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Carbon footprint of a scientific publication: A case study at Dalian University of Technology, China
Abstract
Knowledge of the carbon footprint (CF) of a scientific publication can help to guide changes in behavior for mitigating global warming. A knowledge gap, however, still exists in academic circles. We quantified the CF of a publication by parameterizing searches, downloads, reading, and writing in the processes of publication with both direct and indirect emissions covered. We proposed a time-loaded conversion coefficient to transfer indirect emissions to final consumers. A questionnaire survey, certification database of Energy Star, fixed-asset databases specific to our campus, and reviewed life-cycle-assessment studies on both print media and electronic products were integrated with Monte Carlo simulations to quantify uncertainties. The average CF [(CI: 95%), SD] of a scientific publication was 5.44 kg CO2-equiv. [(1.65, 14.78), 4.97], with 37.65 MJ [(0.00, 71.32), 30.40] of energy consumed. Reading the literature contributed the most, followed by writing and searching. A sensitivity analysis indicated that reading efficiency, the proportion of e-reading, and reference quantity were the most dominant of 52 parameters. Durable media generated a higher CF (4.24 kg CO2-equiv.) than consumable media (1.35 kg CO2-equiv.) due to both direct and indirect reasons. Campus policy makers should thus not promote the substitution of e-reading for print reading at the present stage, because their environmental advantages are highly dependent on time-loaded and behavioral factors. By comparison, replacing desktops with laptops is more attractive, by potentially reducing CFs by 50% and the disproportionate consumption of energy.
... Despite these difficulties, a plethora of sustainability indexes exist already [34,35], but no one concerns the sustainability of scientific publishing. One interesting approach is to calculate the carbon footprint of a publication, which is estimated to be on average 5.44 kg of CO 2 [36]. However, the proposal of calculating the carbon footprint was not based on characteristics of the journal or publisher, but mainly on the way a scientific article is written and especially how it is consumed, i.e. whether it is read on paper or electronically, and which device is used for reading the electronic article [36]. ...
... One interesting approach is to calculate the carbon footprint of a publication, which is estimated to be on average 5.44 kg of CO 2 [36]. However, the proposal of calculating the carbon footprint was not based on characteristics of the journal or publisher, but mainly on the way a scientific article is written and especially how it is consumed, i.e. whether it is read on paper or electronically, and which device is used for reading the electronic article [36]. The development of a sustainability factor as a counterweight to the JIF could facilitate the selection of sustainable publishers for scientists. ...
Assessing sustainability of journals and publishers could guide the choice of a publication venue. However, sustainable scientific publishing is not sufficiently defined. We assessed motivations for sustainable scientific publishing and importance ratings of sustainability aspects of scientific publishing in an online survey. The questionnaire was answered by 129 participants, including publishing scientists, non-academic research institution employees, editors, administrative staff of scientific journals and publishing companies, and individuals working at sustainability organizations. Personal motivation was rated to be important for all stakeholders, especially for scientists (p < .001). Universities, journals, non-academic staff at universities, journals, and publishers were perceived to be motivated to act sustainably because of external factors such as incentives, policies, laws, and regulations (p < .001). The most important sustainability aspects of scientific publishing were the proportion of open access articles and open access costs, a sustainability policy, plan, and report, digital publication, publication of sustainability topics, support of sustainable actions for staff, sustainable operations, e.g., sustainable transport, and social responsibility for staff, including gender aspects. The low response rate limits conclusions. The results suggest a sustainability index for scientific publishers could serve as an aid for decision making in scientific publishing.
... Lee [22] aimed to measure carbon footprint left to nature based on direct and indirect consumption in Taiwan. Song et al. [23] investigated the amount of carbon emitted directly and indirectly by individuals in the process of scientific studies. In this context, they concluded that literature review and writing process have a high carbon footprint. ...
The Earth is a complex system where living and non-living elements coexist in a delicate balance. Climate change is the primary factor responsible for the degradation of this system over time. The far-reaching consequences of climate change impact various aspects of our lives, including the physical environment, urban settings, human activities, economy, technology, agriculture, food production, access to clean water, and public health, all of which are widely acknowledged. Human-induced greenhouse gas emissions in these areas significantly trigger global climate change. Hence, addressing and mitigating the environmental damage from these emissions and the interconnected climate change phenomena is imperative. This situation is where the concept of "carbon footprint" gains prominence in assessing the extent of this damage. Carbon footprint serves as an essential measure in managing and curbing climate change. This study focused on controlling and mitigating carbon emissions, one of the primary greenhouse gasses responsible for climate change, by implementing spatial interpolation techniques based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The investigation targeted the Beşirli neighborhood in the Ortahisar district of Trabzon province. Data concerning electricity and natural gas usage were acquired from relevant institutions to perform carbon footprint calculations. Subsequently, carbon footprint calculations were conducted utilizing the acquired data within the specified region. The resulting outputs were systematically organized, integrated into the GIS environment, and linked to their respective geographical locations. Eventually, region-specific carbon footprint distribution maps were generated using selected spatial interpolation methods. These maps enabled a spatial observation of points exhibiting variability in terms of carbon emissions, thereby highlighting the carbon footprints evident in the region. The ultimate goal of this endeavor is to propose practical measures for minimizing the adverse environmental impacts by suggesting strategies to reduce and prevent carbon footprints associated with carbon emissions in the relevant areas.
... Thus far, the basic elements of the curricular design process with integrated project delivery measures for a comprehensive Net-Zero-Design regulatory framework are either incomplete or missing in most accredited architectural schools and in the professions of the US [9]. Focusing on carbon neutrality, some research has been published on the impacts of university campuses, and GHG inventories have been developed to evaluate campus emissions worldwide [10][11][12][13][14]. Although the methodologies and results of these studies are different, it can be generally said that a medium-size university building has an average emission factor of 4000 tons of CO 2-eq /year [10], mainly due to the fact that a majority of university buildings operate as energy hogs [15]. ...
Carbon-neutral design is pivotal for achieving the future energy performance targets of buildings. This paper shows research projects that promote the environmental sustainability of university campuses at the international level. GHG accounting methods and operational strategies adopted by the University of Genoa (UNIGE), Italy, and the Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, USA, are compared, with both universities striving to make buildings and campus facilities benchmarked and carbon neutral in the near future. Our comparative research includes analyzing campus buildings at both universities and their attempts to design, retrofit, and transform these buildings into carbon neutral buildings. Two case studies were discussed: the Smart Energy Building (SEB) in the Savona Campus of the UNIGE, and the Paul L. Cejas School of Architecture (PCA) Building of the FIU. The SEB’s construction reduced emissions by about 86 tCO2/y, whereas the PCA’s retrofitting reduced GHG emissions by 30%. Other operational strategies, including energy efficiency and energy generation, allowed the UNIGE to reduce their overall Scope 1 + 2 GHG emissions by 25% from 2013 to 2016. Globally, FIU Scope 1 + 2 GHG emissions per person were found to result in more than three times the UNIGE’s emissions, and 2.4 times if evaluated per square meter. The results were compared with GHG emissions and operational strategies from other universities.
... But the emphasis placed on air travel should not obscure other sources of the GHG emissions generated by research, including IT equipment, commuting, the use of office space, catering (canteens and food stands), heating, the consumption of electricity (lighting, power for machines), and digital technology [25,26]. In some disciplines, scientific equipment stands as a major source of emissions, for example in astronomy [7], with its energy-intensive supercomputers. ...
We present a survey of the French research community and climate change carried out in 2020. It is one of the largest surveys ever conducted on this issue: it is based on a sample of more than 6,000 respondents representative of the French public sector research community, regardless of their status and discipline. On the one hand, it measures practices that emit large amounts of greenhouse gases, such as air travel, and addresses the differences between disciplines and within them according to different individual characteristics (gender, status, location, etc.). On the other hand, it questions the representations of research actors concerning the climate emergency, and what they are willing to do to reduce their emissions. The survey highlights three results: first, an acute awareness of environmental and climate issues widely shared by members of the scientific community; second, a willingness to implement changes; and third, a clear gap between these attitudes and practices that still emit large amounts of greenhouse gases. This raises the question of the role of research institutions, whose support is required to implement profound reforms in the organization of research activities.
... On the other hand, Song et al. (2016) analyzed the CF of a scientific publication by conducting a case study at Dalian Technology University, China. For the author, knowledge of the CF of a scientific publication can help guide behavior changes to mitigate global warming. ...
Purpose
Reducing our carbon footprint (CF) or decarbonizing is a sustainable development goal. Although there has been an increase in research on this topic, little is known about the status of CF research within universities. The purpose of this paper is to identify the initiatives implemented in universities aimed at reducing CF in their efforts toward creating a Green Campus.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a bibliometric method, the status of this field of research was examined for the purpose of identifying the main publications and the most central researchers in terms of productivity and citations. Also, by using an exploratory factor analysis (EFA), the regions of the world with the most active research, as well as the direction of research, were identified.
Findings
The survey identified the region that published the most on the subject in the past 10 years, as well as the most relevant authors in the publications. Through this factor analysis, it was possible to identify, among the 105 publications analyzed, four distinct factors (clusters) with different thematic strands that appear to define a difference between the related studies on this topic. These factors were identified as campus management: supply and consumption operations; greenhouse gases emissions assessment: CF calculation; university air travel; sustainable food systems. The changes in people’s attitudes and in the use of university spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to the CF was also noted as a point that can be investigated in future research. As well as the reflection of the reduction in academic air travel and the “forced” occurrence of online events during the same period.
Originality/value
The paper aims to innovate by applying the multidimensional scaling method and EFA to scientific articles on the topic of decarbonizing campuses and identifying the clusters that constitute this field of study. The research seeks to contribute to current metric knowledge on the topic and to the creation of a specific research agenda.
... The units of the carbon intensity should, however, not lead to the conclusion that writing a paper will actually have the quoted carbon footprint or adding one more author will increase the carbon footprint. While writing a paper has some carbon footprint, we do not estimate its value here as it is not in the scope of this paper and it will be small compared with the per-paper footprint of research infrastructures 36 . What we estimate is the share of the carbon footprint of a given infrastructure among the scientific community, and writing one more paper or adding one more author will actually reduce the carbon intensity as it will increase the denominator in the equations. ...
The carbon footprint of astronomical research is an increasingly topical issue with first estimates of research institute and national community footprints having recently been published. As these assessments have typically excluded the contribution of astronomical research infrastructures, we complement these studies by providing an estimate of the contribution of astronomical space missions and ground-based observatories using greenhouse gas emission factors that relates cost and payload mass to carbon footprint. We find that worldwide active astronomical research infrastructures currently have a carbon footprint of 20.3 ± 3.3 MtCO2 equivalent (CO2e) and an annual emission of 1,169 ± 249 ktCO2e yr⁻¹ corresponding to a footprint of 36.6 ± 14.0 tCO2e per year per astronomer. Compared with contributions from other aspects of astronomy research activity, our results suggest that research infrastructures make the single largest contribution to the carbon footprint of an astronomer. We discuss the limitations and uncertainties of our method and explore measures that can bring greenhouse gas emissions from astronomical research infrastructures towards a sustainable level.
... Online education has recently been discussed in light of measures required to reduce the carbon impacts of institutions of higher education (Caird and Roy, 2019;Carr et al., 2019;Versteijlen et al., 2017). To date, rapid technological progress has provided multiple digital platforms and created numerous smart tools for online teaching/learning, thus facilitating its broad(er) uptake by Universities and colleges worldwide (Song et al., 2016). For example, the Open University represents a popular public institution of higher education in the UK which specialises in the delivery of online courses and distance-based learning (Sharples et al., 2012). ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a unique opportunity to compare the carbon intensity of higher education delivered on-and off-campus. This is attributed to governmental lockdown orders that have forced Universities to close their campuses, ban business travel and move all teaching and learning activities online. This study represents a first known attempt to compare the carbon footprint of a mid-sized UK University produced during the COVID-19 lockdown (April-June 2020) against that generated within the respective time period in previous years. Although the overall carbon footprint of the University decreased by almost 30% during the lockdown, the carbon intensity of online teaching and learning was found to be substantial and almost equal to that of staff and student commute in the pre-lockdown period. The study contributed to an emerging academic discourse on the carbon (dis)benefits of different models of higher education provision in the UK and beyond. The study suggested that policy and management decisions on transferring education online should carefully consider the carbon implications of this transfer.
... These laws have not only laid the foundation for the formation of global climate governance after 2020 but also point the way for human society to enter a new way of life and production. Since these, CF has been applied and promoted internationally (Chambers et al., 2007;Mancini et al., 2016;Song et al., 2016). ...
Carbon footprint can monitor the degree of human stress on the ecological environment and has been widely used to measure the level of climate change and sustainable development. To systematically sort out and analyse the development history of carbon footprint research, a keyword co-appearance and literature co-citation knowledge mapping has been drawn, the carbon footprint research hotspots, knowledge bases, research frontiers, and research features have been analysed, from Web of Science core database since 2008 as a data source. From the review, by establishing a carbon footprint research framework from the perspectives of both government and market, the problems of regional environmental governance efficiency, fairness mechanisms, and carbon emission rights are analysed under the government-led and market-led approaches and reviewed the development of carbon footprint research methods. In addition, the boundary and the applicability of the carbon footprint accounting methods has been discussed. The results show: (1) China is increasingly becoming an ideal for carbon footprint research due to its varied and complicated problem of climate and environment. (2) Future research hotspots will focus more on carbon sinks, land use changes, energy consumption, industrial ecology, buildings, livestock, and international trade. (3) Half-life, burst, and centrality indicate that the knowledge bases of carbon footprint are the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Emissions Scenarios, ISO14040 (2006) and Livestock’s long shadow. (4) The latest international fronts of carbon footprint research focus on the carbon footprint generated in international trade, innovations of methods and discrimination and definition of the theory concept, for example, the expression of carbon footprint means the use of either ecological land area units or physical weight units. (4) The research features are mainly concerned with the carbon footprint application of the multi-region input-output model in international trade, multi-scale assessment of human impact on the environment and sustainable development, and resource-environment effects associated with food loss and waste.
... They estimate that digitalisation can achieve energy savings for journals/articles with low readership and when they displace lengthy car journeys to a library. Song et al (2016) estimate that producing a review article at a Chinese university requires ∼38 MJ of energy consumption, allowing for searching, downloading and reading several information sources. Reading accounts for 65% of the total, assuming one quarter is on a desktop and the remainder in print. ...
Background. The contribution of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to a low carbon economy is unclear. Previous reviews emphasise the need to assess the specific factors that determine the environmental impacts of ICTs, but none of them link those factors to the magnitude of the impacts on energy consumption and carbon emissions. Our study aims to fill this evidence gap.
Methods/Design.We restrict our analysis to a single application domain, namely e-materialisation, defined as the partial or complete substitution of material products with electronic equivalents. We conduct the first systematic literature review of the direct and higher order impacts of the digitalisation of goods on energy consumption.
Results/Synthesis.We identify 31 relevant studies that we sort into five categories, namely: ‘epublications’ (e-books, e-magazines and e-journals); ‘e-news’; ‘e-business’; ‘e-music’; and ‘e-videos and games’. All but one of the 31 studies use life-cycle analysis and employ a range of product-system configurations, functional units, system boundaries and allocation rules. Confining attention to direct and substitution effects, the studies suggest potential energy savings from e-publications, e-news and e-music, and less potential from e-business and e-videos/games. However, different assumptions for key variables (such as the lifetime and energy efficiency of user devices, the extent to which personal transport is displaced and the number of users of material and digital products) lead to very different estimates— including many where lifecycle energy consumption increases. Most of the studies assume that digital goods substitute for material goods and all of them neglect rebound effects—which suggests that they overestimate energy savings.
Discussion. Given the diversity and context-specificity of the available evidence, the optimistic assumptions that are frequently used (e.g. perfect substitution) and the neglect of rebound effects, we cannot conclude that e-materialisation has delivered significant energy savings to date or is likely to do
so in the future.
... Globally, information and communication technology produces an estimated 1.4% of total global carbon emissions (Malmodin & Lund en 2018). Whether there is an environmental advantage of reading a journal article online will depend on the lifetime of the device used, energy efficiency of the device, reading time and number of readers; one study estimated casual reading of academic articles on electronic devices to be more environmentally friendly than reading paper copies (Song et al. 2016). ...
Objective:
Attention is drawn to the potential of global warming to influence the health and wellbeing of the human race. There is increasing public and governmental pressure on healthcare organisations to mitigate and adapt to the climate changes that are occurring. The science of anaesthetic agents such as nitrous oxide and the halogenated anaesthetic agents such as greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting agents is discussed and quantified. Additional environmental impacts of healthcare systems are explored. The role of noninhalational anaesthetic pharmaceuticals is discussed, including the environmental life-cycle analyses of their manufacture, transport, disposal and use. The significant role of anaesthetists in recycling and waste management, resource use (particularly plastics, water and energy) and engagement in sustainability are discussed. Finally, future directions for sustainability in veterinary anaesthesia are proposed.
Conclusions:
Veterinary anaesthetists have a considerable opportunity to drive sustainability within their organisations through modification of their practice, research and education. The principles of sustainability may help veterinary anaesthetists to mitigate and adapt to our environmental crisis. Due to their particular impact as greenhouse gases, anaesthetic agents should be used conservatively with the lowest safe fresh gas flow possible. Technologies for reprocessing anaesthetic agents are described.
... In this sense, the CF component of the EF methodology measures the bio-productive land needed to sequester the anthropogenic CO 2 -emissions. Second, CF is an indicator that measures the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions that are generated in a certain area or linked to a certain activity [14,15], directly or indirectly [18,19]. It is also interpreted as a sum of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) being connected to the different lifecycle phases of products based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. ...
The Ecological Footprint (EF) has become a very popular alternative indicator of development in the last three decades. It can be widely used to show the unsustainability of total and individual levels of consumption in countries. But can EF be a meaningful indicator at the micro level as well? This paper presents an argument on this issue. Based on a literature review including our own analysis and the correlation of EF with GDP and other alternative indicators, EF is evaluated at the macro level. Then, an original case study is presented, underpinning the applicability of EF on the company level, linking the ordinary corporate carbon footprinting with the EF method. Based on the findings, micro level EF calculations can help organizations in finding fields of intervention (inefficiencies and emission hotspots). EF accounting can also be used to evaluate the economic benefits of such measures after their realization.
... The framework and toolset of corporate carbon accounting and auditing have developed a lot in the recent years (see for example Schaltegger and Csutora, 2012) and many companies and other organizations tend to account, control and report their carbon emissions. The carbon footprint is a concept quantifying the quantity of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are linked to a certain activity (directly or indirectly, see Wiedmann et al., 2009or Song et al., 2016 or can be attributed to the different lifecycle phases of products (Johnson, 2012;Johnson and Tschudi, 2012;Galli et al., 2012), influencing also the sustainability of certain consumption patterns (Kim and Neff, 2009). From this point of view, corporate level carbon footprints can be defined as the total carbon (or greenhouse gas) emissions related to the activity or products of a certain company. ...
As a yield of efforts in the international climate policy and emerging consumer awareness there is a growing interest for the quantification of corporate level carbon footprints. As a consequence, there have been numerous initiatives, guidelines and calculation methods emerged recently to be able to quantify company level direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions. Most of them are based on the philosophy and classification of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. This paper intends to provide a comparison of freely available online corporate level carbon footprint calculators with a novelty value of addressing their validity and reliability. Validity here refers to the issue whether different calculators cover the same or similar aspects or scopes of the corporate carbon footprint, while reliability addresses the question whether different calculators deliver the same or similar result if we use the same input data. Based on the example of an imaginary enterprise, we argue that validity is partly achieved, while reliability of the calculators is relatively low. This means that online corporate carbon calculators can be useful to provide a first insight for companies into their carbon footprints and they can also be useful for temporal comparisons at the level of one company (if the activity of the company is not too complex.) However, these calculators do not seem to be very appropriate for comparisons among different companies or with external benchmarks.
... A commonly used benchmark to identify the environmental impact of products is to assess the Carbon Footprint of Products (CFP) on a one-year-basis. A variety of case studies concerning life-cycle assessment including carbon footprints has been published in literature for all different kinds of products and services, such as refrigerators [3], domestic water heating devices [4], urban transport systems [5] or even scientific publications [6]. The footprint-procedure is important for raising awareness and providing decision making guidelines on the customer side as well as within the company. ...
To assess cost, time investment, energy consumption and carbon emission of manufacturing on a per-piece basis, a bottom-up approach for aggregating a real-time product footprint is proposed. This method allows the evaluation of the environmental impact of a batch or even single product using monitoring or simulation data. To analyze the infrastructure, the production plant is decomposed into modules that are in relation to each other via inputs and outputs. Distinguishing between modules for production, logistics, energy system, buildings and auxiliary systems, the different approaches for distributing resource consumption between the products are presented. Special attention is paid to typical scenarios that occur in production plants and problems that may arise from them. For example, the incorporation of standby-, setup- and ramp-up times, the energy consumption of the administration and the allocation of different products and by-products manufactured at a machine are taken into account. © 2016, International Centre for Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems SDEWES. All rights reserved.
... A commonly used benchmark to identify the environmental impact of products is to assess the Carbon Footprint of Products (CFP) on a one-year-basis. A variety of case studies has been published in literature for all different kinds of products, including scientific publications [3]. The footprint-procedure is important for raising awareness on the customer sides as well as within the company. ...
... At the same time, what are the nefarious environmental impacts of such a biblical flood of publications (Pautasso 2012;Song et al. 2015) and associated meetings (Li et al. 2014;Parsons 2015), and could one ever manage to keep up to date with the topic, when searching Google Scholar for invasive species returns about 16,800 findings published in 2014 alone (not too bad: only about 2/h every day of the year)? The pace of publishing is increasing at breakneck speed: In Web of Science (core collection, 1991-2014, as of October 2015) a search for (invasive species OR alien species OR exotic species OR non-native species OR invasion biology OR invasion ecology) results in about 18,000 items, of which about half appeared since 2010 and one-third appeared since 2012. ...
This article addresses the decarbonization of the French public research sector via a novel form of scientific mobilization: Labos 1point5, a group of research personnel, whose strategy is partly based on developing and then distributing a carbon calculator to estimate the quantity of greenhouse gases emitted by French public research laboratories, expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) or “carbon footprint.” Here, I question the effects of this quantification on laboratories’ approach to decarbonization. Commensuration of research practices through an estimation that is not centered on a specific practice (such as travel) or limited to certain instruments (e.g., telescopes, supercomputers, computer hardware) opens up the boundaries of responsibility attribution. I identify three forms of tensions that arise during this process: a tension in terms of level of responsibilities, a material and disciplinary tension, and finally, a definitional tension, in the sense of “boundary-work” (Gieryn, 1983), in which this initiative is simultaneously labeled as scientific and activist.
Dematerialization through information technology aids in advancing environmental sustainability. Replacing a bound thesis with an e-thesis for a university dissertation will be a complementary paradigm shift for higher environmental performance. Hence, the study intended to determine and compare the environmental performance parameters of conventional paper-based bound-thesis and e-thesis. Moreover, the study aimed to identify the activities causing higher environmental burdens during the production of bound and e-thesis. Open LCA 1.11 was employed for a conventional bound thesis with its e-version submitted by the undergraduates of the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka. The study utilized U.S. EPA life-cycle inventory data. The analysis demonstrated that the overall global warming potential of a 40-page hard cover thesis was 4,839,000.00 kg CO2-eq to which paper and cover import and paper manufacturing stages contributed more than 99% (4,830,000.0 kg CO2-eq). In comparison, a 0.084 MB soft copy of an e-thesis reported a negligible (0.09936 kg CO2-eq) global warming potential value. Ozone formation-human health, ozone formation-terrestrial ecosystems, terrestrial acidification, fine particulate matter formation, and marine eutrophication potential were 265,584.31 kg NOx eq, 265,583.21 kg NOx eq, 177,451.5 kg SO2 eq, 52,948 kg PM2.5 eq, and 29,041.0 kg N-eq for bound thesis production system. Except for the stratospheric ozone depletion impact and water consumption, environmental performance indicators of e-thesis were superior to the conventional-bound thesis. The study recommends the preparation of e-thesis as an environmentally sound approach. Switching to renewables, extended lifespan, and material recycling of devices at the end of use, sustainable forestry practices, process optimization, and cleaner production technologies can further enhance the environmental performance of e-thesis.
Due to climate change and the risk of global warming, many academic institutions seek to develop a comprehensive inventory of greenhouse gas emissions. Higher education institutions (HEIs) are often challenged to develop a process for accurately assessing campus resource consumption that is efficient and informative. Such an assessment relies heavily on data availability and institutional capacity to accurately report its findings, which help to benchmark its footprint against peer institutions and establish the mechanisms to sustain such data-intensive work. In response to this, and faced with numerous challenges in a desert environment, the American University in Cairo (AUC) implemented a carbon accounting method to describe its carbon footprint (CF) on a bi-annual basis. This method highlights the sustainability team’s strategies to reduce energy consumption and emissions on campus. The report measures the university’s CF from campus operations and activities. AUC is the first HEI in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to conduct such a comprehensive study of its impact on climate change. As part of its ongoing efforts to maintain and improve its operational sustainability, AUC has witnessed a one-third reduction in overall energy consumption on the New Cairo campus over the past two years, decreasing utility costs by 35%, thanks to an energy-saving plan designed and implemented by its sustainability team. This chapter analyzes the method, challenges, strengths, and areas of improvement of the implemented system and outlines subsequent strategies to manage campus resources.KeywordsCarbon footprintCarbon reportingEmissionsHigher Education InstitutionsGreen campuses
We provide an estimate of the environmental impact of the recruitment system in the economics profession, known as the “international job market for economists”. Each year, most graduating PhDs seeking jobs in academia, government, or companies participate in this job market. The market follows a standardized process, where candidates are pre-screened in a short interview which takes place at an annual meeting in Europe or in the United States. Most interviews are arranged via a non-profit online platform, econjobmarket.org, which kindly agreed to share its anonymized data with us. Using this dataset, we estimate the individual environmental impact of 1057 candidates and one hundred recruitment committees who attended the EEA and AEA meetings in December 2019 and January 2020. We calculate that this pre-screening system generated the equivalent of about 4800 tons of avoidable CO2-eq and a comprehensive economic cost over €4.4 million. We contrast this overall assessment against three counterfactual scenarios: an alternative in-person system, a hybrid system (where videoconference is used for some candidates) and a fully online system (as it happened in 2020–21 due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Overall, the study can offer useful information to shape future recruitment standards in a more sustainable way.
Higher Education Institutions (HEI) or universities, as organisations engaged in education, research and community services, play an important role in promoting sustainable development. Therefore, they are increasingly linked to the initiative of calculating their carbon footprint (CF), which is a tool to assess sustainability from the perspective of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The aim of this study is to carry out a systematic review of the current situation of CF assessment in academic institutions by analysing different key elements, such as the time period, methodologies and practises, calculation tools, emission sources, emission factors and reduction plans. The review protocol considered articles published until March 2021. Of the articles reviewed, 35 are aimed specifically at calculating the CF of HEI, while the remaining articles consist of review, activity-specific CF assessment or GHG emission reduction articles. Clear differences have been identified when results are compared for the normalised CF (average of 2.67 t CO2e/student, ranging from 0.06 to 10.94) or the percentage of carbon offsetting, only considered in 14% of the studies and ranging from 0.09 to 18%. The main reason for this is the lack of standardisation as regards the time metric (year, semester), functional unit (student, employee, area) and data collection boundary (scope 1, 2, 3), the emissions sources and emission factors, mainly for scope 3 (water consumption and treatment, waste treatment, office, ICT and laboratory consumables, commuting and travel, construction materials, canteens, etc.), and the inclusion or not of the effect of carbon offset projects to offset the CF (aim of the project and absorption sources and factors). However, despite the differences, a reduction over time is clearly observed. Therefore, CF in HEI requires further improvements and solutions to a number of challenges, including the definition of representative emission sources, the creation of a robust emission factor database and the development of tools/methodologies that cover all the needs of this type of organisation.
Graphic abstract
With the increasing dominance of digital reading over traditional reading, gaining an understanding of the environmental impacts of the formats has become critical. This systematic literature review synthesizes and integrates the findings of studies comparing print reading with on-screen reading. The results reveal that the environmental impacts of printed and digital media depend on the usage rates and number of readers of both types of media as well as user behaviors and other parameters, and digital reading also has its own negative environmental impacts. Finally, research gaps are identified and a research agenda is proposed, including considering environmental performance in comparison studies, empirical investigations of actual user behaviors, and environmental savings for lending and sharing materials from libraries. This study aims to clear the misconception and change the popular stereotype that “e-reading is environmentally more sustainable than conventional reading,” and to provide stakeholders with more valuable information that is necessary to make environmentally informed decisions.
This paper presents a survey conducted among the community of transport historians, on the occasion of the annual conference of the main association in this field, T2M. The survey collected quantitative and qualitative data on air travel by these scholars during 2019. The paper discusses the weight of social factors (gender, academic position, age) in the carbon footprint of these researchers due to flying. It shows the strong dependence of this community on flying, perceived as the only system likely to meet the need for physical encounters, particularly for conferences and the life of academic networks. It also shows that these historians see the issue of the airplane as a moral problem for which their institutions are expected to propose solutions. However, the scale of the weight of long-haul flights seems to be underestimated by the scholars' perception, while it raises questions about the ability to find alternative solutions.
Reducing carbon footprints is an important part of sustainable development. Although there has been increasing research attention to this topic, little is known about the status of research on the carbon footprint of higher education (CFHE). In this study we examined the status of this field by identifying the key publication outlets and the most central researchers in terms of productivity and citations, common keywords and research directions, the world regions with the most active research, and changes in these metrics over the last decade. Journal articles and conference proceedings published from 2010-2019 (N = 283) were identified using the Web of Science Core Collection. Bibliometric analysis showed that the University of California System was the most productive organization during this period, and the United States (USA) was the most productive region of the world. The Journal of Cleaner Production (JCLP) was the most common outlet for publication. In some cases there were strong academic-cooperation relationships, notably the research groups headed by Thomas Wiedmann and Edgar Hertwich. Cluster analysis identified six clusters of keywords: life-cycle assessment, environmental performance and carbon management, greenhouse gas emissions, design, system, and sustainability.
Hong Kong and Macao are featured with their urban metabolism as they heavily rely on the energy and resource supply from other regions. However, a comprehensive perspective is lacked to depict their CO2 emissions due to the independence of statistical data. Here we analyze the carbon footprints of Hong Kong and Macao. The direct energy-related emissions (Scope 1), the emissions of cross-boundary electricity (Scope 2), and the embodied emissions associated with trade (Scope 3) are examined. Scope 1 carbon footprints of the two areas were stabilized at 50 Mt, accounting for 0.6% of those from Mainland China in 2018. Their global footprints were approximately three times of their Scope 1 emissions, accompanied by a continuous growth between 2000 and 2015, and the contribution of their local footprints has doubled on average. Their Scope 3 emissions were mainly due to the enormous unfavorable balance of trade. Meanwhile, the increasing impact of imports’ higher emission intensity on their Scope 3 emissions should not be ignored. We suggest that Hong Kong and Macao should adjust their mitigation policies that focus only on Scope 1 emissions as developed cities outsourcing production through supply chains.
One of the most important challenges to improve sustainability is the management of climate change and the reduction of green house gas emissions. In 2014 the University of Genoa and the Ministry of the Environment signed an agreement to assess the Carbon footprint of the university, in order to promote the mitigation of climate change and to study possible innovative solutions to reduce the environmental burdens. Following the agreement, the university want to implement a project for the sustainable management of waste within it. A circular economy methodology has been used to implement a project that will help in diminish the pollutants impacts deriving from the waste management recovering and recycling high quality materials. In cooperation with municipal local companies for the management of waste, the project foresees to implement studies and research in the field of guidelines, attitudes and behaviour of the population towards the recovery, recycling and reuse, pushing for a transition to a circular economic approach. Considered the lack of an accounting model and monitoring of waste products it has been decided to implement it. Waste produced by the university have been estimated and calculated through experiments and on field analyses and its GHG potential have been evaluated through a LCA methodology. The general outcome of this research shows that it is possible to create a circular economy model applicable to other universities and medium-sized communities, even if future development are presented in order to improve future investigation.
Global warming is a very serious environmental problem. Universities, the most active organizations and locations for scientific research and social activities, have a responsibility to construct low carbon campuses and to play an important role in reducing CO2 emissions. The concept and definition of a low carbon campus were proposed in this paper along with a comprehensive model. Tianjin Polytechnical University (TJPU) was used as a case study because of its innovative efforts in this aspect. The ecological footprint evaluation (EFE) and life cycle assessment (LCA) were integrated to evaluate a low carbon campus qualitatively; The ecological footprint index (EFI) was proposed for a quantitative evaluation. The EFI of TJPU was 0.61, which indicated that the low carbon campus of TJPU is classified as having strong sustainability. Last, effective recommendations were proposed based on data analysis to improve the low carbon campus; qualitative and quantitative evaluations were also discussed to enhance the progress of constructing low carbon campuses worldwide.
Digital information and communication devices –smartphones or tablet, laptop and desktop computers– are often perceived as much more environmentally friendly than newspapers and magazines – but is this common opinion justified? Previous studies comparing the environmental impact of electronic vs. print media show that the answer depends on many parameters of the technologies under study and the use patterns assumed. Empa’s Technology and Society Lab, the University of Zürich the “Denkfabrik visuelle Kommunikation” jointly developed a web-based tool that can be used to evaluate the environmental effects of a broad variety of printed and electronic media for clearly defined use patterns. In a first step, the basic scientific facts were established using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodological framework. Two LCA studies have been done, one for the production and disposal of the various media, the other one for the (active) use of each of these media. Technical data from various producers have been used for the ICT devices examined as well as for the power consumption during the use phase. All inputs to these processes have been modeled using background processes from the ecoinvent database. The results from these two studies are environmental indicators for each type of media representing production and disposal resp. (active) use of the device, calculated per device resp. per unit of active use. Combining these data in the second step made it possible to calculate the environmental impacts from any specific use pattern combined with the various types of print and electronic media. In order to make those findings available to users who have no knowledge in LCA methodology, a website providing an easily applicable tool has been developed. Two cases studies – one comparing different ways of advertising for (food) products; the other one taking the conference paper at hand as example – show some of the possibilities this tool offers to non-specialists.
Remanufactured products that can substitute for new products are generally claimed to save energy. These claims are made from studies that look mainly at the differences in materials production and manufacturing. However, when the use phase is included, the situation can change radically. In this Article, 25 case studies for eight different product categories were studied, including: (1) furniture, (2) clothing, (3) computers, (4) electric motors, (5) tires, (6) appliances, (7) engines, and (8) toner cartridges. For most of these products, the use phase energy dominates that for materials production and manufacturing combined. As a result, small changes in use phase efficiency can overwhelm the claimed savings from materials production and manufacturing. These use phase energy changes are primarily due to efficiency improvements in new products, and efficiency degradation in remanufactured products. For those products with no, or an unchanging, use phase energy requirement, remanufacturing can save energy. For the 25 cases, we found that 8 cases clearly saved energy, 6 did not, and 11 were too close to call. In some cases, we could examine how the energy savings potential of remanufacturing has changed over time. Specifically, during times of significant improvements in energy efficiency, remanufacturing would often not save energy. A general design trend seems to be to add power to a previously unpowered product, and then to improve on the energy efficiency of the product over time. These trends tend to undermine the energy savings potential of remanufacturing.
I recently returned from the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), my principal scientific society. This year's conference theme was “Global Warming: The legacy of our past, the challenge for our future.” Roughly 4000 scientists attended from countries around the world to
Purpose
The study aims to determine the environmental impact of printed content in libraries and thus to find out how a digital information service can help libraries and institutions play a key role in helping the environment.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected and analysed through a combination of environment scan and document analysis, and some mathematical calculations. Comparative data for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from printed books and journals in certain countries, and some specific university libraries in Australia and New Zealand are presented. A lifecycle analysis approach is used to identify various factors that are responsible for GHG emissions for printed as well as digital information resources.
Findings
The study found that dematerialisation, i.e. the replacement of printed content with digital information services, can help libraries and institutions to reduce their impact on the environment. However it is also noted that further research is needed to develop benchmarks and comparative data for GHG emissions from print‐based and digital information services.
Practical implications
The paper provides data relating to the potential savings in GHG emissions that can be achieved through dematerialisation of printed content in libraries. A series of research issues in the area are identified.
Originality/value
The paper opens up a new area of research on the environmental impacts of information services. For the first time raw data on GHG emissions from printed content held in university libraries are calculated.
This paper compares two Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies independently carried out to assess the environmental impacts of electronic versus print media. Although the two studies lead to the same overall conclusion for the case of a news magazine – namely that the tablet version of the magazine has environmental advantages over the print version – there are significant differences in the details of the LCA results. We show how these differences can be explained by differences in the methodological approaches used for life cycle inventory (LCI) modelling, in particular the use of rough average data versus the attempt to use the most specific and detailed data as possible. We conclude that there are several issues in LCA practice (at least when applied in the domain of media) that can significantly influence the results already at the LCI level: The data collection strategy used (e.g. relying on desk-based research or dismantling a given device) and the decisions made at inventory level with regard to parameters with significant geographic variability, such as the electricity mix or recycling quotas.
Providing environmental education in colleges and universities is a major strategy to cope with the mounting pressure of environmental problems that come with the rapid economy development in China. However, the provision of environmental studies and the incorporation of environmental protection and sustainable development into the academic curricula have not been reported. Here, we analyzed the curricula of 267 out of 810 public universities and colleges in China- a sample of 30% from each of the 12 different types (China's universities are categorized 12 types as agriculture, forestry, engineering, comprehensive colleges, education, ethnic study, medicine, economics, law, arts, language and sports). The results showed that 19.47% of the sampled institutions failed to establish a comprehensive environmental education framework; the education is “greener” in agriculture- and forestry-based institutions, while those focus on sports, art and linguistics are less successful in addressing environmental problems; the institutions funded by the Ministry of Education provide relatively “greener” education than those funded by local and provincial governments. Moreover, the institutions located in underdeveloped areas are less concerned with environmental education than those in more developed area, as reflected by their academic curricula. The level of environmental education is also significantly higher in the “Project 985” universities (the top 39 universities in the country) and the “Project 211” universities (the top 116 universities in the country) than any other universities. The number of textbooks published that address environmental issues showed an increase between year 2005 and 2010, but less significantly in literature, philosophy and education-related textbooks. Our results indicate that environmental education needs to be improved in most of the institutions of higher education in China, and it should be systematically assessed and improved to meet the nation's rising demands in sustainable development, nature and resource conservation.
The consumption of the written word is changing, as media transitions from paper products to digital alternatives. We reviewed the life cycle assessment (LCA) research literature that compared the environmental footprint of digital and paper media. To validate the role of context in influencing LCA results, we assessed LCAs that did not compare paper and print, but focused on a product or component that is part of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector. Using a framework that identifies problems in LCA conduct, we assessed whether the comparative LCAs were accurate expressions of the environmental footprints of paper and print. We hypothesized that the differences between the product systems that produce paper and digital media weaken LCA's ability to compare environmental footprints. We also hypothesized that the characteristics of ICT as an industrial sector weaken LCA as an environmental assessment methodology. We found that existing comparative LCAs offered problematic comparisons of paper and digital media for two reasons — the stark material differences between ICT products and paper products, and the unique characteristics of the ICT sector. We suggested that the context of the ICT sector, best captured by the concept of “Moore's Law”, will continuously impede the ability of the LCA methodology to measure ICT products.
Application of information and communication technology (ICT) is often expected to result in decreased environmental impacts. Several studies have, however, also addressed the possibilities of negative impacts. It is therefore important to assess environmental impacts of ICT products and services. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool for assessing the potential impacts of a product or service over the whole life-cycle, i.e. from raw material acquisition to waste management via production and use phases. The aim of this paper is to review LCA studies of ICT products and services, including a few Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) studies. Many of the studies have considered consumer products, such as computers and TVs. Other consumer products, such as game consoles and TV peripherals, as well as business products, e.g. related to networks, are however more rarely assessed. Manufacturing and use phase have the highest impact in the life cycle. Use phase seems to be the predominant in energy consumption and global warming for some ICT products but for others, especially energy efficient, low weight products, manufacturing may dominate. Rapid technological development is stressed by several authors as a source of variability of results, impacting the production processes and suppliers as well as the content and energy performance of the actual devices. In the future, conducting LCA on ICT, the research community needs to consider the limitations found in the studies conducted so far. It encompasses, among others, the need to address a broad spectrum of environmental impacts, including human and ecotoxicological impacts; modeling actual e-waste management, covering informal management when relevant; and considering user behavior in a realistic way, accounting for rebound and other indirect effects.
There is a growing consensus that ICT can contribute to the reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, both by increasing the efficiency of existing processes and by enabling substitution effects to usher in more energy efficient patterns of production and consumption. While, however, many studies based on theoretical reduction potentials have been presented, in practice it has only been possible to cite a few examples of such reductions thus far.This article presents the results of a field experiment for one particular domain in which ICT can be substituted for more carbon-intensive technologies: using advanced videoconferencing technology to reduce intercontinental conference travel and thus travel-related GHG emissions. We organized a large resource management conference simultaneously on two continents and assessed the emissions caused by the attendees’ travel and by the additional ICT equipment utilized to connect the two venues. We further assessed, based on a survey, the emissions in the alternative scenarios of holding the conference at either one of the places, and the satisfaction of the participants with the two-site conference format.The results show that reductions of 37% and 50% in travel-related GHG emissions were attained as compared to the single-site alternatives, although more people took part than in any of these alternatives. At the same time, the attendees’ experience was clearly positive, showing that the multiple-site format can serve as an acceptable alternative to the traditional one-site format of holding an international conference.
Previous efforts to evaluate the climate change impact of researchers have focused mainly on transport related impact of conference attendance, and infrastructure. Because these represent only a part of the activities involved in the science making process this short note presents the carbon footprint of a complete science making process of one specific case. Apart from presenting the total footprint, we evaluate the relative contribution of the different scientific activities, and quantify mitigating possibilities. The case PhD project had a carbon footprint of 21.5 t CO2-eq (2.69 t CO2-eq per peer-reviewed paper, 0.3 t CO2-eq per citation and 5.4 t CO2-eq per h-index unit at graduation) of which general mobility represents 75%. Conference attendance was responsible for 35% of the carbon footprint, whereas infrastructure related emissions showed to contribute 20% of the total impact. Videoconferencing could have reduced the climate change impact on this case PhD with up to 44%. Other emission reduction initiatives, such as using green electricity, reduction of energy consumption, and promoting commuting by bicycle, could have triggered a reduction of 14% in this case study. This note fits in the movement of academics and universities willing to be green. The study confirms that researchers' mobility is the biggest contributor to his or her carbon footprint, but is not limited to conference attendance, showing the importance of considering all activities in the science making process. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The environmental impact associated with reading an on-line and a printed newspaper is analyzed and compared with respective parts of a television (TV) broadcast. Two reference units were chosen for comparison to account for differences between media in presentation and consumption (reading or watching a news item) and consumption of the daily news as a whole. The environmental impact is assessed using life-cycle assessment (LCA). Key drivers of the environmental impact for both electronic delivery systems are energy consumption and power generation. Not only do the manufacturing of the products and their use have an environmental impact, but so does the use of the necessary infrastructure, that is, energy consumption of the telephone network or data transfer via Internet. Printing of on-line information also turned out to be important. In the case of the printed newspapers, energy consumption is again important, here for the manufacturing of pulp and paper Complete printed newspapers (the form in which they are typically purchased) have a very high environmental burden relative to watching the TV news or reading on-line news, even if the propensity to extend TV viewing is taken into consideration.
Information and communications technology (ICT) contributes substantially to global greenhouse gas (GHG) pollutant emissions, but it is time consuming to estimate the environmental impacts caused by the production of ICT devices, and the literature lacks coverage for newer products. Using a process-sum life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, we estimate and compare the embodied GHG emissions of 11 ICT products, including large- and small-form-factor desktop and laptop personal computers, a thin client device, an LCD monitor, newer mobile devices (an Apple iPad, an iPod Touch, and an Amazon Kindle), a rack server, and a network switch. Full bills of materials are provided via hand disassembly and weighing and are mapped to processes in the ecoinvent v2.2 database to produce impact estimates. Results are analyzed to develop simplified impact estimation models using linear regressions based on product characteristics. A simple and robust linear relationship between mass and embodied emissions is identified; a more sophisticated linear model using display mass, battery mass, and circuit board mass as inputs is slightly more accurate. GHG emissions for newer products are 50% to 60% lower than corresponding older products with similar functionality, largely due to decreased material usage, especially reductions in integrated circuit content.
Final impact results from an industry-wide environmental life-cycle assessment of cathode ray tube (CRT) and liquid crystal display (LCD) computer monitors are presented for 20 environmental impact categories. Considering the entire life cycle of each monitor, water eutrophication and aquatic ecotoxicity impacts for the baseline analysis were greater for the LCD while all other impact categories (e.g., resource use, energy, ozone depletion, landfill space use, human health toxicity) were greater for the CRT. Energy inputs from CRT glass manufacturing, for which there was some uncertainty in the data, drive many of the CRT impacts. Modifying the glass energy data based on comparison to secondary data resulted in nine of the 20 impact categories having greater relative life-cycle impacts for the LCD than the CRT. When comparing the manufacturing stages of each monitor type in the baseline scenario, the LCD has greater relative burdens on the environment in eight categories. Energy, global warming, and hu
Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of desktop personal computers (PCs) are analyzed to assess the environmental impact of PCs and to explain inconsistencies and disagreements across existing studies. Impacts, characterized in this work in terms of primary energy demand and global warming potential, are decomposed into inventory components and impact per component in order to expose such inconsistencies. Additional information from related studies, especially regarding use-phase energy consumption, helps interpret the LCA results. The weight of evidence strongly suggests that for primary energy demand and contribution to climate change, the use phase is the dominant life cycle phase; manufacturing impacts are smaller but substantial, and impacts due to product transportation and end-of-life activities are much smaller. Each of the few LCA studies that report manufacturing impacts as being greater than use-phase impacts make unrealistically low assumptions regarding use-phase energy consumption. Estimates of manufacturing impacts, especially those related to printed circuit boards and integrated circuits, are highly uncertain and variable; such estimates are very difficult to evaluate, and more systematic research is needed to reduce these uncertainties. The type of computer analyzed, such as low-power light desktop or high-power workstation, may dominate the total impact; future studies should therefore base their estimates on a large sample to smooth out this variation, or explicitly restrict the analysis to a specific type of computer.
Advances in digital technology and the growth of information networks are revolutionizing human activity. The Internet has been championed as a new tool for environmental improvement. A life‐cycle energy analysis of digital libraries, a growing application of information technology, was conducted to test this premise.
Life‐cycle models were compared for journal collections in digital and traditional formats. The basis for analysis was the amount of information in a typical scientific journal article (∼12 pages), which is equivalent to 0.97 hr of on‐screen reading time. Digital system elements such as servers, routers, laser printers, and computer workstations were modeled. Journal production, delivery, storage, binding, interlibrary loan, and photocopying were examined for the traditional system. Building‐related infrastructure, office paper, and personal transportation of the library patron were analyzed for both cases. In all, the study incorporated nearly 30 model elements, 90 input variables, and numerous fixed parameters.
Five primary scenarios were constructed to consider increasing levels of complexity. Scenario 1 assumes only one reading per article (unit of analysis). Additional scenarios assume 1,000 readings and vary the following: laser printing, photocopying, and personal transportation. Energy consumed by the digital collection ranged between 4.10 and 216 MJ. The traditional system realized burdens from 0.55 to 525 MJ. Four significant effects were uncovered: (1) Energy consumption per unit was highly influenced by the number of readings per article. (2) Networking infrastructure by itself had a relatively small effect on total energy consumed by the digital system. (3) When personal transportation was considered, its effects tended to dominate. (4) The impact of making personal copies varied. Photocopying always increased energy consumption, whereas laser printing actually saved energy when it substituted for on‐screen reading.
Purpose
The sale and distribution of books are activities that have changed through increased use of the internet. The main aim of this paper was to determine the potential environmental impacts of paper books and identify key issues determining the magnitude of those impacts. A second aim was to study the environmental difference between a paper book bought in a traditional bookshop and through an internet bookshop. In addition, areas with a lack of data and major uncertainties were to be noted.
Materials and methods
A screening life cycle assessment was performed on an average hardback novel produced and read in Sweden. The data used were general data from Ecoinvent 2.0 and site-specific data from companies participating in the study, whenever average data were not available.
Results and discussion
The results showed the most important processes to be pulp and paper production. However, if a substantial distance was travelled by car, to buy a book or collect it, this had a major influence on the environmental performance. Comparing the two bookshop alternatives, the results showed a slight benefit for the internet bookshop due to fewer books being returned to the publisher and the avoidance of energy use at the traditional bookshop. The buyer of a book could significantly influence the total impact by choosing to walk to the bookshop or to combine the trip with several other activities to decrease the impact of the travel per activity performed. When books ordered via the internet were sent by postal services directly to the end consumer, the climate change impact was lowered.
Conclusions
This study showed that, in addition to the paper used, the way books are bought and distributed, including possible personal transportation, can significantly affect the total environmental impact of paper books. The impact per book read can be significantly decreased by sharing books with others.
Viable alternatives to conventional newspapers, such as electronic papers, e-papers or e-readers, are intended to have many of the qualities of paper, such as reading using reflective light, high resolution, 180° viewing angle. It has been suggested that the environmental impact of e-paper can be lower than for printed and internet-based newspapers. However, in order to find the facts of the matter, a thorough life cycle perspective covering raw material acquisition, production, use and disposal should preferably be used to study the environmental performance of the different products. A screening life cycle assessment was performed to describe the potential environmental impacts of two product systems; printed on paper and tablet e-paper newspapers. Results show that the most significant phase of the life cycle for both product systems was the production of substrate or platform. Accordingly, key aspects that may affect the resulting environmental performance of newspaper product systems were for the printed newspaper number of readers per copy and number of pages per issue and for the tablet e-paper newspaper lifetime and multi-use of the device. The printed newspaper in general had a higher energy use, higher emissions of gases contributing to climate change and several other impact categories than the tablet e-paper newspaper. It was concluded that tablet e-paper has the potential to decrease the environmental impact of newspaper consumption. However, further studies regarding the environmental impact of production and waste management of electronic devices and internet use, as well as more comprehensive assessment of toxicological impacts are needed. As the data on the electronic devices becomes more comprehensive this may prove to be a major limitation of electronic newspaper systems. Developers are suggested to strive towards minimisation of toxic and rare substances in production.
In her letter “Travel trade-offs for scientists” (10 December 2010, p. [1476][1]), I. C. Burke wrote that science organizations should lead the charge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from travel and that scientists should demonstrate a different way of doing business that doesn't contribute
Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) has developed fast over the last three decades. Whereas LCA developed from merely energy analysis to a comprehensive environmental burden analysis in the 1970s, full-fledged life cycle impact assessment and life cycle costing models were introduced in the 1980s and 1990 s, and social-LCA and particularly consequential LCA gained ground in the first decade of the 21st century. Many of the more recent developments were initiated to broaden traditional environmental LCA to a more comprehensive Life Cycle Sustainability Analysis (LCSA). Recently, a framework for LCSA was suggested linking life cycle sustainability questions to knowledge needed for addressing them, identifying available knowledge and related models, knowledge gaps, and defining research programs to fill these gaps. LCA is evolving into LCSA, which is a transdisciplinary integration framework of models rather than a model in itself. LCSA works with a plethora of disciplinary models and guides selecting the proper ones, given a specific sustainability question. Structuring, selecting, and making the plethora of disciplinary models practically available in relation to different types of life cycle sustainability questions is the main challenge.
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