Arne Remmen

Addressing resource efficiency through the Ecodesign Directive: A review of opportunities and barriers

The European Union has initiated a number of initiatives to improve resource efficiency in Europe. The Ecodesign Directive is one of the policy instruments that could aid the transition towards a m ...

Life Cycle Management: Implementing Sustainability in Business Practice

Life cycle management is a business management concept applied in industrial and service sectors to improve products and services, while enhancing the overall sustainability performance of the business and its value chains. Life cycle thinking and product sustainability is operational for businesses that are ambitious and committed to reducing their environmental and socio-economic burden while maximizing economic and social value. In this regard, life cycle management is used beyond short-term business success and aims at long-term achievements. The term “life cycle management” has been confused with other uses in engineering and manufacturing (product life cycle management) and in software development (application life cycle management), in buildings, plants, information management and so on. There is a need to clarify this term and its definition more than a decade since the concept was first introduced. This chapter aims at elaborating the concept and definitions of life cycle management as currently found in literature and as extending it from focusing on implementation of life cycle sustainability assessment into business practice to include it as part of sustainable consumption and production strategies and policies. Methods and tools used and the general framework for life cycle sustainability management covering environmental, social and economic aspects in business practices are discussed in detail.

Sustainable infrastructure: A review and a research agenda

This paper proposes a taxonomy of themes and a research agenda on sustainable infrastructure, with a focus on sustainable buildings (SB) and green infrastructure (GI). The citation databases of Web of Science formed the basis for a novel strategic thematic analysis of co-citation and co-occurrence of keywords with a longitudinal identification of themes during the last two decades (from 1995 to 2015) of an emerging and ever growing research area. SI is a multidisciplinary endeavour, including a diversified array of disciplines as general engineering, environmental ecology, construction, architecture, urban planning, and geography. This paper traces that the number of publications in SI is growing exponentially since 2003. Over 80% of total citations are concentrated in less than 10% of papers spread over a large number of journals. Most publications originate from the United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The main research streams in SI are green infrastructure, sustainable buildings, and assessment methods. Emerging and prevailing research themes include methodological issues of cost-effectiveness, project management and assessment tools. Substantive issues complement the research agenda of emerging themes in the areas of integration of human, economic and corporate social responsibility values in environmental sustainability, urban landscape and sustainable drainage systems, interdisciplinary research in green material, integrated policy research in urbanization, agriculture and nature conservation, and extensions of Green Building (GB) and GI to cities of developing countries.

How to Implement Life Cycle Management in Business

This chapter discusses how business can implement life cycle sustainability assessment into their management strategies. Life cycle management is a management approach that provides business a systematic way of managing their sustainability issues. The PDCA (Plan, Do, Check and Act) cycle is one of the quality management tools that can be used by companies to implement life cycle management initiatives in order to improve their sustainability performance. The relevance of the PDCA cycle is discussed to ensure a continuous performance improvement by setting and implementing a well-defined plan, checking whether the ambition goals are achieved or any adjustment actions are needed to continue the evaluation process.

Product policies on the environmental performance of washing machines : Investigating the synergies and coherence between policy instruments

This report constitutes part of the larger project Eco-design and Future Product Policy – Further research on Energyrelated Products. The objective was to investigate how nine policy instruments af ...

Expanding the Scope of the EuP Directive

This report is the documentation from the project “Expanding the Scope of the EuP Directive”, financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers for the Environment. The project was kick-started by the ad ...

Policy Brief - Ecodesign Requirements for Textiles and Furniture

Policy Brief: Ecodesign Requirements for Textiles and Furniture The EU Eco design Directive’s potential for application to nonenergy related themes has come under the spotlight in recent years with ...

Potential Ecodesign Requirements for Textiles and Furniture

A large part of the lifecycle environmental impacts of a product are determined at the design stage, why The EU Eco design Directive’s potential for application to non-energy related themes has com ...

Life cycle assessment for printed newspapers in Northwestern Mexico

This paper aims to present the relevant results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study conducted on printed matter under a sheet-fed offset printing process by a company located in northwestern Mexico. Different scenarios were simulated in order to support decisions related to the improvement of environmental performance along the production processes. The study design was based on the European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment (EPLCA), which is in line with the ISO 14040 and 14044:2006 standards on LCA. The scope of the study was cradle-to-gate, with emphasis on the production of printed matter. The method chosen for the impact assessment was Impact 2002+ with a combined midpoint–damage approach. The results of the study showed that the major contributors to adverse effects were, primarily electricity consumption followed by paper consumption during the printing operation, as well as consumption of ink to a small degree. As for the plate-making operation along with the generation of secondary products, the result was negative. This is essentially due to involvement of recyclable materials, thus contributing to the prevention of raw material extraction. The smallest impact was observed from processes involving cleaning products and LP gas. The main issues of concern stemming from the results are electricity consumption and printing – both activities dominate almost all the midpoint categories. Generation of secondary products also had a relative environmental impact along the supply chain. Cleaning agents and LP gas did not have a significant impact on the final results of the process.

Policy Brief : Addressing resource efficiency through the Ecodesign Directive - A review of opportunities and barriers

Recommendations for Nordic policymakers:Resource related ecodesign obligations will be a necessary part of the future policy mix, though not all parts of the policy puzzle is yet in place. The Nord ...