Leveraging Life Cycle Assessment to Better Promote the Circular Economy: A First Step Using the Concept of Opportunity Cost

In economics, opportunity cost is defined as the benefit foregone by choosing another course of action. Considering opportunity costs enables the improved handling of trade-offs to better support strategic decision-making. We introduce the concept of opportunity cost into life cycle assessment (LCA)...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSustainability Vol. 14; no. 6; p. 3451
Main Authors Aleisa, Esra, Heijungs, Reinout
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 15.03.2022
Subjects
Circular economy
Decision making
Economic growth
Economics
Externality
Nutrients
Opportunity costs
Philosophy
Sludge
Sustainability
Wastewater
Wastewater treatment
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Summary:In economics, opportunity cost is defined as the benefit foregone by choosing another course of action. Considering opportunity costs enables the improved handling of trade-offs to better support strategic decision-making. We introduce the concept of opportunity cost into life cycle assessment (LCA). In our framework, opportunity cost extends the system expansion paradigm to support better alignment with a circular economy (CE). Opportunity cost thinking is considered to be most useful for the efficient allocation of scarce economic capital for the creation of economic value. In the environmental domain, we use such thinking to account for the implications of ‘wasting waste’. In this paper, we consider a case of treated wastewater sludge being used as a source of nutrients as a vehicle to study the points at which LCA can support a CE. Our conclusions, however, have wider repercussions because there are many more situations in which product systems are analytically demarcated from the web of connections in which they are embedded.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su14063451