Science of The Total Environment. Volume 949, November 2024

Marthe A. Høiberg, Konstantin Stadler, Francesca Verones

Inputs of persistent plastic items to marine environments continue to pose a serious and long-term threat to marine fauna and ecosystem health, justifying further interventions on local and global scales. While Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is frequently used for sustainability evaluations by industries and policymakers, plastic leakage to the environment and its subsequent impacts remains absent from the framework. Incorporating plastic pollution in the assessments requires development of both inventories and impact assessment methods. [...]

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The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, Volume 29, Mai 2024

Philip Gjedde, Fabio Carrer, Johan Berg Pettersen, Francesca Verones

Marine vertebrate populations have halved in the past decades, and invasive species are a major driver for this loss. While many model the spread of invasive species, a model to assess impacts of marine invasions, after introduction, has hitherto been missing. We present the first regionalized effect factors for marine invasions. These factors gauge differences in biodiversity impacts after invasions, enabling life cycle impact assessments to highlight biodiversity impacts from invasive species. [...]

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Environmental Science and Technology, Volume 58, Mai 2024

Ahmed Marhoon, Miguel Las Heras Hernandez, Romain G. Billy, Daniel Beat Müller, Francesca Verones

The growing environmental consequences caused by plastic pollution highlight the need for a better understanding of plastic polymer cycles and their associated additives. We present a novel, comprehensive top-down method using inflow-driven dynamic probabilistic material flow analysis (DPMFA) to map the plastic cycle in coastal countries. [...]

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Environmental Pollution, Volume 341, January 2024

Naiara Casagrande, Carla O. Silva, Francesca Verones, Paula Sobral, Graça Martinho

All plastic contains additives. Once in the environment, these will start to leach out and will expose and harm aquatic biota, causing potentially lethal and sub-lethal toxic effects. Even though life cycle assessment covers the toxic impacts of several thousands of chemicals, models to assess the toxic impacts of plastic additives are only emerging. [...]

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Ecosphere, Volume 14, november 2023

Francesca Verones, Philip Gjedde, Maximilian Koslowski, John S. Woods, Radek Lonka, Konstantin Stadler

Invasive species are the second most important reason for species extinction since 1500 ad. In addition, these invasive species can cause vast economic loss. In marine ecoregions, alien species introductions are increasing, and those that become invasive have caused profound changes in many marine ecoregions. [...]

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Ecological Indicators, Volume 135, February 2022

Marthe A.Høiberg, John S.Woods, FrancescaVerones

Marine animals have been known to interact with and become entangled in plastic debris for decades. Despite increasing annual input volumes of plastic waste to the natural environment and the threat this constitutes to marine biodiversity, impacts of mismanaged plastic waste generally remain unquantified in environmental impact assessments. [...]

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Ecological Indicators, Volume 99, April 2019, Pages 61-66

John S. Woods, Gorm Rødder, Francesca Verones

Plastic waste from anthropogenic activities is accumulating in the marine environment and poses a threat to marine biodiversity. Nevertheless, tools to assess the potential ecosystem damage from plastic waste are currently lacking from sustainability assessment approaches, such as life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies. [...]

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