Industrial Sustainability Assessment and Communication: Metrics, Methods, and Tools

Dear Colleagues,

The interest of industries in the sustainability performance of their production processes and products, as well as in the communication of their sustainability impacts, has grown strongly in recent years. This phenomenon can be observed on a global level, since the pressure from stakeholders towards industries is increasing worldwide. This highlights the need for approaches for the evaluation and communication of sustainability performance that can provide reliable and credible results, thus, discouraging greenwashing practices aimed at deceiving customers and the general public.

This Special Issue will promote research concerning the assessment and communication of industrial sustainability, both at a global level and with respect to each of its three dimensions (economic, environmental, social).

Theoretical, empirical, and practitioner papers that investigate one or more of the following topics are invited:

• Sustainability assessment and performance of the industrial production, both in the manufacturing and in the process industry;
• Impact of the Industry 4.0 revolution and smart production on the sustainability of industrial production;
• Sustainability impacts of new technologies, production processes, materials, and products at an early technology readiness level;
• Sustainability performance in both large and small-to-medium-sized enterprises;
• Sustainable management of supply chains and networks;
• Sustainability performance benchmarking;
• Fair and reliable communication of sustainability performance.

The papers should adopt one or more of the following approaches:

• Development of new metrics and/or methodologies;
• Consolidation or validation of existing metrics and/or methodologies;
• Analysis of case studies;
• Proposal of best practices;
• Analysis and development of supporting IT tools.

Other topics and approaches relevant to this Special Issue but not listed will also be considered.

Dr. Giuseppe Tomasoni
Dr. Paola Cocca
Dr. S. Nurmaya Musa
Prof. Marzia Traverso
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.