On the Sustainability Indexing of Carbon Footprint Reduction Approaches for Manufacturing Industry

Due to global warming, EU Commission developed and disseminated a roadmapRoadmap towards carbon reduction and neutrality, called EU Green DealGreen Deal. Since manufacturingManufacturing is one of the highest contributors in increased greenhouse gases emissions, industry must align with Green DealGreen Deal aiming to reduce its carbon footprintCarbon Footprint significantly. There are several ways of decreasing carbon footprintCarbon Footprint in industry, ranging from reducing resources consumptionConsumption to carbon capture and digitalisation of manufacturingManufacturing. Until now, there has been no attempt to categorize and stratify the different technological approaches, in terms of the different sustainabilitySustainability aspects; social, financial and environmentalEnvironmental. The aim of this paper is to categorize and stratify key approaches per different manufacturingManufacturing level. A literature reviewLiterature review was performed to collect all technologies and approaches that aim to reduce carbon footprintCarbon Footprint in industry which were then categorize per manufacturingManufacturing level, using an updated version of manufacturingManufacturing levels, expanding further than the factoryFactory level, including Industry 5.0Industry 5.0 aspects. Each technology and approach were assessed in terms of environmentalEnvironmental and financial sustainabilitySustainability and cost. The paper shows that industries should take into consideration not just the environmentalEnvironmental aspect of these technologies, but also the social and the financial aspects.