Strategies for the environmental management of the marble districts through the integrated contribution of life cycle assessment and GIS

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show the results of a research work related to a different way for manage stone districts, in order to obtain environmental improvements. The extraction and the processing of natural stone imply a considerable environmental impact, both on the production area and at the global scale, with a consequent penalization of the environmental profile of the lytic products. The research highlights the potential role that a “district” can play on the radical transformation of the current production system (linear model) towards a more sustainable “modus operandi” (circular model) from both the environmental and the economic point of view, through the reuse/recycling of scraps in the same or other sectors. According to this approach, the research suggests the structure of a “management platform” prototype, aimed at monitoring the district territory in order to find possible new synergies in the supply chain for the benefit of the whole territory. The proposed management platform has the aim to assess the scenarios that can be pursued at a local and national level, by collecting data on environmental impacts and on material flows through the LCA and contextualizing them on a local scale with the use of GIS.