Global Sustainability Indicator Research Articles

New boundaries for sustainability accounting? A case study of multi-entity accounting and reporting in the agrifood sector

PurposeThis study examines how accounting tools and techniques are used to create and support membership and reporting boundaries for a multi-entity sustainability scheme. It also considers whether boundary setting for this initiative helps to connect corporate activity with planetary boundaries and the SDGs.Design/methodology/approachA case study of a national agrifood sustainability scheme, analysing extensive documentary data and multi-entity sustainability reports. The concept of partial organising is used to frame the analysis.FindingsAccounting, in the form of planning, verification, target setting, annual review and reporting, can be used to create a membership and a reporting boundary. Accounting tools and techniques support the scheme's standard-setting and monitoring elements. The study demonstrates that the scheme offers innovation in how sustainability reporting is managed. However, it does not currently provide a cumulative assessment of the effect of the sector's activity on ecological carrying capacity or connect this activity to global sustainability indicators.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research can build on this study's insights to further develop our understanding of multi-entity sustainability reporting and accounting's role in organising for sustainability. The authors identify several research avenues including: boundary setting in ecologically significant sectors, integrating global sustainability indicators at sectoral and organisational levels, sustainability controls in multi-entity settings and the potential of multi-entity reporting to provide substantive disclosure.Originality/valueThis paper provides insight into accounting's role in boundary setting for a multi-entity sustainability initiative. It adds to our understanding of the potential of a multi-entity reporting boundary to support connected measurement between corporate activity and global sustainability indicators. It builds on work on partial organising and provides insight into how accounting can support this form of organising for sustainability.

Developing a Controlling Model for Analyzing the Subjectivity of Enterprise Sustainability and Expert Group Judgments Using Fuzzy Triangular Membership Functions

The evaluation of sustainability is complex, involving several factors and expert opinions. In our research, we analyzed and evaluated the activities of a premium packaging material manufacturer with the participation of three relevant and professional groups. Various expectations have been defined in the form of plan values. From these plan values, we measured and evaluated the sustainability level of the company with the help of plan-fact ratios, fuzzy logic and triangular functions, enabling the subjective evaluation and integration of different opinions into the model. The purpose of our model is to support enterprise decision-making by taking into account sustainability aspects and the different expectations of interested parties. Our model helps identify intervention points and manages subjectivity in the field so that the decisions of enterprise managers better reflect the expectations and perspectives of those involved. The model we built is significantly different from previously used and developed indexes, as it functions as an enterprise-controlling model and index during sustainability evaluation. The developed model can also integrate company-specific and global sustainability indicators. Our research contributes to the development of sustainability evaluation methodology and the scientific examination of enterprise decision-making models. The controlling model we developed offers an integrated approach to managing the subjectivity of sustainability evaluation and the different expectations of stakeholder groups.

Comparing Innovative Versus Conventional Ham Processes via Environmental Life Cycle Assessment Supplemented with the Assessment of Nitrite Impacts on Human Health

Global sustainability indicators, particularly in human health, are necessary to describe agrifood products footprint. Nitrosamines are toxic molecules that are often encountered in cured and processed meats. As they are frequently consumed, meat-based products need to be assessed to evaluate their potential impact on human health. This article provides a methodological framework based on life cycle assessment for comparing meat product processing scenarios. The respective contributions of each step of the product life cycle are extended with a new human health indicator, nitrosamine toxicity, which has not been previously included in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies and tools (software and databases). This inclusion allows for the comparison of conventional versus innovative processes. Nitrosamines toxicity was estimated to be 2.20x10−6 disability-adjusted life years (DALY) for 1 kg of consumed conventional cooked ham while 4.54x10−7 DALY for 1 kg of consumed innovative cooked ham. The potential carcinogenic and noncarcinogenic effects of nitrosamines from meat products on human health are taken into account. Human health indicators are an important step forward in the comprehensive application of LCA methodology to improve the global sustainability of food systems.

An environment-economic analysis of hydrogen production using advanced biorefineries and its comparison with conventional technologies

This paper shows how novel high-performance thermophilic consortia employed in the dark fermentation stage of a biorefinery can lead to a competitive commercial-scale hydrogen production using lignocellulosic biomass as feedstock. The biorefinery design alternatives under study also include either diluted acid or hydrothermal pretreatment, and the option of either selling the biogas produced in the wastewater treatment stage or using it for electricity cogeneration. A bi-dimensional (i.e., environmental-economic) sustainability analysis was carried out comparing these four design alternatives against two conventional schemes (coal gasification and natural gas reforming). Results showed that, under a regulatory framework that considers environmental and economic issues on the same basis, the low total production costs of conventional schemes are not enough to compensate, in monetary terms, their severe environmental impacts (mainly water usage and pollution) when compared with the biorefining options. Moreover, most of the proposed biorefinery schemes ranked higher than conventional options. In particular, the design with acid pretreatment and biogas sale was the most sustainable option with a positive global sustainability indicator (0.007 USD/MJout).

Assessment of UASB–DHS technology for sewage treatment: a comparative study from a sustainability perspective

ABSTRACTThis paper assesses the technical and economic sustainability of a combined system of an up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB)–down-flow hanging sponge (DHS) for sewage treatment. Additionally, this study compares UASB–DHS with current technologies in India like trickling filters (TF), sequencing batch reactor (SBR), moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR), and other combinations of UASB with post-treatment systems such as final polishing ponds (FPU) and extended aeration sludge process (EASP). The sustainability of the sewage treatment plants (STPs) was evaluated using a composite indicator, which incorporated environmental, societal, and economic dimensions. In case of the individual sustainability indicator study, the results showed that UASB-FPU was the most economically sustainable system with a score of 0.512 and aeration systems such as MBBR, EASP, and SBR were environmentally sustainable, whereas UASB–DHS system was socially sustainable. However, the overall comparative analysis indicated that the UASB–DHS system scored the highest value of 2.619 on the global sustainability indicator followed by EASP and MBBR with scores of 2.322 and 2.279, respectively. The highlight of this study was that the most environmentally sustainable treatment plants were not economically and socially sustainable. Moreover, sensitivity analysis showed that five out of the seven scenarios tested, the UASB–DHS system showed good results amongst the treatment system.

Spatially Differentiated Sustainability Assessment for the Design of Global Supply Chains

Supply chains of modern products are often characterized by globally dispersed activities that have ecological, economic, and social impacts. Life cycle-oriented sustainability assessment methods usually aim at compiling the total impacts of a product without explicitly considering their spatial distribution. This may be problematic because regional characteristics of technology and environment are ignored and opportunities for tradeoffs between local and global sustainability measures are hidden. This paper proposes a framework for spatially differentiated sustainability assessment to support the design of global supply chains. The framework comprises a resource flow model that links production processes to specific locations, multi-scale impact assessment to derive regional and global sustainability indicators, and multi-criteria evaluation balancing the preferences of different stakeholders. An illustrative example shows that the application of this framework to a simplified supply chain of beer production leads to different results when alternative supply chain structures are compared.

Environmental assessment of green concretes for structural use

This paper presents a comparative environmental assessment of several different green concrete mixes for structural use. Four green concrete mixes were compared with a conventional concrete mix: recycled aggregate concrete with a cement binder, high-volume fly ash concrete with natural and recycled aggregates, and alkali activated fly ash concrete with natural aggregates. All five concrete mixes were designed and experimentally verified to have equal compressive strength and workability. An attributional life cycle assessment, based on the scenario which included construction practice, transport distances, and materials available in Serbia, was performed. When treating fly ash impacts, three allocation procedures were compared: ‘no allocation’, economic, and mass allocation, with mass allocation giving unreasonably high impacts of fly ash. Normalization and aggregation of indicators was performed and the impact of each concrete mix was expressed through a global sustainability indicator. A sensitivity analysis was also performed to evaluate the influence of possibly different carbonation resistance and long-term deformational behavior on the functional unit. In this specific case study, regardless of the choice of the functional unit, the best overall environmental performance was shown by the alkali activated fly ash concrete mix with natural aggregates and the high-volume fly ash recycled aggregate concrete mix. The worst performance was shown by the recycled aggregate concrete mix with a cement binder.

Global economic sustainability indicator: analysis and policy options for the Copenhagen process

The traditional discussion about CO2 emissions and greenhouse gases as a source of global warming has been rather static, namely in the sense that innovation dynamics have not been considered much. Given the global nature of the climate problem, it is natural to develop a more dynamic Schumpeterian perspective and to emphasize a broader international analysis, which takes innovation dynamics and green international competitiveness into account: We discuss key issues of developing a consistent global sustainability indicator, which should cover the crucial dimensions of sustainability in a simple and straightforward way. The basic elements presented here concern genuine savings rates—covering not only depreciations on capital, but on the natural capital as well—, the international competitiveness of the respective country in the field of environmental (“green”) goods and the share of renewable energy generation. International benchmarking can thus be encouraged and opportunities emphasized—an approach developed here. This new EIIW-vita Global Sustainability Indicator is consistent with the recent OECD requirements on composite indicators and thus, we suggest new options for policymakers. The US and Indonesia have suffered from a decline in their performance in the period 2000–07; Germany has improved its performance as judged by the new composite indicator whose weights are determined from factor analysis. The countries covered stand for roughly 91% of world GDP, 94% of global exports, 82% of global CO2 emissions and 68% of the population.

Emergy analysis of building manufacturing, maintenance and use: Em-building indices to evaluate housing sustainability

In recent years, integrated building design practices based on the definition of “green building” criteria as common standards of measurement have been promoted. For example, Green Building Rating Systems such as LEED (US) and BREEAM (UK) provide national standards for developing high-performance sustainable buildings. However, integrated environmental accounting methods and global sustainability indicators are still required to evaluate the general environmental performances of buildings, because housing is greatly concerned with global environmental problems such as the use of non-renewable energy, the overexploitation of materials, the exhaustion of resources and the wasting of energy. In this work, an emergy (spelled with an “m”) analysis has been applied to a building to account for the main energy and material inflows to the processes of building manufacturing, maintenance and use. Building materials, technologies and structural elements have been measured and compared to each other in order to evaluate their impacts and to provide a basic calculation that may be used for evaluation and selection. A comprehensive appraisal of the building industry is then expected through a series of synthetic indices. Results represent a source of information that will also be useful for future studies on the urban and regional scale.

Global sustainability: Toward measurement

The widespread interest in the concept of sustainable environment and development has been accompanied by the need to develop useful systems of measurement. We discuss the use of indicators which might be used to assess such conditions. Our characteristics, or criteria, for desirable global sustainability indicators are: We discuss the basis of these characteristics, and examine two categories of indicators (soil erosion and population) and two specific indicators (physical quality of life index and energy imports as a percentage of consumption) for their value as sustainability measures.