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As the product environmental footprint (PEF) has a profound impact on the environmental sustainability, it is crucial to estimate PEF in the product life cycle. The existing researches lack the prescriptiveness and environmental footprint-specific accounting guidance to produce consistent PEF, thus most of the existing PEF models fail for product life cycle. The paper is devoted to PEF assessment for product life cycle. After the introduction of PEF, the calculation model for each of the 14 kinds of PEF is proposed. PEF assessment process is then put forward in detail, which includes 10 steps, i.e. functional unit selection, system boundary determination, impact types selection, data collection, impact types classification, impact types characterization, impact types of PEF calculation, impact types standardization, impact types grouping and weighting, PEF assessment result. PEF assessment process of an agricultural picking robot is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. Image 1033 • Product environmental footprint model is proposed. • Each of product environmental footprints for product lifecycle is proposed. • Establishment of product environmental footprint in the product lifecycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability is a paradigm that affects many sectors due to an increasing of stakeholders’ pressure, economic or political reasons. The wine industry is concerned about sustainability in both senses: it confronts threats from sustainability issues, such as climate change, chemical exposure and water and energy availability and its activities have their own impacts. In this sense, understanding sustainability in the wine world requires identifying definitions and principles, but also a review of current practices. This paper sets forth a cross-country analysis about current sustainability assessment frameworks in six countries (South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, US, Chile and France) in order to identify their main aspects, drivers and issues. A cross-analysis discusses the presentation, the scale, the scope, the governance, the deepness, the learning potential and the content, in a cross-disciplinary perspective. The common grounds are summarized in terms of main indicators linked with official guidelines. Most of the frameworks are certifications or labels in voluntary programs, using a qualitative approach to check compliance with guidelines, without proposing the improvement of sustainability performance. They are more focused on operation and on mitigating impact. All frameworks have indicators considering the main environmental issues to the wine industry. The frameworks development should move toward a more effective proposition for improving wine sustainability, in order to answer to the operational challenges with a strategic thinking. The analysis performed can contribute to the development of sustainability programs, improve current methods and encourage the diffusion of sustainability practices to the individuals or in terms of national programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been recent calls for a shift to an evidence-based paradigm in environmental management, grounded in systematic monitoring and evaluation, but achieving this will be complex and difficult. Evaluating the educational components of environmental initiatives presents particular challenges, because these programs often have multiple concurrent goals and may value 'human outcomes', such as value change, which are intangible and difficult to quantify. This paper describes a fresh approach based on co-creating an entirely new values-based assessment framework with expert practitioners worldwide. We first discuss the development of a generic framework of 'Proto-Indicators' (reference criteria constituting prototypes for measurable indicators), and then demonstrate its application within a reforestation project in Mexico where indicators and assessment tools were localized to enhance context-relevance. Rigorously derived using unitary validity, with an emphasis on relevance, practicability and logical consistency from user perspectives, this framework represents a step-wise advance in the evaluation of non-formal EE/ESD programs. This article also highlights three important principles with broader implications for evaluation, valuation and assessment processes within environmental management: namely peer-elicitation, localizability, and an explicit focus on ethical values. We discuss these principles in relation to the development of sustainability indicators at local and global levels, especially in relation to post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

An improved steel sheet pile (SSP) inspection procedure is proposed in this paper, which couples the field inspection condition-index methodology previously developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with reliability assessments to quantify the life-cycle costs and environmental impacts associated with various maintenance and repair (M&R) scenarios. Maintenance and repair strategies over the analysis period (from present to the end of the structure's lifetime) are determined through reliability assessment for structures with relatively low condition indices. The level of maintenance activity is then to be determined by the life-cycle cost analysis and environmental life-cycle assessment of M&R alternatives. The optimal M&R alternative is the one with the lowest cost combined with minimal environmental impact. Using these methodologies, the SSP structure owners will gain improved capabilities to monitor present-day conditions of SSP infrastructure and prioritize structures that will require sustainable M&R. Further research is proposed to collect real field-inspection data and create M&R records that can be used to estimate the reliability more accurately. In addition, the methodology developed for this relatively simple type of structure can be extended to more complex and critical structural systems such as gates, valves, and other components making up locks, dams, and other related navigational facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]