Life Cycle Assessment in EU policies: past, present and future

Over the past years the concept and practice of sustainable development has been continuously evolving. In this context, Life Cycle Thinking and Life Cycle Assessment (LCT and LCA) have become more and more prominent in European and global policies. A significant decoupling of environmental impacts from welfare requires the definition of specific policies aiming at reducing burdens associated with the production and consumption of goods and services. The seminar presentation illustrates the use and relevance of life cycle approaches in EU policies, from the first initiatives related to the integrated product policies up to the central role in achieving the ambitions of the Green Deal. Different Communication, Strategies, Regulations, Directives have integrated elements of LCA in order to ensure the adoption of more holistic approaches to production and consumption. Moreover, the European Product and Organisation Environmental Footprint (PEF and OEF) are expected to be referred to horizontally across a variety of policies to increase transparency and comparability of LCA results.

Speaker summary

Dr Serenella Sala, Deputy Head of Unit and Scientific Project Manager, Land Resources Unit, European Commission, Joint Research Centre

Serenella Sala is a scientific project manager at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission since 2010. She is the Deputy Head of Unit of the Land Resources Unit of the Directorate D- Sustainable Resources, and the team leader of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) group of the JRC. She is coordinating the activities on LCA, with specific focus on its application at meso and macro scale for supporting policies. She is an environmental scientist, holding a PhD in Ecology. Her research activities have always been focused on the sustainability assessment of supply chains, adopting LCA as the reference methodology. With a strong interdisciplinary approach, she developed methodologies and models for sustainable development, integrated environmental assessment, LCA, risk assessment for supporting eco-innovation of processes and products, and resource efficiency. A list of publications and an overview of her research activities are available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Serenella_Sala.