scholarly journals Improving the environmental sustainability of hotel buildings through the analysis of its life cycle. Case study: Balearic Islands

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (06) ◽  
pp. 709-715
Author(s):  
B. Roselló ◽  
◽  
A. Moia ◽  
A. Cladera ◽  
V. Martínez
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1647-1656
Author(s):  
R. Santi ◽  
G. Elegir ◽  
B. Del Curto

AbstractWhen assessing the sustainability of a product, an ideal life cycle is considered which could include the “Use” and “End of Life” phases. Does human behaviour affect the environmental sustainability? This paper intends to propose a methodological framework for assessing sustainable behavioural scenarios. The framework will be then developed in a specific case study on Compostable Single Use Products (CSUPs), with the aim of designing the identity of compostable materials for packaging in order to guide consumers to behave in a sustainable way in CSUPs disposal phase.


Author(s):  
Michele Germani ◽  
Marco Mandolini ◽  
Marco Marconi ◽  
Marta Rossi

Due to the increasing pressure of legislations and market, the environmental sustainability is becoming a key competitive factor for companies. In specific markets, as the Northern Europe one, customers are very careful on the quality and sustainability of products, thus companies has to design and manufacture green goods. In this context, there is a strong need of effective design tools and platform which allows to configure products applying the life cycle paradigm and with the “environment on mind”. Currently in the market there are only few examples of products designed taking into account the eco-design concepts. In particular, for mechatronic or energy using products only the use phase is usually considered and all the re-design strategies aim to reduce the energy consumption. This is essentially due to the fact that there is a lack of tools and design platforms, which are easy to use and well integrated with the traditional design tools and with the design processes of companies. This paper wants to demonstrate the usefulness of a set of interoperable eco-design tools, the G.EN.ESI platform, in supporting the re-design of a mechatronic product. The proposed case study, realized in collaboration with an Italian leading company in the sector of household appliances, focuses on the improvement of a domestic cooker hood with the final objective to obtain a more sustainable product. The in-depth experimentation, for the duration of more than 3 months, involved different stakeholders within the company (designers, environmental expert, etc.), with the aim to validate the G.EN.ESI platform tools in different phases of the re-design process. The case study showed that the use of the platform has supported the company in the identification of the environmental hot-spots and during the product re-design phase, considering the whole life cycle. The re-engineered cooker hood exhibits relevant improvements in the most important environmental and economic indicators (environmental impact, energy efficiency, disassemblability, recyclability, etc.). Also a detailed analysis of the platform usability has been performed in order to measure if the tools completely fulfil the expectations of the final users. Finally, the level of integration within the company processes has been evaluated with a dedicated questionnaire. The results of these last analyses showed that the G.EN.ESI platform is appropriate to support a company to improve the sustainability of their products without the needs to heavily alter the traditional design process.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. 15262-15283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Bruscoli ◽  
Daniele Fiaschi ◽  
Giampaolo Manfrida ◽  
Duccio Tempesti

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 3252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianna Lena Kambanou

Despite the existence of many life cycle costing (LCC) methods, LCC is not widely adopted and LCC methods are usually further tailored by practitioners. Moreover, little is known about how practising LCC improves life cycle management (LCM) especially if LCM is considered emergent and constantly developing. In a manufacturing company, LCC is prescriptively introduced to improve LCM. In the first part, this study describes how various methodological choices and other aspects of practising LCC were the outcome of contestation and conformity with extant practices and not only the best way to fulfil the LCC’s objective. This contestation can even influence if LCC is adopted. In the second part of the research, the implications of practising LCC on LCM are explored. LCC is found to positively propel LCM in many ways e.g., by spreading the life cycle idea, but may lead to a narrower understanding of the term life cycle resulting in the sustainability focus of LCM being overridden. The article also discusses how the findings can be taken into consideration when researchers develop LCC methods and when industry practises LCC.


Fuel ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 254 ◽  
pp. 115627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Tomatis ◽  
Ashak Mahmud Parvez ◽  
Muhammad T. Afzal ◽  
Sannia Mareta ◽  
Tao Wu ◽  
...  

Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 230
Author(s):  
Hossein Omrany ◽  
Veronica Soebarto ◽  
Jian Zuo ◽  
Ruidong Chang

This paper aims to propose a comprehensive framework for a clear description of system boundary conditions in life cycle energy assessment (LCEA) analysis in order to promote the incorporation of embodied energy impacts into building energy-efficiency regulations (BEERs). The proposed framework was developed based on an extensive review of 66 studies representing 243 case studies in over 15 countries. The framework consists of six distinctive dimensions, i.e., temporal, physical, methodological, hypothetical, spatial, and functional. These dimensions encapsulate 15 components collectively. The proposed framework possesses two key characteristics; first, its application facilitates defining the conditions of a system boundary within a transparent context. This consequently leads to increasing reliability of obtained LCEA results for decision-making purposes since any particular conditions (e.g., truncation or assumption) considered in establishing the boundaries of a system under study can be revealed. Second, the use of a framework can also provide a meaningful basis for cross comparing cases within a global context. This characteristic can further result in identifying best practices for the design of buildings with low life cycle energy use performance. Furthermore, this paper applies the proposed framework to analyse the LCEA performance of a case study in Adelaide, Australia. Thereafter, the framework is utilised to cross compare the achieved LCEA results with a case study retrieved from literature in order to demonstrate the framework’s capacity for cross comparison. The results indicate the capability of the framework for maintaining transparency in establishing a system boundary in an LCEA analysis, as well as a standardised basis for cross comparing cases. This study also offers recommendations for policy makers in the building sector to incorporate embodied energy into BEERs.


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