FSLCI & RICV launch report on Marine Litter & LCA

We are excited to announce that we launched our report on “Connecting Expert Communities to Address Marine Litter in Life Cycle Assessment” today during our Life Cycle Innovation Conference in Berlin.

The report provides an overview of discussions during a lunch-to-lunch workshop that we organized in collaboration with the Red Iberoamericana de Ciclo de Vida (RICV) in Brussels from 22.05 to 23.05.2018. The workshop was organized as a follow-up to the Medellin Declaration on Marine Litter in Life Cycle Assessment and Management, which highlighted that currently LCA, as one of the most widely used environmental sustainability assessment tools for greening the economy, is not adequately addressing the impacts on the environment caused by marine debris, such as plastics.

Indeed, there is still an overall need to assess marine ecological impacts in marine environments in LCA in a meaningful way, despite the fact that some attempts have been made in the past linked to fishing activities. Given the magnitude of the impacts caused by marine debris, plastics and micro plastics in the oceans and as a response to the public concern on these impacts echoed at last year’s Ocean Conference, the FSLCI Marine Litter workshop was organized. It convened more than 30 experts with various backgrounds to start a process towards addressing the issue of marine litter within LCA and also to some extent in life cycle management.

The full workshop report is available here.