Eco-innovative practices for sustainable consumption and production: what are the possible benefits for companies ?

The paper aims to present some eco-innovative practices regarding Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP). The study also focuses on potential benefits for the actors who implement these practices, mainly with reference to companies. After a literature review on the actual importance of SCP and on the effects of eco-innovation tools and policies on companies, authors present the developed eco-innovation practices in three focus areas related to sustainable consumption and production. The aim of the study is to contribute to literature studies on SCP with the development of eco-innovative practices resulting by the integration of existing tools, by pointing out and valorizing their potentials and synergies. These practices have been pointing out in the framework of the international European project. Three focus areas are involved by the practices: sustainability of products and services, sustainability of production processes and sustainable management of industrial areas. Authors developed four eco innovative practices resulting from the integration of 15 existing tools. These practices offer many opportunities to many actors, mainly companies and public authorities, in order to achieve environmental and competitive benefits and implement eco-innovation principles with a cooperative and shared approach

Life cycle assessment and ecodesign in a day - Lessons learned from a series of LCA clinics for start-ups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs)

In recent years, life cycle assessment (LCA) has become one of the main tools for quantifying environmental sustainability of products and services. The main advantage of LCA is that several environmental impacts are assessed simultaneously over the entire life cycle of a product or a service, across its whole value chain. Its holistic nature makes LCA a laborious and expensive method, less accessible to start-ups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). However, as most of Finnish companies are of those sizes there is a clear need for a more simple, yet robust, solution. To tackle the challenge, we have developed a concept called the LCA clinic. Our idea is to streamline LCA and make it affordable for SMEs and start-ups. In this report we present the conceptual idea and illustrate its application on a series of trials with real companies. The outcomes of the LCA clinic trials show that it is applicable in practice. Moreover, they provide a valuable feedback for further development of the concept. The trials also proved that LCA clinics have a potential to stimulate life cycle thinking (LCT) in the participating companies

Konsep Produk Kipas Angin Multi Fungsi 3 In 1 sebagai Strategi Penurunan Biaya Dampak Lingkungan Berbasis Life Cycle Assessment (Lca)

As a tropical country, one of the electronic products is quite high level of consumption is the fan. The high number of fan consumption potentially increasing the number of e-waste, in which by it life phase, electronic product generate many environmental impact.environmental impact by each life phase influencing by the design phase. The increased awareness of the importance of environmental protection and the possible impacts have increased interest in the development of methods to better understand and address these impacts. One of the techniques being developed for this purpose is life cycle assessment (LCA).By LCA calculation, it can address the value of environmental impact of each product's life phase, the eco-cost value and the alternative strategy for reducing the environmental impact of the product. From the results of the LCA calculation by eco-cost 2012 method of simapro, between wall fan 16, desk fan 12 and stand fan 16 and stand fan wadesta, show that the eco-cost value of wall fan 16, desk fan 12 and stand fan 16 are Rp. 627.180,00 per unit of product. While the alternative products b integration concept of 3 in 1 product, produce eco-cost value amount Rp. 223,281.00 per unit product. The eco-cost value of wadesta stand fan is smaller cause this product using lesser material and lesser components than if the product stand fan, wall fan and desk fan is a separate unit of product. Stand fan wadesta can reduce the eco-cost value amount Rp.403.360,00 per unit product

Sustainability in Store

Retailers across Western Europe are faced with the challenge to integrate the idea of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) into their operations. The difficulty hierin lies in the the lack of any clear understanding or agreement for what the term implies for retailers and how to implement it in retailers’ daily operations. Instead, retailers need to handle a number of different – at times competing – understandings of SCP among their stakeholders and combine these into a strategy that fits their business interests. In this thesis, I study the interaction between retailers, their stakeholders and market demand to understand how the complexity of the sustainability discourse is translated into concrete action on the shop floor. My results show retailers to be highly flexible in their work with SCP, however also quite unstrategic. Much of retailers’ efforts to integrate SCP into their operations is based on a trial-and-error process with frequent mistakes and change of direction. To approach SCP more strategically more attention must be paid to the sensemaking process of SCP among stakeholders and how it connects to market demand. My research found that rather than focusing on the overall sustainability of products and services, retailers ought to comparmentalize SCP to match specific stakeholder groups in a meaningful way. Retail brands have emerged as particularly useful tool in this respect. Due to the property rights assigned to such brands, they offer the retailer the ability to actively enage with SCP and adapt its meaning to stakeholder expectations. However, sensemaking of SCP is also to a great extent a local process, removed from the national discourse. While brands are well-suited to engage with the macro-discourse, they are not sufficiently able to adapt to the micro-level discourse. My research points to the important role individual stores have in the adaptation process of SCP to the micro-level discourse. Several examples of successful micro-adaptation to local sensemaking of SCP at the store level could be observed in my research. Successful integration of SCP into a retailer’s operation therefore seems to depend on a functioning multi-layer process within the organisation, where both headquarters and stores contribute their strengthes to a functioning internal translation procees of SCP, from global discourse to local enaction. These results have particular relevance for centralized retail organisations. They imply more responsibility for stores in the sensemaking and operationalisation of SCP as a way to achieve a more contextually meaningful approach to SCP

Cooking behaviours: understanding energy use to design persuasive applications

Electric cookers and kettles are often high electricity consumers amongst household appliances. Cooking requires several interactions with these appliances, and furthermore people’s behaviours play an important role in the energy consumption. This research is seeking to understand people’s behaviours whilst cooking and also identify the determinants of these behaviours. Energy monitoring, video recording and semi-structured questionnaires were used to gather this information. This knowledge will inform the development of an intervention aiming at reducing energy expenditure

Relationship between Market Competition and Green Supply Chain Management Practices in Manufacturing Industry

There is a growing market and institutional demands for companies to implement green practices to produce environment friendly products and services. Therefore, more companies are integrating the green practices into their operations, which have increased the market competition. In order to improve their competitiveness in the market, companies are forced to adapt to changing market requirements by implementing practices that could differentiate themselves, such as green supply chain management (GSCM). This study aims to understand the relationship between market competition and GSCM practices among manufacturing companies in Penang and Johor, Malaysia. Data gathered from a survey among the companies were analyzed using descriptive and correlation analysis. The results revealed that the level of market competition in the manufacturing companies’ business environment and the implementation of GSCM practices were relatively moderate. A Spearman’s correlation analysis show that market competition had a moderate positive relationship with all GSCM practices studied, namely green purchasing, product eco-design, cooperation with customers, reverse logistics and internal environmental management. The findings highlight the role of market competition in promoting environment friendly behavior in manufacturing industry. In addition, they also show that more should be done by the industry to improve the sustainability of their supply chain practices

Environmentally sustainable houshold consumption: From aggregate environmental pressures to indicators for priority fields of action

During the UNCED conference in Rio de Janeiro 1992 unsustainable consumption and production patterns were identified as one of the key driving forces behind theunsustainable development of the world (Agenda 21, chapter 4). These consumption and production patterns are based on the European model of industrialisation, spread around the globe in the age of colonisation and brought toextremes by the upper-class of industrialised societies, in particular in the United States, but also in a number of countries in the South. Therefore, all states of theworld share the task of developing sustainable consumption and productionpatterns, while particular responsibility rests with the industrialised nations of Europe, North America and Japan. They, and the thriving but small rich elite in the transition countries and in the South, form a global consumer society, with shared products, lifestyles and aspirations. As it is essential to support the transition towards sustainable development byproviding the proper information in an operational manner, the UNCED conference has called for the development of suitable means of information, and in particular for the development of sustainability indicators applicable throughout the world (Agenda 21, chapter 40). The UNDESA set of indicators for changingconsumption and production patterns offers helpful advice in this regard but stilllacks the theoretical underpinning needed to consistently complete it by definingthe few still missing indicators.This paper undertakes to suggest such a methodology based on the environmental space concept. It derives a set of science based indicators from this approachwhich are easily applicable in everyday life and analyses the environmentalrelevance of the consumption clusters chosen for analysis as well as the relevanceof the phenomena characterised by the indicators suggested. As households arejust one actor in the field of consumption, a qualitative assessment of influences isperformed and the result depicting the key actors for each environmentallyrelevant consumption cluster is presented as an actor matrix. --

An Innovative Approach to Teaching Sustainable Design and Management

International audienceFor many years the market leadership was driven by offering better price on more product functions and services. The world is currently shifting towards social responsibility thinking. This changes the market behaviour, and leads to more innovations, such as designing new product/service/system using re-usable parts, new electric motor concepts, or inventing new chemical production procedures generating less waste, and many more opportunities. This paper introduces a research valorisation activity that aims at developing a program of training and coaching to prepare students and industry partners to this emerging innovation wave. The most outstanding particularity of this program is that it combines management and engineering aspects of sustainability in a form that empowers trainees to deploy sustainable approaches in practice. The particular target group of design engineers get equipped with fundamentally important sustainability knowledge enabling them to include sustainability considerations in their products and systems design. Eco-design is positioned as a key lever towards achieving sustainable product-service systems

Life cycle assessment and valuation of the packaging waste recycling system in Belgium

This study analyses the packaging waste management system in Belgium. Waste management operations involve a significant number of processes associated with energy consumption and emission of pollutants in air and water. To assess the impact on the environment of the several waste management operations, a life cycle assessment was developed. The operations of selective and refuse collection, sorting, recycling and incineration of packaging waste were considered. A comparison between two scenarios was developed. The first scenario comprised the packaging waste management system in operation in 2010. This system comprises the waste management operations envisaging the recycling of the packaging materials. The second scenario was developed based on the hypothesis that there was no recycling system and all packaging waste would be collected in the refuse collection system. An environmental valuation was performed to convert the environmental results into a common unit (EUR). To accomplish this valuation, three methods were used: Ecocost, Ecovalue and Stepwise. These methods were developed in Europe and follow different methodologies. The environmental results were compared using the three methods and they were consistent with the conclusion that the recycling scenario (i.e. the actual situation in 2010) is more environmentally sound