Assessing and Improving the Eco-Efficiency of Manufacturing: Learning and Challenges from a Polish Case Study
Department of Production Engineering, Kielce University of Technology, Tysiąclecia Państwa Polskiego 7, 25-314 Kielce, Poland
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Academic Editor: Luigi Aldieri
Energies 2021, 14(23), 8125; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14238125
Received: 29 October 2021
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Revised: 16 November 2021
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Accepted: 16 November 2021
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Published: 3 December 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Waste Management and Circular Economy in Regional Development and Planning)
Manufacturing offers substantial opportunities for economic growth after COVID-19, as long as it delivers competitively priced goods while simultaneously reducing pressure on the environment. In this study, we present the methodological feasibility of the joint application of life cycle assessment (LCA) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) for assessing eco-efficiency at the sector level. We employ this methodology to assess the environmental profiles of manufacturing in Poland in relation to their gross value added, and subsequently calculate the improvement targets for the eco-inefficient manufacturing industries. The study reveals that only the chemical industry is relatively eco-efficient, whereas the remaining industries have considerable room for improvement due to their very low eco-efficiency, and thus should follow the best practices established by the chemical industry. Although there are always individual paths for manufacturing industries to achieve the decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressure, activities such as the transformation of manufacturing methods to be less energy and material intensive and/or to be low-emission, the reincorporation of waste into the manufacturing processes, and the implementation of environmental management systems should become common targets of manufacturing in Poland.
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Keywords:
data envelopment analysis; life cycle assessment; processing industry; circular economy; Poland
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MDPI and ACS Style
Rybaczewska-Błażejowska, M.; Masternak-Janus, A. Assessing and Improving the Eco-Efficiency of Manufacturing: Learning and Challenges from a Polish Case Study. Energies 2021, 14, 8125. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14238125
AMA Style
Rybaczewska-Błażejowska M, Masternak-Janus A. Assessing and Improving the Eco-Efficiency of Manufacturing: Learning and Challenges from a Polish Case Study. Energies. 2021; 14(23):8125. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14238125
Chicago/Turabian StyleRybaczewska-Błażejowska, Magdalena, and Aneta Masternak-Janus. 2021. "Assessing and Improving the Eco-Efficiency of Manufacturing: Learning and Challenges from a Polish Case Study" Energies 14, no. 23: 8125. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14238125
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