Today, new lithium-ion battery-recycling technologies are under development while a change in the legal requirements for recycling targets is under way. Thus, an evaluation of the performance of these technologies is critical for stakeholders in politics, industry, and research. We evaluate 209 publications and compare three major recycling routes. An important aspect of this review is that we tackle the need for a critical evaluation of these recycling routes by introducing clear terms and creating a structuring scheme. Our evaluation criteria cover three areas: status of development, process performance, and life-cycle environmental impacts. With respect to development status, we provide an analysis of today’s market. A criterion of process performance is recycling efficiency, which today focuses on the mass of the recovered materials. To include the contributions of critical materials, we add a criterion for the efficiency of recovery of materials. Life-cycle assessments provide information on gross impacts, benefit of substituting virgin material and net impact. Present life-cycle assessments focus on waste management rather than on recovery of critical materials. This review contributes to an understanding of these trade-offs and supports discussion as to what is the “best” recycling route when targets conflict. Graphical Abstract There are three possible process sequences for each lithium-ion battery-recycling route. A distinction is made between pre-treatment steps (gray), direct physical treatment steps (green), pyro-metallurgical treatment (orange), and hydro-metallurgical treatment (blue). The figure is based on a figure from Doose et al. (Joule 3:2622–2646, 2019).

Waste management is essential for the safety and wellbeing of any society; it also helps to tackle global problems, such as climate change and resource scarcity. To support the evolution of waste management systems (WMSs) towards a circular economy (CE), assessment methods are applied. This paper shows, using the case of Marrakech (Morocco), how a novel holistic approach called WMS development stage concept (WMS-DSC) is applied to assess WMSs and determine measures promoting a CE. The approach enables a simplified derivation of measures that are useful to municipal decision makers and consists of five stages; stage 1 is equal to a WMS lacking essential WM elements and stage 5 describes a functioning CE. The approach was specifically designed to be transferable to other Global South cities through the categorization into these universal stages. The results from the WMS-DSC show that components related to energy recovery and waste recycling are classified in stage 1. For the latter, a slight development towards stage 2 can be assumed due to the planned activities in Marrakech. The components "collection and transport" and "prevention and reuse" are mainly in stage 2. Nevertheless, the components "governance", "sector and market" and "waste disposal" are assigned to stages 2 and 3 with a stronger trend towards stage 4. The results show that in Marrakech and Morocco, CE is still in its infancy, and with this current state, it is hard to achieve. However, 33 measures were determined to improve the WMS of Marrakech and promote a CE.

• A holistic approach to assess waste management systems’ performance is presented. • A benchmarking tool to estimate the circular economy (CE) evolvement in cities. • Usable for cities both in the Global North and South to identify CE potentials.

This study developed a methodology to estimate the amount of construction material in coastal buildings which are lost due to climate change-induced sea level rise. The Republic of Fiji was chosen as a case study; sea level rise is based on predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the years 2050 and 2100. This study combines the concept of a geographic information system based digital inundation analysis with the concept of a material stock analysis. The findings show that about 4.5% of all existing buildings on Fiji will be inundated by 2050 because of an expected global sea level rise of 0.22 m (scenario 1) and 6.2% by 2100 for a sea level rise of 0.63 m (scenario 2). The number of buildings inundated by 2050 is equivalent to 40% of the average number of new constructed buildings in Fiji Islands in a single year. Overall, the amount of materials present in buildings which will be inundated by 2050 is 900,000 metric tons (815,650 metric tons of concrete, 52,100 metric tons of timber, and 31,680 metric tons of steel). By 2100, this amount is expected to grow to 1,151,000 metric tons (1,130,160 metric tons of concrete, 69,760 metric tons of timber, and 51,320 metric tons of steel). The results shall contribute in enhancing urban planning, climate change adaptation strategies, and the estimation of future demolition flows in small island developing states.

Modern industry benefits from the automation capabilities and flexibility of robots. Consequently, the performance depends on the individual task, robot and trajectory, while application periods of several years lead to a significant impact of the use phase on the resource efficiency. In this work, simulation models predicting a robot’s energy consumption are extended by an estimation of the reliability, enabling the consideration of maintenance to enhance the assessment of the application’s life cycle costs. Furthermore, a life cycle assessment yields the greenhouse gas emissions for the individual application. Potential benefits of the combination of motion simulation and cost analysis are highlighted by the application to an exemplary system. For the selected application, the consumed energy has a distinct impact on greenhouse gas emissions, while acquisition costs govern life cycle costs. Low cycle times result in reduced costs per workpiece, however, for short cycle times and higher payloads, the probability of required spare parts distinctly increases for two critical robotic joints. Hence, the analysis of energy consumption and reliability, in combination with maintenance, life cycle costing and life cycle assessment, can provide additional information to improve the resource efficiency.

Emerging photovoltaic technologies are expected to have lower environmental impacts during their life cycle due to their extremely thin-film technology and resulting material savings. The environmental impacts of four emerging photovoltaics were investigated based on a meta-analysis of life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies, comprising a systematic review and harmonization approach of five key indicators to describe the environmental status quo and future prospects. The status quo was analyzed based on a material-related functional unit of 1 watt-peak of the photovoltaic cell. For future prospects, the functional unit of 1 kWh of generated electricity was used, including assumptions on the use phase, notably on the lifetime. The results of the status quo show that organic photovoltaic technology is the most mature emerging photovoltaic technology with a competitive environmental performance, while perovskites have a low performance, attributed to the early stage of development and inefficient manufacturing on the laboratory scale. The results of future prospects identified improvements of efficiency, lifetime, and manufacturing with regard to environmental performance based on sensitivity and scenario analyses. The developed harmonization approach supports the use of LCA in the early stages of technology development in a structured way to reduce uncertainty and extract significant information during development.