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For achieving a transition towards sustainable development, central importance is attached to science and education, and especially higher education. Suitable formats are needed for empowering students to perform transformative research. On the basis of transdisciplinary and transformative real-world laboratory research and futures studies, we develop encompassing learning and teaching module: the Transformative Innovation Lab (til). The lab builds on insights into five key competencies and three types of knowledge needed for developing socially robust sustainability innovations. In this paper, the main features of this experiential and reflexive format are presented and linked to a handbook for facilitating the lab. Central learnings for implementing the format in existing study programmes from two test runs at two German universities are shared and discussed.
Practices of urban experimentation are currently seen as a promising approach to making planning processes more collaborative and adaptive. The practices develop not only in the context of ideal-type concepts of urban experiments and urban labs but also organically in specific governance contexts. We present such an organic case in the city of Wuppertal, Germany, centred around a so-called change-maker initiative, "Utopiastadt." This initiative joined forces with the city administration and collaborated with a private property owner and the local economic development agency in an unusual planning process for the development of a central brownfield site. Ultimately, the consortium jointly published a framework concept that picked up the vision of the "Utopiastadt Campus" as an open-ended catalyst area for pilot projects and experiments on sustainability and city development. The concept was adopted by the city council and Utopiastadt purchased more than 50% of the land. In order to analyse the wider governance context and power struggles, we apply the social-constructivist theory of Strategic Action Fields (SAFs). We focused on the phases of contention and settlement, the shift in interaction forms, the role of an area development board as an internal governance unit and the influences of proximate fields, strategic action, and state facilitation on the development. We aim to demonstrate the potential of the theory of SAFs to understand a long-term urban development process and how an episode of experimentation evolved within this process. We discuss the theory's shortcomings and reflect critically on whether the process contributed to strengthening collaborative and experimental approaches in the governance of city development.
Citizen science is a transdisciplinary approach that responds to the current science policy agenda: in terms of supporting open science, and by using a range of science communication instruments. In particular, it opens up scientific research processes by involving citizens at different phases; this also creates a range of opportunities for science communication to happen This article explores methodological and practical characteristics of citizen science as a form of science communication by examining three case studies that took different approaches to citizens' participation in science. Through these, it becomes clear that communication in citizen science is "always" science communication and an essential part of "doing science".
Urban transitions and transformations research fosters a dialogue between sustainability transitions theory an inter- and transdisciplinary research on urban change. As a field, urban transitions and transformations research encompasses plural analytical and conceptual perspectives. In doing so, this field opens up sustainability transitions research to new communities of practice in urban environments, including mayors, transnational municipal networks, and international organizations.
Sustainable consumption policies affect households differently, in particular when they are confronted with limitations on income, time or freedom of movement (e.g. driving to work). And although it is possible to assess either the average or individual material footprint (per capita or via surveys), we lack methods to describe different types of households, their lifestyles and footprints in a representative manner.
We explore possibilities to do so in this article. Our interest lies in finding an applicable method that allows us to describe the footprint of households regarding their socio-demographic characteristics but also find the causes consumption behaviour. This type of monitoring would enable us to tailor policies for sustainable consumption that respect people's needs and restrictions.
Quantitative environmental assessments are crucial in working effectively towards sustainable production and consumption patterns. Over the last decades, life cycle assessments (LCA) have been established as a viable means of measuring the environmental impacts of products along the supply chain. In regard to user and consumption patterns, however, methodological weaknesses have been reported and, several attempts have been made to improve LCA accordingly, for example, by including higher order effects and behavioural science support. In a discussion of such approaches, we show that there has been no explicit attention to the concepts of consumption, often leading to product-centred assessments. We introduce social practice theories in order to make consumption patterns accessible to LCA. Social practices are routinised actions comprising interconnected elements (materials, competences, and meanings), which make them conceivable as one entity (e.g. cooking). Because most social practices include some sort of consumption (materials, energy, air), we were able to develop a framework which links social practices to the life cycle inventory of LCA. The proposed framework provides a new perspective of quantitative environmental assessments by switching the focus from products or users to social practices. Accordingly, we see the opportunity in overcoming the reductionist view that people are just users of products, and instead we see them as practitioners in social practises. This change could enable new methods of interdisciplinary research on consumption, integrating intend-oriented social sciences and impact-oriented assessments. However, the framework requires further revision and, especially, empirical validation.
In Germany, the consumer sector "food" is responsible for around 15% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Due to the high demand for food outside the home, changes in this area have the potential to significantly boost climate-efficient nutrition, and this includes changes in school kitchens. Currently, about 264 kg of GHG emissions per year are attributable to the food served to each school child who has school lunch year-round.
Therefore, the project "Climate and Energy Efficient Cooking in Schools" ("Klima- und Energieeffiziente Küche in Schulen” or KEEKS for short) sought to determine the status quo in the kitchens of 22 all-day schools serving a total of 5,000 lunches per day. This was done by taking energy measurements and analyzing the equipment, technology and processes used in the kitchens, and by interviewing kitchen managers using guided interviews. Greenhouse gas emissions arising from menus and kitchen processes were calculated, potential savings were identified, and recommendations for action were developed and tested. The most effective measures - the reduction and substitution of meat and meat products and the establishment of efficient waste management systems - save around 10% of a school kitchen’s greenhouse gas emissions. The recommendations that have been developed can support kitchen staff in designing a climate-friendly, child-friendly, healthy and affordable menu in the school kitchen.
Nutrition is one of the most important areas for the great transformation. So how can a shift towards a sustainable food system be achieved? This paper addresses this question - based on more than ten years of research on sustainable nutrition at the Wuppertal Institute. It focuses on public catering, because even small changes - for example in the choice of ingredients - have a huge impact here. With appropriate policy frameworks, public catering can serve as an easily accessible place for consumers to experience sustainable food and at the same time be a reliable buyer of biodiversity and climate-friendly food from farmers. However, other actors are also needed for a transformation of the food system: The "Zukunftsimpuls" addresses politics, (agricultural) industry, science and every individual - because the transformation of the food system is a task for the entire society.
The demand for metals from the entire periodic table is currently increasing due to the ongoing digitalization. However, their use within electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) poses problems as they cannot be recovered sufficiently in the end-of-life (EoL) phase. In this paper, we address the unleashed dissipation of metals caused by the design of EEE for which no globally established recycling technology exists. We describe the European Union's (EU) plan to strive for a circular economy (CE) as a political response to tackle this challenge. However, there is a lack of feedback from a design perspective. It is still unknown what the implications for products would be if politics were to take the path of a CE at the level of metals. To provide clarification in this respect, a case study for indium is presented and linked to its corresponding recycling-metallurgy of zinc and lead. As a result, a first material-specific rule on the design of so-called "anti-dissipative" products is derived, which actually supports designing EEE with recycling in mind and represents an already achieved CE on the material level. In addition, the design of electrotechnical standardization is being introduced. As a promising tool, it addresses the multi-dimensional problems of recovering metals from urban ores and assists in the challenge of enhancing recycling rates. Extending the focus to other recycling-metallurgy besides zinc and lead in further research would enable the scope for material-specific rules to be widened.