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Proper information regarding the performance of waste management systems from an environmental perspective is significant to sustainable waste management decisions and planning toward the selection of the least impactful treatment options. However, little is known about the environmental impacts of the different waste management options in South Af...
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Citations
... Considering the present pace of population expansion and industrialization, MSW is projected to rise to 3.4 billion tons by 2050 (a 70% increase from 2016). More than 90% of MSW generated is often disposed of haphazardly or burnt openly in underdeveloped region (Adeleke et al., 2022a;Adeleke et al., 2021). This poor waste management often result in unprecedented environmental consequences. ...
... Unlike specialty chemicals, ECMs are mixtures of hundreds different compounds, with composition varying significantly depending on the preparation method. However, the decellularization process involves a small number of chemicals and physical treatments for which sufficient data are available to compile the LCA analysis [41,42]. Due to the high level of customization, the LCA of ECM is likely to suffer from the variability in the materials of origin [43,44]. ...
The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a network of proteins and other molecules that encase and support cells and tissues in the body. As clinical and biotechnological uses of ECM are expanding, it is essential to assess the environmental impact associated with its production. Due to high levels of customization, various laboratories employ distinct methods; therefore, this study evaluates three common protocols. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology has been developed to evaluate the environmental impacts of products produced through diverse processes. Despite its widespread application in the pharmaceutical industry, LCA has seldom been utilized to estimate the environmental effects of laboratory protocols. This Viewpoint applies LCA to assess the functionality and environmental impacts of ECM produced via P1, P2, and P3. The results of this assessment indicate that the protocol with the highest impact generates approximately 43 times more CO2‐equivalent emissions (CO2 eq) than that with the lowest impact, while the ECM produced using the least impactful protocol demonstrates the highest biocompatibility. Additional environmental indicators such as eutrophication, photochemical oxidation, and acidification also vary among the tested protocols. This work underscores the need to factor environmental impact in the development of novel biomedical materials.
... There is an obvious and strong link between inefficient MSW systems and environmental and wellness concerns [7]. Despite the fact that alternatives to waste management have been proposed, many countries are neglecting these, and the predominant treatment methods remain open dumping [8,9] and landfilling [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. The inadequacies of traditional waste management systems, largely based on landfilling, are increasingly evident [21,22]. ...
The treatment or utilization of municipal solid waste (MSW) is a topic of intense global concern. Life cycle assessment (LCA), as applied to municipal waste, has recently attracted significant attention from researchers. The life cycle of MSW encompasses a series of processes, beginning with waste generation and ending with its final disposal. This study aims to provide an overview of the LCA methodology and the development of various software tools, discussing both the limitations and potential of LCA. We searched the Web of Science database for all articles published between January 2003 and October 2023 on the topic of "life cycle assessment in municipal waste management". This review thus offers the most current evidence on LCA in MSW management, emphasizing the need for more effective global environmental governance to address waste management issues.
... Similar to CE, waste management has been emphasized in almost all documents in this review. Adequate information about the functionality of waste management systems from an environmental perspective is critical in choosing the least effective treatment options in sustainable waste management decisions and planning (Adeleke et al. 2022). The effective treatment of waste to be used as a resource Environmental Science and Pollution Research in future has a significant part in attaining environmental sustainability and transitioning to a circular economy (Tanveer et al. 2022). ...
Transitioning to a circular economy is indispensable for the construction industry to achieve sustainable development goals. Understanding trends, gaps, and opportunities in life cycle assessment (LCA) for adopting a circular economy is critical. This study investigates the development of publications, identifies the most effective documents, authors, and countries, and highlights critical issues, knowledge axes, active research areas, and knowledge gaps. The study screened 196 out of 280 articles from the Scopus database and conducted a bibliometric analysis using CiteSpace and VOSviewer. Document clustering analysis identified the main research domains, and thematic classifications of knowledge areas and axes were provided. Additionally, development opportunities and knowledge gaps were identified through a full-text analysis of selected articles. The results show an increase in publications post-2017, with key research clusters including “Critical consideration,” “Circular building component,” “Building material,” “Design for disassembly,” “Integrated load match analysis,” “Adaptive reuse project,” “Data bank,” “Prospective life cycle assessment,” “Investment decision,” and “Environmental comparison.” Over 60% of the documents propose circular design solutions, end-of-life strategies, and alternative materials, while more than 80% focus solely on the environmental aspect. Only 4.6% develop integrated indicators, 2.5% automate LCA, 2.1% compile life cycle inventory databases, and 2% consider the social dimension. The findings emphasize the need to develop integrated indicators, methods, life cycle inventory databases, and automation tools based on integrated platforms and emerging technologies like building information modeling. This research identifies current knowledge gaps, suggests future research directions, and enhances understanding of how to make LCA more compatible with the circular economy.
... Further, the environmental impact parameters as for instance global warming potential (GWP), terrestrial ecotoxicity (TE), etc., can be assessed through the sustainability study (Ferronato et al. 2023). Therefore, successful implementation of LCA on waste management can clearly indicate its viability to be used for environmental impact assessment of BL synthesis process (Adeleke et al. 2022). ...
For the first time, an energy-efficient and eco-friendly technology for the conversion of abundantly available kitchen waste, specifically waste cooked rice water (WCRW) to drop-in- biofuels, namely, butyl levulinate (BL), has been explored. The synthesis of BL was accomplished employing butyl alcohol (BA) and WCRW in an energy-efficient UV (5W each UVA and UVB)-near-infrared (100W) irradiation assisted spinning (120 rpm) batch reactor (UVNIRSR) in the presence of TiO2-Amberlyst 15 (TA15) photo-acidic catalyst system (PACS). The optimal 95.81% yield of BL (YBL) could be achieved at 10 wt% catalyst concentration, 60 °C reaction temperature, 80 min time, and 1:10 WCRW: BA concentration as per Taguchi statistical design. Moreover, additional combination of different PACS such as TiO2-Amberlyst 16, TiO2-Amberlyst 36, and TiO2-Amberlite IRC120 H rendered 86.72% YBL, 90.04% YBL, and 93.47% YBL, respectively, proving superior efficacy compared to individual activity of the acidic catalysts and photocatalysts. The heterogeneous reaction kinetics study for TA15 PACS suggested Langmuir–Hinshelwood model to be the best fitted model. A significant 63.33% energy could be saved by UVNIRSR as compared to conventional heated reactor at the optimized experimental condition using PACS TA15. An overall alleviation in environmental pollution with 59.259% reduction in GWP, 15.254% decline in terrestrial ecotoxicity, 18.238% diminution in marine ecotoxicity, 17.25% decrease in ozone formation affecting human health, 5.865% reduction in human non-carcinogenic toxicity, 18.65% diminution in ozone formation affecting terrestrial ecosystem, 55.17% significant decrease in terrestrial acidification, and 25.619% mitigation in fresh water ecotoxicity could be observed. Furthermore, BL-biodiesel-diesel blends (3% BL, 7% biodiesel, and 90% diesel) exhibited significant reduction (25.45% and 36%, respectively, for CO and HC) in harmful engine exhaust emissions demonstrating environmental sustainability of the overall process.
... Wang et al., 2022;Liu et al., 2023;Cai et al., 2021;F. Wang et al., 2022;Xiao and Xiao, 2018;Dee et al., 2017;Yan et al., 2023;Li and Zhou, 2015;Ma et al., 2022;Pan et al., 2022;Singhal et al., 2017;Rosini and Revelli, 2020;Du et al., 2023) dan 17 life cycle assessment (Zarea et al., 2019;Ng et al., 2014;Jirapornvaree et al., 2021;Tang et al., 2023;Ding et al., 2019;Rostami et al., 2019;Adeleke et al., 2021;Avarand et al., 2023;Ibá ñez-Foré s et al., 2021;Yadav and Samadder, 2017;de Sampaio Lopes et al., 2020;Y. Wang et al., 2016;Marzban et al., 2020;Bicer et al., 2017;Liu et al., 2021;Pokhrel et al., 2020;Gheibi et al., 2018). ...
... The ecology of cities as a whole, including examining the dynamics of energy, water, materials, and information entering and exiting urban areas and their corresponding impacts on internal and external environments (Aryal et al., 2023;Gültekin, 2022;Zarea et al., 2019;Ng et al., 2014;Jirapornvaree et al., 2021). All life cycle assessment keywords are dominated by discussions regarding the optimization of ecosystem services in ecology for cities, municipal solid waste management (Zarea et al., 2019;Adeleke et al., 2021;Avarand et al., 2023;Yadav and Samadder, 2017;Liu et al., 2021;Pokhrel et al., 2020), wastewater and storm water (Ng et al., 2014;Tang et al., 2023;Rostami et al., 2019;Avarand et al., 2023;de Sampaio Lopes et al., 2020). ...
Cities are no longer viewed as creatures with a linear-climax-established cycle but as ecosystems with dynamic and complicated processes, with people as the primary component. Thus, we must understand urban ecology’s structure and function to create urban planning and appreciate the mechanisms, dynamics, and evolution that connect human and ecological processes. The ecological city (ecocity) is one of the city conceptions that has evolved with the perspective of urban ecology history. The concept of ecocity development within urban ecology systems pertains to recognizing cities as complex ecosystems primarily influenced by human activities. In this context, individuals actively engage in dynamic problem-solving approaches to address environmental challenges to ensure a sustainable and satisfactory quality of life for future generations. Therefore, it is necessary to study how ecocity has developed since it was initiated today and how it relates to the urban ecology perspective. This study aims to investigate the progression of scholarly publications on ecocity research from 1980 to 2023. Additionally, it intends to ascertain the trajectory of ecological city research trends, establish connections between scientific concepts, and construct an ecological city science network using keyword co-occurrence analysis from the urban ecology perspective. The present study used a descriptive bibliometric analysis and literature review methodology. The data was obtained by utilizing the Lens.org database, was conducted using the VOS (Visualization of Similarities) viewer software for data analysis. The urban ecology research area ecology of cities can be studied further from density visualization of ecosystem services and life cycle assessment. Finally, the challenges and future agenda of ecocity research include addressing humans by modeling functions or processes that connect humans with ecosystems (ecology of cities), urban design, ecological imperatives, integration research, and improving the contribution to environmental goals, spatial distribution, agriculture, natural resources, policy, economic development, and public health.
... Hospital wastewater comprises a complex mix of organic and inorganic contaminants, including nutrients, pathogenic bacteria, and antibiotic-resistant strains, which can harm humans and the environment if not cleaned (Ajala et al. 2022;Fatimazahra et al. 2023). Preventing eutrophication and subsequent aquatic ecosystem damage requires efficient wastewater nutrient removal (Adeleke et al. 2022). Moreover, pathogenic bacteria in hospital wastewater can transmit infectious diseases, thus jeopardizing public health (Anand et al. 2022). ...
This study is aimed at assessing the effectiveness of hospital’s wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in removing nutrients, pathogenic bacteria, and addressing antibiotic resistance using a case study of a tertiary hospital in Ibadan, Nigeria. During the dry and wet seasons in the month of July and December, respectively, samples were collected, and analyzed using standard guidelines to examine significant physicochemical parameters of the WTTP; to evaluate the removal efficiency of biological oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD), and to examine the prevalence of pathogenic and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The results of this study showed that during the dry season, certain parameters exceeded acceptable limits, including temperature, total suspended solids (TSS), total dissolved solids (TDS), phosphate, and nitrate. Although there were reductions in BOD (1555 mg/L to 482 mg/L) and COD levels (3160 mg/L to 972 mg/L), they remained above acceptable limits by World Health Organization. In the wet season, the level of COD (20 mg/L) in the effluent was within acceptable limit, while the BOD (160 mg/L) was above the acceptable limit. The WWTP effectively removed nutrients and reduced the microbial load, as evident from the absence of fecal coliforms in the effluent in both seasons. In respect to BOD removal efficiency, the level of purification of wastewater by the WWTP was 69% during the dry season, while the removal efficiency of COD was 83.54% which showed the efficiency of the WWTP at the removal of COD. However, antibiotic resistance was still present. The study concludes that while the WWTP effectively addressed nutrients and microbial load, additional measures such as tertiary treatment methods like chlorination and UV radiation are necessary to tackle antibiotic resistance. This is crucial to prevent the release of antibiotic-resistant bacteria into the environment, safeguarding human health, animals, plants, and overall environmental well-being.
... The study area was the city of Johannesburg, located in Gauteng Province, South Africa (Fig. 1). The city of Johannesburg is one of the three metropolitan cities in Gauteng province with approximately 85% of its total population (Adeleke et al., 2022). The area is termed the Highveld, and it covers 1645 km 2 with an elevation of 1767 m (Adeleke et al., 2022;Knight, 2018). ...
... The city of Johannesburg is one of the three metropolitan cities in Gauteng province with approximately 85% of its total population (Adeleke et al., 2022). The area is termed the Highveld, and it covers 1645 km 2 with an elevation of 1767 m (Adeleke et al., 2022;Knight, 2018). The area has a warm climate that consists of low rainfall and temperature in winter and high temperatures and rainfall in the summer (Goldreich, 1992;Jombo et al., 2022). ...
Land use and land cover (LULC) mapping is important for sustainable land management and has received great attention from researchers over the years. Classifying satellite imagery within urban environments poses challenges due to the spectral similarity among various LULC features. This study aims to evaluate Landsat 9, Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 imageries in LULC classification in a heterogeneous urban area, using the city of Johannesburg as a case study. The objectives of the study were to examine the effectiveness of Random Forest (RF) and k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN) in the classification of Landsat 9, Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 imageries in the study area. The benefits of integrating ancillary data and using post-classification correction (PCC) to generate precise LULC maps in the study area were also assessed. The performance of the multispectral bands for the satellite imageries was evaluated. The RF classifier performed better than kNN in LULC classification with high overall accuracies of 96%, 92% and 94% for Landsat 9, Landsat 8, and Sentinel-2 imageries, respectively. The kNN classifier produced overall accuracies of 95% (Landsat 9), 91% (Landsat 8) and 90% (Sentinel-2). The integration of additional data and the application of the PCC method led to enhanced accuracies in all three satellite imageries. For Landsat 9, both the RF and kNN classifiers exhibited a 1% improvement in accuracy. Notably, all overall accuracies demonstrated enhancements, with the maximum increase reaching 2%. The NIR, Red, and SWIR bands were the most influential with values of 100%, 94%, and 85%, respectively, in the LULC classification. The results of this study provide valuable information to land managers, municipalities, and stakeholders in understanding the spatial distribution of LULC classes, data, and classification methods to use in a heterogeneous urban environment.
... The authors also sought to contribute with scientific evidence on the potential and challenges of circular bioeconomy within an African context. Additionally, despite having several studies on municipal biowaste in Africa (Mangundu et al., 2013;Komakech et al., 2015;Nhubu et al., 2020;Adeleke et al., 2021), to our knowledge, the aspect of linking circular bioeconomy, waste management and life cycle principles is still missing in literature. Currently, the African Union does not have fully developed policies on the circular bioeconomy and as such, A. Ncube et al. ...
Increased material circularity has become a priority in the agenda of the European Union and worldwide, as the necessity to decouple environmental impacts from economic growth become more imminent. Circular Economy (CE) and Bioeconomy (BE) are interrelated and complementary closed-loop approaches that can potentially transform and disrupt the linear economy while aligning the environment with the economy for the benefit of human society and other species. While the prospects of CE and BE approaches are appealing, their implementation and feasibility need to be carefully investigated with the possibility of influencing practice and policy. Although, there is still an ongoing and growing body of literature on CE and BE transitions, the actual environmental benefits of these circular models have often been assumed rather than measured. Furthermore, there is still a lack of understanding regarding the viability of CE and BE, thus the need to use multi-dimensional contexts and tailor-making solutions to local supply chains.
Against this background, the main objective of the present research is therefore to
evaluate environmental implications of transitioning towards CE and BE by pointing out that: (i) all new processes and proposals should firstly be analysed by means of
environmental accounting approaches, to ensure that the circular conversion pathways of waste and by-products into new useful products perform better than the traditional business-as-usual patterns, (ii) all waste/residues can and should be converted into new products (biogas, renewable natural gas, platform chemicals, fertilisers, etc) in order to replace non-renewables and fossil-based materials, (iii) such conversions require a cooperative effort to develop sustainable processes and conversion plants, and finally (iv) the circular and Bioeconomy transitions may generate additional positive and negative impacts which need careful consideration, while facing inhibiting and enabling forces.
The adoption and application of established environmental performance evaluation
tools, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and EMergy Accounting (EMA), can enable us to identify positive and negative environmental implications of CE and BE
opportunity streams. In this regard, different waste conversion and recovery pathways are applied in this study to the agri-food, energy, urban, waste management, tourism, and construction sectors in different geographic locations, using case scenarios in order to generate actionable insights leading to a better understanding. The design of circular patterns through scenario simulation was mainly aimed at improving environmental performance through the avoidance of virgin raw material extraction and through the prevention of waste generation and landfilling. For example, the agri-food case studies (i.e., olive oil and winery) highlighted that the implementation of circular strategies through the re-use of by-products in traditional linear production systems leads to better environmental performance of circular systems compared to counterpart linear production systems (in the order of magnitude of 2-3 times). Meanwhile, the construction sector studies demonstrated that the replacement of non-renewable materials and fossil
energy with materials recovered from residues and renewable energy (fly ash instead of clay, use of photovoltaic system to replace wood combustion, and agri-food hemp byproducts substituting material aggregates in the manufacturing of construction concrete) could significantly reduce environmental impacts. Furthermore, the study on bioenergy (generating biogas from source separated organic waste and upgrading into biomethane) raised relevant questions about the need for coordinated regulations and policies to fully disentangle from fossil fuel dependence, at the same time solving the waste management problem that many local authorities still face today. The overall environmental improvement in all the investigated case studies was mainly due to appropriate design and waste utilization leading to decreased consumption of non-renewable sources and
reduction of environmental impacts from business-as-usual activities. Opportunities for the development of policies aimed at mitigating climate change and improving overall resource efficiency through material circularity and reconciling legislation, and waste management are recommended. Key drivers and strategies that can influence decision making and uptake of circular initiatives at micro, meso and macro levels were also highlighted. The theoretical and practical outcomes of this cross-case research work can be used to provide information for discussions with regulators, academia, municipal planners, businesses, and other stakeholders. The work can also be replicated and applied to other key economic sectors to ensure environmental efficiency and sustainable production systems.
Keywords: Circular Economy, Bioeconomy, Life Cycle Assessment, EMergy Accounting, Biorefinery, Waste management and recovery.
... Few authors used LCA to analyze the environmental performances of WI plants on a national scale, highlighting benefits for most of the considered impact categories (Beylot et al., 2018;Sisani et al., 2022). Other authors used LCA to compare the performance of WI with other waste management alternatives or with thermoelectric powerplants, often observing that WI outperformed most alternatives (Abuşoglu et al., 2017;Adeleke et al., 2022). LCA allowed to analyze the impacts of different WI plants (Havukainen et al., 2017), and of the reuse of bottom ash (Margallo et al., 2015). ...
... • The environmental performances of WI installations are rarely assessed (Sisani et al., 2022) through publicly available and validated data, such as those present in EMAS ESs. • The performance analysis is mostly performed through LCA, considering specific case studies (Adeleke et al., 2022;Havukainen et al., 2017;Abuşoglu et al., 2017); the few national-scale studies are context-specific due to the application of the LCA approach (Sisani et al., 2022;Beylot et al., 2018). • There is an overall lack of focus (Table 1) on which environmental aspects WI companies consider significant, how they quantify their impacts and plan to improve their environmental performances. ...
This work analyzed how 15 Italian waste incineration (WI) plants registered to the European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) in 2020 reported to the public their environmental sustainability. Their EMAS Environmental Statements (ESs) were analyzed to identify the environmental performance indicators and metrics used by the companies, the improvement actions planned, and the adoption of the Best Available Techniques (BAT) for WI. 197 environmental performance indicators and 140 improvement objectives, with an overall allocated budget of 79.8 M€, were inventoried. WI companies emphasized reporting and improvement of energy consumption, emissions to air, waste production, process management and energy production. Current values of 8 key performance indicators (HCl, NOx, CO, and dust concentrations in flue-gas, water consumption, waste production, and electricity consumption/production per 1 ton of treated waste) were assessed and compared. GHG reporting and compliance with the BAT for WI (on emissions to air, energy and raw materials consumption, and waste production), although often not detailed, w also analyzed. Requesting companies to report a pre-defined subset of key metrics, possibly related to the BAT emissions levels, and an explicit section on the adopted BAT could provide an even more representative description of the environmental performances of the WI plants. This study shows a novel approach that could be extended to other industrial sectors to analyze their environmental performance from a consistent, validated, and publicly available data source (EMAS ESs). It also provides metrics and recommendations that could be useful references for the environmental reporting of the WI sector.
