Sven Lundie

Environmental-economic measures of tourism yield

A focus on ‘tourism yield’ is an important aspect of business strategies to maintain and enhance destination competitiveness. Ideally the notion of ‘tourism yield’ should include tourisms environmental and social value to a destination in addition to economic value. This paper attempts to develop measures of economic and environmental yield. It first describes how measures of economic yield may be estimated and presents results for Australian inbound tourism. Environmental yield estimates are then developed for the same visitor markets. A hybrid approach is employed, combining input-output analysis with an onsite audit for tourist accommodation. The relevant environmental impacts include those on energy use, water use, greenhouse gas emissions and ecological footprint. The findings reveal that, for some inbound markets, simultaneous achievement of relatively high economic and environmental goals is not possible, and that economic-environmental tradeoffs may be necessary. The results have implications for all destinations which use notions of ‘tourism yield’ to inform their marketing strategies.

Assessing the Ecological Footprint of a Large Metropolitan Water Supplier: Lessons for Water Management and Planning towards Sustainability

Faced with the task of communicating their combined social, environmental and economic impact, water service providers are seeking to report overall performance in an aggregated way. Such a methodology must be scientifically robust, easily communicated and allow benchmarking of performance while reflecting a transition towards sustainability. In this paper the ecological footprint (EF) is calculated for Sydney Water Corporation (SWC), using input-output analysis and land disturbance in an innovative approach that overcomes problems identified in the original EF concept. This pilot study has allowed SWC to gain some valuable insights into its impacts: SWCs annual EF is about 73 100 ha in terms of land disturbance. Of this, 54 000 ha are projected to become disturbed as a consequence of climate change, with the remainder of 19 100 ha being disturbed on SWCs premises (2400 ha) and on those of upstream suppliers (16 700 ha). Total on-site impacts equal 9300 ha, while indirect land disturb ance contributes 63 600 ha. The EF appears promising as an educational and communi cation tool and may have potential as a decision support tool. However, further research is needed to incorporate downstream impacts into the EF, which would have significant benefits to SWC in terms of assessing and communicating the organizations overall progress towards sustainability.

Review of multi-criteria decision aid for integrated sustainability assessment of urban water systems

Integrated sustainability assessment is part of a new paradigm for urban water decision making. Multi-criteria decision aid (MCDA) is an integrative framework used in urban water sustainability assessment, which has a particular focus on utilising stakeholder participation. Here MCDA is reviewed in the context of urban water management used in a decision making framework. Three other commonly used integrated approaches in urban water management (cost-benefit analysis, triple bottom line and integrated assessment) are compared with MCDA. Generic types of shortcomings associated with MCDA are discussed to provide an understanding of MCDAs limitation in urban water management decision making; including 1) preferential independency, 2) double counting and under-counting, and 3) transparency of MCDA methods and results.

Life‐Cycle Assessment of Biosolids Processing Options

Summary Biosolids, also known as sewage sludge, are reusable organic materials separated from sewage during treatment. They can be managed in a variety of ways. Different options for biosolids handling in Sydney, Australia, are compared in this study using life-cycle assessment. Two key comparisons are made: of system scenarios (scenario 1 is local dewatering and lime amendment; scenario 2 is a centralized drying system) and of technologies (thermal drying versus lime amendment). The environmental issues addressed are energy consumption, global warming potential (GWP), and human toxicity potential (HTP). Scenario 2 would consume 24% more energy than scenario 1. This is due to the additional electricity for pumping and particularly the petrochemical methane that supplements biogas in the drier. A centralized system using the same technologies as scenario 1 has approximately the same impacts. The GWP and HTP of the different scenarios do not differ significantly. The assessment of technology choices shows significant differences. The ample supply of endogenous biogas at North Head sewage treatment plant for the drying option allows reductions, relative to the lime-amendment option, of 68% in energy consumption, 45% in GWP, and 23% in HTP. Technology choices have more significant influence on the environmental profile of biosolids processing than does the choice of system configurations. Controlling variables for environmental improvement are the selection of biogas fuel, avoidance of coalsourced electrical energy, minimization of trucking distances, and raising the solids content of biosolids products.

Soil salinisation: a local life cycle assessment impact category

Salinity is an increasing environmental problem in agricultural ecosystems and is not adequately represented in conventional life cycle assessment (LCA) impact categories. It is often not the total quantity of salts emitted or the proportion of salt accumulated in the soil profile that is the primary mechanism for deteriorating soil conditions for irrigated salinity, rather the ratio of major cations in the soil matrix and the potential for colloid dispersion and reduced permeability. A soil salinisation potential (SP) is proposed as an indicator for irrigated salinity and potential soil degradation from poor irrigation practices. The indicator uses the threshold electrolyte concentration concept that predicts the adjusted sodium adsorption ratio (SAR)/ Electrical conductivity (EC) ratio that soil will no longer flocculate, but potentially disperse. The SAR is converted to a threshold EC and compared to the measured EC in order to develop a site-specific irrigation equivalence factor (EF). This site/region/process specific EF is then used to weight the sodium load to soil and repeated for each stage throughout the entire life cycle to determine the overall Salinisation Potential (SP). The data required for calculating the SP is generally readily available either on site or from the water chemistry of the local watercourses. Preliminary calculations simply require the volume, pH, electrical conductivity (EC), alkalinity and the concentrations of Na, Ca, and Mg of the irrigation water. The site/process/region specific nature of the indicator ensures a quantitative measure to enable comparisons between different systems and is useful for identifying stages in the life cycle of a product (particularly food products), where the potential for soil salinisation and soil degradation is most severe.

Yield Measures for Special-Interest Australian Inbound Tourism Markets:

Different tourism stakeholders mean different things by ‘yield’ and this presents a barrier to communication and policy discussion. Primarily, this paper provides an overview of different concepts of yield. It also operationalizes several of these measures using inbound tourism expenditure data for Australia so that the origin markets and market segments identified as generating high yields under the various measures can be compared. The paper further identifies the manner in which the concept of yield can be broadened to embrace sustainable yield by incorporating measures of environmental and social impact. It concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of the study.

Environmental assessment of products

The evaluation of product alternatives in Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a critical step on the basis of results as related to their impact category data. Decisions involving several environmental issues are hardly ever straightforward, since one alternative only seldom clearly dominates the others in all aspects. More often, one alternative scores better on some environmental issues and worse on others. A combination of impact data and preferences is then required for evaluation. This can be done using evaluation methods based on fixed societal preferences. However, by applying different evaluation methods to the same data, different “best” alternatives may be chosen. This reduces the credibility of LCA results.Instead of fixed societal preferences an approach has been developed which uses consensus-oriented ranges of societal values for specifying the ranking of the overall environmental attractiveness of alternatives. These ranges may indicate both the uncertainty of decision-makers and the shifting of societal values, e.g. as related to the dynamics of knowledge of environmental problem areas.In this article, an approach is proposed which combines environmental data and uncertain societal values to form a clear statement on alternatives regarding their overall damage. By using a full set of potentially relevant societal preferences, a merely coincidental selection of the best product alternative is ruled out. A step-by-step procedure, narrowing down the feasible range of societal preferences, has been developed. The approach is illustrated using a case study of TV-housing concepts and a survey.

Constructing enterprise input-output tables - a case study of New Zealand dairy products

We describe an efficient method for estimating enterprise input-output tables for cases when only information on marginal totals is available. In order to estimate the production structure of enterprises, we utilize engineering knowledge to construct a qualitative prior containing 1 wherever an output may require an input, and 0 otherwise. This qualitative prior is then scaled by the total enterprise turnover, and subsequently reconciled using the RAS method in order to meet accounting rules. We demonstrate the usefulness of this method in an application to dairy product manufacturing in New Zealand, where we estimate the input-output tables for 22 production sites. Our analysis is carried out in units of mass, and hence the accounting rules are mass balance requirements.JEL Classification:Q560, C650, L660.

The MIIM LCA Ph.D. Club : Presentation and introduction

During 1998, the number of completed Ph.D.s on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) seemed to be larger than any previous year. In order to mark this achievement, a special series is being published in the International Journal of LCA. In this introductory paper, the Class of MUM outline the results of their research work over the last few years. A number of common points and tendencies have emerged through this work. First of all, the scope-dependency of LCA models: some of us have discerned in particular the need to distinguish between descriptive and change-oriented LCAs. Secondly, a number of the theses focus on the interaction between LCA and decision-making. Thirdly, the benefits of pluralism in impact assessment and allocation have been advocated in some of the theses. Finally, it may be noted that in these theses structuring the management of controversial issues seems to be preferred to eliminating such issues by a process of harmonisation. Future papers will map out the intellectual journeys undertaken in the development of these theses and discuss key findings in more detail.

Recycling und Entsorgung

Im folgenden werden Verfahren bei der Elektronikschrottverwertung einschlieslich der Demontage, der maschinellen Aufbereitung und der Sekundarrohstoflfgewinnung beschrieben. Im Detail wird auf spezielle Recyclingverfahren wie das Schleswag- und Reichart-Dassler-Verfahren zum Elektronikschrottrecycling sowie das Bildrohrenrecycling (Trocken- und Nasverfahren) eingegangen, die den Stand der Technik widerspiegeln.