ISO 14051-Based Material Flow Cost Accounting in a Nutshell
May 1, 2013 1 CommentThe ISO 14000 series has proved to be handy for quite a while now. Companies and public institutions have valued the universal guidelines for all sorts of environmental management procedures – energy management, carbon footprinting and life cycle assessment, to name the most important ones. Two years ago, a new seed was planted in the ISO 14000 orchard, bearing the name ISO 14051. This new norm wa...
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Burn or Bury? Analyzing Waste Management Options in Detail
November 5, 2012 1 CommentReduce, Reuse, Recycle – the waste imperative is as clear as it can get. What's less clear, however, is what we should we do with the remaining stuff. Even the greenest society is, at a certain point, confronted with the unusable leftovers of consumption. What should happen to these? Treatment of the leftovers is a well discussed question and the answer relies on three big alternatives: incineration, dumping and composting. All three have pros and cons, some of which are apparent, others rather surprising. In this article, let me introduce you to a life cycle assessment (LCA) that analyzes th...
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LCA, CF, MFCA? What to Expect From Umberto User Workshop Hamburg, ...
August 20, 2012Sustainability 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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Students Often Responsible for Changes
November 17, 2011 1 CommentIt’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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Exploring the Environmental Effects of Electric Cars
November 8, 2011 1 CommentCan 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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Getting started … success factors for collaboration between Unive ...
October 17, 2011A typical situation: Let’s say his name is Michael, working for a medium sized production company, trained as an engineer and responsible for running the operation smoothly and efficient. Approximately 30% of his working time Michael uses for environment, health and safety issues, related to regulations and reporting. The company is facing challenges like high energy cost, rising cost for primary raw materials. Furthermore, a competitor provides carbon footprint information to the customer with the quotation. Michael is convinced that his operation is already very efficient, and he is also con...
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Key Elements for your Sustainable Social Media Strategy
August 26, 2011 4 CommentsFrom a corporate perspective, the relevance of Social Media within a Sustainability Strategy has been rising step by step over the last years. Undeniably, the world wide web has emerged to version 2.0. In former times, it used to be an instrument that is mainly used for providing information to the public or specific audiences – Whereas today, it rather consists of a relevant path to start and maintain a dialogue with internal and external stakeholders. Hence, modern companies are constantly changing their one-way communication to a more dialogue-based approach. Focusing this challenge in ...
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Carbon Neutral Online Shopping – How Green are Mail Order Compani ...
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Biomass Lagging Behind Prospering Wind and Solar Markets
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Food Footprints: Subjective Consumer Perception vs. Profound LCA ...
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A Truly Green Building Sector? Sustainable Housing Challenges in ...
May 21, 2013 -
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 ...
May 8, 2013 -
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 ...
May 1, 2013 -
[...] 5-Fold Increase in Efficiency – Not Delusional at All ...
April 22, 2013
