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  10 Appropriate Indicators to Measure Green Growth in Industry

  December 17, 2012    5 Comments

  Green Growth, Sustainable Growth, Green Economy – All of these concepts require decoupling. A decoupling, in a nutshell, that maintains economic growth while achieving material de-growth. Instead of consuming ever more resources to produce ever more profits (“traditional” growth), decoupling refers to the idea of consuming less material resources and still generating more profits (green growth). What sounds good in theory, faces some technicalities in practice. The most important one is: how do you measure “greenness”? Which of all the shrinking resources should be saved, in order to merit get...

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  Green Ocean Hunters? The Environmental Effects of Fishing and Aqu ...

  September 11, 2012    1 Comment

  Last week, in part one of this article, we ended with the tragedy of the commons and the question of whether overfishing is a logical consequence of human nature. Luckily, not all things are as bad as they seem. Let's get back to our effort to increase comprehension and scroll to page 18 of Frank Asche's report (Green Growth in Fisheries and Aquaculture Production and Trade). He seems quite confident there. [T]here is no doubt that aquaculture can be carried out in a sustainable manner, independent of the level of intensity. Therefore, the real issue with aquaculture and sustainability is whe...

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  Carbon Neutral Online Shopping – How Green are Mail Order Compani ...

  August 29, 2012    7 Comments

  In the last 150 years, three major trends have changed the way humanity consumes. First, industrialization shifted production from self-sufficiency to consumerism. Second, ongoing economic development allowed local economies to expand across entire countries, which was followed by globalization and worldwide markets. Globalization started with colonial powers trading goods between continents and has not yet achieved its peak, even if it has been more than 30 years now since China opened its markets. The third important development marking a substantial shift in the way we consume is telephone ...

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  What's the Greenest 1 L Packaging? Two Powerful LCAs Give the Ans ...

  August 5, 2012  

  It was a month ago when I heard the surprising news that milk packaged in cartons has the best environmental performance as compared to other packaging materials. Do they, really? Aren't the reusable deposit bottles world famous for being green? Well, actually, milk bottles are white or brown, of course, but environment-wise their reputation is outstandingly green. In order to find some reliable information, I took the time to scan two comparative LCAs on beverage packaging, and guess what: the returnable glass bottle is far from being the best. LCA, for those who aren't familiar with the init...

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  6 Options to Maintain Current Lifestyles with Far Less Raw Materi ...

  August 1, 2012    4 Comments

  There is this old, ever repeating view of humanity as a counter-productive force when it comes to nature conservation, and that action toward a sustainable world is therefore doomed to failure right from the start. This view seems tempting, since the reasoning makes sense at first sight. Even if we increased material efficiency noticeably, so it goes, the drastic growth in material demand will override any achievements. This view is what Julian Allwood and Jonathan Cullen called “with one eye open”. They wrote a comprehensive book about sustainable materials called “With Both Eyes Open,” avail...

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  Carbon Neutral World Cup? Green Stadiums? Really?

  July 24, 2012  

  Fancy pictures of green stadiums have been fast to hit the media since FIFA's decision to give the 2022 soccer World Cup to Qatar was published. FIFA also announced that Brazil (2014), Russia (2018) and Qatar (2022) will have to satisfy green building certificate requirements when putting up new stadiums. Looking at the carbon footprint of South Africa's 2010 World Cup, however, you learn that the stadiums only accounted for 1.1 percent of the event's carbon footprint (0.6% for construction and renovation, 0.5% for energy use during the event). Hence, it is clear that better stadium design wil...

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  Why SMEs Should Foster, Not Fear the Corporate Carbon Footprint

  March 22, 2012  

  Most firms are occupied with selling products and meeting payroll and feel they don't have time or aren't all that impassioned about "saving the world." However, ignoring sustainability is not really an option. So states Blair Gifford in the book "A Simple Path to Sustainability: Green Business Strategies for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses". Needless to say, I totally agree. Well, in order to be clear and precise, ignoring sustainability is of course an option, but it's a pretty silly one. Why? Because you miss enormous opportunities! As Wolfgang Wimmer, Kun-Mo Lee, Ferdinand Quella and Jo...

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  "Everybody Should do Their Share" - The Long Road to Sustainabili ...

  March 17, 2012    1 Comment

  knowtheflow: Prof. Dr. Inci Gökmen, you offer a course named "Sustainable Living and Green Chemistry" at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. Prof. Dr. Inci Gökmen: Yes, I just started, this semester. Does it provoke a positive response? Yes, I think so. First, I started with a discussion on the "limits to growth". I guess everybody knows that there are limits in this world. We watched the movie "The Story of Stuff" with my students in class and I tried to get some feedback from them. The students said "yeah, the movie is presenting all the problems, but it is not proposing a...

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  What is Carbon Footprinting and Why Does it Facilitate Effective ...

  February 18, 2012  

  Costs to the environment, generated throughout your company's production process, can be assessed in different ways, just as its financial costs can be. One of these methods, probably the most convenient and yet a still exact one, is the carbon footprint. The carbon footprint concentrates on one environmental impact factor only - this factor is the climate related emission, measured in one unit, kilogram CO2-equivalent. As I illustrated in my article on the parallels of carbon footprinting with cost accounting, there are several advantages in connection with the use of a single score method...

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  What Conclusions Can We Draw From Tesco Dropping its Carbon Footp ...

  February 4, 2012  

  A week ago, the Guardian published the news that the Tesco grocery store chain dropped its plan to put a carbon label on all of its products. I felt a little sorry for the carbon trust, but I wasn't surprised at all. Why? Because I didn't expect a true commitment to sustainability from Tesco in the first place. In this article, I tell you why, and I explain the possible conclusions you can draw from this. 1. Protected by Oligopoly, Supermarket Chains Will Never Foster Sustainability Like all the players in the oligopoly of the supermarket business, the Britain-based multinational grocery ret...

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  Getting it Straight: Exact Carbon Emissions From One Bottle of Wi ...

  January 8, 2012    5 Comments

  I bet you know how much carbon dioxide your car emits per kilometer. Maybe you are also well informed about the carbon reduction goals of the country where you live. But, when the working day is over, when you sit in a restaurant or relax at home with your partner or a friend by your side, deep in good conversation, when you start to enjoy life and when you open a delicious bottle of Spanish red wine – have you ever thought about its impact on the climate? Grupo ARCE has. The company derives its expertise from having calculated carbon footprints in the food sector and the electromechanical ...

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  How Traditional Cost Accounting Methods Resolve Carbon Footprint ...

  November 26, 2011    1 Comment

  Life cycle assessment (LCA), in simplified definition, is a task that uncovers all environmental effects a process or a product creates. It is a difficult task and one that is complex. Why is it so complex? Mainly, because the environment can be harmed in multiple ways and because emissions can have multiple levels of impact. A usual life cycle analysis focuses on six different goals or six ways in which the environment needs to be protected. To mention the most important ones: there is the greenhouse effect, the ozone hole, eutrophication, noise emission, human toxicity and eco toxicity. Incl...

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  3 Precise Perspectives on Corporate Carbon Footprints

  November 4, 2011    2 Comments

  As business consultant in the field of sustainability, I would like to share with you three findings that I made in Central and South America, working with companies willing to reduce their carbon emissions. Since the awareness of global warming becomes omnipresent, more and more companies try to evaluate their share. In my opinion, the best measure to know the flow of carbon emissions, is the Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF). Why? Because the CCF is the ideal instrument not only to measure carbon emissions, but also to define goals and strategies for reducing the company's impact on climate c...

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  Information and Interaction – Social Media in an “analogue way”: ...

  August 26, 2011  

  Two important events upcoming this week: From Sunday 28th August on, the Life Cycle Management takes place in Berlin. Life Cycle Management is one of the most important topics within industrial production today, as it covers both environmental and economic questions. In the pre-sustainability-era, the public discussion on life cycles was mainly focused on typical management models like Boston Consulting's four steps: product development, production, use and degeneration. Due to that perspective, companies spent most attention and money to product development. But times have changed. Or should ...