Mike Berners-Lee posts on the Guardian his findings. As it turns out riding a bike is about 1/10th the carbon footprint driving a car when taking into consideration the full life cycle of both transporation choices.
Mike presents a nice discussion on the points to consider when making this comparison, such as, differences in quality of life. The full blog post can be found here on The Guardian website:http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/08/carbon-footprint-cycling
SETAC North America is allowing late abstracts for the 31st Annual Meeting in Portland, OR. http://portland.setac.org/
Abstracts submitted prior to the June 4th deadline will get first preference in selection of platforms but you now have until June 14th 2010 at 7AM CDT to submit your late abstract.
SETAC understands the hard work and long hours scientists are putting in to help clean-up and study this catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. This addition is to allow workers on the oil spill effort in the Gulf of Mexico additional time to submit an abstract and continue to enhance the high quality of science we all expect at a SETAC annual meeting.
SETAC thanks you for your efforts and looks forward to seeing you at the meeting in Portland, OR.
Don’t miss submitting your abstract by June 4 (Friday this week!) for the SETAC North America 31st Annual Meeting from 7-11 November 2010 in Portland Oregon.
The California Redwood Association claims that “Across the board, wood outperforms plastics, steel and concrete. Using concrete instead of wood, for example, can generate 80 percent more greenhouse gases and require about 40 percent more energy. With LCA, science clearly shows that using wood can save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Details of the study can be found HERE
Do you agree? Send us a note by selecting the read more button and entering your comments in the comment field.
The Care to Air Design Challenge seeks the world’s most innovative, covetable, and sustainable air-drying solution for clothing. At stake? $10,000 in prize money from Levi Strauss & Co., the challenge sponsor – to be distributed among the finalists – in addition to an audience with our distinguished panel of eco-innovators.
A complete third party lifecycle assessment on a pair of Levi’s® 501® jeans revealed that, on average, almost 60% of the climate impact comes during the consumer phase. Nearly 80% of that is due to the energy intensive method we choose for drying. Levi Strauss & Co. is taking strides to bring its carbon footprint down to zero and build sustainability into everything they do – but the LCA revealed that the company needs help from consumers to make the biggest difference.
“The most effective way to reduce the climate impact of a pair of jeans is to air dry, yet the average US household chooses a dryer. Some communities have even banned clotheslines, calling them unsightly. Well Levi Strauss & Co. would like to challenge that point of view by finding clothesline designs or other innovative air drying solutions that are undeniably stylish, sustainable and effective.”
The so-called right-to-dry movement has been growing in the United States, according to Alexander Lee, executive director of Project Laundry List, an advocacy group based in Concord, N.H., that promotes cold-water washing as well as air drying.
To find out more details about entrance requirements and the judging criteria, visit the Care to Air Design Challenge on myoo website: http://myoocreate.com/challenges/care-to-air-design-challenge
Due to popular demand and unfortunate scheduling relative to a long US holiday weekend, the deadline for LCA X abstracts has been extended from Tuesday 1 June to Friday 4 June.
The conference website is at: http://lcacenter.org/LCAX/
PRESS RELEASE: PU Europe presented on May 20th, 2010, a generic Environmental Product Declaration for Polyurethane (PU) insulation boards to increase the transparency of construction products markets.
Background:An environmental product declaration (EPD) is a communication tool that provides quantified information on the potential environmental impacts of a product or process based on information from a life cycle assessment (LCA) over its entire lifetime or a part of it. An important advantage of using EPDs is the possibility to add LCA-based information in the supply chain. This feature makes EPDs particularly valuable for the building sector where the final building is based on a large number of materials, construction products, semi-manufactured products and processes. The EPD for PU was established through a third-party verified system based on the future CEN standard prEN 15804 and covers the cradle-to-gate phase of the product.
On behalf of PU Europe, Shpresa Kotaji (Huntsman Polyurethanes and PU Europe Life Cycle Assessment expert) commented, “With the publication of our EPD, we do not only respond to an increasing market need, we also want to pro-actively increase market transparency and facilitate sustainable material choices at the building level.”
It is indeed important to know that EPDs for construction products cannot simply be compared on the basis of a weight unit. Comparisons can only be performed at the level of the building so as to establish how much of a product is needed to meet certain design requirements and how material choices affect the overall building design in terms of ancillary materials, component weight and thickness, building footprint etc.
The PU industry will further step up its efforts to optimise production technologies and processes. “We can expect these efforts to lead to significant improvements in the overall environmental balance of PU insulation products over the next few years”, Kotaji concluded.
The environmental product declaration is available HERE
The Sustainability Consortium (http://www.sustainabilityconsortium.org/) has two openings for LCA Research Associates. You can find the job postings here: http://hr.uark.edu/jobdetails.asp?ListingID=6273
Please follow the application instructions in the job posting to apply.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on May 20th, 2010, joined academic, business, government and environmental leaders in announcing the formation of the first-in-the-nation, non-profit Green Products Innovation Institute (GPII). The Institute will be headquartered in San Francisco, California and dedicated to developing comprehensive chemical standards for every day products that are safe and healthy for humans and the environment.
Companies will be able to come to the GPII to get advice on how to “green” their products are and how to improve them. It is a combination of third party C2C certification based on the MBDC method which has now been released to the public domain. The Governor backs it along with companies such as Method, Aveda, Wal-Mart, Herman Miller, Google (YouTube) and Shaw Carpets. Mike Volkema – Chairman of the Board, Herman Miller spoke at the announcement and said 100% of its products will be certified C2C.
The full press release can be found HERE
ARLINGTON, VA, May 25, 2010 (News Release) – The Aluminum Association posted today a comprehensive and transparent life-cycle analyses (LCA) of aluminum cans.
Major findings include:
“The data shows that we are using significantly less material and less energy to produce same-size beverage cans as compared with 17 years ago,” said Steve Larkin, president of the Aluminum Association. “The aluminum industry has made tremendous gains in sustainability. The aluminum can is more sustainable than ever.”
The study is publicly available at www.aluminum.org/lca.