Blog
Here, ISIE members will be invited to blog on issues important to industrial ecologists. Are you interested in writing a blog post? Please contact us or log onto your account and submit your post!
The Legacy Environmental Footprints of Capital
28 Jul 2023
by Ranran Wang and Edgar Hertwich.
Manufactured capital assets, such as buildings, machinery, and transport equipment, play a pivotal role in driving economic development and human progress. Yet, a common misconception pins greenhouse gas emissions and resource extractions mainly on short-term...
Can a small island be sustainable?
22 Mar 2023 in
Island Industrial Ecology (Islands)
The role of material stocks and livestock in shaping the sociometabolic transition of the past, present and future on the Greek island Samothraki
Doctoral thesis by Dominik Noll
This doctoral thesis is empirically capturing effects of the global sociometabolic transition of the past...
Islands at Risk - Analyzing Resource-use Dynamics from a Socio-metabolic Research Perspective
14 Feb 2023 in
Island Industrial Ecology (Islands)
By Francisco Xavier Felix Martin del Campo (ISIE profile)
Our resource-use dynamics is posited as an important example of complex systems in need for better understanding. These have contributed significantly to the improvement in global material standards of living through the provisioning of...
Socio-metabolic research and public policy: workshop findings
29 Nov 2022
How can industrial ecology become more policy-relevant? About 30 industrial ecologists explored this question in a workshop at the ISIE-SEM 2022 conference in Vienna. During the workshop, which was organized by Stijn van Ewijk, Philip Nuss, and Alessio Miatto, the participants discussed how...
Thanks for a great ISIE-SEM 2022!
04 Nov 2022 in
Socio-Economic Metabolism (Metabolism)
Transforming socio-economic metabolism in times of multiple crises
19-21 September 2022, Vienna, Austria
The ISIE-SEM conference 2022 that took place from 19-12 September 2022 in Vienna was a great success. More than 180 colleagues from the world-wide SEM community and from related research...
Life-Cycle Information for Banks and Investors
26 Oct 2022
Never before have climate risks been so starkly visible. This Ocotober, the worst floods in a decade killed 600 in Nigeria. In September, Hurricane Ian devastated swaths of Florida, causing 100s of billions USD in damage. In August, one third of Pakistan was flooded and 33 million people had to flee...
Sustainability and Transitions Research: Taking the High Road
03 Jun 2022 in
Socio-Economic Metabolism (Metabolism)
In a recent opinion paper, [1] Julian Kirchherr complains about that “up to 50% of the articles that are now being published in many interdisciplinary sustainability and transitions journals may be categorized as “scholarly bullshit”. These articles, Julian states, “typically...
Green growth now !
05 Apr 2022
by Edgar Hertwich, Ranran Wang, Valentina Assenova.
Summary: Concerned about GHG emission reductions slowing economic growth, China and India weakened the COP26 Glasgow Climate Pact. Our research suggests decarbonization and growth are independent processes. Delaying one to achieve the...
Is e-waste a threat or an opportunity for small-island economies to transition to a circular economy?
07 Mar 2022 in
Island Industrial Ecology (Islands)
Elham Mohammadi (ISIE profile)
Electronic waste is considered a global ecological issue as well as a valuable source of materials by an immense body of research. Various concerns have been raised about e-waste, including air, water, and soil pollutions, geopolitical supply risk of metals, planned...
The evolution of consumer electronic waste in the United States
03 Nov 2021
Shahana Althaf and Callie Babbitt
Today we live in a technology-dependent world, where new electronics are constantly flooding the market and consumers are tempted to upgrade their working gadgets with newer and shinier models. As a result, news articles and academic studies have warned of...
Community Solar Prioritization Tool
25 Feb 2021
My Center - the California Center for Sustainable Communities, https://www.ioes.ucla.edu/ccsc/ -- has just recently launched a new tool.
The solar opportunity map is a web tool built to assist community-based organizations to find the best places for community solar or resiliency centers...
An indicator framework for monitoring progress towards a circular economy
09 Jul 2020
This blog post is part of a series on the 2019 Graedel Prize Winners. Read the other blog post here: Mapping urban material flows with freight data.
From left to right: Fridolin Krausmann, Andreas Mayer, Dominik Wiedenhofer, Willi Haas (not shown: co-Authors Philip Nuss and Gian Andrea...