The emergence of politically driven bioeconomy strategies worldwide calls for considering the ecological issues associated with bio-based products. Traditionally, life cycle analysis (LCA) approaches are key tools used to assess impacts through product life cycles, but they present limitations regarding the accounting of multiple ecosystem service-related issues, at both the land-use and supply chain levels. Based on a systematic review of empirical articles, this study provides insights on using LCA assessments to account for ecosystem service-related impacts in the context of bioeconomy activities. We address the following research questions: what is the state of the art of the literature performing LCA assessments of forest-based bioeconomy activities, including the temporal distribution, the geographic areas and products/processes at study, and the approaches and methods used? 2. Which impacts and related midpoints are considered by the reviewed studies and what types of ecosystem service- related information do they bear? Out of over 600 articles found through the Scopus search, 155 were deemed relevant for the review. The literature focuses on North-America and Europe. Most of the articles assessed the environmental impact of lower-value biomass uses. Climate change was assessed in over 90% of the studies, while issues related to ozone, eutrophication, human toxicity, resource depletion, acidification, and environmental toxicity were assessed in 40% to 60% of the studies. While the impact categories accounted for in the reviewed LCA studies bear information relevant to certain provisioning and regulating services, several ecosystem services (especially cultural ones) remain unaccounted for. The implications of our study are relevant for professionals working in the ecosystem services, circular bioeconomy, and/or LCA communities. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

The globally growing demand to produce more food with fewer inputs, less energy, and lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions challenges current agricultural practices. Recycled fertilizers made of various side streams and types of biomass have been developed mainly to improve nutrient recycling in food systems. However, the knowledge of the impacts of different recycled fertilizers on GHG emissions and energy use is lacking. There is also a need for developing environmental assessment methods for quantifying the impacts of recycling processes, particularly in terms of choosing reasonable methods for co-product allocation. The aims of this study were to address the above mentioned research gaps by i) assessing energy use and GHG emissions of various recycled fertilizers, ii) comparing the recycled fertilizers with mineral fertilizers, and iii) comparing the impacts of using different co-product allocation methods for the recycled fertilizers. Attributional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used for estimating energy use and GHG emissions of recycled fertilizers, including ammonium sulfate, biogas digestate, and meat and bone meal, using kg of nitrogen in the fertilizers as a functional unit. In addition, the energy use and GHG emissions of oat production when using the recycled and mineral fertilizers were quantified. The data were obtained from field experiments, LCA databases, published literature, and fertilizer companies. The life-cycle energy consumption and GHG emissions of recycled fertilizers were found to be lower than that of mineral fertilizer, but also differences between recycled fertilizer products were notable. The biggest differences between fertilizers occurred in manufacturing and transportation. However, this conclusion is highly sensitive to several decisions, such as data sources and LCA methods used. Handling the raw materials of recycled fertilizers as by-products instead of residues adds burdens from primary production to fertilizers. Also handling the materials as waste increases the impacts due to burdens from the recycling process. Since the raw materials of fertilizers have only little economic value, applying economic allocation results to significantly lower impacts than mass allocation. Consequential LCA studies would be needed to improve the understanding of the wider impacts of recycled fertilizers, e.g. considering the benefits of avoided waste management processes. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This study identifies new wood-based products with considerable potential and attractive markets, including textiles, liquid biofuels, platform chemicals, plastics, and packaging. We apply a mixed-methods review to examine how the position of the forest industry in a given value chain determines the respective production value. An assessment is provided as to the degree to which these emerging wood-based products could compensate for the foreseen decline of graphic paper markets in four major forest industry countries: USA, Canada, Sweden, and Finland. A 1%-2% market share in selected global markets implies a potential increase in revenues of 18-75 billion euros per annum in the four selected countries by 2030. This corresponds to 10%-43% of the production value of forest industries in 2016 and compares with a projected decline of graphic paper industry revenue of 5.5 billion euros by 2030. The respective impacts on wood use are manifold, as many of the new products utilize by-products as feedstock. The increase in primary wood use, which is almost entirely attributed to construction and to some extent textiles markets, would be in the range of 15-133 million m(3), corresponding to 2%-21% of the current industrial roundwood use in the selected countries.

We investigated how the initial age structure of a managed, middle boreal (62A degrees N), Norway spruce-dominated (Picea abies L. Karst.) forest area affects the net climate impact of using forest biomass for energy. The model-based analysis used a gap-type forest ecosystem model linked to a life cycle assessment (LCA) tool. The net climate impact of energy biomass refers to the difference in annual net CO2 exchange between the biosystem using forest biomass (logging residues from final felling) and the fossil (reference) system using coal. In the simulations over the 80-year period, the alternative initial age structures of the forest areas were (i) skewed to the right (dominated by young stands), (ii) normally distributed (dominated by middle-aged stands), (iii) skewed to the left (dominated by mature stands), and (iv) evenly distributed (same share of different age classes). The effects of management on net climate impacts were studied using current recommendations as a baseline with a fixed rotation period of 80 years. In alternative management scenarios, the volume of the growing stock was maintained 20% higher over the rotation compared to the baseline, and/or nitrogen fertilization was used to enhance carbon sequestration. According to the results, the initial age structure of the forest area affected largely the net climate impact of using energy biomass over time. An initially right-skewed age structure produced the highest climate benefits over the 80-year simulation period, in contrast to the left-skewed age structure. Furthermore, management that enhanced carbon sequestration increased the potential of energy biomass to replace coal, reducing CO2 emissions and enhancing climate change mitigation.

Purpose Following the urgency to curb environmental impacts across all sectors globally, this is the first life cycle assessment of different wine grape farming practices suitable for commercial conventional production in South Africa, aiming at better understanding the potentials to reduce adverse effects on the environment and on human health. Methods An attributional life cycle assessment was conducted on eight different scenarios that reduce the inputs of herbicides and insecticides compared against a business as usual (BAU) scenario. We assess several impact categories based on ReCiPe, namely global warming potential, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, terrestrial toxicity, freshwater toxicity, marine toxicity, human carcinogenic toxicity and human non-carcinogenic toxicity, human health and ecosystems. A water footprint assessment based on the AWARE method accounts for potential impacts within the watershed. Results and discussion Results show that in our impact assessment, more sustainable farming practices do not always outperform the BAU scenario, which relies on synthetic fertiliser and agrochemicals. As a main trend, most of the impact categories were dominated by energy requirements of wine grape production in an irrigated vineyard, namely the usage of electricity for irrigation pumps and diesel for agricultural machinery. The most favourable scenario across the impact categories provided a low diesel usage, strongly reduced herbicides and the absence of insecticides as it applied cover crops and an integrated pest management. Pesticides and heavy metals contained in agrochemicals are the main contributors to emissions to soil that affected the toxicity categories and impose a risk on human health, which is particularly relevant for the manual labour-intensive South African wine sector. However, we suggest that impacts of agrochemicals on human health and the environment are undervalued in the assessment. The 70% reduction of toxic agrochemicals such as Glyphosate and Paraquat and the 100% reduction of Chlorpyriphos in vineyards hardly affected the model results for human and ecotoxicity. Our concerns are magnified by the fact that manual labour plays a substantial role in South African vineyards, increasing the exposure of humans to these toxic chemicals at their workplace. Conclusions A more sustainable wine grape production is possible when shifting to integrated grape production practices that reduce the inputs of agrochemicals. Further, improved water and related electricity management through drip irrigation, deficit irrigation and photovoltaic-powered irrigation is recommendable, relieving stress on local water bodies, enhancing drought-preparedness planning and curbing CO2 emissions embodied in products.

Societal interest in all aspects of sustainability has increased. Therefore, pig farmers need to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses in all dimensions of sustainability: economy, environment, social wellbeing, and animal health and welfare. Our aim was to describe and critically discuss the development of a sustainability assessment tool for pig farms and to evaluate its suitability by applying it to 63 European pig farms (13 breeding, 27 breeding-to-finishing, and 23 finishing farms). The multi-criteria assessment tool was developed in several steps (the selection and scaling of indicators and their aggregation and weighting) in order to summarise the indicators into subtheme and theme scores. The indicators contributing the most to the subtheme/theme scores were identified and discussed in order to evaluate the procedure of the development. For example, some indicators, such as Ecological compensation area, Fairness of prices, and Tail docking, for which farms were scored low, were also identified as "real world problems" in other studies. For other sustainability aspects with low performance, the threshold might have been set too ambitiously, e.g., for Number of sows per annual working unit. Furthermore, to analyse the suitability of the tool, we assessed the best and worst median theme scores (good and poor performances) for each dimension, as well as the variability of the performances of the farms within the themes. Some themes were found to be moderate, such as Pig comfort, Biodiversity, or Resilience, whereas others were found to be good, e.g., Water and the Human-animal relationship, as well as several themes of the social wellbeing dimension. Overall, the sustainability tool provides a comprehensive assessment of the sustainability of pig production. Furthermore, this publication contributes to both the theory (development of a robust sustainability tool) and the practice (provision of a tool to assess and benchmark the sustainability on farms). As a next step, a sensitivity analysis should be performed, and the tool should be applied for further development.

The separation between crop- and livestock production is an important driver of agricultural nutrient surpluses in many parts of the world. Nutrient surpluses can be symptomatic of poor resource use efficiency and contribute to environmental problems. Thus, it is important not only to identify where surpluses can be reduced, but also the potential policy tools that could facilitate reductions. Here, we explored linkages between livestock production and nutrient flows for the Baltic Sea catchment and discuss management practices and policies that influence the magnitude of nutrient surpluses. We found that the majority of nutrients cycled through the livestock sector and that large nitrogen and phosphorus surpluses often occurred in regions with high livestock density. Imports of mineral fertilizers and feed to the catchment increased overall surpluses, which in turn increased the risk of nutrient losses from agriculture to the aquatic environment. Many things can be done to reduce agricultural nutrient surpluses; an important example is using manure nutrients more efficiently in crop production, thereby reducing the need to import mineral fertilizers. Also, existing soil P reserves could be used to a greater extent, which further emphasizes the need to improve nutrient management practices. The countries around the Baltic Sea used different approaches to manage agricultural nutrient surpluses, and because eight of the coastal countries are members in the European Union (EU), common EU policies play an important role in management. We observed reductions in surpluses between 2000 and 2010 in some countries, which suggested the influence of different approaches to management and policy and that there are opportunities for further improvement. However, the separation between crop and livestock production in agriculture appears to be an underlying cause of nutrient surpluses; thus, further research is needed to understand how policy can address these structural issues and increase sustainability in food production. (C) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.