Szigeti Cecília
56736668800
Publications - 27
Rolling Contact fatigue Defects and a New Approach to Rail Material Management
Publication Name: Acta Polytechnica Hungarica
Publication Date: 2025-01-01
Volume: 22
Issue: 4
Page Range: 227-246
Description:
This article describes the current method of calculating the Hertzian contact stress and the corresponding shear stress occurring in the rail head at the rail-wheel contact and highlights the false sense of security that this approach creates among experts. The authors then present a method that is easy to implement in spreadsheet software and provides realistic results. In light of the results obtained, it is shown that it is not possible to prevent defects induced by the occurring stresses but only to keep them within limits by means of rail machining, which is a realistic objective, without significantly limiting the throughput capacity of the railway track. The combined effects of rail machining and natural wear cause the cross-sectional area and inertia and thus, the load-bearing capacity of the rails to decrease continuously. If the limit is exceeded, the rails may be installed again in less heavily used track sections and continue functioning. At the end of their service life, the track owner sells them as used rail scrap. If possible, recasting them as electro-steels, can significantly reduce the production costs and the amount of CO2 emitted during production.
Open Access: Yes
DOI: DOI not available
Investigation of CO2 Emission Concerning Levee Reinforcement Technologies
Publication Name: Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering
Publication Date: 2025-01-01
Volume: 580 LNCE
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: 1-10
Description:
Flooding is one of the primary causes of losses from natural disasters in numerous regions worldwide, surpassing all other types of natural hazards in terms of damage. In recent decades, flood damage has been significantly severe due to the increase in the frequency and intensity of floods. Considering that levees are built for an established design life, it is essential to consider potential changes in loads due to atmospheric climate change. Climate variability may affect hydraulic loading and soil eroding with significant precipitation or during drought or high wind conditions. These atmospheric changes over time may affect the structural integrity of the levee. The dominating failure modes for typical ground conditions along rivers are slope stability, overtopping, through seepage, and underseepage. Several technologies can be applied to prevent levee failure, strengthen the levee, avoid overtopping or internal erosion, and ground subsidence due to changing groundwater. The most common ones are concrete columns, sheet piles, geosynthetics, and deep mixing using different binders. However, these technologies come out to be costly, in terms of materials. Moreover, the primary material of these interventions is cement. Nowadays, it is accepted that the cement industry is one of the two largest producers of carbon dioxide (CO2 ). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide comprehensive guidelines for promoting sustainable development in terms of environmental, social, and economic dimensions in all sectors of the economy, including civil engineering. The study outlines the procedure to calculate the carbon dioxide emissions of different technologies for levee reinforcement. Considering a simple scenario, the technical suitability of the investigated technologies is analyzed, and the carbon dioxide emission is analyzed separately.
Open Access: Yes
Providing Decent, Affordable, and Sustainable Housing: Analysing Environmental Impacts of Family Houses Built with Conventional and Unconventional Building Materials
Publication Name: Environmental Footprints and Eco Design of Products and Processes
Publication Date: 2024-01-01
Volume: Part F3205
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: 105-126
Description:
The construction industry is considered an activity responsible for both significant CO2 emissions and material flows. Providing affordable, decent, and sustainable habitats is, however, a fundamental human need. Therefore, the chapter aims to analyse the environmental impacts of construction and energy upgrades of detached family dwellings typical in Hungary. For the analysis of environmental impact, the concept of ecological footprint (EF) was used. The main advantages of this method are that (1) results can be compared to the upper limits of sustainability, (2) figures are rather easy to understand for each stakeholder, and (3) the concept may take into consideration all impacts of human activities. The chapter, however, analyses only the EF of material use of constructions. The sample consists of data on five detached family houses, representing the housing in Hungary: (1) a new two-storey family house with a gable roof, (2) a new family house made of timber, and (3) an energy upgrade of a typical family dwelling built between 1950 and 1990, called “Hungarian cube”. The results show that the construction of new detached family dwellings has a significantly higher ecological footprint than renovating an existing one. Using non-conventional construction materials (e.g. timber), however, can decrease the ecological footprint of construction, but useful lifetime should be considered more deeply in this case. Volatile energy prices have highlighted the importance of the energy efficiency of the housing stock. Newly built dwellings have outstanding insulation and, therefore, have nearly zero emission during operation, but they are not the means of affordable housing due to their construction costs, and the construction itself has a significant environmental impact which is not outweighed by the energy savings during the useful lifetime. Therefore, retrofitting and even extension of dwellings can better contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Open Access: Yes
The Ecological Footprint of Embedded Rail Structures
Publication Name: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems
Publication Date: 2024-01-01
Volume: 877 LNNS
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: 42-52
Description:
Since the 1990s, tramway transport in East-Central Europe has been experiencing a renaissance. In urban planning practice, there has been a growing trend towards the displacement of individual motorized transportation, thereby reducing traffic congestion and air pollution, creating the foundations of a healthier, more liveable urban environment. In the major cities, large-scale investments have recently been carried out or are being planned. Most of the investments focused the modernization and renovation of existing line sections, but there are also examples of new lines being built. Due to the increasing demands placed on rail transport (reduction of noise and vibration loads, as well as of life cycle costs), the use of embedded superstructures is gaining ground in Poland as well. These superstructures are excellent from a technical point of view and have a lower environmental impact in terms of noise and vibration, but the cost savings and ecological footprint reductions vary between designs. Our research proposes a standardized approach to measure environmental impacts of urban railway projects using ecological footprint (EF) calculation. As a result of our previous studies, we found that the ecological footprint of a design built with B3 rails is significantly smaller than that of a design built with 59Ri2 rails. In our current study, we have investigated how the ecological footprint of the design with the more favourable ecological footprint changes when it is modified to meet the environmental considerations. We examined the additional environmental impact of reducing noise and vibration. In our research we present an example from Krakow to illustrate the practical application.
Open Access: Yes
Investigating the Ecological Footprint of Deep Mixing
Publication Name: Chemical Engineering Transactions
Publication Date: 2023-01-01
Volume: 107
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: 349-354
Description:
In railway construction practice, we are increasingly faced with the problem of having to pass our new lines through areas with unfavorable subsoil conditions or with the need to reinforce the substructure of our existing lines due to increasing traffic demands (speed, axle load). The low strength, high compressibility, and low permeability of unfavorable subsoil will result in stability problems and prolonged consolidation with extremely high settlements, respectively. One of the effective technologies to counter the geotechnical problems is the deep mixing. The technology requires the addition of a binder (cement, lime) to the local soils. These materials have a high installed CO2 emission, thus significantly increasing the ecological footprint of infrastructure development. Due to the increasing demands on reducing CO2 emissions, secondary raw materials, e.g., fly ash or slag, have been increasingly prioritized. The study reports the methodology for calculating the ecological footprint of deep-mixing as an embankment foundation. Based on a simple case, the effect of different cement content (5 and 8%), and the application of slag and fly ash as a secondary raw material is analyzed, and the ecological footprint is calculated separately. The results show that the ecological footprint of deep mixing can be drastically reduced; under the conditions of the study, the reduction compared to clean cement is 40% for slag stabilization and 50% for fly ash.
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.3303/CET23107059
The Ecological Footprint of Construction Materials—A Standardized Approach from Hungary
Publication Name: Resources
Publication Date: 2023-01-01
Volume: 12
Issue: 1
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
Due to the large volume and mass of materials used, the construction industry is one of the sectors with the highest environmental impact. However, to provide good quality, affordable, and low-energy housing, the business case must be maintained. Accordingly, we aimed to develop and test a calculator to measure the ecological footprint of the embodied carbon in materials used in construction projects in a standardized way, without the need for environmental or even civil engineering expertise, and thus in a way that is accessible to SMEs. The novelty of our research is that although there are calculators for measuring the environmental impact (e.g., carbon footprint) of the construction industry, and there is a methodology for calculating the ecological footprint of construction, there is no free, easy-to-use, online calculator for calculating the ecological footprint of embodied carbon in materials available to all enterprises. In other words, this approach extends our previously developed corporate ecological footprint calculator with the environmental impacts of material usage. The study summarises the baseline research for an ecological footprint calculator, tested on two new condominium buildings and the energy renovation of five condominium buildings, built with a prefabricated technology typical in Hungary and other post-socialist countries. Based on our results and in accordance with former literature sources, most of the ecological footprint of new construction projects is determined by materials with high mass and volume, in particular, concrete, steel, and masonry; so it is not necessary to take into account all construction materials in a calculator in a detailed way. We also conclude that renovation and ongoing maintenance, as well as preservation, are recommended for structurally sound buildings, as embodied carbon in materials in the case of an energy upgrade of an existing condominium building has an environmental impact of 0.3–0.8 global hectares per dwelling, depending on the technical content, while in the construction of a new building, this value is between 10.49–14.22 global hectares. Our results can help investors and clients in their decisions, and policymakers in determining urban development directions.
Open Access: Yes
The Impact of Cement Aggregates on the Fire Resistance Properties of Concrete and its Ecological Footprint
Publication Name: Chemical Engineering Transactions
Publication Date: 2023-01-01
Volume: 107
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: 337-342
Description:
The strength properties of concrete are significantly influenced by the type of binder used. In the case of cement, the use of cement-containing admixtures (CEM II) is becoming increasingly popular from a durability and environmental point of view. The first question was how cements containing different admixtures behave and how their compressive strength changes under high temperatures (fire). First, the experiments were carried out with the cement tests, and then the concrete specimens were checked for the extent to which the addition of admixtures modifies the favourable effect measured for cement. Under thermal loading, the value of the residual compressive strength of the cement paste increased with the addition of the admixture content. The results of the compressive strength test and the developed crack patterns were consistent with each other. The most severe cracking was observed in the Portland cement specimens, and the decrease in strength was also the most significant. Based on the results of the cement tests, several types of cement were used for the concrete tests. The second research question was: Which concrete recipe has the lowest specific ecological footprint? Therefore, for each formulation, the specific ecological footprint is crucially influenced by the type and amount of substitute used, as their specific CO2 emissions are typically lower than those of Portland cement. Based on our previous studies, a reduction in the specific ecological footprint of up to 10 % can be achieved by using substitutes. The novelty of our research lies in the combined use of fire resistance and ecological aspects, which helps to select a formulation with better technical properties and, at the same time, more sustainable.
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.3303/CET23107057
"Green" Tram Tracks for the Sustainability of the Urban Environment
Publication Name: Chemical Engineering Transactions
Publication Date: 2023-01-01
Volume: 107
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: 289-294
Description:
Greening tram tracks has ecological, urban planning and economic impacts. Greening of the tracks supports the development of sustainable stormwater management as well as improving the visual appearance of the city. The restoration of the natural water cycle is achieved through water-sensitive design: the innovative solution used achieves both the retention of water, the reduction of run-off and the increase of the surface area available for evaporation. The literature data (Grüngleis Netzwerk, 2011) show that 50-70 % of the annual precipitation projected onto the green runway is absorbed and re-evaporated. The urban climate impact of the vegetation systems to be developed is most pronounced in the summer months. The microclimate of green track environments has a positive impact on the health of the population. Our work will investigate the effects of green vegetated areas. In this study, we analysed the ecological impact and the capacity to sequester of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by photosynthesis of grass- and crowfoot-lined tracks. The Sedum green roofs quantified carbon storage is approximately 160 gC/m2 during a two-year period (Collazo-Ortega et al., 2017). The concept of a vegetated track leads to an improvement of green space indicators in a complex system of urban environments through the correct choice of vegetation plants. Prioritising and encouraging the construction of green tracks is one of the possibilities to make the urban environment more livable. It is also necessary to encourage this at the regulatory level in cities.
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.3303/CET23107049
Circular Concepts and Values: Will Reuse Become Fashionable?
Publication Name: Chemical Engineering Transactions
Publication Date: 2023-01-01
Volume: 107
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: 301-306
Description:
Analysts often treat the circular economy as a technical issue. They often focus on how to organise work processes better. The authors’ concept is that circularity is much more than that, and a more precise and holistic approach can help create a better and more inclusive future for all. Young people play a key role in achieving a circular future (as a socioeconomic system). In this paper, the authors will look at how young people relate to circular processes. The research, based on a survey of 1,442 university students, took place in November and December 2022. The majority of the respondents were born around 2000 and are enrolled in undergraduate studies at Széchenyi István University. The questions of a standardised questionnaire were designed to collect information on the awareness of participation in the socioeconomic cycle process, the understanding of the context and the way of participation. The results of the research show that the students who consider themselves environmentally conscious are more likely to recycle and collect waste selectively, but it is not clear whether they participate in extending the life of the objects (swapping, second market, etc.). The research also found that students do not use and are typically unaware of online applications promoting circular lifestyles. The research sheds light on what a circular future would look like and what could be built on it.
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.3303/CET23107051
Green Thinking - Green Positions
Publication Name: Chemical Engineering Transactions
Publication Date: 2023-01-01
Volume: 107
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: 403-408
Description:
There are different definitions and conceptual approaches to ‘green jobs’ (‘green’ meaning to be related to the environmental pillar of sustainability). It is generally accepted that green jobs are those that contribute in some way to the preservation or restoration of the natural environment. The conceptual diversity also creates many difficulties in measuring them, mainly because they do not constitute a clearly defined sector of the labor market. In this study, the authors first compared conceptual approaches with corporate communication. The research is exploratory in nature, so at this stage, the authors looked at companies where communication with employees is considered to be a key issue (these companies are referred to as 'leading companies'). They were defined as having won for two consecutive years at least one of the awards/recognitions studied. The authors looked for ‘green’ attributes among the ‘leading companies’ in online job advertisements. The novelty of the research lies in the detailed analysis of green jobs and green-collar jobs and the labor market communication of these concepts, which may also answer the question of whether the green attributes of the jobs or the jobs themselves are attractive to prospective employees. The most important finding of the research is that the "green idea" is rarely mentioned in job advertisements of the companies surveyed. In line with the literature, the results show that even leading companies do not use sustainability as a message to attract employees.
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.3303/CET23107068
Ecological Footprint Analysis of Tramway Track Structures
Publication Name: Chemical Engineering Transactions
Publication Date: 2023-01-01
Volume: 107
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: 283-288
Description:
The European urban landscape has been constantly evolving in the last 70 years since the Second World War. Thus, European cities are developing their own public transport networks. Urban rail transportation, namely trams, can be considered a mobility option with (1) high capacity, (2) relatively low life-cycle cost, and (3) low Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission. Developing green urban transport systems requires, however, using a more comprehensive and complex approach. To do this, infrastructure operators should consider the environmental aspects of construction projects in the decision-making process. This article analyses the construction and maintenance issues of a very common and widespread tramway superstructure from the environmental point of view, using the methodology of ecological footprint calculations. Considering environmental impacts is highly recommended as early as the design stage by selecting the most suitable construction materials and technologies. Therefore, structural and vibration-damping solutions are compared that are equivalent in terms of technical suitability to highlight CO2 emissions and ecological footprint during the production and life cycle of each building material. The results suggest that a multi-directional assessment can help to develop a more sustainable, liveable and environmentally friendly urban transport without major trade-offs. The article also shows how the ecological footprint of the designed track structure changes when it is optimised to minimise the environmental impact. Such a change could result in a reduction of up to 20 % in the ecological footprint.
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.3303/CET23107048
Assessing the sustainability of urbanization at the sub-national level: The Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity accounts of the Budapest Metropolitan Region, Hungary
Publication Name: Sustainable Cities and Society
Publication Date: 2022-09-01
Volume: 84
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
The growing concentration of people and wealth often results in imbalances of resource consumption and carrying capacity, therefore, the sustainability assessment of urbanization can offer an important basis for global sustainable transition. This paper aims to provide an analysis of the environmental sustainability of urbanization in Hungary focusing on the long-term changes of ecological footprint and biocapacity at the sub-national level, with a special attention to the Budapest Metropolitan Region (BMR). During the research a hybrid method considering an input-output model and household consumption data was used for the calculation of regional ecological footprint, whereas biocapacity was measured on the basis of land use data. Findings suggest, that even though the ecological deficit of the country has been gradually decreasing since the early 2000s, due to a shrinking population and increasing biocapacity, the ecological overshoot is still significant in the case of Budapest and its agglomeration (30 fold and 2.4 fold respectively). The unsustainability of the BMR is caused partly by demographic factors (7.6% population growth as opposed to the the 7.7% decrease in the countryside) and partly by rising per capita ecological footprint values (especially in the agglomeration from 2.73 to 2.92 gha/capita), which are not balanced by biocapacity on the supply side. This research concluded that policy makers in ageing societies with a highly centralized urban system like Hungary should launch programmes targeted specifically to primary metropolitan areas to improve environmental efficiency and encourage people to change their consumption behaviour.
Open Access: Yes
Carbon accounting measurement with digital non-financial corporate reporting and a comparison to european automotive companies statements
Publication Name: Energies
Publication Date: 2021-09-01
Volume: 14
Issue: 18
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
The regulatory environment for both sustainability and financial reporting is changing as standardisation and digital reporting (e.g., XBRL) are gaining traction within regulators. The measurement methodology and mandatory information content of disclosures are yet to be decided for corporate CO2 reporting by EU regulators and standard-setting organisations. In our study, we reviewed the sustainability reports of three leading German automotive groups by revenue for the period 2016–2020 as a case study. The research methodology was carried out with text-mining-aided content analysis to provide a collection of sustainability standards (GRI and SASB) in the evaluation of emissions reporting. As an addition to prior literature, conditions of relevance and clarity regarding published information were introduced in the evaluation process of compliance to CO2 disclosures. Companies by reporting practice were assigned to different stages of carbon management and actual emissions were evaluated. In the conclusions, discussion of the reliability of reported sustainability information, the applicability of digital reporting is provided through regional perspectives. We found that although analytical methods are available to assess the level of corporate carbon management, their usefulness is limited if the data are not reliable. Significant progress can be expected from analyses using standardised, comparable corporate carbon data.
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.3390/en14185607
Households’ electricity consumption in hungarian urban areas
Publication Name: Energies
Publication Date: 2021-05-02
Volume: 14
Issue: 10
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
The aim of this study is to examine the factors influencing the electricity consumption of urban households and to prove these with statistically significant results. The study includes 46 small and medium-sized towns in Hungary. The methodology of the study is mainly provided by a model that can be used for this purpose; however, the results obtained with the traditional regression method are compared with the results of another, more complex estimation method, the artificial neural network, which has the advantage of being able to use different types of models. The focus of our article is on methodological alignment, not necessarily the discovery of new results. Certain demographic characteristics significantly determine the energy demand of a household sector in a municipality. In this case, as the ratio of people aged 60 or over within a city rises by 1%, the urban household average energy consumption decreases by 61 kilowatt hours, and when it rises by 1%, the amount of pollutants expelled from urban households’ average energy consumption may decrease by 22.8745 kg. The research area of our paper was greatly influenced by the availability of the statistical data. The results can be used in the planning of urban developments.
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.3390/en14102899
Ecological footprint as an indicator of corporate environmental performance—empirical evidence from hungarian smes
Publication Name: Sustainability Switzerland
Publication Date: 2021-01-02
Volume: 13
Issue: 2
Page Range: 1-20
Description:
Small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) play a significant role in the national economies of the EU member states. This economic activity has an inevitable environmental impact; however, environmental performance indicators are mostly measured at larger companies. Since the ecological footprint (EF) is a suitable measure of unsustainability, this paper considers it as a measure of the environmental impact of SMEs. An EF calculator for SMEs was developed that is freely available online, and it is a methodological innovation per se. Our previous research projects highlighted that the calculator must be easy‐to‐use and reliable; therefore, the calculator considers only the common, standardizable, and comparable elements of EF. Our results are based on validated ecological footprint data of 73 Hungarian SMEs surveyed by an online ecological footprint calculator. In order to validate and test the usefulness of the calculator, interviews were conducted with respondents, and results were also checked. The paper presents benchmark data of ecological footprint indicators of SMEs obtained from five groups of enterprises (construction, white‐collar jobs, production, retail and/or wholesale trade, and transportation). Statistical results are explained with qualitative data (such as environmental protection initiatives, business models, etc.) of the SMEs surveyed. Our findings could be used as a benchmark for the assessment of environmental performance of SMEs in Central‐ and Eastern Europe.
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.3390/su13021000
Measuring the impacts of suburbanization with ecological footprint calculations
Publication Name: Cities
Publication Date: 2020-06-01
Volume: 101
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
In this paper we present a complex Ecological Footprint (EF) analysis of one of the largest metropolitan regions in post-socialist East Central Europe, the Budapest Metropolitan Region. Our overall goal is to use both top-down and bottom-up approaches and measure the changes of footprint at a metropolitan scale between 2003 and 2013. Our specific objective is to explore how the spatial rearrangements of wealth, density and consumption influence the spatiotemporal changes of EF. The top-down (compound) calculations indicate growing footprint values both in Hungary and in the Budapest Metropolitan Region in the investigated period. However, household-level hybrid (component-based) calculations revealed decreasing footprint values for Hungary both in absolute and relative terms, and a growth for the metropolitan region. This finding suggests growing income disparities within the country. The indirect (consumption embedded) components of EF findings show that in the core city footprint values are higher due to higher disposable income. However, there is a gradual catching up in the suburban zone as younger and more affluent households arrive. On the other hand, direct per capita footprint values decreased in Budapest and grew in the suburbs between 2003 and 2013, mainly due to a higher heating footprint.
Open Access: Yes
Challenges of Corporate Ecological Footprint Calculations in the SME Sector in Hungary: Case Study Evidence from Six Hungarian Small Enterprises
Publication Name: Agroecological Footprints Management for Sustainable Food System
Publication Date: 2020-01-01
Volume: Unknown
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: 345-363
Description:
Scientific and social discourse examines primarily the environmental performance of large enterprise actors. Although these large enterprises usually operate on an international level, over half of the added value created in the European Union and thus over half of the environmental damage are generated by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME). Nevertheless, while the tools and expertise required to measure environmental performance are available for large enterprises, the SME sector has only limited access to these tools. s part of our research, we have developed an ecological footprint (EF) calculator applicable to the specificities of the SME sector, which has been tested on six Hungarian companies operating in different sectors and organisational frameworks. The test results indicate that the managerial information system of partnerships includes all the main inputs that are necessary to estimate a company’s EF. However, in the case of sole proprietorships, most of the required data can only be acquired by estimation. Our EF calculations on analysed firms cannot be considered as representative data. But on the base of the case studies, we can suggest that our EF calculator for SMEs is suitable to take a more comprehensive survey on EF of Hungarian and international firms, in order to generate sectoral benchmarks. Ecological footprint among analysed enterprises ranged between 5102 and 263,589 global square metres. It is caused mainly by (1) the sector (e.g. constructions have generally larger footprints than office activities) and (2) the size, expressed in number of employees or value added. To increase transparency of the environmental performance of the SME sector, we recommend that the supplementary annex of partnerships includes the main input data necessary for the calculation of the EF in a comparable and consistent way, in natural units of measurement. With such information and our calculator, it would be possible to determine the average environmental impact of the individual sectors, which would provide an appropriate starting point for the environmental investments of enterprises.
Open Access: Yes
Example of a German free-float car-sharing company expansion in East-Central Europe
Publication Name: Resources
Publication Date: 2019-12-01
Volume: 8
Issue: 4
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
This study examines the expansion of a German free-float car-sharing company in Hungary from financial and sustainability perspectives. BMW and Daimler recently created the joint ventures ShareNow, ChargeNow, ReachNow, FreeNow, and ParkNow, which are having a significant global impact, as their services are now available in 14 different countries. We also expect further market development, since ShareNow started to operate in Hungary in May 2019. The whole EU market is just one step away from being covered by the same professional service, and the future might bring a real globally available free-float car-sharing service provider. Our review used a combination of two methodologies: financial statement-based business analysis and sustainability analysis. On the basis of this study, we concluded that these companies are primarily operated for profit and not on a sustainable operation basis. Additionally, it was also found that the current statistical data collection method does not measure precisely these activities. Financial reporting and sustainability reporting are connected, but they cover different areas. As a subject of further research, we suggest examining whether it is possible to establish a clear connection between these methodologies in the foreseeable future.
Open Access: Yes
Through the blurry looking glass-SDGs in the GRI reports
Publication Name: Resources
Publication Date: 2019-06-01
Volume: 8
Issue: 2
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
"Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" was agreed upon in 2015 by the global community and proposes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for the period between 2015 and 2030. Since the greater integration of goals was an explicit claim, there are numerous overlaps among them. One of the novelties of the SDGs is that, in order to achieve the set goals, the Agenda 2030 addresses not only the states but the businesses as well. In our study, the relationships between the SDGs were analyzed on the base of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) indicators linked to the goals. The analysis was carried out by cluster analysis. Our results indicate that there is a strong relationship to be found among nine of the 17 SDGs. That relationship is mainly technical, which is caused by the number of aligned (genuine) GRI indicators. Though there are relationships between the SDGs as well, their strength is much weaker. According to our classification of SDGs, we suggest that the gap of business attention among SDGs is smaller than it is showed by KPMG.
Open Access: Yes
Ecological footprint at the micro-scale-how it can save costs: The case of ENPRO
Publication Name: Resources
Publication Date: 2018-09-01
Volume: 7
Issue: 3
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
The Ecological Footprint (EF) has become a very popular alternative indicator of development in the last three decades. It can be widely used to show the unsustainability of total and individual levels of consumption in countries. But can EF be a meaningful indicator at the micro level as well This paper presents an argument on this issue. Based on a literature review including our own analysis and the correlation of EF with GDP and other alternative indicators, EF is evaluated at the macro level. Then, an original case study is presented, underpinning the applicability of EF on the company level, linking the ordinary corporate carbon footprinting with the EF method. Based on the findings, micro level EF calculations can help organizations in finding fields of intervention (inefficiencies and emission hotspots). EF accounting can also be used to evaluate the economic benefits of such measures after their realization.
Open Access: Yes
Corporate carbon footprint analysis in practice – With a special focus on validity and reliability issues
Publication Name: Journal of Cleaner Production
Publication Date: 2017-11-20
Volume: 167
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: 1177-1183
Description:
As a yield of efforts in the international climate policy and emerging consumer awareness there is a growing interest for the quantification of corporate level carbon footprints. As a consequence, there have been numerous initiatives, guidelines and calculation methods emerged recently to be able to quantify company level direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions. Most of them are based on the philosophy and classification of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. This paper intends to provide a comparison of freely available online corporate level carbon footprint calculators with a novelty value of addressing their validity and reliability. Validity here refers to the issue whether different calculators cover the same or similar aspects or scopes of the corporate carbon footprint, while reliability addresses the question whether different calculators deliver the same or similar result if we use the same input data. Based on the example of an imaginary enterprise, we argue that validity is partly achieved, while reliability of the calculators is relatively low. This means that online corporate carbon calculators can be useful to provide a first insight for companies into their carbon footprints and they can also be useful for temporal comparisons at the level of one company (if the activity of the company is not too complex.) However, these calculators do not seem to be very appropriate for comparisons among different companies or with external benchmarks.
Open Access: Yes
Environmental Impacts of Urbanization - Changes of the Ecological Footprint of Commuting in the Urban Region of Budapest
Publication Name: Teruleti Statisztika
Publication Date: 2017-09-01
Volume: 57
Issue: 5
Page Range: 469-494
Description:
The main aim of this paper is to explore how daily commuting has contributed to the changes of ecological footprint in the Buda-pest urban region since 1990 by using census data of 1990, 2001 and 2011. First, the func-tional urban region of Budapest was delim-ited using the 15% threshold of daily com-muting to work to Budapest in 2001. Accord-ing to international methodology 185 sur-rounding municipalities and Budapest were defined as the urban region. Using data on the transport vehicle of commuting the vol-ume of CO2 emissions was estimated at mu-nicipal level for the 185 municipalities. Final-ly, on the basis of emission values the ecolog-ical footprint of the whole urban region was estimated. Our results show declining ecolog-ical footprint values throughout the 1990s, due to decreasing commuting rates, which is the result of economic restructuring, growing unemployment and less mobility of the la-bour force. However, as commuting in-creased due to economic upswing after 2000 the ecological footprint also grew, the use of motor vehicles (private car and bus) in com-muting substantially and dynamically in-creased. In the reviewed periodspatial struc-ture of commuting significantly changed: rail-commuting shrunk into a few outstanding transport axes, whereas the use of passenger cars increased also in the less booming areas of the urban agglomeration.
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.15196/TS570501
Decoupling – shifts in ecological footprint intensity of nations in the last decade
Publication Name: Ecological Indicators
Publication Date: 2017-01-01
Volume: 72
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: 111-117
Description:
The ecological price of economic growth is a heavily debated issue, where ideologies often neglect factual information. In this paper, through the relationship of the ecological footprint and GDP, we examine the tendencies of eco-efficiency in the first decade of the 21st century. We conclude that the average ecological footprint intensity of countries have improved significantly in the given period. In 2009, 50 percent less area was needed to produce a unit of GDP. Many countries could reach the so-called strong decoupling − these countries could increase GDP while decreasing the ecological footprint in absolute terms. We also repeated the analysis of a scientific article published in 2004. We managed to update data and identify ecologically positive tendencies. In ten years, the average of the world's ecological footprint intensity has significantly improved, it halved all in all. We found that 90 percent of the countries started to move to the direction of sustainable development. Among the studied 131 countries, 40 experienced strong decoupling (absolute decrease of resource use), in 77 countries weak decoupling occurred (relative decrease of resource use), and there were only 14 countries, where no decoupling could be observed (relative increase of resource use).
Open Access: Yes
The historical ecological footprint: From over-population to over-consumption
Publication Name: Ecological Indicators
Publication Date: 2016-07-25
Volume: 60
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: 283-291
Description:
Abstract The ecological risk from over-population has been recognized since Malthus (1798). GDP growth per capita in agriculture disproved his pessimism but, since the Club of Rome and its case on Limits to Growth more recently there has been concern that there is a parallel risk from such growth in terms of ecological footprints (EF). Authors have developed a GDP/EF correlation function and calculated the ecological footprint (EF) from 10,000 B.C. till 1960, using historical statistics, with the method of backcasting (Brandes and Brooks, 2005).1 In all major indicators growth patterns have been dominating, not only since the industrial revolution, but in the known history of mankind. From data since 1961, we calculate the correlation between GDP and the ecological footprint and have been able to determine long time data series of population, GDP, biocapacity and EF. Our findings are first: the main driver of growth and environmental degradation is not population per se, but consumption patterns and levels multiplied by the number of consumers, especially in developed economies, as the I = PAT equation recognized (Ehrlich and Holdren, 1971). In fact, as we approach to today, population, which used to be the key driver to growth and environmental degradation, becomes the least important driver, especially in the last two decades. Second: change is not incremental or linear as assumed in much mainstream economics: in line with Schumpeter's bunching and swarming and it jumps and leaps asymmetrically, as in our finding of such a leap (the 7th) between the 1930s and 1970s. Third: the dominant paradigm legitimizing growth (from the late 18th century) while already challenged by many since the Club of Rome and other reports should be revisited in terms of the concept of 'fullness' in the sense that while the earth in 1776 was roughly 10 per cent full, by 2008 this figure was over 150 per cent.
Open Access: Yes
Environmental games
Publication Name: Informacios Tarsadalom
Publication Date: 2012-12-01
Volume: Unknown
Issue: 4
Page Range: 85-105
Description:
The authors of this paper identified several online games, available over the Internet for free, which can be instrumental in children's environmental education. Taking advantage of widely spread use of information and communication technologies and the Internet, we can ensure that children get acquainted with the principles of sustainable development through enabling online games. 50 items of the authors' collection of games are randomly selected but considered useful for these purposes.
Open Access: Yes
DOI: DOI not available
The Ecological Footprint and Fire Resistance of Concrete Mixtures
Publication Name: Journal of Sustainable Development of Energy Water and Environment Systems
Publication Date: 2025-09-01
Volume: 13
Issue: 3
Page Range: 1-13
Description:
Different types of binders can significantly affect the strength properties of concrete. The use of cement-containing admixtures is becoming more widespread in the building industry when considering durability and environmental impact. This paper examines how different types of cement containing different admixtures behave. How the compressive strength of concrete changes under elevated temperature, and which concrete mixture has the lowest CO2 emission. To determine the strength parameters, test specimens of 150x150x150 mm and 70x70x250 mm were prepared from the concrete mixtures. After heating and cooling, they were broken, thereby determining the compressive and flexural-tensile strength values. The ecological footprint was calculated for each mixture, which is substantially influenced by specific parameters for example the type and amount of substitute materials. These materials typically have lower CO2 emissions than Portland cement. The novelty of this research lies in the combined investigation of the changing compressive strength of concrete at elevated temperatures and its sustainability. The change in the formulation resulted in a saving of the emission of ~10% (43.22 kgCO2e emissions) compared to the reference value. The importance of reducing the ecological footprint is demonstrated by the authors using a case study of the Gotthard tunnel.
Open Access: Yes
Pathways to asbestos-free and sustainable cities using multi-level perspective approach
Publication Name: Discover Sustainability
Publication Date: 2025-12-01
Volume: 6
Issue: 1
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
Urban policymakers, researchers, and municipal planners increasingly face the challenge of managing complex sustainability transitions, particularly in contexts involving persistent environmental hazards such as asbestos contamination. This systematic review applies the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP), which examines interactions between niche innovations, socio-technical regimes, and broader landscapes, to the underexplored area of asbestos-free urban transitions. The concept of an “asbestos-free city” is introduced in this paper as a novel analytical lens to describe urban transitions aiming to eliminate asbestos-related risks through systemic, sustainable interventions. The review was conducted through a structured qualitative analysis of peer-reviewed academic literature, guided by predefined thematic criteria and relevance to urban asbestos-related transitions. The review highlights the factors that enable or hinder the adoption of asbestos-free and strong sustainable solutions, as well as the role of various actors, such as policymakers, industry, and civil society, in driving these transitions. Despite the growing body of work on sustainability transitions, the integration of MLP into asbestos-related urban transformation remains limited. This paper fills that gap by offering a structured synthesis and proposing a roadmap for future research and practice. Our findings provide actionable insights for actors across policy, civil society, and industry seeking to accelerate transitions toward asbestos-free and sustainable cities.
Open Access: Yes
