The positive impact factory - Transition from eco-efficiency to eco-effectiveness strategies in manufacturing

Christoph Herrmann*, Stefan Blume, Denis Kurle, Christopher Schmidt, Sebastian Thiede

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articleAcademicpeer-review

49 Citations (Scopus)
764 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Manufacturing of products and goods contributes to more than one-third of the global CO2 emissions caused by humankind mainly due to combustion of fossil fuels. Current measures to reduce the emissions primarily focus on eco-efficiency, seeking mainly for minimized energy demand and to a smaller extent also for minimized resource consumption. However, this strategy of just "making things less bad" will not suffice to overcome the aforementioned challenges. Instead eco-effectiveness strategies need to be aspired, containing manufacturing systems which lead to a positive recoupling between economy and ecology. Contemporary trends and solutions in industry prove that the metamorphosis towards eco-effectiveness has already started and is gaining momentum. This contribution gives an overview about historically related bad impacts of manufacturing to environment and society and derives requirements for future manufacturing, leading to the concept of a Positive Impact Factory. Several industry examples are presented, showing factories on their individual way towards such positive impacts.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)19-27
Number of pages9
JournalProcedia CIRP
Volume29
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2015
Externally publishedYes
Event22nd CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering, LCE 2015 - Sidney, Australia
Duration: 7 Apr 20159 Apr 2015
Conference number: 22

Keywords

  • Eco-effectiveness strategies
  • Factory sustainability evaluation
  • Positive impact factory
  • Sustainable manufacturing

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