Transcript

I am Bruno Barrionuevo. I'm a political scientist, but for the last few years, I've been working on the field of sustainability assessments. I work for a company called GeoSense in Greece, as well as for a research center there in which I basically focus on performing economic and environmental impact assessments covering, which is two of the three dimensions of sustainability. And as part of the GeoSense team, I take part in the Kairos Project, where we're trying to analyse and understand the economic and environmental impacts of the use of drones in the five use cases we have in this project as compared to the impacts, economic and environmental impacts, of other more conventional ways of doing the same tasks. Life cycle assessment is basically a methodology that allows us to calculate and evaluate the impacts upon the environment associated with any given product or service along its entire life cycle, which means that we are not going to be focusing only on one specific part of the life of that product, for instance, when we are using that object. But we try to look at the whole period of life of this product from the moment that we extract the necessary raw materials to create that product, the actual production process, the transport from one part of the world to another, to the point in which we use the actual product up to the point when we no longer need it. And then we have to dispose of it, whether by throwing it, recycling it, or reusing it. LCA helped us to compile a list of all the inputs in terms of natural resources, material, and energy with their amounts that we need to actually create that product as well as all the outputs in terms of the use and value that product is going to have, any form of waste that it creates, and any form of emission to the environment. And through a number of calculations LCA allows us to translate these inventories into quantified effects upon a list or a range of impact categories that are very relevant for our environment. When we talk about sustainability analysis, we need to remember that we're talking about the analysis of three different dimensions, the economic, the social, and the environmental. The three of them are very important, but sometimes they tend to get into conflict with each other. So when we try to do a sustainability assessment, we need to look at the three dimensions. In the specific case of a life cycle assessment, we have here a methodology that helps us only with the environmental dimension. LCA has four characteristics that I think bring a lot of value to this world of sustainability assessment. One of them has to do with its life cycle perspective. What LCA tries to do is to look at the impact on the environment of any given product through its entire life cycle, not just for a short part of its life. At the same time, LCA, or Life Cycle Assessment, looks at a wide range of environmental impacts. As we said, the environment is a quite complex thing in itself. And if we are to look only into one impact, for instance, climate change, we may fall into the risk of forgetting or not considering other aspects that are equally important. So LCA gives us, let's say, like a whole picture or environmental profile of any product or service. At the same time, a life cycle assessment is a quantitative method which allows us to put a number, if you want, associated with each of those impact categories. And finally, it's a method based on science which allows us to use it with some confidence. It has some robustness, and it allows a work of comparison with different products, different points, and different levels, which helps, I believe, on its replicability and diffusion.