An Integrated Framework for Life Cycle Engineering

Michael Zwicky Hauschild, Christoph Herrmann, Sami Kara

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    Abstract

    Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) was introduced as a concept more than 24 years ago in order to address emerging concerns about environmental sustainability in engineering. A number of methods and tools have been introduced to operationalise the LCE concept, but since then, the scope of sustainability has broadened, and as a result, LCE has evolved in parallel with other disciplines with similar aims. Currently, in addition to LCE, there exist a number of concepts such as Industrial Ecology, Cleaner Production, Life Cycle Management (LCM), Industrial Symbiosis, and Circular Economy. As a result, orientation becomes challenging and a framework to integrate them is required. The paper aims to introduce an integrated framework for LCE defining the concept and its boundaries, and it argues for the need to reorientate LCE towards the environmental dimension of sustainability. Through an integrated top-down and bottom-up approach, the framework establishes a relationship between LCE and the other concepts and positions them relative to the planetary boundaries and the concept of absolute environmental sustainability. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
    Original languageEnglish
    JournalProcedia CIRP
    Volume61
    Pages (from-to)2-9
    Number of pages8
    ISSN2212-8271
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2017
    Event24th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering - Kamakura, Japan
    Duration: 8 Mar 201710 Mar 2017
    Conference number: 24

    Conference

    Conference24th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering
    Number24
    Country/TerritoryJapan
    CityKamakura
    Period08/03/201710/03/2017

    Bibliographical note

    © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 24th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering

    Keywords

    • Life Cycle Engineering
    • Absolute sustainability
    • Planetary boundaries
    • Integrated framework

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