Anna Petit-Boix

Autonomous University of Barcelona | UAB · Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technologies (ICTA)

Circular economy (CE) is gaining traction in cities as an approach to reducing local and global environmental impacts. Yet, how effective are these strategies in terms of their environmental impacts? To find out, we took a deep dive into 30 CE policies from cities in high-income countries across Europe, the Americas, and Oceania. We assessed the re...

Due to urban population growth during recent decades, the food supply chain has become one of the key material flows in the metabolism of cities. Urban agriculture (UA) can be an alternative for mitigating food supply impacts. UA can provide environmental benefits, but current concepts and strategies do not reflect its full potential. The circular...

Sustainability scientists are increasingly expressing concerns about the lack of creativity and reflexivity, vital elements for driving sustainability transformations, in their profession. We argue that these concerns stem from established scientific practices of knowledge accumulation and interdisciplinary research, often neglecting the influence...

Reducing food loss in the horticultural sector is crucial to meet policy goals and support a transition towards more sustainable agriculture and eating habits. We quantified food loss in the Catalan horticultural sector for the year 2020 and estimated its economic value and main contributing products. Annual food loss is equivalent to 19 million €...

Over the last few years, several policies and new technological solutions have targeted the construction sector with the aim of reducing the sector's impacts on the environment. Among the different technological advances proposed, the reuse of materials in construction has been reported as a promising solution for an increase in sustainability and...

To effectively navigate out of the climate crisis, a new interdisciplinary approach is needed to guide and facilitate research that integrates diverse understandings of how transitions evolve in intertwined social–environmental systems. The concept of tipping points, frequently used in the natural sciences and increasingly in the social sciences, c...

Numerous challenges – from population increase to climate change – threaten the sustainable development of cities and call for a fundamental change of urban development and green-blue resource management. Urban forests are vital in this transition, as they provide various ecosystem services and allow to re-shape and re-think cities. Based on a Euro...

The current enthusiasm for the circular economy (CE) offers a unique opportunity to advance the impact of research on sustainability transitions. Diverse interpretations of CE by scholars, however, produce partly opposing assessments of its potential benefits, which can hinder progress. Here, we synthesize policy-relevant lessons and research direc...

This Research Agenda has been developed as part of the European Forest Institute (EFI) Network Fund call for the preparation of a Green Book of Biocities and a Research Agenda for Biocities of the Future. The Research Agenda is intended as a foundational document for further research and initiatives to be undertaken by the new EFI Biocities Facilit...

A paradigm shift is needed in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) to progress from traditional pollutant removal to resource recovery. However, whether this transformation produces overall environmental benefits will depend on the efficient and sustainable use of resources by emerging technologies. Given that many of these technologies are still be...

Seeking to meet sustainability targets, cities are promoting a number of circular economy initiatives. Whether or not these actions help cities to approach sustainable resource management is often unclear. To identify, prioritize and monitor resource-efficient strategies, cities can look for targets and indicators among the Sustainable Development...

Longstanding research on wood cascading has identified a variety of factors to enable a more efficient, circular use of forest-based products in Europe. We provide an overview of these factors and their interactions. Based on our review, two of the most critical barriers for wood cascading are: 1) Competition between energy and material uses of was...

Urban agriculture comes with its own share of environmental impacts. Circular strategies like rainwater harvesting promise to reduce these impacts, but we find that not all strategies are resource efficient and environmentally effective. The most eco-friendly and circular strategies for urban agriculture, based on our case of a Mediterranean tomato...

Circular economy is gaining momentum in cities. To ensure a sustainable circular economy, measuring the environmental performance of circular economy strategies is indispensable. However, do current environmental assessments support the prioritisation of sustainable circular strategies in cities? We find that environmental assessments miss out on...

Halving food waste is a prominent target in European policymaking to conserve increasingly strained food resources. However, we find that expanding the scope of political action to include dietary changes and complement targets with resource footprints hold greater resource-saving potential while avoiding trade-offs. Comparing food waste and dietar...

Urban agriculture (UA) is a means for cities to become more resilient in terms of food sovereignty while shortening the distance between production and consumption. However, intensive soilless UA still depends on the use of fertilizers, which relies on depleting non-renewable resources such as phosphorous (P) and causes both local and global impact...

The current enthusiasm for circular economy (CE) offers a unique opportunity to advance the impact of research on sustainability transitions. Diverse interpretations of CE by scholars, however, produce partly opposing assessments of its potential benefits, which can hinder progress. Here, we synthesize policy-relevant lessons and research direction...

To feed future populations on ever-scarcer natural resources, policy initiatives aim to decrease resource footprints of food consumption. While adopting healthier diets has shown great potential to reduce footprints, current political initiatives primarily address strategies to reduce food waste, with the target of halving food waste at retail and...

Local food production through urban agriculture (UA) is promoted as a means to make cities more sustainable. However, UA does not come free of environmental impacts. In this sense, optimizing urban resources through circular economy principles offers the opportunity to close loops and improve production systems, but an assessment of these systems t...

Urban agriculture systems can significantly contribute towards mitigating the impacts of inefficient and complex food supply chains and increase urban food sovereignty. Moreover, improving these urban agriculture systems in terms of nutrient management can lead to a better environmental performance. Based on a rooftop greenhouse in the Barcelona re...

We compare two of the most commonly used food packaging materials, PET and corrugated cardboard, using the example of fruit punnets. The results show that a corrugated cardboard fruit punnet generates less harmful climate emissions than an equivalent PET fruit punnet due to the greenhouse gas potential of biological raw materials. If PET fruit punn...

Phosphorus (P) resources are decreasing at an alarming rate due to global fertilizer use and insufficient nutrient recovery strategies. Currently, more circular approaches are promoted, such as recovering P from wastewater in the form of struvite. This is especially attractive for urban areas, where there is a growing trend of local crop production...

Urban agriculture systems, such as rooftop greenhouses, are attractive alternatives for mitigating the impacts of the extensive food supply chains that currently feed cities. In this study, we study the opportunity that nutrient recirculation offers to improve the environmental performance of agricultural systems. In particular, we analyze the envi...

Purpose Rooftop greenhouses (RTGs) are agricultural systems that can improve the food supply chain by producing vegetables in unused urban spaces. However, to date, environmental assessments of RTGs have only focused on specific crops, without considering the impacts resulting from seasonality, combinations of crops and nonoperational time. We ana...

In light of global population growth and the increasing food demand in cities, new food production strategies have been developed to promote a more resource-efficient urban agriculture. Greenhouses with hydroponic systems have been proposed as sustainable systems for growing food in urban areas with a better control of plant growth. However, nutrie...

Understanding how a circular economy (CE) can reduce environmental pressures from economic activities is crucial for policy and practice. Science provides a range of indicators to monitor and assess CE activities. However, common CE activities, such as recycling and eco-design, are contested in terms of their contribution to environmental sustainab...

A recent study helps city planners find the greenest and most effective way of producing renewable energy, crops and water on rooftops. The researchers developed a method for analysing the performance and environmental impacts of different combinations of rooftop rainwater-harvesting-, energy- and food systems. It could aid efforts to promote urban...

A key strategy towards sustainable urban development is designing cities for increased circular metabolism. The transformation of areas underused, such as urban rooftops, into productive spaces is being increasingly implemented as a result of associated multiple benefits. Rooftop greenhouses (RTGs) are an interesting option for exploiting urban roo...

The circular economy has become the focus of a recent major EU policy program, which aims at the transformation towards environmentally sustainable modes of production and consumption. This has moved parts of the forest and related bio-based industries to envision their operations in terms of a circular economy. However, the meaning and implementat...

Cities are rapidly growing and need to look for ways to optimize resource consumption. Metropolises are especially vulnerable in three main systems, often referred to as the FEW (i.e., food, energy, and water) nexus. In this context, urban rooftops are underutilized areas that might be used for the production of these resources. We developed the Ro...

Assuming specific behavior models, the variety of design codes currently used for the design of concrete beams inevitably results in different solutions, ensuring service during the whole expected lifetime with a maximum functional quality and safety. However, from a sustainable design perspective, such differences may have remarkable environmental...

Urban agriculture has emerged as an alternative to conventional rural agriculture seeking to foster a sustainable circular economy in cities. When considering the feasibility of urban agriculture and planning for the future of food production and energy, it is important to understand the relationships between energy flows throughout the system, ide...

The European Union has recently introduced the ’circular economy’ as a high-level strategy to move our societies beyond the limits to growth. In the eyes of European policy makers, we will reach a circular economy through business innovation or the promotion of existing sustainable business models based on circular economy principles. Yet, we know...

Circular economy (CE) is gaining popularity at different levels with the promise of creating more sustainable processes. In this context, cities are implementing a number of initiatives that aim to turn them into sustainable circular systems. Whether these initiatives achieve their sustainability goals, however, is largely unknown. Nevertheless, as...

Food security in cities is an increasing concern due to the impact of climate change and the concentration of world population in cities. Urban agriculture (UA) aims at enhancing food production in urban areas, providing potential environmental advantages by reducing food transport, packaging and waste generation. Among UA alternatives, rooftop gre...

Water management plays a major role in any city, but applying alternative strategies might be more or less feasible depending on the urban form and water demand. This paper aims to compare the environmental performance of implementing rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems in American and European cities. To do so, two neighborhoods with a water-stress...

Given the expansion of urban agriculture (UA), we need to understand how this system provides ecosystem services, including foundational societal needs such as social cohesion, i.e., people's willingness to cooperate with one another. Although social cohesion in UA has been documented, there is no framework for its emergence and how it can be model...

Stormwater management is essential to reducing the occurrence of flooding events in urban areas and to adapting to climate change. The construction of stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs) entails a series of life cycle environmental impacts but also implies avoided burdens, such as replacing urban infrastructure after flooding. The aim of th...

Evaluating the sustainability of the urban water cycle is not straightforward, although a variety of methods have been proposed. Given the lack of integrated data about sewers, we applied the eco-efficiency approach to two case studies located in Spain with contrasting climate, population, and urban and sewer configurations. Our goal was to determi...

Defining sustainable cities is not straightforward. The main issues involved in urban sustainability are buildings, energy, food, green areas and landscape, mobility, urban planning, water and waste; and their improvement is promoted through different strategies. However, a quantitative method, such as life cycle thinking (LCT), is essential to eva...

Rainwater harvesting might help to achieve self-sufficiency, but it must comply with health standards. We studied the runoff quantity and quality harvested from seven urban surfaces in a university campus in Barcelona according to their use (pedestrian or motorized mobility) and materials (concrete, asphalt and slabs). An experimental rainwater har...

Purpose: The rapid urbanization and the constant expansion of urban areas during the last decades have locally led to increasing water shortage. Rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems have the potential to be an important contributor to urban water self-sufficiency. The goal of this study was to select an environmentally optimal RWH strategy in newly c...

Flood damage results in economic and environmental losses in the society, but flood prevention also entails an initial investment in infrastructure. This study presents an integrated eco-efficiency approach for assessing flood prevention and avoided damage. We focused on ephemeral streams in the Maresme region (Catalonia, Spain), which is an urbani...

Islands are hotspots in the provision of local, unique products and the integration of the environmental dimension is especially interesting to ensure their self-sufficiency and resource protection. The goal of this study was to determine the life cycle environmental impacts of the artisan cheese with Mahón-Menorca Protected Designation of Origin (...

Population growth, urbanization and climate change stress the need for alternative water systems and food production areas. Fresh produce is imported from distant agricultural areas, whereas water availability is decreasing due to droughts or poses a threat due to sudden and intense rainfall events. In this context, the implementation of urban agri...

Stockbreeding in islands is essential to preserve native species, as well as to provide the population with local products and approach self-sufficiency. In this sense, the environmental and economic performance of these systems needs to be addressed to define the most suitable production systems. The goal of this contribution is to analyze the eco...

The environmental analysis of public nursery schools is of great interest since they are crucial in the early education of children and are expected to show high environmental standards. This paper aims to analyse the environmental profile (energy, water and transport flows) of this sector. A sample of 12 public nursery schools belonging to the Sch...

Urban agriculture (UA) is generally appealing from a self-sufficiency standpoint. However, its implementation at a city scale depends on the space availability and social motivations, and tools are needed for assessing its feasibility. This study aims to present an interrelation of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), social perception and environ...

The implementation of eco-design in industries and production processes is increasing because of the current environmental situation caused by the pressure of human activity on the environment, as well as, due to the inter-industry competition, supply-chain pressures and purchase criteria of the consumers. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the...

The environmental assessment of water networks for the provision of drinking water and the collection of wastewater are key in cities, especially in Latin America where some urban areas do not have these infrastructures and new urban areas will be built in the near future. Studies from previous literature including both networks have focused on a s...

Rainwater harvesting (RWH) has often been used as a water infrastructure adaptive measure to mitigate water supply shortages due to droughts. Recently, RWH has received increasing attention owing to its other ecosystem services like stormwater management and groundwater recharge. However, the tradeoff among those ecosystem services to cost and soci...

The demand for sanitation infrastructures is increasing due to a rise in the urban population. To meet the need for wastewater collection, the construction of sewer networks must comply with a series of technical parameters that indicate whether a solution is feasible or not. Considering that this construction implies a series of environmental impa...

Eco-design has gained popularity in the industry sector towards a sustainable production. The need to consider the environmental consequences of products and production processes has been highlighted not only in policy but also in the market. Companies are making a shift towards eco-innovation by integrating tools such as eco-design into their prod...

Green and grey stormwater management infrastructures, such as the filter, swale and infiltration trench (FST), can be used to prevent flooding events. The aim of this paper was to determine the environmental and economic impacts of a pilot FST that was built in São Carlos (Brazil) using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC). As a...

Due to the rapid urbanization and the large contribution of cities to the global environmental impact, urban policies integrate sustainability in the public space design. Current literature has accounted for the environmental impact of the main elements of the urban fabric, although studies have dealt with them individually. This chapter aims to op...

With more than 50% of the world’s population living in urban areas, and with this percentage going up, there is an increasing concern in the field of wastewater management in cities. Considering the development of new settlements, the construction and rehabilitation of sewer networks is required to meet the demand for sanitation. This situation is...

Sewers are known as longitudinal reactors where gases such as methane, nitrous oxide and hydrogen sulphide can be produced. However, gaseous emissions have been mainly assessed in wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). This article presents a critical review of studies that quantify the generation of these gases in sewers and to identify the existing...

Water management is a key issue in the sustainable performance of urban environments. Hence, an integrated approach is required in the eco-design and construction of other sub-systems such as industrial and logistic smart parks. According to the definition presented by Kazemersky and Winters (1999), smart parks are “an innovative model designed to...

The environmental impacts resulting from sewer networks are best analysed from a life-cycle perspective to integrate the energy requirements into the infrastructure design. The energy requirements for pumping wastewater depend on the configuration of the city (e. g., climate, population, length of the sewer, topography, etc.). This study analyses a...

Managing sanitation infrastructures is of paramount importance in order to meet the demand of an increasing urban population. From a life-cycle perspective, the operation stage of the wastewater collection and treatment results in 2 different types of contributions to the Global Warming Potential (GWP). On the one hand, the indirect impacts consist...

A sewer network can be considered as a biological reactor where each constructive element can lead to different environmental conditions. Depending on these conditions, several biological reactions could take place resulting in gas formation, such as nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4) and hydrogen sulphide (H2S). Problems like corrosion and odour a...