Although LCA-Life Cycle Assessment (BCV) is increasingly used in the business sector, this methodology for assessing the environmental impact of a product / process at all stages of its life is still not well known to public authorities. However, it is clear that the integration of BCVs into public policy will soon have great potential for improving regional policy on reducing the environmental impact of products and increasing resource efficiency in the regions. To fill this gap and to make wider use of LCA methodologies, a new project, LCA4Regions, is being launched.
Invited by the Project Coordinator – Government of Navarra (Spain) – 2019 September 30 and October 1st. For the first time, 9 project partners met in Brussels (Belgium) to discuss LCA4Regions project activities. Public authorities will be encouraged to adopt BCV approaches and methodologies in the context of regional environmental mitigation policies, thus contributing to the new Interreg Europe program project LCA4Regions – Environmental and Resource Efficiency Management through Life Cycle Assessment Measures for European Union Regional Policy.
The 48-month project partner plans include expanding the use of the BCV approach as a holistic approach to designing and implementing public policies related to environmental and resource efficiency. The first project meeting was for the project partners to discuss the project strategy and project implementation guidelines.
The LCA4Regions project involves organizations from across the European Union. The project consortium consists of 4 governmental institutions – Lombardy region (IT), Lodz region (PL), CIMBAL, Baixo Alentejo community association (PT), Navarra government (ES), 3 educational institutions – KTU, Kaunas University of Technology (LT), NIC, National Institute of Chemistry (SI) and Pyhäjärvi Institute (FI); as well as the Industry Association AIN (ES) and the ACR + Municipal Association (BE).
The project is planned to have six international events aimed not only at exchanging best practices in the application of Life Cycle Methodologies, but also at enabling representative regions to host their colleagues from the project partners for thematic seminars and to participate in exchange of good practices. International seminars are planned in the following areas:
Implementing BCV in Environmental and Resource Efficiency Policy – From Theory to Practice;
Resource efficient BCV;
BCVs in waste and material streams;
BCV in Procurement;
BCV – training and capacity building;
Application of BCV for monitoring and evaluation.
More information:
Jolanta Dvarionienė
LCA4Regions project manager in Lithuania
jolanta.dvarioniene@ktu.lt
www.interregeurope.eu/lca4regions
