ZEMCH 2015 - International Conference Proceedings | Page 40

2014): The first target is guiding the citizens to set up sustainable solutions to generate power for
their buildings by offering innovative solutions that are already tested and guaranteed in term of
money back. The second target is offering all the required technical information about applying
new sustainable strategies to the building and how it will affect economically. The third target is
focusing on stretching the life span of the resources and the lifecycle of energy. The fourth and
the last target is aiming to create new jobs. Another successful project is recycling carpets; most
European companies now sort the carpets to reuse or recycle them according to their components instead of burning them or sending them to the land fill. Srinivas. H (2013) highlighted the
advantages of recycling or reusing the carpets, it consumes less energy comparing with manufacturing new carpets. Moreover, it deducts the energy needed to get the virgin materials and
minimizes the areas used for landfills. In addition to that, recycling carpets helps in opening new
markets for eco-friendly products.
2. Agenda 21: Agenda 21 was established in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro as a result of the world conference on environment and development by the Center for Economic Development (UCED).
The main purpose of this agenda is to put international guidelines for sustainable development
for different subject areas; economic, environmental, social, and industrial (Plessis 2013). Figure 6
shows what the causes of unsustainable development are to avoid them.

Figure 6: Causes of unsustainable development (PSDN 2015)
To act locally with referring to agenda 21, “Local Agenda 21” was established to achieve human
needs for living quality life by protecting the ecosystem with human practices which can be
achieved by interactive and collaborative participation (UN 2015). Yirmibesoglu (2015) highlighted
in his research three main goals for Local Agenda 21: The first goal was the local administration of
the city which should act and participate with the citizens to implement Local Agenda 21 guidelines. The second goal was increasing the interaction between local and international communities to encourage co-operation between both administrations and exchange knowledge and
experiences in the environmental field. The third goal was encouraging women and youth to be

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ZEMCH 2015 | International Conference | Bari - Lecce, Italy