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Abstract:The emphasis on learning and adaptation among different actors at various political administrative levels and on various geographic scales has become a precondition for the emergence of sustainable development. It is possible to find the essential form of collaborative management by using a Strategic Plan, designed to determine a local model of sustainable competitiveness in economic, social and environmental terms. The adoption of a Strategic Plan stimulates a process of shared knowledge, through which it is possible to generate a new environmental governance (EG) that is truly representative of a local system. This paper presents, as a case study representative of the Italian context, the Strategic Plan of the Nebrodi area (SP), and assesses the structure of a new form of public and private environmental governance focused on sustainable concern. Finally, the SP could be considered a guideline for managing the local territorial and environmental system from a long-term perspective.

Food waste is one of the most important issues taken into account by the European Union due to its negative environmental, economic and social impacts. The treatment of food waste through recycling processes represents a solution for food waste minimisation. Concerning, in particular, the retail sector, it is necessary to define strategies for retail-oriented sustainable food waste management. The aim of this study is to compare the potential environmental impacts related to five scenarios (landfill, incineration, composting, anaerobic digestion and bioconversion through insects) for the disposal/treatment of food waste produced by a mass retail company operating in Messina (Italy) through the application of the Life Cycle Assessment method, in order to find the best treatment solution. Results based on the treatment of a functional unit of 1 tonne of food waste show that the bioconversion scenario represents the most preferable solution considering all of the impact categories analysed through the CML 2 baseline 2000 method, except for Global Warming, for which higher environmental performances are connected to the anaerobic digestion scenario. The incineration and the bioconversion scenarios show the highest environmental benefits when the production of alternative energy sources and valuable materials is evaluated through the inclusion of the avoided productions in the analysis.

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Current industrial production is driven by increasing globalization, which has led to a steady increase in production volumes and complexity of products aimed at the pursuit of meeting the needs of customers. In this context, one of the main tools in the management of customer value is Lean Manufacturing or Production, though it is considered primarily as a set of tools to reduce the total cost of the resources needed to achieve such needs. This philosophy has recently been enriched in the literature with case studies that link Lean Management (LM) with the improvement of environmental sustainability. The consequence is an expansion of the Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM); indeed, CIM, currently, combining and integrating the key business functions (e.g., business, engineering, manufacturing, and information management) with a view of the life cycle, does not highlight the strategic role of the environmental aspects. In order to deal with the increasingly rapid environmental degradation that is reflected in society, in terms of both economy and quality of life, Industrial Ecology (IE) introduced a new paradigm of principles and instruments of analysis and decision support (e.g., Life Cycle Assessment-LCA, Social Life Cycle Assessment -SLCA, Material Flow Account-MFA, etc.) that can be considered as the main basis for integrating the environmental aspects in each strategy, design, production, final product, and end of life management, through the re-engineering of processes and activities towards the development of an eco-industrial OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2014, 6 6363 system. This paper presents the preliminary observations based on a analysis of both theories (LM-IE) and provides a possible assessment of the key factors relevant to their integration in a "lean environmental management", highlighting both positives (lights) and possible barriers (shadows).