Achieving sustainable patterns of consumption and production is perhaps the biggest challenge facing our society today. The de-mand for more safe environmentally benign products is rising and many companies are lookin...Achieving sustainable patterns of consumption and production is perhaps the biggest challenge facing our society today. The de-mand for more safe environmentally benign products is rising and many companies are looking for new ways to progressively improve the sus-tainability of their products. Moreover, there are numerous opportunities and countless innovations, technological as well as non-technologi-cal,that need to be exploited to improve the sustainability of products. Manufacturing industry is an important sector of any economy and hasthe potential to become a driving force for enabling sustainable patterns of production and consumption through introducing efficient productionpractices and developing products and services that help reduce environmental impacts. The benefits of adopting an integrated policy towardsproduct development based on life cycle thinking and eco-design to stimulate improvement of the environmental performance of each part ofproduct life cycle phases and achieve sustainable patterns of production and consumption are emphasized. The challenges in implementingsustainable manufacturing and the circular economy approaches are listed. A number of solutions are suggested to face up these challenges,for instance, increased awareness of enterprises particularly SME's of product life cycle issues and the opportunities that are available for costsavings and profit making from eco-innovation in product development for both the domestic and export markets and providing practical helpand advice directly to enterprises on integrated product development to promote enterprise led Eco-innovation. Aiming at contributing to sus-tainable manufacturing in China, Sino-UK Low Carbon Manufacturing Consortium, a multi-disciplinary research and educational partnershipbetween academia, industry and government agencies in the UK and China with interest in sustainable manufacturing issues, has been formedrecently.The vision, aims and benefits of membership of the consortium are also discussed.展开更多
A sustainable materials management for metals should be achieved to conserve resources of metal minerals.For the sustainable materials management,material flows through the whole life cycle of materials have been reco...A sustainable materials management for metals should be achieved to conserve resources of metal minerals.For the sustainable materials management,material flows through the whole life cycle of materials have been recognized by material flow analysis(MFA) studies.Former MFA studies pointed out that cyclic use of metals could be enhanced not only by increasing quantity of recovered scrap but also by upgrading quality of the scrap.In general,the quality is degraded by contaminants which commingle at disassembling processes.The mixture of contaminants depends on usage of materials in products.Here,Type I ecolabelling has a potential to convey messages for avoiding mixture of contaminants to the producers of finished products.In this study,on the basis of a survey on existing certification criteria related to metals in the world,a general concept of certification criteria on sustainable materials management for metals in Type I ecolabelling system is proposed.Finally,we propose six criteria in the form of certification criteria in Type I ecolabelling system.展开更多
文摘Achieving sustainable patterns of consumption and production is perhaps the biggest challenge facing our society today. The de-mand for more safe environmentally benign products is rising and many companies are looking for new ways to progressively improve the sus-tainability of their products. Moreover, there are numerous opportunities and countless innovations, technological as well as non-technologi-cal,that need to be exploited to improve the sustainability of products. Manufacturing industry is an important sector of any economy and hasthe potential to become a driving force for enabling sustainable patterns of production and consumption through introducing efficient productionpractices and developing products and services that help reduce environmental impacts. The benefits of adopting an integrated policy towardsproduct development based on life cycle thinking and eco-design to stimulate improvement of the environmental performance of each part ofproduct life cycle phases and achieve sustainable patterns of production and consumption are emphasized. The challenges in implementingsustainable manufacturing and the circular economy approaches are listed. A number of solutions are suggested to face up these challenges,for instance, increased awareness of enterprises particularly SME's of product life cycle issues and the opportunities that are available for costsavings and profit making from eco-innovation in product development for both the domestic and export markets and providing practical helpand advice directly to enterprises on integrated product development to promote enterprise led Eco-innovation. Aiming at contributing to sus-tainable manufacturing in China, Sino-UK Low Carbon Manufacturing Consortium, a multi-disciplinary research and educational partnershipbetween academia, industry and government agencies in the UK and China with interest in sustainable manufacturing issues, has been formedrecently.The vision, aims and benefits of membership of the consortium are also discussed.
基金the Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (A) KAKENHI 22686084
文摘A sustainable materials management for metals should be achieved to conserve resources of metal minerals.For the sustainable materials management,material flows through the whole life cycle of materials have been recognized by material flow analysis(MFA) studies.Former MFA studies pointed out that cyclic use of metals could be enhanced not only by increasing quantity of recovered scrap but also by upgrading quality of the scrap.In general,the quality is degraded by contaminants which commingle at disassembling processes.The mixture of contaminants depends on usage of materials in products.Here,Type I ecolabelling has a potential to convey messages for avoiding mixture of contaminants to the producers of finished products.In this study,on the basis of a survey on existing certification criteria related to metals in the world,a general concept of certification criteria on sustainable materials management for metals in Type I ecolabelling system is proposed.Finally,we propose six criteria in the form of certification criteria in Type I ecolabelling system.
