Steven B. Young

• PhD
• Professor at University of Waterloo

Regulations and initiatives focused on responsible sourcing of raw materials have grown in the last decades. So-called "conflict minerals"-typically tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold (3TG) associated with Democratic Republic of Congo-have been a target for responsible sourcing since 2008. As production of most raw materials has increased, there is...

Regulatory actors, particularly market authorization agencies, health technology assessment agencies, and health care procurement agencies, exert a powerful influence on the adoption and use of health technologies (eg, medicines and medical devices). With health care being responsible, directly and indirectly, for an estimated 4.6% of global greenh...

Life cycle assessment, a comprehensive tool to evaluate environmental impacts across a product's life cycle, traditionally focuses on "inside-out" impacts caused by the product on the environment, emphasizing resource use, global warming, and other environmental impacts. In contrast, the "outside-in" perspective considers resource availability and...

Healthcare is a critical and complex service sector with direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions amounting to 5%–10% of the national total in developed economies like Canada and the United States. Along with a growing, albeit sporadic, set of life cycle assessment (LCA) (and “carbon footprinting”) studies of specific medical products and...

The resilience and low cost of plastics has made their usage ubiquitous, but is also the cause of their prevalence and longevity as waste. Plastic pollution has become a great concern to the health and wellbeing of ecosystems around the world; microplastics are a particular threat, due to their high mobility, ease of ingestion by wildlife, and abil...

The tracking of electronic waste (e-waste) flows through and within pre-processing facilities plays a crucial role in determining the fate of resources contained in e-waste. This study maps material and economic flows of e-waste through manual and mechanical processes at the pre-processing facility using material flow analysis. Both daily and annua...

Purpose We observe a methodological gap for assessing impacts within the Area of Protection (AoP) Natural Resources in LCA with regard to concerns about the accessibility to raw materials. Adding criticality considerations as a complement to environmental LCA addresses abiotic resources accessibility. We present a study that integrates and applies...

In this article, we explore concrete examples of circularity strategies for critical raw materials (CRMs) in commercial settings. We propose a company-level framework for systematically evaluating circularity strategies (e.g., materials recycling, product reuse, and product or component lifetime extension) in specific applications of CRMs from the...

The application of circularity strategies to improve resource use and recovery should be considered with their potential impacts on the environment. Their effectiveness could be evaluated by combining the material circularity indicator (MCI) and life cycle assessment (LCA) methods. Environmental trade-offs may be underestimated for some strategies...

The Geopolitical Supply Risk method, originally developed by Gemechu et al. (2016) and subsequently extended by Helbig et al. (2016a) and Cimprich et al. (2017, 2018), is aimed at incorporating supply risk assessment of “critical raw materials” as a complement to environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) within life cycle sustainability assessment...

A circular economy involves maintaining manufactured products in circulation, distributing resource and environmental costs over time and with repeated use. In a linear supply chain, manufactured products are used once and discarded. In high-income nations, health care systems increasingly rely on linear supply chains composed of single-use disposa...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-020-01736-6 free view only version: https://rdcu.be/b1dDH Purpose The safeguard subject of the Area of Protection “natural Resources,” particularly regarding mineral resources, has long been debated. Consequently, a variety of life cycle impact assessment methods based on different concepts are ava...

PurposeAssessing impacts of abiotic resource use has been a topic of persistent debate among life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method developers and a source of confusion for life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners considering the different interpretations of the safeguard subject for mineral resources and the resulting variety of LCIA methods...

An addition of reduced graphene oxide to nickel–cobalt hydroxide electrodes results in net reduction of cumulative energy demand due to improved electrochemical properties.

Solar chargers for mobile phones are the first integration of organic photovoltaic (OPV) technology into commercial products. Although environmental impacts of OPVs have been studied extensively, the performance of chargers have been narrowly examined in reference to intensity of their use and use geographies. To explore these aspects, we study the...

Healthcare is a critical service sector with a sizable environmental footprint from both direct activities and the indirect emissions of related products and infrastructure. As in all other sectors, the “inside‐out” environmental impacts of healthcare (e.g., from greenhouse gas emissions, smog‐forming emissions, and acidifying emissions) are harmfu...

The diversity of raw materials used in modern products, compounded by the risk of supply disruptions—due to uneven geological distribution of resources, along with socioeconomic factors like production concentration and political (in)stability of raw material producing countries—has drawn attention to the subject of raw material “criticality.” In t...

This study expands the environmental sustainability paradigm of reverse supply chains. The study examines the notion of closed-loop supply chains and suggests the use of the term in academia and business is too limited from a sustainability perspective. Three case examples in automotive remanufacturing were chosen to represent a global, multi-tier...

Global manufacturing firms are engaging distant suppliers of critical raw materials to participate in responsible sourcing. Downstream firms are concerned about risks in mineral supply chains of violent conflict, human rights violations, and poor governance, but they are limited in seeing their suppliers. Descriptive data on 323 smelters and refine...

Vehicle electrification increases the fuel efficiency of the transportation sector while lowering emissions. Eventually, however, electric vehicle batteries will reach their end-of-life (EOL) point, when the capacity of the battery is insufficient for operating a motor vehicle. At this point, the battery is typically removed for recycling. This tre...

The diversity of commodities employed in modern products, compounded with the threat of supply shortages due to geological, geopolitical, and socioeconomic factors, has drawn attention recently to the subject of commodity supply risk assessment – often termed “criticality” assessment. But while criticality assessments have often been conducted on a...

PurposeWhile environmental LCA is relatively well developed, impact assessment methods for the “natural resources” AoP are weak. In particular, resource “criticality” is not addressed in conventional environmental impact assessment methods, though it could be captured within life cycle sustainability assessment. In that regard, the present article...

Product lifecycles can contain several waste management steps after the production of a product. At each step, ‘end-of-life’ supply chains can separate, each emerging supply chain representing an intended lifecycle or an unintended, though not necessarily inferior lifecycle in terms of sustainability. This variety demonstrates the complexity arisin...

Product lifecycles can contain several waste management steps after the production of a product. At each step, ‘end-of-life’ supply chains can separate, each emerging supply chain representing an intended lifecycle or an unintended, though not necessarily inferior lifecycle in terms of sustainability. This variety demonstrates the complexity arisin...

Tantalum, considered one of the critical elements by many countries, is a widely used metal in industries such as electronics, aerospace and automotive. The tantalum market has experienced several disruptions and subsequent price swings in the past, implying problems with its supply chain resilience and stability. In this study, we trace the entire...

The diversity of materials employed in modern products and the complexity of globalized supply chains raise the importance of assessing supply risk of commodity inputs to product systems. Therefore, this article extends the Geopolitical Supply Risk methodology by proposing a characterization model to quantify product supply risk in relation to a fu...

Past studies have considered the impact of fashion on consumer textile disposal behaviour, but have focused mainly on drivers of clothing waste. There is a lack of research that examines consumer attitudes towards fashion and their disposal methods. This study conducted an online survey of 410 people in Ontario, Canada with varying demographic char...

Electric vehicles (EV) have made marvelous achievements in many countries all over the world. Notably, EVs have now entered a new period of rapid development and propagation. Thus, the issue of the whole life cycle of electric vehicles is manufacturing, use and end-of-life is more prominent and is creating great interest from governments and scient...

Bio-succinic acid (bio-SAC) is a promising industrial alternative to the currently used petroleum counterparts. This is mainly due to its energy and environmental performances, which were both, assessed using a cradle-to-gate LCA approach. The foreground data used in this LCA were based on real production data from a facility in Louisiana, USA that...

Due to the material diversity of high-tech products and globalized supply chains, it is important to be able to assess geopolitical supply risks for the supply chain of any commodity. This article extends the Geopolitical Supply Risk assessment method under the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment framework to account for multi-stage supply chains...

Globally, there is a shortage of vegetables to meet the requirements of a healthy diet. Greenhouse production can help meet demand for vegetables, but under certain conditions it can be very energy intensive and unsustainable, particularly in cold climates, such as in Canada. Greenhouse producers in Ontario, Canada, which has the highest concentrat...

Around one fourth of worldwide energy-related CO2- emissions (GHG) are assigned to the transport sector [1]. In order to reduce these emissions significantly, new mobility technologies in the transport sector such as electric vehicles (EV) could contribute substantially [2]. However, like many key forward-looking technologies for industry, it relie...

Purpose Lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery packs recovered from end-of-life electric vehicles (EV) present potential technological, economic and environmental opportunities for improving energy systems and material efficiency. Battery packs can be reused in stationary applications as part of a “smart grid”, for example to provide energy storage systems (...

Founded in 2008 by members of the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, the Conflict-Free Sourcing Initiative (CFSI) supports over 200 companies and associations including OEM firms in electronics, manufacturing, automotive, aerospace, apparel, and retail. The problem of “conflict minerals” is illegal...

Responsible sourcing of metals is characterized as an approach for life cycle management (LCM) and sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) of social issues. The focus is on the supply of “conflict minerals”—tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold (3TG)—whose mining and trade are implicated in conflict and severe social conditions in the Democratic Rep...

Tantalum is widely identified as a “critical material” given its limited production and importance in technology and industry. Recent literature on critical materials calls for quantitative mapping of mineral sources and processing (Bloodworth 2014) and tracking provenance of commodities (Herrington 2013) through supply-chains (Young, Zhe and Dias...

Purpose Introducing a geopolitical-related supply risk (GeoPolRisk) into the life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) framework adds a criticality aspect to the current life cycle assessment (LCA) framework to more meaningfully address direct impacts on Natural Resource AoP. The weakness of resource indicators in LCA has been the topic of discu...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) of conventional-till (CT) and zero-till (ZT) red spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) productions systems in Manitoba was conducted to assess the environmental impacts of these production systems. This LCA on wheat was part of the larger project ’Implementation of cradle to farm-gate LCA for primary agriculture sectors in...

Purpose Much collective wisdom and experience has been gained as an increasing number of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) reviews are conducted. However, specifics on how and when to conduct critical review of LCA studies are still lacking. Toward this need, a technical session entitled ‘LCA Critical Review’ was held during the Life Cycle Management (LC...

A life cycle assessment (LCA) compared composite materials made of petroleum polypropylene (PP) reinforced with glass fibre (GF) and mechanically-equivalent bio-based switchgrass (SG) reinforced hybrid polybutylene succinate (PBS) “hybrid composite”. A biodegradable polymer, PBS may be produced from petroleum or bio-based feed-stocks. In this case...

Comparative LCA studies of identical auto parts conducted by different LCA practitioners can lead to significantly different results and recommendations. While each of the LCA studies may be compliant with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14040 series of LCA standards, discrepancies in modeling, data sources and in parameter...

Certification initiatives are product-focused, rely on standards and use sustainability metrics to inform end-users on the provenance of commodities. In the metals sector, the phenomenon of formal certification programs has recently gained traction. Four initiatives are reviewed to illustrate the status and prospects of metal certification. The pri...

Using existing literature and a modified lifecycle assessment (LCA) approach, we analyzed production, processing, distribution, and cooling stages of food production. Looking at a range of current initiatives related to food system change, we suggest potential solutions to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the food system and strategic priorities f...

The Conflict Free Smelter (CFS) Program is a novel mechanism of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability management, which provides assurances on the sources of strategic resources used in electronics. The program achieves this by auditing metal smelters and refiners to confirm that that they have not sourced materials from conflict...

This substudy is one of 13 research investigations conducted as part of a larger

The effectiveness of life cycle management (LCM) of metals supply to electronics is examined, with focus on understanding challenges to implementation of the US regulation on so-called, "conflict minerals," which are of concern for financing warfare and human rights violations in the DRC. By analyzing a study that attempted to track (down the suppl...

Goal, scope, and background The aim of this work is to present guidance on the application of ISO 14044 to allocation procedures for metal recycling. As such, graphical patterns of metal recycling and generic “rules” for metal recycling maps are presented. The results are intended to be useful in assessing and validating the suitability of allocati...

Purpose This paper seeks to critically analyse the list of principles on the extractive phase of the electronics supply chains, proposed for consumer electronic companies, by the non‐governmental campaign MakeITfair. The purpose is to understand whether conformance with these principles could positively influence the socio‐environmental conditions...

This study was commissioned by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) and the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC). The overall objective was to help these organizations understand how aluminum, cobalt, copper, gold, palladium and tin are mined, recycled, purchased and where they are used in electronics products. Based on the stu...

It is a challenge for businesses, governments, communities and individuals to ensure that continued economic development is ecologically and socially sustainable. Life cycle consideration provide an important perspective to guide the development and use of strategies and tools to assess systems from an overall perspective. Since life cycle consider...

ciation about. Following a couple years of expert meetings, in 1994 the first environmental management standard on LCA was published, Z760 Life Cycle Assessment, under the oversight of Ahmad HUSSEINI. Subsequent documents included ZS10 Life Cycle Impact Assessment: Pulp and Paper Production Phase, and the streamlined LCA method guide PLUS 1115: Lif...

Manufacturer's are placing new and detailed environmental requirements on their suppliers. Examples include environmental management systems (EMS), design-for-environment (DfE) programs, restricted material lists, take-back commitment, and performance disclosures. These requirements are part of the growing practice of environmental supply chain man...

This joint study between Environment Canada and Northern Telecom aimed at carrying out an LCA on a manufactured product, the Nortel M7310 business telephone, in order to identify improvement strategies. The telephone, invented a century ago, by Alexander Graham Bell in Canada, is emblematic of a sophisticated but common everyday product. As such, t...

Volume 20 provides insights on how to improve products and reduce costs by leveraging materials technology in the context of engineering design. It begins with a review of best design practices, identifying roles and responsibilities, workflows and tools, and considerations such as industry standards and codes, environmental regulations, liability,...

As part of a comprehensive research program on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology and practices, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hosted a meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 12 & 13, 1995, on Streamlining LCA. Organized by Research Triangle Institute’s Center for Environmental Analysis for the EPA, the conference provided a forum...

Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) was evaluated as an approach for analysis of potential environmental impacts associated with the production of industrial materials and of product systems. It was the goal also to consider possibilities for environmental improvement via materials selection and design. Based on the LCA approach, a methodolog...

Product designers and manufacturers have developed the Life Cycle Analysis/Assessment (LCA) method for assessing the environmental tradeoffs involved with the efforts to make products that use fewer resources, generate less waste, and are more recyclable. LCA is intended to provide a total life cycle view of the interactions of human activity with...

The life-cycle analysis (LCA) of products is essentially the LCA of materials: both are concurrently and interdependently analyzed and assessed according to their environmental effects. This approach provides a framework to measure the extrinsic environmental properties of materials. In the following, three properties—gross energy requirement, glob...

Preventive engineering [ 1]-[3] uses information about how technology affects human life, society, and the natural ecology in order to adjust engineering methods and approaches to achieve the best possible compatibility between technology and its contexts. It constitutes a different engineering paradigm, aspects of which are emerging in industry an...

Ti-6Al-4V was used to study some fundamental aspects of fatigue. Although, a variety of microstructures and surface conditions were compared, the majority of work was performed on smooth specimens in the beta annealed condition. Additional tests were made on specimens coated partially with spherical titanium particles and on standard FM specimens....