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Researchers all over the world have been involved for some time in valuing and measuring ecosystem services. However, methods to value both costs and supply and to match them on the same scale are still under discussion. This study assesses costs and supply of a subset of supporting and regulating ecosystem service in urban parks and discusses the role and the value of these services under an environmental/economic point of view using emergy synthesis. A total of 73 parks in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, are used as a case study. Results show that green areas in urban parks provide valuable services to the city’s community through transformation processes of natural renewable inputs that would be otherwise wasted. The method can be applied in different locations and contexts to provide useful information to public managers and urban planners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 30 years, distance learning has rapidly spread in developed countries, and to niche markets in developing countries. In Brazil, approximately 5 million people are currently either achieving formal education or corporate training, or obtaining specific knowledge and skills on a wide range of subjects, via distance learning. Motivated by the ongoing expansion of the Brazilian federal chain of public schools, several new campuses, extra classrooms and distance teaching centers have been built, as a function of the intensive promotion of social inclusion by means of education, and specifically allocated budget. Concomitantly, a considerable number of papers discussing reduction of energy and materials consumption in university campuses have been published. Intended as a contribution to this discussion, this work evolves from a comparison of the implicit environmental cost – i.e. the use of natural resources as the prime-matter of infrastructural and operational material, and source of energy to human work-in forming management technicians in a classroom course, and in a distance learning course, obtained from the results of two case studies carried out at a Federal Institute campus in Brazil. The groups were selected for their relative closeness in proportion of attending students. Data were collected by means of measurements and interviews, and a synthesis of the use of natural resources by both modes was obtained by using the emergy accounting method, and then compared. The emergy method was also used to assess current use and underuse rates of the available infra-structural resources. Scenarios based on different numbers of students and teaching staff attending capacity for both modes, distance learning and classroom, were created and compared. Results point out that, under the current configurations, forming a management technician via distance teaching requires a 90% higher environmental support than via classroom teaching. The scenarios, however, do indicate a turning point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the potential prosperity of municipal economies, the welfare and the role of trade of these economies is an important issue in a world in which more than 50% of the population lives in urban centers. ABC Paulista groups three cities which act as production centers combining the abundance of labor and knowledge with the proximity to big consumer centers. The emergy approach recognizes the existence of deterministic principles in economic systems but emphasizes the role of resources, energy and environment. This approach was applied to ABC Paulista to evaluate municipal potential prosperity in the context of the energy resource constraints and showed that ABC municipalities are not autonomous and depend almost entirely on external resources. Indices for assess the human carrying capacity and the standards of living showed that only 2% of the population could be sustained indefinitely by the local emergy. The results lead to the idea that ABC can be seen as an “industry”, which holds the know-how and assets transforming raw materials into vehicles and chemicals that are feedback to the surrounding system. However, the analysis of ABC trade shows that both the Brazilian and the foreign markets take advantage when buying from ABC suggesting that the search for the chances of the prolongation of this specific urban settlement may require different policies and management designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A new way of thinking about conservation is represented by the preservation of native areas and the payment for their environmental services. In the present study emergy synthesis was applied to assess the environmental performance of a coffee farm located in Coromandel, Minas Gerais, in the Brazilian Cerrado. The farm produces green coffee for exportation, and holds an area with native vegetation of 80ha, larger than that required by Brazilian legislation. The assessment of the native area within the farm was carried out in order to determine its environmental sustainability. The emergy ternary diagram was employed to interpret the results, which show that a farm with 54ha of productive area must be matched with 200ha of native vegetation for medium term sustainability. The Cerrado’s farm production is primarily for export, and an evaluation of the environment and economic changes with respect to importing countries was performed. Emergy synthesis is proposed to calculate the price of environmental services balancing trades in the international market. A discussion of the problem of assigning payments for environmental services is presented. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Bus-washing stations play a great role in an urban metropolis daily life. On working days, 15,064 vehicles circulating in Sao Paulo are washed at the end of each day, and transport companies consume approximately 2,200,000m3 of water per year in this activity. This study compares three bus-washing systems operating in São Paulo. Two of these companies use the conventional washing system, using water of artesian wells and disposing the effluent in the public network or in water bodies. The third company uses a rainwater catchment system together with a treatment plant for water reuse. The environmental accounting in emergy concerns to the efficiencies of bus-washing processes, the calculation of emergy indicators, and the potential for the improvement of the three systems. The results of the environmental accounting suggest that the wastewater reuse and the rainwater collection improve the environmental performance of bus-washing activity. The comparison of the environmental cost of the wastewater treatments showed that the best environmental option is the installation of a wastewater treatment plant within the companies for internal water reuse. Opportunities of rainwater catchment and shampoo reduction were also evaluated, showing that there are considerable environmental gains for the companies and for the region of São Paulo. A first opportunity of improvement was applied to companies B and C by installing a rainwater catchment system, decreasing the indice of environmental load from 900 to 170. For companies A and B, there is an opportunity to reduce the use of shampoo during operation in 20% in weight, which leads to an increase of the global productivity of 12%. Global productivity of companies B and C may increase 20% by the installation of a wastewater treatment plant, but to achieve a performance comparable to that of Company A, reuse of the treated water must be implemented. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The paper reports the experiences of a medium size gold-plated jewelry company, located in São Paulo – Brazil, in order to reduce waste and pollution. Actions taken for this purpose are described, as well as the key factors affecting progress, the changes that have been introduced, their cost-effectiveness and the additional benefits accomplished. A waste minimization project was carried out to obtain environmental and economic benefits. The first cleaner production (CP) interventions targeting the improvement of the company''s environmental performance are also described and related to economic benefits. Local scale performance indicators were employed to evidence the economic and the material savings by kilogram of piece produced. Additionally, savings achieved included 86% reduction in volume of degreasing solution and 36% reduction in electricity consumption. The results are complemented with the use of global scale performance indicators (Material intensity, MIs, and Emergy accounting), which look at upstream impacts and evaluate the environmental performance of the system on the biosphere scale, respectively. Material savings (MIs) account for each matter flow to and from a chain of processes from raw material to the final products, and were calculated in order to estimate the changes avoided in material flows and cycles due to the reduced use of inputs by the company. The total emergy of the savings is used as a quantitative measure of the total environmental support to the flows of energy and matter involved in the process, and is calculated to assess the work of nature spared by the reduced use of materials and energy by the company. Emergy values were converted to currency. Global scale performance indicators have shown that little changes within the company reduce upstream impacts and that benefits to the environment are greater than that observed in the companies neighborhood. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Technology change is a well-known strategy used by Cleaner Production (CP) practitioners, and it refers to modifications in the process and/or equipment to increase production efficiency and reduce waste and emissions. These changes can range from small, low-cost options to the replacement of processes that involve large capital investments. The improvements and advantages of the new alternatives must be evaluated in a way to measure and assure its real benefits. This work presents an emergy evaluation of a fasteners manufacturing company planning to replace the zinc-coating process by a water-based organo-metallic coating process. Accounting for the use of resources and the environmental services to dilute the Cr (VI) in the effluent, the study shows that the effluent treatment is efficient and that the emergy invested by the environment to dilute the Cr (VI) released is lower than 0.1% of the emergy used in the coating process. The case study is an example of the application and evaluation of CP options (good operational practices, material and raw material changes, technological modifications, and product change) and is presented to motivate product manufacturers to prioritize environmental performance assessments to their products and services equally as well as to save manufacturers substantial time and efforts during their first attempts to implement CP actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unprecedented scale of packaging waste in global soft drinks supply chains is attracting increasing attention due to its environmental, social and economic impacts. The selection of the most feasible packaging options is one of the key approaches towards reducing resources depletion and packaging disposal. From an environmental point of view, selection requires knowledge of all product life stages including the type and the amount of materials used and the manufacturing practices such as recycling and reuse. In this context, decision makers in industry are looking for assessment methods that address the problem as a whole and not only as a sum of parts for selecting the most appropriate and reliable option. This paper introduces environmental accounting based on emergy as a tool to assist materials selection. This tool can help decision makers in industry providing information on the environmental cost of each decision. Emergy has low cost compared to other methods that require extensive information databases and commercial software. To exemplify the application of the emergy as a tool for material selection, options for the production of soft drinks are compared. The results obtained for the Brazilian case make it possible to select refillable glass bottles as the best option according to the resources available in the country; establishing the best production model for the selected option and determining when and if a recycling stage should be implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The search for sustainability and the growing apprehension with environmental degradation are increasingly attracting researchers from around the world, and bringing the need for developing indicators that include the economy, society and environment. This study compares the emergy indices with 10 known indicators taken from the literature: Gross Domestic Product, Gross Domestic Product per capita, Human Development Index, Happiness Index, Life Expectancy, Democracy Index, Ecological Footprint, Surplus Biocapacity, Wellbeing Index and Environmental Sustainability Index 2002. Correlations are made using the Spearman coefficients to verify correlations between the fractions of renewable natural resources, non-renewable natural resources, resources from the economy and the emergy indices with the known indicators, and indexes emerged with the literature indicators. The analysis of the results is made by illustrative matrices and graphs. The results suggest that the combination of socio-economic and biophysical indicators is essential to provide a better understanding of the limits of economic growth and while ensuring sustainable societal well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In an era of accelerating change around the globe, the roles of the Higher Educational institutions are an increasingly important part of the debate on the evolution of human society and its position in the biosphere. Emergy synthesis is a methodology that can concomitantly evaluate the integration of sustainability principles into curricula, and the campuses' operations to function with minimal environmental impact. Because of the importance of higher education in mankind's sustainable management of the biosphere, accurate estimates of the emergy of the human knowledge contributing to economic and social activities were performed to quantify the environmental, economic, and social costs and benefits of alternative policies. This study applies emergy synthesis to assess the engineering programme at Paulista University. Results were compared with those obtained from the Pharmacy and Business programmes, and used to visualize the entire system (information and resources), their relationships with the environment, and to evaluate subsystems in order to assist in decision-making for introducing SD concepts into curricula, and establishing targets for greening the campus. Energy and material flows used for construction and use of the campus were evaluated along with the information provided to students. The emergy investment to introduce two courses into the Engineering Programme was quantified and provided valuable information to guide senior university managers in the planning of new curricula that include sustainable development concepts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Human health and environmental concerns are not usually considered at the same time. Tin-lead solders are still widely used in several countries, including Brazil, by manufacturers of electronic assemblies. One of the options to reduce or eliminate lead from the manufacturing environment is its replacement with lead-free alloys. This paper applies emergy synthesis and the DALY indicator (Disability Adjusted Life Years) to assess the impact of manufacturing soft solder using tin, lead and other metals on the environment and on human health. The results are presented together with the company's financial results and the results calculated from the Brazilian statistical value of life. The calculation of emergy per unit showed that more resources are used to produce one ton of lead-free solders than to produce one ton of tin-lead solders, with and without the use of consumer waste recovered through a reverse logistics system. The assessment of air emissions during solder production shows that the benefits of the lead-free solution are limited to the stages of manufacturing and assembling. The tin-lead solder appears as the best option in terms of resource use efficiency and with respect to emissions into the atmosphere when the mining stage is included. A discussion on the influence of the system's boundaries on the decision-making process for materials substitution is presented. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The agribusiness contributes significantly to the Brazilian domestic production, and the search for environmentally friendly systems, exploring the maximum possible use of renewable resources and reducing the use of non-renewable ones, affects the agribusiness' productivity and competitivity. An agribusiness producing corn, eggs, pork and milk was evaluated using emergy accounting. The effects of the (des)integration of the production processes on the efficiency and environmental sustainability of the system were assessed using seven scenarios. The first is the existing integrated system and the others are scenarios in which one of the productive subsystems is removed. Efficiency is measured by the global productivity relative to the amount of protein produced. The most environmentally advantageous scenario, in terms of sustainability and productivity, is the one in which pork production is increased and egg production is ceased. This result suggests that increasing integration per se cannot assure gains in environmental sustainability. The integrated management of the residues of the poultry and pig production as organic fertilizer resulted an advantage for the seven scenarios. The scenarios presented should help to evaluate organizational innovations and to identify trade-offs that could influence the environmental performance of agricultural integrated systems. (Des) Integrating different agricultural production systems Unlabelled Image • The benefits of integration in a crop-livestock system was evaluated through emergy synthesis. • Efficiency evaluation of the (des)-integration of corn, eggs, pork and milk production was calculated. • Seven scenarios studied: the integrated existing system and scenarios in which one of the productive subsystems is removed. • The trade-offs between the sustainability and productivity were highlighted and discussed. • The increase of systems/processes to be integrated does not guarantee the best environmental performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]