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  Discovering All Environmental Effects: How Life Cycle Assessment ...

  March 26, 2013  

  Environmental effects are extremely complex, that’s why they’re impossible to measure, so let’s not bother about them too much and keep producing and consuming the way we have over the past 100 years! Why should we change that anyway? Isn’t the GDP still growing after all? Don’t we lead a comfortable good life? Even though this approach may seem strikingly ignorant to some of you, it appears to be common sense among mainstream business people and a general majority in most societies. And, yes, everything is complex indeed: the supply chains of global retailers, the climate, the just-in-time...

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  When Oil Majors Embrace Material Flow Analysis, New Hope for a Su ...

  February 18, 2013  

  There are manifold approaches to close the apparent gap between a shrinking resource base on the one hand and the ever rising human resource demand on the other. For the longest time, the world's big industrial players have followed a strategy to successfully ignore the former, since environmental and social costs were merely negligible external effects. We could call this approach a procrastinating one, because it is future generations who are forced to deal with the outcomes of today's ignorance. In the course of the last 20 years, however, corporate giants have shifted their strategy. It ...

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

  September 5, 2012    1 Comment

  Shrimp farms destroy sensitive mangrove forest ecosystems, salmon escape from designated aquaculture spots and spread parasites, fish trawlers leave nothing but empty seas behind and even organic fish farming could be unsustainable due to dependence on fish meal from wild catch. When it comes to seafood, the message transmitted across mainstream media channels is devastating: there is simply nothing left we can eat responsibly, be it from the wild or aquaculture. Does that mean we all have to go vegetarian? Well, in many cases, the good news is that fish performs better than meat, when it come...

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  LCA, CF, MFCA? What to Expect From Umberto User Workshop Hamburg, ...

  August 20, 2012  

  Sustainability and efficiency: a couple of terms that couldn't be more misused and greenwashed. A pernicious conspiracy of PR and CSR departments around the globe has ridden these words down to mere meaninglessness. This is the setting in which a hero emerges from the ashes, a bright star who leaves the grey smog of empty words behind and does some straight talking. The makers and users of umberto, one of the most underestimated software tools in the professional sustainability universe, come together for a user workshop a month from now. In a concentrated time frame of two days (Sept 17+18, 2...

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  The 8 Most Specific LinkedIn Groups for Industrial Ecology

  June 5, 2012  

  The social media marketing hype seems to be declining, whereas a seemingly infinite flood of mobile internet devices, smartphones and tablets conquer conference audiences and public places. What's left is a rising proportion of users who, rather than just share countless self portraits on facebook, turn the mobile technology to good account. If you form a part of the latter, or want to do so, and also work in an industry-related sustainability field, find the most relevant LinkedIn groups in this article. I bet my (old) netbook you'll find at least one useful group you haven't heard of! I am n...

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  Avoiding the Relocation of Emissions - How to Face Carbon Leakage

  April 1, 2012    1 Comment

  In the course of the last 20 years, some of the more developed countries achieved a remarkable reduction of carbon emissions. However, taking a closer look at this, we see that a reduction in one place can be closely correlated to an increase of emissions in another. A scope of “one country” is incomplete, since both goods and emissions circulate all around the world. In this article, I'll explain the phenomenon of carbon leakage and will suggest ways to assess emissions in a more precise way. Many western and northern European countries can serve as examples of the above mentioned “carbon ...

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  What is an Environmental Product Declaration? And What is it Good ...

  February 21, 2012    3 Comments

  When talking about product labels that deal with the environment, it is often argued that there is an excessive variety of labels swamping consumers with information they don't understand. I have to admit that you can indeed call them irritating, this vast number of redundant "eco labels" invented by creative marketing departments all around the globe. However, in contrast to the superficial information given by some mainstream companies, environmental product declarations (EPDs) give consumers serious information. Thoroughly assessed, easily verifiable, and transparently made, EPDs visualize ...

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  ecoinvent - The Swiss Army Knife of LCA Background Databases

  December 10, 2011    2 Comments

  Background databases can be very convenient when you assess all of the impacts a product or a service has on the environment. Such an assessment is widely known as a life cycle assessment (LCA); it analyzes everything - from raw material extraction through materials processing, manufacture, distribution, use, repair and maintenance, to disposal or recycling (see Wikipedia definition of LCA). Good databases allow an LCA be to carried out precisely, even when there is a lack of complete information. Three Types of Data Sources Generally speaking, there are three options for the data you use as...

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  Students Often Responsible for Changes

  November 17, 2011    1 Comment

  It’s international Students‘ day today. This day has a long history as well as impacts and scale of student movements. As some kind of intellectual nucleus these movements are often a source for fundamental changes. The International Students’ Day has its origin in the late 1930s as Prague university students rebelled against the National Socialists. In this sense students have called attention to political and social over time. And this will be the case for today. In Germany students and pupils from vocational colleges will protest against the current educational system and the bad cond...

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  French Environmental Labeling – Industrial Experience Feedback

  November 14, 2011    2 Comments

  EVEA Conseil is a French Umberto partner and a leading consultancy firm for Life Cycle Assessment and Ecodesign. The LCA project described in this article results in two main improvements. The labeling allows customers to consider environmental indicators relevant for their purchasing decisions. It has also pushed many manufacturers (Leroy Merlin suppliers) to assess their environmental impact trough Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Context and goal of the project According to the french environmental labeling experimentation launched by the Sustainable Development Ministry, the goal of ...

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  Exploring the Environmental Effects of Electric Cars

  November 8, 2011    1 Comment

  Can you imagine the weight of 1.8 billion tonnes? I can't. I can only try to put this number in relation to others. 1.8 billion tonnes, that's the weight of all carbon emissions caused by private transport in 2009. 1,8 billion tonnes, that's 6,4% of the total carbon emissions from fuel combustion, emitted by all countries and all sectors in 2009 (see IEA's 2011 "highlights" report on CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion, page 67). Sustainable Strategies: Drive Less, Use the Bus, Get an Electric Car 1,8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, blown in the atmosphere, that's what happens whe...

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  Productivity, Efficiency and Quality

  October 12, 2011  

  Productivity is probably the main keyword in growth theory. Expressed as a mathematical function it describes the proportion between increases in output per input unit. Obviously there is a close connection to the input output analysis, mainly developed by the economist Wassily Leontief. A growth in productivity, a essential precondition for economic success, can be achieved by more efficient work process flows. Transfering this into target system increasing productivity is the overall target with a growth in efficiency as a measure to achieve this objective. In this context I would like to...

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  Transparency and Saving Potentials

  September 7, 2011    1 Comment

  When I read about "transparency" in the context of sustainability or sustainability management the term mostly is referring to reporting to and communication with the relevant stakeholders of businesses. That's the case in  a study on "Corporate Responsibility and Transparency" (in German: Unternehmerische Verantwortung im Zeitalter der Transparenz) published by pwc in March 2011. The pwc study assesses sustainability reporting of Austrian, Swiss and German companies and shows that 87% of German DAX noted businesses already do sustainability reporting. The energy sector is strongly represented...