Service Footprint Research Articles

Carbon footprint reduction in an e-commerce market: impacts of logistics service sharing

In the e-commerce market, green technology investment and carbon offset purchase are two widely-used approaches for reducing the carbon footprint of logistics services. However, implementing carbon footprint reduction in logistics services generally incurs heavy costs. To distribute heavy costs and improve resource utilization, a novel strategy of logistics service sharing has played an important role. Nevertheless, it is still unclear, in a co-opetitive e-commerce market, how to make use of different approaches and what the impacts of logistics service sharing are. To answer these questions, we develop an analytical model where an e-commerce platform and a third-party seller compete for consumers who care about both the selling price and the logistics service carbon footprint. We assume that the platform builds his own logistics service system and can adopt two different approaches to cut carbon footprint, while the seller needs to outsource logistics services to the TPL service provider or the platform. The analysis shows that without logistics service sharing, the platform may be more willing to purchase carbon offset as the offset cost increases, and the availability of carbon offset can prompt the platform to increase his investment in green technology. By contrast, with logistics service sharing, the platform will be less willing to purchase carbon offset as the offset cost increases, and the usage of carbon offset will induce him to invest less in green technology. These findings highlight that logistics service sharing can change the platform's preference toward the two approaches and modify the relationship between them. Furthermore, we find that logistic service sharing can provide a win-win outcome for the platform and the seller, but is not necessarily helpful for reducing the total carbon footprint in the e-commerce supply chain as well as increasing consumer surplus and social welfare.

Shifting techniques and multi-platform services for carbon efficiency

The impact of IT on climate change is growing rapidly. We aim to develop a data model that evaluates the carbon footprint of digital services, along with a visualization tool to inform users. Besides, we intend to propose new services to reduce carbon emissions when computing workload, adapting the moment, the location or with leaner processing.

A User-Friendly Tool to Increase Awareness about Impacts of Human Daily Life Activities on Carbon Footprint

In recent decades, climate change has demanded more and more attention. Consumers have the power to influence the carbon footprint of goods and services through their purchasing decisions, but to do this they need to learn more. To address this need, it is necessary to develop online questionnaires able to make people aware of which activities have a greater environmental impact in their daily lives. Focusing on this goal, we formulated two tools for quantifying an individual’s carbon footprint over a year. The innovativeness of these tools lies in being user-friendly and providing online open access to compilers, as well as using specific emission factors for the reference context. Specifically, we focused on the main emission sources: gas and electricity consumption, mobility, food, and waste. During these last years, the tools have been proposed to Italian students at different levels of education and to employees of Italian and international companies. The responses from 3260 users revealed an average annual direct carbon footprint per capita of about 5600 kg CO2-eq, which, integrated with the estimate of indirect emissions, provides an estimate in good agreement with the value provided by the Italian National Inventory of greenhouse gases. With the developed tools, people are able to observe which sectors have the greatest impact and consequently are stimulated to emit less by adopting more sustainable behaviors.

A Spatio-Temporal Analysis of the Ecological Compensation for Cultivated Land in Northeast China

Ecological compensation for cultivated land is a prominent means to coordinate the protection and utilization of cultivated land ecosystems. This study assessed the ecological compensation for cultivated land, considering both the ecological footprint and value of ecosystem services. We used the ecological footprint model to calculate the ecological footprint and ecological carrying capacity of cultivated land, combined with the value of its ecosystem services, with a focus on estimating its ecological compensation standard, and we analyzed the temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of Northeast China. We found that the ecological footprint and ecological carrying capacity of cultivated land showed a fluctuating growth trend in Northeast China from 2000 to 2020, increasing by 288.83 × 105 ha and 131.37 × 105 ha, respectively. The spatial distribution of cultivated land’s ecological footprint and ecological carrying capacity showed growth from the southwest to the northeast. The value of its ecosystem services presented an overall trend of growth over the past 20 years, increasing by CNY 13.64 billion, or an increase of 12.47%. In terms of spatial distribution, the trends of the ecological compensation for cultivated land showed obvious differences. This study mainly focused on black soil cultivated land, and its results are helpful for governments in different countries solving similar problems in terms of the ecological compensation for cultivated land. This study will provide a valuable reference to measure the compensation standard scientifically and to provide policy recommendations for sustainable cultivated land’s protection and utilization.

Investigation of the Carbon Footprint of the Textile Industry: PES- and PP-Based Products with Monte Carlo Uncertainty Analysis

The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism was developed to ensure that industrial sectors operating outside the EU follow the same environmental standards and targets while competing with the EU’s carbon market. This mechanism aims to calculate the carbon footprint of goods and services imported into the EU and make carbon adjustments accordingly. The transition phase, starting in 2023, represents the period when the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism will be implemented. The completion of the transition phase is targeted for 2025. By this date, the effective implementation of this mechanism is aimed at demonstrating that countries outside of the EU comply with emissions regulations using Carbon at Border certificates. The textile industry’s products have a significant environmental impact throughout their life cycle, from the production of raw materials to the disposal of the finished product. Textile production, especially synthetic yarns, requires large amounts of energy, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. In this study, a “cradle-to-customer plus waste” life cycle assessment (LCA) is conducted to evaluate the environmental impacts of two products in the textile sector. The Monte Carlo analysis method can be used to handle uncertainties in LCA calculations. It is a method for modeling uncertainties and statistically evaluating results. In this study, this method is preferred at the stage of determining uncertainties. The processes from chips to yarns are investigated for two synthetic yarns: polyester (PES) and polypropylene (PP). The carbon emissions of PP and PES used in textiles are calculated for the first time in this study using detailed modeling with LCAs and a real application. The main production operations are considered: (i) transport of raw materials and packaging material, (ii) energy consumption during the production process, (iii) transport of products, and (iv) end-of-life steps. When the actual data obtained from a company are analyzed, the carbon footprints (CFs) of the PES and PP are calculated to be 13.40 t CO2-eq (t PES)-1 and 6.42 t CO2-eq (t PP)-1, respectively. These data can be used as reference points for future studies and comparisons. According to the results obtained, when the energy consumption and raw material stages in the production of the PES and PP products are compared, it is seen that the CF of PP yarn is lower, and it is more environmentally friendly. These findings can be utilized to enhance government policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and managing synthetic yarn production in Türkiye. Since PP and PES raw materials are predominantly used in synthetic yarns, this study’s objective is to quantify the carbon emissions associated with the utilization of these raw materials and provide guidance to companies engaged in their production.

SWEP-RF: Accuracy sliding window-based ensemble pruning method for latent sector error prediction in cloud storage computing

Latent sector errors (LSEs) in disk drives cause significant outages, data loss, and unreliability in large-scale cloud storage systems, posing not only technical challenges but also environmental concerns in the context of carbon recycling. Predicting LSEs can help avoid these problems and improve cloud reliability, while also contributing to a more sustainable cloud infrastructure. Ensemble classifiers typically outperform individual classifiers for LSE prediction with high accuracy but can lead to underfitting and incurring additional computational cost, complexity, and time and memory consumption. This research addresses this challenge by proposing a twofold solution: optimizing the ensemble diversity of the resulting Random Forest (RF) classifier through accuracy sliding window-based ensemble pruning (SWEP-RF) and using this pruned ensemble to predict LSEs in cloud storage. By effectively predicting and mitigating LSEs, this approach reduces unnecessary energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with data recovery and reprocessing, aligning with carbon recycling goals. SWEP-RF maximizes its lower margin distribution to adapt the RF prediction performance and produce a strong-performing and effective subensemble, further enhancing the overall energy efficiency of cloud systems. Our approach also reduces ensemble size while maintaining high prediction accuracy, leading to more sustainable resource utilization. We evaluate our algorithm using datasets from Baidu Inc and Backblaze datacenters. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach achieves over 98.6% prediction accuracy, a low false alarm rate (FAR) of 0.003%, and extended meantime to data loss (MTTDL) with lead time in advance (LTA) of up to 383.4 Hrs. and 474.3 Hrs., respectively. SWEP-RF outperforms classical models and current state-of-the-art techniques in prediction accuracy, FAR, MTTDL, processing time, memory consumption, and cloud availability, highlighting its significance in not only enhancing cloud storage reliability but also reducing the carbon footprint of cloud services. Our method is a promising solution for enhancing cloud storage reliability through proactive LSE prediction, while addressing the urgent need for sustainable practices and carbon recycling in cloud computing.

Carbon footprint of products and services: The case of a winery in Greece

The phenomenon of global warming occurs when air pollutants such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GreenHouse Gases (GHGs) are collected into the atmosphere and absorb solar radiation which, according to the natural process, should normally escape into the space, trapping heat and thus causing the planet temperature to rise. One of the available tools of the international scientific community to measure the impact of human activity on the environment, is to record and quantify the carbon footprint, in other words, the total greenhouse gas emissions of a product (or service) throughout its life cycle. The present paper focuses on the above issues and presents the methodology and the outcome of a real case study, aiming to lead to useful conclusions. In this framework a study has been made in order to calculate and analyze the carbon footprint of a wine making company that is based in northern Greece. One of the most important conclusions of this work is the overwhelming share (54 %) that Scope 3 has to the total Carbon Footprint, compared to Scope 1 (25 %) and Scope 2 (21 %), as it is vividly shown in the above Graphical Abstract. While the operation of a wine making company is divided in two main steams, Vineyard and Winery, it is concluded, that the Emissions of the Vineyard participate by 32 % in the total Emissions, while the Emissions of the Winery by 68 % respectively. Significant point of the case study is the total Absorptions that had been calculated to cover almost the 52 % of the total Emissions.

Employee mobility and service-related management in the carbon footprint of services—German case studies

PurposeIn a service society, the assessment of climate-relevant environmental impacts of services is of increased importance. In the few Product Category Rules (PCRs) for cleaning services available to date, it is noticeable that employee mobility and service-related management are excluded from the assessment. This practice is critically questioned in the following study. The aim is to show that a calculation of the carbon footprint of services that integrates employee mobility and service-related management provides a better basis for finding ways to reduce their environmental impact.MethodsKey figures on the CO2e emissions of services are examined in exemplary case studies using the example of cleaning, maintenance and reception with regard to the possible share of emissions caused by employee mobility and service-related management activities. For the case studies located in Germany, characteristic values of the equipment, operating materials or mobility used for the service are obtained from available Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). In the absence of EPDs, a simplified estimate is made according to the VERUM method based on the proportion of materials in the product. The case studies compare the carbon footprint of a service by omitting and including employee mobility and service-related management.ResultsThe analysed case studies show an impact share between 32 and 69% for employee mobility and between 10 and 26% for service-related management activities in an integrated carbon footprint of services. The emissions caused by employee mobility and service-related management therefore have a dimension that should not be neglected.ConclusionsFrom these findings, the necessity is derived to include the emissions from the mobility of operational staff and service-related management in future PCRs for services in order to improve the comparability of services. Optimisation efforts of companies must also start at these points of the service organisation.

The scope for radiology to contribute to the NHS net zero target: findings from a survey of radiology staff in the UK

To assess attitudes towards the climate emergency among radiology staff and to identify current practices that may contribute towards the National Health Service (NHS) net zero target. An online survey of radiology staff was conducted assessing current attitudes to the climate emergency. Further questions focused on staff travel, home working, virtual conferences, and recycling. Two hundred and forty-two responses were received from all staff groups within radiology. There were high levels of concern about the climate emergency among radiology staff. Active travel accounts for a relatively small proportion of commuting related to provision of radiology services. Some energy-saving measures are implemented commonly in radiology departments but these are likely to account for only a small proportion of energy use within a department. There is significant scope for reducing the carbon footprint of radiology services by reducing travel, both for work and for radiology education. We discuss the potential for large savings related to energy-saving measures.

Calculation of the carbon footprint of industrial hybrid solar - wind turbines

Ensuring stable access for both the world’s population and various industries with clean energy from renewable sources is one of the most important problems that society will have to solve in the 21st century. The resource base of the energy sector, on which all the economic activities of mankind are based, is exhaustible in the foreseeable future. In this regard, the issues of energy conservation, development and implementation of alternative energy systems from renewable energy sources are becoming one of the most urgent. The article discusses the impact of the food industry on the sustainability of ecological systems, provides a detailed review of methods for calculating the carbon footprint of goods and services, provides data on comparing the accuracy between methods, calculates the carbon footprint of a hybrid solar-wind turbine of a given power.

Carbon Footprint of Products and Services: The Case of a Winery in Greece

Carbon Footprint of Products and Services: The Case of a Winery in Greece

THE WATER FOOTPRINT IN CONTEXT OF CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Fresh water is the most used natural resource among the products we consume daily. Everything we eat or buy contains. But do we know how much water is needed to produce these goods? The concept of water footprint can help us find the answer to this question. Researcher at the University of Twente (Netherlands), Arjen Hoekstra, developed this concept in 2002. His goal was to show the impact on the amount of water that products in our lives contains. For a single product, the water footprint means the amount of water consumed and/or polluted at all stages of its production. It is measured in units of volume giving us an idea of the impact that a particular item has on the use of fresh water. Therefore, it takes into account the water used directly in production and the indirect part used in raw materials. The water footprint assessment method represents the volume of drinking water used either by a consumer or by a producer throughout the supply chain. By using this method, the volume of water is calculated by type of source, as well as the amount of water polluted, depending on the type of pollution, all these elements being specified spatially and temporally. The total water footprint of a product consists of three components: blue, green and gray water footprint. Assessing the water footprint of products and services is a good step towards evaluation of water circularity. The water footprint assessment must be integrated into the concepts of the circular economy by insisting on what happens to water after use and how circular and sustainable it is.

Forest Tax Payment Responsibility from the Forest Service Footprint Perspective.

It has been observed that market failure has hampered the development of sustainable forest ecosystem services such as CO2 absorption and fixation, water retention, and biodiversity. One of the reasons for this is that the link between forest land use and the beneficiaries of that use has not been widely recognized or clearly established. To address this problem, we conducted a footprint analysis to clarify the linkage between Japanese taxpayers as the beneficiaries of forest land use and the use of tax revenue and monetary donations for forest management. This study focuses on how the current forest tax collected from Japanese taxpayers (63 billion Japanese yen) could be allocated more fairly. The question of whether the collected taxes are sufficient is left for another time. At the core of our analysis, we examined the carbon footprint and established a linkage between the origins of CO2 emissions in Japan and their destinations by using a subnational multiregional input-output database and building a base table focused on various land use types and subnational regions at the municipality level. By clarifying these linkages and enhancing their transparency, we provide a basis for developing alternative financing schemes involving both taxation and taxpayer donations in support of forest management activities and protection of biodiverse habitats.

An Empirical Study of the Impact of Urbanization on Industry Water Footprint in China

How to advance new urbanization initiatives and reduce the water footprint of industries is one urgent issue about urbanization that needs to be resolved. Based on spatial dynamic panel data, we used the system GMM (Generalized Method of Moments) to study the impact of urbanization on the industrial water footprint. The results show that, overall, urbanization increases the industrial water footprint, industrial virtual water footprint, and industrial gray water footprint in China. There are sectoral and regional differences in the impact of urbanization. Specifically, urbanization reduces the agricultural water footprint and agricultural virtual water footprint but raises the agricultural gray water footprint. Urbanization increases the manufacturing water footprint, manufacturing virtual water footprint, and gray water footprint. Urbanization reduces the virtual water footprint of the service industry but increases the water footprint and gray water footprint in the service industry. At the regional level, urbanization increases the industrial water footprint and gray water footprint across the three major regions. In the eastern region, urbanization has little effect on increasing the industrial water footprint, and reduces the industrial virtual water footprint, whereas in the central and western regions urbanization increases the industrial virtual water footprint. In all three regions, urbanization reduces the agricultural water footprint, increases the manufacturing and service water footprints, reduces the virtual water footprints of agriculture and services, and increases the gray water footprint of agriculture, manufacturing, and services. In the eastern region, the reducing effect of urbanization is the greatest and the increasing effect of urbanization is the smallest. Additionally, in the eastern region, urbanization has reduced the virtual water footprint of manufacturing, whereas in the central and western regions urbanization has increased the virtual water footprint of manufacturing.

Quantifying the handprint-Footprint balance into a single score: The example of pharmaceuticals.

Life Cycle Assessment typically focuses on the footprint of products and services, expressed on three Areas of Protection (AoP): Human Health, Ecosystems and Resources. While the handprint is often expressed qualitatively, quantified handprints have recently been compared directly to the footprint concerning one AoP: Human Health. We propose to take this one step further by simultaneously comparing the quantified handprint and footprint on all AoPs through normalization and weighting of the results towards a single score. We discuss two example cases of a pharmaceutical treatment: mebendazole to treat soil-transmitted helminthiases and paliperidone palmitate to treat schizophrenia. Each time, treatment is compared to ‘no treatment’. The footprint of health care is compared to the handprint of improved patient health. The handprint and footprint were normalized separately. To include sensitivity in the normalization step we applied four sets of external normalization factors for both handprint (Global Burden of Disease) and footprint (ReCiPe and PROSUITE). At the weighting step we applied 26 sets of panel weighting factors from three sources. We propose the Relative Sustainability Benefit Rate (RSBR) as a new metric to quantify the relative difference in combined handprint and footprint single score between two alternatives. When only considering the footprint, the first case study is associated with an increased single score burden of treatment compared to ‘no treatment’, while in the second case study treatment reduces the single score burden by 41.1% compared to ‘no treatment’. Also including the handprint provided new insights for the first case study, now showing a decrease of 56.4% in single score burden for treatment compared to ‘no treatment’. For the second case study the reduction of single score burden was confirmed as the handprint burden was also decreased because of treatment by 9.9%, reinforcing the findings.

John Crane expands service footprint in Belgium and Azerbaijan

Sealing specialist John Crane has opened a new service centre in Antwerp, Belgium and moved to a larger facility in Baku, Azerbaijan.

John Crane expands service footprint in Belgium and Azerbaijan

Sealing specialist John Crane has opened a new service centre in Antwerp, Belgium and moved to a larger facility in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Carbon footprint of Japanese health care services from 2011 to 2015

The carbon footprint of Japanese health care services, i.e. the domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by health care expenditures, including the associated fixed capital, were calculated using input-output analysis. In 2011 the total carbon footprint of these services was 62.5 × 106 metric tons of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e), which is 4.6% of total domestic GHG emissions. Medical services involving hospitalization accounted for the greatest share, at 15.7 MtCO2e. The second highest category, Medical services without hospitalization, accounted for only slightly less: 14.2 MtCO2e. However, the difference in emissions per patient between these two categories was considerable. On average, emissions per patient for Medical services (hospitalization) were 12 tCO2e/patient, whereas for Medical services (non-hospitalization) they were only 2.1 tCO2e/patient, or 5.4 times less. In terms of type of medical condition, the greatest annual emissions were associated with cardiovascular disease (6.2 MtCO2e) and neoplasm (4.0 MtCO2e). In terms of age, emissions attributed to patients aged 65 and over accounted for more than half of total health care emissions. By 2015, the total carbon footprint had increased to 72.0 MtCO2e, a rise of over 15% in four years. Although medical care and pharmaceuticals are the main factors responsible for this increase, emissions associated with nursing services have also risen, suggesting that demographic aging may be having a significant impact on GHG emissions. As a countermeasure, the potential annual GHG mitigation achievable through avoidance of unused prescribed medicines resulting in waste was estimated at 1.24 MtCO2e, comparable with the total carbon footprint of home medicines. To safeguard planetary health, in addition to implementing technological improvements to the supply chains of health care services, it will be necessary to provide citizens further options for achieving health promotion and GHG mitigation simultaneously.

Data deluge or data trickle? Difficulties in acquiring public data for telecommunications policy analysis

There is a paucity of granular, high-resolution broadband data in the United States, which limits the prospects of informed telecommunications policy debates. In the absence of regulation requiring telecommunication providers to accurately report service footprints, pricing, and service quality data, providers refuse to disclose this information, routinely citing competition as the primary reason for keeping network and pricing data obfuscated. In addition, many secondary datasets needed for broadband planning and policy research, such as parcel or address point data, are equally challenging to gather. These datasets are often controlled by county governments, with no overarching access policy, resulting in neighboring counties with widely divergent policies for the release of these important data. In this article we explore the challenges of open data and its impacts on telecommunication policy development. A recent project which explored the spatial provision of Google Fiber in the Kansas City metropolitan area helps to highlight these difficulties. Basic strategies for mitigating information asymmetries and the lack of data transparency for telecommunication policy analysis are discussed.

Trust Evaluation in Cross-Cloud Federation

Cross-Cloud Federation (CCF) is beneficial for heterogeneous Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) for leasing additional resources from each other. Despite the benefits of on-demand scalability and enhanced service footprints for better service quality, the adoption of CCF is however mainly hindered due to the lack of a comprehensive trust model. The basic aim of such a model should be to address the security and performance concerns of a home CSP on its foreign peers before placing its users’ data and applications in their premises. A transitivity of users’ trust on home CSP and home CSP's trust on its foreign CSPs marks the uniqueness of trust paradigm in CCF. Addressing the concerns of cloud-to-cloud trust paradigm is inevitable to achieve users’ trust in a federation. Various trust models have been proposed in literature for conventional and multi-cloud computing environments. They focus on user requirements but none on federation perspective. Their applicability to CCF for addressing the concerns of cloud-to-cloud trust paradigm requires further consideration. For this reason, we have first outlined the general characteristics of CCF as being dynamic, multi-level and heterogeneous. Afterwards, cloud-to-cloud trust paradigm is proposed based on a set of unique principles identified as (i) trust bi-directionality, (ii) trust composition, (iii) delegation control, and (iv) Resource awareness. An insightful review of Trust Management Systems (TMS) proposed in literature reveals their shortcomings in addressing the requirements of cloud-to-cloud trust paradigm. To overcome these shortcomings, we suggest that some challenges can be merely addressed by aligning the existing methods to the nature of CCF. The remaining challenges require entirely new mechanisms to be introduced. A demonstration of this concept is presented in the form of a requirement matrix suggesting how the characteristics and properties of both CCF and the TMS are influenced by each other. This requirement matrix reveals the potential avenues of research for a TMS aimed specifically for CCF.