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The Wuppertal Institute conducted an impact analysis of the NRW Sustainability Bond #4 of 2018 on behalf of the State Government of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). The most recent bond has a volume of EUR 2.025bn, a term of 10 years and consists of 52 eligible projects from the State's 2017 general budget (sustainable value-added was confirmed in a second party opinion by oekom research1). This report analyses the contribution of the bond to climate mitigation, sustainable land use and social impacts. It also includes information on the impacts of the previous three bonds (NRW Sustainability Bond #1 to #3).
Every diet has an impact on an individual’s health status, the environment, as well as on social concerns. A growing number of meals are consumed in the out-of-home catering sector, in which a systematic sustainability assessment is not part of common practice. In order to close this gap, an instrument was developed as part of the NAHGAST project. After more than one year of using the NAHGAST online tool, it needs to be assessed what positive environmental influences can be realized by using the tool. For this reason, this article deals with the question of whether an online tool can enable stakeholders from the out-of-home consumption sector to revise their meals with regard to aspects of a sustainable diet. In addition, it will be answered how precise recipe revisions of the most popular lunchtime meals influence the material footprint as well as the carbon footprint. In conclusion, an online tool can illustrate individual sustainability paths for stakeholders in the out-of-home consumption sector and enables an independent recipe revision for already existing meals. The results show that even slight changes in recipes could lead to savings of up to a third in carbon footprint as well as in material footprint. In relation to the out-of-home consumption sector, this results in the potential for substantial multiplication effects that will pave the way for the dissemination of sustainable nutrition.
Every diet has an impact on an individual's health status, the environment as well as on social aspects. In particular, ecological and social concerns are usually only vaguely assessed in the daily routines of out-of-home catering and a systematic sustainability assessment of meals is usually not carried out. Since May 2018, the menu calculator presented in this paper has been supporting stakeholders in various catering establishments with their sustainability assessment. The tool was developed within the NAHGAST project (www.nahgast.de) in cooperation with five practice partners and tested and validated by a total of 120 recipes. This article provides an overview of selected recipes' sustainability assessments (meals with fish and meat as well as vegetarian and vegan meals) and highlights the effects on the ecological, health and social dimensions.
Gesund, umweltfreundlich und sozialverträglich : wie ein Onlinetool hilft, nachhaltiger zu kochen
(2020)
Jede Kostform hat Auswirkungen auf den individuellen Gesundheitsstatus, die Umwelt und soziale Aspekte. Insbesondere ökologische und soziale Belange werden im Alltag der Außer-Haus-Verpflegung in der Regel nur vage abgeschätzt, eine systematische Nachhaltigkeitsbewertung von Speisen findet zumeist nicht statt. Seit Mai 2018 unterstützt der hier vorgestellte Menü-Rechner Akteure in unterschiedlichen Verpflegungseinrichtungen bei der Nachhaltigkeitsbewertung. Das Instrument wurde im Rahmen des NAHGAST-Projektes (www.nahgast.de) in Kooperation mit fünf Praxispartnern entwickelt und durch insgesamt 120 Rezepturen getestet und validiert. Der vorliegende Artikel gibt einen Überblick über Nachhaltigkeitsbewertungen ausgewählter Rezepturen (Gerichte mit Fisch und Fleisch, sowie vegetarische und vegane Gerichte) und stellt heraus, welche Effekte sich für die ökologische, gesundheitliche und soziale Dimension zeigen.
The CO2 utilisation is discussed as one of the future low-carbon technologies in order to accomplish a full decarbonisation in the energy intensive industry. CO2 is separated from the flue gas stream of power plants or industrial plants and is prepared for further processing as raw material. CO2 containing gas streams from industrial processes exhibit a higher concentration of CO2 than flue gases from power plants; consequentially, industrial CO2 sources are used as raw material for the chemical industry and for the synthesis of fuel on the output side. Additionally, fossil resources can be replaced by substitutes of reused CO2 on the input side. If set up in a right way, this step into a CO2-based circular flow economy could make a contribution to the decarbonisation of the industrial sector and according to the adjusted potential, even rudimentarily to the energy sector.
In this study, the authors analyse potential CO2 sources, the potential demand and the range of applications of CO2. In the last chapter of the final report, they give recommendations for research, development, politics and economics for an appropriate future designing of CO2 utilisation options based upon their previous analysis.
The demand for metals from the entire periodic table is currently increasing due to the ongoing digitalization. However, their use within electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) poses problems as they cannot be recovered sufficiently in the end-of-life (EoL) phase. In this paper, we address the unleashed dissipation of metals caused by the design of EEE for which no globally established recycling technology exists. We describe the European Union's (EU) plan to strive for a circular economy (CE) as a political response to tackle this challenge. However, there is a lack of feedback from a design perspective. It is still unknown what the implications for products would be if politics were to take the path of a CE at the level of metals. To provide clarification in this respect, a case study for indium is presented and linked to its corresponding recycling-metallurgy of zinc and lead. As a result, a first material-specific rule on the design of so-called "anti-dissipative" products is derived, which actually supports designing EEE with recycling in mind and represents an already achieved CE on the material level. In addition, the design of electrotechnical standardization is being introduced. As a promising tool, it addresses the multi-dimensional problems of recovering metals from urban ores and assists in the challenge of enhancing recycling rates. Extending the focus to other recycling-metallurgy besides zinc and lead in further research would enable the scope for material-specific rules to be widened.
Innerhalb des Projektes NsB-Ress untersuchten Forscherinnen und Forscher eine Konsumform hinsichtlich seiner Ressourceneffizienz- und Diffusionspotenziale, die eine ressourcenschonendere und -effizientere Nutzung natürlicher Ressourcen verspricht. Das Credo: nutzen statt besitzen. Zum Zweck dieser Untersuchung machten sie eine Bestandsaufnahme der aktuell und zukünftig marktrelevanten NsB-Angebote, deren Ressourceneinsparpotenziale im Nachgang analysiert wurden. Durch diese Schritte sollen Erkenntnisse und Aussagen über den möglichen Ressourcenverbrauch und Reboundeffekte möglich werden. Weiterhin wurden Erfolgsfaktoren für die Diffusion von Angeboten identifiziert sowie Einsparpotenziale erschlossen, um auszuloten, wie NsB-Angebote frühzeitig ressourcenleicht gestaltet werden können. Am Ende des Projektes sollen Handlungsempfehlungen für relevante Akteure - also Politik, Wirtschaft sowie Verbraucherinnen und Verbraucher - generiert werden.
Das Projektteam zeichnet in der vorliegenden Broschüre ein differenziertes Bild, das sowohl ökologisch als auch sozial wünschenswerte und förderungswürdige NsB-Angebote aufzeigt, aber auch diejenigen benennt, die mit Reboundeffekten verbunden sein können und deshalb einer politischen Rahmensetzung bedürfen.