Welcome to Life Cycle Talks! A series of talks presenting the research front to keep you up to date with the science and application of the life cycle perspective. Our next guests are Andrea Paulillo, Lecturer in Sustainable Chemical Engineering at University College London, Department of Chemical Engineering, and Anders Bjørn, Assistant professor in sustainability assessment at the Technical University of Denmark, Department of Environmental and Resource Engineering. Andrea and Anders will introduce the concept of absolute environmental sustainability assessment and also talk about a new guidance document for performing absolute environmental sustainability assessment and further work towards standardization of the approach.

“Decision-makers increasingly want to know what level of environmental improvement to aim for in the years and decades ahead – not just how to do a bit better. Therefore, we need absolute environmental sustainability assessment”, says Anders Bjørn.

Presenters

Andrea Paulillo is a chemical engineer, whose recent work focuses on how to link the planetary boundaries framework with LCA. Anders Bjørn is an environmental engineer, whose research is concerned with the development and assessment of methods to measure the environmental impacts of activities at different scales against environmental carrying capacities and to set impact reduction targets, accordingly.

Publications

Title: Guidance for applying absolute environmental sustainability assessment on activities at different scales (BETA version), 2025.
Authors: Bjørn, A., Paulillo, A., Sanye Mengual, E., de Laurentiis, V., Vea, E., Hauschild, M.Z. and Sala, S.
Journal: Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg.

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Title: Approaches to incorporate planetary boundaries in life cycle assessment: A critical review, 2024.
Authors: Paulillo, A. and Sanyé-Mengual, E.
Journal: Resources, Environment and Sustainability.

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Title: Review of life-cycle based methods for absolute environmental sustainability assessment and their applications, 2020.
Authors: Bjørn, A., Chandrakumar, C., Boulay, A.M., Doka, G., Fang, K., Gondran, N., Hauschild, M.Z., Kerkhof, A., King, H., Margni, M. and McLaren, S.
Journal: Environmental Research Letters.

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