A Disruptive EU? : Environmental Technology Verification Comes to Europe
March 30, 2014 1 CommentAn innovation with a proven track record is hardly an innovation. Any innovator is familiar with the conundrum of bringing new products, processes and services to the marketplace. By definition, innovation is new, so it suffers from one distinct disadvantage compared to established technology – it lacks the commercial legitimacy that attaches to yesterday’s developments. The EU Environmental Te...
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26 Life-Cycle-Based Business Strategies that Matter
October 21, 2013We've all heard of the sharing economy. We're all aware of the need for double decoupling. We all know that our resource consumption needs to drop drastically. But still, nothing is less disputed than our enjoyment of more money, be it a raise, a growing business or an increasing GDP. Isn't that contradictory? Well, yes and no. In terms of business strategies, here's how to get to both at the same time. Yoon-Young Chun and Kun-Mo Lee are the two studious Korean researchers whose findings I would like to introduce in this article. They identified 105 business cases that were influenced early...
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Sustainability Triangle? One Pillar Missing!
August 29, 2013 1 CommentThere is a significant growing concern in several arenas that the three-pillar model of sustainability, consisting of environmental, economic and social dimensions, may be overlooking something of fundamental importance. This possible failure was expressed by the remarkably interdisciplinary research team behind "Bringing the 'Missing Pillar' into Sustainable Development Goals". Eight researchers from academia, business, and the NGO-sector, with diverse backgrounds ranging from consulting to sociology and environmental engineering, call for extending the concept of sustainability by nothing...
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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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The Truth About the Dragon: China's Future is Inevitably Green
April 3, 2013 1 CommentWhat if every person in India drove a car? What if all Chinese were to live in their own 3-bedroom house? At the sight of a prospering global economy, many people's trust in the future has been profoundly undermined, especially in the west. Unaware of the ethical paradox, this view grants a wasteful living standard only to the citizens of well-established economies. The old, bipolar world order knew only two spheres of development: The western NATO-states on the one hand and the eastern USSR on the other. Back then, it was only these two spheres that caused large scale-pollution, and this was ...
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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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“A Balanced Mix of Technologies and Strategies” - The Sustainable Path is a Multi-Lane Highway ...
October 16, 2012When it comes to discussing ways to limit human influence on global warming, the most popular reaction is to pass the buck: So who's in charge of making the needed substantial changes in the way things run? The Other. Why? Because they pollute more, because they're more powerful, because they have a historical responsibility, because it's easier for them... There seem to be more excuses for not acting than there are carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere. "Technology Will Save Us" Say Efficiency Advocates Even among those who are concerned with the environment and seek a way to increas...
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Let's Take the Green Economy in Hand Ourselves - The Conclusion From Rio+20's Failure
July 2, 2012 1 CommentOne week has passed and the deeply disappointed comments on the outcome of Rio+20 slowly fade from the media and blogosphere. I wonder where all this disappointment comes from. Don't get me wrong, I don't consider the summit the slightest bit a success. I'm with the well-cited Greenpeace press statement that not only called it an "epic failure", but also ironically envisioned that the summit would more appropriately "go down in history as Greenwash+20". Bryan Walsh of TIME.com found less drastic, but more precise words to describe the meaningless outcome: The final statement that wa...
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The Path to a Green Economy - Lessons From Germany
February 12, 2012 4 CommentsWhat green economy deals with is the idea of running our businesses in a sustainable way. All of them. All of us. Running a business in a sustainable way means that, while doing business, you preserve the basis of your business. One business may be based on a talent, another one on an idea, a third one on luck. There are capital intense businesses, risky businesses and there is dad's business. What they all have in common, every single one of them, is they all require a certain state of affairs to run. I don't refer to the classic triangle of land, labor and capital here - I stretch the point ...
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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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