Please note that this is an on-going project.
Project Description
Cleaner production and circular economy can bring overlapping benefits to business performance by simultaneously increasing profitability, efficiency, competitiveness, and environmental performance. Harnessing the economics of sustainable consumption and production that can drive these benefits requires expertise in understanding, communicating, and then applying complex ideas and strategies. In this course, students will explore how to use various tools, including cleaner production planning and assessment, to achieve sustainability goals. With an advanced and integrated understanding of cleaner, sustainable practices, students will be capable of promoting the uptake of resource-efficient, cleaner production, and circular economy practices. After completing the course, students can be responsible and adaptable professionals with a global perspective, able to find solutions to complex situations using advanced problem-solving skills that will help us move towards being a sustainable society with clean air and clean water, and prosperous businesses.
Project Personnel and Beneficiaries
The course benefits all the professionals working towards sustainable development.
Outcomes to Date
A number of domestic and international students (undergraduate and postgraduate) have completed this course and are applying their knowledge to implement SDGs in their workplaces. The international students from developing and emerging economies have benefited most as those countries urgently require their expertise on responsible consumption and production
Project Significance
This course is aligned strongly with Sustainable Development Goal 12 on responsible consumption and production. The course has also footprints in many other SDGs. In particular, the course addresses following SDG 12 targets:
Target 12.1: Implement the 10-year framework of programmes on sustainable consumption and production, all countries taking action, with developed countries taking the lead, taking into account the development and capabilities of developing countries.
Target 12.2: By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources.
Target 12.3: By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses
Target 12.4: By 2020, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment.
Target 12.5: By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse
Target 12.6: Encourage companies, especially large and transnational companies, to adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle
Target 12.7: Promote public procurement practices that are sustainable, in accordance with national policies and priorities.