What Will It Take to Deliver a Zero-to-Landfill Product?

Author(s):  
Jeffrey R. Boyer

Driven by legal mandates and consumer demand, sustainable businesses will be those that recognize the need for extended responsibility for their products beyond the point of sale. One strategy gaining increasing attention throughout the world is the production and sale of Zero-to-Landfill products - products that contain nothing that is disposed of at the end of their useful life. A product take-back process is required to ensure products that reach the end of their useful lives are reclaimed for reuse, remanufacturing, or recycling. But can companies develop products that are truly zero-to-landfill? What must manufacturers do to deliver products offering this environmental beneficence? The stakeholders in a sustainable enterprise are considered, and the desire for zero-to-landfill products from their perspectives will be examined. Implications for government regulations, reverse logistics, product design and manufacturing, and for corporate profits are examined. The emphasis will be on how such a strategy will impact today's design and manufacturing engineers. Through the use of representative examples, it will be shown that many of the requisite behaviors and processes are being implemented, but that it is still early to quantify the impacts and to understand the emergence of unforeseen consequences.

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 16-19
Author(s):  
Felipe Fonseca ◽  
Daniela de Carvalho Matielo

As probably every other country in the world, in recent years Brazil has seen an immense increase in the production and consumption of electro-electronics equipment, which generates, as expected, an equally large amount of e-waste. However, there is a general lack of information about health and environmental issues among actors involved with the e-waste cycle, and very limited public discussion about the topic. Also, proper legislation to regulate the destination of all this material does not yet exist. The National Policy on Solid Residuals, which has been discussed in the Brazilian Congress since 1991, had shown signs of including ewaste management. But the responsible working group in the Chamber of Deputies has recently decided to make an amendment to its 33rd article, dealing with the regulation of reverse logistics (take-back) and mandatory recycling of special waste, and no longer considering electronic equipment as such. In response to that, the collective Lixo Eletrônico decided to publish a manifesto and open an online petition drawing attention to the change in the bill. The article offers an overview of the situation and the issues involved and explains the action that is being carried out by the Lixo Eletrônico Collective, presenting the first outcomes and next steps.


2020 ◽  
pp. 49-81
Author(s):  
Bruno Van der Maat

The current pandemic has seen some adverse reactions from the most diverse religious groups all over the world to government regulations. After having described some of their manifestations, this contribution analyzes what the Bible and some post biblical (patristic and Talmudic) traditions say about illness and pandemics. As it is ascertained that these sources contain very limited material on these subjects, the third part of this article proposes some ethical reflections regarding the official response to the pandemic as well as some pastoral implications. Key Words: Pandemic, Religion, Bible, Talmud, Pastoral Care.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 621
Author(s):  
Hsin Rau ◽  
Mary Deanne M. Lagapa ◽  
Po-Hsun Chen

The number of consumers with green awareness have grown these days and as a result they have turned to purchase eco-friendly products. For this reason, this study aims to propose a method for eco-design based on the anticipatory failure determination method to develop eco-design products. By using eco-design concepts adopted from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the process will limit the failures and issues related to environmental impact in product design. The proposed method for eco-design product in this study follows the following procedure. First, we analyze product failure. Second, we propose the determination of the non-green phenomenon of the failure. Thirdly, we integrate the intensified non-green phenomenon to generate non-green hypotheses and fourthly, we eliminate each non-green phenomenon hypothesis by introducing the contradiction matrix of TRIZ for obtaining solutions. Finally, we assess alternative eco-design solutions by evaluation. To verify the practicality of the new procedure, a washing machine is used as an example for illustration.


2000 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 156-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Klausner ◽  
Chris T. Hendrickson

Author(s):  
Violeta Bashova ◽  

Development in the spa industry is going through difficulties caused by the world situation of tourism recovery. In days of compliance with anti-epidemic measures and social distance, the restoration of the spa offer will be based on innovative solutions for diversity in the spa services and products. This is the challenge of more enterprising and resourceful professionals in business to avoid the struggle for survival. One of their main fulcrums is reorientation towards non-price competition, which is based on the distinctive features of the product. Either it consists of innovative product design or mere market segmentation, product differentiation typically involves externalities across competitors, which clearly play an important role in firm's competitive incentives to invest in differentiation. The purpose of this report is through research and analysis of supply and development in spas, to prove the hypothesis that the diversity of spa products and services is fundamental to recovering in a highly competitive and further financially aggravated, current environment in tourism.


Author(s):  
Katharine McCoy

This presentation, reflecting a politics undergraduate thesis, will explore the design process behind the ballots that voters use in democratic elections around the world. Ballots are an inherently political objects, and in many cases, the most direct line of communication a citizen has to the government of their country. As such, the design of the ballot affects the legitimacy of higher level electoral and democratic institutions. This project argues that by co-opting the language of product design, a universal ballot design process would make more efficient ballots across the globe.   Product design starts with a brainstorming stage that explores at the user, the goal of the object, and the context of its use to create an effective design. By applying these observations to the process of designing a ballot, each electoral commission can produce a more effective ballot. Currently there is no standardization for ballot design other than ensuring that electoral commissions tried to make it “friendly.” By examining cases of bad ballot design, it is possible to see what element of the design process was missed or misused to create a process that corrects for these mistakes. This project examines poorly designed ballots in Florida, Scotland, and Colombia to explore the large-scale effects these small design choices make, and how to fix them. 


2013 ◽  
Vol 397-400 ◽  
pp. 157-161
Author(s):  
Wei Wei Zhang ◽  
Xiao Song Wang ◽  
Shi Jian Yuan ◽  
Zhong Ren Wang

For a cylinder-beam integrated hydraulic press (CBIHP), the hydraulic cylinder is also functioned as an upper beam. It is the key structural component that outputs the driving force to forge parts. Compared with the traditional three-beam and four-column hydraulic press which has a cylindrical hydraulic cylinder, the structure and force distribution are significantly different for CBIHP. It is able to have higher nominal force and larger section of plunger which the pressure is applied on when the contour geometric dimension is the same. Also, CBIHP has lighter weight and larger section modulus when the nominal force is the same than the traditional hydraulic press. Finally, a 6300KN cylinder-beam integrated hydraulic press, which is the first CBIHP in the world and designed by Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) in 2012, is also introduced in this paper. It can be seen from the results of numerical simulation for the CBIHP that both of the stresses and displacements on the press in the loading process are allowable.


The world of financial services is changing in ways that are more dramatic than we would have foreseen even five years ago. Taking a leaf from evolving ecosystem around mobile telephony, many financial institutions are using smart technology to remodel their branches into smarter point of sale. This has given a genesis to a terminology of “emerging distribution intermediaries” in financial services. Mutual funds (MF) being the combiner of various savings instruments are regarded as the ideal investment vehicle for today’s complex and modern financial scenario. But its penetration is poor. One of the major levers to increase penetration is innovations in distributing MF products. Considering this, Indian government & regulator have taken many policies reforms & IT initiatives towards increasing retail participation in Mutual Funds and equity markets in recent past. Through this paper, researcher has attempted to critically analyze these initiatives. Apart from highlighting various innovations in MF distributions, this paper will also highlight the present state of online Mutual Fund trading platforms. Further, the paper attempts to highlight the areas of concern, augmentation and intervention in this space.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ririn Breliastiti

Sustainability Report (SR) has become one of the main reports of the world's leading companies. In 2005, it was found that more than 250 top companies listed on the Fortune 500 had prepared SR separately from the Annual Report. The development of the number of SRs in each country varies. In the developed countries, awareness to compile and issue SR is supported by government regulations so that SR becomes mandatory. In developing countries, SR is still voluntary because there is still no regulation that requires companies to compile and issue SR. The Carrots & Sticks report, compiled and published by KPMG, United Nations Environment Program, Unit for Corporate Governance in Africa & the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), provided details on the development of mandatory and voluntary instruments in implementing Sustainability Reporting (SR) in various Countries throughout the world from 2006 to 2016. Therefore, this research aims to find out the development of the mandatory and voluntary instruments (government policies) related to SR in the world. This type of research is a literature review. The research instrument used consists of a tabulation containing the development of the mandatory and voluntary instruments (government policy) related to SR in the world, then the researcher conducted an analysis of these findings. The results show that there is an increasing enthusiasm for the application of SR throughout the world. There is an increase in commitment and efforts to achieve transparency and accountability. In countries that have an interest in SR, there has been a significant development, such as 19 countries in 2006, 32 countries in 2010, 45 countries and regions in 2013, and 71 countries and regions in 2016. Indonesia is one of the countries in the Asia Pacific region that has given attention to SR and has its regulations. SR regulations have grown from 180 in 2013 to 400 in 2016, with government regulations dominating 80% of all regulations. Mandatory instruments dominate more than voluntary instruments. Application of SR 30% is for large companies that have been listed on the stock exchange. SR reporting by public companies has covered all sectors on the stock exchange. This development was greatly influenced by the role of the government which encouraged companies to disclose information about sustainability in their annual reports. "Social" reporting instruments show a faster development than "environmental" reporting instruments. 


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document