Reaching The Sustainability

While accelerated economic globalization may have generated additional employment and income worldwide, it has also been one of the drivers of unsustainable production and consumption patterns across the globe.

The Hitachi Sustainability Report 2022 presents our stance toward environmental (E), social (S), and governance (G) issues and details the activities we undertook in relation to these in fiscal 2021.

This book contains collections of selected articles presented at the SDEWES2021 conference and subsequently published in a special issue of Sustainability. The book provides state-of-the-art research, overviewing practices in sustainable development, energy, water and environment systems, as well as their uses and applications. Focus is given to waste management; higher biomass production; biorefineries; bio-digital interface and microbial fuel cells; energy and cost reduction in the building sector; and the economic impact of sustainability.

This Special Issue is entitled “Environmental Sustainability in Maritime Infrastructures”. Oceans and coastal areas are essential in our lives from several different points of view: social, economic, and health. Given the importance of these areas for human life, not only for the present but also for the future, it is necessary to plan future infrastructures, and maintain and adapt to the changes the existing ones. All of this taking into account the sustainability of our planet. A very significant percentage of the world's population lives permanently or enjoys their vacation periods in coastal zones, which makes them very sensitive areas, with a very high economic value and as a focus of adverse effects on public health and ecosystems.

Introduction and Purpose of This Guide Having the capacity to compare a range of infrastructure alternatives objectively is critical to a water or wastewater utility’s long-term sustainability and its ability to serve the needs of its community. This guide is designed to help water and wastewater utilities undertake these critical comparisons, in the context of meeting their existing regulatory requirements and improving the sustainability of utility operations. This document is designed to supplement the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Planning for Sustainability: A Handbook for Water and Wastewater Utilities (“the Handbook”), issued in February 2012. The Handbook identifies a number of steps utilities can take to incorporate sustainability considerations into their existing planning processes, organized around four core elements of planning commonly used by utilities: • PLANNING ELEMENT 1: Goal Setting – Establish sustainability goals that reflect utility and community priorities. • PLANNING ELEMENT 2: Objectives and Strategies – Establish objectives and strategies for each sustainability goal. • PLANNING ELEMENT 3: Alternatives Analysis – Analyze a range of alternatives based on consistent criteria. • PLANNING ELEMENT 4: Financial Strategy – Ensure that investments are sufficiently funded, operated, maintained, and replaced over time.

Introduction   The Australian Government is committed to transforming Australia’s waste into a resource, where most goods and services can be continually used, reused, recycled, and reprocessed as part of a circular economy (refer to Figure 1). This requires changes to be made to all stages of the supply chain, from product design to disposal. However, without stable demand, there is little incentive for the investment in innovation or infrastructure needed to effect these changes. Sustainable procurement helps build a circular economy, aiming to reduce adverse social, environmental, and economic impacts of purchased goods and services throughout their life. This includes considerations such as waste disposal and the cost of operations and maintenance over the life of the goods and services. Australian Government officials need to consider these impacts when making procurement decisions in line with our obligation to spend public money efficiently, effectively, economically, and ethically. As a key principle of the National Waste Policy, the Australian Government has committed to considering environmental sustainability when purchasing goods and services. Under Target 4 of the National Waste Policy Action Plan, all levels of government and industry have committed to significantly increasing their use of recycled content. The Australian Government has committed to using its purchasing power to help build demand and markets for products containing recycled content. This can be achieved through embedding sustainability in contracts where there is an opportunity for recycled content (particularly glass, paper, tires, and plastics) to be procured.