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.

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.

This article is based on the premise that participatory democracy needs active citizens, and active citizens need civic competencies. The goal of this study is to illustrate previous research into active citizenship and civic competencies and to add the own concept of the authors to the literature. The article also provides empirical results from a survey into active citizenship carried out among citizens in Győr, Hungary, 2017. A total of 254 citizens filled out the online and offline questionnaire. The survey sample methods included random and snowball sampling. The sample does not represent the population of Győr, 64.3 per cent were women and about half of the sample were graduate citizens, so the results can be interpreted only to the respondents. Results offer an insight into what citizens think of the concept of active citizenship and which civic competencies they regard as important active participation in society. The article also demonstrates guidance for practitioners and researchers and it adds to the literature on active citizenship. It is possible to believe that knowing what kind of civic competencies people need could be useful to know how to be more active in the society.

"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.

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.

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).