Sustainability, Volume 8, Issue 7

A study was conducted to determine the efficacy of applying ground magnesium limestone (GML) or ground basalt in combination with bio-fertilizer to sustain rice production on an acid sulfate soil in Malaysia. Soils from Kelantan Plains, Malaysia, wer...

Following a regional-level study conducted in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan (Wang et al., 2014 [1]), this paper presents an approach for municipal renewable energy planning and its experimental application in a Japanese municipality using a Geographic...

The electricity industry is a basic industry of the national economy. It has experienced several large-scale power shortages, hard power shortage and soft power shortage, which have brought a great threat to China’s sustainable economic development....

The study aims to contribute to the literature by empirically examining the relationship between small and medium sized enterprises’ (SMEs) mission statements and their performance in sustainable strategy formulation. Although it seems that there is...

This paper examines small hotels that have some type of environmental certification. A survey of 210 small (less than 50 employees) Catalonian hotels was conducted to investigate whether there are significant differences in the results of the impleme...

In the face of climate change, scholars and policymakers are increasingly concerned with fostering “urban resilience”. This paper seeks to contribute towards a better understanding of synergies and differences in how academics and local decision-make...

Sustainable use of natural resources in the production of construction materials has become a necessity both in Europe and Turkey. Construction products in Europe should have European Conformity (CE) and Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), an in...

Significant potential for reducing thermal energy consumption in buildings of moderate and cold climate countries lies within wind energy utilisation. Unlike solar irradiation, character of wind speeds in Central and Northern Europe correspond to the...

Future challenges to the global food supply chain are complex. In order to embrace sustainability, companies should change their management practices towards more efficient resource use. Food waste being a misuse of resources, we identify its causes...

Traffic noise is a combination of noises produced from a number of sources. Of all the traffic noise sources, tire-pavement noise, which is emitted as a result of the interaction of rolling, slipping, or dragging tires and the pavement surface, is th...

Transforming mature tourism resorts has evolved toward a greater involvement of public authorities and away from the mere renovation of public spaces. Authorities today are required to lead the reorganization of tourism activities through the develop...

As the main source of CO₂ emissions in China, the industrial sector has faced pressure for reducing emissions. To achieve the target of 50% reduction of industrial carbon intensity by 2020 based on the 2005 level, it is urgent to formulate specific C...

Building on longitudinal data from 73 Chinese manufacturing firms during 2009–2012, we assess whether and how firms gain higher efficiency in achieving their sustainability goals by adopting management practice standards (ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and/or...

Quantitative measures of transport disadvantage are reviewed in this paper from the perspective of their effectiveness to investigate social exclusion. The effectiveness is assessed using criteria derived through a review of the concepts of transport...

Water erosion causes reduced farmland productivity, and with a longer period of cultivation, agricultural productivity becomes increasingly vulnerable. The vulnerability of farmland productivity needs assessment due to long-term water erosion. The ke...

The regional growth of the goods and services trade has placed greater pressure on the ports of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) members, especially in the developing countries. The purpose of this study is to apply the generalized metafr...

The notion of the bioeconomy has gained importance in both research and policy debates over the last decade, and is frequently argued to be a key part of the solution to multiple grand challenges. Despite this, there seems to be little consensus conc...

Urban expansion is considered as one of the most important problems in several developing countries. Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR) is the urbanized and agglomerated area of Bangkok Metropolis (BM) and its vicinity, which confronts the expansion p...

Localisation may be used as a strategy to remedy the harmful socio-ecological impacts of economic globalisation, and lead to improved sustainability achievements. This article describes the formation of a regional-level localisation index for the 20...

With industrial integration accelerating in domestic and foreign enterprise, industrial integration is becoming the only way for regional development to break through its bottleneck. Compared with advanced foreign enterprises, there exists a signific...

Based on two substitute products, we study the inventory and contract coordination strategy of a three-echelon supply chain, which consists of two suppliers, a manufacturer and a retailer, under supply disruption and stochastic demand. We investigate...

Due to the frequent urban air pollution episodes worldwide recently, decision-makers and government agencies are struggling for sustainable strategies to optimize urban land use/cover change (LUCC) and improve the air quality. This study, thus, aims...

Technology analysis (TA) is an important issue in the management of technology. Most R&D (Research & Development) policies have depended on diverse TA results. Traditional TA results have been obtained through qualitative approaches such as t...

An urban forest assessment is essential for developing a baseline from which to measure changes and trends. The most precise way to assess urban forests is to measure and record every tree on a site, but although this may work well for relatively sma...

Understanding human mobility patterns provides us with knowledge about human mobility in an urban context, which plays a critical role in urban planning, traffic management and the spread of disease. Recently, the availability of large-scale human-se...

The planting of sugarcane crops has expanded in the last decade in the southeast of Brazil, mainly due to its use for biofuel production, such as ethanol. This expansion in the State of São Paulo has occupied land that was previously used for cattle...

Environmental degradation threatens the long term resiliency of the US food and farming system. While USDA has provided conservation incentives for the adoption of best management practices (BMPs), only a small percentage of farms have participated i...

This study explores the technical and scale efficiency of two types of Greek fishing vessels, small-scale vessels and bottom trawlers, using a bias-corrected input-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis model. Moreover, the associations between efficienc...

In the transformation of urban distribution industry, the problem of enterprises generally retaining a self-distribution mode is highlighted, and it is not conducive for enterprises to develop core business. Around the hot issue of climate change, bu...

This paper examines how and to what degree government policies of garbage fees and voluntary source separation programs, with free indoor containers and garbage bags, can affect the effectiveness of municipal solid waste (MSW) management, in the sens...

Northeast China (NEC) is one of China’s major rice production areas and has experienced obvious climate warming over the past three decades, similar to other mid- to high-latitude regions in the Northern Hemisphere. The present study investigates the...

Field testing of a proprietary stormwater treatment device (GPT) was undertaken over a one year period at a commercial site located in Sippy Downs, Queensland. The focus of the study was primarily on evaluating the effectiveness of the GPT device in...

SMEs need to protect their innovation outcomes and increase profits from their innovations in order to make their growth sustainable. The appropriability regime enables SMEs to secure financial returns on their R&D investment so that SMEs can con...

Rapid urbanization and rapid urban growth present great challenges to the sustainable utilization of land resources. This paper discusses the on-going process of construction-to-ecological land conversion (CELC) in terms of three aspects: land use, e...

The long-lasting “guns versus butter” argument reflects the fact that China has been experiencing a difficult choice in terms of improving the defense and social welfare sectors, and thus achieving fiscal sustainability. The result, however, is contr...

Understanding of the influencing factors of industrial sector carbon dioxide emissions is essential to reduce natural and anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, we applied the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) decomposition method...

Sustainable mining has received much attention in recent years as a consequence of the negative impacts of mining and public awareness. The aim of this paper is to provide mining companies guidance on improving the sustainability of their sites throu...

For resilience building, cities need to foster learning and innovation processes among all actors in order to develop transformative capacities of urban governance regimes to manage extraordinary situations as well as continuous change. A close colla...

To comply with recent international trends and initiatives, and in order to help achieve sustainable development, Korea has established a greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction target of 37% (851 million tons) of the business as usual (BAU) rate by...

The role of tourism in rural areas is pivotal for the integration and valorization of territorial resources and it is strengthened by the capacity to promote local community participation in processes of development. The paper addresses the issue by...

Although China has promoted the construction of Chinese Sustainable Ground Transportation (CSGT) to guide sustainable development, it may create substantial challenges, such as rapid urban growth and land limitations. This research assessed the effec...

Urban metabolism analysis has become a useful and effective tool to explore urban socio-economic processes. In this research, in order to explore the similarities and differences of metabolic characteristics and variation rules of different types of...

Sustainability is a crucial factor in Long-Term Care (LTC) programmes, which implies whether the programmes have the capability of sustaining a quality service over the long term. To evaluate the sustainability of community-based LTC programmes, a no...

In light of the growing importance of data network quality in the wireless industry, this study analyzes and compares efficiencies in management, service quality, network quality, and market in the 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless industry. For...

The goal of achieving sustainable tourism is now a priority for many tourism planners. It has been suggested that stakeholder analysis is an essential step in determining sustainable tourism in regions, given its highly contextual nature. However, pr...

In China, existing buildings comprise more than 40 billion square meters, most being of high energy consumption. A substantial reduction in electrical energy costs could be obtained through greater use of daylight. Daylight varies widely due to the m...

A comparative study of two smallholder dairy cooperatives in Kenya examines the question: what factors are conducive to producing sustainable smallholder cooperatives that can gain entry into the vertical value chain in liberalized post-colonial econ...

The tilt angle with the horizon (with respect to the ground) of the solar energy system affects the amount of solar radiation received. This paper suggests a simple and universal method to obtain the optimum tilt angles by estimating the monthly mean...

Many countries and scholars have used various strategies to improve and optimize the allocation ratios for carbon emission allowances. This issue is more urgent for China due to the uneven development across the country. This paper proposes a new met...

Soil is the most basic resource for sustainable agricultural production; it promotes water quality, is a key component of the biogeochemical cycles and hosts a huge diversity of organisms. However, we are not paying enough attention to soil degradati...