logo

Whales, waste and sea walnuts: incorporating human impacts on the marine ecosystem within life cycle impact assessment

Whales, waste and sea walnuts: incorporating human impacts on the marine ecosystem within life cycle impact assessment

Marthe Alnes Høiberg
Marthe Alnes Høiberg

New PhD candidate for modelling impacts of marine plastics

New PhD candidate for modelling impacts of marine plastics

23.09.2020 | by Marthe Alnes Høiberg

My name is Marthe Alnes Høiberg, and I am a new PhD student at the Industrial Ecology Programme in the Department of Energy and Process Engineering at NTNU.

Environment pollution

Courtesy of IFAW (www.ifaw.org)

I have a background in biology and industrial ecology, and I have always had a strong fascination for the ocean and an interest in working for the conservation of nature and biodiversity. Owing to this, I am very excited to be a part of ATLANTIS!

Within this project, I will be working on developing life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) models to quantify the impacts of plastic debris on marine ecosystems. This is an urgent need in environmental assessments in general and in the LCA framework in particular, as the potential for adverse effects of mismanaged plastic is currently left unaccounted for, due to the lack of a comprehensive methodology.

Oceanic plastic

Author: Nico de Bruyn

Through my master thesis written under the supervision of Prof. Francesca Verones at NTNU, I already had the chance to explore this topic, and worked specifically on the impact pathway of entanglement of marine fauna in macroplastic debris. Going further with this research and developing an operational effect factor (EF) for this impact pathway is the first goal of my research as a PhD student.

picture:logo EU and ERC

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 850717).

Atlantis © 2020
webmaster: Industrial Ecology Digital Lab

picture:logo NTNU
picture:logo Industrial ecology programme
picture:logo EU and ERC

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 850717).

picture:logo NTNU

Atlantis © 2020
webmaster: Industrial Ecology Digital Lab

picture:logo Industrial ecology programme