Life Cycle Engineering for Absolute Environmental Sustainability

Sami Kara is a professor of sustainable manufacturing and life cycle engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney Australia and the Director of Vertically Integrated Projects Program at UNSW. He has a professional background of more than 30 years in industry, research, and tertiary education, including several engineering and management positions in manufacturing companies in Australia and around the world. His research interest is in developing technology solutions with a life cycle view by using circular economy strategies to decarbonize and reduce environmental impact of manufacturing industry while helping them create value. Prof Kara is also the Vice-President elect for the International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP). He has authored more than 300 peer reviewed scientific publications. Michael Z. Hauschild is professor in quantitative assessment of sustainability at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) where he leads the DTU Centre on Absolute Sustainability. He has worked on the development of methods for sustainability assessment of products and technologies for 30 years and has served as chair on working groups under UNEP developing the scientific consensus model USEtox for assessment of chemical impacts on health and environment. He has acted as a consultant to the European Commission, creating the groundwork for the Commission’s standard methodology for life cycle assessment (LCA) of products and systems. In 2018 he received the SETAC Europe Lifetime Achievement in LCA Award. He has authored or co-authored more than 270 peer reviewed scientific publications and a leading textbook on Life Cycle Assessment with more than 150 000 downloads.Christoph Herrmann is a university professor of sustainable manufacturing and life cycle engineering and co-director of IWF, the Institute of Machine Tools and Production Technology, at Technische Universität Braunschweig. He is also the director of the Fraunhofer-Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST. He studied mechanical engineering/ production engineering. After earning his doctorate in 2003, he habilitated in production engineering in 2008. As a company founder, he has transferred tools and services to support design for the environment into the electronics and automotive industries. From 2005 to 2008, he was also the scientific director of the KERP Center of Excellence for Environment & Electronics in Vienna. From 2009 to 2013, he was the scientific director and a member of the Automotive Research Center Niedersachsen (NFF) in Germany. He has led various industry and research projects in the fields of life cycle engineering and sustainable manufacturing at both national and international levels. He has published more than 400 papers and books as an author, co-author, and editor.

• 1. Introduction2. A structured approach for LCE3. Environmental Target setting for Products4. Foundations of Techno-environmental Evaluation~5. Advanced Techniques and Impact Assessment in LCA~6. Evaluation of target fulfilment and Environmental Focusing7. LCE Mitigation strategies – Product, background, foreground8. Techno-economic and environmental evaluation9. Case studies10. Life Cycle Engineering: Organisation and Implementation