The theory of ecological modernization explains the forces, mechanisms and dynamics of environmental reform in modern society. Its value is illustrated in the ecological restructuring of the chemical industry on a national and global scale. Detailed studies on the paint industry, the plastic and polymer sector and the pesticide industry show how and to what extent the environment is becoming a crucial factor in the redesigning of the institutional order of society.

In this book key predictors of renewable feedstock adoption to achieve carbon neutrality in the European chemical industry are explored. Systematic data collection for the analysis was conducted through semi-structured expert interviews and document analysis, validating existing theories, including agent-based models of innovation diffusion, the multi-level perspective of socio-technical transition and technological innovation systems. The research findings led to insights on the key predictors of renewable resource adoption and support practitioners to manage the transition to carbon neutrality.

Sustainable development is now accepted as a necessary goal for achieving societal, economic and environmental objectives. Within this chemistry has a vital role to play. The chemical industry is successful but traditionally success has come at a heavy cost to the environment. The challenge for chemists and others is to develop new products, processes and services that achieve societal, economic and environmental benefits. This requires an approach that reduces the materials and energy intensity of chemical processes and products; minimises the dispersion of harmful chemicals in the environment; maximises the use of renewable resources and extends the durability and recyclability of products in a way that increases industrial competitiveness as well as improve its tarnished image.

Through innovative design, creation, processing, use, and disposal of substances, the chemical industry plays a major role in advancing applications to support sustainability in a way that will allow humanity to meet current environmental, economic, and societal needs without compromising the progress and success of future generations. Based on a workshop held in February 2005 that brought together a broad cross section of disciplines and organizations in the chemical industry, this report identifies a set of overarching Grand Challenges for Sustainability research in chemistry and chemical engineering to assist the chemical industry in defining a sustainability agenda. These Grand Challenges include life cycle analysis, renewable chemical feedstocks, and education, among others.

The idea of ecological modernisation originated in Western Europe in the 1980s, gaining attention around the world by the late 1990s. At the core of this social scientific and policy-oriented approach is the view that contemporary societies have the capability of dealing with their environmental crises. Experiences in some countries demonstrate that modern institutions can incorporate environmental interests into their daily routines. Elsewhere, economic and political interests dominate development trajectories and environmental deterioration continues, challenging the premises of ecological modernisation. This volume brings together research on ecological modernisation practices around the world. Studies on Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, the USA, and Southeast Asia examine the applicability of this approach to advanced industrial countries, transitional economies and developing countries respectively. Authors critically examine the premises of ecological modernisation theory, assess its value for understanding past and present environmental transformations, and outline paths for designing future sustainable development. Taken together, the studies in collected this volume offer significant refinements, extensions and critiques of ecological modernisation theory and suggest important directions for future research on social and policy dimensions of environmental change.

Environmental assessment and management involve the production of scientific knowledge and its use in decision-making processes. The result is that within these essentially rational, political assessment frameworks, experts are creating and applying scientific knowledge for decision and management purposes that actually have strong ethical and aesthetic dimensions. Yet these rational political frameworks lack the tools to provide guidance on ethical and aesthetic issues that affect the wider public.This revolutionary work argues that ethical and aesthetic dimensions can only be brought into environmental politics and policies by citizens actively taking a stand on the specific matters in question. The author draws on Habermas trisection of rationality as cognitive-instrumental, moral-practical and aesthetic-expressive, to suggest that truly effective environmental policy needs to activate all three approaches and not favour only the rational. To achieve this objective, the author argues that public participation in environmental policy and assessment is necessary to counteract the dictatorship of technical and economic instrumentality in environmental policy - the failure to take ethical and aesthetic rationalities into account - and, more importantly, how such policy is applied on the ground to shape our natural and material world.