The Environmental Sustainability of Nations: Benchmarking the Carbon, Water and Land Footprints against Allocated Planetary Boundaries

Growing scientific evidence for the indispensable role of environmental sustainability in sustainable development calls for appropriate frameworks and indicators for environmental sustainability assessment (ESA). In this paper, we operationalize and update the footprint-boundary ESA framework, with a particular focus on its methodological and...

BALANCE 4P - Balancing decisions for urban brownfield redevelopment: Technical report of the BALANCE 4P project of the SNOWMAN Network coordinated call IV

Land take as a result of urbanization is one of the major soil threats in Europe. One of the key measures to prevent further urban sprawl and additional land take, is redevelopment of urban brownfields: underused urban areas with, in many cases, soil and groundwater pollution. The latter issue can be a bottleneck for redevelopment of brownfields...

Sustainability in Higher Education: Analysis and Selection of Assessment Systems

There is a noticeable increase in interest with regards to sustainability in higher education. As institutions investigate, implement and market sustainability efforts, there is a myriad of sustainability assessment methodologies currently available. Although these assessment systems were created with the intention of helping sustainability in...

Sustainability assessment of power generation in combination with lng evaporation: A comparison of lca methods and exergy analysis

Several options exist for power generation, but it is difficult to determine which option is the most sustainable. When assessing the sustainability of an option or system, it is important to consider the environmental, economic and social aspects of sustainability and to take a life-cycle point of view. According to literature, a relationship...

Higher education: Features, trends and needs in relation to sustainability

The progress of sustainability within higher education has steadily increased in focus over the last decade and has increasingly become a topic of academic research. With various scholars, journals and conferences exclusively dealing with the subject, a wealth of literature has been produced on best practices, suggestions, and assessments...

Measuring Automobile Plant Sustainability: A conceptual method for assessing automobile plant sustainability

Future visions for heating and washing practices in Irish households: A discussion of the methodological framework employed by the Consensus Research Project Ruth Doyle

This paper reflects on the methodological framework employed by an Irish research project, Consensus (www.consensus.ie) in its examination of sustainable water and energy consumption in Irish households. A key criticism of conventional policy responses aimed at promoting sustainable consumption is that they yield only incremental changes rather...

Explorative study into the sustainable use and substitution of soldering metals in electronics: Ecological and economical consequences of the ban of lead in electronics and lessons to be learned for the future

The Directive 2002/95/EC (RoHS Directive), among other substances, bans the use of lead in the electrical and electronics industry. This explorative study assesses the worldwide environmental and economical effects of the substitution of lead in solders and finishes. It shows the worldwide additional cost of lead-free soldering compared to...