Cleaner Production Letters最新文献

Sustainable development is crucial for the competitive advantage of industries. However, implementing this business model faces challenges that can impact its integration and compromise the adoption of actions to address environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues that are of interest to stakeholders. To date, no in-depth study has presented the relationship between ESG issues and practical actions employed for sustainable development in companies within the Latin American context. Therefore, this article aims to evaluate the relationships between the main ESG issues and the actions applied to develop this theme in the Latin American industrial context, highlighting the main barriers, opportunities, and implications for this integration. As a methodology, a documentary analysis of 79 reports from Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, and Argentina was conducted using the content analysis method. This analysis highlighted central concerns such as climate change, water management, waste management, biodiversity, local communities, diversity, and inclusion. Additionally, a trend of ESG thematic dissemination was identified, which is in an early stage of maturity and lacks studies to quantify and diagnose the environmental impacts of Latin American industries. These findings directly impact the empirical evidence of how the Latin American industry is neglecting social issues, is still developing studies to quantify its environmental impacts, and strongly adheres to the concept and theme of ESG. The conclusions of this study highlight three main points: (i) From 2018 to 2022, 47% of material topics were related to at least one ESG pillar, with a predominance of the environmental dimension, (ii) there was a trend of increased adherence to ESG and improvements in the materiality of reports, and (iii) it is recommended to enhance indicators, accelerate the sustainable transition, and integrate ESG themes into supplier selection and workplace safety to strengthen sustainability practices in Latin American companies.

Under the Paris Agreement, the responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions lies with individual countries, which submit pledges to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) outlining their ambitions and timelines for emission reductions. Within countries, emissions are unevenly distributed among individuals, with the wealthy known to emit disproportionately more. Since greenhouse gas emissions represent a social cost, this paper investigates the economic implications of the lifestyles of the wealthy. The social cost of carbon (SCC) attributed to millionaires—defined based on their assets, including property—is calculated using national emissions data, distributional data, and SCC assessments for both historical (1990–2022) and future periods (2023–2050). The results suggest that only 1.3% of the global SCC, estimated at US$8.7 trillion, was covered by any form of carbon pricing in 2022. Of this amount, 16.5% (US$1.4 trillion) is attributable to millionaires, who represent just 0.8% of the world's population. The most cost-effective climate policy would be to internalize the SCC, ensuring that the carbon price is equal to the SCC. If the SCC remains externalized, the wealthiest individuals could benefit by an estimated US$25.1 trillion over the period from 2023 to 2050. Other market-based mechanisms will be necessary to curb the carbon-intensive consumption patterns of the wealthy.

The issue of sustainable food production has become increasingly important in recent years, starting from Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, moving through important events like Farm to Fork strategy up until the United Nations Food System Summit in 2021. The wine industry also, as a niche of the agri-food sector, has been influenced by this change, but despite its economic and cultural value, its sustainability issues have not been sufficiently explored by academia. The present research expands the debate on environmental sustainability in the wine industry by observing how management academia has addressed this topic over the last twelve years, defining the state of the art of a quite new and unexplored topic. The research has been structured as a systematic literature review of academic papers from 2009 till the first half of 2022. This methodology provides a clear overview of sustainable management practices, effective and potential, throughout the entire agri-food wine production process.

The papers identified are categorized and divided into major (most recurrent) and secondary topics, according to the prevalence criterion.

The findings and discussion section provides an in-depth description and analysis of each category, as well as research gaps identification and possible academic issues. Since it was not possible to find similar works, this research would like to be seen as an opportunity to develop the research on environmental sustainability in the wine industry and align the interest of academia and wine stakeholders defining the path for future research.

Despite increasing calls for circularity in business, the trending Circular Economy (CE) is not converting into action and the global usage of secondary material is declining. Addressing this gap is vital for our future well-being. Hence, more research is needed on whether and how companies translate broader CE discourses into their future visions. This study employed frame analysis to investigate how the CE's meaning and goals are being envisioned and shaped in companies' external communication to advance their future goals. Drawing empirical insights from documents focused on 41 Finnish self-declared front-runner CE companies from various industries, the paper contributes to current CE literature in two ways. First, five distinct future vision frames were identified – technological utopia, outsourcing circularity, business-as-usual, market leader, and systemic change – that demonstrate how self-described front-runner companies communicated circularity to their stakeholders. Second, the study demonstrates how company-level future visions align with or differ from macro-level CE visions. The study found that even self-described frontrunner CE companies were reluctant to align with strong sustainability in their framing, limiting the transformative potential of CE in business context. The findings have implications for managers regarding how they can assess their future visions from the perspective of weak or strong sustainability.

Environmental deterioration is a significant and multi-dimensional issue that concerns the modern world. During the last decades, research has been conducted to address this argument, intending to provide holistic policies that drive sustainable development. However, the European Union (EU) should further provoke the complementarity between growth and environmental quality. Recognizing that gender equality must be introduced in Agenda (2030), this paper intends to examine the impact of well-established macroeconomic and socioeconomic variables in existing literature alongside the role of women in governance. More specifically, this study uses panel data analysis to investigate the understanding of the effects of economic growth, renewable energy, human capital, female representation in parliaments, and environmental regulation on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in 20 European countries from 2004 to 2018. Empirically, the study employs several econometric tests and approaches. Findings partially confirm the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis, while renewable energy and tertiary education enhance sustainability. Environmental regulation is significant for policymakers as it decreases pollution. The role of women in parliaments, which has been scarcely examined in existing literature, appears to be beneficial for the prosperity of EU societies. All empirical findings leave ample room for further discussion among European stakeholders and policymakers, emphasizing the importance of female participation in governance.

An improved sustainability performance of one system does not automatically lead to an improved sustainability performance of larger systems (society and nature). A reliable sustainability assessment must be carried out to improve environmental and social sustainability performance for whole systems. It is necessary to show how a system of interest at any scale should (and can) improve sustainability performance. An examination of the literature on sustainability assessment highlights a lack of a systems perspective in most sustainability assessment frameworks. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to provide a framework that enables an assessment of environmental and social sustainability performance, taking systemic aspects into account. This assessment framework is based on a definition of first- and second-order sustainability performance. The former focuses on narrow efficiency issues, while second-order sustainability performance focuses on systemic effectiveness and covers sustainability impacts on society and nature. Improving the first-order level (narrow perspective) will not automatically lead to an improved second-order sustainability performance (systemic perspective). Thus, systemic effectiveness is not automatically increased in the case of first-order sustainability performance. Therefore, three essential dimensions have been identified and combined in an assessment framework, i.e., the dimension of scale, the decision horizon, and sustainability principles. The conceptualized assessment framework allows to analyze whether an action of a system of interest (e.g., corporate action, any process, project, or policy) contributes to global sustainable development.

New ventures that strive for sustainability are crucial in offering solutions to grand social and environmental challenges, but they often face unique tensions. Previous tensions research has primarily examined incumbent firms, thereby limiting the transferability of findings to new venture contexts. Using a conceptual framework based on paradox theory, we explore the tensions that result from the intent to create social and environmental value in addition to economic value. Using content analysis, eight new ventures were investigated longitudinally at the pre-seed and seed phases. The findings reveal that new ventures face different tensions in the categories of organizing, performing, belonging, and learning. Additionally, the study reveals how entrepreneurs manage these tensions. The findings expand on the sustainability management literature and provide a foundation for more research on new ventures’ tensions. Entrepreneurs can draw on our study to identify and potentially overcome these tensions to create value along the triple bottom line.

Plastic production has increased over the years and the packaging industry was responsible for 44% of the total plastic production. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), due to its favorable properties, is one of the most used polymers in this sector.

This study first aimed to compare the environmental performance related to the production of a novel recycled PET (rPET) form, namely, rPET flake, and then compare it with the production of virgin PET (vPET) and rPET pellet. Secondly, this study aimed to compare the environmental impacts of four water bottles with different compositions, namely, option A composed with only vPET, option B made with 50% vPET and 50% rPET pellet, option C made with 75% rPET pellet and 25% rPET flake, and option D made with 50% vPET, 25% rPET pellet and 25% rPET flake. Option A was designed as a single-use water bottle, while the remaining options (Options B, C and D) were thought to be reusable bottles, and for that reason were heavier and more robust compared to Option A. The environmental impact assessment followed the International Standard Rules of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and the impact assessment method used was the Environmental Product Declaration. Ecoibéria and Logoplaste provided the majority of the required data, and three functional units were considered. The first one was the production of 1 kg of PET, the second was the production of different water bottles, and finally, the third one was the consumption of 2 l of water with different water bottles. As a result, it was first observed that the production of rPET flake in comparison to vPET reduces, on average, 79% of the impacts, and rPET pellet reduces 10% of the impacts. Secondly, in the production of the different water bottles, Option A, the single-use bottle, presented the lowest environmental impacts in almost all categories. Finally, when taking into account the reusable factor, the use of single-use bottles presented the higher environmental impact in all categories, probably because of the dilution of the environmental impacts associated with the production of heavier and robust reusable bottles by the multiple times of uses of these bottles.