The 8th Life Cycle Management (LCM 2017) Conference
The conference organized by the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) recently took place in Luxembourg during September 3rd and 6th. This year’s conference theme was “Designing sustainable technologies, products and policies: from sciences to innovation”. The conference focused on, first, new technologies that have both development and disruptive potentials for LCM toolbox, second, to facilitate interaction between policy makers, business leaders and professionals on LCM guidelines and best practices, and third, to create opportunities to bridge the gap between scientific and business communities to bring higher visibility to the LCM toolbox.
During this conference, Milton Aurelio Uba de Andrade Junior, Murilo Pagotto and Tianchu Lu from the Research Group in Industrial Ecology and Circular Economy at School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Queensland did poster and paper presentation on their researches. Milton’s poster presentation “Exploring future scenarios of ethanol demand in Brazil and their land-use implications” highlighted his recently obtained results on projections of ethanol demand and their implications on land-use. Murilo’s paper presentation “Can We Feed the World? An Integrated Framework for Sustainability Assessment of a Production System in the Australian Food Industry” showcased his research methods and some results on the integrated sustainability assessment framework. He also discussed with the audience about the process of data acquisition and methodology regarding the social life cycle assessment of the integrated framework. Tianchu’s paper and poster presentation on “Towards better life cycle approaches through combined use of system-based methodologies: a case study of interrelationships among environmental sustainability, food systems and diet” focused on the use of system thinking on improving current practices and methods of life cycle assessments of food systems and diet, and its possible impacts on policy-making.
Among the four sub-themes of the LCM 2017 conference, “LCM, circular economy and product value chain” in which included discussion panels on using LCM approaches to support circular economy, and “Development of LCM methods and tools” were the ones that focused more on the methodological development of LCM, while the other two sub-themes emphasised more on the importance of innovations on improving the practices of LCM. The conference also provided a wonderful opportunity for especially young researchers to think about and communicate their researches with potential audiences in the policy and business spheres by organising planetary sessions, discussion panels and group/pair meetings.
Opening ceremony: Speech by Carole Dieschbourg, Minister for the Environment of Luxembourg.
Murilo Pagotto giving presentation on his research at the session “Potentials and limitations of combined life cycle approaches and multi-dimensional assessment”.
The poster presentation of Milton Aurelio Uba de Andrade Junior.
The poster presentation of Tianchu Lu.
Prof. Dr. Matthias Finkbeiner from TU Berlin, also Head of LCM conference series Steering Committee, hosting the “From PhD to Apps!” session during which Tianchu Lu did a presentation on her research and its potential impacts.
