Search results for "Environmental sustainability"
showing 10 items of 65 documents
Integrated membrane bioreactors modelling: A review on new comprehensive modelling framework
2021
International audience; Integrated Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) models, combination of biological and physical models, have been representing powerful tools for the accomplishment of high environmental sustainability. This paper, produced by the International Water Association (IWA) Task Group on Membrane Modelling and Control, reviews the state-of-the-art, identifying gaps for future researches, and proposes a new integrated MBR modelling framework. In particular, the framework aims to guide researchers and managers in pursuing good performances of MBRs in terms of effluent quality, operating costs (such as membrane fouling, energy consumption due to aeration) and mitigation of greenhouse gas…
A Systematic Literature Review of Historic Garden Management and Its Economic Aspects
2020
Historic gardens are important parts of humanity’s built heritage within the designed landscape, providing many environmental, economic and socio-cultural benefits. Management is a key part of their conservation, perhaps the most difficult because it is costly, must be continual, and requires a skilled workforce. This systematic review looks at the literature addressing historic garden management, with special attention regarding the social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainability. Academic studies on this subject come from many different disciplines, making it both stimulating and fragmented. It is now time to consolidate these interdisciplinary efforts into a clear vision, in…
Ranking corporate sustainability: a flexible multidimensional approach based on linguistic variables
2017
Corporate sustainability implies a compromise between the present environmental, social, and economic needs of a firm's stakeholders and their future needs. Corporate sustainability is therefore a multidimensional concept. Nowadays, several independent rating agencies rate firms in terms of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria. These ratings are usually used by main sustainability indices such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, FTSE4 Good, Stoxx Sustainability Index, or Euronext Vigeo Family to select companies to invest in. Only those firms performing better than the average of their sector are selected. However, although providing linguistic ratings about the performan…
Life Cycle Assessment for Supporting Eco-Design: The Case Study of Sodium–Nickel Chloride Cells
2021
The European Union is moving towards a sustainable, decarbonized, and circular economy. It has identified seven key value chains in which to intervene, with the battery and vehicle value chain being one of them. Thus, actions and strategies for the sustainability of batteries need to be developed. Since Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a strategic tool for evaluating environmental sustainability, this paper investigates its application to two configurations of a sodium–nickel chloride cell (planar and tubular), focusing on the active material and the anode, with the purpose of identifying the configuration characterized by the lowest environmental impacts. The results, based on a “from cradle…
A comparative life-cycle assessment of asphalt mixtures for railway sub-ballast containing alternative materials
2018
Abstract Bituminous sub-ballast in railway track-bed can mitigate the variation of the moisture content in the subgrade and reduce vertical stiffness variations of the track leading to a more durable infrastructure. Nevertheless, durability is only one of the aspects that affects the sustainability of an infrastructure. Other relevant aspects are related to the environmental and economic issues. This research work joins the worldwide effort towards a paradigm shift in civil engineering devoted to assess the sustainability of infrastructures at the design stage. With this in mind, in this study different alternative bituminous sub-ballast mixtures containing recycled materials, namely crumb …
Synthetic environmental appraisal of waste management system: an application to the Sicilian region
2004
This paper addresses the problem of synthetically evaluating the environmental performances of urban solid waste systems. This, in fact, represents a crucial point in the management process of complex systems that local administrations are called to cope with, in order to provide decisions about policy options that involve different issues characterising the quality of life of people. Suitable methods of evaluation are clearly required for this aim. This work introduces the dashboard of sustainability and the ecological footprint approaches as aggregate indicators of the performances of solid waste management systems. The methods have been selected due to their intrinsic simplicities, provi…
An intertemporal approach to measuring environmental performance with directional distance functions: Greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union
2014
Abstract The impact of economic activity on the environment is a matter of growing concern for firm managers, policymakers, researchers and society as a whole. Building on previous work by Kortelainen (2008) [Dynamic environmental performance analysis: A Malmquist index approach. Ecological Economics 64, 701–715], we contribute an approach to assessing intertemporal environmental performance at the level of the management of specific pollutants, as the result of change in eco-efficiency and environmental technical change, which identify catching-up with best available environmental practices and eco-innovation, respectively. In doing so, we use Data Envelopment Analysis techniques, directio…
Role of alternative food networks in Sicilian farms
2014
Today the short supply chain can be carried out through several typologies which are called as alternative food networks (AFNs). In fact, according to some studies, it is an 'alternative' response to the dominant agro-food system, which offers the possibility to produce food products through supply chains that are opposed to long, complex and rationally organised industrial chains. In the last years many European farmers adopted short supply chain to commercialise their agro-food products and Italy is one of the EU members in which AFNs are developed, thanks to its numerous typical an local products. The aim of this paper has been to analyse the role that AFNs play in Sicilian farms and how…
Ranking farms with a composite indicator of sustainability
2011
The assessment of sustainability at farm level has been growing in popularity over the last few years. This article contributes to this line of research by building up composite indicators for different facets—social, economic, environmental, and global—of farm sustainability using a methodological approach that combines data envelopment analysis (DEA) and multicriteria decision making (MCDM) methods, and assigns common weights to each individual sustainability indicator. This approach is applied to a database of 163 farms located in the Campos County, a region belonging to the dry lands of the Spanish Northern Plateau, using 12 individual indicators of sustainability. Our findings show tha…
Towards a broader perspective on the forms of eco-industrial networks
2014
Abstract This paper explores various forms of eco-industrial networks in advancing environmental sustainability. Prior research on environmental sustainability primarily identifies industrial actors as autonomous entities or considers the role of networks in advancing environmental sustainability from a rather narrow perspective. However, the networks of ties in which industrial firms are embedded profoundly impacts not only their own performance, but also the natural environment in which they operate. Based on a systematic literature review, we identify four forms of eco-industrial networks that have the potential to advance environmental sustainability: 1) symbiosis networks, 2) sustainab…