Our colleagues Hannah Aster, Lukas Zeilerbauer, and Johannes Lindorfer have recently published a paper in “The Journal of Sustainability”. It is titled “Environmental Impacts of Drone Delivery: A Comparative Meta-Analysis and Standardised LCA Metrics” and examines the sustainability of drone-based logistics.
As demand for low-emission delivery solutions grows, drones are often viewed as a promising alternative for last-mile transport. But how sustainable are they really, and which components have the greatest environmental impact?
The study synthesizes existing life-cycle assessment (LCA) analyses and applies the PRISMA approach to identify ecological hotspots in drone delivery chains — from battery production to electronic components. It highlights how strongly different system boundaries and assumptions influence results, emphasizing the need for standardized LCA methods to allow better comparison across studies.
The findings show that the actual environmental footprint of drones depends heavily on whether production and all life-cycle stages are included in the assessment. As a conclusion, the authors propose a standardized functional unit to which environmental impacts should be referenced. This provides an important foundation for more consistent sustainability evaluations in future research.
Link to the article: Environmental Impacts of Drone Delivery: A Comparative Meta-Analysis and Standardised LCA Metrics