Discovering All Environmental Effects: How Life Cycle Assessment with LCA Software Works
March 26, 2013Environmental 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...
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How to Invent the Right Institution to Cut Resource Conflicts
March 11, 2013Can you resist the impetus coming from a 234 page report that has the promising title “Resource Futures” and boasts a beautiful Sankey diagram on the front page? See, I couldn't either. But before you expect a concise summary here, you had better be warned. I'm deeply sorry, but the report's giant scope of analyzing all the major resource flows in all of the world's bigger countries, including their trade and actual trends, just exceeds what fits in the odd blog article. Scanning the first 20 pages yourself wouldn't pose too much of a threat to convenience, though, since they're already pretty...
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When Oil Majors Embrace Material Flow Analysis, New Hope for a Su ...
February 18, 2013There 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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To Recycle or Not to Recycle – PVC Cable Waste is the Question
July 9, 2012 3 CommentsRecycling – it’s the magic word when the ill-informed think “environmental friendliness”. “Recyclable” – the number one green term that doesn’t mean a thing. Of course, as long as you put enough energy into a process, you can recycle virtually anything. The issue, the uncomfortable drawback that sits behind the pleasant sheen, the little itch you feel when you start thinking things through, is the inevitable truth of energy input. Yes, producing stuff requires energy. And yes, recycling, too, really does require energy! Material savings are easy to outline, but the key to a true environmental ...
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Program Highlights at ACHEMA 2012: What Not to Miss at the Green ...
June 17, 2012Green chemistry is a relatively young science in its own respect. Interest in this subject, however, is growing rapidly and, although no concerted agreement has been reached as yet about the exact content and limits of this interdisciplinary field, there appears to be increasing interest in umpteen environmental topics, which are based on chemistry embodied in this subject. To the pleasant surprise of all, this increased understanding of the principles that are the backbone of green chemistry has spurred many outstanding efforts to implement chemical processes and innovative technologies that ...
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Material Flow Based Process Systems Engineering
November 25, 2011 1 CommentI have been waiting for this for far too long, but finally it has been written and it deserves your attention: a paper on advanced material flow based systems engineering. It was published in the December issue of Computers and Chemical Engineering and is titled "Identification of economic potentials in production processes: An industrial case study". The paper describes the approach used by BASF to process-systems engineering and, in particular, to assess process improvements and innovations. Are you wondering why I’m enthusiastic about this paper although it sounds rather technocratic, if no...
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Refining Material Flow Analysis: The Arising of Input-Output Econ ...
October 20, 2011We can be proud of the great wealth of reliable, good quality data that are being produced every day all over the world to inform policies, promote changes and monitor the progress of our societies. Is what proclamed Paul Cheung exactly one year ago. Paul Cheung is United Nations Statistics Division's director, and one year ago was the first world statistics day. So, resuming Cheung's message, statistics answer three purposes: informing policies, promoting changes and monitoring societal progress. In the age of a shrinking resource base and a pressing need to fight global warming, the task...
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Information and Interaction – Social Media in an “analogue way”: ...
August 26, 2011Two 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 ...
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Carbon Neutral Online Shopping – How Green are Mail Order Compani ...
August 29, 2012 7 Comments -
Biomass Lagging Behind Prospering Wind and Solar Markets
September 1, 2011 6 Comments -
Only 16.7% of Global Energy Consumption Is Renewable – Ways for I ...
June 26, 2012 6 Comments -
Four Fit-For-Future Bachelor Programs in Europe
January 28, 2012 5 Comments -
Food Footprints: Subjective Consumer Perception vs. Profound LCA ...
November 1, 2011 5 Comments
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A Truly Green Building Sector? Sustainable Housing Challenges in ...
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5 Clear-Cut Economic Benefits of Sustainability Reporting
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How to Recycle Phosphorus, the Most Least-Known Scarce Resource
May 6, 2013 1 Comment -
ISO 14051-Based Material Flow Cost Accounting in a Nutshell
May 1, 2013 1 Comment -
Who's Happier – The Proactive Lohas or the Spontaneous Hedonist? ...
April 9, 2013
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Here's another noteworthy "MDPI Sustainability"-article asse ...
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Thanks Moritz for the interesting blog post. Recently ARTE T ...
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A very nice blog explaining the basic idea as well as the be ...
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[...] valued the universal guidelines for all sorts of envi ...
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[...] 5-Fold Increase in Efficiency – Not Delusional at All ...
April 22, 2013
