Sustainable business practice' is an aspiration for an increasing proportion of small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) around the world, promising profitability, resilience and positive social and environmental impacts. 'Lean thinking' has evolved as a popular business strategy for SMEs to achieve sustainable business practice, addressing the need for efficiency in production and waste reduction. In this study we explore the co-evolution of 'lean and green thinking' and the potential for lean and green practices to enable successful transitions to sustainable business practice.Focusing on investigations into manufacturing SMEs in Queensland, Australia, we first establish four key enablers and six key barriers to sustainable business practice, derived from a series of indepth interviews with Chief Executive Officers and senior managers involved in sustainability and lean manufacturing. We offer an institutional theory perspective on these findings, concluding the potential for normative, coercive and mimetic drivers to influence SMEs to shape environmental, social and economic decision making and legitimise the transition to sustainable business practice.We then present a novel 'Model of strategic enablers of sustainable business practice' to guide SMEs to intentionally use their lean and green strategies to successfully adopt sustainable business outcomes. We propose that through adopting lean and green thinking to transition to sustainable business practice, SMEs can more rapidly contribute to the circular economy at the level of firm.Agencies and professional bodies can support SMEs in this transition through targeted interventions that address the enablers and barriers presented.

Road dust contain potentially toxic pollutants originating from a range of anthropogenic sources common to urban land uses and soil inputs from surrounding areas. The research study analysed the mineralogy and morphology of dust samples from road surfaces from different land uses and background soil samples to characterise the relative source contributions to road dust. The road dust consist primarily of soil derived minerals (60%) with quartz averaging 40-50% and remainder being clay forming minerals of albite, microcline, chlorite and muscovite originating from surrounding soils. About 2% was organic matter primarily originating from plant matter. Potentially toxic pollutants represented about 30% of the build-up. These pollutants consist of brake and tire wear, combustion emissions and fly ash from asphalt. Heavy metals such as Zn, Cu, Pb, Ni, Cr and Cd primarily originate from vehicular traffic while Fe, Al and Mn primarily originate from surrounding soils. The research study confirmed the significant contribution of vehicular traffic to dust deposited on urban road surfaces.

The shift towards sustainable manufacturing processes and products has influenced business organizations to improve their environmental performance and efficiency. 'Lean thinking' has evolved to 'lean and green thinking' as a targeted intervention for organizations to implement sustainable business models that reduce waste and improve material efficiency, and subsequently minimise costs. The lean and green concept however is still relatively new and it remains unclear for many as to how exactly lean thinking can contribute to the sustainability transformation of organizations. The objective of this research was to undertake a systematic literature review of how the implementation of lean and green initiatives could lead to sustainable business practice. This article includes an analysis of both conceptual and empirical research papers discussing various industrial contexts, and evaluation of: a) the impact of lean methods on environmental performance; and b) the variety of integrated lean and green models.The review highlights the ad hoc and limited use of lean thinking within corporate sustainability initiatives and the authors establish a 'lean and green matrix' that identifies opportunities to embed lean and green practices in five common work streams including waste, energy, emissions, water and chemical management. In addition to comparing different industries and their systems, this review provides a reference point for further investigation into lean and green practices. The findings contribute to the authors' research agenda that aims to develop a replicable system for holistically exploring strategies in corporate environmental management and prioritising the most appropriate lean methods. It is proposed that industrial practitioners could benefit from such a system, which could transform their organization's performance through well-integrated and aligned sustainable business practices.

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Incorporating engineering concepts into middle school curriculum is seen as an effective way to improve students' problem-solving skills. A selection of findings is reported from a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-based unit in which students in the second year (grade 8) of a three-year longitudinal study explored engineering concepts and principles pertaining to the functioning of simple machines. The culminating activity, the focus of this paper, required the students to design, construct, test, and evaluate a trebuchet catapult. We consider findings from one of the schools, a co-educational school, where we traced the design process developments of four student groups from two classes. The students' descriptions and explanations of the simple machines used in their catapult design are examined, together with how they rated various aspects of their engineering designs. Included in the findings are students' understanding of how their simple machines were simulated by the resources supplied and how the machines interacted in forming a complex machine. An ability to link physical materials with abstract concepts and an awareness of design constraints on their constructions were apparent, although a desire to create a ''perfect'' catapult despite limitations in the physical materials rather than a prototype for testing concepts was evident. Feedback from teacher interviews added further insights into the students' developments as well as the teachers' professional learning. An evolving framework for introducing engineering education in the pre-secondary years is proposed.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) (i.e., planning, timetabling, preparation, teaching strategies, content knowledge, problem solving, classroom management, questioning, implementation, assessment, and viewpoints) was used to explain links to student outcomes in STEM education. The study showed how pedagogical knowledge practices may be linked to student outcomes (knowledge, understanding, skill development, and values and attitudes) for a STEM education activity.

BackgroundMunicipal wastewaters contain a multitude of organic compounds derived from domestic and industrial sources including active components of pharmaceutical and personal care products and compounds used in agriculture, such as pesticides, or food processing such as artificial sweeteners often referred to as micropollutants. Some of these compounds or their degradation products may have detrimental effects on the environment, wildlife and humans. Acesuflame is one of the most popular artificial sweeteners to date used in foodstuffs. The main objectives of this descriptive study were to evaluate the presence of micropollutants in both the influent and effluent of a large-scale conventional biological wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in South-East Queensland receiving wastewater from households, hospitals and various industries.MethodsBased on USEPA Method 1694: Filtered samples were spiked with mass-labelled chemical standards and then analysed for the micropollutants using liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry.ResultsThe presence of thirty-eight compounds were detected in the wastewater influent to the treatment plant while nine of the compounds in the categories of analgesic, anti-inflammatory, alkaloid and lipid/cholesterol lowering drugs were undetectable (100 % removed) in the effluent. They were: Analgesic: Paracetamol, Salicylic acid, Oxycodone; Anti-inflammatory: Naproxen + ve, Atorvastatin, Indomethacin, Naproxen; Alkaloid: Caffeine; Lipid/cholesterol lowering: Gemfibrozol.ConclusionsThe study results revealed that the micropollutants removal through this biological treatment process was similar to previous research reported from other countries including Europe the Americas and Asia, except for acesulfame, a highly persistent artificial sweetener. Surprisingly, acesulfame was diminished to a much greater extent (>90 %) than previously reported research for this type of WWTPs (45–65 %) that only include physical removal of objects and solids and a biodegradation step.

The on-site treatment of sewage is common in all rural and regional areas of the world. Due to the public health and environmental risks that these treatment systems pose, the need for adopting performance based management strategies is gaining increasing recognition. This demands the establishment of performance objectives for on-site sewage treatment and disposal which are based on stringent scientific analysis. A research project was undertaken to identify and investigate the role of influential site and soil characteristics in the treatment performance of subsurface effluent disposal areas. The treatment performances of a number of septic systems on a range of site and soil conditions were investigated together with detailed soil analysis. The changes to soil physico-chemical characteristics of the disposal area due to effluent application and its effluent renovation capacity were found to be directly related to the subsurface drainage characteristics. Significant changes to exchangeable cations and chemical parameters such as pH, electrical conductivity and cation exchange capacity (CEC) can result due to subsurface effluent application. A relationship exists between chemical parameters such as exchangeable Na and Ca:Mg ratio and CEC. A strong correlation also exists between the depth to the restrictive subsurface horizon and observed treatment performance. The study confirmed that soil chemistry can be a valuable predictive tool for evaluating the long-term performance of sewage effluent disposal systems particularly in poorly drained sites.