Surpassing sustainability: making a ‘net-positive’ impact

Welcome to the final issue of 2017, which marks our tenth anniversary of publication. It has been a great pleasure to observe the tremendous and rapid growth in the number and range of sustainability-related research projects through a decade of publishing in the area. Where the traditional focus in sustainability publications was mainly on environmental considerations, with financial constraints being the chief determining factor for implementation, notable inroads are now being made into understanding the social aspects of sustainable development.

It is also encouraging to see that there has been a shift away from the traditional culture of ‘holding others responsible’, and simply blaming the lack of clear evidence, regulations, investments and desire to change behaviours for slow progress towards the main goals of sustainable development. Moreover, the international dimensions of sustainability challenges are now commonly understood and accepted, and governments, industry and other stakeholders, including the general public as consumers, are working together to develop targets that are universal, initiatives with meaningful and measurable outcomes, and R & D programmes which possess a truly global outreach, in particular within emerging economies.

The Paris Agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) dealing with greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance engendered support from the largest ever number of world leaders for an international initiative, and there is now a clear urgency at the highest level of almost every government within both developed and developing countries to deal with present and upcoming challenges related to global warming and climate change. Similarly, industry has undergone a remarkable change in mindset with the recognition that sustainability is beneficial to both short-term operations and long-term business viability. Sustainability strategies, methodologies, tools and technologies are being embraced by businesses of varying size and type, leading to noticeable improvements in industrial practices.

Figure 1. The Underpinning Principles of Net Positive Manufacturing.

Humanity in general has borne the greatest brunt of the negative impacts in the form of increasing number and severity of both atmospheric and climatic events such as hurricanes, floods, and wild fires, dangerously polluted urban areas with detrimental effects on health, and serious concerns regarding long-term availability, quality, and fair access to food and water. This has led to much greater public awareness, and more importantly, a willingness to change.

With this in mind, could we assume that we are heading towards a sustainable future for humanity on planet Earth ?

The intensification of highly sophisticated and detailed research on specifics of the challenges ahead has provided a much clearer and deeper understanding of the biophysical constraints of our planet. According to WWF and Global Footprint Network, by 2 August of this year (2017) humanity had used more from nature than our planet can renew in the whole year. This means that the equivalent of 1.7 planets would be required to produce and maintain enough to meet humanity’s needs at current consumption rates (Earth Overshoot Day 2017). This is predominately due to inherent and inevitable economic barriers faced by global sustainability initiatives, which has often led to only adopting a ‘Less Bad’ approach to meet the requirements of regional and national legislation and incremental efficiency measures demanded by the general public. The benefits of such initiatives are now perceived as too small and too slow to tackle the needs of tomorrow, so in reality, much more effort is required over and above today’s levels to secure a sustainable future.

When ‘Less Bad is Not Good Enough!’, what should our future aspirations and goals be beyond the scope of current sustainability strategies, methods, tools and technologies ?

Although reducing the damage being done continues to have merit where no alternative yet exists, the future will not be a place for technology or industry that does not provide a net benefit. In this context, a new paradigm referred to as ‘Net-Positive’ is being researched and developed (Rahimifard et al. 2017), which is defined as the ability of businesses to adopt a ‘restoring, self-healing, and regenerative’ approach and simply to put back more into society and the environment than what they take out. This radically novel vision for future industrial development presents a number of methodical, organisational, technological, as well as social and ethical challenges for Sustainable Engineering research which must aid the transition from incremental changes to a radically new vision for future industrial development in order to prevent the predicted worst-case scenarios based on the current patterns of unsustainable production and consumption.

At the heart of the proposed paradigm shift through the net-positive approach is a transformative view of the manufacturing sector which has traditionally been focused on ‘converting raw materials into products, often in large volumes’. This unidirectional flow of materials (and other embedded resources) has resulted in the development of a set of methods, tools and technologies that aim to optimise production (often based on cost reduction), maximise throughput, and more recently, aggressively promote increased consumption to increase profit. Conversely, the proposed net-positive manufacturing must adopt a distinctly different approach based on the concept of ‘borrowing resources to satisfy needs’ so that these resources are returned for further use. This circularity in the use of resources, referred to as ‘Immortal Use of Resources’ (Rahimifard 2015), and the ability to up-cycle or at least recycle (but not down-cycle) resources is fundamental to being net-positive.

In addition, achieving a net-positive impact cannot be accomplished through incremental improvements in the ‘business-as-usual’ mindset. In this respect, future manufacturing organisations should have the ability to demonstrate evidence of net-positive through best practice in corporate responsibility and sustainability across the spectrum of social, environmental and economic impact areas, in line with globally respected standards. In spite of the seemingly negative image of this sector, the authors assert that manufacturing is crucial to solving complex problems across all of these areas by taking on the responsibilities of ‘good corporate citizenship’ throughout the entire value chain.

The fundamental challenge that lies ahead for researchers in net-positive is to map out a pathway to a truly sustainable planet such that technological rebound effects and socio-economic boom and bust patterns do not recur. We look forward to receiving submissions that highlight net-positive solutions over the coming years.

An overview of publications in this issue

This has been our third year of publication with six issues, and this year we featured a special double issue of extended manuscripts based on the research publications presented at the Third International Conference on Sustainable Design and Manufacturing held in Crete-Greece. In our final issue of the year, we are presenting seven papers. The first part of this issue focuses on eco-design, and the latter on supplier selection and reverse logistics.

The first paper by Kwok et al. reports on the development of a design toolkit that aims to support designers in the designing of individualised eco information to encourage sustainable consumer behaviour.

In the second paper, Calero-Pastor et al. propose a simplified method to assess the design of efficient heating systems in residential buildings using data from EU product policies. This method is novel as it enables the assessment of heating systems based on proven labelling schemes, and supports design activities at system level.

The third paper by Thamsatitdej et al. determines the priorities of sustainable supply chain management focusing on eco-design. Their results indicate that product deployment is an important approach for improving eco-design practice towards sustainable supply chain management.

In the latter half of this issue, Sen et al. propose a novel decision support framework to solve supplier selection problems by simultaneously considering green as well as resiliency criteria. In addition, they introduce a unique performance index, called ‘g-resilient’ or ‘ecosilient’ index, to help in assessing the extent of suppliers’ overall performance.

In the fifth paper, Temur and Bolat reveal some of the regulatory and non-regulatory situations related to Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Reverse Logistic Network Design (RLND) in developing countries in which individual sustainable WEEE RLND efforts are still unorganised and informal. They conduct a case study in a recycling company to evaluate and validate the performance of proposed models.

The sixth paper by Pandian and Abdul-Kader measures the performance of the Reverse Logistics enterprise using an agent-based simulation model with a case study involving cell phone remanufacturing.

In the last paper, Ilgin looks at the problem of used product selection faced by third-party reverse logistics providers by proposing a four-stage methodology.

We would like to thank all of our authors, reviewers, board members and administrators over the past decade for their valued contributions that have helped make IJSE a success. Please note that the acknowledgement list of those who have been supporting us through their comments, recommendations and reviews will appear in the first IJSE issue of 2018.

Shahin Rahimifard and Hana Trollman
[email protected]