Events & News

CentrEau Hebd'Eau | Microplastics in the aquatic environment : how bad are they compared to the rest of the environmental impacts of a product over its life cycle?

54th webinar of the Hebd'Eau series entitled « Microplastics in the aquatic environment : how bad are they compared to the rest of the environmental impacts of a product over its life cycle? ».

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In collaboration with:

Speaker: Elena Corella-Puertas, CIRAIG, École Polytechnique de Montréal

Language : English, with an English slideshow

See the PPT presentation here »

Summary: Life cycle assessment (LCA), a tool commonly used to assist environmental decision-making, does not yet allow for considering the consequences of (micro)plastic waste leaked into the environment. This limits the application of LCA as a decision-making tool, since the potential environmental benefits of decisions based on plastic bans or substitution initiatives cannot be properly assessed and may sometimes lead to unintended consequences on ecosystems and/or human health. This presentation will share advances in LCA methodologies for quantifying the potential impacts of microplastic emissions into the (aquatic) environment. To illustrate the application of these methodologies, an LCA case study of to-go food containers will be presented, which will compare the impacts of microplastic litter to other impact categories (climate change, water use, etc.).

Don't miss the entire series of CentrEau Hebd'Eau webinars "All about water management". The webinars are short 20-minute presentations where CentrEau professors and researchers, as well as guest speakers, present their research and its importance in a semi-popularized manner. They are followed by a brief Q&A period and are held live every other Thursday at 1 p.m. Check out the previous webinars on our YouTube Channel.

Hebd'Eau webinars will pause for the summer, but stay tuned for the Fall line-up!