Suchergebnisse

The spread of eco-design activity through industry has not necessarily resulted from a systematic assessment of the potential benefits. For example, eco-design principles have been adopted (and developed) by organisations or individuals who feel an increased environmental or social responsibility, or designers who find an aesthetic resonance with ecology. Alternatively, eco-design principles are adopted as a means of reducing production costs or meeting new legislation. Industries such as electronics, IT and domestic appliance industries already integrate environmental issues in their design culture and manufacturing operations whilst other industries such as construction are still aligning themselves with issues of sustainability. Certain sectors have much potential to benefit from the application of eco-design principles. It is suggested here that indicators of the potential for reducing environmental impact through eco-design could be found in publicly available aggregated data for industry spending and environmental impact. A systematic characterisation of UK industry sectors according to the potential benefits associated with application of eco-design principles could be instrumental in directing future eco-design research, development and application in industry. Results are presented for the characterisation of several industry sectors, conclusions about the methodology and suggestions for further work are made.

Greywater re-use has much potential as a water conservation measure although its uptake has been tempered somewhat by concerns over the potential risk to health, financial viability and the absence of formal legislation. The focus of these concerns varies according to the planned scale of re-use. At the domestic scale, research has shown that although greywater re-use is technically feasible and conceptually attractive to a proportion of homeowners, presently, the financial returns from water savings are too small to encourage wider uptake. It has been suggested that the financial viability of greywater re-use improves with an increase in scale. This research reports on the performance of water re-use systems using a computer simulation model. Re-use system design is evaluated and re-use system performance predicted. The importance of estimating the water saving potential and water quality implications of a planned re-use project becomes more acute as the scale increases. In order to estimate water saving efficiency and evaluate system design, it is necessary to understand the patterns of water flow in a building. Yet, there is a limited availability of detailed appliance usage data for multi-occupancy building. The appliance usage of multi-occupancy residential buildings can be estimated from single-family water usage data. Results show that increases in storage size give improved re-use system performance up to a point, after which increases in capacity result in reduced gains in performance. For a single family household of 4 occupants this point is around 250 litres and for multi-occupancy buildings it is around 1000 litres for all occupancies. Disinfection performance in lower occupancy buildings is compromised if the storage capacity is increased beyond these values. Simulating different levels of component reliability and frequency of maintenance revealed that performance was significantly reduced if systems were maintained at 3 month or even 1 month intervals, although, weekly maintenance checks maintained performance levels even for frequently failing components.

The UK Government's sustainable development strategy, 'Securing the Future', commits the Government to a clearer focus on well-being. The strategy identified the need to ensure that well-being issues are tackled consistently, in the right way, and that the Government is genuinely making a difference to people's lives. Against this background, the project specification asked for a think-piece that would explore the relationship between well-being and sustainable development. In order to address this issue, there are three stages of research: 1. A review of the relationship between well-being and sustainable development which will also serve to clarify some of the key concepts that will feed into the two empirical stages that follow 2. A questionnaire to explore what stakeholders think and to provide insights into how best to explore the relationships between well-being and sustainable development in the workshop that follows 3. A workshop to bring together experts to focus on key questions about the possible synergies and tensions between different concepts of well-being in a sustainable development context