Green Factory Research Articles

A Study on Carbon Emission in Logistics Industry: Creating Awareness to Reduce

Objective: Climate change is a reality we cannot ignore and now more than ever we need visible action irrespective of our geographic location or economic status. This study explores the multifaceted hurdles impeding scope 3 emission reduction initiatives within the logistic sector, challenges that create barriers in their investment decisions, regulatory pressures, unavailability of technology and monitoring support, etc. Theoretical Framework: Globally, alerts are being created for climate actions that are lacking and resulting in huge gaps between the target set and covered. Bangladesh is leading the way towards green initiatives scope 1 (Direct emission) and 2 (Indirect emission) but not visible driving scope 3 emission reduction (All indirect emissions in a company’s value chain, including downstream transportation). Method: Employing a qualitative approach, data was gathered through interviews and meetings with 500 or more green factories in Bangladesh. Due to less time and political barriers, could not continue the research and accumulate more data. Results and Discussion: The findings highlight revealing key barriers such as unavailability of technology, overly expensive options or huge investment for intensive technology, limited access to those technologies, lack of skilled resources, monitoring and reporting challenges, lack of collaboration, etc. that are creating obstacles for climate actions all around the world. Research Implications: Awareness and collaboration could bring a positive impact to reduce the significant challenges that the logistics industry confronts in reducing Scope 3 emissions, obliging collaborative efforts among service providers, manufacturers end users. Originality/Value: Policy interventions and technological upgrades can emphasize the significance of unified action in transforming the logistics landscape towards sustainability which would impact positively and make a difference.

Government certified environmental labels and trade credit: Evidence from green factories

Using novel data from a manually collected green factory list, our results show government-certified labels significantly enhance trade credits by reducing information asymmetry. Heterogeneity analysis reveals stronger effects in highly monopolized, low-reputation markets, where green certification provides a competitive advantage.

Generating high purity and yield of capsanthin and capsorubin carrot germplasm through synthetic metabolic engineering.

Capsanthin and capsorubin are red κ-xanthophylls exclusively found in a handful of other plant species. Currently, capsanthin and capsorubin are only extracted from red pepper. Here, high purity production of capsanthin and capsorubin has been achieved in carrot taproot by synthetic metabolic engineering strategy. Expression of a capsanthin-capsorubin synthase gene (CaCCS) from pepper resulted in dominant production of capsanthin whereas expression of a LiCCS gene from tiger lily resulted in production of both capsanthin and capsorubin in carrot taproot. The highest content of capsanthin and capsorubin was obtained in LiC-1 carrot taproot hosting the LiCCS gene, 150.09 μg/g DW (dry weight). Co-expression of DcBCH1 with CCS could improve the purity of capsanthin and capsorubin by eliminating the non-target carotenoids (eg. α-carotene and β-carotene). The highest purity of capsanthin and capsorubin was obtained in BLiC-1 carrot taproot hosting DcBCH1+LiCCS genes, 91.10% of total carotenoids. The non-native pigments were esterified partially and stored in the globular chromoplast of carrot taproot. Our results demonstrated the possibility of employing carrot taproot as green factories for high purity production of capsanthin and capsorubin. The capsanthin/capsorubin carrot germplasms were also valuable materials for breeding colorful carrots cultivars.

Regulatory or market pressures: What promotes environmental grandstanding in Bangladesh?

Many factors affect the adoption of the mandatory technology of effluent treatment plants for pollution management in Bangladesh. Some of these factors could also affect the adoption of voluntary environmental standards. Therefore, it is important to identify and analyze the importance of these key factors, considering their role in enhancing environmental performance in crucial industries for the country's economy. In this study, a literature review preceded an analysis of factors through structural equation modelling to investigate how attributes of the regulatory agency combine with market aspects to influence environmental practices such as the adoption of mandatory ETP and voluntary certifications. Using official quarterly data, the results of this study show that access to green finance and the number of employees of the regulatory agency significantly affect the adoption of additional ETPs. On the other hand, the size of fines for pollution does not significantly affect the adoption of ETPs. It was also found that green finance and additional ETP adoption also increased the adoption of green factory buildings, which is a voluntary exercise. This study sheds light on the underlying relationships that can guide ongoing multilateral interventions to enhance capacity of regulatory agencies to implement environmental regulations. It also provides new evidence to formulate relevant strategies for enhancing environmental performance by scaling up green finance.

The value of “green label”: green factory and corporate ESG performance

ABSTRACT Green manufacturing and corporate ESG performance are two vital issues related to sustainable development. Utilizing manually collated data of green factory, publicly listed company data and corporate ESG scores disclosed by the Bloomberg database, this paper adopts a difference-in-difference approach to explore the impact of green manufacturing on corporate ESG performance. The empirical results demonstrate that green manufacturing significantly enhances corporate ESG performance by expanding green investment and alleviating financing constraints. Further analysis indicates that green manufacturing plays a more crucial role in improving corporate environmental performance and social responsibility. The findings offer valuable insights for refining government environmental regulatory tools and for corporations aiming to enhance their ESG performance.

More green, less labor gains? Green factory and labor income share in China

Green Manufacturing, a pivotal aspect of green transformation, carries high expectations for its potential role in wealth creation and equitable distribution. This paper investigates whether the growth dividend resulting from Green Manufacturing benefits workers. Leveraging the “Green Factory” list released in 2017 and subsequent years as a quasi-natural experiment, we apply a time-varying difference-in-differences methodology to analyze the income distribution effects of Green Manufacturing. Our findings reveal that Green Manufacturing significantly boosts labor productivity within companies but does not notably impact worker wages, leading to a decline in the labor income share. Furthermore, we show that alleviating financing constraints and fostering green innovation are two prominent operating mechanisms, while human capital upgrading shows negligible effects. Overall, the evidence suggests that the growth dividends stemming from Green Manufacturing do not evenly benefit all input factors.

Research on Green Transformation of Enterprises from the Perspective of Innovation Driving

This paper takes Zhejiang Zhongguang Electric Group Co.Ltd. as an example to explain how enterprises overcome the problems faced in the transformation of green manufacturing, take innovation-driven green manufacturing as the primary premise, and become the pathfinder of innovation-driven green manufacturing in the manufacturing industry. The research in this case found that CGE adheres to the “innovation” driven development, and strives to create a development model of “one main body, innovation driven and five integration” with itself as the main body, innovation driven and five integration complemented; Through the construction of green factories, the design of green parks, the research and development of green products and the operation of green supply chain, the in-depth development of innovation is promoted in an orderly manner, providing valuable experience for the organic integration of green manufacturing and sustainable development. At the same time, the strategic layout of Zhongguang Electric is also improving day by day, constantly pursuing enterprise growth and technological breakthroughs, and integrating green management into enterprise management, product design and production.

Phytochemical Evaluation of Different Solvent Mediated Extracts and Brine Shrimp Lethality Bioassay of Psychotria Octosulcata W. A Talbot

Plants’ bioactive chemicals have been utilized throughout human history as supplements and medicines to support the body’s natural physiological processes. When their function is discovered, many substances are added for medical uses. Herbs are known to contain a variety of organic substances. These crucial herbs are the main ingredients in many pharmaceutical and healthcare products. Traditional folk medical practices offer essential information for the extraction and creation of numerous medications and activities as well. The production of a few highly active pharmaceuticals is justified by the extraction and characterization of a variety of bioactive chemicals from green factories. This study uses quantitative analysis of ethyl acetate, ethanol, n-hexane, chloroform and aqueous extract along with established methodologies to assess the phytochemicals. Alkaloids, flavonoids, reducing sugars, proteins, amino acids, saponins, tannins, terpenoids and glycosides were discovered in the quantification and phytochemical screening results. Due to the presence of several phytochemical substances, the entire plant of Psychotria octosulcata W. A. Talbot demonstrated a diversity of medicinal potential. The cytotoxicity activity of the plant extracts was predicted using brine shrimp lethality assay (BSLA). The results showed that the shrimp in the ethanolic extract of Psychotria octosulcata W. A. Talbotare extremely hazardous in higher concentrations. Only 10 shrimps are discovered to be lethal at lowest concentrations even after 24 h. This can be due to the presence of bioactive substances.

Manufacturing of an effective, eco-friendly nano insecticide with aiding of green alga Chlorella vulgaris in contrast with the traditional insecticide.

This study aims to establish an aqueous extract of Chlorella vulgaris as a green factory to manufacture titanium nanoparticles and to apply these nanoparticles to control the house flies (Musca domestica). Since the crystallite size of prepared titanium nanoparticles was 27.39 nm. Furthermore, the observed size for bulk particles ranged (from 92.33-249.6) nm through SEM. While for nanocrystalline the size ranged (from 9.395- 206) nm. Several phytochemicals were detected within algal extracts such as phenols, tannins, alkaloids, flavonoids, resins, and saponins. All these active compounds participated in nano-synthesis by acting as reducing and stabilizing agents. finally, titanium nanoparticles were used as a controlling agent against house flies (Musca domestica) and compared with traditional insecticides (Imidacloprid). High mortality percentages reached 100% against 1st larval stage, 70% against 3rd larval stage, and 93.3% in adult flies. These fatalities were higher after using Imidacloprid for all tested stages. Many phenotypic distortions were also caught in houseflies treated with TiO2 NPs prepared by Chlorella, such as; failure in pupal emergence and maturity, incomplete development in the head, legs, and wings, and disappearance in genital organs. It has shown that Chlorella Vulgaris is a good candidate for nanomanufacturing and a rich naturally derived Nanopesticide.

Status and challenges of green manufacturing: Comparative analysis of China and other countries

Energy-intensive manufacturing is a major source of GHG emissions and environmental impacts. Countries in the world are all facing challenges in green manufacturing transformation. The conceptual evolution and actual implementation of green manufacturing in China and other countries show some similarities but also discrepancy. This paper describes the green manufacturing system in China from four aspects: green factory, green product, green park and green supply chain. The comparison of the four aspects is carried out between China and world's major economics including Europe, the United States, Japan, etc. Our results show that the common challenges among countries in the process of promoting green manufacturing are absent of corresponding product baseline standards in evaluating green products and no sufficient life cycle planning within plant boundaries. China is faced with specific challenges that there is no clear green product evaluation standards in life cycle assessment methods, system boundaries and life cycle stages of products. Other countries such as Germany and the United States are faced with challenges that there is a lack of environmental and performance evaluation as well as concrete implementation of life cycle evaluation within the factory boundary, and that there is difficulty for the national manufacturing industry chain to achieve a closed loop since industrial migration. We suggest that China draw lessons from the European Union, the United States and Japan in the elaborate methods design of green products assessment. As such, China's green factory assessment framework and strict government guidance can be a reference for other countries.

Digitisation and renaissance of the manufacturing industry in major cities : The case of Berlin

The rise of digitisation will cause a major upheaval in the manufacturing industries, bringing changes to traditional industrial location patterns as well. In order to understand the direction these structural changes are taking, this paper analyses the start-up activity in the industrial sector. The frontrunners are metropolitan regions and in particular major cities such as Berlin or Munich. Furthermore, detailed analysis of the city of Berlin shows higher and stable concentrations of new industrial companies in inner city locations. This spatial pattern requires the proactive application of legal planning instruments for mixed land use, which contributes to the integration of hybrid spaces and clean and green factories in the inner city.

Plant-made vaccines against viral diseases in humans and farm animals.

Plants provide not only food and feed, but also herbal medicines and various raw materials for industry. Moreover, plants can be green factories producing high value bioproducts such as biopharmaceuticals and vaccines. Advantages of plant-based production platforms include easy scale-up, cost effectiveness, and high safety as plants are not hosts for human and animal pathogens. Plant cells perform many post-translational modifications that are present in humans and animals and can be essential for biological activity of produced recombinant proteins. Stimulated by progress in plant transformation technologies, substantial efforts have been made in both the public and the private sectors to develop plant-based vaccine production platforms. Recent promising examples include plant-made vaccines against COVID-19 and Ebola. The COVIFENZ® COVID-19 vaccine produced in Nicotiana benthamiana has been approved in Canada, and several plant-made influenza vaccines have undergone clinical trials. In this review, we discuss the status of vaccine production in plants and the state of the art in downstream processing according to good manufacturing practice (GMP). We discuss different production approaches, including stable transgenic plants and transient expression technologies, and review selected applications in the area of human and veterinary vaccines. We also highlight specific challenges associated with viral vaccine production for different target organisms, including lower vertebrates (e.g., farmed fish), and discuss future perspectives for the field.

Analyzing Short-run and Long-run Causality Relationship among CO2 Emission, Energy Consumption, GDP, Square of GDP, and Foreign Direct Investment in Environmental Kuznets Curve for Thailand

This paper analyzes the causal link between CO2 emission, energy consumption, GDP, square of GDP, and foreign direct investment in the Environmental Kuznets Curve for Thailand from 1971-2014. Three steps are used: bound tests to verify the presence of cointegration, autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to check the effects of the dependent variables on the independent variable in the short run and long run, and finally, the vector error correction (VECM) was used the detect the causal relationships among variables. The results show no cointegration between variables, confirming the short-run relationship's existence. In addition, the Granger causality results show varied outcomes, indicating that two bidirectional causal relationships exist in the short run. The first relationship is between energy consumption and GDP, and the second is between energy consumption and GDP2. In addition, there are seven unidirectional relationships where FDI affects CO2 emission, energy consumption, GDP, and GDP2, including CO2 emission affects energy consumption, GDP, and GDP2. The results of long-run causal relationships show three bidirectional causal relationships between GDP and CO2 emission, GDP2 and CO2 emission, including GDP and GDP2. Moreover, there are two unidirectional relationships: GDP influences energy consumption and GDP2 affects energy consumption. Therefore, in terms of policy, the Thai government should support using more renewable energy. Including foreign direct investment, the government should issue a policy for foreign investors' investment by regulating green factories and efficient technology in reducing pollution emissions.

Physical Separation: Reuse Pollutants and Thermal Energy from Water

Conventional sewage treatment based on biological and chemical methods have made historical contributions to humans. However, it breaks the biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus and cannot remove hazardous materials including viruses and nano/microplastics. Therefore, we rethought the conceptual revolution of principles of sewage treatment in the 1890s, that is, “the replacement of a philosophy that saw sewage purification as the prevention of decomposition with one that tried to facilitate the biological processes that destroy sewage naturally”. We proposed a promising sewage treatment system based on physical separation, which mainly consists of the source separators and the insoluble-pollutants separators, soluble-pollutants separators, and the wastewater heat recovery devices in wastewater treatment plants. By using the promising system, the carbon in wastewater will be recovered by sending biosolids directly into the soil after removing the hazardous materials and organic toxicity. The nitrogen and phosphorus in wastewater will be sent back into the soil or be used for hydroponics rather than be mineralized. The thermal energy in wastewater will be recovered and reused, and the hazardous materials will be removed. As a result, the promising system will turn the wastewater treatment system with high resource and thermal energy waste and high energy consumption into a no-chemicals, green factory. At present, nonetheless, it is still urgent to develop more advanced insoluble-pollutants separators and soluble-pollutants separators with high separation efficiency and low energy consumption, especially volume separators. Because the volume separators (e.g., functionalized sand filters) have the potential for replacing the surface separators (e.g., membranes).

The efforts of manufacturing enterprises toward sustainable development under voluntary environmental policy: The roles of external pressure, attraction, and internal attributes

AbstractBased on the National Green Factory Policy (NGFP) issued by the Chinese government in 2016, we analyzed the list of manufacturing enterprises awarded the National Green Factory (NGF) designation in 31 provinces over the period 2017–2021. In this regard, we found that the local governments' political resources and soft pressure, and enterprises' profitability have a positive effect, while mimetic pressure has a negative effect on the tendency of manufacturing enterprises to declare NGF designation (hereafter, TENDENCY). Moreover, the positive effect of soft pressure was stronger when political resources were high (vs. low). Additionally, we observed a U‐shaped relationship between the enterprises' environmental pollution level and TENDENCY, and that profitability can weaken such relationship. This study contributes to the literature on the institutional theory and resource dependence theory, and provides new insights into how governments can develop voluntary environmental policies to incentive manufacturing firms to engage in green behaviors.

Biotechnology Advances in Bioremediation of Arsenic: A Review.

Arsenic is a highly toxic metalloid widespread in the Earth's crust, and its contamination due to different anthropogenic activities (application of agrochemicals, mining, waste management) represents an emerging environmental issue. Therefore, different sustainable and effective remediation methods and approaches are needed to prevent and protect humans and other organisms from detrimental arsenic exposure. Among numerous arsenic remediation methods, those supported by using microbes as sorbents (microbial remediation), and/or plants as green factories (phytoremediation) are considered as cost-effective and environmentally-friendly bioremediation. In addition, recent advances in genetic modifications and biotechnology have been used to develop (i) more efficient transgenic microbes and plants that can (hyper)accumulate or detoxify arsenic, and (ii) novel organo-mineral materials for more efficient arsenic remediation. In this review, the most recent insights from arsenic bio-/phytoremediation are presented, and the most relevant physiological and molecular mechanisms involved in arsenic biological routes, which can be useful starting points in the creation of more arsenic-tolerant microbes and plants, as well as their symbiotic associations are discussed.

THE IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENTAL INNOVATION & ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT ON GREEN PRODUCT INNOVATION PERFORMANCE IN THE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY OF PAKISTAN WITH THE HELP OF MEDIATING ROLE OF GREEN CREATIVITY CLIMATE

The purpose of this paper, exploring the impact of success factors of EIP dimensions (i.e. Environmental Management, Creativity Climate, Green Creativity, Green Product Innovation Performance) & their impact on the organizational performance of Manufacturers in Pakistan on various leveled execution (i.e. environmental performance, economic performance, & operational performance, whereas EIP practices in developing countries like Pakistan needs to explore. The Data of this research were collected from the managers of 185 business firms in Pakistan through survey questionnaires with a purposive sampling technique. The target population consisted of managerial employees (business experts & executives) from private business firms & it was subjected to PLS-SEM for analysis. Our findings show that Manufacturing organizations can find consumers with low-quality environmental requirements having a low motivation to buy products. The most important element of an organization that promotes the establishment of a green factory product, contributes to the organizational innovation theory.

Inviting MNFs’ green offshoring: Is it an effective way to coordinate economic and environmental sustainability?

Nowadays, to achieve sustainable development, many developing countries are worrying about the deteriorating lock-in issues of high carbon. Therefore, policies including tax break, consumer green education, and subsidy for green production are set out to motivate multinational firms (MNFs) to build green factories in developing countries. This results in transboundary issues that induce MNFs' offshoring besides the traditional consideration of production cost. In this paper, we formulate the tradeoffs of an MNF headquartered in a developed country in building green factories overseas in developing countries that help the latter reshape urban infrastructure and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We show that the MNF's offshoring cost (e.g., the supply chain decentralization loss and the overseas delivery time cost) can be compensated by the tax-planning benefit because of the developing countries' tax break policies. We also show that the softened downstream market competition, improved consumer green awareness, and subsidy for green production serve as alternative weapons to encourage the MNFs to build green factories in developing countries.

Life cycle assessment of polycarbonate production: Proposed optimization toward sustainability

The global plastics industry urgently requires a shift to sustainable manufacturing, but only a mere fraction of these plastics have been explored for their life cycle environmental impacts. Polycarbonate (PC), the top consumer of engineering plastics, lacks due attention. This study quantified the industrial-level environmental impacts of two mainstream PC production processes in China, the world's largest PC producer, via an integrated and regionalized life cycle impact assessment model. The fossil depletion category contributed dominant environmental impacts, accounting for approximately 60% in both scenarios. Bisphenol A production and coal mining and combustion were identified as crucial processes, specifying optimal directions toward sustainability. The PC green factories showed eco-effectiveness, with roughly 10% reductions in both non-carcinogens and global warming categories at the leading level. The mechanically recycled PC production could yield 82.3%–99.6% benefits in key categories. Moreover, green mines, ultra-low emission, bio-based plastics, and extended producer responsibility are highly recommended.

Evaluation of Green Manufacturing Level in China’s Provincial Administrative Regions Based on Combination Weighting Method and TOPSIS

Green manufacturing is becoming an important emerging field in the new round of global industrial revolution and scientific and technological competition. Scientific evaluation of China’s regional green manufacturing level has far-reaching significance for promoting the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry and enhancing international competitiveness. This paper defines the connotation of green manufacturing in China in the new era, proposes four dimensions of green production, green emission, green technology, and green benefit as the framework of the evaluation system, and constructs the evaluation index system. By taking 30 provincial administrative regions as research samples, based on the data from 2017 to 2020, the combination weighting method and TOPSIS are used for evaluation from the perspective of “static” and “dynamic” to identify the current situation and development of green manufacturing level in each region. It was found that the important factors affecting the green manufacturing level in each region are green products, green invention patents, sulfur dioxide, green factories, and coal consumption. The “static” evaluation results show that the green manufacturing level varies significantly among regions. The eastern area is generally better than the central and western areas, and only six regions are at high-level and medium to high-level. In addition, the four dimensions in most regions are imbalanced, with an obvious Matthew effect. The “dynamic” evaluation results show that the green manufacturing level in 30 regions appears to have six different types of dynamic trends. There is a small change in the ranking of most regions, indicating that the dynamic development of green manufacturing level has clear regional dependence, which is difficult to change in the short term. The research results show that the index system and model can effectively evaluate the regional green manufacturing level. Finally, combined with the important influencing factors, some suggestions are proposed to enhance the regional green manufacturing level.