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A safe and effective medical waste transport network is beneficial to control the COVID-19 pandemic and at least decelerate the spread of novel coronavirus. Seldom studies concentrated on a two-phase COVID-19 medical waste transport in the presence of multi-type vehicle selection, sustainability, and infection probability, which is the focus of this paper. This paper aims to identify the priority of sustainable objectives and observe the impacts of multi-phase and infection probability on the results. Thus, such a problem is formulated as a mixed-integer programming model to minimise total potential infection risks, minimise total environmental risks, and maximise total economic benefits. Then, a hybrid solution strategy is designed, incorporating a lexicographic optimisation approach and a linear weighted sum method. A real-world case study from Chongqing is used to illustrate this methodology. Results indicate that the solution strategy guides a good COVID-19 medical waste transport scheme within 1 min. The priority of sustainable objectives is society, economy, and environment in the first and second phases because the total Gap of case No.35 is 3.20%. A decentralised decision mode is preferred to design a COVID-19 medical waste transport network at the province level. Whatever the infection probability is, infection risk is the most critical concern in the COVID-19 medical waste clean-up activities. Environmental and economic sustainability performance also should be considered when infection probability is more than a certain threshold. Funding Agencies|National Natural Science Foundation of China [71904021]; Chunhui Plan of the Ministry of Education of the People?s Republic of China [CQ2019001]; Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing, China [cstc2020jcyj-msxmX0164]; China Scholarship Council [202008500051]; Undergraduate Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Planning Grant [S202111799038, 202111799004]; Graduate Scientific Research and Innovation Foundation of Chongqing [CYS21383, CYS21384, CYS22604, CYS22608]; Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province [2022JJ40455]

Disaster waste management received increasing attention in recent years, but there was no review updating the evolving development after the study of Brown et al. (2011a). To explore how the topics in disaster waste management evolved in recent years and to analyze whether the gaps identified by Brown et al. (2011a) are covered, 82 papers published from 2011 to 2019 were selected from the Scopus database based on the defined process and criteria. This paper systematically examines the disaster waste management research from nine aspects of planning, waste, waste treatment options, environment, economics, social considerations, organizational aspects, legal frameworks and funding. The results suggested that there were no obvious changes or developments in the field of disaster waste management, although a few research gaps have been addressed, such as waste separation, waste quantities, case studies of incineration and waste to energy, direct economic effects, social considerations as well as application of GIS technology. Except for the comparative studies, future directions were suggested by the gaps that persist since Brown et al. (2011a) and the new gaps that were identified in this review. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Funding Agencies|National Natural Science Foundation of China [71672074]; Scientific Research Start-up Foundation for Introduction of Advanced Talents in Chongqing Technology and Business University [1955011]; Research Project of Chongqing Technology and Business University; Twelfth Five-Year Planning Project of Philosophy and Social Science of Guangdong Province [GD15CGL07]

Understanding the global environmental impacts of local consumption is an area of growing interest among policymakers and consumers. By knowing what products comprise urban consumption “hotspots,” municipalities and consumers alike could take deliberate actions to target and discourage consumption of high-impact products. In this paper, a new method for identifying environmental hotspots of consumption is presented. The main methodological advances are the following: i) material flow analysis of urban areas and life cycle assessment are combined; ii) a 16-year time-series of urban consumption data is used for selection of the most suitable representative products and for trend analysis; iii) representative products are selected systematically from consumption data of 1000 product types; iv) representative products are scaled up to represent consumption of the product groups; v) hotspots are identified by simultaneously evaluating six environmental impacts - acidification, climate change, eutrophication (marine and freshwater), photochemical ozone formation, and resource use; vi) for the case study, hotspots are connected to the city's profiles. The method was applied to the Swedish cities Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo and to Sweden in total. Electronics is a hotspot for all the studied areas and all the studied impacts and should be a prioritized product group for action. Fuel is a hotspot shared by all the areas while vehicles is a hotspot in Gothenburg. Meat is a nationwide hotspot, but not for the cities investigated. Gothenburg and Stockholm could collaborate to find effective measures for their common hotspot machinery. Thus, the method can be used to identify hotspots and find which product types could be part of national versus local programs. QC 20190516

Sustainable humanitarian supply chain has a great impact on saving lives, decreasing human suffering and contributing to development. Organizational coordination plays an important role in it, although it is uncommon to be established due to the conflicting interests and expectations. To cope with the problem and achieve the sustainability of humanitarian supply chain, the coordination between private sector and humanitarian organization was further discussed with the help of sustainable principle regarding stakeholder approach. Different from the existing literature that elaborated the drivers and the advantages of coordination, this paper aims to explore the coordination mechanism regarding whether to coordinate, when to adopt the optimal coordinated strategy and how such a strategy can perform well. To analyze the tendency of the coordinated decisions, evolutionary game models concerning traditional and trust mechanisms were developed. Then, computational studies based on hypothetic data were simulated to validate the effectiveness of the proposed model. Results indicated that the coordination decision was affected by coordinated returns and costs, normal returns and extra returns in terms of the traditional mechanism. Several situations in regard to the coordinated decisions were analyzed by adopting evolutionary stable strategies. Moreover, trust had a significantly positive impact on coordination promotion under the support of potential returns and high-level trust. Finally, managerial insights for achieving the sustainable humanitarian supply chain were given from the perspective of organizational coordination and strategy. Funding agencies: National Natural Science Foundation of China [71672074, 71772075]; Twelfth Five-Year Planning Project of Philosophy and Social Science of Guangdong Province [GD15CGL07]

Governmental policies and business models are considered key elements for a transition to a circular economy. In current literature, there is a lack of understanding on how these two elements interact and how this understanding is used to accelerate the realisation of a circular economy. We shed light on this issue by conducting a systematic review of the literature in combination with a literature synthesis that looked in particular at interactions between governmental policies and business models not limited to a circular economy. We systematised the findings and then applied them to a circular economy context. The results show that there is a multitude of possible interactions between governmental policies and business models. The most commonly studied interaction is between command-and-control regulations and the value proposition element of business models. Soft policy measures like information- or communication-based policies or support mechanisms are less studied. Other findings suggest that there are certain types of dynamics which are useful to understand for policymakers and business model designers alike. A few examples of the synthesised insights are i) entrepreneurs may optimise their circular business models to exploit the policy framework, ii) technologies may lead to circular business model innovation forcing policymakers to adapt, and iii) policymakers may pay special attention to the needs of circular business models and support their competitiveness. Funding agencies: Circular European Economy Innovative Training Network (Circcuit) - European Commission [721909]; Mistra REES (Resource Efficient and Effective Solutions) program - Mistra (The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research) [2014/16]

A majority of previous studies on environmental problems caused by waste generation have focused on waste disposal issues without fully highlighting the primary reasons behind the problems. As a consequence, efforts to reduce these problems are usually directed towards the stakeholders that provide waste treatment and disposal instead of the stakeholders that contribute to waste generation. In order to detect connections between different problems of sustainability and to suggest measures which may contribute to their solutions, this study provides a simplified overview of the mechanisms behind waste generation and management. The results from the study show that the only way to eliminate problems of sustainability is to apply an upstream approach by dealing with the primary problems which occur in the early stages of the system (e.g. overconsumption of products, as well as use of finite resources, toxic materials, and non-recyclable materials). By dealing with these problems, the emergence of secondary problems would be prevented. Thereby, stakeholders who have the highest possibility to contribute to the sustainable development of the waste generation and management are the stakeholders from the origin of the products life cycles, such as product developers, manufacturing companies, product users and policy makers. Different trade-off situations such as contradictions between economics, recyclability, energy efficiency, make it even harder to deal with issues of sustainability related to the system and to detect the stakeholders who may contribute to the development. One of the main conclusions from this study is that when transforming society towards a circular economy, the traditional view of separate systems for production and waste management must be changed. In order to refer to all problems of sustainability and also cover the top steps of the waste hierarchy, life cycle assessment of waste management should include manufacture and use of products ending up as waste. Waste entering the waste management system with "zero burden", by releasing the previous actors of the waste life cycle from any responsibility related to the environment (i.e. by shifting the total environmental burden into the waste management system), does not capture the problems with waste generation. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Funding Agencies|Swedish Energy Company: Tekniska Verken; Swedish Energy Company: Goteborg Energi

Green public procurement can play an important role in reducing the environmental impact of societies. While its uptake is continuously growing, barriers to its use still remain. One barrier previously identified in literature is related to the lack of accessible and easy to use tools that help standardize the development of criteria in green tenders. In this paper, to help overcome this barrier, a method is presented that can be used to develop green public procurement tools that follow previous studies recommendations about including life-cycle assessment-based data and basing procurement criteria on national environmental objectives. The method was then applied to develop a procurement tool for green procurement of public transport services in Sweden based on the Swedish environmental quality objectives. Results from the assessment of 18 pre-defined fuel systems are shown together with an illustrative example of how the tool can be used in the process leading up to procurements to set relevant criteria and during the procurement to adjust incoming tender prices. The results showed that waste-based biomethane and hydrogenated vegetable oil systems were well aligned with the Swedish environmental quality objectives due to being able to contribute positively to several objectives. Crop-based biofuels, on the other hand, performed worse due to negative effects from agricultural practices. The performance of the electric vehicle systems depended in large on how the electricity was generated, where renewable sources and low carbon sources performed better than non-renewable alternatives. Funding agencies:This research has received funding from the Swedish Biogas Research Center, which in turn is financed by the Swedish Energy Agency, Linkoping University and the center's partners and members.

This paper reviews studies of the environmental impact of textile reuse and recycling, to provide a summary of the current knowledge and point out areas for further research. Forty-one studies were reviewed, whereof 85% deal with recycling and 41% with reuse (27% cover both reuse and recycling). Fibre recycling is the most studied recycling type (57%), followed by polymer/oligomer recycling (37%), monomer recycling (29%), and fabric recycling (14%). Cotton (76%) and polyester (63%) are the most studied materials. The reviewed publications provide strong support for claims that textile reuse and recycling in general reduce environmental impact compared to incineration and landfilling, and that reuse is more beneficial than recycling. The studies do, however, expose scenarios under which reuse and recycling are not beneficial for certain environmental impacts. For example, as benefits mainly arise due to the avoided production of new products, benefits may not occur in cases with low replacement rates or if the avoided production processes are relatively clean. Also, for reuse, induced customer transport may cause environmental impact that exceeds the benefits of avoided production, unless the use phase is sufficiently extended. In terms of critical methodological assumptions, authors most often assume that textiles sent to recycling are wastes free of environmental burden, and that reused products and products made from recycled materials replace products made from virgin fibres. Examples of other content mapped in the review are: trends of publications over time, common aims and geographical scopes, commonly included and omitted impact categories, available sources of primary inventory data, knowledge gaps and future research needs. The latter include the need to study cascade systems, to explore the potential of combining various reuse and recycling routes.

Some countries rely heavily on exports as an essential component of their economic competitiveness. With the current trends in economic globalization, promoting exports has become a common strategy to boost economic growth. Exports of environmental technologies represent a new window of opportunity for economic growth and a contribution to global sustainability. With this in mind, national governments have designed initiatives that aim to promote exports within this sector. To address their objectives, governments provide initiatives to promote foreign commerce with their environmental technology sector. This article assesses the awareness, participation, and perceived effectiveness of such governmental initiatives to promote exports among Swedish environmental technology firms. An Internet survey was sent to 693 Swedish environmental technology companies, previously identified and classified, with a 25% response rate. The responses show a relatively high export orientation although a majority of the respondents claimed they were unaware of governmental initiatives that fit their particular export needs. The companies that did find appropriate governmental initiatives showed a high level of participation in such initiatives, but only a few of these participants could relate their participation to actual exports. The findings suggest there is a need to design support instruments based on the particular characteristics of the environmental technology sector rather than to offer generic solutions for such export promotion. Megatech

Cement production contributes to extensive CO2 emissions. However, the climate impact can vary significantly between different production systems and different types of cement products. The market is dominated by ordinary Portland cement, which is based on primary raw materials and commonly associated with combustion of vast amounts of fossil fuels. Therefore, the production of Portland cement can be described as a rather linear process. But there are alternative options, for example, involving large amounts of industrial byproducts and renewable energy which are more cyclic and thus can be characterized as relatively “synergistic”. The main purpose of this article is to study how relevant the leading ideas of industrial symbiosis are for the cement industry based on a quantitative comparison of the CO2 emissions from different cement production systems and products, both existing and hypothetical. This has been done by studying a group of three cement plants in Germany, denoted as ClusterWest, and the production of cement clinker and three selected cement products. Based on this analysis and literature, it is discussed to what extent industrial symbiosis options can lead to reduced CO2 emissions, for Cluster West and the cement industry in general. Utilizing a simplified LCA model (“cradle to gate”), it was shown that the CO2 emissions from Cluster West declined by 45% over the period 1997e2009, per tonne of average cement. This was mainly due to a large share of blended cement, i.e., incorporation of byproducts from local industries as supplementary cementitious materials. For producers of Portland cement to radically reduce the climate impact it is necessary to engage with new actors and find fruitful cooperation regarding byproducts, renewable energy and waste heat. Such a development is very much in line with the key ideas of industrial ecology and industrial symbiosis, meaning that it appears highly relevant for the cement industry to move further in this direction. From a climate perspective, it is essential that actors influencing the cement market acknowledge the big difference between different types of cement, where an enlarged share of blended cement products (substituting clinker with byproducts such as slag and fly ash) offers a great scope for future reduction of CO2 emissions.

Cement is a vital and commonly used construction material that requires large amounts of resources and the manufacture of which causes significant environmental impact. However, there are many different types of cement products, roughly ranging from traditional products with rather linear resource flows to more synergistic alternatives where industrial byproducts are utilized to a large extent. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies indicate the synergistic products are favorable from an environmental perspective. In co-operation with the global cement producing company CEMEX a research project has been carried out to contribute to a better understanding of the CO2 performance of different ways of producing cement, and different cement products. The focus has been on Cluster West, which is a cement production cluster consisting of three plants in Germany. This paper is the first in a series of three, all of which are included in this special issue. It has two main aims. The first is to carry out an attributional LCA and compare three different cement products produced in both linear and synergistic production setups. This has been done for cradle to gate, focusing on CO2-eq emissions for Cluster West. The second aim of this part is to develop and test a simplified LCA model for this production cluster, with the intention to be able to compare different versions of the production system based on the information of a few parameters. The attributional LCA showed that cement products that contain a large proportion of byproducts, in this case, ground granulated blast furnace slag from the iron and steel industry, had the lowest unit emissions of CO2-eq. The difference between the lowest emission product (CEM III/B) and the highest (CEM I) was about 66% per tonne. A simplified LCA model based on six key performance indicators, instead of approximately 50 parameters for the attributional LCA, was established. It showed that Cluster West currently emits about 45% less CO2-eq per tonne of average product compared to 1997. The simplified LCA model can be used effectively to model future changes of both plants and products (which is further discussed in part II and part III).

Cement production is among the largest anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide (CO2) and there is considerable pressure on the cement industry to reduce these emissions. In the effort to reduce CO2 emissions, there is a need for methods to systematically identify, classify and assess different improvement measures, to increase the knowledge about different options and prioritize between them. For this purpose a framework for assessment has been developed, inspired by common approaches within the fields of environmental systems analysis and industrial symbiosis. The aim is to apply a broad systems perspective and through the use of multiple criteria related to technologies and organization strategies facilitate informed decision-making regarding different CO2 performance measures in the cement industry. The integrated assessment framework consists of two parts: a generic and a case-specific part. It is applied to a cement production cluster in Germany called Cluster West, consisting of three cement plants owned by CEMEX. The framework can be used in different ways. It can be used as a tool to perform literature reviews and categorize the state-of-the-art knowledge about options to improve the CO2 performance. It can also be used to assess options for the cement industry in general as well as for individual plants. This paper describes the assessment framework, the ideas behind it, its components and the process of carrying out the assessment. The first part provides a structured overview of the options for improvement for the cement industry in general, while the second part is a case-specific application for Cluster West, providing information about the feasibility for different categories of measures that can reduce the CO2 emissions. The overall impression from the project is that the framework was successfully established and, when applied, facilitated strategic discussions and decision-making. Such frameworks can be utilized to systematically assess hundreds of different measures and identify the ones most feasible and applicable for implementation, within the cement industry but also possibly in other sectors. The results demonstrated that even in a relatively synergistic and efficient production system, like Cluster West, there are opportunities for improvement, especially if options beyond “production efficiency” are considered. On the day of the defence date the status of this article was Manuscript.