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Gaining deep leverage? : Reflecting and shaping real-world lab impacts through leverage points
(2024)
Real-world laboratories (RwLs) are gaining further traction as a means to achieve systemic impacts towards sustainability transformation. To guide the analysis of intended impacts, we introduce the concept of leverage points, discerning where, how, and to what end RwLs intervene in systems. Building on conceptual reasoning, we further develop our argument by exploring two RwL cases. Examining RwLs through the lens of the leverage points opens the way for a balanced and comprehensive approach to systemic experimentation. We invite RwL researchers and practitioners to further advance RwLs' transformative capacity by targeting the design and emerging direction of a system, contributing to a culture of sustainability.
Ways of evaluating the societal impact of real-world labs as a transdisciplinary and transformative research format are under discussion. We present an evaluation approach rooted in structuration theory, with a focus on structure-agency dynamics at the science-society interface. We applied the theory with its four modalities (interpretation schemes, norms, allocative and authoritative resources) to the case of the Mirke neighbourhood in Wuppertal, Germany. Six projects promoted the capacity for co-productive city-making. The effects of the projects were jointly analysed in a co-evaluation process. Previously proposed subcategories of the modalities as an empirical operationalisation were tested and confirmed as being applicable. Five new subcategories were generated. The use of the modalities seems appropriate for co-evaluation processes. The tool is practical, focused on real-world effects, and suitable for transdisciplinary interpretation processes. We encourage further empirical testing of the tool, as well as development of the subcategories.
Biodiversity is under threat all over the planet. Implementing sustainable out-of-home catering (OHC) is a key way to reduce the environmental impact of the agri-food sector. Thus far, there have been no studies that show the impact of food on biodiversity at the menu level in Germany. This means that neither commercial kitchens nor their patrons can record the biodiversity impact of the menus or dishes served there. This article describes the development of an assessment framework and some initial findings. The framework was developed on the basis of a systematic literature review and expert interviews. Taking this as a starting point, an indicator-based approach was developed with a focus on land use. The approach was then validated by assessing recipes used at OHC facilities. The results show that using the BiTe Biodiversity Index (BBI) that was developed, it is possible to assess the biodiversity impacts of meals and optimize them at the level of the dish. The article outlines the possible areas for improvement. Overall, it is clear that this approach can already be used in the OHC context today.
The international architecture competition Solar Decathlon Europe was held in Wuppertal in 2022 and focused on sustainable building and living in the city. The student teams participating in the competition developed buildings that would enable climate-friendly living and be tailored to the "Mirke" district in Wuppertal and the individual needs of the residents in this neighborhood. Not only the neighborhood was the focus of the competition, but also the residents of the Mirke district were involved in the project through a neighborhood panel. As part of the Mirke neighborhood panel, three survey waves were conducted between May 2021 and August 2022. The results and insights gained from the neighborhood panel were incorporated into the project and shared with the architectural teams participating in the competition. In addition, the results were shared and discussed with the urban development department of the city of Wuppertal, local initiatives, and other partners in the neighborhood.
Leftovers lovers vs. haters : a latent class analysis on dinner leftover management behaviours
(2023)
Leftovers are particularly at risk of being discarded, and therefore a main component of household food waste. This study provides insights into sources of heterogeneity in leftover management behaviours, with a particular focus on the use of meal kits providing matched portion and ingredient sizes, and identifies consumer segments via a latent class analysis. We investigate whether belonging to a segment with positive attitudes toward leftovers, and engagement in conscious leftover management behaviours decreases the amounts of dinner leftovers and food waste. Besides, we demonstrate that several food waste antecedents, emotions, personal norms, intention and dinner procurement routines elicit leftover management segment membership. In addition to examining such individual differences, we also investigate the role of meal-level determinants, in particular, whether meal kits heterogeneously affect dinner leftovers depending on the consumer's leftover management segment.
Data was collected from 868 households from six countries, using an online survey and diaries. Results of the latent class analysis point towards five consumer segments. We found differences in dinner leftovers amount across classes and detected heterogeneous effects of meal kits. That is, meal kits were able to diminish leftovers in two segments, but not in the other segments. These results provide novel insights into consumer heterogeneity regarding the occurrence, antecedents, and potential solutions of leftovers and resulting household food waste. Implications for both theory and policy are discussed.
The word "literacy" has come to be used to describe a wide range of competencies, including design literacy - a term that, despite its presence in design discourse, is still characterised by a certain fuzziness. In this paper, we explore this highly discursive theoretical field in order to gain a more nuanced and expanded understanding of the topic. In doing so, we argue that these divergent positions are also due to the ambiguity of the term “design”.
We understand design as the perpetual de- and reconstruction of the world, as a way of worldmaking, both physically and conceptually. Thus, design literacy can be understood as a way to perceive traces of design and its processes, to perceive the world as contingent: a circular cognitive process of recognising that something - if not everything - in our cultural pluriverse is designed, understanding how it was designed and that it can potentially become the subject of design again and again. In our paper, we emphasise the contingency of design - and the ethical level that can arise from understanding the possibility of a different design.
Ultimately, our aim with this paper is to emphasise that design literacy is a crucial competence for encouraging pluralistic perspectives and initiating transition processes, as it helps to acknowledge the temporary necessity but long-term non-necessity of things (which particularly includes the transitory nature of one's own creations).
To date, the circular economy has fallen short of its promise to reduce our resource demand and transform our production and consumption system. One key problem is the lack of understanding that highly promising strategies such as refuse, rethink, and reduce can be properly addressed using research on sufficiency. This article argues that a shift in focus is required in research and policy development from consumers who buy and handle circularly designed products to consumption patterns that follow the logic of sufficiency and explain how sufficiency-oriented concepts can be incorporated into existing social practices. The authors show that sufficiency is not necessarily as radical and unattractive as is often claimed, making it a suitable yet underrated strategy for sustainability and the transition to an effective circular economy. The case of urban gardening shows that small interventions can have far-reaching effects and transform consumption patterns as the logic of availability is contested by newly developed concepts of "enoughness" and opposition to "über-availability." The authors propose utilizing comprehensive state-of-the-art theories of consumption and human action when developing strategies and policies to make the circular economy sustainable while being more critical of utilitarian approaches. Using social practice theories that have proven to be beneficial allows human actions to be comprehensively analyzed by recognizing their embeddedness in social and material frameworks; addressing the meaning, competences, and materials of routinized human behavior; and examining indirect effects.
The impending climate catastrophe gives rise to an increased environmental awareness among many designers, who direct their work towards the paradigm of sustainability. While designing with an "ecological lens" is necessarily oriented towards the future, we highlight the past as an inspiring realm to explore. Rather than recycling materials, we encourage the recycling of ideas as a combination of historiographic and speculative design methods.
We will present a framework that extends the idea of design as a "projecting" activity into the idea of design as a constant negotiation process about the relevance and appropriateness of current and past technologies. Design revolves not just about what will be, but to a large extent about what should remain and what should recur, or as Jan Michl put it: "seeing design as redesign" (Michl 2002). We will illustrate the thought of designing futures with pasts by means of a research project that aims at developing a refrigerator for circular economy. The refrigerator - as the currently dominant technology to preserve food - will serve as a starting point to show how artefacts and architecture as well as human skills and knowledge in the preparation and preservation of food are historically interlinked. The history of food preservation unfolds not only along the evolution of the refrigerator, but encompasses household techniques like smoking, curing and fermenting, as well as long-forgotten architectural "answers" such as deep-freeze community buildings. We will revisit three historical examples of food preservation and present the method ‘throwing’ past ideas into the future.
Three main arguments are presented in this richly illustrated paper: First, that historiography is a form of designing, second, that designing is constituted and influenced by path dependencies (cf. David 1985) that are deeply rooted in the past and third, that the past is a valuable source of inspiration when designing for sustainable development. Looking at history becomes a way of "mental window shopping" (Simon 1985, 188) for approaches that are to be reactivated and transformed.
Public catering has become increasingly important in recent years. With increasing annual customers, the sector's impact on the environment is also growing continuously. At the same time, public catering offers a lever to promote sustainable nutrition that has rarely been used so far. Small changes in kitchen practices and food offers can thus be multiplied into a significant positive impact on environmental challenges, such as climate change or loss of biodiversity due to the large number of servings. In contrast to private households, management decisions in public catering can influence the food-related environmental impact of thousands of customers. This article deals with the nationwide level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and resource use in the German public catering segment "business" and its saving potentials by different scenarios of unsupported and supported recipe revision. In this paper, we define "unsupported" as the intuitive optimization of recipes by employees of public catering businesses. In contrast, "supported" approaches had to meet specific target goals, for example of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ernährung; engl. German Nutrition Society or the sustainable level. Specifically, we will test how (A) an unsupported recipe revision, (B) a recipe revision based on dietary recommendations and (C) a recipe revision using scientific guidance affect the environmental impact of a dish. As a methodological framework, an online survey of public catering companies was conducted as well as a scenario analysis at menu level and at nationwide level. The results are based on empirical data on the one hand, and on extrapolations on the other. The results show that the nationwide implementation of recipe revision according to scientific guidance-such as concrete target goals for the GHG emissions per serving-can save up to 44% of resource use in the German business catering sector (which corresponds to 3.4 million tons of resources per year) and as much as 40% of GHG emissions (0.6 million tons GHG emissions per year). Even in the scenario of unsupported recipe revision, GHG and resource savings of up to 20% can be realized. The results show that public catering can reduce its material and carbon footprint by 20% overnight. Moreover, the findings show indications for the sustainable transformation of public catering. Nevertheless, it must be noted that these are some first steps of the transformation, which will require further changes with even greater impacts and political activities.
The food system plays a crucial role in mitigating climate change. Even if fossil fuel emissions are halted immediately, current trends in global food systems may prevent the achieving of the Paris Agreement's climate targets. The high degree of variability and uncertainty involved in calculating diet-related greenhouse gas emissions limits the ability to evaluate reduction potentials to remain below a global warming of 1.5 or 2 degrees. This study assessed Western European dietary patterns while accounting for uncertainty and variability. An extensive literature review provided value ranges for climate impacts of animal-based foods to conduct an uncertainty analysis via Monte Carlo simulation. The resulting carbon footprints were assessed against food system-specific greenhouse gas emission thresholds. The range and absolute value of a diet carbon footprint become larger the higher the amount of products with highly varying emission values in the diet. All dietary pattern carbon footprints overshoot the 1.5 degrees threshold. The vegan, vegetarian, and diet with low animal-based food intake were predominantly below the 2 degrees threshold. Omnivorous diets with more animal-based product content trespassed them. Reducing animal-based foods is a powerful strategy to decrease emissions. However, further mitigation strategies are required to achieve climate goals.