Proposal to Foster Sustainability through Circular Economy-Based Engineering: A Profitable Chain from Waste Management to Tunnel Lighting

The Effects of Subsidies on MSW Treatment Companies: Financial Performance and Policy Implications

Companies that provide public services usually receive subsidies from municipalities as compensation for replacing the latter in their functions as public service providers. However, the managers of those companies are not always interested in maintaining an economically sustainable company, as this implies turning off the tap on exploration subsidies. This article investigates the effect of subsidies on the financial performance of municipal solid waste collection and treatment companies for 2016–2020 and across NUTS II regions. The accounting data of 680 companies retrieved from the SABI database, make it possible to assess the economic sustainability of the companies through financial ratios and operational data. The results show that the financial structure and management of companies in the Centro, Lisbon, and the Azores allowed to take advantage of exploration subsidies to achieve economic sustainability. In the remaining regions these subsidies proved to be ineffective. These results have implications for managers and policy makers insofar as it sheds a light on the conditions under which subsidies contribute to the economical sustainability of companies in the sector.

The Contribution of Peripheral Large Scientific Infrastructures to Sustainable Development from a Global and Territorial Perspective: The Case of IFMIF-DONES

Large scientific infrastructures are a major focus of progress. They have a big impact on the economic and social development of their surroundings. Departing from these well-known facts, it is not trivial to affirm whether the global contribution to Sustainable Development (SD) is higher when they are built in peripheral and not highly developed provinces instead of capitals and rich areas. Besides the economic impact on depressed areas, other SD-related parameters like the attachment of young and skilled people to their homeland, the avoidance of uncontrolled migrations from rural to dense urban zones, the growth of new focuses of knowledge independent from the lines of research established in the universities of the capitals, the indirect impact of auxiliary infrastructures and others must be analyzed. Concerning the next implementation of the “International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility—Demo Oriented Neutron Source” (IFMIF-DONES) project in Granada (Spain), one depressed and tourism-dependent zone, an analysis and comparison with similar infrastructures were done and presented.

Effects of Circular Economy Policies on the Environment and Sustainable Growth: Worldwide Research

The challenge of transitioning from a linear to a circular economy model is still ongoing and requires the development and application of new knowledge, leading to innovative, technological, and sustainable processes, products, and services. The evolution of global research on this topic from 2004 to 2019 was studied in this work. For this purpose, a bibliometric analysis of 1366 articles was applied, producing results on the scientific productivity of the driving agents that most contribute to this theme. The findings show a growing interest, especially in the last four years, in the study of circular economy (CE) policies on the environment. The main subject area that articles address is environmental science. Five research lines have been identified, which mainly study the efficient management of energy resources and the economic factors that make the CE model possible: Environmental pollution and agricultural activity; waste management to avoid a negative environmental impact; improvement of the environmental impact through ecological products; the product life cycle, and the consequences of climate change. The implementation of CE policies will contribute to making economies less dependent and unprotected and more competitive. Global research has exhibited an upward trend during the period analyzed and has grown exponentially since 2015, coinciding with the publication of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda.

Factors Affecting the Consumption of Energy-Efficient Lighting Products: Exploring Purchase Behaviors of Thai Consumers

The continued usage of inefficient lighting products in residential sectors is one of the major causes of the rapid growth in global energy consumption. Their replacement with highly efficient lighting appliances could avoid large amounts of electricity consumption and reduce CO2 emissions worldwide. In this regard, the collective contribution by the residential sector is extremely important and the increase in demand for energy-efficient lighting products can help achieve sustainability goals. This study aims to examine the determinants of household consumers’ behaviors in purchasing energy-saving lighting products by applying the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as the main theoretical framework. Data (n = 288) from a survey in Thailand were analyzed using causal Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results suggested that attitude has the largest direct effect, while subjective norm was the weakest predictor of purchase intention towards light-emitting diode (LED) products. In addition, this study expands the TPB by including an investigation of a direct effect of attitude on purchase behavior. The results suggest that attitudes have a strong direct influence on the purchasing behavior for LED products. Additionally, only some socio-demographic variables have significant effects on purchase behavior. The study’s findings highlight several implications for policymakers, the private sector, and green marketers in developing practical strategies. Furthermore, suggestions and future research directions are discussed.

The Perspective of Total Lighting as a Key Factor to Increase the Sustainability of Strategic Activities

In the last decades, lighting has evolved from a branch of engineering ensuring safety and performance in indoor and outdoor installations, to a key discipline interacting with a wide spectrum of fields and having a deep impact on our daily lives. Although this evolution also applies to other areas of knowledge, the special features of lighting make its potential and also its limitations different. It is not the typical field where a well-established mathematical framework allows a departure from well-defined input and identifying clear effects and conclusions. The reason is that lighting is a field dealing with the interaction between a physical phenomenon and a physiological and psychological system, the human being. In addition to the complexity of its basis, the relationship between lighting and sustainability has become stronger in recent years. This relationship is bi-directional in some cases: on one hand, advanced societies require more and more complex lighting installations, which means high energy consumption, use of raw materials, financial costs, manufacturing and maintenance processes, waste and emissions to the atmosphere. On the other hand, good lighting has an impact on issues like productivity, well-being, happiness, disease avoidance, safety, and many other qualitative aspects whose direct or indirect impact on sustainability is remarkable. This work will analyze how lighting can give answers to questions related to sustainability, not only from the classic topics of energy consumption and waste management, but from a wider and global perspective. The results of these works are analyzed, and the basis of the new framework of total lighting, discussed.

Main Dimensions in the Building of the Circular Supply Chain: A Literature Review

Circular economy is an alternative to the traditional production model and has therefore attracted a great deal of attention from researchers. The change in the production system is accompanied by new logistical needs related both to resources and waste and to the distribution and recovery of products. The circular supply chain involves return processes and the manufacturer intends to capture additional value in the supply chain. In this paper, value chains have been mapped to visualize the links and interactions between the different stages and actors to understand the complexities of these systems and to make informed decisions. For this reason, and based on thorough literature review, the final objective of this work is to achieve a conceptual framework to study circular supply chain, which uses the main theoretical perspectives in strategic management literature. Four dimensions have been identified to support the development of these new supply chains—greater intensity in the relationships established in the supply chain, adaptation of logistics and organizational, disruptive and smart technologies, and a functioning environment. It can be concluded that to develop a new relationship capacity will allow for reaching more frequent, closer relationships with more actors. These relationships will be developed within an adapted organizational and logistical framework that is framed in new business model archetypes. However, dimensions related to the business environment such as sectoral, legislative, and fiscal frameworks must be incorporated.

Calculating Reactive Power Compensation for Large-Scale Street Lighting

LED-based street lighting installations generate reactive power, particularly when they are dynamically dimmed. It contributes to power loss and efficiency reduction of the grid. The reactive power can be compensated by installing additional dynamically connected inductors in lighting control cabinets. However such an approach significantly increases the cost of the lighting infrastructure. The goal of this paper is to propose another, low cost approach to reactive power compensation for dynamically dimmed lighting installations. It is based on connecting fixed settings inductors at lighting control cabinets. The inductors settings are calculated by the proposed algorithm for city-scale lighting systems. Its objective is to completely eliminate capacitive reactive power and to keep inductive reactive power within acceptable limits.

The Sustainable Approach to Corporate Social Responsibility: A Global Analysis and Future Trends

Due to the process of globalization, companies are obligated to observe corporate social responsibility and best practices from a sustainability approach towards their stakeholders and society. The explicit aim is to determine the relevance of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its relationship with sustainability, in order to establish trends and future lines of research. The evolution of global research on this subject has been studied from 2001 to 2018. For this purpose, a bibliometric analysis of 1832 articles has been applied, obtaining results of the scientific productivity of the journals, authors, institutions, and countries that contribute to this research. Evidence shows a growing interest in studying the relationship between socially responsible practices and the dimension of sustainability. The main category is Business, Management, and Accounting. The most productive journals are the Journal of Business Ethics and Sustainability. The authors with the most articles are García-Sánchez, Moneva, and Moratis, while Kolk is the most cited. The most prolific institution is the University of Salamanca. The United States is the country with the most publications and quotes. France and China are the countries with the largest number of international collaborations in their work. Global research has been on an upward trend with optimal publication rates in recent years.

Navigating Transitions for Sustainable Infrastructures—The Case of a New High-Speed Railway Station in Jingmen, China

Sustainable development and Circular Economy (CE) have drawn massive attention worldwide. Construction practices consume large amounts of materials, resources and energy. Sustainability and CE could play a big role in reduction efforts. However, the potential influence of both concepts on the planning and construction of large infrastructures remains unexplored. This paper investigates how professionals involved in a high-speed railway station project in the Chinese city of Jingmen envision the use of sustainability and CE for the planning and construction of the railway station and its surrounding areas. We reviewed policy documents and interviewed local professionals with the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) framework. The analysis reveals opportunities for improvement towards sustainability and the interdependence between the dimensions in the TBL framework for the railway station and its surroundings. The case shows that local professionals identify ample opportunities for improvement (presented as “sustainability ideas”), but none appear truly sustainable. These insights provide evidence that the hierarchical introduction of transition(s) creates a cognitive silo for local professionals when envisioning sustainability ideas. In the TBL framework, this study finds a useful and novel approach to break down the silos, because the TBL stresses the interdependence between the various sustainability dimensions.

Sustainability Indicators Concerning Waste Management for Implementation of the Circular Economy Model on the University of Lome (Togo) Campus

The circular economy aims to reduce the volume of waste generated in the world, transforming it into resources. The concept of indicator of circular economy was introduced to evaluate the improvement obtained regarding efficiency in terms of reduction, reuse and recycling of waste generated on the campus of the University of Lome (Togo). These indicators showed that 59.5% of the waste generated on the campus in 2018 could be introduced into the circular economy paradigm through composting, and 27.0% of the energy consumed could be replaced by clean energy obtained from biogas. The entire plastic fraction can be introduced into the circular economy paradigm by reusing plastic bottles and selling the rest in the port of the city. Thus, the income obtained could range from €15.5/day in 2018 to €34.5/day in 2027. Concerning old tires, 1.5% of the rubber needed to pave the entire roadway of the campus could be replaced by the waste generated by the tires currently existing there. Consequently, waste management on the campus could be controlled thanks to these indicators, and this could serve as a model for the rest of the country.

Roadway Lighting Retrofit: Environmental and Economic Impact of Greenhouse Gases Footprint Reduction

Roadway lighting retrofit is a process continuously developed in urban environments due to both installation aging and technical upgrades. The spectacular example is replacing the high intensity discharge (HID) lamps, usually high pressure sodium (HPS) ones, with the sources based on light-emitting diodes (LED). The main focus in the related research was put on energy efficiency of installations and corresponding financial benefits. In this work, we extend those considerations analyzing how lighting optimization impacts greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction and what are the resultant financial benefits expressed in terms of emission allowances prices. Our goal is twofold: (i) obtaining a quantitative assessment of how a GHG footprint depends on a technological scope of modernization of a city HPS-based lighting system; and (ii) showing that the costs of such a modernization can be decreased by up to 10% thanks to a lowered CO 2 emission volume. Moreover, we identify retrofit patterns yielding the most substantial environmental impact.

Proposal of Sustainability Indicators for the Waste Management from the Paper Industry within the Circular Economy Model

The optimization of water management in industrial processes is paramount in diminishing or mitigating, as far as possible, the negative externalities generated by its current use within the linear economy model. This research presents methods for the optimization of wastewater from paper mills which are associated with the new sustainability and circular economy model. In this way, the concept of circular economy was applied to the wastewater treatment from a paper mill, with the objective of recovering the resources contained in this type of effluent. The wastewater treatment plant is based on a biological reactor of activated sludge, and treats a flow of 4868 m3·day−1. This study proposes the development and evaluation of indicators of circular economy applied to wastewater from a paper mill, as well as the assessment of the removal performance of color, total suspended solids (TSS), biochemical oxygen demand on the fifth day (BOD5), and chemical oxygen demand (COD), which are higher than 96% in all cases. Per 1 m3 of wastewater from a paper mill, a volume of 0.9 m3 of potentially reusable water and a recovered sludge mass of 0.7 kg are generated; the latter is reused as a mineral filler during the process itself. In light of this, a multivariable statistical analysis was applied to determine the relationship of the operation variables and indicators of circular economy. In this way, wastewater from the paper mill can be regarded as a technological nutrient, which is partially reintroduced into the production process, enabling the recovery of the water and mineral fillers that it contains.