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Purpose: The study of sustainability within universities is recognized as essential for debates and research; in the long term, the "sustainable university" concepts can contribute to sustainability from a larger perspective. This study aims to propose a conceptual model for evaluating the students' sustainability considering their interactions with the university and the environment. The proposed model is titled Sunshine model. It is applied to students of the La Salle University, Peru. Design/methodology/approach: The model combines academic performance, happiness and the ecological footprint to quantify university students' sustainability. A structured questionnaire survey was elaborated and applied to get the raw data that feeds the three methods. The students' average grades evaluate academic performance. Happiness is quantified by the happiness index method, and the ecological footprint is measured by the demand for food, paper, electricity, transport and built-up areas. Results are evaluated under both approaches, overall group performance and clusters. Findings: The proposed model avoids misleading interpretations of a single indicator or discussions on sustainability that lack a conceptual model, bringing robustness in assessing students' sustainability in universities. To have a low ecological footprint, the student needs to need up to 1 planet for their lifestyle, be considered happy with at least 0.8 (of 1) for happiness index, and have good academic performance with at least a grade of 7 (of 10) in their course. Regarding the case study, La Salle students show a high academic grade degree of 7, a high level for happiness index of 0.8 and low performance for ecological footprint by demanding 1.8 Earth planets, resulting in an "environmentally distracted" overall classification for students with 2019 data. From a cluster approach, 81% of evaluated students (n = 603) have low performance for ecological footprint, whereas 31% have low performance for indicators of recreational activities of happiness. Changing lifestyles and making more recreational activities available play crucial roles in achieving higher sustainability for the La Salle students. Research limitations/implications: The happiness assessment questionnaire can be subject to criticism, as it was created as a specific method for this type of audience based on existing questionnaires in the literature. Although it can be seen as an important approach for diagnoses, the proposed model does not consider the cause–effect aspect. The decision-maker must consider the sociocultural aspects before implementing plan actions. Practical implications: University managers can better understand why university students have high or low sustainability performance and provide more effective actions toward higher levels of students' sustainability. Originality/value: The proposed model, Sunshine model, overcomes the single-criteria existing tools that access the sustainability of universities. Rather than focusing on university infrastructure, the proposed model focuses on the students and their relationship with the university. [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]

The misuse of Gross Domestic Product as a measure of public wellbeing results from the idea that economic growth is always synonymous with enhanced quality of life, disregarding the fact that the economy profits from natural, social, and human capital. In order to monitor progress towards sustainability and increased well-being, governments working closely with scientists developed new metrics that go further than income and material wealth. There are several candidates for revisions of the Gross Domestic Product. Based on a comprehensive literature review, this paper identified several possible indicators that intend to adjust, supplement or substitute for Gross Domestic Product. Two main approaches were identified. The first uses Gross Domestic Product as foundation to build a complete index and includes proposals to greening Gross Domestic Product, socializing the indices and including it in a more comprehensive index. The second approach relates to efforts to redefine the indicators, with the use of environmentally oriented indicators and socially oriented measures. Challenges to measure development, welfare, and wellbeing are discussed to provide a wide-angle view of efforts to develop measures of social-economic-ecological status and progress beyond the current very narrow Gross Domestic Product. It was recognized an urgent need for guidance for the development of governance regimes designed to change from short-term decision-making processes to those, which support the multi-decade planning and implementation processes that are needed to guide the transition to post fossil carbon societies. This comprehensive review covers a wide range of topics, from problems of GDP to challenges and thoughts about indicators. The review shows that if mankind is concerned with the sustainable development of the planet as a whole, then progress indicators measured only in monetary or social terms are limited and restricted to the weak or the medium sustainability model, and must be complemented by biophysical indicators. It is time to change the global knowledge of what progress really is, changing the discussion from growth to sustainable development and human well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The complexity of the environment demands a well-constructed composite environmental index (CEI) to provide a useful tool to draw attention to environmental conditions and trends for policy purposes. Among the common difficulties in constructing a proper CEI are uncertainties due to the selection of the most representative underlying variables or indicators. A degree of uncertainty accompanies experts' judgments, and to deal with vague, subjective or inconsistent information, logic other than classic is required. This study analyzes a procedure that uses different experts' opinions in constructing a CEI, with the use of paraconsistent annotated logic. For this, a sensitivity analysis of the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI 2005) was used as an example to assess the reliability of experts' opinions. The uncertainty due to the disagreement in experts' opinions clearly indicates that the forms we presently use to measure and monitor the actual environment are insufficient, that is, there is a lack of a ¿science of sustainability¿. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Ternary diagrams are presented as graphic tools to assist environmental accounting and environmental decision-making based on emergy analysis [Odum HT. Environmental accounting – emergy environmental decision making. John Wiley & Sons; 1996. 370 pp. [1]]. Beyond the unquestionable advantages of graphic interpretation over table analysis, the use of ternary diagrams or phase diagrams, widely used for physical chemistry evaluation of three component systems, permits the use of phase diagram properties to assess the dependence of the system upon renewable and non-renewable inputs, the environmental support for dilution and abatement of process emissions and the system efficiency. The prompt visualization of the emergy accounting data makes possible to compare processes and systems with and without ecosystem services, to evaluate improvements and to follow the system performance over time. With the aim of ternary diagrams, aspects such as the interaction between systems and the interactions between systems and the environment can be readily recognized and evaluated. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This special volume of the Journal of Cleaner Production is built primarily upon articles submitted for the 4th International Workshop Advances in Cleaner Production held in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2013. The 54 articles underscore the urgent need for changing from unsustainable production and societal patterns to sustainable ones. They provide many new approaches to help industries, governments and society to speed up the transition to sustainable patterns. The authors focus on defining and solving problems with special emphasis upon sustainability strategies: raw material replacement, renewable energy, technological developments, product, and policy changes. The central roles of improved corporate management for sustainable societal transitions are explored, with an emphasis upon stakeholder empowerment in promoting implementation of new cleaner technologies within companies, industrial sectors, supply chains and countries. Some authors improved assessment tools for environmental accounting at the biospheric scale. Some authors underscored the need for cooperation among governments, industrial sectors and companies to accelerate the integration of Cleaner Production into policies and practice. Multiple examples of successful integration of CP in national and local policy structures, exemplified how focused work in key industrial sectors is delivering multiplier benefits within and among companies and in the community, at large. The authors documented numerous benefits of holistic integration of local, regional, national and global efforts to accelerate the transition to sustainable development and societal well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In a recent paper, “A combined tool for environmental scientists and decision makers: ternary diagrams and emergy accounting.” [Giannetti BF, Barrella FA, Almeida CMVB. A combined tool for environmental scientists and decision makers: ternary diagrams and emergy accounting. J Clean Prod, in press] Ternary diagrams were proposed as a graphical tool to assist emergy analysis. The graphical representation of the emergy accounting data makes it possible to compare processes and systems with and without ecosystem services, to evaluate improvements and to follow the system performance over time. The graphic tool is versatile and adaptable to represent products, processes, systems, countries, and different periods of time. The use and the versatility of ternary diagrams for assisting in performing emergy analyses are illustrated by means of five examples taken from the literature, which are presented and discussed. It is shown that emergetic ternary diagram''s properties assist the assessment of the system efficiency, its dependence upon renewable and non-renewable inputs and the environmental support for dilution and abatement of process emissions. With the aid of ternary diagrams, details such as the interaction between systems and between systems and the environment are recognized and evaluated. Such a tool for graphical analysis allows a transparent presentation of the results and can serve as an interface between emergy scientists and decision makers, provided the meaning of each line in the diagram is carefully explained and understood. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The sustainability of the development of water resources is a pressing challenge. Natural forces, economic pressure and increasing population determine a significant growth in water use and pollution not supported by highly inefficient water supply practices. In this framework, the Italian water services with fragmented management, highly deficient collection and treatment of wastewater - and existing and potential problems in water supply in some areas of the country – explains the reasoning of the drastic restructuring introduced by Law 36/1994 (Act n. 36 on Water Resources, 1994). The impossibility of avoiding natural monopoly and the necessity to industrialize the whole sector determined the imposition of a "for the market" competition in order to exploit possible economies of scale and scope. In this work, a group of Italian water utility companies is used to assess the sustainable efficiency of the Italian water sector, using the mathematical/linear programming of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) on a set of key variables including, water losses (never considered in the previous studies) to assess technical and environmental efficiency. This well-known technique allows evaluating the systems' efficiency not only by calculating the efficiency of each unit, but also helping policymakers by suggesting corrective policies and measures which could make the inefficient units efficient. This approach can be useful for policymakers to direct decisions towards a more sustainable and efficient water sector. • The sustainability and the efficiency of water resources are crucial challenges. • Water losses play a key role in the evaluation of the performance of water-based firms. • Owned public firms have the highest efficiency scores. • Firms located in northern Italy are more efficient than those operating in the rest of the Country. [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]