Redesigning Condominiums in Addis Ababa: Bridging energy fluctuations

In 2015, the UN coined 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with each goal based on three pillars: society, environment, and economy. Rapid growth can result in a country not succeeding in developing all pillars simultaneously. This, in turn, can lead to a stagnation of development. Ethiopia is a clear example of such stagnation, as inject...

Embodied carbon: the hidden challenge for real estate developers: Achieving net-zero carbon building ambitions by steering on including embodied carbon during the early design process

Purpose:<br/>Given the urgent need to decarbonize the building and construction industry to prevent a catastrophic climate breakdown. The United Nations has called for action from industry leaders to drastically decrease their carbon footprint, and bring it to zero by 2050 at the latest. Efforts to decrease operational carbon emissions...

A sustainably optimized highrise concept

Due to population growth we need more buildings, but due to urbanization there are hardly any opportunities to densify in highly concentrated cities. While we inevitably need more buildings, we have to also take into account that the construction industry is one of the major contributors to climate change. In order to prevent further damage on...

Bio-based air ducts: The applicability of bio-based materials for the construction of air duct components.

Nowadays, air ducts components for ventilation used in offices, hospitals and schools are made from non-renewable materials mainly sheet metal and plastics. Continuing to feed the high demand of metals is a challenge and could result of depletion of natural resources. This raises the importance to look into renewable resources with a lower...

Life Cycle Assessment of Inflight Services and Measures to Reduce Their Carbon Footprint

Aviation is an important sector and one of the key contributors to today’s economy. With a forecasted annual growth rate of 4.4%, the sector is expected to expand even more in the coming years. This expansion is however followed by the environmental burdens aviation causes to the environment. Following the anticipated growth of the aviation...

The impact of storage systems on the environmental performance of aerospace warehousing: Design and application of environmental assessment model for small part storage systems at an aerospace part distributor

Social and political pressure has made emissions an increasingly important subject for companies. The extension of the sustainability reporting mandate by the EU has increased the necessity for carbon transparency for companies in Europe. Warehousing and distribution account for 13\% global supply chain emissions and can be an important factor...

An investigation into the carbon and material footprint of the Dutch consumption of pharmaceuticals

This thesis explores the relatively large contribution of the product category ‘chemicals n.e.c.’ (chemicals not elsewhere classified) to the Dutch healthcare sector’s carbon and material footprint observed in previous studies. For this, an input-output study using SNAC-EXIOBASE data was performed. SNAC-EXIOBASE uses national statistics for the...

Redesign of a Facade System Based on an Environmental Impact Assessment Framework

The building industry is responsible for 36% of global final energy use (Global Alliance for Building and Construction, 2018), 39% of CO2 Emissions (Global Alliance for Building and Construction, 2017) and 50% of global waste in just cities (Ellen Macarthur Foundation, 2017). This is mainly due to the linear economy model which is still the...

Sustainability assessment of quay wall development in the Port of Rotterdam

The current social climate in which sustainable awareness is prioritized, is affecting the port sector. In new-to-develop ports and in the expansion and maintenance of existing ports, implementing sustainability is  encouraged.However, applying sustainability is not self-evident. In order to achieve sustainability targets and to comply with the...

Designing a low carbon footprint drum container

The fruit juice which is sold in our supermarkets, here in the Netherlands, originates from all over the world. The vast majority of juices are imported from abroad. Apple juice from China, orange juice from Brazil, pineapple juice from Ghana; juices travel a long way before we consume them. <br/><br/>The transport of juices, by sea, road and...

Approaches to sustainability in the fishing sector: The case of Cornelis Vrolijk's pelagic fisheries from the Northeast Atlantic

The meaning of what a sustainable fish food product demands can differ among the stakeholders who are knowledgeable in the product system. This thesis applies methods and tools from the field of industrial ecology to understand what sustainability means when it comes to a pelagic fish product from the Northeast Atlantic. The study covers a need...