Sustainable consumption is interlinked with sustainable production. This chapter will introduce the closed-loop production, the circular economy, the steady state economy, and Cradle to Cradle (C2C) models of production. It will reflect on the key blockages to a meaningful sustainable production and how these could be overcome, particularly in the context of business education. The case study of the course for bachelor’s students within International Business Management Studies (IBMS) program at three Universities of Applied Science (vocational schools), and at Leiden University College in The Netherlands will be discussed. Student teams from these schools were given the assignment to make a business plan for a selected sponsor company in order to advise them how to make a transition from a linear to circular economy model. These case studies will illustrate the opportunities as well as potential pitfalls of the closed loop production models. The results of case studies’ analysis show that there was a mismatch between expectations of the sponsor companies and those of students on the one hand and a mismatch between theory and practice on the other hand. The former mismatch is explained by the fact that the sponsor companies have experienced a number of practical constraints when confronted with the need for the radical overhaul of established practices within the entire supply chain and students have rarely considered the financial viability of the "ideal scenarios" of linear-circular transitions. The latter mismatch applies to what students had learned about macro-economic theory and the application through micro-economic scenarios in small companies. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319656076 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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This article explores cooperation between a commercial supermarket chain and an environmental non-governmental organization linking it to consumer perception of the “The Super Animals” collectable cards promotion initiative. The case study focuses on one particular joint project involving Animal Cards that was initiated by the supermarket Albert Heijn and the World Wide Fund for Nature in The Netherlands. Based on this case, environmental non-governmental organizations’ strategic choices in the context of contesting discourses of sustainability and consumption, as well as implications for environmental education, are addressed. This article combines three strands of the literature – on sustainable consumption, on strategic cooperation between commercial companies and environmental non-governmental organizations and on environmental education. It is argued that the Animal Cards initiative presents an ambiguous case by both attempting to enhance environmental awareness and promoting consumption, opening up questions about the value of such cooperative ventures to the objectives of environmental education. It is concluded that cross-sector partnerships have the potential to lead to improvements in corporate social responsibility and environmental awareness among consumers but simultaneously pose the danger of undermining the critical stance toward consumption. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540514556170 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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Scholars in sustainable consumption increasingly highlight the limitations of “weak sustainable consumption” approaches to overcome the challenges of the current environmental crisis. While efforts to enable cleaner production and circular flows of materials are necessary and important, progress in environmental efficiency tends to deviate attention away from a more critical challenge: advancing sufficiency. In order to deliver “absolute” improvements, reducing production and consumption levels (an explicit focus on “strong sustainable consumption”) is needed. However, international and national environmental policies tend to avoid such measures. The literature points out that resistance from businesses and citizens and fear of losing geopolitical power or income from consumption taxes are major obstacles for such policies to emerge. In this context, this paper examines the case of the “Amsterdam Doughnut”, the measures aimed at reducing consumption of electronics, textiles and furniture included in the “Amsterdam Circular 2020-2025 Strategy”, and the relation to product lifetimes. Interviews with key actors involved in the integration of Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economy model into the city strategy were conducted, and official documents were reviewed. The paper discusses to what extent these efforts can be characterized as a “strong sustainable consumption” policy, and aspects that may have helped to overcome the resistance mentioned above, contributing to ongoing debate about the implementation of sufficiency principles.
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Due to the existing pressure for a more rational use of the water, many public managers and industries have to re-think/adapt their processes towards a more circular approach. Such pressure is even more critical in the Rio Doce region, Minas Gerais, due to the large environmental accident occurred in 2015. Cenibra (pulp mill) is an example of such industries due to the fact that it is situated in the river basin and that it has a water demanding process. The current proposal is meant as an academic and engineering study to propose possible solutions to decrease the total water consumption of the mill and, thus, decrease the total stress on the Rio Doce basin. The work will be divided in three working packages, namely: (i) evaluation (modelling) of the mill process and water balance (ii) application and operation of a pilot scale wastewater treatment plant (iii) analysis of the impacts caused by the improvement of the process. The second work package will also be conducted (in parallel) with a lab scale setup in The Netherlands to allow fast adjustments and broaden evaluation of the setup/process performance. The actions will focus on reducing the mill total water consumption in 20%.
Synthetic ultra-black (UB) materials, which demonstrate exceptionally high absorbance (>99%) of visible light incident on their surface, are currently used as coatings in photovoltaic cells and numerous other applications. Most commercially available UB coatings are based on an array of carbon nanotubes, which are produced at relatively high temperature and result in numerous by-products. In addition, UB nanotube coatings require harsh application conditions and are very susceptible to abrasion. As a result, these coatings are currently obtained using a manufacturing process with relatively high costs, high energy consumption and low sustainability. Interestingly, an UB coating based on a biologically derived pigment could provide a cheaper and more sustainable alternative. Specifically, GLO Biotics proposes to create UB pigment by taking a bio-mimetic approach and replicate structures found in UB deep-sea fish. A recent study[1] has actually shown that specific fish have melanosomes in their skin with particular dimensions that allow absorption of up to 99.9% of incident light. In addition to this, recent advances in bacterial engineering have demonstrated that it is possible to create bacteria-derived melanin particles with very similar dimensions to the melanosomes in aforementioned fish. During this project, the consortium partners will combine both scientific observations in an attempt to provide the proof-of-concept for developing an ultra-black coating using bacteria-derived melanin particles as bio-based, sustainable pigment. For this, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences (Zuyd) and Maastricht University (UM) collaborate with GLO Biotics in the development of the innovative ‘BLACKTERIA’ UB coating technology. The partners will attempt at engineering an E. coli expression system and adapt its growth in order to produce melanin particles of desired dimensions. In addition, UM will utilize their expertise in industrial coating research to provide input for experimental set-up and the development of a desired UB coating using the bacteria-derived melanin particles as pigment.
Buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 36% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the EU, and the largest energy consumer in Europe (https://ec.europa.eu/energy). Recent research shows that more than 2/3 of all CO2 is emitted during the building process whereas less than 1/3 is emitted during use. Cement is the source of about 8% of the world's CO2 emissions and innovation to create a distributive change in building practices is urgently needed, according to Chatham House report (Lehne et al 2018). Therefore new sustainable materials must be developed to replace concrete and fossil based building materials. Lightweight biobased biocomposites are good candidates for claddings and many other non-bearing building structures. Biocarbon, also commonly known as Biochar, is a high-carbon, fine-grained solid that is produced through pyrolysis processes and currently mainly used for energy. Recently biocarbon has also gained attention for its potential value with in industrial applications such as composites (Giorcellia et al, 2018; Piri et.al, 2018). Addition of biocarbon in the biocomposites is likely to increase the UV-resistance and fire resistance of the materials and decrease hydrophilic nature of composites. Using biocarbon in polymer composites is also interesting because of its relatively low specific weight that will result to lighter composite materials. In this Building Light project the SMEs Torrgas and NPSP will collaborate with and Avans/CoE BBE in a feasibility study on the use of biocarbon in a NPSP biocomposite. The physicochemical properties and moisture absorption of the composites with biocarbon filler will be compared to the biocomposite obtained with the currently used calcium carbonate filler. These novel biocarbon-biocomposites are anticipated to have higher stability and lighter weight, hence resulting to a new, exciting building materials that will create new business opportunities for both of the SME partners.
