Wood‐Based Nanotechnologies toward Sustainability

With over 30% global land coverage, the forest is one of nature's most generous gifts to human beings, providing shelters and materials for all living beings. Apart from being sustainable, renewable, and biodegradable, wood and its derivative materials are also extremely fascinating from a materials aspect, with numerous advantages including porous and hierarchical structure, excellent mechanical performance, and versatile chemistry. Here, strategies for designing novel wood‐based materials via advanced nanotechnologies are summarized, including both the controllable bottom‐up assembly from the highly crystalline nanocellulose building block and the more efficient top‐down approaches directly from wood. Beyond material design, recent advances regarding the sustainable applications of these novel wood‐based materials are also presented, focusing on areas that are traditionally dominated by man‐made nonrenewable materials such as plastic, glass, and metals, as well as more advanced applications in the areas of energy storage, wastewater treatment and solar‐steam‐assisted desalination. With all recent progress pertaining to materials' design and sustainable applications presented, a vision for the future engineering of wood‐based materials to promote continuous and healthy progress toward true sustainability is outlined.     

Innovation and employee injury risk in automotive disassembly operations

Engineering innovations in car disassembly systems are studied for affects on system operators’ risk of repetitive strain injury (RSI). Objective instrumented measures of injury risk factors with synchronised video-based task analyses were used to examine changes in operators’ RSI risk during two cases of engineering innovation: (1) a shift in industrial model from traditional extracting saleable parts to line-based full material recovery, and (2) the prospective effects of a simulated ‘Lean’-inspired process improvement in the line system. Both cases of innovation showed significantly increased movement speeds and reduced muscular recovery opportunities, implying increased RSI risk. This case study reveals a mechanism by which innovation may increase RSI risks for operators. Managers responsible for engineering innovation should ensure their teams have the tools and mandate necessary to control injury hazards as part of the development and design process. These cases suggest how failure to manage RSI hazards in the innovation process may allow increases of injury risks that can compromise operational performance. This ‘innovation pitfall’ has implications for operator health and organisational sustainability. Alternative pathways are discussed.     

Examining the effects of government intervention on the firm’s environmental and technological innovation capabilities and export performance

Considering our living environments directly affect the quality of our daily lives, many believe that the environment should only be safeguarded by the mighty hands of the government instead of leaving the environmental stewardship in the hands of profit-making private enterprises. As such, the government often intervenes with the way private enterprises conduct business through many different forms of environmental regulations and business incentives. However, the efficiency and effectiveness of such government intervention are still unknown and unclear at best. Many sceptics still think that economic growth and environmental protection are in conflict with each other and subsequently the firm’s environmental performance and export performance cannot be achieved simultaneously even with active government intervention over the firm’s environmental management. To clarify this misconception, this paper aims to examine whether government intervention leads to the affected firm’s both environmental and export performance (export sales performance). In addition, it investigates whether government intervention enhances the firm’s environmental and technological innovation capabilities and thus makes the firm more competitive in the global marketplace. In so doing, this paper verifies the ecological modernisation theory and institutional theory using the empirical analysis of the survey data obtained from the Korean manufacturing industry.     

Advances and challenges in the implementation of strategic environmental assessment in Chile

After almost 20 years of environmental impact assessment (EIA) in Chile, in 2010 the country adopted a more strategic view in order to include sustainability objectives in the development of policies and plans: the strategic environmental assessment (SEA). For supporting this new process, the Ministry of Environment developed a series of guidelines delineating the focus and methodology for an adequate implementation of SEA. These guidelines have been widely embraced by different actors as a reference to elaborate the environmental reports. In this opinion letter, we express our view upon the advances and challenges in the development of the SEA process in Chile and the role of evolving guidelines that have shaped the current implementation. The most relevant advances are related to an increasing awareness regarding the integration of sustainability issues in decision-making and the complementarity of SEA with the elaboration of policies and plans. Challenges are still present, and they are mainly related to the practical implementation rather than the availability of guidelines, where SEA is slowly being understood as different from the traditional EIA.     

Energy and material flow modelling of additive manufacturing processes

Additive manufacturing (AM) processes allow fabrication of three-dimensional complex parts. Due to the exact amount of material used during the manufacturing step, these new manufacturing processes offer great opportunities for sustainable manufacturing. However, existing studies on these processes focus mainly on energy consumption and information about resources consumptions and waste flows are still lacking. This study aims to quantify with accuracy inventory data of AM processes during the manufacturing step of the life cycle of products. In order to accurately assess the environmental impact of a product, a generic method for acquisitions and characterisation of inventory data for parts made by AM processes is proposed. This methodology focuses not only on the electrical energy consumption but also on material consumption. This paper also describes the development of a parametric process model, which provides to an operator, an accurate estimation of the environmental performances of the fused deposition modelling process.     

Environmental impact of warehousing: a scenario analysis for the United States

In recent years, there has been observed a continued growth of global carbon dioxide emissions, which are considered as a crucial factor for the greenhouse effect and associated with substantial environmental damages. Amongst others, logistic activities in global supply chains have become a major cause of industrial emissions and the progressing environmental pollution. Although a significant amount of logistic-related carbon dioxide emissions is caused by storage and material handling processes in warehouses, prior research mostly focused on the transport elements. The environmental impact of warehousing has received only little attention by research so far. Operating large and highly technological warehouses, however, causes a significant amount of energy consumption due to lighting, heating, cooling and air condition as well as fixed and mobile material handling equipment which induces considerable carbon dioxide emissions. The aim of this paper is to summarise preliminary studies of warehouse-related emissions and to discuss an integrated classification scheme enabling researchers and practitioners to systematically assess the carbon footprint of warehouse operations. Based on the systematic assessment approach containing emissions determinants and aggregates, overall warehouse emissions as well as several strategies for reducing the carbon footprint will be studied at the country level using empirical data of the United States. In addition, a factorial analysis of the warehouse-related carbon dioxide emissions in the United States enables the estimation of future developments and facilitates valuable insights for identifying effective mitigation strategies.     

基于可持续能力和协调状态的水资源系统评价方法探讨

基于可持续理论、系统协调理论内涵,从区域资源条件、生态环境、水资源开发利用水平及经济社会现状要素相互耦合、共同支撑水资源系统的角度,应用压力-状态-响应模型(PSR模型)构建了区域水资源系统综合评价指标体系,借鉴前人研究成果提出了水资源系统可持续度、协调度概念及其定量表征方法,在此基础上提出水资源系统综合评价方法,并结合有关数据对2003—2013年辽宁省水资源安全形势演进态势进行实证分析。结果表明:1研究时段内辽宁省水资源系统可持续度呈整体上升趋势,自然因素导致资源子系统可持续度变化不稳定,其余3个子系统可持续度基本呈现逐年提升态势;2研究时段内辽宁省水资源系统协调度波动变化,是资源条件、生态环境、开发利用水平和经济社会发展因素的耦合导致子系统之间的协调关系不稳定;3在研究时段内辽宁省水资源系统安全等级逐渐提高,安全态势趋于好转。未来,有关部门应在加大自然资源和生态环境保护力度、提高水资源开发利用水平和促进区域经济与社会发展的基础上,努力探索区域水资源系统协调发展和统一管理的新思路和新方法,将水资源纳入区域可持续发展进行综合管理和优化配置,以期实现区域水资源系统和谐、可持续的发展目标。     

保定市水环境承载可持续性分析

为评价区域水环境承载与经济社会荷载之间的相对关系,采用水环境承载的可持续性评价指标体系来进行分析。该指标体系为指数-指标-变量的金字塔信息模式,分1个指数、6个分类指标、36个表征变量。根据保定市的地域特点与发展情况,选取1995~2004年的统计资料,采用常规加权平均综合评价法、模糊综合评价法分别计算了保定市1995~2004年的水环境承载度。结果分析表明,保定市的水环境承载度尽管处于较低水平(可持续承载度<0.6),但总体而言,水环境可持续承载度呈现出逐年增大的趋势,增加的幅度大约为0.01/a,表明总体趋势是向好的方向发展。局部地区的一些指标仍有远离可持续承载的趋势,需要采取相应的措施与对策。     

多联产系统的能值评估

为了扩展能值分析方法的应用范围,根据能值分析的基本思想,并以能量守恒和能值守恒为依据,提出了能反映多联产系统特点的能值评价指标,该能值评价指标将多联产系统的成本结构、排放影响和节约的资源置于同样重要位置考虑.以煤基燃料-电力多联产系统（甲醇-电力,氢-电力）为案例进行了能值分析.结果表明：该能值评价指标能全面度量多联产系统及其可持续性;多联产系统的连接模式、技术配置等因素均影响着多联产系统的可持续性;合适的燃料-电力比例的多联产系统的可持续性与单产系统相比有明显改善.图4表3参11