Life cycle thinking for the assessment of waste and circular economy policy: status and perspectives from the EU example.

Autor: De Laurentiis V; European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy., Caldeira C; European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy., Sala S; European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy. Electronic address: serenella.sala@ec.europa.eu., Tonini D; European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Seville, Spain.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Waste management (New York, N.Y.) [Waste Manag] 2024 Apr 30; Vol. 179, pp. 205-215. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Mar 14.
DOI: 10.1016/j.wasman.2024.02.037
Abstrakt: Life cycle thinking methods such as life cycle assessment (LCA) and costing (LCC) were originally developed to assess the performance of products and services (business-making decisions). However, they are increasingly deployed to support policy-making along the entire policy cycle, including via impact assessment (IA) of different policy options. These applications are associated with a number of challenges, mainly related to the dynamic and prospective nature of policy IA, typically forward-looking into 10-20 years ahead. This requires the application of prospective scenario analyses to develop the baseline scenario, reflecting the 'do nothing' into the future (business-as-usual), and the alternative scenarios, reflecting the consequences incurred by the implementation of the policy options under study. Such prospective and broadened boundary nature of policy IA challenges traditional LCA/LCC practices mostly based on retrospective, static scenarios and datasets. The present study provides an overview of recent IA studies supporting waste policy to show the state-of-the-art and the main challenges associated with the application of life cycle methods in IA, focusing on the most recent EU waste and circular economy policies. Moreover, since specific and transparent guidance on how to implement consistently these methods in policy IA is lacking, the study provides an initial guidance for application of life cycle thinking in IA drawing upon the knowledge obtained conducting waste policy IA studies. Key challenges in the field are still to be addressed, and might inspire further research to improve the application of life cycle thinking to policy assessment.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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