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37 - On the evolution of “Cleaner Production” as a concept and a practice

February 2018

February 2018

Authors:

Luc Hens

Flemish Institute for Technological Research

Juan Jose Cabello Eras

Universidad de Córdoba (Colombia)

Alexis Sagastume

Corporación Universidad de la Costa

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On the evolution of “Cleaner Production”as a concept and a practice

L. Hens

, C. Block

, J.J. Cabello-Eras

, A. Sagastume-Gutierez

, D. Garcia-Lorenzo

C. Chamorro

, K. Herrera Mendoza

, D. Haeseldonckx

, C. Vandecasteele

Vlaamse Instelling voor Technologisch Onderzoek (VITO), Mol, Belgium

2C ECOSOLUTIONS, Oud-Heverlee, Belgium

Universidad de la Costa (CUC), Baranquilla, Colombia

Universidad de Cienfuegos (UCf), Cuba

University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Leuven, Belgium

article info

Article history:

Received 21 July 2017

Received in revised form

5 November 2017

Accepted 11 November 2017

Available online 11 November 2017

Keywords:

Cleaner production

Corporate social responsibility

Renewable energy

Sustainable tourism

Smart city

abstract

“Cleaner Production“(CP) is about less and more efﬁcient energy and materials use and the substitution

of more harmful products (for the environment and health) by less dangerous ones. CP was the reply of

the industry to the call for sustainable development as launched by the WCED (1987) and further

elaborated in Rio's Agenda 21 (UN, 1992). During the past 25 years, the concept was put in practice.

During this period it changed in scope, methods, and application area. This provided a deeper socio-

economic impact to an idea that was originally launched to awaken industry on its environmental

responsibilities.

This paper provides a review of essentials that contributed to the fundamental changes in CP during

the most recent quarter of a century. It takes off with a review of CP deﬁnitions illustrating the changes of

the content. Changes in scope are exempliﬁed with the increasing importance of “Corporate Social Re-

sponsibility”(CSR). This includes that post-modern companies have not only responsibilities on their

economic performance and the environment, but should also act on issues including human rights and

resources, business ethics, and community involvement. The links between CP and green and circular

economy are indicated. The CP approach is increasingly applied outside the industry. CP for sustainable

tourism is discussed in more detail but is only an example of the wider application in e.g. agriculture or

health services.

This widening of contents necessitates more and better-adapted methods supporting the measure-

ment of the CP components. Indicators, assessment strategies, and green accounting are increasingly

improved and used more speciﬁcally and frequently.

This evolution is discussed in a context of a dilution of the original environmental targets in a wider,

more societal scope and the transition towards a more responsible, proactive and reliable management

of the sectors applying CP.

1. Introduction

“Cleaner production”emerged as a practical way to make in-

dustry aware of its substandard management of environmental

issues during the interbellum period and the ﬁrst decades

following the Second World War. A series of major accidents

occurred in which the Meuse Valley inversion and fog accident in

Belgium in 1930 (Batta et al., 1933; Nemery et al., 2001), the dioxin

emissions in Seveso, Italy caused by ICMESA/Roche in 1976 (Hens

et al., 2016), the Union Carbide pesticide disaster in Bhopal, India

in 1984, which is considered the world's worst industrial disaster

with around 16000 deaths in total (Lapierre and Moro, 2004), and

the nuclear disaster in Fukushima (Japan) in 2011, became textbook

examples. These major events all caused serious damage to the

environment and human health (Friis, 2007). They were of

importance for both acute and chronic, long term effects.

As signiﬁcant was the growing insight on the environment and

health hazards caused by asbestos, benzene, mono vinyl chloride,

heavy metals, PCBs and dioxins, listing just these examples (EEA

Copenhagen, 2002).

*Corresponding author.

E-mail address: luchens51@gmail.com (L. Hens).

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.11.082

Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 3323e3333

In 1987 the World Commission on Environment and Develop-

ment launched the report ‘Our Common Future’(Brundtland

Report; WCED, 1987). The main conclusion of the report was that

the major environmental problems were a consequence of poverty

in one part of the world and unsustainable consumption and pro-

duction in the other. The report, therefore, proposed to strive for

sustainable development (SD): ‘development that meets the needs

of the present without compromising the ability of future genera-

tions to meet their own needs’(WCED, 1987). The concept has 3

pillars: economic viability, protection of the environment and social

and ethical acceptance.

The “Brundtland report”aims at improving environmental

quality, safeguarding biodiversity, and protecting human and

ecosystem health. All socio-economic sectors should contribute to

these goals promoting a sustainable development.

The concept of CP was developed during the preparation of the

Rio Conference (UN, 1992). UNEP (United Nations Environmental

Program) developed in 1991 the often cited deﬁnition: “CP is the

continuous application of an integrated preventive environmental

strategy to processes, products, and services to increase efﬁciency

and reduce risks to humans and the environment”. It was meant to

reduce the environmental impact of industry and built among

others on ideas from the 3P concept (pollution prevention pays).

Whereas sustainable development is a goal for a wide array of

target groups (population, consumers, businesses, among others),

CP is directed to business, industry (processes, products) and ser-

vice. The original deﬁnition points primarily to technical aspects:

CP strategies are fundamentally concerned with operations, envi-

ronmental sustainability and maximization of waste reduction,

recycling, and reuse at the enterprise level, and are thus micro

economic in scope”(Kalili, 2015).

During the past 25 years, the vision on CP changed considerably,

in scope, content and the range of sectors applying the approach.

This widening content necessitated new methods to address the

range of aspect of sustainable development which emerged. Also,

the targets moved: from less pollution and waste generation

mainly during the production, over design of products with less

environmental impact, to sustainable tourism, environmentally

sound healthcare, and quality of life in green and smart cities.

This paper reviews these changes in scope, methods, and tar-

gets. It starts with a review of selected deﬁnitions, illustrating the

changing fundamental thoughts of the concept. The relations of CP

with “green”and “circular economy”are addressed. They illustrate

how the CP concept was deepened and linked with other concepts

which came on the forefront since the 1992 Conference on Envi-

ronment and Development (UN, 1992) The paper further puts

emphasis on the move of environmental management systems

(EMS) towards corporate social responsibility (CSR), on the appeal

for CP in non-industrial sectors (as administration, banking and

health care), on the array of nowadays assessment and monitoring

methods, complementary to environmental management systems,

and on targeting a more environment saving tourism and urban

quality of life.

Dealing with these changes in scope, the paper is structured in

two main parts (Fig. 1):

(1) Deepening the concept is illustrated by analyzing CP deﬁni-

tions over the last 18 years, together with the relations of CP

with “green”and “circular economy”.

(2) A second main change concerns the widening of the appli-

cation of CP. Originally meant as a reply of industry to the call

for sustainable development, the concept was gradually

wider applied in business (corporate social responsibility),

the service sector (as tourism and health care), and in the

move to green, smart cities.

These are equally the main sections analyzed in this paper in a

CP context.

2. Changes in scope and application ﬁeld

2.1. Changing deﬁnitions and expansion of the concept

Dealing with environmental problems caused by industry in the

1970s put emphasis on pollution abatement, treatment of emis-

sions and efﬂuents using so called end-of-pipe techniques before

releasing to the environment. The costs of the control of industrial

pollution and of monitoring compliance with the ever more strin-

gent legal requirements increased continuously and for industri-

alized countries typically reached 0.8 to1.7% of the GNP over the

period 1972e1986. During the second half of the 1970s the concept

of low and non-waste technologies emerged, and the emphasis

shifted to pollution prevention rather than pollution treatment (El-

Kholy, 2002).

Perhaps in response to this shift of emphasis The United Nations

Environment Programme (UNEP) developed in 1989 the ﬁrst deﬁ-

nition of CP given in Table 1.

This deﬁnition deserves some speciﬁcations:

1. CP is deﬁned as a strategy, i.e., it extends well beyond technical

ﬁxes, and is more than an isolated audit.

2. It is preventive, not so much end-ofepipe technology is aimed

at, rather the reduction of waste and emissions at the source.

3. CP is integrated, does not isolate and concentrate on only one

aspect of the problem.

4. The continuity of the CP effort is emphasized: one can always do

better, there is always room for improvement. Technologies can

always be cleaner, the ultimate ideal goal being a technology

that produces no pollution at all.

5. CP is about processes, products, and services as ﬁelds of

application.

6. Although it is not stated in the deﬁnition the scope of the

analysis should extend downstream of manufacturing and use

of a product to its disposal as waste; and upstream to the supply

side and the pollution produced in extracting and processing the

inputs of raw materials and semi-ﬁnished goods. CP has to

consider the whole life cycle (so-called cradle to grave analysis).

This original deﬁnition of CP has been adapted/modiﬁed/

expanded in different ways; an overview of the most frequently

mentioned deﬁnitions is given in Table 1.

Deﬁnition 2 offers an alternative to the UNEP deﬁnition (deﬁ-

nition 1) and mentions that CP is not only about concepts but

also about procedures. Moreover, it is stated explicitly that all

phases of the life cycle analysis have to be addressed. Only

processes and products are considered by the deﬁnition. New is

also that it stresses societal commitment: business alone can e.g.

develop new, more environmentally benign products, but it is

society which decides to buy these. The deﬁnition does however

not explicitly indicate that CP is also about increasing resource-

efﬁciency, it just mentions reduction of risks to humans and the

environment.

The third deﬁnition stems from the international declaration on

cleaner production of 1998. It starts similar to the ﬁrst, but the

aims are formulated much broader to embrace the 3 pillars of

sustainability: economic, social (including health and safety)

and environmental. The introduction of economic beneﬁts is

new.

L. Hens et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 3323e33333324

The fourth deﬁnition mentions only production and products

and stresses that the principal actors are the companies, which

control the production processes, but strongly inﬂuenced by

their customers and by politics. For services it is recommended

speaking about cleaner services.

Deﬁnition 5 limits CP formally to processes in any industrial

sector and to products. It clearly states the targets of CP:

resource use minimization, improving eco-efﬁciency, and

source reduction.

The deﬁnition of SD features (deﬁnition 6) is rather exhaustive

as it enumerates the aims of the CP activities: reduce waste and

environmental and health risks; minimise environmental

damage; use energy and resources more efﬁciently; increase

business proﬁtability and competitiveness; and increase the

efﬁciency. Note the inclusion of increasing business proﬁtability

and competitiveness as an aim.

Deﬁnition 7 is mainly technical and limited in scope.

Deﬁnition 8 only mentions technical beneﬁts: less waste, fewer

emissions and maximal product output. It also mentions waste

heat and noise as an addition to the previous descriptions.

The 9th deﬁnition is similar to deﬁnition 1, but mentions cost

reduction.

The 10th deﬁnition deﬁnes cleaner technologies as technologies

characterized by efﬁcient extraction and use of natural re-

sources; reduced generation of harmful components; minimal

releases to air, water and soil; producing durable products

which can be recovered or recycled as far as possible; limit the

energy input. Mentioning production of durable products suit-

able for recovery or recycling ﬁts into the “circular economy”

concept promoted by the European Commission (see Section

2.4).

The term Cleaner Production has been in common use since

1989. Deﬁnition 1 has been used as the working deﬁnition of all

UNEP and UNIDO programmes related to the promotion of CP.

Nonetheless, the conﬂuence of the global economic and the

Green economy (2.3) Circular economy (2.4)

Corporate Social Responsibility (2.2) Smart city (2.6) Service sectors (2.5) e.g. tourism

Fig. 1. The deepening and the widening of the changes in scope of the CP concept and their application as discussed in this paper. The numbers between brackets refer to the

sections in the corpus of this paper.

Table 1

Deﬁnitions of cleaner production.

1. CP is the continuous application of an integrated preventive environmental strategy applied to

processes, products and services to increase overall efﬁciency, and reduce risks to humans and the

environment

-United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP/IEO), 1990

2. CP is the conceptual and procedural approach to production that demands that all phases of the

life cycle of a product or of a process should be addressed with the objective of prevention or the

minimization of short and long-term risks to humans

and the environment. A total societal commitment is required for effecting this comprehensive

approach achieving the goal of a sustainable society

European Commission, 1st European Roundtable on Cleaner

Production Programmes, 1994

3. CP is the continuous application of an integrated, preventive strategy applied to processes,

products and services in pursuit of economic, social, health, safety and environmental beneﬁts.

UNEP, International declaration on cleaner production, 1998

4. CP is a preventive strategy to minimise the impact of production and products on the

environment. The principal actors are the companies, which control the production processes.

They are inﬂuenced strongly by their customers and politics.

Fresner, 1998

5. CP is a systematically organized approach to production activities, which has positive effects on

the environment. These activities encompass resource use minimization, improved eco-efﬁciency

and source reduction, in order to improve the environmental protection and to reduce risks to

living organisms. It can be applied to processes used in any industrial sector and to products

themselves (cleaner products).

Glavic and Lukman, 2007

6. CP is a preventative approach to managing the environmental impacts of business processes and

products. CP uses changes in technology, processes, resources or practices to reduce waste,

environmental and health risks; minimise environmental damage; use energy and resources

more efﬁciently; increase business proﬁtability and competitiveness; and increase the efﬁciency

SD Features, accessed 2017

7. CP is manufacturing in which waste minimization and prevention practices are continuously

applied. These practices include (1) conservation of raw materials and energy, (2) elimination of

toxic inputs, and (3) reduction in toxic outputs

Business Directory, accessed 2017

8. CP is a preventive, company-speciﬁc environmental protection initiative. It is intended to

minimise waste and emissions and maximize product output.

Yaacoub and Fresner, 2006

9. CP is a preventive, integrated continuous strategy applied to products, processes, and services, to

enhance efﬁciency, which improves environmental performance and reduces costs

Kaunas University of Technology Lithuania

10. Cleaner technologies are technologies that extract and use natural resources as efﬁciently as

possible in all stages of their lives; that generate products with reduced or no potentially harmful

components; that minimise releases to air, water and soil during fabrication and use of the

product; and that produce durable products which can be recovered or recycled as far as possible;

output is achieved with as little energy input as is possible

European Commission, Review of cleaner production, 2017

L. Hens et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 3323e3333 3325

environmental crisis that occurred in the last 2 decades has

consolidated the understanding of the interdependence be-

tween economic and environmental systems. Moreover, the

inefﬁcient and at times the wasteful use of natural resources,

including energy, water and materials, is at the heart of the key

environmental challenges, including climate change. Therefore,

UNIDO and UNEP in 2007/2008 broadened the deﬁnition of

cleaner production to explicitly include resource efﬁciency,

which is a key element of the transitions towards Green In-

dustry and Green Economy and introduced the term Resource

Efﬁcient and Cleaner Production (RECP). This deﬁnition reads as

follows: RECP entails the continuous application of integrated,

preventive environmental strategies to processes, products, and

services in order to increase efﬁciency and reduce risks to

humans and the environment. RECP addresses the three sus-

tainability dimensions individually and synergistically: a)

heightened production efﬁciency and economic performance

through improved productive use of natural resources (mate-

rials, energy, water) at all stages of the production cycle, b)

environmental protection by conserving resources and through

minimization of the adverse impacts of industrial production

systems on nature and the environment, and c) human devel-

opment and social enhancement through minimization of risks

to people and communities, and support to their development,

e.g. by providing jobs and protecting the well-being of workers

and local communities (UNIDO, accessed in July 2017a,b; United

Nations Environment Programme accessed in July 2017).

This deﬁnition explicitly mentions production efﬁciency (which

was actually already meant by ‘efﬁciency’in the original deﬁ-

nition), clearly mentions materials, energy and water as natural

resources and mentions also communities and support to their

development. Moreover, as in the original deﬁnition on which it

builds (deﬁnition 1), it continues to include services (UNEP

DTIE). Consecutively, the joint UNIDO-UNEP global RECP pro-

gram was formulated and approved in 2009.

In summary, over about 20 years, the deﬁnition of CP remained

essentially the same, but gradually more attention was given to

resource efﬁciency, to the social dimension of sustainability

(support to the development of people and communities, e.g. by

providing jobs and protecting the well-being of workers and

local communities), to the economic dimension (heightened

production efﬁciency, reduced costs, business proﬁtability and

competitiveness), while the environmental aspect remained

central. To date, CP (or RECP) is seen as the business strategy to

contribute to the 3 dimensions of sustainable development.

2.2. Corporate social responsibility (CSR)

Post-modern companies realize that their role in society goes

beyond making a proﬁt and running the backing ﬁnancial

management.

Originally environmental management systems (EMS) mainly

targeted achieving legal compliance. Since the 1960s-1970s com-

panies faced increasing numbers and an increasing complexity of

environmental regulations. Legal imperatives were complemented

with permits and voluntary schemes (e.g. on certiﬁcation). Not all

companies managed to keep up with this evolution and found

themselves after some years in a situation in which they violated

different legal regulations. Strengthening maintenance of envi-

ronmental laws and prosecution of infractions, resulted in EMS

approaches, primarily targeted at legal compliance. Today most

companies developed a policy going beyond respecting the (legal)

regulations and adopted a more proactive attitude than before on

environmental impacts. The consecutive character of the manage-

ment cycles allows companies e.g. emitting less acidifying sub-

stances, volatile organic products, and releasing less and less

polluting waste water as described in their permits. Moreover, since

the 1990s companies not only address their environmental re-

sponsibilities using environmental management systems, but they

also address human resources and management, union rights, re-

lationships with the local communities, and ethical issues.

No generally accepted CSR standard exists, and the different

types of companies necessitate speciﬁc requirements. To address

the environmental aspects of a CSR company, existing systems

handle the following elements:

- A vision and a commitment to environmental policy by the top

management.

- A certiﬁed EMS, deﬁnitely of the most impacting sites. Certiﬁ-

cation of the EMS motivates the internal stakeholders, but also

shows the outer world that the company runs an EMS according

to the best available international standards. Next to ISO14001

or EMAS, which cover the full spectrum of the system, certiﬁ-

cation systems as BREEM or LEED focus on particular aspects as

environmentally sound buildings or energy consumption.

- Management of environmental risks: A declining incidence of

environmental accidents provides a reliable indicator for this

key aspect in accident prone organizations. Related is the care a

company provides to clean up and restore the impacts of pre-

vious accidents.

- Impacts on biodiversity, their remediation, and if applicable the

resaturation of damaged sites.

-“Green”products show a variety of aspects reﬂecting the DNA of

the company: From IT-software to reduce CO

-emissions, over

FSC-certiﬁed timber and locally grown organic food, to

degradable washing products, listing only a few examples.

- Environmental performance addresses air, water, and soil

pollution, next to company speciﬁc aspects on waste (see

Table 1) and land use, among others. Also the environmental

performance of the mobility of products and personnel should

be assessed in terms of transport mix and pollution emission

trends. (McManners, 2014)

Complementary to these general criteria, speciﬁc sector-bound

aspects should be taken into account: A ﬁne chemicals cosmetics

or pharmaceutical company faces other environmental impacts

than a company producing mechanical devices, and this latter

differs from a railway company.

Companies are motivated to join these CSR dynamics, not only

because of their sustainable responsibilities. Corporate social in-

vestment (CSI) funds, although still limited in absolute value, are

among the fastest growing sectors on auction markets worldwide.

Today and in the near future CSR companies, through this vehicle of

funds, will obtain easier access to capital, providing them a

competitive advantage on their non-CSR competing organizations.

CSR should not be limited to industry. Other production sectors

might also signiﬁcantly beneﬁt from CSR-based approaches.

Contemporary agriculture and husbandry face important chal-

lenges of energy consumption and (chemical, including pharma-

ceutical and fertilizer) inputs. Striving towards sustainability,

industrialized agriculture might take advantage of applying CP

principles to limit its energy and other inputs (e.g. chemicals),

contributing to biodiversity conservation while generating less

(water, air, and soil) pollution, microbial resistance, and environ-

mentally more sound outputs. What applies to the environment

equally applies to husbandry. The evidence grows that industrial

meat production (e.g. chicken farming) endangers workers,

L. Hens et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 3323e33333326

animals, and consumers (Silbergeld, 2016).

What applies to agriculture and husbandry equally applies to

forestry and aquaculture, listing just these sectors.

CSR (sometimes rebranded as corporate sustainability) and CP

as part of sustainable development (SD) mirror and complement

each other. Today CSR is the prevailing way business and industry

respond to SD (Thiel, 2015). This offers important new opportu-

nities. The concepts of CSR dovetail in different theories and sci-

entiﬁc traditions. These include: economy (competitive advantage,

marketing), sociology (public responsibility, stakeholder theory),

ethics (abstain from negatively impacting activities, corporate

behavior), management (workforce management, integrated con-

trol of processes), law (universal human rights, legal compliance,

controversy responses), but deﬁnitely also in environmental per-

formance (air, water, soil, waste, energy, biodiversity, transport)

and resource efﬁciency of which CP is an intrinsic component. In

addition, some of the social aspects of CSR were already considered

in the later deﬁnitions of CP.

Implementing CSR necessitates two accompanying aspects:

(1) Adopting an environmental and social accounting system: A

basic aspect of running an EMS in combination with the

wider CSR aspects necessitates veriﬁable reporting on the

performance of the system. The results of this activity are of

use for the company both to verify the CSR targets set in the

past, to reﬁne and adjust them for the future, and to

communicate the results to other target groups as auction

holders, authorities and the public at large. Methods

measuring the environmental and social performance of

companies were established and developed during the last

half a century (Aras, 2015) and are commonly known under

the heading “sustainability accounting”. While the environ-

mental methods were already partially established by the

1970s, the factors that lead the social domain in CSR have

been described more recently. Nevertheless they are most

important in describing and understanding the reciprocal

character between local communities and the company

(Thiel, 2015). Environmental accounting, which is an

important part of this approach is further developed in box 1.

(2) Corporate social investment (CSI): This is one of the drivers

of the system. CSI makes use of sustainable investment

funds. These handle criteria which in an explicit, systematic

and balanced way handle social responsibility criteria

(ecological, ethical, labor rights related, community

involvement, corporate management) for the selection the

companies in which they invest. Most funds also handle

exclusion criteria: They do not invest in arms, tobacco,

alcohol or nuclear, listing just these examples. The selection

of these companies is based on the accounting data provided

by the companies.

Box 1

Accounting green for cleaner production

Green accounting is a system which allows compiling all indicators of environmental change expressed in physical units or

indices based on physical units. The indicators should reﬂect various aspects, elements, events and environmental factors which

characterize the source (e.g. forest protection, groundwater or minerals in the soil), but also to the sinks (e.g. air pollution, waste,

consumer guidance). Ecological (or green) accounting reﬂects environmental changes as far as possible in the economic sphere

of national and business accounts (Von Bischhoffshausen, 2016).

Cleaner production contributes to sustainable development in industry through an efﬁcient management of natural resources, the

use of renewable energy, more efﬁciency of environmental processes and other strategies, while producing quality products. In

this context, green accounting is important as a set of methods measuring the eco-efﬁciency of products in economic terms

(Chakraborty, 2017). Quantifying the costs, expenses and environmental investments of the production provides relevant and

signiﬁcant information on "cleaner production".

Green accounting also provides information on and from environmental management systems which objectivizes and facilitates

decision making on minimizing costs and investing in technology and materials development. Green accounting quantiﬁes the

eco-efﬁciency of the production processes, their environmental impacts and these of the products and their acceptance on the

market (De Oliveira Neto et al., 2016).

“Cost”is fundamental in green accounting for cleaner production. It allows to improve the environmental performance while

reducing the cost and support the identiﬁcation, evaluation and an adequate location of the environmental costs (Shaikh, 2016).

Green or environmental costs cover the life cycle and entail purchasing, disposal and treatment (e.g. of resources, monitoring,

training, and insurance).

Implementing an environmental accounting system is most relevant as it beneﬁts both society and entrepreneurs. It contributes to

the proper management of natural resources and the environment, which is the fundamental goal of green accounting.

Contributing to preserving the environment necessitates a "Cleaner Production"which conserves raw materials, water and en-

ergy; minimizes toxic and dangerous raw materials; and decreases the toxicity of emissions and waste at the source during the

production process. Green Accounting provides quantitative data on environmental performance and money and is as such

essential for "cleaner production”(Chamorro, 2016).

Green accounting was originally established as a macroeconomic measure referring to national economies. This why environ-

mental accounting uses both physical and monetary units measuring the consumption of natural resources and energy, both

renewable and non-renewable (Ojito et al., 2017).

In a company these ﬁnancial data are one of the bases moving to cleaner production. This entails integrating social and envi-

ronmental information of the company, which often was not quantiﬁed or disclosed before. In this way green accountancy

contributes to a cultural shift in the organization's business approach towards cleaner production.

L. Hens et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 3323e3333 3327

In spite of the attraction of the idea, CSR is still in the process of

development and consolidation. While in high eincome economies

a main focus these days is on detailing the relevant aspects, taking

into account the speciﬁcity of the sectors (e.g. Amarjit, 2014), and

the legal implementation of CSR (Luetkenhorst, 2004), the situation

is different in developing countries. Pena-Vinces and Delgado-

Marquez (2013) analyzed the state of the art in 100 Peruvian

exporting companies. They showed that investing in CSR, in

particular by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) does not

automatically result in more proﬁt. This is one of the reasons why

SMEs do not pay attention to this practice of sustainability. On the

other hand, the number of cases increases worldwide supporting

the notion that non-proﬁt social entrepreneurship can lead to

alleviation of poverty (Halkias and Thurman, 2012).

The study of Pena-Vinces and Delgado-Marquez (2013) also puts

the focus on SMEs. Their relation of proﬁtability and CSR is

nuanced, as can be demonstrated with a few examples:

(-) In SMEs in Europe and Asia both the social and the envi-

ronmental dimension of CSR were shown to have a positive

impact on the ﬁnancial performance of SMEs. The social

dimension of CSR indicates affecting the relationship the

most. The effect was also more pronounced in Europe than in

Asia (Bohin and Wiebe, 2016).

(-) Japanese SME case studies showed that the long term rate of

return on CSR investment, with proper priority and prudent

focus, is competitive. Most important in reaching CSR targets

is the strategical formulation, the clear communication and

the wide acceptance by the stakeholders (Park et al., 2017).

This embryonic literature on CSR and SMEs further points to the

evolving character of CSR.

2.3. Green economy

Green economy (GE) is deﬁned as the aggregate of all activities

with the primary objective of minimizing all forms of environ-

mental impact. This presumes the articulation of other disciplines

that contribute to its main objective: green administration, green

accounting, and green ﬁnance, among others. (ECO, 2010).

GE can also be considered as a system of economic activities

related to the production, distribution, and consumption of goods

and services that result in improved human well-being over the

long term, while not exposing future generations to signiﬁcant

environmental risks and ecological scarcities (Fared, 2012).

GE contributes at using the natural capital efﬁciently by

addressing not only economic but also social, organizational, cul-

tural and educational aspects.

GE became a buzzword in the aftermath of the Rioþ20 Confer-

ence (UN, 2012). In the context of SD and poverty eradication it was

an attempt to balance the economic value of “green policy”, and the

concern that sustainable development should not disappear from

the political agenda. The discussion highlighted once more that an

increasing GNP was not the best economic measure for sustain-

ability and warned against the pitfalls of green washing and sus-

picious, insufﬁciently documented “green labeling”. It put

emphasis on the beneﬁcial economic aspects of investing in

improved environmental management (including technical aspects

as water and air treatment, and waste management) but also in

their link with assessment, management, and monitoring. GE aims

at joining economic security and environmental protection (Dodds

and Strauss, 2012).

GE is a complex, multi-dimensional concept which is closely

linked with CP through factors as advanced green technology,

green consumerism, green innovations, appropriate sustainability

models, green and lean supply chain management, etc. (Tseng et al.,

2013).

Although the sustainable development ambitions of GE are high,

the number of cases showing its limitations (e.g. in the recent

German energy transition) increases (Weber and Cabraz, 2017;

Borel-Saladin and Turak, 2013).

2.4. Circular economy

Closely related to the idea of green economy, is the concept of

circular economy (CE) which is inspired by ecological systems

(European Commission, 2015a, b; 2017; European Parliament,

2017; Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2015; Van Acker, 2016;

Wuppertal Institute, 2016; Block, 2017; Messenger, 2017). By

adopting of “closing-the-loop”production patterns, CE aims to in-

crease the efﬁciency of resource use, with special focus on waste

(Ghisellini et al., 2016). It is a model aiming at decoupling growth

from resource (material, energy) constraints, maintaining material

and resources in the economy as long as possible, thus minimizing

waste and resource use. The concept dates back to late 1970s and

has been shaped by a number of schools of thought such as

“regenerative design”,“industrial ecology”and “cradle to cradle”.

CE is a generic term for economic, technological and policy

guidelines striving to (better) close material loops, to dematerialize

the economy or make the economy less resource dependent.

CE goes beyond the conventional “reduce, reuse and recycle”

approach; it also includes the repurposing and rethinking of ma-

terials, and the repair, refurbish and maintenance of products to be

cycled back into supply chains. This can be obtained by:

Adapted product design for easier disassembly and easier

recycling,

Standardization and modularization of components,

Elimination of the use of toxic substances,

Creating markets for collecting and reselling components.

New consumption patterns (sharing of goods, intelligent archi-

tecture) and new business models (leasing, shift from product

ownership to product usage) must be developed (Zhu and Cote,

2004).

An important barrier to CE is the lack of an adequate collection

system. This means that also the disposal sector will have to rethink

itself towards cleaner collection of products, going beyond the

discussion of mono-material collection as waste streams are usu-

ally composed of different materials (Andersen, 2007).

2.5. Service sectors: sustainable tourism as an example

Tourism is a fast and sustainable growing economic sector

worldwide. In 2016 over 1.1 billion international arrivals were

noticed. The 2016 ﬁgure is the result of an uninterrupted solid

growth since more than 59 years. For 2017 a growth rate of 3e4% is

expected. Although most of the tourism activity still happens in

Europe and in North-America, the growth is most pronounced in

selected developing countries. In spite of its vulnerability for nat-

ural disasters, public health concerns, and political instability,

tourism is seen by these countries as an important source of foreign

money and their support to the sector is considered as an instru-

ment for poverty alleviation (Lee, 2001).

Tourism development faces environmental, social, economic,

and ethical problems. Environmentally the sector faces the nega-

tive effects of air pollution in skiing areas, bathing water pollution

at beaches, refuse waste, high inputs of energy and materials in the

increasing sea-cruises section, and suffers from the amounts of (air

and car) trafﬁc it generates (Cabello-Eras et al., 2016). At the social

L. Hens et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 3323e33333328

side, apart from the limitations on development and the risk of

increasing inequalities tourism development might introduce,

seasonal less attractive working conditions, tourism often attracts

begging, criminality, prostitution and drugs trade. From an eco-

nomic point of view over-dependence on the sector (over 70% of

the economy of the Maldives depends on tourism) and money

leakage are well-studied problems. The ethical aspects of e.g. pro-

poor tourism and neo-colonialism characteristics of tourism to

developing countries are of growing concern (Spenceley, 2008;

Tang, 2014).

On the other hand, tourism offers important opportunities

alleviating the above mentioned problems. A signiﬁcant part of

tourism activities occurs in sunny places during the peri-summer

season, which provides huge opportunities using photovoltaic

and passive solar energy. In national and geo-parks, both terrestrial

and marine, tourism allows raising awareness on the (ecosystem)

value of biodiversity. Advanced combined social and technical

methods exist dealing with the waste and pollution hot-spots

problem. Establishing pedestrian zones in intensively used tourist

areas contributes to solving issues of crowding (Becken and Hay,

2007).

To handle the problem, tourism has a series of instruments at its

disposal ranging from preventive assessment methods, over com-

pany (hotels) and sub-sector (golf courses) speciﬁc environmental

management systems, planning, policy, life cycle analysis of its

products, economic instruments as taxes and levies, to education

and information initiatives such as eco-labels and ethical codes (Xu

and Fox, 2014).

For sustainable tourism, it is important embarking for these

solutions while conserving and protecting the natural and cultural

resources which constitute its capital. For this transition, the sector

should, among others, make use of CP approaches bringing down

its carbon footprint, and using its inputs more efﬁciently. As much

as any other sector, tourism will beneﬁt of making sustainability

part from the sectorial culture (Mowforth and Munt, 2005).

Tourism is discussed here as an example of a service sector

which might beneﬁt from the experience of CP methods. For many

other examples, including the health care sector, taxi companies,

railway companies, cultural organizations, education, or adminis-

tration the same applies. There is no valid reason why non-

production sectors in general should not take advantage of

applying integrated sustainability approaches of which CP is a part,

to bring down their negative environmental, social and economic

imprints in society.

2.6. Green, blue, healthy and smart cities

The widening area of application of CP is not limited to the

increasing number of sectors which might beneﬁt from applying

the concept. Also, larger structures and organizations will beneﬁt.

Cities offer an example.

Cities host more than half of the world population, receive every

week 1.4 billion commuters, and generate over 85% of the world

GDP. Most urban agglomerations are localized at the borders of the

continents, providing them with an important part of their econ-

omy which is water (trade) bound, and consequently with a sig-

niﬁcant blue water aspect.

The idea of eco-cities dovetails in the environmental problems

post-modern cities face: Increasing urbanization and moderniza-

tion, cleaning-up the industrial heritage of the past century and

declining attraction and quality of life. Cities emit major amounts of

carbon, are hot spots of water pollution, areas where land is scarce

and land use critical, and intense waste producers. This affects not

only the quality of the environment, but also human health. This

applies in particular to “civilization diseases”as diabetes: 2 people

out of three suffering from diabetes live in cities; its incidence and

risk of type 2 diabetes is affected by particulate pollution in the air;

multiple and complex links exist between “urban diabetes”and

climate changes (IDF, 2015). Cities increasingly emerge as key pla-

ces interlinking climate change, environmental quality and health.

Green cities are a major reply to these problems: They have low

air pollution levels which do not threaten human health or the

urban physical environment, they establish a water use and quality

policy, strive towards zero waste emissions, are carbon neutral, and

offer a sufﬁcient amount of accessible green spaces for each

inhabitant (Lucarelli and Roe, 2012).

Cities bordering the sea or localized along main rivers, will pay

special attention to their sea-bound economy. Ports and port areas,

facing speciﬁc environmental (space and pollution) problems will

require advanced environmental management systems, supported

by the cooperation of all involved stakeholders. They deal with the

extra (heavy) trafﬁc the port activities generate, moving towards

sustainable, long term solutions.

Policies combine CP and smart cities in a variety of ways. In

Europe the progress of smart cities depends on the advancement of

the green economy and consequently on the further development

of energy efﬁciency and renewable energy resources (Ferrara,

2015). In Southeast Asia Vietnam considers realizing smart cities

as the follow-up of the Rioþ20 Conference (UN, 20112).

Political realities often strive towards combining these green-

blue and health aspects of nowadays cities with the idea of cities

as knowledge centers (De Jong et al., 2013). Combining environ-

mental quality, urban health and knowledge, smart cities develop

improved IT-managed trafﬁc systems, promote low emission (new,

electric) vehicles, and limit the access for old, polluting cars. They

use advanced IT-techniques optimizing their public services and

cultural offer. The more complex the system is, the more holistic the

cure proves to be. The management of green cities necessitates an

integrated vision on the future of the city. In the end green cities

aim at creating beautiful and livable cities for the inhabitants and

the visitors.

3. More adapted methods

Although during recent years major progress has been realized

in integrating CP in the widening landscape of areas where the

concept is applied, intellectual investments in fundamental,

applied and practical tools remain required. Moreover the broader

application ﬁeld generates new needs. A few examples will illus-

trate this.

3.1. Indicators

One of the early instruments measuring SD, the effectiveness of

its (policy) instruments and the trends in its evolution, are in-

dicators. Among their originally deﬁned characteristics is that in-

dicators should use existing data (Bell and Morse, 1999). Experience

with indicators convincingly showed that the relevant data are

limited and dispersed. Moreover, gap analysis showed data gaps

and also the quality of the available data raised concern. These

remarks require a reply which basically comes to generating more

indicator-relevant data.

Next to this, the issue of speciﬁcity has been raised. Measuring

eco-efﬁciency aims at obtaining an idea of the social, economic and

environmental efﬁciency of an organization or a sector. It is about

attaining a higher value with fewer inputs of materials and energy,

and more output while avoiding pollution and waste. There is

currently no widely accepted, single indicator, nor index inte-

grating these three aspects of sustainability, enabling the moni-

toring of an organization or a larger unit. There is a need for

L. Hens et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 3323e3333 3329

establishing these speciﬁc measures targeted to assign the effec-

tiveness and efﬁciency of cleaner production (Henriques and

Catarino, 2015; Cabello-Eras et al., 2014).

Finally, although developing sustainability indicators tradition-

ally is the subject of complex manuals and guidelines, an imminent

need remains to standardize the procedures more, in such a way

that international, intra- and inter-sectoral comparisons provide

more reliable results.

3.2. Assessment methods

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) originated during the

1970s as a systematic process analyzing and assessing the impacts

of new projects on the environment. The aim was preventing,

avoiding and/or mitigating the negative effects on the environment

(Devuyst, 1995).

This was followed by realizing that plans, policies, and programs

might be as impacting on the environment as individual projects.

These impacts were addressed by strategic environmental assess-

ment (SEA) (Dalal-Clayton and Sadler, 2005). The widening of this

impact assessment scope necessitated an extension of the meth-

odological arsenal: the science and technology driven approaches

prevailing in EIA, were complemented by methods dovetailing in

planning and socio-economic sciences.

Further widening of the assessment methods targeted speciﬁc

areas of impact prediction and evaluation. Health impact assess-

ment is an example. Its characteristic hazards-exposure-dose

dependent effects logic, which only partially coincides with fore-

casting environmental impacts, necessitated a speciﬁc framework,

which is commonly referred to as health impact assessment (HIA).

Also for policy targeted impact assessments and those focusing on

social impacts, proper schemes have been developed (Janssens and

Hens, 1995).

This range of assessment methods appealed for synthesis. This

was partially realized with the introduction of sustainability impact

assessment (SIA). Although no generally accepted deﬁnition exists,

SIA can be deﬁned as “a formal process of identifying, predicting

and evaluating the potential impacts of a wide range of relevant

initiatives and their alternatives on the SD of society”. SIA has

similar targets as EIA and SEA: improving decision making and

bringing environment/SD on board in decision making, but the

method differs in scope from its predecessors. While EIA is targeted

to environmental impacts of projects, SIA deals with SD at all levels

of decision making (Hug

e and Hens, 2010).

Particular aspects are provided by risk assessment. In a SD

context, ﬁnancial exposure and its associated risk will most likely

be assessed on acceptability. Environmental and human health

risks might be quantiﬁed and assessed too. The results are based on

the level of hazard the pollutants pose. The information can be used

in two ways. First, it allows setting an environmentally “safe”level.

Second, it may be used in conjunction with an exposure assessment

to prepare a probabilistic risk assessment (Johnston et al., 1999). In

contrast to EIA and its related assessments, environmental risks

have limited prevention capacity: They are merely used stating that

the pollution of water or another environmental medium has

exceeded what is considered acceptable. Social (e.g. reputational)

risks assessment is possible, but rare. Nevertheless the social risks

are considered essential in the process of SD transitions (Almeida

et al., 2015). This heterogeneity of risk approaches results in

almost absent combinations, providing a basis for sustainability

risk assessment. While a holistic risk management (e.g. on eco-

pharmaceutical risks, combining risks of products with life cycle

analysis, evaluation and re-assessment of the environmental, social

and ﬁnancial aspects) is most necessary in a context of the

widening application area of CP, its functional application looks

remote today.

The impact assessment family of methods, summarized above,

is most relevant for cleaner production. They allow identifying the

contribution of CP to preventing or mitigating foreseeable impacts

and point to gaps in current knowledge. This latter also demon-

strates the need for new, speciﬁc, additional assessment methods in

a range of domains targeted to realizing aims where CP is able

removing or alleviating current bottlenecks.

3.3. Management

During recent years major progress was realized both in

developing fundamental and applied aspects of (environmental,

sustainability targeted) management systems (Heesterman and

Heesterman, 2013; Halkias and Thurman, 2012). Early and simple

approaches targeting general aspects on water, air, soil, energy,

waste, and mobility evolved to systems addressing both the direct

and the indirect impacts of the equation. EMSs for hospitals e.g. not

only deal with general considerations on energy use, CO

-emis-

sions, water use, waste reduction, and pollution by likely hazardous

chemicals. Over the years they became targeted towards speciﬁc

issues as the occurrence of Legionella pneumophila and/or Pseudo-

monas aeruginosa in tap water and other water distribution facil-

ities, eliminating mercury, reducing anesthetics contributing to

GHG-emissions, environmentally sound antibiotics, PVC-free

“safe”blood bags, other plastics and polymers used in health

care, and medicines and other chemicals with endocrine disrupting

properties (Schroeder et al., 2013; WHO-Europe, 2016). Moreover

signiﬁcant progress was realized in the collection and treatment of

speciﬁc data, green procurement for hospitals, and linking sub-

sections as waste management and food.

On the other hand, signiﬁcant unmet needs exist. Examples

entail:

- The mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of green

procurement.

- Product sustainability of supply chains and detailed systems

managing the increasing complexity.

- New organizational capacities.

- The integration of the currently insufﬁcient environmental and

socio-economic data.

- Stakeholder involvement in developing new management-

supporting technologies with a toxicity reducing character.

- The wider contribution of these approaches to well-being and

quality of life.

Different management approaches exist to implement rational

energy use in a CP context (RECP). Management standards as ISO

14001 (Environmental Management System/EMS standardized by

the International Standards Organization), ISO 26000 (Corporate

Social Responsibility Management System) and ISO 50001 (Energy

Management System). These systems which facilitate the intro-

duction and implementation of RECP, have been applied in the

industrial sector as well as in the service one (Gopalakrishnan et al.,

2014).

Additionally, speciﬁc methodologies for water management

(Koufos and Retsina, 2001; Feeley et al., 2008; Hutchison and

Ellison, 1992) and for waste management (Tchobanoglous, 1993;

Morrissey and Browne, 2004) further contribute to the imple-

mentation of RECP. To cope with the different management sys-

tems, which demand several duplicated tasks when implemented

in parallel (Zeng et al., 2007), the concept of integrated manage-

ment, for which there are several deﬁnitions, emerged (Gianni and

Gotzamani, 2015). Such integration aims at taking advantage of the

synergies and elements common to the different management

L. Hens et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 3323e33333330

approaches towards a more holistic management system (R€

oßler

and Schlieter, 2015), which in principle allows for a complete

implementation of RECP. However, regardless of the need for

guidelines and models to harmonize and streamline integrated

management systems, a recognized international standard is still

missing (de Oliveira, 2013; Gianni and Gotzamani, 2015).

3.4. Monitoring, modelling and reporting

Under the heading “measuring provides knowledge”both

impact assessment studies and EMS rely on measured data.

Therefore, collecting data, including the monitoring of foreseen

(and overlooked) impacts are essential to enhance the reliability of

these methods.

Models are an important instrument in this respect. They

enhance the predictive capacity of the assessment approaches.

Their validation is driven by data of high technical quality (Moffatt

et al., 2001), which depends to a large extent on the quality, the

availability and the accessibility of databases and reporting.

The experience with life cycle analysis (which also is strongly

driven by the use of process-speciﬁc data) illustrates the frag-

mentary and partial character of the available data, which are often

difﬁcult to control on their scientiﬁc validity. Data relevant for SD

suffer even more from fragmentation, partiality, and lack of quality

assurance. More and easier accessible reliable data reported ac-

cording to strict quality guidelines are mandatory at this moment

and for the years to come.

4. Changing targets

The widening of the scope of problems and issues covered by

cleaner CP also results in broadening the aims to be realized. The

focus is on three aspects:

(-) While originally the approach was mainly applied contrib-

uting to SD in the production sector, widening the applica-

tion scope of CP by involving the service and administrative

sectors, next to the decision makers, points to its relevance

for a broader societal realization of sustainable development.

Monitoring and assessment instruments should be adapted

to this new and evolving context.

(-) This widening towards sustainable development has far

going consequences. The main one is the dilution of the

environmental targets. More and more environmental

quality and responsible use of resources is not anymore a

target by itself. As an element of SD it becomes embedded in

a wider strategy addressing also economics and social as-

pects. At the policy level quality of life (QoL) targets, of which

environment is a part, move to the forefront.

(-) The widening of the targets also manifests itself at a strategy

level. Originally, business and industry had to cope with the

effects of major calamities. Their reply was ﬁrst negating the

issue by moving the attention towards another aspect as

jobs. After the acceptance of their undercooled attention for

environmental issues, they installed environmental

(including energy and resources) management. This illus-

trates the defensive the strategy during the ﬁrst post Second

World War decades. Embracing environmental management

fundamentally changed this strategy: It allowed industry

acting in a pro-active way on environmental challenges. The

approach allowed going beyond legal compliance and per-

forming better on energy consumption and pollution pre-

vention than prescribed by the permits. This provided the

sector a much more reliable perception in the environmental

and sustainability debate.

This fundamental move might provide a guideline for other

sectors. Agriculture, forestry and ﬁsheries e.g. should leave their

environmental impacting perception behind and opt for sustain-

able food production methods.

5. Discussion

This overview of 25 years of evolving ideas on CP not only il-

lustrates the logical steps taken during the widening of the concept.

More fundamentally it illustrates that the environmental and SD

challenges cannot be solved by technology (even not in combina-

tion with socio-economic data) alone. A wider and more integrated

approach, combining technological advances with human ecology,

policies, psychology and ethical aspects are mandatory to ensure

further steps forwards to SD.

Dealing with the historical trends in the evolution of the CP

concept allows also identifying major trends for the future:

- CP will increasingly become an important part of the vision,

strategy, policy, and management not only in production sectors

(industry, agriculture, forestry, aquaculture), but also in service

sectors as tourism, health care and administration.

- The growing interest of the services sector will increase the

attention for cleaner consumption. In hospitals, the consump-

tion of products is responsible for over 40% of the CO

-emis-

sions. Green procurement, combined with in depth

environmental management allows bringing down the absolute

emission ﬁgures.

- To cope efﬁciently with this widening perspective proper

monitoring and identiﬁcation are essential. This should go

beyond the currently existing laboratory and administrative

quality control procedures. It should include among others

proper environmentally accountancy allowing to establish more

accurate and more targeted (environmental, social, economic,

combined) footprints, to mention only this most needed

methodological progress.

- CP will be applied realizing targets of SD coinciding e.g. with the

aims of public health and clean environments as they are

interpreted in a green and smart city context (neutral carbon

balance, zero waste, accessible green and blue spaces), and

development in general. To this end major changes and inno-

vation will be necessary.

- Complementary to the strategic aspects, issues that will attract

more attention during the years to come include:

Integrated CO

-reduction approaches to stabilize climate

change and the associated effects. This presumes combining

avoidance, reuse, stocks, minimization, adaptation, and miti-

gation of the effects. This will necessitate improved and

optimized production processes, life cycle approaches

(combining the origin of the materials with production as-

pects, maintenance and waste, taking into account the

transport aspects) better product design, monitoring of the

outputs and impacts, management, sustainability-targeted

quality control, stakeholder involvement, awareness raising

and training (Huisingh et al., 2014).

Water use and quality: freshwater of good quality is an

increasingly rare and valuable resource. More efforts are

needed to use less water (savings improving the efﬁciency of

water use), preventing both chemical and biological water

pollution, and increasing the effectiveness of waste water

treatment.

Seasonal, locally produced, environmentally sound (organic,

ecological, with a limited energy and chemicals input) food

will become increasingly important and take advantage of CP

methods and strategies. Realizing the ambitious targets on

L. Hens et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 3323e3333 3331

this food issue will necessitate an integrated approach

including green procurement, quality control (labels), good

practices, and behavioral and cultural changes and transitions.

More research is needed unraveling the links between envi-

ronmentally sound food and health.

The success of the CSR-CP nexus will strongly be inﬂuenced by

the implementation in SMEs, not at least in developing

countries. Environmental improvements in SMEs of local in-

dustrial districts (“industrial clusters”) can bez reached using

three governance approaches: legal enforcement, supply

chain pressure, and voluntary engagement in CSR (Puppim de

Oliveira and Jabbour, 2015). Experience with environmental

management instruments (e.g. environmental and sustain-

ability impact assessment) showed that these instruments are

generating most effect if they are legally compulsive and

properly enforced.

- Realizing these widened CP targets will necessitate more and

better-focused research (e.g. on footprints and accountancy

methods, environmental and related impact assessments and

new developments in renewable energy and energy efﬁciency),

education, knowledge, skills, and consultancy.

The widening scope of cleaner technology is promising but also

has its limitations. Additional initiatives e.g. to advance CSR are

often situated in the realm of the social targets and instruments.

The concept of “shared value”might be provided. In the long term

the ﬁnancial performance of an organization depends on the

quality of the environment in which it operates (Porter and Kramer,

2006). According to this vision, acting in a sustainable way goes

beyond responsibility; it offers opportunities serving the core ob-

jectives of the organization, promoting innovation and establishing

a competitive advantage.

Another weakness of the new developments concerns the hes-

itating and controversial implementation of CSR in developing

counties. In view of the varying ﬁrst research results on this

emerging topic, more research is strongly indicated. (Pena-Vinces

and Delgado-Marquez, 2013).

Using CSR in SMEs is much slower than in auction market listed,

bigger companies. This should be alleviated as CP targets appeal to

SMEs: Worldwide they produce around 70% of the total world

pollution and 60% of the total carbon emissions (Aragon-Correa

et al., 2008). SMEs should go beyond their legal obligations to

address this massive problem of pollution and resource use.

In the past, CP signiﬁcantly contributed to the implementation

of SD in business and industry. It proved to be likely one of the most

effective concepts and instruments awakening this sector for the

changes in a society moving towards a cleaner environment.

Therefore the widening scope, targets and methods will, without a

doubt, contribute to a society moving towards long-term,

respectful and responsible transitions. This is most likely one of

the major strengths of the widening of CP.

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Ketty Herrera-Mendoza · Luc Hens · Chantal Block · Juan Jose Cabello Eras · Carlo Vandecasteele

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