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Laser cladding is one of the principal means of equipment remanufacturing and the environmental profiles of this technology has become a research focus. This paper examines the environmental impacts of cast iron cylinder head block remanufacturing through laser cladding using life cycle assessment (LCA), and compares it with the new cylinder head block manufacturing. Resource and energy consumptions of each manufacturing and remanufacturing processes are collected along the production line and then the results of six selected environmental impact categories are calculated. Consistency and sensitivity analysis is also conducted after life cycle impact assessment. The results reveal that cylinder head remanufacturing by laser cladding will achieve large environmental benefits, which can cut environment impact over the entire life cycle by 63.8% on average. This paper also discusses the trend of changes in environmental impacts using scenario analysis over different remanufacturing levels. By taking characterized global warming potential (GWP) as the assessment index, the result shows that remanufacturing will no longer be the preferred option if it needs to repair more than 16 cracks by laser cladding for the cylinder head. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the severe problems caused by global warming, controlling greenhouse-gas emissions has become an emerging topic around the world. This situation has led to the implementation of legislations, forcing companies to implement innovations and strategies to prevent and reduce carbon emissions. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of implementing these strategies and the estimation to fulfill Kyoto Protocol's 2020 target Emission Trading Schemes needs to be further analysed and discussed. This paper reviews the existing greenhouse-gas-emission legislations, as well as carbon offset programs worldwide. A detailed analysis on carbon emissions trends related to emissions penalties is shown for six major countries. The optimal penalty for emissions trading schemes is also analyzed and discussed in this paper. Future changes that could be made to the existing programs for enhancing their effectiveness are also suggested. It was found that carbon emissions decreased around 1.58% per year since Emission Trading Schemes implementation. Around 23.43% of CO 2 reduction can be reached after 10 years of Emission Trading Schemes implementation, compared to the trend when Emission Trading Schemes was not implemented. Despite Emission Trading Schemes implementation is extremely recent, based on the existing data a first estimation of the optimal penalty in achieving the maximum carbon reduction it was found around US$90.22 per tonne. However, as the implementation period of Emission Trading Schemes is still limited for most countries, it is necessary to explore similar analysis as future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to determine the environmental aspects of a less impactful municipal solid waste management system through life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. In order to achieve this goal, first, the composition study was conducted in Sakarya, Turkey for one year. The results of first step are to be utilized as a reliable data source in establishing a complete picture of the environmental performances of municipal solid waste management systems with a life cycle perspective. The functional unit of the study was selected as one ton of municipal solid waste generated in Sakarya. System boundaries included collection and transportation of municipal solid waste and its treatment and disposal by MRF, incineration, composting and landfilling methods. Data on the process was gathered from a field study conducted in Sakarya, and from SimaPro 8.0.2 literature and libraries. The data was evaluated with CML-IA methodology by the means of abiotic depletion, abiotic depletion (fossil fuels), acidification, global warming, ozone depletion, human toxicity, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity and photochemical oxidation. According to the results, while landfilling and incineration have been confirmed as the worst waste final disposal alternatives, composting and material recovery showed better performance. An integrated system (MRF, composting, incineration and landfilling) is considered as a solution towards improved sustainability to overcome the existing waste management problem. The paper showed LCA to be a valuable tool which can help governors and managers plan an integrated waste management strategy that provides more preferable environmental outcomes than the strategy suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades, environmental footprint of the product manufacture has emerged as an important public concern, causing manufacturers to re-assess their product's environmental impacts. Responding to global outcry on global warming, world leaders have agreed to limit global temperature rise to less than 2 °C above the temperature in pre-industrial times. As a result, governments and industrial leaders around the world have proposed a roadmap for 80% emissions reduction by 2050. The aim of this work develops a novel approach of linking Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Lean manufacturing to reduce the negative environmental impacts of a plastic injection moulded product. Products that use plastic as their primary source of raw materials are mainly produced by plastic injection processes. Although plastic injection moulding has many benefits such as ‘high production rates’, there is a lack of through investigation on the effects of this process has on the environment such as climate change, ozone depletion etc. This paper proposes a novel cross-functional mapping approach of linking lean-thinking and LCA. The implementation case study has been presented with the view to re-assess carbon footprint of an existing plastic product. The reported implementation work demonstrates that the adaptation of lean thinking and LCA could significantly minimise negative environmental impacts of a plastic injection product. A case study indicates that the overall environmental impact has been reduced by approximately 40% in climate change, human toxicity, photochemical oxidant formation, acidification and eco-toxicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Production of pork, the most consumed meat globally, is estimated to emit 668 m tonnes CO 2 -eq of greenhouse gases each year. Amongst various production systems that comprise the pig industry, grain-based intensive production is widely regarded as the largest polluter of the environment, and thus it is imperative to develop alternative systems that can provide the right balance between sustainability and food security. Using an original dataset from the Republic of Ireland, this paper examines the life-cycle environmental impacts of representative pig farms operating under varying production efficiencies. For the baseline farm with an average production efficiency, global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP) and eutrophication potential (EP) per kg carcass weight departing the slaughterhouse were estimated to be 3.5 kg CO 2 -eq, 43.8 g SO 2 -eq and 32.1 g PO 4 -eq, respectively. For herds with a higher production efficiency, a 9% improvement in feed conversion ratio was met by 6%, 15% and 12% decreases in GWP, EP, AP, respectively. Scenario and sensitivity analyses also revealed that (a) a switch to high-protein diets results in lower GWP and higher AP and EP, and (b) reducing transportation distances by sourcing domestically produced wheat and barley does not lower environmental impacts in any notable manner. To improve cross-study comparability of these findings, results based on an auxiliary functional unit, kg liveweight departing the farm gate, are also reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metallized textiles are novel materials that can be used in high value added functional goods, such as Assistive Technologies (AT) products. Potential issue with innovative metallization of textiles is the toxicity and environmental impact of the substances used in the process. To investigate this issue, this paper utilizes an original methodology of linking the analysis of toxicity of chemicals used in the textile metallization with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the metallization process itself. This is done from the perspective of three relevant impact categories: global warming, toxicity and water use, for which, three methods were selected: IPCC et al., 2013 GWP 100a; USEtox 2 and Available WAter Remaining (AWARE). The LCA uses a mix of primary and secondary data and three cradle-to-gate scenarios were chosen for calculating results - first presenting just the metallization process itself, second taking into account alternative impregnation process and third including metallized surfaces - woven cotton and polyester. While the most toxic chemical identified was formaldehyde, the results of the LCA shows top processes contributing to global warming is the electricity consumption, the use of polyurethane with 0.996 kg CO 2 eq. and EDTA with a result of 0.816 kg CO 2 eq. The greatest impact on human toxicity and freshwater ecotoxicity comes from copper (II) chloride mostly used in the plating phase. Moreover polyurethane used in the impregnation phase leaves the largest water footprint of 0.984 m3. When taking into account the metallized surface scenario, the impact of cotton was high for global warming and water use and the impact of polyester was relatively low for all impact categories. The main conclusions of the research relate to the identification of cleaner production methods that could reduce the environmental footprint of the metallization of textiles. They include, among others: development of technology that can significantly increase resource productivity through selective metallization of conductive tracks; use of alternative formaldehyde-free and polyurethane-free chemicals; use of a closed loop system for water remaining in the technological process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to determine whether the strategy of material composition in a popular Volkswagen Golf model has reduced its environmental load over the last 30 years. The main parameter of our simplified model of LCA was the weight of the materials used to build the car, with the impact on the environment assessed in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. The obtained results indicate a systematically increasing impact on climate that is 49% greater in the Golf Mk6 than in the oldest model, the Golf Mk1. The increased load associated with the production stage is only compensated to a small degree during the operation of a car. For example, by replacing the Mk5 model with the Mk6 model, the environmental benefits begin only after 21 years of use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At urban level, the generation Municipal Solid Waste and Construction and Demolition Waste is mostly related to the life-cycle of buildings. An evaluation method based on Life Cycle Assessment methodology is presented in this paper to make an analysis of the environmental performance of different life-cycle building waste management strategies in tertiary buildings. As a case study, several waste management strategies considering a tertiary building located in the city of Zaragoza in Spain, are studied. The aim of the case study is to compare the environmental impacts, in terms of Global Warming Potential, of the scenarios proposed focussing on the waste minimisation and avoidance of landfilling of at least 10% for the Municipal Solid Waste generation during a building's use stage, and Construction and Demolition Waste generated during its construction and end-of-life. In case of Municipal Solid Waste, the results show that when a recovery scenario includes energy recovery from the residual fraction of the mechanical-biological treatment plant in the form of Refuse Derived Fuel, greater benefits in terms of the Global Warming Potential are obtained than with current scenarios of landfill deposition of the residual fraction. On the other hand, in case of Construction and Demolition Waste, a similar situation can be observed in case of an increase of the recovery rates of metals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With 7.5% total nutritional value, pork is a staple food for many members of the Austrian population. Among members of the general public, little is known about the environmental impacts “from farm to fork” in the production of pork. This paper identifies three main impact categories for the environmental profile of Austrian pork using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. In a transparent and comprehensive manner, this LCA studied environmental impacts occurring throughout the production chain of pork, also including the transport and consumption stages. The results are expressed in terms of the global warming potential (GWP), soil acidification and eutrophication, specifically in CO 2 -equivalents, SO 2 -equivalents and NO 3 -equivalents normalized to one kg of fresh Austrian pork (carcass weight) as the functional unit. The main results of the study indicated that the environmental burden is primarily related to the farming stage: 92.3% of GWP, 98.4% of soil acidification and 95.4% of eutrophication. The processes taking place after the agriculture stage (i.e., during the slaughtering stage, retail market and consumption) play a minor role, except for the relative impact of eutrophication during the slaughtering stage. The transportation that took place between the different life cycle stages only marginally influenced the emissions analysed, with private transport from the retail market to the household contributing most of the emissions considered in this part of the life cycle. These results point to the farming stage as the main focus for future improvements. Due to its high contribution to the GWP, soil acidification and eutrophication potential, enhancing the efficiency and environmental protection measures implemented during the farming stage (or improving the choice of commodities used from feed production) could generate the highest reductions in impacts on soil acidification, eutrophication and potentially on the global climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are various technologies that have been developed to reduce nitrogen oxide (NO x ) gas emissions from nitric acid plants. The current study, however, focused on chemical absorption with the following key objectives. First, the paper assessed several reaction pathways that entail the use of combination of common industrial absorbents and oxidants for the absorption of NO x . Second, an analysis on the production of potassium nitrate (KNO 3 ) fertilizer using the byproducts formed from chemical absorption was studied. In addition, a life cycle assessment (LCA) on the environmental implications of NO x absorption and byproducts utilisation for the production of fertiliser through industrial symbiosis was evaluated. This was performed to find the combination of absorbent and oxidant with the least environmental impacts for industrial symbiotic formation. The goal of the LCA was set as the production of 1 kg of potassium nitrate fertiliser. The analysis has shown that use of hydrogen peroxide in combination with calcium hydroxide had the least environmental impacts per kg KNO 3 produced. These were a global warming potential (GWP) of 9 kg CO 2 equivalent emissions (CO 2 -e), acidification potential (AP) of −0.073 kg sulphur dioxide equivalent (kg SO 2 -e), eutrophication potential (EP) of −0.058 kg phosphate equivalent (kg PO 4 − -e), 0.1 kg of solid waste generated, and 15.7 L of water used. The most striking finding was that this combination reduced the overall GWP, AP and EP per kg KNO 3 produced by 7.8 kg of CO 2 -e, 0.12 kg SO 2 -e and 0.08 kg PO 4 − -e respectively in comparison to the production of conventional KNO 3 fertilizer. The hotspots for all reaction pathways were water and energy use. Water use could not be reduced due to effects on reaction efficiencies for all pathways. However, a solution to reduce the carbon footprint from energy use is the substitution of energy generated from fossils with wind energy. This was evaluated to have the potential of reducing GHG emissions of ozone use by up to 93%, leading to overall GWP reduction of about 86% and 80% for calcium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide use with ozone respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Livestock production is among the most ecologically harmful of all anthropogenic activities. It has massive direct and indirect contributions to global warming besides causing widespread ecodegradation in other ways. But livestock production cannot be reduced because, as it is, the global demand for animal protein is far higher than the supply. Whereas in developed countries people get about 95 g of protein per day in their diets, of which nearly 60% is made up of animal protein, in developing countries the protein intake is only about 45 g/day and of it a mere 15% is made up of animal protein. This gap in the availability of animal protein for a large fraction of the world's population who desires it, is continuing to increase because of the increased globalization-induced rich-poor gap across the world. Besides the fact that conventional ways of animal protein production using livestock―chicken, goat, pork, beef―are highly eco-degrading; in terms of availability of pasture lands as well as enhancement in productivity of edible zoomass with inputs from science and technology, the upper limits of animal protein production have already been reached. The ocean-based food production has similarly reached unsustainable levels. As a consequence, now onwards the demand will increasingly outstrip supply. In this backdrop it is essential that we look at the potential of minilivestock, especially insects. As brought out in this paper, human beings have evolved as entomophagous species and there are even suggestions that some of the special proteins and other constituents present in the insects might have helped the human brain to develop as rapidly as it did to enable its evolution into Home sapiens . Moreover, several species of insects are prized delicacies in advanced countries like Japan, Australia, and Europe. Hence, insects are not restricted to being ‘subsistence food’ of grossly impoverished people as one might imagine though a lot of species do help the world's poor to survive. If other virtues of insects are considered― especially their high food-to-zoomass conversion efficiency, quick growth rate, enormous variety, and world-wide distribution―their potential as a much more sustainable source of animal protein than conventional livestock would become obvious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been proved to act as a desirable tool to evaluate the environmental impacts of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). However, the application of LCA methodology in the field of wastewater treatment is still in progress. This paper has made a review of the LCA studies dealing with biological (activated sludge) WWTPs, with the aim to provide qualitative interpretation of the associated environmental impact categories: eutrophication potential, global warming potential, toxicity-related impacts, energy balance, water use, land use and other impact categories. Possible sources for each impact category of WWTPs are summarized in order to provide information about the critical aspects in WWTP systems that might influence LCA results. Moreover, recent development and the application status of characterization models for each impact category have been reviewed. The analysis indicates that it is important to carry out site-specific LCA studies on WWTPs. The specificity is most typical for the eutrophication potential and toxicity-related impact categories, which need implementation of spatial differentiated characterization methods, considering the emission location, spatial dimensions (transfer between environmental compartments) and even properties of pollutants. Although remarkable progresses have been obtained, their applications in the field of wastewater treatment are still limited. For the global warming potential impact category, it is most crucial to calculate accurately the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, because nitrous oxide (N 2 O) and methane (CH 4 ), as well as fossil origin carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) in wastewater have the potential to make considerable contributions. In the end, prospective is made about which aspects in WWTPs are candidates for further LCA studies. Overall, there is still room for pursuing more accurate results when applying LCA to WWTPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water contamination by organic compounds is a ubiquitous problem, requiring their removal to meet stringent water quality standards. This paper presents for the first time the life cycle environmental impacts and economic costs of a new water treatment technology for removal of organic compounds known as the ‘Arvia’ process. The impacts and costs are compared with the widely-used granulated activated carbon (GAC) process. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used to estimate the environmental impacts and the economic analysis is based on the operating costs. For the GAC system, two scenarios are considered: no regeneration of the spent GAC which is landfilled (GAC-1) and 90% regeneration with 10% of fresh GAC added to replace losses (GAC-2). The LCA results suggest that the Arvia process has lower environmental impacts in comparison to both GAC scenarios for at least seven out of 11 impacts considered. Relative to the GAC-1 scenario, Arvia has 70% lower global warming, acidification, eutrophication, depletion of fossil resources, human, freshwater and marine toxicity. Compared to GAC-2, the reductions in these impacts range between 5% and 50%. However, GAC-2 has lower depletion of elements and ozone layer, photochemical smog and terrestrial toxicity than the Arvia process. The results also show that Arvia has slightly higher operational costs than GAC-2 but significantly lower than GAC-1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to assess whether for dry biodegradable packaging without food contamination, a detailed life cycle assessment supports the priorities suggested by the five-level hierarchy, as described by the European Waste Directive 2006/12/EC. Environmental impacts and water withdrawal were assessed using an extended version of IMPACT 2002+, accounting for the dynamic pattern of greenhouse gas releases for each scenario when determining Global Warming Potentials for a time horizon of 100 years (in this paper defined as dynamic assessment). The present assessment shows that, for most impact categories, mechanical recycling is the most interesting option, followed by direct fuel substitution. Intermediate performances are obtained by anaerobic digestion and municipal incineration. Landfill and industrial composting of dry packaging generate the highest environmental impacts of the studied end-of-life options. Indeed, the composting of the studied materials does not substantially improve compost quality and does not enable energy recovery. The hypothesis that composting is by default environmentally preferable over energy recovery because it is a form of recycling is not confirmed by the present study, thus underlining the importance of a sound and case-specific application of the EU waste hierarchy and the need to complete the hierarchy by product specific studies. Though of limited effect on the present study, the dynamic assessment of greenhouse gas may moderately decrease the impacts effectively taking place over the 100-year horizon. More important is to consider the degradation patterns of biodegradable materials and present to the decision makers both the 100-year and the long term impacts of the end-of-life options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The simplification of life cycle inventories (LCIs) by reducing the number of elementary flows is a major issue regarding their use in sector-specific applications. It can ease the understanding of complete LCIs and focus on the most relevant elementary flows. Current LCIs that have been created for Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) differ from databases provided by academics, in which more than a thousand flows are considered, as they contain a reduced list of substances. In this paper, we examine the consequences of these simplified LCIs on the accuracy of the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) step. We consider the specific case of an LCI database for building products that was developed in France. Three environmental midpoint and endpoint indicators are analysed: the global warming potential (GWP), the photochemical ozone formation potential (POCP), and the disability-adjusted life years (DALY). The results for 110 building materials indicate that a simplification is not always relevant, as large uncertainties were detected in the final results, especially for the environmental indicators describing the photochemical ozone creation and the damage to human health that require a larger number of LCI flows. In the case of the GWP indicator, the simplification is relevant for approximately 95% of the building materials. The analysis of the key elementary flows for each indicator enables the identification of missing elementary flows in the simplified LCI. Perspectives and recommendations are provided to improve the level of details of simplified LCIs according to the impact assessment methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concrete is responsible for a significant share of global GHG emissions, which can be mainly ascribed to the production of clinker. Alkali-activated concretes have been investigated in literature as a possible alternative, but the sustainability still appears reduced by the high embodied energy of chemicals typically used for the activation step. This paper investigates concrete belonging to strength classes 35, 50 and 70 MPa and produced with a silicate activator derived from waste glass (AABR). Through a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the investigation aims to compare the AABR to Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) concrete and alkali-activated concrete produced with commercially available chemicals (AABC). The effects produced by the variations of some key parameters (impact allocation of precursors, energy mix, amount of activator in the concrete, distance of procurement of raw materials) over the total impact of the AABR are also investigated. Results show that the adoption of alkali-activated concretes instead of OPC concrete allows a significant reduction in environmental categories of global warming (averagely 64% reduction for AABC and 70% for AABR), acidification potential (averagely 23% for AABC and 35% for AABR), and terrestrial eutrophication (averagely 53% for AABC and 60% for AABR). In addition, the study evidenced that the use of waste glass-based activator allows a significant reduction in every environmental category when compared to the use of commercially available chemicals. • LCA was carried out on alkali activated concrete with waste-derived activator. • Comparisons to OPC and AAC with commercial activators were performed. • AAC with waste activator allows 70% reduction of global warming. • Waste derived activator has lower impacts than commercially available chemicals. • Impacts of key parameters from the use of waste-derived activator were assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research analyzes the business feasibility of freeze-dried powdered drink mix from Thai-grown Nam Dok Mai (NDM) mango for exportation to the United States. Since food processing generates large quantities of greenhouse gas emissions which contribute to global warming, the cradle-to-grave environmental impact of the mango powdered mix, specifically global warming potential (GWP), was determined using life cycle assessment. Based on the feasibility analysis, the mango powdered mix is thus positioned as a novelty for health-conscious and environmentally-concerned consumers because the product uses NDM mango fruits of premium quality as the main ingredient and carries a carbon footprint label on the packaging. A 50 g sachet of freeze-dried NDM mango powdered drink mix is priced at USD 7.80. The financial analysis showed that the mango drink mix possesses great business potential with high profitability. The environmental impact assessment identified the freeze drying process as the dominant contributor of GWP (15.40 kgCO 2 eq) due to high electricity consumption. • This paper deals with feasibility analysis of Thai-grown mango powdered drink mix. • Cradle-to-grave global warming potential of the freeze-dried mango mix is assessed. • Freeze drying contributes the most to GWP due to high electricity consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than half of the world's agricultural products are lost and do not reach their consumers. Food production is rather energy-susceptible. To solve this problem, the solutions focused on reducing production loss without harming the environment and human health are developed. Thus, it is useful to preserve product quality and reducing the environmental impact incurred during the preparation of fresh carrots at the same time. It was assessed the extent of the effectiveness on the current loss of fresh carrots throughout the supply chain. The treatment of carrots with ozonated water not only reduces food loss, but also increases productivity. Ozonated water is introduced during the preparation of carrots for sale at farms where fresh carrots are made ready for trade, and at the final stage of processing, the products are sprayed with ozonated water, which allows the surface of the products to be disinfected. The evaluation of microbiological parameters where products were treated with ozonated water at 1.9 ± 0.1 mg L−1 rate and at a temperature of 3.0 ± 0.15 °C (RH – 90.45 ± 2.95%) products could be retained 1.8 times longer. The assessment of environmental impact of carrots commercial preparation technology was carried out with SimaPro 8.0.5 software, where two scenarios were compared using a standard carrot treatment line and another using product spray stage with ozonated water. It was established, that using an ozonized water and stored under optimal conditions, product losses could be decreased by 44.4% and the global warming, acidification and eutrophication potential decreased by 45.2%. Image 1 • Reduction of contamination by microorganisms and increase of production storage time. • Ozone technology could reduce product's loss up to 44%. • Total CO 2 , SO 2 and PO 4 emissions could be reduced to 45% by ozone technology. • Reduction of consumption of electricity, water, transport, packaging, printer paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Portuguese context, the life cycle assessment of building materials is still in its infancy. So far, there is only a small number of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) available, all target for industrially-based materials. Although vernacular earthen materials are seen as ecological materials, with low potential environmental impacts, there are no studies that allow to quantitatively compare these materials with conventional ones, according to the applicable standards. In the case of Portugal, there are no EPDs or studies for these materials and the studies available worldwide are hard to compare, since they not follow the same life-cycle assessment methodology. This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding about the environmental performance of earthen materials by presenting results from the life cycle assessment of Compressed Earth Blocks (CEBs) and Rammed earth, based on specific life cycle inventory values obtained from a producer company, following the guidance provided by the standard EN15804. Among other conclusions, results show that CEB and Rammed earth have a total Embodied Energy of 3.94 MJ/block and 596 MJ/1 m3 and a Global Warming Potential of 0.39 kg CO 2 eq/block and 47.5 kg CO 2 eq./1 m3, respectively. In a cradle-to-gate analysis of different walls, the use of earthen building elements can result in reducing the potential environmental impacts in about 50%, when compared to the use of conventional ones. Additionally, the advantages of using earthen materials are also discussed for the different building life-cycle stages, focusing on the possibility to recycle these materials in a closed-loop approach. Image 1 • RE and CEB have a higher environmental performance than conventional materials. • RE and CEB have about half the impacts of conventional materials in GWP and EE. • The use of lime as stabiliser represents >60% of impacts in all indicators. • RE and CEB can be returned to the natural environment at very small environmental cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]