Andrea Raggi

Università degli Studi G. d'Annunzio Chieti e Pescara | UNICH · Department of Economics

The use of life cycle-based assessment has been defined a crucial microfoundation to implement circular business models from a dynamic capabilities perspective. Through a case study of a multinational packaging corporation in the plastics sector, the application of an industry-developed circularity assessment, the Circular Transition Indicators (CT...

The authors would like to make the following corrections about the published paper [...]

The application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in the wine sector has received a particular attention in the last years. The inventory phase represents an important and sometimes critical issue for LCA analysts. This paper presents a systematic review of LCA studies (over the last 10 years) in the wine sector in order to analyze the aspects related...

Social acceptance is considered the main non-technical barrier to the development of bioenergy projects. This paper presents the results of a systematic literature review aimed to cover a lack in state-of-the-art literature about socio-cultural factors affecting the acceptance of biogas projects at a global scale. Moreover, this study is aimed at i...

Il settore vitivinicolo italiano ricopre un ruolo fondamentale nell’economia nazionale e nello scenario produttivo mondiale. Infatti, l’Italia è tra i primi produttori di vino al mondo, con una elevata superficie coltivata a vite. La letteratura internazionale mostra la carenza di dati ambientali nel settore vitivinicolo italiano. Pertanto, la cost...

Tourism has become an important contributor to many sustainability issues. In addition, online booking platforms have grown to become an increasingly used means of booking accommodation, which can be crucial for encouraging sustainability. Furthermore, the promotion of sustainable tourism (ST) and accommodation services at an international level ha...

The circular economy (CE) concept has become a major interest for companies, promising new business opportunities and a decrease in environmental impacts. Though research on circular business models has recently increased, few scholars have investigated how companies engaged with CE view the connection between CE and sustainability. To address this...

The shift towards sustainable development is argued to be achieved by a circular disruption triggered or supported by circular economy (CE) policies. CE policies can pressure the disruption of currently predominant linear socio‐technical systems across sectors towards a circular paradigm. Knowledge on how these policies appear on the agenda is esse...

While academic literature related to sustainability assessment approaches in circular inter-firm networks continues to grow, little is known about the implementation and applicability of these approaches by industry practitioners across their supply chains. This chapter therefore compares the proposed approaches from the literature with those appli...

Given that the pressure of climate change action on companies is increasing, it is recommended to measure the improvement of mitigation activities in terms of GHG emissions. This paper aims to highlight the still-open aspects that characterise simplified GHG accounting tools, starting from the outcomes of a case study. This study was performed usin...

An emerging research area is dedicated to developing approaches for assessing the ‘circularity’ of companies and their products, within the context of sustainability goals. However, empirical evidence on the uptake of these assessment approaches remains scarce. Using a purposive sampling, we conducted a survey receiving 155 responses and held 43 se...

Purpose For the development of any life cycle assessment study, the practitioner frequently integrates primary data collected on-field, with background data taken from various life cycle inventory databases which are part of most commercial LCA software packages. However, such data is often not generally applicable to all product systems since, esp...

The tourism industry is one of the fastest growing sectors, even though in the last couple of years there has been a negative effect due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This growth has led to an increase in environmental, economic and social impacts. Furthermore, the transition towards a circular economy has become one of the priorities of the European U...

This article presents and discusses a pilot test concerning the environmental impacts assessment of organizations. The study was conducted in a production site of a world leading group in the plastic packaging industry. The purpose was to deepen the knowledge of the methodologies currently available and also of the benefits and the difficulties rel...

Background The social impacts generated by industrial waste treatment processes have not been studied enough, as shown in the literature. Social life cycle assessment studies have mainly focused on the assessment of products and less on industrial waste, especially wastewater, although potentially relevant from an environmental point of view, and a...

The debate on the relationship between the long-established concept of sustainability, and the relatively novel one of circularity in constantly increasing biogas production remains. In this study, additional discussion elements to such an open debate are provided. With its role in the bioeconomy and ongoing ambiguity, a bibliographic review of ana...

Purpose An apicultural system is characterised by multifunctionality, with one of the functions being the pollination service performed by honeybees, which is of fundamental importance for the nutrition of mankind. The discussion on including ecosystem services in the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology has opened; this article proposes an alte...

To seize the potential of Circular Economy (CE) organisations need to evaluate and communicate their progress moving away from the non‐sustainable paradigm of ‘take‐make‐dispose’ towards circularity. Existing CE assessments for organisations focus on companies. Although the need for CE assessment is recognised in both public and private sectors, li...

The most popular definition of sustainable development, which can be found in the Brundtland Report, sets an ideal goal but do not provide a clear direction for the implementation of sustainable solutions. Other related concepts and approaches have emerged as means to progress towards sustainability in a more pragmatic way, such as the circular eco...

Circular economy has become a central concept of sustainable production and consumption since its introduction into the public eye. However, to ensure circular economy actually delivers on its promises regarding sustainability, it is vital to anticipate and assess the impact of circular economy practices in an integrated way. For that purpose, holi...

Despite the frequent association of circular economy (CE) with sustainability, most CE practices have yet to prove they actually contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs), and social aspects in particular. To attain the consensually established targets in the SDG framework, it is vital to assess the impact of CE practices. As...

Circular Economy (CE) is seen as a key strategy in achieving sustainable development and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To seize the potential of CE, public and private organisations need to evaluate and communicate their progress moving away from the non-sustainable paradigm of “take–make–dispose” towards circularity. The...

When planning sustainable waste management systems (WMSs), decision makers should consider various aspects, including environmental, economic and social issues. In this framework, a linear programming model may be useful to identify the best scenario among the many theoretically possible. With reference to previous research by the same authors on e...

Industrial Symbiosis (IS) is a business-focused collaborative approach oriented towards resource efficiency that has been theorised and studied mainly over the last 25 years. Recently, IS seems to have found a renewed impetus in the framework of the Circular Economy (CE), a novel approach to sustainability and Sustainable Development (SD) that has...

This study investigates how different typologies of networks could be potentially related to the development of an Industrial Symbiosis (IS). The structural and relational features (entities/nodes and flows/ties, respectively) of various types of typical networks (planned industrial areas, local supply networks, districts, ecologically equipped ind...

The practicality of adopting Life Cycle Assessment to support decision-making can be limited by the resource-intensive nature of data collection and Life Cycle Inventory modelling. The number of chemical products increases continuously, and long-term analyses show that overall growth of chemicals production and demand as well as faster growth in em...

Organizations play a key role in reducing anthropogenic pressure on the natural environment. The first step towards improving their sustainability performances is the implementation of methodologies that take into consideration multiple environmental impact categories, as well as the entire value chain. The attention of scholars and practitioners w...

Purpose This article analyses, in an industrial ecology (IE) perspective, urban contexts with specific features, such as a reduced space scale, a hybrid nature, which includes a residential, industrial and rural dimension, and a strong spatial contiguity among these three dimensions. Methods The study starts with a retrospective investigation of s...

The definition of a Functional Unit (FU) is essential for building and modelling a product system in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). A FU is a quantified description of the function of a product that serves as the reference basis for all calculations regarding impact assessment. A function may be based on different features of the product under study,...

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been increasingly used for the improvement of the environmental performance of products and services, including food systems. Amongst them, however, honey appears to have been rarely analysed. Furthermore, the pollination by honeybees can be regarded as one of the functions of an apiculture system and is of utmost im...

This paper is the editorial of the special issue on "Food security and agriculture" published by the review Food Economy in 2018.

This paper aims at evaluating the environmental impact of two types of organic fraction of municipal solid waste treatment techniques e composting and anaerobic digestion with post-composting e by using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The analysis concerns a facility of municipal solid waste selection and composting, which is located i...

La definizione dell’unità funzionale (UF) nella Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) è essenziale per modellare il sistema-prodotto analizzato. L’UF descrive la quantità di funzione del prodotto che funge da riferimento per tutti i calcoli necessari per la valutazione degli impatti. La funzione è determinata in base alle proprietà del prodotto valutato. Inf...

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been increasingly used for the improvement of the environmental performance of products and services, amongst which food systems. Nevertheless, honey appears to have been rarely analysed. Furthermore, the role of honey bees as pollinators can be regarded as one of the functions of an apiculture system and is undoubte...

Il presente articolo descrive uno studio di LCA applicato a due opzioni di trattamento della frazione organica dei rifiuti solidi urbani (FORSU) riferiti a un impianto ubicato in Abruzzo. La prima opzione corrisponde all’attuale linea di compostaggio dell’impianto, mentre nella seconda è stato ipotizzato l’affiancamento alla linea esistente di un p...

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been increasingly used for the improvement of the environmental performance of goods and services, amongst which products belonging to the agri-food sector. Part of the international scientific literature considers simplification of LCA a relevant approach in order to make LCA easier to perform, especially for Small-...

Accanto ad una sempre maggiore diffusione del Life Cycle Thinking per il miglioramento ambien-tale delle filiere agroalimentari, vi è l’esigenza di strumenti semplificati di Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), specialmente per le Piccole e Medie Imprese, che spesso non hanno le risorse per l’esecuzione di una LCA completa. A tal fine, sono stati proposti,...

The aim of the study presented in this article is to assess, from an environmental standpoint, a set of eco-innovations applied to the production process of an automotive component. The eco-innovations were developed by a supply network of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the framework of a project named "Hi-reach". The component consi...

When municipal waste scenarios are compared by using Life Cycle Assessment, the comparison is usually carried out among a limited number of alternative scenarios identified in advance. Therefore, however accurate and broad the scenario definition may be, the scenario actually generating the lowest environmental impacts might just not be included am...

Currently, stakeholders’ increasing attention to quality is driving the wine sector to rethink and change its own production processes. Amongst product quality dimensions, the environment is gaining ever-growing attention at various levels of policy-making and business. Given its soundness, the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has become widespre...

Consolidated evidence demonstrates a global increase in the occurrence of natural disasters. In the management of such events, a considerable importance is attributed to the waste and debris removal and treatment methods. Indeed, a sustainable management of the event‘s aftermath should include whether and how these materials can be recyclable or re...

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been increasingly used to improve the environmental performance of food systems and simplification of LCA appears to be a vital question, especially for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Following a literature review on simplified LCA tools and their subsequent ranking, some of the best-rated tools were imp...

Carbon Footprint (CF) can be of great importance for the dissemination of life-cycle information of products. The use of CF has recently increased, despite some methodology aspects being still not sufficiently addressed. This paper deals with the accounting of biogenic carbon exchanges, focusing on the wine sector, which has been the object of seve...

Carbon Footprint (CF) can be of great importance for the dissemination of life-cycle information of products. The use of CF has recently increased, despite some methodology aspects being still not sufficiently addressed. This paper deals with the accounting of biogenic carbon exchanges, focusing on the wine sector, which has been the object of seve...

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), as a tool for assessing environmental performance, can also be implemented in order to help decision makers choose the best alternatives of integrated waste management systems (IWMS) in terms of environmental impacts. In order to avoid making assumptions, linear programming (LP) models integrated to LCA may allow us to...

Simplification is a crucial question for a widespread dissemination of life cycle information, especially when it comes to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are lacking the knowledge and resources that are necessary to implement LCAs. Following a literature review on simplified LCA tools and approaches that could be appropriate for th...

Purpose. Consequential LCA（CLCA）is becoming widely used in the scientific community as a modelling technique which describes the consequences of a decision. However, despite the increasing number of case studies published, a proper systematization of the approach has not yet been achieved. This paper investigates the methodological implications of...

The aim of this paper is to highlight the potential use of the tools of life cycle thinking LCT to support business decisions, which can have economic, social and environmental impacts, in the short and long term, using as a case study the agri-food sector. In this way, thus, we intend to contribute to the solution of an issue much debated in the l...

The food supply chain has nowadays become an important contributor to a number of environmental impacts due to a notable increase in food production, to major changes in dietary habits and to the way in which the processes included in the food chain are generally performed. In order for the whole chain to be taken into consideration, a life cycle a...

Carbon Footprint (CF), being a simplified LCA tool, can be of great importance for the dissemination of life-cycle information of products. The use of CF has remarkably increased recently despite some methodology aspects are still not sufficiently addressed. This paper deals with one of these: the accounting of biogenic emissions, focusing on the w...

This Chapter describes and discusses the approach for identifying a simplified life cycle assessment (LCA) model suited for SMEs in the agri-food sector, addressing both the supply (developments of methods and tools) and demand (what stakeholders desire from a life cycle tool) side of the simplification problem. As far as the demand side is concern...

The food supply chain has become an important contributor to a number of environmental impacts, and food and drink products are accountable for a significant share of the overall environmental impacts of private consumption. In order for the whole chain to be taken into account, a life cycle approach to environmental assessment is needed; in that f...

In Chap. 6 a simplified Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool that could be suitable for SMEs, especially in the food industry, was identified. In this Chapter, the selected tool (eVerdEE) was tested for its robustness and suitability, by implementing it to an Italian wine produced by a small winery. A full LCA was also carried out to evaluate in parall...

Representing the coordinated work of a research group from four different Italian University departments which conducted the Eco-Management for Food (EMAF) Project, this book offers a systematic approach for managing and improving the environmental aspects of agri-food processes and products using Product-Oriented Environmental Management Systems (...

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a decision support tool that can be used to assess the environmental performance of an integrated waste management system or to identify the system with the best performance through a comparative analysis of different scenarios. The results of the analysis depend primarily on how the scenarios to be compared are defin...

The Eco-Management for Food Project (EMAF Project - PRIN No.2008TXFBYT co-funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research) has the purpose to design and implement a Product-Oriented Environmental Management System (POEMS) framework that is specified for the agri-food industry. The POEMS framework has a modular structure resulti...

Purpose Consequential LCA (CLCA) is becoming widely used in the scientific community as a modelling technique which describes the consequences of a decision. However, despite the increasing number of case studies published, a proper systematization of the approach has not yet been achieved. This paper investigates the methodological implications of...

The aim of this abstract is to present a LCM tool designed for the agri-food industry, a POEMS framework with a modular structure resulting from the integration of complementary tools: an Integrated Management System (IMS), a simplified Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and a suitable Environmental Product Label or Declaration (EPLD) - EMAF Project co-fu...

Global warming represents one of the most critical internationally perceived environmental issues. The growing, and increasingly global, wine sector is one of the industries which is under increasing pressure to adopt approaches for environmental assessment and reporting of product-related greenhouse gas emissions. The International Organization fo...

Rapid growth in life cycle assessment (LCA) methodological developments has generated a large body of work that may appear to lack direction. In this article we developed and applied a structured approach, inspired by the meta-analysis concept, to examine literature and identify research thrusts on how to further develop LCA. The procedure consists...

Consequential LCA (CLCA) is becoming widely used as an advanced modelling technique which describes the consequences of a decision. However, despite the increasing number of case studies published, a proper systematization of the approach has not been achieved yet. Most of the issues on which a debate was raised in the past still remain unsolved, l...

Researchers have identified food industry as one of the most important drivers of environmental pressures both at the European level and worldwide. Life Cycle Assessment is a tool which has been increasingly used in order to identify the environmental impacts of food products, amongst a fair variety of goods and services. This paper summarises the...

The objectives of the research here described were to put in evidence the eco-profiles of two product-systems concerning bovine leather manufactured in Italy and Spain, to identify their hot spots and to find out if the different technologies and cooperative management solutions adopted led to significant environmental differences in the two system...

Introduction “Food and drink” products are the basis of life. However, it is recognised that their supply also contributes to the environmental impacts associated with production and consumption. Recently, an increasing number of food chain partners and public authorities have introduced a widening range of initiatives to provide information about...

The environmental sustainability of tourism has been increasingly appearing in Local Agenda 21 and in the development policies of many countries. Although several studies have focused on sustainable tourism, only a few of them are based on life cycle assessment (LCA), the main methodology to assess environmental issues from a life cycle perspective...

A model able to measure eco-effectiveness, which was theoretically proposed and illustrated in a previous article, is here developed and implemented for three case studies (USA, EU-15 and Japan) in order to verify its potential usefulness in the natural resources field. The results obtained by the application of the 'loss function' – ability to mea...

Background, aim and scopeRecords over the last decades indicate a high growth rate for tourism, making it one of the most important industries in the world economy. Since estimates outline a consolidation of this trend, an accurate identification and assessment of the environmental impacts related to the life cycle of tourist products is increasing...

Service organisations, as well as manufacturing ones, may be responsible for significant negative environmental impacts. To minimise them and to aim to those market segments that are sensitive to environmental issues, service organisations could improve the environmental soundness of their services through the integration of environmental issues in...

Pursuing eco-efficiency in all industrial activities has become a target in the last two decades, and many positive results have led to the belief that this could be the solution to resource and environmental questions. However, even by recognising the encouraging results obtained in several large- and medium-sized companies, mainly in the field of...