1,720,960 research outputs found
Sustainable Production and Consumption in the Mediterranean Area: designing a toolkit for sustainable management of the Industrial areas
No full textThe core of the Sustainable Consumption and Production Policy (SCP/SIP) Action Plan is a dynamic framework aiming to improve the environmental performance of products throughout their life-cycle, to stimulate the demand for better products and to help consumers make better choices. Particularly challenging are the fields related to environment and sustainability of Industrial Areas. The complexity of the management duties suggests the development of a set of tools that can help managers in performing their tasks.
The aim of this paper is to present the set of tools to be integrated for a Sustainable Management of Industrial Areas as well as the hypotheses for their systematization and integration. These tools are grouped in a toolkit to provide a unique point of access to information. The toolkit should support the IA to evolve towards a reference model characterized by a unitary management, a shared industrial development policy of the area, common infrastructures and innovative services to increase the efficiency of the use of natural resources.
The paper is a result of the EU Project ECO-SCP-MED financed by the MED Programme
The challenge of plastics in a circular perspective
Full text linkAlthough plastic is a very important material in our economy and lifestyle, we need to deal with its pervasive impact and the huge amount of plastic waste produced, especially in the urban context. In Italy, the production of plastic waste is about 4.8 million tons with a share of 31.4% sent for recycling, 32.8% sent to Waste to Energy facilities and 35.8% sent to landfill. The negative effects of plastic waste have to be mitigated by means of prevention and other measures aimed at a transition to sustainable production and consumption patterns. The presented perspective takes advantage of the work done in the framework of the Italian Circular Economy Stakeholders Platform (ICESP) and identifies regulatory and technical criticalities in the sector, while defining strategic actions to be implemented along the entire value chain of plastics in the short, medium and long term perspective, with the aim of outlining possible mitigation solutions. From the snapshot of the ongoing advancement of the circular economy in the plastic sector, within the Italian urban context, suggestions can be gained for a strategy based on a systemic life cycle approach
Sharing economy and circular economy. How technology and collaborative consumption innovations boost closing the loop strategies
No full textSharing economy business experiences are rapidly rising worldwide and deeply changing structures and models of customers purchasing attitudes and needs. Inspired by principles of sustainable consumption, its starting point is the idea that every underutilized resource is a wasted resource. Beyond the digital services implemented by sharing platform, there are also social and physical places where communities are experimenting the potential of collaborative and innovative solutions: purchasing groups, time banking, social street, co-working spaces. Goods and services access promoted by sharing business models are emerging in the place of older model based on private propriety and a consumerist view of society. This is strongly connected with circular economy strategies, particularly referred to waste prevention, reduction and resources valorisation European goals. This paper gives an overview of sharing economy including drivers and barriers which can affect its effective expansion. Moreover, collaborative models in the most strategic and critical sectors (such as mobility, agro-food, buildings and goods production and consumption) by a resources perspective, will be analysed to show how sharing economy can contribute to circular economy. At this end, this paper explores the circularity approach and in particular it identifies the role of sharing economy in products and services from a life cycle thinking (LCT) approach. The focus will be the benefits ofthe sharing economy models considering mainly two aspects; a) the length of the product’s use phase (lifetime) and b) the intensity of use. A review of available data considering the most strategic sectors in terms of environmental impacts, will also be presented from a sharing economy point of view. © 2017, Gh. Asachi Technical University of Iasi. All rights reserved
Promoting innovation and sustainability in Mediterranean industrial areas: the MEID managing model
No full textIndustrial areas have an underestimated role in promoting regional growth, jobs and entrepreneurship, especially in countries with a strong manufacturing tradition as the Mediterranean ones. Nevertheless the use of non-renewable energy resources, the emission of pollutants and waste production have up to now represented a weakness in the existing production model. Moreover the strong competition from countries with low labour cost has caused the decline of traditional manufacturing industry in Europe. There is therefore a need to relaunch Mediterranean industrial areas adopting a more efficient management model which can foster innovation and sustainability. Among the industrial development approaches developed to face the increase of environment pollution and the unsustainable use of natural resources, one of the most promising concepts is Industrial Ecology (IE), based on the metaphorical relationship between natural ecological and industrial systems.
After an introduction on these concepts, the paper focuses on the activities and results of the Mediterranean Eco-Industrial Development (MEID) project, funded by the European Regional Development Fund in the framework of the MED program. MEID involves different actors from six Mediterranean countries with the aim to provide a sustainable standard management model and tools to plan, build and manage competitive and innovative industrial areas in the Mediterranean region.
The paper presents an outline of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis carried out on selected industrial areas of the partnership countries. Afterwards, the MEID model is presented. An incremental approach has been adopted to ensure the model applicability to new industrial areas, as well as already operating non structured and structured areas. Fundamental parts of the management model are high level infrastructures and innovative services to support Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to create networks, exploit the eco-innovation opportunities and face the challenges of the Green Economy
The management model of the MEID project: tools for Sustainable Industrial Areas and opportunities for SMEs
No full textAmong the new industrial development approaches developed over the last decades to face the continuous increase of environment pollution and the unsustainable use of natural resources, one of the most promising concepts is Industrial Ecology (IE) which is based on the metaphorical relationship between natural ecological and industrial systems. To play a significant role in the path towards sustainable development, Eco- Industrial Areas should go beyond waste and by-products exchange, acting as true industrial communities, characterized by highly cooperative and symbiotic relationships between firms which share all available opportunities to minimise the use of resources and create better products. In this framework, new concepts on the management of industrial areas have been developed, involving non only material/energy flow aspects, but also human dimension, strategic management and policy perspective ones.
The introduction of new concepts on the management of industrial areas has its origin in the need to replace the so called “end of pipe” approach, meant as treatment of pollution at the end of productive cycle – typical to the traditional productive systems, with that of more pro-active approaches while maintaining a positive outcome on the whole local economy. Sustainable Industrial Areas (SIAs), equipped and settled with technical and organizational requirements in order to decrease the pollution as well as manage its pressure on environment, can increase their potential economic value and achieve the local communities acceptance.
The MEID (Mediterranean Eco-Industrial Development) project intends to follow this approach and tents the road to a complete sustainability, considering economic, environmental and social aspects, developing a support tool for IA managers and reference model for Local Authorities to plan, built and manage SIAs
Fostering Sustainable Production in Mediterranean industrial areas: a Mediterranean management model and ICT toolkit
No full textModern management of Industrial Areas (IAs) can give an important contribution to Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) policy in Mediterranean regions. It includes activities related to environmental performance and sustainability, as well as marketing and promotion of the image of the Area and can allow to identify and exploit synergies among the settled companies to improve the overall efficiency in the use of natural resources of the area. Modern management is nevertheless a complex duty which comprises several tasks and requires a remarkable expertise in several fields. To help managers in performing these new tasks, a Mediterranean model, based on several project expe- riences realized at European and national level has been developed. The management model con- sists in a series of necessary steps to be followed to progress towards a more sustainable production system. To increase its effectiveness the model has been integrated with a set of web-based tools de- veloped in some European projects which address several aspects of IAs management: a checklist with a scoring system for evaluating and benchmarking at international level the initial status of an IAs; a database of best practices which can be adopted in Mediterranean IAs for improving their environ- mental, social and economic profile; a guide for designing and constructing eco-efficient industrial buildings; a software for calculating the carbon footprint of waste management in IAs; a checklist for logistic services to identify and to provide a set of practical steps that can be taken to successfully ac-
complish a sustainable logistic service.
In this paper, after outlining some characteristic of the production system of Mediterranean region and the weak points of the actual SCP, the tools developed for supporting a modern management of IAs are described and their contribution to SCP policies are discussed. Some suggestion for improving the national and local policies in Mediterranean area are then discussed in the conclusions
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
- …
