Sustainable Manufacturing in China

http://solarfeeds.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4583:efficiency-the-cheapest-energy&catid=80:80&Itemid=173 

On Solarfeed.com I was made aware of the Forbes special report, “Energy + Genius”, commencing on November 5. It will be ”packed with solutions and stories” on how to address the increasing demand for energy worldwide without exceeding the limitations of available resources. As a preview Forbes provides a few short articles on the topic, which are not as interesting as expected.  However, I can recommend “The Saudi Arabia Beneath Detroit” article, which highlights efforts to increase energy efficiency as one of the most promising routes to secure energy supplies in the future. The author Amory Lovins calls this “to drill for the Saudi Arabia-sized savings under Detroit.”:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/09/amory-lovins-energy-biz-energenius08-cx_al_1009lovins.html

I am hoping to  to review some innovative technological ideas featured in the upcoming Forbes report. 

The “Sustainable Manufacturing Summit Europe” is taking place in Brussels, Belgium, 19-21 November 2008:

http://www.greenpowerconferences.com/corporateclimateresponse/sms_europe.html

The summit aims at discussing the chances and challenges that go along with sustainable manufacturing. Particularly interesting in my opinion is the prospect of a range of corporate case studies on (amongst others) : 

Sustainability Posters by Marian Bantjes, Christoph Niemann and Paula Scher

• Manufacturer energy efficiency
• Product life cycle analysis
• Manufacturing design for “reduce, reuse, recycle”
• SME case studies

On the 19th there is a session on ”Winning and innovative strategies for sustainable manufacturing” with speakers from BASF and Toyota Motors. If these speakers manage to highlight, through practical examples, how innovative thinking turned into greener AND more cost-efficient production, I think this could be a fascinating session to attend!

Picture Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/undercover_surrealist/2404595233

Today’s web page of the German news magazin Spiegel.de, runs an article, which’s title can be translated along the lines of “China’s output of greenhouse gases might double.”

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,585713,00.html

I managed to find the English version as distributed by Reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE49L0Z920081022?sp=true

The articles refer to a report published by the Chinese Academy of Science pointing out that China’s greenhouse gas emissions could more than double over the next two decades if no appropriate countermeasures are taken. News like this clearly underline the importance of clean and efficient manufacture in China for economies world wide.

Opportunities for Environmental Industries in China

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Sharing the article above seems useful because it provides links to two PDF-documents containing extracts from the “Environmental opportunities overseas” magazine, published by the UK TRADE & INVESTMENT, a government organisation helping UK based companies to act on the global stage (www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk). It is suggested ”anyone who is manufacturing or marketing green products looks at this document to learn more about China’s landscape” (Cleener, Greener Manufacturing Blog).

Being new to blogging I was advised by a more experienced Portuguese friend of mine to embed some “thrilling videos“. So I went to search a common place, used by people and institutions to “broadcast yourself^TM“. It turned out there is a huge number and variety of videos related to the wider topic of sustainability.

When narrowing these down to our more specific topic of sustainable manufacturing, I realised there is a small number of -unfortunately monotonous, uninteresting or even incredibly boring- videos related to the more specific topic of sustainable manufacturing. However, I was determined to publish and discuss an -exciting, interesting or even fascinating- video, receiving interesting blog-comments. To keep it short, I had to decide between two finalists, a video discussing the carbon footprint of a webpage and the one below about “Companies going green“, published by RIT University News (the news and public relations division of Rochester Institute of Technology, located in western New York state):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx9Cplv26NU&hl=en&fs=1]

We will pick up on some of the examples or companies mentioned in the video to discuss them later in this blog (in several episodes/posts to come, the first one stating my ideas on what sustainable manufacturers could learn from a copying machine…)

This conclusion is derived from an interesting article called “The mpg confusion” (mpg=miles per gallon) featured on RealClimate – Climate science from climate scientists:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/09/the-mpg-confusion

The article caused an  exciting discussion (over 340 responses), pointing out that a product’s whole lifecycle has to be considered to evaluate its environmental impact.