Thursday 13 October | 17:00 – 18:00 CEST

Seminar: LCA and planetary boundaries

By Anders Bjorn

Anders develops, applies and evaluates LCA-based methods for absolute environmental sustainability assessment for use by companies and other decision-makers.

Anders will present the fundamentals of planetary boundaries, give examples of how the concept has been applied with LCA and outline ongoing and future method improvements. Anders will then facilitate a discussion between the participants.

*The seminars are limited to 25 participants. Participants joining, will be placed in the waiting room and allowed in the zoom meeting on a first come first serve basis.

Wednesday 12 October | 17:00 – 18:00 CEST

Seminar: The role of LCA in Material Sustainability

By Guide Sonnemann

Guido Sonnemann is full professor at the University of Bordeaux where he heads the research group on life cycle assessment and sustainable chemistry CyVi at the Institute of Molecular Sciences. He arrived in Bordeaux in 2012 with a Chair of Excellence provided by the Aquitaine region. He is programme director for the participation of the university in the KIC EIT Raw Materials and coordinator of the International Master programme on Advanced Materials Innovative Recycling (AMIR). Moreover, he is co-founder and Executive Committee chair of the Forum for Sustainability through Life Cycle Innovation (FSLCI). From 2002 to 2012 Guido Sonnemann was (Associate) Programme Officer at UNEP responsible for the Life Cycle Initiative and in 2009/ 2010 for the International Resource Panel; finally, he became Science Focal Point for UNEP’s Resource Efficiency sub-programme. He holds a PhD in chemical engineering, University Rovira & Virgili, Spain (2002), M.Sc. in environmental chemistry, University of Poitiers, France (1996), and graduated as environmental engineer, Technical University of Berlin (1995).

His research focuses on the one hand on the sustainability assessment of emerging technologies in the field of chemistry and materials science and of products coming from priority clusters in the New Aquitaine region and on the other hand on the advancement of methods based on life cycle assessment (LCA) to support these assessments. Guido Sonnemann is for instance leading the research on considering geopolitical risk and dissipation of abiotic resources in life cycle assessment. He published more than 100 scientific papers and a few books.

About the seminar: 
The focus of the seminar is on LCA case studies of emerging technologies in the field of materials science to evaluate and support changes in the future with regard to current trade as well as consumption and production patterns of materials. The idea is to have them used in product systems that contribute to a more sustainable economy, which means here more resilient, low carbon, resource efficient, circular and inclusive regarding the use of raw materials. The presentation by Prof. Guido Sonnemann will cover fundamentals of how to assess the sustainability of materials used in product systems and give insights into case studies on how support a sustainable innovation of materials using life cycle assessment Prof. Sonnemann will include in this presentation an introduction to the GeoPolRisk method as a new way to address trade patterns in eco-design and make materials more resilient with regard to their supply chain. In the second part of the seminar Prof. Sonnemann, jointly with the organizers of the symposium, will facilitate a discussion among the participants to further develop mutual understanding of LCA in material sustainability.

*The seminars are limited to 25 participants. Participants joining, will be placed in the waiting room and allowed in the zoom meeting on a first come first serve basis.