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With the goal of decarbonization and carbon neutrality in the health sectors of many countries by 2050, health professionals must implement systemic changes in clinical practice to reduce carbon use, whilst meeting equity targets and improving health outcomes. Sustainable healthcare practices address the socio-ecological determinants that undermine population health, intervene as early as possible in the disease process, deliver 'lean' healthcare pathways and reduce the 'triple bottom line' costs of healthcare provision, benefiting patients, populations, and the environment. Methods and tools to do this are available and physiotherapists can play a key role in improving health outcomes and achieving sustainable development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doing business in the twenty-first century, a period marked by globalization, terrorism, limitation of natural resources, environmental problems, is a real challenge and managers must make efforts in order to create a healthy and new organizational culture, whose goal is long-term financial performance, but also the well-being of the whole planet. In recent years, more and more companies are focusing on integrating sustainability into their core business, understanding that this can become a source of innovation and lasting value. This paper aims to capture what sustainability is and what are the advantages it can bring, at the company level, looking at how to create lasting value through social and environmental performance. The new challenge for companies is to find a new way to measure and manage business performance, not only by maximization of shareholders value, but by maximizing stakeholders’ value. Creating sustainable value is a new paradigm in the development of companies, based on the inclusion of intangible assets and human capital in the value of the company. Therefore, the factors that generate economic value have changed, and the theory of the shareholder company has become the theory of the partnership company, which emphasizes the well-being of all partners: employees, customers, community, shareholders, etc. Sustainable value is created from the shared interests of stakeholders and shareholders and to achieve it, modern companies must have a new approach based on identifying the key value drivers and design long-term strategies, which automatically requires a new way of seeing and treating the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Romania has a significant agricultural potential due to the land owned, the workforce employed in this sector, the favorable climate conditions, but with all this the performance of Romanian's agriculture is reduced compared to the EU. One of the ways of modernizing and revitalizing agriculture is represented by investments from European funds that have as strategic direction the sustainable development of agriculture. This article develops a synthetic theoretical framework on the peculiarities of Romania's agriculture in the context of EU agriculture, the performance analysis of agricultural holdings, and last but not least a case study on the assessment of the sustainable performance of agricultural holdings in Romania by economic size classes . The objective of this article is to assess the sustainable performance of agricultural holdings in Romania compared to the EU by analyzing the link between the farm size and sustainable value in order to identify the performance growth directions. In order to achieve the proposed objective, the sustainable value method was used. The results highlight the fact that in Romnaia the mediumsized farms achieve the highest performance expressed through Sustainable Value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposed a framework for sustainable product development in the context of high value engineering, using life cycle based approaches combined with methods of sustainable value modeling and analysis. A Sustainable Value model was proposed based on the understanding of Value from economic, social and environmental perspectives. Then, a QFD-based approach of life cycle scheming driven by sustainable value requirements was proposed for generating product concepts and life cycle plans of total high value, while Life Cycle Simulation was employed for modeling complicated close-loop type product life cycles and evaluation of sustainable values. The proposed framework may help bring experts in fields of product and process engineering, industrial management and ecological assessments to a common vision, and therefore accelerate design convergence for more sustainable products, processes and business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developments around the use of additive manufacturing (AM) for making components and end-products is radically changing the way manufacturing activities are organized. Many researchers are now turning their attention to AM technology and its potential benefits for boosting economic, social, and environmental sustainability. However, there is still much uncertainty on the full impact from a life cycle perspective. Previous work has reviewed the implications of AM from a sustainability and life cycle point of view, but it is unclear whether the technology can fully realize the potential benefits identified, and whether it will lead to unintended consequences such as increased material consumption, thereby further straining the planet's carrying capacity and pushing society towards unsustainable, more materialistic values. This research builds on previous work to customize a tool, the Sustainable Value Roadmapping Tool (SVRT), which combines the strategic roadmapping technique with the sustainable value analysis tool. Roadmapping is a well-established approach for businesses to strategically plan activities for the short-, medium- and long-term; combined with the value analysis tools, it can identify opportunities for sustainable value creation for all stakeholders, including society and the planet. While SVRT has been developed and tested in a more generic context (i.e. not technology-specific), it also has good promises to help companies to explore the potential benefits and challenges of AM adoption across products’ life cycle and the associated business model implications. This paper will present the prototype version of SVRT for AM. The findings consolidate and expand the opportunities and challenges already identified in the literature. Further work will conduct case studies to use the SVRT with companies adopting AM technology and better understand the sustainability impacts from a business perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of sustainable development issues requires the engagement of all stakeholders in decision-making processes, as well as developing tactics and strategies. The complexity of this task increases on regional and international levels, where a huge amount of interests intersect or even contradict each other. To develop proper policy measures towards sustainability, it is essential to use appropriate performance assessment. Regardless of the existence of some macro estimation methods, vast gaps in practical use still remain. In this paper, a set of methods for assessing the sustainability performance of countries is outlined and discussed. The main advantages and weaknesses of the prevalent approaches are considered. Using available statistical data from open sources, sustainability performance assessment in countries within the Baltic Sea Region in the years 2005–2010 is carried out according to different methods and discussed, thus obtaining the profile of sustainability performance for countries in the Baltic Sea Region. The results of the calculations may be used for sharing with communities, detecting sustainability gaps in the countries’ economies, substantiating national and regional sustainable development strategies, and analyzing the investment attractiveness of the given region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Romania is one of the EU countries with significant agricultural potential. The economic and social changes occurring after 1990 has profoundly affected the agriculture in Romania. The excessive land fragmentation due to land restitution to the former owners and their heirs, as well as the subsequent developments have led to a large number of small-sized agricultural holdings and a small number of large agricultural holdings, in terms of size and economy. The sustainability performance must be assessed from the economic, social and environmental points of view. The paper aims to assess the sustainable performance of the agricultural holdings in Romania on economic size classes, to highlight the directions for enhancing the performance by reorganizing the agricultural structures. For achieving this purpose, we used the Sustainable Value-based approach. The results of comparison between Romania and other EU countries highlight the importance of medium-sized farms, which achieve the best performance expressed by the Sustainable Value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Sustainability assessment is needed to build sustainable farming systems. A broad range of sustainability concepts, methodologies and applications already exists. They differ in level, focus, orientation, measurement, scale, presentation and intended end-users. In this paper we illustrate that a smart combination of existing methods with different levels of application can make sustainability assessment more profound, and that it can broaden the insights of different end-user groups. An overview of sustainability assessment tools on different levels and for different end-users shows the complementarities and the opportunities of using different methods. In a case-study, a combination of the sustainable value approach (SVA) and MOTIFS is used to perform a sustainability evaluation of farming systems in Flanders. SVA is used to evaluate sustainability at sector level, and is especially useful to support policy makers, while MOTIFS is used to support and guide farmers towards sustainability at farm level. The combined use of the two methods with complementary goals can widen the insights of both farmers and policy makers, without losing the particularities of the different approaches. To stimulate and support further research and applications, we propose guidelines for multilevel and multi-user sustainability assessments. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Implementing the principles of sustainable development in Romanian agriculture is a current goal meant to contribute to fundamental transformations of the rural space. It also aims at increasing the attractiveness of this area, with positive influences not only on the local economy, but also in terms of quality of life and environment. Creating sustainable value is the main purpose of agriculture. This is reflected in obtaining quality products by complying with environmental requirements and high socioeconomic efficiency. The paper presents an analysis methodology for the performances of Romanian agriculture compared to the agriculture of EU, by using the Sustainable Value method. The analysis reveals the weak performance of Romanian agriculture regarding the use of available resources, particularly agricultural areas, and labour force. The conclusions of the analysis also show directions of action for the sustainable development of this sector of economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Configurable toolset to evaluate technology opportunities for corporate foresight. • Collaborative development of qualitative tools to guide prospective sensemaking. • Environmental and social aspects integrated into early stage technology assessment. • Context-driven toolset configuration to match future technology opportunity type. • Inclusion of end-user and wider societal insights into forward-thinking activities. There is an urgent need for technology development to make a sustainable or restorative contribution to the environment, with its inherent links to society and societal welfare. Forward-looking activities, such as firm level technology forecasting and technology intelligence, are increasingly important in providing positive impact that is complementary to policy level interventions. However, selecting and implementing appropriate approaches to conduct these activities and quantifying their value contribution is still difficult. This article seeks to demonstrate how technology opportunities may be explored more effectively by combining existing methods for assessing new technology and identifying sustainable value, in an approach for industry that is both configurable and practical while delivering tangible benefits. It details the two-year university-industry collaboration and testing of a configurable toolset, based on four templates used in a workshop setting. Results indicate that the toolset has successfully probed technological, environmental and social capabilities, promoted the selection and implementation of an appropriate approach and led to the quantification of value through the inclusive, transparent and documented assessment of technology opportunities and the tangible actions identified. In summary, the toolset supports company employees in realising a measure of prospective sensemaking, which is a key deliverable from forward-looking activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]