Integrating cleaner production into sustainability strategies: an introduction to this special volume

This special volume of the Journal of Cleaner Production is built primarily upon articles submitted for the 4th International Workshop Advances in Cleaner Production held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2013. The 54 articles underscore the urgent need for changing from unsustainable production and societal patterns to sustainable ones. They provide many new approaches to help industries, governments and society to speed up the transition to sustainable patterns. The authors focus on defining and solving problems with special emphasis upon sustainability strategies: raw material replacement, renewable energy, technological developments, product, and policy changes. The central roles of improved corporate management for sustainable societal transitions are explored, with an emphasis upon stakeholder empowerment in promoting implementation of new cleaner technologies within companies, industrial sectors, supply chains and countries. Some authors improved assessment tools for environmental accounting at the biospheric kale. Some authors underscored the need for cooperation among governments, industrial sectors and companies to accelerate the integration of Cleaner Production into policies and practice. Multiple examples of successful integration of CP in national and local policy structures, exemplified how focused work in key industrial sectors is delivering multiplier benefits within and among companies and in the community, at large. The authors documented numerous benefits of holistic integration of local, regional, national and global efforts to accelerate the transition to sustainable development and societal well-being. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.