Environmental labels on products and services have been increasingly significant in influencing consumer purchasing and represent a crucial communication of the environmental credentials of products and companies. Yet their importance to industrial designers, who are recognised as having significant influence over the environmental impact of products, is less known. The overall aim of this research project is to investigate factors affecting the implementation of UK environmental labels by in-house industrial designers in UK Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). A review of the literature on industrial designers and environmental labels found that there was a gap in knowledge surrounding the factors affecting how and whether in-house industrial designers implement labels in their work, and what understanding they have. In response to the literature review a number of research questions were generated, which influenced the direction of this emergent, exploratory research. A Preliminary Study was set up to collect qualitative data from practicing industrial designers in UK SMEs on their recognition and use of environmental label schemes. A mock-up Resource was consequently developed that provided the information the Preliminary Study participants claimed to need. During the Main Study the Resource was used as an elicitation tool to further probe designers' understanding and use of labels. Subsequently, three Case Studies were conducted with UK SMEs who have implemented labels on their products, to identify elements of best practice. The in-house SME designers in the study appeared to have knowledge of environmental label types and schemes. Both this and designers' position within their companies especially in terms of their input on design briefs moderates their ability to implement labels. The cooperation and contribution of colleagues is also significant to the effective application including driving their use and being willing to include them in the product development process from early stages to impact on success or effectiveness. It is suggested that a whole company approach is needed. This thesis provides an original contribution to knowledge on in-house designers' capability to implement labels; understanding of designers' current knowledge and use of labels; and the role of designers in all SMEs, not just those engaged in ecodesign or using environmental labels.

As information regarding origin, production method, and environmental certifications characterize a progressing seafood market, scare analysis has been made to understand market responses. This study focuses on consumer preference for wild-caught and farm-raised shrimp with several attributes. These include the Homegrown By Heroes label and Best Aquaculture Practices certification, as well as other existing attributes including the Marine Stewardship Council and each state’s local label. Also considered are hypothetical labels including Community Supported Fishery (CSF) and National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This study surveys consumers in Kentucky and South Carolina while utilizing a choice experiment to elicit willingness-to-pay measures for these various product attributes. Both wild-caught and farm-raised shrimp are considered since these species have significant market potential. Like previous studies, a strong preference for fresh as well as local shrimp was found. Furthermore, preference for Homegrown By Heroes was found to be highly valued by consumers, as well as the NOAA label signifying a federally operated ecolabel. Consumers were also found to value BAP and MSC certifications, two third-party agencies currently existent in the seafood market. Marketing and policy recommendations are given based on consumer willingness to pay estimates for these various seafood attributes in both states.

abstract: Ecolabels are the main driving force of consumer knowledge in the realm of sustainable product purchasing. While ecolabels strive to improve consumer's purchasing decisions, they have overwhelmed the market, leaving consumers confused and distrustful of what each label means. This study attempts to validate and understand environmental concerns commonly found in ecolabel criteria and the implications they have within the life cycle of a product. A life cycle assessment (LCA) case study of cosmetic products is used in comparison with current ecolabel program criteria to assess whether or not ecolabels are effectively driving environmental improvements in high impact areas throughout the life cycle of a product. Focus is placed on determining the general issues addressed by ecolabelling criteria and how these issues relate to hotspots derived through a practiced scientific methodology. Through this analysis, it was determined that a majority the top performing supply chain environmental impacts are covered, in some fashion, within ecolabelling criteria, but some, such as agricultural land occupation, are covered to a lesser extent or not at all. Additional criteria are suggested to fill the gaps found in ecolabelling programs and better address the environmental impacts most pertinent to the supply chain. Ecolabels have also been found to have a broader coverage then what can currently be addressed using LCA. The results of this analysis have led to a set of recommendations for furthering the integration between ecolabels and life cycle tools. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Civil and Environmental Engineering 2012

The topic of ecology has resonated more and more in society in recent years, and the concept of sustainability in many forms is an integral part of this. Companies set out to fight for a green future with their product offerings and marketing strategies. But greenwashing practices can often be part of this company communication and the product or a brand could look more ecological than it is and the truth about the impact on the environment often remains hidden. Although the practices are considered misleading advertising, which is regulated by the state, in practice we may still find about half of the products that do not provide sufficient information to assess the accuracy of the claim. The aim of this work is to reflect on the issue of greenwashing and map the awareness of this phenomenon in Czech society with a closer focus on the young generation because it was the young generation that has been the focus of attention in connection with the Fridays For Future movement in recent years. The work is divided into theoretical, methodological, and research parts. In the research part is using quantitative research, the hypothesis is examined according to which the young generation is more ecological, and thus their awareness of greenwashing is greater. Research has shown that awareness of...

La thèse, constituée d'une compilation de sept articles, apporte des éléments de réponse aux questions suivantes : Quels sont les déterminants d'adoption et de diffusion des approches volontaires ? Comment un problème de pollution diffuse peut-il être régulé par une approche volontaire ? Comment les approches volontaires peuvent-elles être utilisées à des fins stratégiques ? <br /><br />L'article 1 définit et caractérise les approches volontaires. Les vertus prêtées aux instruments volontaires sont discutées en confrontant l'argumentation théorique aux études empiriques disponibles et aux réalités de terrain. Grâce à une étude approfondie de la norme ISO 14001, l'article 2 montre que la phase d'élaboration des normes constitue un espace stratégique où se dessinent, au moins partiellement, les positions concurrentielles futures. L'article 3 éclaire les déterminants de la diffusion différenciée de la norme ISO 14001 sur un échantillon de 158 pays. Les estimations économétriques montrent que, même si les facteurs reflétant des considérations d'ordre ‘environnemental' jouent un rôle non négligeable dans la diffusion de la norme ISO 14001, d'autres facteurs comme le taux de diffusion de la norme ISO 9000 et la présence d'un pays dès la phase de conception de la norme jouent un rôle prépondérant. L'article 4 relatif aux déterminants de la certification selon la norme ISO 14001 dans les 1000 premières entreprises agro-alimentaires françaises, montre que cette norme est surtout adoptée pour des raisons managériales, comme l'amélioration de la productivité des employés et l'organisation au sein de la firme. Grâce à une étude de cas de contractualisation entre un pollué, Vittel, embouteilleur d'eau minérale, et plusieurs pollueurs, les agriculteurs, sur des droits de propriété relatifs à l'environnement, et la comparaison de ce cas avec des situations similaires, l'article 5 explicite les conditions d'émergence et de construction d'une solution coasienne en dépit de coûts de transaction pouvant apparaître comme prohibitifs. L'aticle 6, tente d'appliquer la théorie des coûts de transaction (à la Williamson) aux problèmes d'environnement. Une telle extension requiert la caractérisation de la transaction environnementale et des différentes structures de gouvernance et l'application de l'hypothèse d'alignement proposée par Williamson. Enfin, certains économistes considèrent les approches volontaires comme des instruments déguisés permettant de servir certains intérêts privés, tout en se réclamant de l'intérêt collectif. Grâce à un modèle de Stackelberg, l'article 7 montre comment certains agents économiques promeuvent la mise en place d'écolabels plus exigeants en termes de performance environnementale afin d'augmenter stratégiquement le coût de leurs concurrents. Les effets totaux en terme de bien-être (meilleure protection de l'environnement versus distorsion de la concurrence) sont difficiles à évaluer et requièrent une analyse au cas par cas.

The main objective of this thesis is the description of the current actions of European graphic industry to reduce the environmental impact. The revision of the current situation is carried out by reviewing European legislation, private and public initiatives, and actions taken within the national legislation of European Union. Thus, a description of the opportunities and challenges of the European graphic industry is implemented. Moreover, a study of implementation of practices to reduce environmental impact is carried out in a graphic company, called El Tinter. Results of this thesis indicate that the European graphic industry has developed a large number of innovations in order to ensure the sustainability of the industry, but there are remaining issues which require greater accomplishment. In conclusion, it is important to note that the overall environmental impact of the European graphic industry represents the addition of the individual impacts of stakeholders involved, so the final decrease depends on the sum of collective actions.

The steadily increased environmental concerns have become exceedingly palpable over time, not at least in consumers’ way of demanding greener products, or companies’ ways of incorporating green marketing strategies. A common tool for companies producing environmentally friendly food is ecolabelling. Foods with ecolabels on them enable consumers to know that this certain product indicates a good environmental choice. There are various factors that influence consumers’ buying behavior towards it. The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether knowledge, attitude and subjective norms have any relationship with Swedish consumers’ green buying behavior. A theoretical framework consisting of literature-identified constructs was developed. Using a questionnaire, a sample size of 158 was realized which was statistically analyzed. Findings indicated that there is a positive relationship between buying behavior and knowledge, attitude and subjective norms. It further revealed that the buying behavior towards ecolabelled food was not that common among the respondents. Hence, the study suggests that despite the positive attitude and sufficient amount of knowledge, consumers are still not that keen about buying ecolabelled food.

L’usine du futur et les performances environnementales sont de nos jours au cœur des préoccupations. Les produits et services éco-labellisés sont de plus en plus populaires. En plus des coûts financiers engendrés, les processus d’éco-labellisation sont longs et complexes, ce qui démotive parfois les fabricants et les fournisseurs de services à demander des certifications. Dans ce contexte, ce travail de recherche, propose une démarche et une plateforme d’aide à la décision visant à améliorer et à accélérer ce processus afin de démocratiser l’accès à la certification écologique. Les bases de connaissances traditionnelles étant généralement peu interopérables, difficiles à être réutilisées et ne supportant pas les inférences, la plate-forme proposée repose sur une base de connaissances composée de diverses ontologies de domaine construites selon la documentation officielle européenne sur les écolabels. Cette base est composée de modules d'ontologies interconnectées couvrant divers produits et services. Elle permet d’automatiser le raisonnement sur ces connaissances et de les interroger en tenant compte de la sémantique. Un schéma de modularisation orienté suivant le domaine et la catégorie du produit, et portant sur les critères d’écolabels européens des produits détergents est utilisé comme cas d'application. Afin de permettre une réutilisation aisée des modules d'ontologie pour différents groupes de produits, ce schéma de modularisation fait la distinction entre la connaissance de base du domaine et les connaissances variables concernant les critères de labélisation de chaque groupe. La méthode de raisonnement utilisée exploite les mécanismes d'inférence sur des règles SWRL, et fournit des résultats argumentés pour l’aide à la décision. La modélisation adoptée pour la représentation des connaissances n’est pas uniquement dédiée à la plateforme proposée. Elle permet également une exploitation des connaissances via des outils du Web sémantique. Afin de favoriser la réutilisation des modules d'ontologie, une approche de contextualisation pour la fédération d’ontologies a été proposée. Elle permet de pallier les inconvénients de "OWL: imports". Contrairement aux approches existantes, où il est nécessaire de réaliser soit un mapping, soit d’ajouter des relations sémantiques modifiant les modules d’ontologies de base, notre approche n’affecte pas et ne nécessite pas l’importation de tous les concepts de ces ontologies. Pour faciliter la mise en œuvre de cette approche, nous proposons un nouveau plug-in pour l'éditeur d'ontologie « Protégé ». / With the rising concern of sustainability and environmental performance, eco-labeled products and services are becoming more and more popular. In addition to the financial costs, the long and complex process of eco-labeling sometimes demotivates manufacturers and service providers to be certificated. In this research work, we propose a decision support process and implement a decision support platform aiming at further improvement and acceleration of the eco-labeling process in order to democratize a broader application and certification of eco-labels. The decision support platform is based on a comprehensive knowledge base composed of various domain ontologies that are constructed according to official eco-label criteria documentation. Traditional knowledge base in relational data model is low interoperable, lack of inference support and difficult to be reused. In our research, the knowledge base composed of interconnected ontologies modules covers various products and services, and allows reasoning and semantic querying. A domain-centric modularization scheme about EU Eco-label laundry detergent product criteria is introduced as an application case. This modularization scheme separates the entity knowledge and rule knowledge so that the ontology modules can be reused easily in other domains. We explore a reasoning methodology based on inference with SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language) rules which allows decision making with explanation. Through standard RDF (Resource Description Framework) and OWL (Web Ontology Language) ontology query interface, the assets of the decision support platform will stimulate domain knowledge sharing and can be applied into other application. In order to foster the reuse of ontology modules, we also proposed a usercentric approach for federate contextual ontologies (mapping and integration). This approach will create an ontology federation by a contextual configuration that avoid the “OWL:imports” disadvantages. Instead of putting mapping or new semantics in ontology modules, our approach will conserve the extra contextual information separately without impacting original ontologies or without importing all ontologies’ concepts. By introducing this contextualization, it becomes easier to support more expressive semantics in term of ontology integration itself, then it will also facilitate application agents to access and reuse ontologies. To realize this approach, we elaborate a new plug-in for the Protégé ontology editor.

En lien avec l’essor du développement durable et de la Responsabilité Sociale des Entreprises (RSE), les enjeux de durabilité sont devenus une tendance forte du secteur immobilier. Cette thèse examine l’immobilier durable et explore la valeur que diverses parties prenantes y associent. Chacun des cinq chapitres se concentre sur différents acteurs pour étudier leurs perceptions de l’immobilier durable et la manière dont elles façonnent leurs pratiques. Le premier chapitre questionne le concept de valeur associée aux bâtiments durables. Le second chapitre examine les stratégies de création de valeur liées à l’immobilier durable à l’échelle des foncières. Les troisième et quatrième chapitres portent respectivement sur la diffusion des certifications environnementales et leur valeur de marque pour les entreprises utilisatrices. Le cinquième chapitre explore l’impact des préoccupations croissantes liées au développement durable sur la gestion de long terme du stock de bâtiments existants. / In relations with the rising concerns on sustainable development and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), sustainability-related topics have become a key trend in the real estate sector. This dissertation examines sustainable real estate, and investigates more particularly the value it holds for various stakeholders. Each of the five chapters focuses on different market players to analyse how sustainability-related topics are perceived, and the extent to which these perceptions shape practices. Chapter 1 questions the notion of value associated with sustainability-related features at a building level. Chapter 2 examines the value creation strategies associated with sustainability-related topics at corporate level. Chapters 3 and 4 focus respectively on the diffusion of sustainability certification schemes, and occupiers’ perceptions of their brand value. Chapter 5 explores the impacts of sustainability-related trends on the long term management of the building stock.

<p>Promoting sustainable consumption is critical to meet the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Food systems can cause considerable environmental impacts, which are exacerbated by the rapidly increasing global population and urbanization. Policy makers are seeking strategies to promote sustainable food consumption to reduce food-related environmental footprints. However, literature assessing environmental implications of food consumption has several gaps: first, studies using national average diets or one-day dietary recall data are likely to neglect the heterogeneous food purchasing patterns in different households and over longer time spans; second, few studies have considered reducing the overall food-emissions-water-land (FEWL) impacts and the FEWL impact reduction potentials have not been fully examined due to lack of considering changing consumption patterns of food items within food groups. Additionally, knowing the environmental impacts of food consumption is only the first step towards sustainable consumption. Providing the information to consumers to guide their decision making is also critical. Ecolabels are increasingly used to inform consumers about the environmental performance of products. However, the effectiveness of ecolabels is unclear because methods used in existing studies may not show consumers’ naturalistic behavior.</p> <p> </p> <p>This dissertation aims to address these research gaps to provide better understanding of the reduction potentials and trade-offs of food environmental impacts, and the effectiveness of ecolabels to facilitate consumer decision making for sustainable consumption. To achieve the objective, a variety of models and methods are used: (1) detailed food purchasing records from 57,578 U.S. households were analyzed and a process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) model is developed to evaluate the food carbon emissions and identify reduction pathways; (2) the LCA model was then expanded to also quantify food-related blue water footprint and land footprint. The FEWL impact reduction potentials were evaluated in two dietary change scenarios: (a) only adjusting intake in each food group to the recommended amount and (b) in addition to adjusting food group intake amount, changing consumption patterns to shift towards the food item that minimizes the overall FEWL impacts within each group). A food-item level analysis was also conducted to examine the FEWL impact trade-offs associated with food item substitutions; and (3) survey and attention data were collected from 156 participants in a naturalistic shopping environment using eye tracking glasses to evaluate the effectiveness of ecolabels on informing consumers’ product selection for sustainable consumption. </p> <p> </p> <p>By assessing the environmental impacts of food consumption and the effectiveness of ecolabels, this dissertation proposed pathways to reduce food-related environmental impacts (i.e., through identifying target households and food groups for impact reduction) and strategies to improve ecolabels’ effectiveness in consumers’ decision making. The results can provide insights to policy makers to promote sustainable consumption. </p>