Sustainability in steel production is considered a global challenge which needs to be faced with coordinated actions, especially considering the environmental impacts of the industry. The main source of solid waste in the steel industry is steel slag but circularity practices have the potential to provide significant environmental benefits. Thanks to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) one can assess the environmental impact and explore circular transition. This study explores a case study to highlight the practical implications of the environmental management of steel slag with circularity practices not only from a product perspective but from an organizational perspective as well. To do so, it applies the Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (O-LCA) and the Product Life Cycle Assessment (P-LCA) methodologies and it explores to what extent the improvements and the efforts to recover the steel slag can be detected. The results show that when the steel slag is recovered it has lower impacts than when it is landfilled. The results also tell us that the variations obtained with the P-LCA application are greater than those obtained with O-LCA application. Moreover, it emerges that O-LCA methodology can detect environmental improvements of circularity practices and it is useful for setting and monitoring company-wide environmental impact reduction targets, but the reduction of the impacts is less clear than P-LCA application. O-LCA and P-LCA methodologies are not interchangeable to quantify the environmental benefits and address the efforts to improve a process in terms of circularity.
