A Critical Assessment of Environmental Degeneration and Climate Change

China and its population are confronted with fundamental environmental challenges, as both environmental degeneration and the impact of climate change exhibit critical political, economic, and social implications for their future development. Among the various environmental challenges China faces, this chapter identifies pollution issues, soil erosion, acid rain, and sea-level rise. This variety of environmental issues increases the underling complexity of how best to address these challenges, especially as China’s growth strategy has the potential to exacerbate the negative impact on the environment further. Hence the question which development strategy China will follow–a ‘growth first and clean up later’ or ‘cleaning up while growing’–carries serious implications not only for the environmental situation in China itself, but for the international community as well. It is crucial to recognize that China’s multidimensional environmental challenges also carry critical implications for China’s international reputation.

An Environmentally Integrated Manufacturing Analysis Combined with Waste Management in a Car Battery Manufacturing Plant

This chapter presents an environmentally integrated manufacturing system analysis for companies looking for the benefits of environmental management in achieving high productivity levels. When the relationship between environmental costs and manufacturing decisions is examined, it can be seen that the productivity of the company can be increased by using an environmentally integrated manufacturing system analysis methodology. Therefore, such a methodology is presented and the roadmap for generating environmentally friendly and economically favorable alternative waste management solutions is elaborated. The methodology combines data collection, operational analysis of the manufacturing processes, identification of wastes, and evaluation of waste reduction alternatives. The presented methodology is examined in a car battery manufacturing plant, which generates hazardous wastes composed of lead. It is aimed to decrease the wastes derived from the production so that the efficiency in raw materials usage is increased and the need for recycling the hazardous wastes is decreased.

Greener Transportation Infrastructure

The presented methodology has two fundamental goals: first, to foster greener design practices among airport managers, planners, and designers, and second, to establish a dynamic dialogue between all airport stakeholders, while overcoming the shortcomings of traditional environmental impact assessments and thus ensuring capacity enhancement. The innovative aspects of the methodology are the combination of a flexible implementation strategy, the use of Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) with cost and utility functions, and a structured definition of environmental sustainability with customized evaluation parameters.

Green Logistics

This chapter presents a global overview of green logistics practices at various management levels and the inherent challenges of their implementation in emerging markets. It begins by clarifying the terminology and describing its scope and characteristics, and it continues with an analysis of the impact of green logistics on the creation of economic and social value.

Environmental Standardization for Sustainability

It is axiomatic that environmental controls are expressed as environmental standards, a traditional driver of investment in pollution control. Environmental standards spur investment in green technologies that promise to stimulate sustainable business models. The institutional framework of environmental standardization is complex; a widely misunderstood political process. A variety of standardization activities have impacted environmental protection historically and are now poised for further growth as green market discipline proliferates. Environmental standardization is a unique fusion of technology design and public policy development involving various constituencies: environmentalists, technologists, legislatures, regulators, standards-setting bodies, upstream suppliers, downstream users, and society’s affected communities. This chapter reviews the role of standardization activities in setting environmental constraints, in the development of green technologies, and in establishing metrics for environmental certification and monitoring. The implications of managing environmental standardization to attract financing for sustainable business models are so significant that disregarding the risks of environmental standardization imperils competitiveness.

Study on Low-Carbon Economy Model and Method of Chinese Tourism Industry

Recent years saw the global wave of new low-carbon economy, which is a new strategic measure to cope with global warming, and it has gained lots of concerns from many governments. As the representatives of developing countries, China is responsible for “common but distinguishing duty for global climate change.” Many policies have been made to develop low-carbon economy with the hope to advocate and innovate low-carbon economy in some industries and cities during these years. Therefore, it is a theoretical and innovative project to find out a low-carbon economical model for various industries and carry out the experiments of low-carbon economy in some cities. Hence, guided by low-carbon economy theory, choosing booming Chinese tourism industry as the object, this chapter tries to construct an operation framework system of low-carbon tourism development from the advantage of low-carbon tourism to the proposal of low-carbon tourism definition so as to conclude an execution scheme of “six elements” of low-carbon tourism with selecting OCT East (Chinese national ecotourism demonstration district) and Mt. Danxia (World Geo-park) as demonstration districts to discuss about models and methods of low-carbon economy in tourism.

A Conceptual Model for Greening a Supply Chain through Greening of Suppliers and Green Innovation

Nowadays, more organisations are focusing on how to improve their environmental performance, partly driven by recent regulations in this area. This means that green supply chain management plays an important role over traditional supply chain management. Companies could gain competitive advantage through the proper management of their supply chain activities, for example, purchasing management. In fact, organisations can now generate more business opportunities than their competitors by addressing environmental management successfully. More specifically, it has been identified that implementation of green innovation can become a company’s order winner. However, not many studies have investigated the relationships between the greening of suppliers, green innovation, environmental performance and competitive advantage. The objective of this article is to propose a conceptual model, developed from a review of relevant literature and performance indicators, and to identify how future research can address these issues.

Voluntary Emissions Reduction

While binding regulations on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have yet to be introduced outside of a limited number of high-emitting sectors in the EU, several organizations have set up voluntary GHG programs that promote firm-level inventories and/or emission reductions. Many argue that these programs are not forceful or rigorous enough to result in real emissions reductions and may simply encourage “greenwashing.” In 2007, the United Nations Global Compact initiated the voluntary Caring for Climate (C4C) platform for businesses wishing to demonstrate climate leadership. To assess how voluntary emissions reduction programs have performed, this study examines the progress that C4C signatories have made. The results show widely dispersed GHG quantities and a range of reduction plans. Due to the lack of uniform, comparable data, the authors call for standardized, clearly defined carbon accounting guidelines as the first step towards effective corporate GHG management.

Carbon as an Emerging Tool for Risk Management

Since 2005, when the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) launched, green adoption in business and industry has been marred by fraudulent carbon credits, VAT swindlers and carbon cowboys, inefficiencies of a nascent market, and not least of all by legislative uncertainty. The disrepute afforded by these examples hindered low carbon growth and deterred emerging business models from adopting more carbon friendly practices. But, as this chapter argues, the shift toward liberal environmentalism has yielded a new generation of businesses seeking to incorporate carbon assets, emissions trading, and sustainability strategies across the value chain. Central to this shift is the notion of carbon as a tool for risk management in businesses, which occurred through the instrumentalisation of CO2 into a tradable asset. By utilising carbon as a financial instrument, businesses are able to manage project risk, market risk, and reputational risk more effectively. This chapter demonstrates this argument through industry examples and provides practical advice for businesses today.

Information Technology Resources Virtualization for Sustainable Development

Nowadays business organizations seem to be involved in the processes of sustainable development. Therefore, not only economic indicators of performance are considered but also – the environmental responsibility is equally important. The environmental responsibility covers social responsibility and natural environment responsibility. The last one demands taking into account promotion of sustainable use of renewable natural resources, reducing the emissions and wastages, and decrease of energy consumption. The first part of the chapter includes presentation of benefits resulting from IT (Information Technology) resources virtualization, Grid computing and cloud computing development. The second part contains a model of IT governance for sustainability. The main important factors included in the model concern IT strategy, business strategy, IT management, business agreements.