A material flow analysis, carried out with the use of data available in New Jersey, has been instructive in placing mercury aspects of CFLs in perspective with other uses and releases mercury.

The global aluminum industry, as part of its program of materials stewardship, is encouraging industry to collect and reuse aluminium by "mining the infrastructure of society". For such urban mining to take place, industries need to understand comprehensively the complete life cycle of aluminum and its products.

A determination of the sustainability performance of a company ought to fulfill certain requirements. It has to take into account the direct impacts from on-site processes as well as indirect impacts embodied in the supply chains of a company. This life cycle thinking is the common theme of popular footprint analyses, such as carbon, ecological, or water footprinting.

Practitioners of life cycle assessment (LCA) have recently turned their attention to social issues in the supply chain. The United Nations life cycle initiative's social LCA task force has completed its guidelines for social life cycle assessment of products, and awareness of managing upstream corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues has risen due to the growing popularity of LCA.

Oslo's wastewater pipeline network has an aging stock of concrete, steel, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipelines, which calls for a good portion of expenditures to be directed toward maintenance and investments in rehabilitation.

New fuel regulations based on life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have focused renewed attention on life cycle models of biofuels. The BESS model estimates 25% lower life cycle GHG emissions for corn ethanol than does the well-known GREET model, which raises questions about which model is more accurate.

Economic growth is supposed to deliver prosperity. Higher incomes should mean better choices, better lives, an improved quality of life for us all. That, at least, is the conventional wisdom. But things haven't always turned out that way.

Industrial symbiosis is principally concerned with the recovery and reuse of wastes (materials, water or energy) from one industry as alternative input in a neighboring facility. This reuse is an iconic application of industrial ecology and is regularly combined with other collective environment management initiatives into eco-industrial parks.

In order to convey the results of our industrial ecology research to broader audiences, the Green Design Institute research group at Carnegie Mellon University offers the Green Design Apprenticeship for local high school students. The Green Design Apprenticeship introduces participants to industrial ecology concepts and how they intersect with engineering.

The study fills the gap in existing literature by comparing the economic costs and environmental impacts of processes in four services companies in Europe and the United States. Process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) and the case study method are used to compare companies both on four global-scale impacts and on environmental intensity (impacts per unit cost).