The LCA4Regions project joined the Life Cycle Initiative Conference (LCIC 2022) that took place in Berlin from 29 June to 1 July. In addition to disseminating the project's first results, it was a great opportunity to strengthen connections between the LCA community academia and public policies and regional development authorities.
The project was in particular under the spotlights on Day 2 of the conference, during the session “Fostering Regional Sustainable Development through Life Cycle Approaches”, chaired by Pekka Maijala from Satakunta region. Pekka Maijala presented on-site the paper “A bottom-up approach to promote application of life cycle procedures at regional level” (written by Pekka Maijala, Jolanta Dvarioniene, Fritz Balkau and Sandra Elia Hurtado). This paper includes a general introduction to the LCA4Regions project and some of its results, best practices and other outcomes. Within the same session, Sandra Elia Hurtado from Navarra presented online the paper “The experience of Navarra Region using life cycle assessment and management tools”, illustrating LC experiences from Navarra.
The LCIC2022 gathered about 200 participants on-site in Berlin, Germany and further 100 participants were present online. LCIC is arranged every two years, and is an important venue for exchanging information for LC related research and networking. The event included several Keynote lectures, parallel thematic sessions, workshops and barcamps, as well as a posters presentation.
The programme of LCIC 2022 consisted of several topics focusing much around sustainability aspects of different environments, such as heavy industries, Food sector, Eco-design, digitalization, innovations and circular economy. Each day presented a theme, such as “Supporting the journey towards net zero and beyond with Life Cycle Approaches” (Day 1), “Implementing Sustainable Innovation through Digitalization” (Day 2) and 2 Applying Systems Thinking to guide the transition towards a regenerative Circular Economy” (Day 3). Higher level Keynotes were presented by Prof. Dirk Messner (president of the German Environment Agency) and Dr. Janez Potocnik, Co-Chair of the International Resource Panel. Even though several parallel sessions prohibited attendance to all talks of interest, all presentations were recorded for later use and utilisation for the participants. This increases significantly the knowledge sharing among participants. Generally, the attendance was very fruitful offering further networking, thus contributing both the dissemination targets and competence growth of the LCA4Regions project.
