Cécile Bulle

• PhD
• Professor at University of Quebec in Montreal

Purpose Within the international working group Marine Impacts in Life Cycle Assessment MarILCA, a mechanistic fate framework was proposed to refine the fate factors (FFs) and subsequently characterization factors (CFs) of microplastics (MPs) emitted to the marine environment, for the impact category “physical effects on marine biota.” To operationa...

Mineral resources are essential for reaching net-zero ambitions by 2050. There is a rising diversity of metals in electricity generation and storage technologies, as well as for mobility technologies. However, little is known about the future supply of minor elements historically mined in low volumes such as indium, tellurium, germanium, or tantalu...

Cette étude présente une approche itérative de priorisation de stratégies d’économie circulaire (ÉC) pertinentes en matière de réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre (GES) pour la production de grains dans Lanaudière, au Québec, à l’aide de l’analyse du cycle de vie (ACV). Après une revue de la littérature des stratégies d’ÉC généralement...

Ce projet consiste à rechercher des synergies écosystémiques urbaines entre l’industrie existante, les infrastructures vertes, le patrimoine industriel et les besoins communautaires pour le secteur LaSalle/Ville Saint-Pierre/Lachine-Est, situé autour du canal de Lachine à Montréal. L’objectif de ce projet pluridisciplinaire est de concevoir un plan...

PurposeThe international working group MariLCA has proposed a framework aiming towards integrating the impacts of plastic pollution in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). Filling one of the identified mechanisms, this paper proposes a harmonized LCIA framework for the development of mechanistic fate factors (FFs) and consequently characterization...

Viticulture needs to satisfy consumers' demands for environmentally sound grape and wine production while envisaging adaptation options to diminish the impacts of projected climate change on future productivity. However, the impact of climate change and the adoption of adaptation levers on the environmental impacts of future viticulture have not be...

Introduction and literature review Abiotic resources are extensively used in industrialized societies to deliver multiple services that contribute to human well-being. Their increased extraction and use can potentially reduce their accessibility, increase competition among users, and ultimately lead to a deficit of those services. Life cycle assess...

Hydroelectric dams and their reservoirs have been suggested to affect freshwater biodiversity. Nevertheless, studies investigating the consequences of hydroelectric dams and reservoirs on macroinvertebrate richness have reached opposite conclusions. We performed a meta-analysis devised to elucidate the effects of hydropower, dams and reservoirs on...

The materials used globally in the construction sector are projected to more than double in 2060, causing some to deplete. We argue that access to the services that the resources provide must be protected, thus implying that a carrying capacity (CC) for resource dissipation must be set. Dissipation accrues when the resource becomes inaccessible to...

To date, life cycle assessment (LCA) does not include a methodology for assessing the impacts of plastic litter leaked to the environment. This limits the applicability of LCA as a tool to compare the potential impacts of single‐use plastics and their alternatives on ecosystem quality and human health. As a contribution to tackle this issue, this w...

PurposeFor society to continue to use forest resources in a sustainable manner, we need to be concerned about how they are consumed now and about the future needs. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a robust tool, scientifically based and possible to be adapted to the quantification of multiple environmental issues in a systemic way. Deforestation and...

Plastic litter of all sizes has been acknowledged as a serious threat to biodiversity, especially in the marine environment. The fact that life cycle assessment (LCA) does not properly consider these issues is a serious problem for the aspirations of LCA in the public sphere. This paper focuses on micro‐ and nano‐sized plastics (MNPs), which have t...

The transformation of a river into a reservoir and the subsequent occupation of the riverbed by a reservoir can impact freshwater ecosystems and their biodiversity. We used the National Lake Assessment (134 reservoirs) and the National Rivers and Streams Assessment (2062 rivers and streams) of the United States Environmental Protection Agency in or...

Hydroelectric dams and their reservoirs have been suggested to affect freshwater biodiversity . However, studies investigating the consequences of hydroelectric dams and reservoirs on macroinvertebrate richness have reached opposite conclusions. We carried out a meta-analysis devised to elucidate the effects of hydropower dams and their reservoirs...

Hydropower is often presented as a clean, reliable, and renewable energy source, but is also recognized for its potential impacts on aquatic ecosystem biodiversity. We used direct empirical data of change in fish species richness following impoundment to develop ecological indicators to be used in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and accounting for hyd...

PurposeConsequential life cycle assessment (C-LCA) aims to assess the environmental consequences of a decision. It differs from traditional LCA because its inventory includes all the processes affected by the decision which are identified by accounting for causal links (physical, economic, etc.). However, C-LCA results could be quite uncertain whic...

Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) links the emissions and resource abstractions of a product system or process to potential impacts on the environment through characterization factors (CF). For regionalized impact categories like water-use, the regional CFs can vary over several orders of magnitude within the same country. The aggregated country-...

Existing methods for applying the planetary boundary concept in life cycle assessment are not sufficiently spatially and temporally resolved. Here, we develop a new method for freshwater use based on the safe operating space (SOS) at watershed-level. The SOS is based on the concept of environmental flow requirements, which is the share of mean mont...

Existing methods that apply the planetary boundary for the nitrogen cycle in life cycle assessment are spatially generic and use an indicator with limited environmental relevance. Here, we develop a spatially resolved method that can quantify the impact of nitrogen emissions to air, soil, freshwater or coastal water on "safe operating space" (SOS)...

Purpose Regionalization in life cycle assessment (LCA) aims to increase the representativeness of LCA results and reduce the uncertainty due to spatial variability. It may refer to adapting processes to better account for regional technological specificities (inventory regionalization) or adding of spatial information to the elementary flows (inven...

Purpose The goal of this study is to calculate regionalized fate and characterization factors for zinc (Zn) emitted to soil considering the Zn transfer through groundwater in USETox and Zn speciation in soil, groundwater, and surface water using regionalized soil, subsoil, and freshwater parameters. Methods Partition coefficients for Zn in soil an...

Whether it is for water supply, flood control or hydropower uses, the transformation of a river into a reservoir can impact freshwater ecosystems and their biodiversity. Using the National Lake Assessment (NLA; 148 reservoirs) and the National Rivers and Streams Assessment (NRSA; 2121 rivers and streams) of the United States Environmental Protectio...

Purpose This paper addresses the need for a globally regionalized method for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), integrating multiple state-of-the-art developments as well as damages on water and carbon areas of concern within a consistent LCIA framework. This method, named IMPACT World+, is the update of the IMPACT 2002+, LUCAS, and EDIP methods....

Up until today, the technology used for the capture and production of pure CO2 in post-combustion applications for both use and sequestration relies primarily on the use of chemical amine solvents such as monoethanolamine (MEA). However, these solvents require significant amounts of valuable, high-grade process heat for solvent regeneration and suf...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) can be used to translate the planetary boundaries (PBs) concept to the scale of decisions related to products. Existing PB-LCA methods convert quantified resource use and emissions to changes in the values of PB control variables. However, the control variable for the Land-system change PB, “area of forested land remaini...

Hydroelectricity is often presented as a clean, reliable, and renewable energy source, but is also recognized for its potential impacts on aquatic ecosystem biodiversity. We used empirical data on change in fish species richness following impoundment to develop Characterisation Factors (CF) and Impact Scores (IS) for hydroelectricity production for...

As the largest producer of coal chemical products in the world, China faces tremendous pressure to reduce its carbon emission. An accurate quantification of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emission of coal chemical industry in China is therefore necessary. However, due to the variety of coal chemical products and limitations of CO2 emission factors, the t...

Southern Amazonia has been the center of a large expansion of cropland and cattle production through land use change in both Amazon and Cerrado biomes. While this expansion has had noted impacts on the regional water cycle, little information is currently apparent in life cycle impact assessments of both cropland and cattle products. This study app...

In the early building design stage, there are numerous uncertainties due to the lack of information on materials and processes. Designers therefore cannot quantify the environmental impacts of buildings in order to evaluate the environmental performance of their designs early on. In this paper, life cycle assessment (LCA) and building information m...

Purpose Metals have often been identified as the main contributors to (eco)toxicological impacts in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. Indeed, environmental fate models are generally unsuitable for these substances as they were developed for organics. Recent work has focused on improving these models by accounting for biogeochemical conditions (e...

Purpose The aim of the study is to calculate regionalized characterization factors for the atmospheric emissions of metals transferred to soil for zinc, copper, and nickel taking into account the atmospheric fate and speciation. Methods In order to calculate characterization factors for all possible atmospheric emission locations around the world,...

The water footprint (WF) has introduced a much-needed perspective for decision-makers on the use of water resources in supply chains. It has been used as a tool to assess and improve water use efficiency and water resources management, as well as inform on potential environmental impacts of water consumption in products. This paper is a contributio...

Ecosystem quality is an important area of protection in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). Chemical pollution has adverse impacts on ecosystems at the global scale. To improve methods for assessing ecosystem impacts, the Life Cycle Initiative hosted at the United Nations Environment Programme established a task force to evaluate the state‐of‐the‐...

Life cycle assessment has been recognized as an important decision-making tool to improve the environmental performance of agricultural systems. Still, there are certain modelling issues related to the assessment of their impacts. The first is linked to the assessment of the metal terrestrial ecotoxicity impact, for which metal speciation in soil i...

Recent progress in Life Cycle Impact Assessment highlighted the need to assess the loss of resources’ functional value when assessing the life cycle impacts of resource depletion. To be able to assess the loss of functional value of resources due to scarcity and depletion, there is a need to assess the potential substitutions among different resour...

Addressing the spatial dimension in life cycle assessment (LCA) appears to be a promising avenue to reduce the uncertainty of LCA results. However, to our knowledge, there is no comprehensive literature review on how to integrate geographic aspects at every LCA stage. This study aims to create a common language and build a framework guiding the LCA...

Increasing needs for decision support and advances in scientific knowledge within life cycle assessment (LCA) led to substantial efforts to provide global guidance on environmental life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) indicators under the auspices of the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative. As part of these efforts, a dedicated task force focused on ad...

Since 2000, soybean production has gained increasing importance in Brazil, particularly in Southern Amazonia and the state of Mato Grosso, the largest producer in the country. This expansion has taken place through cropland extensification into natural ecosystems in the Amazon (tropical forest) and Cerrado (savanna) biomes with land transformation...

Purpose Anthropic water uses can affect aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems through various pathways. To address these impacts in life cycle assessment, an array of impact assessment methods can be applied. The currently well-known review of methods carried out by the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative’s WULCA working group (Kounina et al. Int J Life...

In life cycle assessment (LCA), the potential terrestrial ecotoxicity effect of metals, calculated as the effect factor (EF), is usually extrapolated from aquatic ecotoxicological data using the equilibrium partitioning method (EqP) as it is more readily available than terrestrial data. However, when following the AMI recommendations (i.e. with at...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to evaluate two wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) scenarios in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC): extended aeration (EA) and pond system (PS). The main goal was to compare the environmental performance of two WWTP technologies across all environmental impact categories in selected methods when developing...

The state of Mato Grosso is the largest soybean producer in Brazil with production in both Amazon tropical forest and Cerrado savanna biomes. In this study, we test how LCA might help evaluate an agricultural product's environmental performance considering past and future land transformation impacts to biodiversity and ecosystem services.

The incorporation of soil moisture regenerated by precipitation, or green water, into life cycle assessment has been of growing interest given the global importance of this resource for terrestrial ecosystems and food production. This paper proposes a new impact assessment model to relate land and water use in seasonally dry, semi-arid, and arid re...

Land transformation and occupation (LTO) can lead to a change in landscape evapotranspiration (ET) with effects that have been of interest in life cycle impact assessment modeling in recent years. Soil moisture regenerated by precipitation, or “green” water, plays an important role in returning water vapour to the atmosphere and regenerate precipit...

Environmental monitoring indicates that progress towards the goal of environmental sustainability in many cases is slow, non-existing or negative. Indicators that use environmental carrying capacity references to evaluate whether anthropogenic systems are, or will potentially be, environmentally sustainable are therefore increasingly important. Suc...

Purpose Ignoring metal speciation in the determination of characterization factors (CFs) in life cycle assessment (LCA) could significantly alter the validity of LCA results since toxicity is directly linked to bioavailability. Methods Zinc terrestrial ecotoxicity CFs are obtained using modified USEtox fate factors, WHAM 6.0-derived bioavailable fa...

The spatial dimension is an important aspect in life cycle assessment (LCA). Indeed life cycle processes, and therefore also elementary flows, are most likely to be geographically scattered due to global supply chains. The environmental impacts related to an elementary flow can be different across the globe depending on the spatial variability of e...

Metals are a major concern in life cycle assessment (LCA): they dominate the ecotoxicological impacts due to the use of models that do not consider metal speciation. The objective of this study was to measure the influence of zinc (Zn) speciation on LCA results and evaluate the importance of including it in LCA. A case study in which ecosystem qual...

Purpose The integration of different water impact assessment methods within a water footprinting concept is still ongoing, and a limited number of case studies have been published presenting a comprehensive study of all water-related impacts. Although industries are increasingly interested in assessing their water footprint beyond a simple inventor...

Purpose Pesticides are applied to agricultural fields to optimize crop yield and their global use is substantial. Their consideration in life cycle assessment (LCA) is affected by important inconsistencies between the emission inventory and impact assessment phases of LCA. A clear definition of the delineation between the product system model (life...

Purpose Total metal-based toxicity potentials, like the ones used in life cycle assessment (LCA), can sometimes introduce bias and significantly affect the validity of LCA results since toxicity is associated with the bioavailable metal fraction. Methods Here, the bioavailable fraction of zinc (Zn) for world soil types is obtained using the WHAM...

The importance of integrating resources criticality assessment into Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) under the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) framework has been discussed for some time. However, the question how to proceed towards integration remain unclear. Only very few work is published on this issue and to our knowledge only Schneider e...

Purpose Polychlorodibenzo-p-dioxins and -furans (PCDD/Fs) are always produced as undesired impurities and are found in traces in mixtures such as pentachlorophenol (PCP) pole-treating oil. PCDD/Fs were previously shown to follow the oil’s fate by affinity, but life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) has never taken into account such interactions withi...

In the past decade, several methods have emerged to quantify water scarcity, water availability and the human health impacts of water use. It was recommended that a quantitative comparison of methods should be performed to describe similar impact pathways, namely water scarcity and human health impacts from water deprivation. This is precisely the...

The municipal sanitation system based on black water source-separation (BWS) is often advanced as a viable environmental alternative to conventional systems (CONV). However, current studies have not led to any formal conclusions on the environmental advantage of such a system. The objective of this study is to compare the environmental performances...

PurposeIn recent years, several methods have been developed which propose different freshwater use inventory schemes and impact assessment characterization models considering various cause–effect chain relationships. This work reviewed a multitude of methods and indicators for freshwater use potentially applicable in life cycle assessment (LCA). Th...

In order to estimate the total exposure to the lead emissions from a municipal waste combustion plant in Denmark, the indirect pathway via ingestion of lead deposited on soil has to be quantified. Multi-media fate models developed for both Risk Assessment (RA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be used for this purpose, but present high uncertaint...

Most pollutants are released into the environment in the presence of other contaminants, creating complex mixtures. In life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods, characterization factors (CFs) are used to obtain the potential impacts associated with each contaminant emission. Current LCIA methods do not include CFs to evaluate the potential impac...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology that quantifies potential environmental impacts for comparative purposes in a decision-making context. While potential environmental impacts from pollutant emissions into water are characterized in LCA, impacts from water unavailability are not yet fully quantified. Water use can make the resource unavai...

Impacts from water unavailability are not yet fully quantified in LCA. Water displacement from the original water body (consumption) or quality degradation of released water reduces water availability to human users. This can potentially affect human health through diseases or malnutrition or, if financial resources are available, adaptation can o...

Column experiments were conducted to validate a screening model predicting the influence of pentachlorophenol (PCP) pole-treating oil on the vertical migration of its impurities, chlorinated dioxins and furans (PCDD/Fs). PCP pole-treating oil (15 mL d(-1)) and water (20 mL d(-1)) were added daily to the top of sand and organic soil columns during 3...

The environmental impacts of remediation of a chloroethene-contaminated site were evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA). The compared remediation options are (i) in situ bioremediation by enhanced reductive dechlorination (ERD), (ii) in situ thermal desorption (ISTD), and (iii) excavation of the contaminated soil followed by off-site treatmen...

Following a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, this study aims at defining an appropriate performance index to consider environmental impact in the development of a multicriteria evaluation comparing factory-built wood-frame exterior walls. The investigation is applied to a case study comparing five wall assemblies for the exterior wall of a res...

PurposeFreshwater scarcity is a problem in many areas of the world and will become one of the most sensitive environmental issues in coming decades. Existing life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies generally do not provide assessment schemes or characterization factors of the potential environmental impacts of freshwater use or freshwater resourc...

Field samples were collected around six pentachlorophenol (PCP)-treated wooden poles (in clay, organic soil, and sand) to evaluate the vertical migration of polychlorodibenzo-p-dioxins and furans (PCDD/Fs). Soils were characterized, PCDD/Fs, C(10)-C(50), and PCP were analyzed for seven composite samples located at a depth from 0 to 100 cm and at a...

Background, aim, and scope Task Force 3 of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative has been working towards developing scientifically sound methods for quantifying impacts of substances released into the environment. The Clearwater Consensus follows from the Lausanne (Jolliet et al. Int J Life Cycle Assess 11:209–212, 2006) and Apeldoorn (Apeldoorn I...

PurposeAs impact assessment methods for water use in LCA evolve, so must inventory methods. Water categories that consider water quality must be defined within life cycle inventory. The method presented here aims to establish water categories by source, quality parameter and user. Materials and methodsWater users were first identified based on the...

The designer of a light-frame wood wall assembly should consider simultaneously several performance criteria in addition to the minimum requirements set by building codes. The different performance criteria being mostly studied and optimized independently, the search for the most suitable solution is however a complex problem. A research project wa...

In order to better understand the fate of polychloro dibenzo-p-dioxins and furans (PCDD/Fs) in soils around pentachlorophenol (PCP) treated poles, a model was developed to assess the influence of wood-preserving oil and PCP on the vertical migration of octachloro-dibenzo-p-dioxin (OCDD). Simulations were performed for three soil types: sand, clay a...

Goal, Scope and Background Canadian LCA practitioners currently use European or American methodologies when conducting comprehensive impact assessments, despite the fact that these methods may not be appropriate for Canadian conditions. Due to the lack of suitable models that are currently available, work has been undertaken to develop an LCIA meth...