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This book describes and analyses necessities for a more resource-efficient world. It discusses solutions for a more sustainable use of natural resources, addressing decision-makers and experts from the fields of policy development, industry, academia, civil society, and the media. The book presents strategies, concrete ways and examples of achieving more sustainable resource use in practice. Following on from two previous titles published on Factor X by the Umweltbundesamt (German Environment Agency), entitled “Factor X: Policy, Strategies and Instruments for a Sustainable Resource Use” (2013) and “Factor X: Re-source – Designing the Recycling Society” (2014), this book further investigates how savings in natural resources and resource efficiency improvements could be achieved, focusing on good practice examples that cover different resource categories, pursue different efficiency strategies and come from different sectors, e.g. innovative products or serv ices, technology, management approaches, systemic approaches, etc. The background against which this work is done has a highly comprehensive span, from the first Declaration of the Factor X Club in the nineties, to the European Commission’s Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe that was published in September 2011, through to the German Federal government’s German Resource Efficiency Programme (ProgRess I and II) in 2012 and 2016, the G7 Alliance for Resource Efficiency, and most recently the development and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
Economic growth --- Economic policy and planning (general) --- Economics --- Environmental protection. Environmental technology --- Production management --- economie --- economische politiek --- economische groei --- milieuzorg --- duurzame ontwikkeling
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As currently projected, global population growth will place increasing pressures on the environment and on Earth’s resources. Growth will be concentrated in developing countries, leading to leaps in demand for goods and services, and a paradox: although there are initiatives to decouple resource use and economic growth in mature economies, their effects could be more than offset by rapid economic growth in developing countries like China and India. Others will follow, claiming their equal right to material well- being. This will even more increase the challenge facing the industrialized countries to reduce their resource use. The editors of Factor X explore and analyze this trajectory, predicting scarcities of non-renewable materials such as metals, limited availability of ecological capacities and shortages arising from geographic concentrations of materials. They argue that what is needed is a radical change in the ways we use nature’s resources to produce goods and services and generate well-being. The goal of saving our ecosystem demands a prompt and decisive reduction of man-induced material flows. Before 2050, they assert, we must achieve a significant decrease in consumption of resources, in the line with the idea of a factor 10 reduction target. EU-wide and country specific targets must be set, and enforced using strict, accurate measurement of consumption of materials. Their arguments are drawn from empirical evidence and observations, as well as theoretical considerations based on economic modeling and on natural science. Factor X holds that these fundamental principles should underpin future Resources Strategies: the consumption of a resource should not exceed its regeneration and recycling rate or the rate at which all functions can be substituted; the long-term release of substances should not exceed the tolerance limit of environmental media and their capacity for assimilation; hazards and unreasonable risks for humankind and the environment due to anthropogenic influences must be avoided; the time scale of anthropogenic interference with the environment must be in a balanced relation to the response time needed by the environment in order to stabilize itself. The book concludes by offering proposals and ideas for new national and regional policies on reducing demand and shifting toward sustainability, and concrete actions and instruments for implementing them. The editors have created a useful map on our transformation path towards a “Factor X” society.
Methodology of economics --- Economic growth --- Economic policy and planning (general) --- Economics --- Environmental protection. Environmental technology --- Production management --- Business economics --- duurzaamheid --- economie --- economische politiek --- economische groei --- milieuzorg --- duurzame ontwikkeling --- milieubeheer
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Factor X: Re-source—Designing the Recycling Society examines the issue of resources and raw materials, from the perspective of sustaining industrialized economies in the face of global competition for shrinking supplies. Although Germany has reduced its appetite for raw materials from some 680 tonnes per million GDP in 2000 to 580 tonnes in 2008, it still is not on track to meet the goals of its national sustainability strategy. Economical use of raw materials not only reduces pressure on the environment but also opens up economic opportunities for individual companies and the economy as a whole, as shown by a modeling study carried out on behalf of the German Federal Environment Agency. The role of recycling management is a key point in this work. This implies that rich industrialised countries will need to reduce their excessive consumption while other countries should be allowed to increase consumption. Human economies must meet each other in a “sustainability corridor”. Factor X: Re-source—Designing the Recycling Society explores the role of recycling in efforts to achieve the sustainable world envisioned in the Federal Environment Ministry’s Resource Efficiency Programme, known as ProgRess. The chapters build a roadmap to a Recycling Society in which the decoupling of resource consumption and economic growth is accomplished.
Environmental law --- Applied physical engineering --- Environmental protection. Environmental technology --- Engineering sciences. Technology --- milieukunde --- duurzaamheid --- milieu --- duurzame ontwikkeling --- milieurecht --- milieupolitiek --- ingenieurswetenschappen --- milieubeheer
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