SimaPro and GaBi are the most commonly used software tools to conduct a professional life cycle assessment. There is, however, a third solution in this field, one that is capable of not only calculating product life...
Tag - material flow analysis
Top-Notch Sustainability Practitioner Gathering: Umberto User Workshop in Essen, Sept 11/12, 2013
When 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...
5 Steps towards Maximum Resource Efficiency Part 2: Material Flow Modeling, MFCA and LCA Made Easy
Last week, I introduced you to the first three steps small and medium-sized companies need to take to increase their resource efficiency to a maximum. Today, you’ll find the last two of the five steps involved in...
5 Steps towards Maximum Resource Efficiency: Material Flow Modeling Made Easy
When calculating and reducing business-related environmental effects, two different approaches are traditionally taken. There is the product centered concept on the one hand, and the production centered one on the other...
Discovering All Environmental Effects: How Life Cycle Assessment with LCA Software Works
Environmental effects are extremely complex, that’s why they’re impossible to measure, so let’s not bother about them too much and keep producing and consuming the way we have over the past 100 years! Why should we...
How to Invent the Right Institution to Cut Resource Conflicts
Can you resist the impetus coming from a 234 page report that has the promising title “Resource Futures” and boasts a beautiful Sankey diagram on the front page? See, I couldn’t either. But before you expect a...
When Oil Majors Embrace Material Flow Analysis, New Hope for a Sustainable 21st Century Arises
There are manifold approaches to close the apparent gap between a shrinking resource base on the one hand and the ever rising human resource demand on the other. For the longest time, the world’s big industrial...
To Recycle or Not to Recycle – PVC Cable Waste is the Question
Recycling – it’s the magic word when the ill-informed think “environmental friendliness”. “Recyclable” – the number one green term that doesn’t mean a thing. Of course, as long as you put enough energy into a process...
Program Highlights at ACHEMA 2012: What Not to Miss at the Green Processes Industry Conference
Green chemistry is a relatively young science in its own respect. Interest in this subject, however, is growing rapidly and, although no concerted agreement has been reached as yet about the exact content and limits of...
Material Flow Based Process Systems Engineering
I have been waiting for this for far too long, but finally it has been written and it deserves your attention: a paper on advanced material flow based systems engineering. It was published in the December issue of...