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China has become the world largest paper and paperboard producer. However, pulp and paper industry has involved high resource consumption and severe pollution especially for water. This research has assessed the eco-efficiency of China's pulp and paper industry at the national level and provincial level. An overview regarding the cleaner production of China's pulp and paper industry was presented to reveal the measures for reducing environmental impact in the last two decades. Slacks-based measure was used to analyze the efficiency levels of 16 provinces' pulp and paper industries. To uncover the underlying causes of eco-efficiency performance, Malmquist–Luenberger index was calculated to discover the drivers of productivity growth of pulp and paper industries. Our results showed that the pollution treatment of China's pulp and paper industry has made progress in terms of water consumption and water pollution, although the absolute amount of pollution discharge is still large. Chemical oxygen demand emissions are still the first critical influencing factor of pulp and paper industry's inefficiency. Furthermore, efficiency progress was the dominating contribution of the industry's productivity growth between 2010 and 2013. The policies for adjusting the industrial structure of pulp and paper industry have resulted in the scale effects through eliminating backward production capacity and accelerating merger and acquisitions. Moreover, the productivity of pulp and paper industry was underestimated when the undesirable outputs were ignored. It indicates that the stricter environmental regulations have positive effects on paper companies to internalize environmental pressures in the production activities through environmental management. In the future, pulp and paper companies should further internalize the cost of pollution treatment through scale effects and technology improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Existing product life cycle assessment (LCA) studies on offset printed matter all point at paper as the overall dominating cause of environmental impacts. All studies focus on energy consumption and the dominating role of paper is primarily based on the energy-related impact categories: global warming, acidification and nutrient enrichment. Ecotoxicity and human toxicity, which are related to emissions of chemicals, etc., are only included to a limited degree or not at all. In this paper we include the impacts from chemicals emitted during the life cycle of sheet fed offset printed matter. This is done by making use of some of the newest knowledge about emissions from the production at the printing industry combined with knowledge about the composition of the printing materials used. In cases with available data also upstream emissions from the production of printing materials are included. The results show that inclusion of the chemical emission-related impacts makes the EDIP97 impact profile of sheet fed offset products much more varied, as well for the normalised profiles as for the profiles weighted by distance to political environmental targets. Especially the ecotoxicity impact potential related to the production stage may contribute significantly, and the use of paper no longer becomes the overall dominating factor driving the environmental impacts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract The annual market demand for disposable baby diapers exceeds 20 billion units (690 kt) in the European Union (EU). Almost 40,000 disposable diapers are used every minute, producing 1.3 t/min (dry weight) of waste. Based on the estimates in this work, this requires 90.3 PJ of primary energy and emits 2.7 Mt CO 2 eq. annually. In an attempt to reduce resource, waste and environmental impacts associated with diapers, this paper focuses on novel design and manufacture of disposable baby diapers. This involves using optimised absorbent core and novel bonding technologies to replace conventional gluing of diaper materials. Life cycle assessment has been performed to compare the environmental performance of these new diapers, here termed "glueless", with standard designs. The annual resource consumption and environmental impacts of glueless diapers have been estimated at different production levels: a single production platform, an industrial plant, a country (Italy) and the EU, taking into account different production volumes, electricity mixes and waste management options. Different market penetration scenarios have been considered to determine potential environmental implications at the EU level by 2020. The results reveal that glueless diapers reduce the consumption of raw materials by 23% (9.2 g/diaper), primary energy demand by 25% (752 kJ/diaper) and global warming potential by 10% (10.4 g CO 2 eq./diaper) compared to the standard diapers. They also have more than 50% lower eutrophication, ozone depletion and human and eco-toxicity. Up to 16 PJ primary energy and 191,000 t CO 2 eq. would be saved annually in the EU by using glueless diapers. The cumulative savings would amount to 47 PJ and 566,000 t CO 2 eq. by 2020. The annual consumption of raw materials at the EU level would be reduced by 196,000 t with cumulative savings of up to 584,000 t by 2020, also reducing the equivalent amount of waste from the disposal of diapers. Consequently, glueless diapers can contribute to meeting the energy, climate and resource efficiency goals specified in the EU 2020 strategy. Graphical abstract Image 1 Highlights • Novel design and manufacture of "glueless" disposable baby diapers is considered. • Glueless diapers save 23% of materials and 25% of energy relative to standard type. • Most life cycle impacts are reduced by >50% and global warming potential by 10%. • Up to 584,000 t of waste and 566,000 t of CO 2 eq. can be saved by 2020. • Glueless diapers can help meet the EU energy, resource and climate change targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Pulp and paper manufacturing sector constitutes one of the largest industry segments in the world in terms of water and energy usage as well as of significant use and release of chemicals and combustion products. Since its chief feedstock –wood fiber– is renewable, this industry can play an important role in sustainable development, becoming an example of how a resource can be managed to provide a sustained supply to meet society's current and future needs. This calls for a thorough assessment of environmental costs and impacts associated to pulp and paper operations, including both direct and indirect inputs supporting the whole papermaking process as well as the main outputs, co-products and by-products. By means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, this paper aims at assessing the environmental sustainability of the pulp and paper production so as to identify those phases across the whole supply chain that entail the highest environmental loads, thus requiring improvements. To determine the environmental impacts as accurately as possible, the manufacturing stages performed in the pulp and paper mill complex of Stora Enso Oyj Veitsiluoto Mills at Kemi, Northern Finland, were taken as a model and assessed by means of the SimaPro 8 LCA software, utilizing ReCiPe Midpoint (H) method for the impact assessment. As expected, most of the resulting impacts are caused by the industrial production phase. The production processes of pulp and paper jointly affect all the investigated impact categories with the highest shares, ranging from 50% of generated impacts on water depletion up to 88% on freshwater eutrophication. Generally, the main contributions to environmental loads come from the electricity and heat requirements and, only at a minor extent, from the use of chemicals such as the sodium hydroxide and sodium chlorate. In particular, pulp production process generates the main loads on global warming (46% of the total impacts), ozone depletion (39%), freshwater eutrophication (55%), human toxicity (46%), metal depletion (42%) and fossil depletion (46%). In the remaining investigated impact categories, namely terrestrial acidification, photochemical oxidant formation and terrestrial ecotoxicity, most of impacts derive from the use of optical brighteners and fillers in the final steps of paper production and from the intensive consumption of water in the recycling step of end-of-life affecting water depletion. Moreover, the implementation of measures for material and energy efficiency in the assessed system, such as the use of renewable energy generated in situ from black liquor and residual biomass to support the requirements of the integrated pulp and paper mills and the waste paper recycling, resulted to be crucial in lowering the environmental burdens. In particular, the partial fulfillment of electricity and heat requirements by means of a circular use of residues within the system leads to a noteworthy reduction of impacts in all the investigated impact categories, up to more than 70% in global warming and fossil depletion potentials, thus contributing to higher process sustainability compared with other averaged European systems for paper production. The obtained research results are a valuable source of management information for the decision makers, at both company and national levels, with the aim to improve the environmental performance of pulp and paper industry. Highlights • A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of papermaking in Finland was performed. • The main environmental hotspots in each process step were identified and discussed. • Energy and material efficiency solutions leads to a noteworthy reduction of impacts. • Pulp and paper industry is a benchmark model to transition towards a circular economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract A rapid development of building environmental research from the globe is witnessed in recent years to deal with the environmental issues, especially in terms of energy consumption and carbon emissions, due to the substantial environmental burdens associated with the building industry. Thus, numerous scientific efforts have been devoted to buildings through environmental assessment like a life cycle assessment (LCA) and a methodological framework development. Concerning the rapid growth of buildings, LCA is increasingly used for assessing and mitigating the associated environmental impacts from material selection to the whole building systems. This study aims to comprehensively review the LCA implication on buildings by discussing the contemporary issues related to the development of this research field. The study considers a wide range of literature including case studies, reviews and surveys, and these articles are critically examined according to the predefined criteria developed. An in-depth analysis is also conducted on selected studies to unveil the criticality of the assessments and results under different considerations. In addition to demonstrating the research gaps for comprehensive assessment of buildings, the adoption of a circular economy (CE) concept is highlighted by providing a comprehensive framework. The findings show that resource recovery and resource-efficient building construction are seldom considered in prevailing studies. As a result, the framework proposed in this paper should help support a paradigm shift towards a comprehensive research for increasing the accuracy and practicability by introducing the CE principle to the building industry for enhancing its sustainability performance. Highlights • Literature related to building-environmental research was critically analyzed. • LCA implication on buildings was comprehensively reviewed by discussing the contemporary issues. • Selected papers were critically analyzed to unveil the research trends and practices. • Knowledge gaps for comprehensive assessment of buildings under the CE principle are identified. • Comprehensive framework based on the CE principle was proposed for comprehensiveness building LCA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electricity consumption and material wastage of manufacturing industries have directly or indirectly influenced the environment. Many manufacturing enterprises are committed to improving energy and material efficiencies. To achieve this goal, one of the high-efficiency ways is to optimize the scheduling. In this study, a multi-object optimization model is constructed for a particular kind of batch processing scheduling problem existed in flexible flow shops, where the objects include makespan, electricity consumption and material wastage. First, the models for electricity consumption and material wastage are built, based on which a mathematic model for scheduling problem is built afterwards. Finally, a hybrid non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) method is employed to solve the multi-object optimization scheduling model. A case study based on a real-world paper mill industry is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method and its application in practice. Moreover, a real-life scheduling problem is investigated, and the result shows that the proposed method is more efficient than manual scheduling in energy and material saving. In fact, many tissue paper mills or other manufacturing industries schedule by manual labor in China, indicating that the proposed method has a significant potential in improving energy and material efficiencies in the studied flexible flow shop, and in energy and material saving in similar industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, various environmental assessment methods have been developed. The aim of this paper is to compare these methods to identify their advantages and disadvantages when used to analyze energy efficiency in agricultural production systems. A systematic review of information helped to identify six environmental assessment methods: ecological footprint, material flow analysis, ecological network analysis, life cycle analysis, exergy, and emergy. A multi-criteria comparison was carried out, taking into account the level of formalization, system modeling, spatial scale, inventoried flows, type of indicators, relationship with the concept of efficiency, and usability of each of the methods. This work allowed the strengths and weaknesses of each environmental assessment method to be highlighted. Proving that the Emergy approach could provide a relevant framework for the analysis of the multiple energy flows that interact in an agricultural production system, and for achieving an integral understanding of energy efficiency in the whole system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental impact evaluations in manufacturing fields is a complicated decision-making problem, which involves wastes emission, resource consumption and energy utility, etc. This paper presents an intelligence method for environmental impact evaluation using kernel fuzzy clustering and a back-propagation neural network. The objective of this article is to apply artificial intelligence technology to evaluate environmental influence of cutting process and develop a decision support tool for selecting the optimal environmental solution from various alternative schemes. There are three stages to accomplish this assessment procedure. First, the evaluation index system of the cutting process was analyzed and established. Next, a training sample set which was used for learning the 'knowledge and experience' by neural networks, was acquired by kernel fuzzy clustering algorithm. Finally, an evaluation model based on a back-propagation neural network was constructed, and connection weights of the model were determined after training. A case research on the cutting processes of the automobile workpiece was conducted. Results showed that the proposed method is more concise and practicable than existing evaluation methods and provide a feasible and effective decision-making tool for selecting an optimal cutting process while manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The CRIMSON (Constrained Rapid Induction Melting Single Shot Up-Casting) method uses a rapid induction furnace to melt just enough metal for a single mould rather than bulk melting used in traditional casting process. The molten metal is then transferred to a computer – controlled platform to complete the counter-gravity up filling. The highly controlled metal flow is pushed into the mould to finish the pouring and solidification. In the present paper the energy saving capability of CRIMSON approach is compared with conventional sand casting process. The paper focuses on the energy and resource efficiency optimization of casting stages through simulation and life cycle assessment analysis simulation for proposing alternative means for the better performance of such processes. It is proven that the CRIMSON process can produce high quality castings with higher energy efficiency and lower environmental impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laser cladding is one of the principal means of equipment remanufacturing and the environmental profiles of this technology has become a research focus. This paper examines the environmental impacts of cast iron cylinder head block remanufacturing through laser cladding using life cycle assessment (LCA), and compares it with the new cylinder head block manufacturing. Resource and energy consumptions of each manufacturing and remanufacturing processes are collected along the production line and then the results of six selected environmental impact categories are calculated. Consistency and sensitivity analysis is also conducted after life cycle impact assessment. The results reveal that cylinder head remanufacturing by laser cladding will achieve large environmental benefits, which can cut environment impact over the entire life cycle by 63.8% on average. This paper also discusses the trend of changes in environmental impacts using scenario analysis over different remanufacturing levels. By taking characterized global warming potential (GWP) as the assessment index, the result shows that remanufacturing will no longer be the preferred option if it needs to repair more than 16 cracks by laser cladding for the cylinder head. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract There is increasing interest in the idea that energy efficiency has economic, environmental and social impacts beyond energy and cost saving - a 'multiple benefits' perspective. However, present EU-decision making on energy efficiency is based on assessment of a very narrow range of costs and benefits. This paper investigates whether and how advocates of energy efficiency have used multiple benefits to frame their interactions with policy-makers at EU and UK level, and to broaden the appeal of energy efficiency. Nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with key practitioners from industry-backed or trade organisations and environment-focussed NGOs. All respondents regularly made use of multiple benefits arguments. Their experience is that these arguments are most persuasive when linked to the values and priorities of decision-makers and politicians, most of whom do not value energy efficiency as a benefit in itself. Different contexts and different benefits are more or less salient for different stakeholders. This framing sets energy efficiency decisions in a broad economic, environmental and social context. As such it requires more evidence than a simple focus on energy savings, and different sorts of evidence which can connect with a variety of decision makers. The importance of recognising differing contexts, actors, values, priorities has led to the development of an alternative visualisation of multiple benefits, which de-centres energy efficiency. Highlights • 'Multiple benefits' identifies economic, social and environmental impacts of energy efficiency. • Leading NGOs and trade associations use this framing to influence EU policy makers. • Multiple benefits arguments work best linked to values and priorities of policy makers. • Persuasive case studies as well as quantitative evidence are required. • A new visualisation of multiple benefits has been developed, which 'de-centres' energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Process energy consumption and environmental impact have been considered as important performance indicators for the sustainable electrical discharge machining (EDM) process. This paper presents a sustainable manufacturing technique known as magnetic field-assisted EDM (MF-EDM) to enhance the machine characteristics for the purpose of reducing the energy consumption and environmental hazards of the conventional EDM machining Ti6Al4V. Firstly, the principles of energy consumption, machining noise impact, and MF-EDM are respectively described. Thereafter, a set of experiments is carried out to investigate the effects of the main process parameters on the electrode wear rate (E W R), energy consumption (S E C), and environmental impacts (including carbon emission and machining noise) extensively, using the Taguchi method. The results indicate that the pulse on time (ranging from 100 to 200 μs) and magnetic field intensity (ranging from 0.05 to 0.10 T) are the two most significant factors affecting the MF-EDM sustainable manufacturing performance. Furthermore, the optimal process parameters were obtained by optimizing the MF-EDM process economically and environmentally using the modified non-dominated neighbor immune algorithm (M-NNIA) method. Compared to the minimum outputs of the experimental results, the optimal solutions of the E W R , S E C , and machining noise were significantly decreased, by 18.30%, 61.43%, and 20.95%, respectively. Therefore, it can be concluded from the above research that the proposed hybrid MF-EDM technique offers significant advantages and potential for applications in the sustainable manufacturing field. Graphical abstract Image 1 Highlights • A sustainable technique, magnetic field assisted EDM, is proposed to reduce energy consumption and environmental hazards. • Electrode wear rate, energy consumption, machining noise of MF-EDM processing Ti6Al4V were completely investigated. • Optimal parameter combinations were obtained through optimizing MF-EDM process economically and environmentally by M-NNIA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, carbon emissions produced by coal consumption have raised concerns around the world, but the carbon emissions associated with coal production should also be considered. As China's second-largest province for coal production, it is of extreme importance around the whole country for small and medium-sized coal enterprises in Inner Mongolia to achieve low-carbon transition. In this paper, we apply the IPAT equation to analyze the relationships among environmental impact, population, affluence and technology. The results of the analysis show that technological innovation can make an environmental impact or can cause pollutant emissions of a unit GDP to decline. Technological innovation is viewed as an avenue for environmental improvement, and corporate entities are key players in the environmental improvement. This equation can also be used indirectly on the micro-scale, for example, to determine the directions of development of enterprises and encourage the enterprises to achieve low-carbon transition as soon as possible. Selecting the example of a surface coal mine in Inner Mongolia (China) under the framework of cleaner production and the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ), cleaner production options helping to reduce carbon emissions were proposed and implemented. Through the implementation of the options, carbon emissions of the coal mine were reduced by approximately 4%. Contributing cleaner production options for reducing carbon emissions mainly include increasing the efficiency of energy usage, substitution of environmentally friendly materials, optimization of process controls and changing process technologies. The results obtained in this paper can not only provide a decision-making foundation for the local governments when they invest in carbon reduction projects but also play an exemplary role for other similar enterprises to reduce carbon emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging economies like China, India, and Mexico are becoming the world's manufacturing leaders through the engagement in offshoring production activities. In achieving this status, however, they have met with difficult environmental issues. This paper features an analysis of industry-level panel data to examine the link between different offshoring tasks in China and carbon dioxide emissions. Through this analysis, the environmental effects of offshored production are addressed. Specifically an input–output model is presented, thereby quantifying offshored production tasks in China. The results show that iron and steel, nonferrous metals (IS) and chemicals (CH) generate the most carbon dioxide during production of processed goods. Additionally, electrical machinery (EM) and general machinery (GM) generate a higher amount of carbon dioxide during production of parts and components. The results also show that those industries characterized by higher energy consumption have higher carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions induced by offshoring. Given these results, it seems that any solutions geared towards reducing the energy consumption of entire manufacturing industries would be useful. Furthermore, the results of the analyses presented here indicate that China would be responsible for working with developed countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through cooperative environmental regulation. A globalization perspective is adopted to offer unique insight into the environmental issues faced by China. The results of this paper would provide quantified, actionable information for formulating practical industrial policies geared towards reducing carbon dioxide leakage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often difficult to determine the effects of policies at a sectoral level in the overlapping domains of pollution control and energy conservation, making it difficult to consider co-benefits of energy conservation and air pollution reduction and tensions. In China, the industry sector contributes much more carbon and pollution emissions than other sectors. In this paper, Baoshan District (BSD), one of the most important industrial zones in the Shanghai metropolis, is used as a case study to illustrate the situation and to provide information to assess the effectiveness of environmental sustainable development policies in industries. The policies resulting from China's Eleventh Five-year Plan (FYP) are considered at the level of BSD. In particular, the result of implementing local policies of air pollution control and energy are analysed at BSD. Three indicator systems are adopted for quantitatively and qualitatively evaluating energy saving and air pollution reduction achieved by technical, structural and management measures in industrial enterprises of BSD. Analysis made in the paper shows that the co-benefits of pollution cutting and energy conservation have been achieved at certain scopes and degrees in the industry sector in BSD, e.g. SO 2 and Particulate Matter (PM) were reduced by 35.1% and 7.7% respectively, and the energy density was cut by 26.7%. Due to existing barriers of the lack of co-planning and co-operations in the process of designing and implementing the policies, and the overlooking the leakage of emissions in the whole project area, the overall co-benefits cannot be achieved effectively in BSD. Recommendations are made for future detailed studies of this or similar districts to develop an indicator system of co-benefits to help demonstrate the advantages of joint planning and policies for co-benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changing people's behaviour in relation to energy consumption will be one of the most important challenges in the near future. We analyzed the determinants behind individuals' decisions to adopt curtailment behaviour or to purchase energy saving products. Using data from 213 university students, we explored the influence of personal capabilities and moral norms, along with trust in information on energy saving actions provided by different entities on two energy saving behaviours. The results of the statistical model emphasise how personal norms and trust in information provided by private companies, on the one hand, and family and friends, on the other, strongly influence the adoption of energy saving actions and curtailment behaviours. The paper reveals the pivotal role of private companies in developing the market demand for energy-saving products by providing credible and scientifically-based information on environmental performance. The paper also contributes to strengthening the reliability of value-belief-norm theory and emphasizes the role of trust in information as a contextual factor that influences the adoption of a pro-environmental behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout industrial practice, the problem is that of identifying a suitable holistic approach connecting Cleaner Production, Total Site Integration, and Energy Efficiency Optimization. The combination of all the before mentioned concepts is believed to be crucial for comprehensive assessment of the energy and environmental issues within a company. Various case studies are included within this paper regarding the implementations of cleaner production principles, energy audit performance, pinch analysis and various optimisation techniques' calculations. Several energy audits of industrial processes within the dairy, ceramic, metal processing and meat processing industries, services such as laundries and of public buildings were carried out in order to find possibilities for increasing the overall energy efficiencies of industrial processes, buildings and energy systems. On the bases of the results and the knowledge obtained from the projects mentioned in the paper, a Total Site – Cleaner Production – Energy Efficiency – Optimisation approach is proposed which enables gradual research, development and integration of Cleaner production, Energy Auditing and Optimisation combined within novel optimisation methods and its concepts. The main objective of the research was the use of analysis regarding industrial practices when developing a holistic Total Site – Cleaner Production – Energy Efficiency – Optimisation approach for supporting industrial needs during the optimisation of energy demand. This novel approach consists of three phases that include within each one the traditional Total Site Integration, Cleaner Production and Energy Efficiency – Optimization methods with a proposed novel structure for addressing the energy and environmental categories within industry. This novel approach could generate greater efficiency due to combining the different methods and consequently having a higher more positive impact on the environment. The scientific added value is demonstrated through the combination of Total Site, Cleaner Production and Energy Efficiency Optimization approaches as a comprehensive unit and by the proposal of this novel procedure for the implementation of Total Site – Cleaner Production – Energy Efficiency – Optimisation approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, several technologies and management strategies are proposed for upgrading wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in order to improve sludge stabilization or minimize sludge production. In order to make sure that this leads to overall improvements, their techno-economic and environmental performance has to be carefully evaluated. In response to this, the techno-economic and environmental performance was assessed for a considered model reference WWTP upgraded with separate treatment and disposal for primary and secondary sludge to provide guidance to research, policy and investment efforts. This paper departs in an experimental campaign carried out within the EU project “ROUTES” and describes an assessment of an upgrade of a WWTP, involving wet oxidation of primary sludge and thermophilic anaerobic digestion (integrated with thermal hydrolysis pre-treatment) for secondary sludge. The reference plant and the upgrade implied different disposal routes for the resulting sludges: incineration for the stabilized sludge deriving from the reference WWTP; agricultural land application for the secondary stabilized sludge from the upgraded plant and landfilling for the solid residue deriving from the wet oxidation process (as non-hazardous waste). The mass balance carried out for both reference and upgraded WWTPs showed a reduction of total sludge production (up to 45%) for the upgraded WWTP. The additional energy demand of the upgraded solution (+22.4 Wh/(PE d), PE: population equivalent) was partially balanced by the electric energy produced by combined heat and power unit installed in the upgraded WWTP (−18.08 Wh/(PE d)). The integrated assessment showed that the upgraded solution, although resulting in an increase of WWTP technical complexity, may contribute to environmental and economic advantages. The paper provides guidance in terms of which aspects need a more thorough evaluation when this upgrade is considered in real cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the environmental impacts of drill and blast tunnelling by life cycle assessment. In order to understand the potential of cleaner tunnelling, this paper also analysis the influence of tunnel length and size on pollutant emissions. The excavation practices of rock tunnel in Norway over past 20 years are used to estimate material, equipment and energy consumption. The background data are drawn out from various databases in the Simapro software. The results indicate that: 1) the most important contributor to the climate change and terrestrial eco-toxicity impacts are the loading and hauling process. Its relative contribution also increases when the tunnel becomes bigger or longer. 2) The drilling and blasting process is the dominate contributor to the human toxicity, photochemical oxidant formation, particulate matter formation and terrestrial acidification impacts. The relative influence of this process, however, slightly decreases when tunnels become bigger or longer. 3) The three main sources for all impacts are explosives, diesel and electricity. Therefore, a significant potential of environmental impacts reduction could be reached by optimising drilling and blasting operation to reduce explosive consumption, and by improving renewable energy sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies include four stages to assess the environmental impact of a product or process. These four stages are scope definition, life cycle inventory (LCI), life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and interpretation of results. Data collection for the LCI requires substantial effort and may be considered the most critical phase of a LCA, as poor data availability and inconsistency of data may lead to unrealistic results and conclusions. In machine tools, this inventory definition effort is amplified by the inherent complexity of machine tools and their operational behaviour alternatives. This paper describes a LCI method for machine tools providing a new procedure, which improves the transparency and consistency of LCA data. The method is partially based on the developments and strategies described in the draft standard ISO/DIS 14955-1. In this paper, a detailed description of the new method is presented along with the demonstration of its applicability by its implementation in two different manufacturing cases. One of the cases involves the manufacturing of an aeronautic part, while the other case relates to a part manufactured for the household sector. The environmental impact of these two parts, which are produced by a traditional process and by an alternative process is considered, thus it is demonstrated that LCI method as part of a LCA, can be used as a decision support tool to assess the lifecycle impact of the manufacturing of a product using machine tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The material processing industry has to deal with material and energy reduction targets, and such a need becomes more and more urgent when future energy and resource consumption predictions are considered. The optimization of machining operations has conventionally been performed by identifying the range of process parameters that lead to the maximum efficiency, which are generally defined on the basis of maximum productivity and minimum cost criteria. Cost-based models are part of the industrial cultural background, while the emerging environmental impact analysis has not yet become fully established. The paper describes an approach that is aimed at the integration of system-level models for the environmental and economic assessment of machining. Process time, cost, energy demand and carbon dioxide emissions are assumed as optimization targets. The dry and wet turning of Ti-48Al-2Cr-2Nb and Ti-6Al-4V alloys, while varying the process parameters, is considered as a case study. The results highlight that the range of process parameters that allow the maximum process efficiency to be achieved is influenced by material machinability, and that a holistic approach to process optimization appears to be a key task which is worth further research efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to analyse and compare the environmental performances of the most widely used cooking appliances (the induction hob vs. the gas hob) considering a typical Italian scenario in terms of food, family and social habits. Cooking appliances are subject to energy labelling, and they represent the most impacting system inside households. This study was performed in accordance with the international standard, ISO 14040/14044, by using an attributional Life Cycle Assessment (aLCA). The functional unit is defined as the “preparation of a complete homemade meal (lunch) for 20 years consumed by a four-member family in Italy”. This study shows the dominance, in terms of environmental impact, of the induction hob with respect to the gas hob for most of the selected midpoint indicators. In particular, the induction hob accounts for more than 60% of the climate change and ozone depletion impact categories and more than 70% of the metal depletion category. The same trend is also noticed in the end-point categories (human health, ecosystem qualities and resources) and for the Cumulative Energy Demand indicator. Based on the experimental evidence of this work, the use phase is the most important due to the different energy carriers (natural gas vs. electrical energy). This finding is the result of the nature of the energy carrier (the electricity grid mix) in the Italian scenario, which is mainly based on non-renewable sources. In addition, concerning the production phase of the two appliances, the induction hob shows a relevant dominance in terms of the human toxicity and metal depletion impact categories due to the use of rare metals and coppers in the cooktop part manufacturing. The outcomes obtained from this study may be used by household manufacturers to improve the performance and design solutions of their appliances as well as by end users in their selection of cooking technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, carbon emissions reduction is a very important challenge all over the world. Improvement of human capital helps to reduce carbon emissions. This paper studies the long- and short-term effects of human capital on carbon emissions in Pakistan from 1971 to 2014. We employ an autoregressive distributed lag model and the vector error correction model to analyze the co-integration and direction of causalities between human capital and carbon emissions, respectively. Results show that a significant long-term relationship exists between human capital and carbon emissions. Improvement of human capital will reduce carbon emissions without decreasing economic growth. Granger causality test results describe the bidirectional causality that exists between human capital and carbon emissions in the long term and no causality in the short term. Human capital and economic growth have feedback effects in the long term and no effect in the short term. The results of this study show that improvement in human capital through education will help carbon emissions reduction in the long term. This study will help policymakers devise a comprehensive strategy to reduce carbon emissions through improvement of human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a belief that sustainability-certified coffee production helps increase economic benefits to farmers and reduces negative environmental impacts. However, the international empirical evidence is not conclusive. Also, there is a lack of empirical evidence for Vietnam - the world's second-largest coffee producing country. This paper provides the first empirical examination of the differences in eco-efficiency between conventional and sustainability-certified coffee-growing farms in Vietnam. Data of 726 farms in Vietnam over three crop years from 2012/13 to 2014/15 are analysed. Environmental pressures measured by the level of consumption of nitrogen, phosphorus, irrigation water, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and land are investigated in relation to the value-added of coffee production. Empirical results show that in each crop year, coffee farms could reduce environmental pressures by more than 50% while holding the value-added of outputs constant. On average, sustainability-certified farms are found to be more eco-efficient than conventional farms, but efficiency differences appear to converge over time. This convergence may be due to positive externalities of certification, less compliance to certification standards or the combination of these effects. Higher eco-efficiency levels are also correlated with farms located in higher elevation locations, having wind-break trees, and using drip or spray irrigation systems. These should be taken into account as policy options to sustain and improve the positive effects of certification in regard to both economic and environmental aspects, rather than rapid expansion of certified production. Further, one could incorporate ecological and environmental dimensions and welfare into eco-efficiency models and a stochastic production environment may be a useful modeling approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is to evaluate the energy consumption and environmental impact of rubberized asphalt pavement during the life cycle. Reducing the environmental influences of the highway infrastructure has received the increasing attentions recently. Application of crumb rubber in asphalt pavements overcomes the used tires disposal problem and achieves materials savings and environmental benefits, due to the reduction of raw material and extension of pavement service life. In addition, rubberized asphalt production is a highly energy consuming process due to a higher mixing temperature. However, the warm mixing technology can lower the mixing temperature of rubberized asphalt mixture, leading to approximately 20–25% of fuel savings. Moreover, the consumed energy of rubberized asphalt during maintenance phase is lower than that of conventional asphalt. In addition, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the production and construction of rubberized asphalt mixtures are similar to those from hot mix asphalt, but their emissions of CO and CH 4 are much lower. Meanwhile, the noise reduction is an environmentally friendly benefit. The leachate from asphalts used wet and dry-process crumb rubber modifiers (CRM) does not pose a measurable threat to the environment. Rubberized asphalt technology as a green technology in term of lowering GHG emissions, saving energy and raw material and reducing noise level of pavement should be widely used to achieve environmental sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the results of the experimental research into maximum concentrations of anthropogenic emissions from typical brown low-rank coal combustion in the traditional pulverized state as well as from the combustion of coal-water slurries with or without petrochemicals. The temperature of fuel heating in the model combustion chamber varied in the range from 500 °C to 1000 °C. The relative values of concentrations of anthropogenic emissions are calculated with due consideration of key energy characteristics of the fuel: combustion heat, specific mass of the fuel component in a mixture, specific energy obtained per fuel cost. The findings illustrate considerable differences not only between the concentrations of the analyzed anthropogenic emissions, but also between the times, during which these concentrations remained high. In addition, we compare the boundary conditions (i.e. borderline or minimum sustainable ignition temperatures) necessary and sufficient for the combustion of the fuel compositions under study and analyze fuel heating and ignition delay times. Special aspects are determined of the environmentally friendly combustion of coals as part of coal-water slurries with or without petrochemicals at different temperatures: from minimum temperatures usually observed at the beginning of sustainable ignition to those typical of small- or medium-sized power plants. Concentrations of the most hazardous oxides of sulfur and nitrogen produced during coal combustion are 3–5 times higher than during coal-water slurry combustion. The differences between these parameters for coals and coal-water slurries containing petrochemicals are less noticeable. Nevertheless, the emissions of nitrogen and sulfur oxides from the combustion of coal-water slurries containing petrochemicals are at least 30–60% lower than from the combustion of coals. Taking into account the cost of the components of coal-water slurries containing petrochemicals, as well as the combustion heat and the concentrations of anthropogenic emissions, specific indicators show that coal-water slurries containing petrochemicals are more efficient than coals or the coal-water slurries without petrochemicals. If filter cakes are used as the main component of coal-water slurries containing petrochemicals, the specific indicators of such fuels grow 5–6 times higher (or even 10 times higher in special cases) versus pure coals. The research findings show that the temperature monitoring in the combustion chamber is obligatory to provide high ecological indicators. At temperatures below 1000 °C, it is possible to provide stable combustion of fuels and significantly reduce emissions as compared to the traditional high-temperature regimes (above 1000 °C). Thus, temperatures lower than 1000 °C are more rational. Finally, the conditions for the optimal coal fuel combustion are presented in terms of the environmental friendliness, energy and cost efficiency, as well as fire and explosion safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An urgent challenge in the manufacturing industry is increasing efficiency while decreasing energy consumption and environmental impact. Past studies addressing these issues have mainly focused on tool path optimization only considering machining efficiency. In this paper, we present a methodology to optimize the tool path for high efficiency, low energy consumption and carbon footprint in milling process. Firstly, the description and influencing factors of tool path are introduced. Then, a multi objective tool path optimization model with maximum machining efficiency, minimum energy consumption and carbon emission is proposed. Furthermore, the solution of the proposed model is introduced, which including two steps, one is the calculation of the number of cutter contact points (CCP), the other is using adaptive dynamic GA to optimize the connection sequence and ways of each CCP. Finally, the effectiveness and practicability of the method are verified by the machining experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to green product development by identifying the green products with the highest potential for growth in a country. To address our aim, we use the concept of product proximity and product space and, borrowing from the results of recent studies on complexity economics, we advance that the green products with the highest potential for growth among all green products in a given country are those being in close proximity to the products a country produces with high Relative Comparative Advantage (RCA). We test this hypothesis performing a regression analysis. We build the product space for 141 different countries for the years between 2005 and 2013 and for each country we compute the maximum proximity of each green product to the products with high RCA (i.e., the proximity of the product source of competitive advantage closest to the green product considered). Results confirm that green products with high maximum proximity to the products with high RCA had the highest growth. So doing, we contribute to the literature by providing a new application of the product space as a policy making tool for green development. We also provide several applications of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Product life cycle (PLC) is a series of life cycle phases which a product will go through in its lifetime. There are several issues with the life cycle of a product when looked from the environmental impact perspective. These issues impact resource scarcity, cause adverse effects on the environment and loss of embodied energy as waste. Some of the potential solutions to these issues, as proposed in literature, are to carry out various End-of-Life (EoL) recovery processes on products including their recycling, reuse and remanufacturing. These EoL recovery processes help in reclaiming materials, components and sub-assemblies from used products and make them available for new products, or extend life of the products as a whole. In order to efficiently carry out these EoL recovery processes, a pre-requisite is disassembly. Disassembly processes are closely related to the design specifications of a product. Therefore, designers should incorporate disassembly considerations into a product during its early design stage itself in order to make disassembly of the product easier when it reaches the EoL phase. Therefore, the objective of the work reported in this paper is to support designers in evaluating some of the major factors influencing disassembly, both individually and together, so as to assess the trade-off among these in an integrated manner during early design stages of the product's life cycle, thereby helping designers compare and select alternative designs of a product that have better disassembly potential at the EoL phase. An Integrated Framework has been developed to support designers in the above evaluation process. For practical application, the Framework has been implemented into a computer based tool called IdeAssemble, and the usefulness of the tool is tested with a design experiment. The results indicate that the tool supported designers in decision making on alternative designs better than when designers evaluated without the tool. IdeAssemble tool could be used as early as during the embodiment design stage of a product when information on materials, geometry, disassembly tools and types of disassembly task are available to the designer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approximately 30–40% of the total natural resources that are used in industrialized countries are exploited by the building sector, and almost 40% of the world’s consumption of materials converts into the built environment. Thus, improving the environmental performance of building sector could be crucial for reaching the sustainability of urban environment. The main scope of this paper is to highlight the interest of building renovation as an adequate measure for improving building environmental performance in term of emergy and identify processes that cause significant environmental stress on a local ecosystem. To enable the comparison of all phases and processes for the studied system, an emergy evaluation was performed. A multi-apartment building located in the city of Šabac, Serbia, was used as case study. Several building renovation scenarios were considered, which include different measures for building envelope thermal performance improvements, as well as installation of local renewable energy heat production system. Different renovation timelines were also compared. The overall results showed that 68% of the emergy flow is caused during the building operation phase, 24% during the construction phase and only 8% during the end-of-life phase. All renovation measures proved to be beneficial from the environmental point of view, and the use of additional materials and resources to conduct renovation measures considered did not have a negative impact on the building overall environmental performance. The effect of conducting renovation measures after the first decade of building lifetime improved the overall building environmental performance by almost 50% when compared to the same renovation measures conducted in the last decade of the lifetime (for all measures considered). Finally, based on the emergy indices analysis, it can be concluded that the application of building renovation measures improves the overall building environmental performance, enables higher efficiency in indigenous resource use, and lowers the pressure on a local ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Sustainability and sustainable production is nowadays a wide research field due the urgency of reducing environmental burdens of industrial production. Sustainable manufacturing issues are widely investigated too. In particular, due to the relevance such issues assume for automotive and aeronautical industry, the investigation of sheet metal forming processes sustainability is worth studying and, within this research fields, a certain lack of knowledge is still present. Many studies have been presented concerning the evaluation and reduction of environmental burdens in manufacturing. In this paper, the authors focus on sheet metal forming and aim to investigate both the efficient use of materials and process energy saving. The paper presents a sensitivity analysis which is based on experimental and numerical data. A traditional forming process (stamping) is numerically analyzed to determine process energy and also the amount of material utilized for the initial blank. An experimental campaign was instead developed on an incremental forming operation and energy measurements were obtained. Both the processes were carried out using two different aluminum alloys and two different sheet thickness values. Furthermore, two final component geometries were investigated for both of the processes. The analysis reached the conclusion that the investigated processes are quite different to each other as their environmental impact is concerned since both the required process energy and the possible material savings are rather different for the two operations. The obtained results allowed to formulate some comparison guidelines as sustainability of the investigated operations is concerned. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: When performing life cycle assessment (LCA) assumptions regarding the energy use are often decisive for the outcome. In this paper, current approaches of identifying marginal electricity and heat technologies for consequential LCAs are challenged. The identification of marginal energy technologies is examined from three angles: The marginal electricity technology is identified in Danish historical and potential future energy systems. The methods of identifying and using marginal electricity and heat technologies in key LCA studies are analysed. Finally, the differences in applying energy system analysis and assuming one marginal technology are illustrated, using waste incineration with energy substitution as a case. The main problem with the current approach is the use of one single marginal technology. It is recommended to use fundamentally different affected technologies and identify these in several possible and fundamentally different future scenarios. If possible, the affected technologies should also be identified based on energy system analyses considering the technical characteristics of the technologies involved. Some results in this paper may be applicable to other affected technologies than energy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The operational energy use is responsible for an important share of the life cycle environmental impact of buildings. In the national LCA method for buildings in Belgium, as in most environmental impact assessments, operational energy use and associated impacts are kept unchanged throughout the 60-year service life of the building. The energy mix will however change over the building life cycle and this will influence the impact of the operational energy use. The overall aim of this paper is to analyse how long term temporal changes in the electricity mix in Belgium might influence the life cycle environmental impact of buildings using an attributional approach. This paper focuses on three aspects. First, it analyses future scenarios for the Belgian electricity mix as it is uncertain how it will change over time. Second, the environmental impact of these changes in the mix is evaluated using the Belgian life cycle impact assessment method for buildings considering a broad set of indicators. Finally, it is investigated how these changes in the electricity mix during the building service life can be included in the attributional life cycle assessment and how this influences the overall environmental impact of the operational phase. Within this study, three dynamic scenarios are defined and compared with the static approach, i.e. current electricity mix remains unchanged during the next 60 years. The analysis reveals differences in the building life cycle environmental impact of −29% and +34% compared to the current static approach, while differences in the life cycle carbon footprint range from −59% to +33%. This highlights the importance of considering changes in the electricity mix in LCA of buildings and in considering a broad range of environmental indicators instead of solely focussing on greenhouse gas emissions when making policy decisions. In general, a major challenge for the next decade seems to be phasing out nuclear power, without increasing the environmental impact of the electricity mix. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eco-design that addresses the consumption of resources and energy, as well as pollution emissions from a product life-cycle perspective, is an effective way to solve environmental problems. However, the optimal eco-design solution is hardly generated in the conceptual design stage due to the complex association of the life cycle design information. To this end, this paper proposes a new eco-design model based on a life cycle integrated framework to effectively manage life cycle information in the conceptual design phase. In this work, (1) The life cycle-oriented model is proposed to integrate the product design information in terms of a systematic association mechanism between function, structure, material and process to construct the design space. (2) A life cycle design scenario-based similarity matching method is developed to support the environmental impact assessment of design options in the design space. (3) A hope tree-based heuristic search algorithm with the principle of minimizing environmental impact is proposed to efficiently obtain the eco-design solution. An application for eco-design of the lift equipment is given to demonstrate the capability of the proposed method. The results show that the environmental impact of the generated eco-design solution is improved by 19.48%, and the material and use stage has the highest environmental impact which accounts for 39.59% and 47.74% respectively. This work provides a targeted method for guiding designers to implement eco-design in the conceptual design phase through the life cycle. [Display omitted] • An integrated life cycle model is proposed to express the design information of function, structure, material and process. • A scenario-based similarity matching method is proposed to acquire the LCI for the design options. • Hope tree-based algorithm is used to efficiently obtain the optimal eco-design solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As economies in the European Union are ultimately driven by the final consumption of citizens, policy makers need proper indicators to monitor the environmental impacts associated with this consumption. These indicators can be constructed using two different approaches, each having their strengths and limitations. The top-down approach is based on environmentally extended input–output analysis and quantifies the environmental impacts of product groups and services provided by industrial sectors. The bottom-up approach is based on Life Cycle Assessment and quantifies the environmental impacts of a selection of representative products. The bottom-up approach has already been used by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre to calculate the impacts of the final consumption per capita in the European Union in 2006. In this paper, we calculated these impacts through a top-down approach, using the Exiobase database. The covered household activities are food, consumer goods, mobility, shelter and services. The goal was to calculate all the impact categories recommended by the International Reference Life Cycle Data handbook, and compare both approaches. However, the categories ionizing radiation, toxicity and abiotic resource depletion could not be included, as some relevant emissions and resources are not available in Exiobase. To study more profoundly the impact on natural resources, we added the Cumulative Exergy Extraction From the Natural Environment to the impact assessment. When comparing both approaches, it can be concluded that there is a considerable shift in the results. This means that the information obtained by a top-down approach could supplement the information base for policy support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the energy intensity of residential rainwater tanks and attempts to assess the implications of this energy consumption on the merits of these systems as a whole. The use of decentralised water supply systems has been encouraged in urban areas through legislation and state based incentives in many parts of the world. However, there has been a lack of empirical field research detailing the end-use energy consumption of these systems, and consequently a lack of understanding surrounding the impact their energy consumption has on their overall viability as a water supply source. This research examines high resolution, end-use level water and energy data from an internally plumbed rain water tank system (IPRWTS) monitoring study recently concluded in South-East Queensland, Australia. This data is then used to inform life cycle simulation and analyses. The findings indicate that the IPRWTS configurations in the case-study location have marginal cost-benefit and that significant cost differences arise in identical systems, due to pump performance factors. An unexpected finding was that in nearly half of the monitored homes, pumps were consuming large amounts of energy in frequent re-pressurisation of pipe systems, leading to increased electricity costs for householders. Analysis demonstrates that pump selection and the end-uses plumbed into the IPRWTS are important considerations in order to optimise cost-benefit. Quantification of these relationships gives homeowners, builders and policymakers the opportunity to improve decision making when implementing IPRWTS in residential homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been a growing concern over the environmental impact of traditional manufacturing, especially in terms of energy consumption and related emissions of carbon dioxide. Besides the adoption of new equipment, production scheduling could play a key role in reducing the total energy consumption of a manufacturing plant. In this paper, we explicitly introduce the objective of minimizing energy consumption into a typical production scheduling model, i.e., the job shop scheduling problem, based on a machine speed scaling framework. To solve this bi-objective optimization problem, we propose a multi-objective genetic algorithm incorporated with two problem-specific local improvement strategies. These local improvement procedures aim to enhance the solution quality by utilizing the mathematical models of two restricted subproblems derived from the original problem. Comprehensive computational experiments have been carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed solution approach. The results presented in this work may be useful for future research on energy-efficient production scheduling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of building a sustainable future by reducing fossil energy consumption with the objective of minimizing detrimental climate change, particular attention was given to minimizing the complexity, energy consumption and environmental impact of microstructures manufacturing. In this work a new fast-fabrication process for microelectromechanical systems is presented. The name of this new fabrication process is KISSES for Keep It Short, Simple and Environmentally Sustainable . Combining classical deposition techniques (with common metals and polymers and with less common materials such as tree resins, paper and glue), release techniques and a computer numerical control cutting machine, a two-dimensional fabrication process has been developed and the first steps of three-dimensional microfabrication have also been initiated. In order to test this new process, various test structures have been fabricated and tested. These include resonant structures with electronic actuation and electronic measurement, having good quality factors for plastic-based devices, and high-resolution masks (∼10 μm) which can be used, for example, for screen-printing techniques. Finally, a temperature sensor and a viscosity sensor have been designed, fabricated with the KISSES process and characterized. These devices exhibit, respectively, a limit of detection of 0.112 °C and a viscosity estimation error of less than 10% for viscous silicone oils from 5 cP to 50 cP. These characterizations of the microdevices show that the proposed process provides a simple method that is capable of fabricating devices that function with high performance. The aim of developing a rapid, simple and environmentally sustainable process has therefore been demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the environmental impact of the injection molding process by carrying out a life cycle assessment. A review of how EcoInvent's Life Cycle Inventory database characterizes this process has been conducted, and a new methodology based on that analysis has been carried out. Aspects such as the infrastructure of the factory or waste treatment are part of the environmental impact of the injection molding process, but the most significant factor is electricity consumption; therefore, electricity consumption measurements of the process have been performed. This environmental analysis has been applied to the processing of several parts made of high-density polyethylene, which have been characterized by measuring the electricity consumption. As a consequence of this work, it has been proven that electricity consumption can be used as an injection molding machine selection criteria, from an environmental standpoint, as it produces the highest environmental burden of the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluations of the environmental sustainability of lifestyles and consumption practices have been taking centre stage in European research projects in recent years. Considerable work has been undertaken on the environmental assessment of food consumption patterns, and several analytical tools and methodologies have been proposed to quantify the environmental burden of production and consumption. Claims have been made in several international reports that the Mediterranean diet offers the best consumption pattern in terms of both the environment and health, but there has never been a specific assessment of the Mediterranean diet in comparison with other food consumption behaviours. This paper explores the environmental burdens of the Mediterranean diet applied in the Italian context. The environmental performance of this diet is compared to the national average diet in Italy, as well as to two empirical scenarios of healthy and vegetarian food consumption patterns. The environmental burdens of the different diets are assessed in terms of their energy consumption and their carbon footprint using a hybrid IOA-LCA method. This method considers the positive aspects of both bottom-up methodologies (e.g. life cycle assessment – LCA) and top-down methodologies (e.g. input–output analysis – IOA). The results allow several comparisons to be made between the different diets. When compared with the national average diet, the Mediterranean diet reveals an improvement in environmental performance of 95.75 MJ (2.44%) and 27.46 kg CO 2 equivalent (6.81%) per family. The best overall environmental performance can be found with the vegetarian diet in which energy consumption is 3.14% lower and the carbon footprint 12.7% lower than the national average diet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manufacturing accounts for 37% of the global energy demand. Few researchers have conducted a holistic energy assessment of factories where energy beyond production equipment is accounted for, and environmental impact assessments of machine tool manufacturing are even more limited. All the while, factories need to understand where energy is used, how to allocate it to their products, and where savings lie. This paper quantifies the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of a machine tool manufacturer located in Iga, Japan. Six plants within the factory are investigated whose primary operations range from precision machining to product assembly. Furthermore, a model of the energy consumption of each plant's HVAC system is developed and used to evaluate the environmental impacts and operating costs at alternative sites in China, Germany, and the US. Location was found to have a significant influence on the environmental impacts and resulted in changes in the annual energy consumption relative to the Iga baseline that ranged from −10% to 8%. Additionally, opportunities for improvement were identified by comparing the energy intensities of the equipment within the plants to industrial averages. Since the plants in this study use widespread manufacturing processes and varied climates were investigated, the methods and strategies that were developed can be extended to other discrete manufacturing facilities to identify opportunities for cleaner production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information & Communication Technology (ICT) industry meets great expansion in China, in production as in diffusion, as the derived environmental impact becomes an increasing key issue in concern of Chinese policy makers. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is widely used tool for measuring ICT products' environmental impact then for estimating relative legislative measures' efficiency. Consider the vast territory with highly centralized of power in China, this paper introduces the geographical factor into the study on the environmental impact according to different categories of ICT product. From this article, the geographically unbalanced development of ICT industry together with disproportional distribution of energy consumption over different phases of ICT products' life cycle may eventually contributes to the inconsistent results on environmental benefits or loss in different regions, according to the concept of LCA. In ignoring the fact that environmental balance varies from one region to another, according to the product's category and how the LCA result is distributed over different phases of life cycle, there could be eventual inefficiency of China's environmental policy-making in subject of ICT industry's environmental impact for the past, today and tomorrow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reduction in the use of raw materials and the spread of energy efficient processes and components are necessary from both the economic and the environmental viewpoints. This paper presents the design of an innovative multi-functional agricultural machinery able to integrate three separate traditional implements used for hay raking, hay baling and bale wrapping, i.e. hay rake, round baler and bale wrapper machines, with the aim of speeding up the harvesting operations and reducing both the energy consumption and the global environmental impact. A comparative analysis about the adoption of the traditional implements and the new multi-functional machinery is reported. Particularly, the reduction in both the fuel consumption (−32%), the human labor (−66.7%) is discussed together with a differential environmental analysis of the proposed system and the traditional implements. To meet such a last purpose, the study adopts the life cycle assessment methodology carefully quantifying the impact indicators for three different categories, i.e. human health, ecosystem quality and resource depletion. The results highlight a global environmental impact reduction of about 35%. The proposed system represents an effective and competitive improvement to ease and speed the haymaking process and to reduce the environmental impact of such a key farmer activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydropower is considered as one of the most convenient and popular renewable energy technologies and its capacity is growing rapidly throughout the world. Its rapid deployment also comes up with various environmental issues which cannot be neglected at a glance. Previous studies had imposed questions about its sustainable nature and now it becomes important to think about the sustainability of hydropower projects so that the technology would grow effectively in future. This paper reviews the status of research on environmental assessment of hydropower projects. The factors which affect the environmental impacts associated with hydropower generation are also explored. It is found that environmental impact assessment of hydropower projects must be performed considering all aspects and factors which affects the environmental impacts associated with hydropower projects. Most of the previous studies are focused on the estimation of GHG emissions so it is necessary to give emphasis on other environmental impacts like acidification, land use, energy consumption etc. and also consider biomass decomposition in submerged land. In fact it is not worthy to predict the sustainability of hydropower projects without considering almost all biophysical impacts associated with them. The paper also compares large and small hydro considering all sustainability assessment factors. Small hydropower projects are considered as a good alternative to control the problems associated with large hydropower projects but still many studies found that so many issues are associated with small hydro as well which cannot be neglected completely. Image 1 • Factors that influence the environmental impacts of a hydropower plant are summarized. • Current status of research related to sustainability assessment of hydropower projects is discussed. • Comparison among Large and Small Hydropower in respect of sustainability is provided. • Improvements required in the future research in order to obtain more realistic and useful results are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Product lifespans of electric and electronic products are in decline, with detrimental environmental consequences. This research maps the environmental impacts of refrigerators and laptops against their increasing energy efficiency over time, and finds that product life extension is the preferred strategy in both cases: refrigerators bought in 2011 should be used for 20 years instead of 14, and laptops for at least 7 years instead of 4. Designers however lack expertise to design for product life extension (through longer product life, refurbishment, remanufacturing) and product recycling. The paper explores a range of product life extension strategies and concludes that tailored approaches are needed. One of the main research challenges is to determine when to apply which product life extension strategy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Due to the urgent need for global reductions of environmental impacts, many studies have been carried out in different fields. One of the most important sectors is manufacturing, particularly due to the high power consumption of the production machines of manufacturing plants. This paper focuses on the efficiency of the machining centres and provides an experimental approach to evaluate and optimize the process parameters in order to minimize the power consumption in a milling process performed on a modern CNC machine. The parameters evaluated are the cutting speed, the axial and radial depth of cut, and the feed rate. A lubrication strategy has been chosen based on previous studies: all the tests have been carried out using dry lubrication in order to eliminate the environmental impact due to lubricant without substantially affecting the energy consumption. The process has been analyzed using a Response Surface Method in order to obtain a model fit for the fine tuning of the process parameters. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Energy consumption keeps increasing in China's building sector with the constant growth of urban population and people's living standard. In order to achieve co-benefits of reducing energy use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy costs effectively, all respects related to the energy performance in the building sector need to be addressed. Considering the fact that over 80% of total energy use in a building's lifecycle is contributed by the operation stage, the study's focus is put on this stage for well understanding the energy consumption and carbon emissions and exploring the approach to achieve the effectiveness of co-benefits. The energy use in large commercial buildings is 4–6 times higher than residential buildings in China, thus IKEA Xuhui Store as one of large shopping malls in Shanghai is selected as the case study by using the method formed in the study. The outcomes of research show that the benefit of annual 170 MWh of energy use and 150 tons of CO2e reduction as well as the significant economic benefit have been achieved by implementing different measures in IKEA Xuhui Store between 2008 and 2011. Existing investment, technology and capacity barriers to co-benefits approach in a wider consideration of China's building sector are described. The assessment for evaluating co-benefits of cutting energy use and CO2 emissions in the production and demolition stages in a building's lifecycle are also addressed by the paper. However, it is very complicated to make a lifecycle assessment on the overall co-benefits in the building sector because of the complexity and the lack of available data for the research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Reducing energy usage is an essential consideration in sustainable manufacturing. In the past, metal cutting operations have been mainly optimized based on economical and technological considerations without the environmental dimension. It is essential to improve production rate and cutting quality while simultaneously mitigating the effect of manufacture on the environment. This paper presents a multi-objective optimization method based on weighted grey relational analysis and response surface methodology (RSM), which is applied to optimize the cutting parameters in milling process in order to evaluate trade-offs between sustainability, production rate and cutting quality. Three objectives, such as surface roughness, material removal rate and cutting energy, are simultaneously optimized. The parameters evaluated are spindle speed, feed rate, depth of cut and width of cut. The grey relational grade values for the multiple responses are obtained using weighted grey relational analysis. The weighted grey relational analysis is a quantitative method we proposed to determine the weight factors of multiple responses for grey relational analysis. Based on weighted grey relational analysis and RSM, the optimal milling parameters were identified, and the obtained results indicated that width of cut is the most influential parameter. Experiments using Taguchi design method were performed to verify the proposed optimization method and promising results were achieved. The experimental results indicate that the proposed optimization method is a very useful tool for multi-objective optimization of cutting parameters. Moreover, the results also show that low spindle speed cutting is more energy efficient than cutting at initial speed for milling process and the traditional multi-objective optimization does not satisfy the requirement for sustainable machining. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Electric motors are one of the most common electrical components used both in industrial and household applications. In order to reduce world energy consumption and environmental impact, electric motors need to be improved in terms of efficiency and eco-sustainability. For this reason it is necessary to improve environmental consciousness, favouring the application of eco-design guidelines in the design phase, which is the most important stage where “green” solutions can be rapidly ideated, evaluated and optimized. Different aspects have to be concurrently considered in order to achieve a high quality product in a short time to market. In this context, the present paper describes an innovative web-based software platform to configure and simulate customized energy efficient electric motors. The core of the platform is a knowledge-based system which aims to standardize the design process according to the rules which represent the company know-how and best practices. The platform integrates different software tools to support the development from conceptual design to detailed design, and from the configuration of design solutions up to environmental impact assessment and manufacturing cost evaluation. It also provides a collaborative area in order to improve the collaboration among remote users involved in the design process, thanks to the sharing of important design data and models. The presented practical case studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the platform application. The achieved results demonstrate the improvement of the configured solutions in comparison with the traditional adopted motors. The new motors exhibit both a considerable increase in energy efficiency and at the same time relevant improvement in product sustainability combined with acceptable production costs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Lime production is characterized by large emissions of CO2 and by other environmental impacts. In Cuba this industry operates with outdated technology, resulting in low energy and material efficiency and in high environmental impacts. In order to improve the environmental performance of the lime industry in Cuba it is necessary to have an overview of the environmental impacts associated with the production process. This paper quantifies the environmental impacts of lime production in Cuba by means of LCA methodology in a cradle-to-gate evaluation. It also aims at establishing a benchmark for improvement by comparing the environmental impact of this industry in Cuba with a plant in an industrialized country. For the inventory evaluation the process of lime production was divided in five production stages. When necessary, the data was completed with literature sources. For the impact assessment the impacts in the following categories were considered: energy consumption, global warming, human toxicity, photoxidant formation and acidification. Results show that the calcination stage and the consumption of fuel, electricity and limestone are the main contributors to environmental impact of the production process. The economic assessment shows possibilities to improve the environmental performance while achieving cost reductions in the production process. The larger improvements in the environmental performance and cost saving can be achieved by improving the energy efficiency of the calcination stage. This can partially be accomplished with moderate investments. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]