Organizational Life Cycle Assessment for the sustainability of Controlled Realese of Optmized plant (CROP) biotech process

Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (O-LCA) is an innovative methodology aimed for the sustainable development of every type of company or organization. It evaluates the environmental impacts related to all the activities behind an organization. It has the same framework of the consolidated tool of Life Cycle Assessment; the main difference between the two is the objective of the study: the LCA refers to one single product, often for the comparison with a similar product which has the same function, while the O-LCA's aim is just the evaluation of environmental impacts of its product portfolio, together with direct and indirect activities involved in the organization structure; the purposes for performing an Organizational Life Cycle Assessment can have an analytical, a managerial or a social basis. This study is applied to a young and innovative biotechnological company, called Aethera Biotech, located in Camisano Vicentino (VI, Italy). It uses an alternative in vitro process for the cellular growth of plants, sold in the cosmetic and nutraceutical markets as an essence in a glucose liquid solution (CROP) or as a powder (PC) as food supplements. It substitutes the classic agriculture cultivation of plants, by limiting the land use, the water consumption for the irrigation and it is not influenced by the climate conditions, which is challenging the field agriculture because of the global warming and the increasing of devasting weather phenomena. The sustainability of the company is crucial for its fundamental basis, as a valuable replacement of the classic cultivation but also for marketing purposes, in order to gain attention from stakeholders, whose attention is growing towards more sustainable solutions. To conclude, the O-LCA tool is on the way of its consolidation (as the LCA already is) for being a strategic methodology for the growth of organization in the sustainable, economic and social point of view.