Inventive engineers serving the environment
September 7, 2016Can environmentally friendly raw materials meet product specifications and be cost effective? This is the question that HOBAS Engineering, manufacturer of fiberglass reinforced pipe systems, has asked. By evaluating their ecological footprint, the company plans to add an additional dimension to its market and R&D analysis. In the following you can download the full article. ...
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Top-Notch Sustainability Practitioner Gathering: Umberto User Workshop in Essen, Sept 11/12, 20 ...
August 7, 2013When the only way to implement a satisfactory future in human development is holistic thinking about sustainability, why is it that we so rarely happen to come across aids for realizing this mindset? Well, it's a good question, but they actually do appear from time to time. An outstanding example every year is practitioners from business and academia coming together at the umberto user workshop to showcase their manifold ways of tackling sustainability and efficiency challenges. In their respective companies and research projects, they each face all sorts of questions concerning their many dif...
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Holistic Sustainability Measurement: The Composite 3-Pillar-Index
January 11, 2013 1 CommentBy the end of the 20th century, a deep conceptual gap had evolved between a destructive economy devouring the declining resource base on the one hand and a poor, protection-needing environment on the other. However, this contradictory approach – economy vs. environment – is misleading. Even the most fundamental environmentalist has to admit that his or her participation in the market by consuming goods and services is inevitable. Well, there is of course a way to deny consumerism - subsistence lifestyles are possible, to a certain extent. However, in my humble opinion, it is virtually impossib...
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10 Appropriate Indicators to Measure Green Growth in Industry
December 17, 2012 6 CommentsGreen Growth, Sustainable Growth, Green Economy – All of these concepts require decoupling. A decoupling, in a nutshell, that maintains economic growth while achieving material de-growth. Instead of consuming ever more resources to produce ever more profits (“traditional” growth), decoupling refers to the idea of consuming less material resources and still generating more profits (green growth). What sounds good in theory, faces some technicalities in practice. The most important one is: how do you measure “greenness”? Which of all the shrinking resources should be saved, in order to merit get...
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The Five Most Important Changes for Global Sustainability: Living Planet Report 2012
May 21, 2012 2 CommentsWe live above our limits, the planet does not provide sufficient resources for our consumerist lifestyle, and things get worse. The rich exploit the poor, ecosystems are destroyed, and nothing happens to stop this. We've heard it before, and we will hear it again: our lifestyle is far from being sustainable, we consume more than the planet has to offer. The biennial Living Planet Report, published by WWF, Zoological Society of London, Global Footprint Network and European Space Agency once more tells a truth that we have become more and more familiar with. But is there nothing we can do about ...
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Ecology's Step Child - We Need Water Footprints!
October 31, 2011 3 CommentsAssessing environmental effects of human activity is something we become more and more familiar with. If you consider yourself an eco-friendly person, granted that you have calculated your personal ecological footprint. You also try to buy local products and watch out for information on transport distances. More and more customers put pressure on companies, in order to receive detailed information on ecological impacts. On the supply side, an increasing number of environmentally responsible companies get into detail, giving an insight into product related climate effects by publishing carbon f...
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Celebrations, come on, let’s celebrate and have a good time. And don’t think about tomorrow…? ...
September 27, 2011 2 CommentsDo you know what day today is? Yes, it is google’s 13th birthday. But this is not what I want to write about. Today is Earth Overshoot Day, hooray! From now on to the end of the year humanity consumes resources that Mother Earth can theoretically not provide. In other words, today is something like the “Negative Sustainability Day”. So that’s all for this year! If mankind would take sustainability seriously we would have to stop consuming resources NOW for the rest of 2011. Each year the Global Footprint Network (GFN) calculates the day from which on we consume resources on tick. To do ...
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To Recycle or Not to Recycle – PVC Cable Waste is the Question
July 9, 2012 12 Comments -
Carbon Neutral Online Shopping – How Green are Mail Order Companies?
August 29, 2012 9 Comments -
What's What: Understanding the ISO 14000 Family Of Standards
September 13, 2011 8 Comments -
3 Alternative Ideas for Waste Management in Developing Countries
November 9, 2012 7 Comments -
Biomass Lagging Behind Prospering Wind and Solar Markets
September 1, 2011 7 Comments
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The 8 Most Specific LinkedIn Groups for Industrial Ecology
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More Than Ecosystem Dynamics - Understanding the Different Concepts of Resilience
June 11, 2012 1 Comment -
A Challenging Task: Promoting Energy Efficiency in Tajikistan
May 28, 2012 3 Comments -
The Five Most Important Changes for Global Sustainability: Living Planet Report 2012
May 21, 2012 2 Comments -
7 Measures for Efficient Climate Control on the Factory Floor
May 15, 2012 3 Comments
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