Cassiano Moro Piekarski

Background: Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices have evolved from regulatory requirements to strategic drivers of competitiveness and long-term value creation, particularly in road freight logistics, where environmental impacts, greenhouse gas emissions, labor relations, and stakeholder transparency are critical. Methods: This study identifies and systematizes ESG-related critical performance factors in road logistics by combining a systematic literature review with an analysis of sustainability reports from Brazilian road freight logistics companies. Academic findings and market practices were compared to support the development of an integrated ESG monitoring and assessment dashboard. Results: The findings reveal limited standardization in sustainability monitoring and control practices, with convergence observed around a restricted set of critical performance factors across companies. Conclusions: Based on these results, a unified theoretical dashboard integrating the three ESG dimensions into structured criteria and performance indicators is proposed. The model contributes to a more systematic assessment of ESG maturity and offers a theoretically grounded framework to support sustainability monitoring and managerial decision-making in road freight logistics.

This article presents a systematic literature review aimed at identifying challenges and opportunities for integrating sustainability into the digital product lifecycle. The review followed the PRISMA 2020 guidelines and involved a comprehensive search across three databases—Web of Science, Scopus, and ScienceDirect—using structured Boolean queries. A total of 377 records were retrieved, and after duplicate removal and a multi-stage screening process based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, 56 peer-reviewed studies were selected for analysis. These studies were examined in relation to how they addressed environmental, social, and economic dimensions throughout the digital product lifecycle and UX/UI design. Key challenges identified include high energy consumption, limited user awareness of environmental impacts, and the exclusion of vulnerable populations from digital solutions. Opportunities include the adoption of sustainable design strategies, the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), co-design practices, and data-driven decision-making tools. The findings were synthesized into a conceptual framework structured across three lifecycle stages—pre-development, development, and post-development—and mapped to six sustainability requirements. This study contributes to the field by aligning digital innovation with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and offering a theoretical foundation for the development of practical frameworks and indicators that support sustainable digital product development.

Sustainability has been regarded as a central aspect for the short-, mid-, and long-term survival of businesses. This paradigm brings forth the need for companies to keep up with market competition while addressing the sustainable development aspects of their operations. With the emergence of tools and techniques such as machine learning and artificial intelligence language models, the decline of market entry barriers has prompted organizations to innovate and stay competitive through traditional innovation or employing open innovation (OI). The purpose of this paper is to investigate how OI can enhance sustainability practices. To this end, a systematic review using Methodi Ordinatio was conducted. We investigated authors’ objectives and overarching topics revolving around sustainability and OI. Three areas of opportunity were identified: (i) the literature on sustainability and OI is prolific, and international collaboration is encouraged; (ii) aspects of sustainability and OI are viewed through the prism of environmental concerns, sustainable innovation, social dimensions, principles of circular economy, sustainable business models, and pathways to sustainable growth; and (iii) collaboration, crowdsourcing, knowledge management, and stakeholder engagement are some of the most frequently addressed issues. Future research can be conducted on these avenues to produce significant results for the area of sustainable OI.

Waste management is necessary because the inefficiency of resources in production activities leads to the generation of waste from the use of raw materials. According to the World Bank, global waste generation is expected to reach 3.4 billion tons by 2050, nearly double the amount produced in 2010 (Kaza et al., 2018 Kaza, S., Yao, L., Bhada-Tata, P., & Van Woerden, F. (2018). What a waste 2.0: a global snapshot of solid waste management to 2050. Washington, D.C.: World Bank Publications. http://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-1329-0. http://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-1329-0... ). The problem becomes even more significant when considering the entire value chain of products. For instance, according to the FAO (2014) Food and Agriculture Organization – FAO. (2014). Food waste footprint full-cost accounting (98 p.). Rome: FAO. Retrieved in 2024, January 22, from https://www.fao.org/3/i3991e/i3991e.pdf https://www.fao.org/3/i3991e/i3991e.pdf... , if food wastage were a country, it would rank as the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter. Additionally, Steffen et al. (2015) Steffen, W., Broadgate, W., Deutsch, L., Gaffney, O., & Ludwig, C. (2015). The trajectory of the Anthropocene: the great acceleration. The Anthropocene Review, 2(1), 81-98. http://doi.org/10.1177/2053019614564785. http://doi.org/10.1177/2053019614564785... and Oliveira et al. (2021) Oliveira, J. A., Silva, D. A. L., Puglieri, F. N., & Saavedra, Y. M. B. (2021). Introduction to Life Cycle Engineering and Management (LCEM). In J. A. Oliveira, D. A. Lopes Silva, F. N. Puglieri & Y. M. B. Saavedra (Eds.), Life cycle engineering and management of products. Cham: Springer. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78044-9_1. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78044-9... explain that global socio-economic development exerts pressures and impacts on the environment, with waste generation being one of the driving forces behind this situation. Currently, the world operates with only 9% circularity, revealing a significant gap between waste generation and value creation in a life cycle approach (Fraser et al., 2023 Fraser, M., Haigh, L., & Soria, A. C. (2023). The circularity gap report 2023. Amsterdam: Circle Economy. ).

In the processing of buckwheat to produce flour, wastes account for approximately 20% of the whole grain. This article points out the potential routes for value recovery of the waste obtained in the processing of buckwheat during the production of flour, thus fomenting a circular bioeconomy. To that end, the following steps were taken: (a) characterizing the processing of buckwheat for flour production and the wastes generated; (b) listing existing actions for different uses of the wastes obtained in the processing of buckwheat; (c) categorizing the uses of buckwheat wastes according to the existing literature; and (d) classifying the potential uses of the wastes obtained in the processing of buckwheat within the categories identified. Buckwheat wastes can be used to produce goods in the sectors of fertilizers; food; chemical; pharmaceutical; fabrics, yarns, and threads; cements and asbestos; hygiene and personal products; and other products. Food (human and animal) products presented the greatest market attractiveness, followed by pharmaceutical products. However, potential for innovation considering the sectors' revenue point out that food and chemical products are the most promising. This study provides guidance on how to use innovation to guide opportunities for a more circular bioeconomy toward both environmental and economic benefits.

Recently, electric vehicles have gained enormous popularity due to their performance and efficiency. The investment in developing this new technology is justified by the increased awareness of the environmental impacts caused by combustion vehicles, such as greenhouse gas emissions, which have contributed to global warming and the depletion of oil reserves that are not renewable energy sources. Lithium-ion batteries are the most promising for electric vehicle (EV) applications. They have been widely used for their advantages, such as high energy density, many cycles, and low self-discharge. This work extensively investigates the main methods of estimating the state of charge (SoC) obtained through a literature review. A total of 109 relevant articles were found using the prism method. Some basic concepts of the state of health (SoH); a battery management system (BMS); and some models that can perform SoC estimation are presented. Challenges encountered in this task are discussed, such as the nonlinear characteristics of lithium-ion batteries that must be considered in the algorithms applied to the BMS. Thus, the set of concepts examined in this review supports the need to evolve the devices and develop new methods for estimating the SoC, which is increasingly more accurate and faster. This review shows that these tools tend to be continuously more dependent on artificial intelligence methods, especially hybrid algorithms, which require less training time and low computational cost, delivering real-time information to embedded systems.