Refine
Year of Publication
- 2012 (9) (remove)
Document Type
- Peer-Reviewed Article (3)
- Conference Object (3)
- Report (2)
- Part of a Book (1)
Division
Domestic sustainability innovations are considered to play a key role for pathways to sustainable consumption. The paper shows how open innovation processes can lead to such sustainable innovations, by means of an experimental and interactive infrastructure. It presents how – based on results of the LivingLab project conducted at the Wuppertal Institute within a European Consortium (Lead TU Delft) - currently an extended Sustainable LivingLab approach is developed and applied in two joint research projects at national and international level. To conceptualise this approach, we refer to recent proceedings in innovation and sustainability research, i.e. practice theory to analyse sustainable product design. Focusing on technical solutions and individual behaviour while assuming people's needs as fixed entities, disregards the dynamics of everyday practices in which technologies themselves create needs. Therefore, the consumer's position should be strengthened through userdriven innovation. LivingLabs are combined lab-/household systems, which put the user, i.e. the home occupant, and value chain related actors (producer, handicraft, etc.) on centre stage in the innovation process. We introduce its research agenda and the Three Phases Model of research. We hypothesise that at the end of this userintegrated innovation process developed products have a higher chance of successful diffusion. To illustrate this, we show how the LivingLab infrastructure is employed for the German InnovationCity Ruhr and how it can promote the development of user-centred sustainable consumption strategies.
MIPS / hot spot analysis
(2012)
The field of nutrition is facing numerous social, ecological and economic challenges in the coming decades. The food industry belongs to the most significant economic sectors worldwide and the increasing population of 9 billion in 2050 will cause a growing demand on food. So far, changing lifestyles, especially the global rising consumption of meat and dairy products are increasing environmental damage. Moreover our health and wellbeing are the direct result of healthy or unhealthy nourishment and influence follow-up indicators like individual and public health, the expense of the health sector and work productivity.
The material footprint is a tool to measure and optimize the resource consumption of both products and their ingredients and the production processes along the whole value chain. It covers the whole life cycle of the products, from the extraction of raw materials to the processing industry, distribution, consumption, recycling, and disposal. In order to decrease resource consumption to a level in line with the planetary boundaries, the material footprint of household consumption should achieve a level of six to eight tonnes per capita in a year by 2050. This means a reduction in natural resource consumption by a factor of 5 to 10 in Western European countries. In order to ensure a decent lifestyle for all people in 2050, also the material footprint of nutrition has to be reduced significantly by 2050.
The paper shows the relevance and role of nutrition in the overall material footprint of households on the basis of existing studies on the overall resource consumption caused by household consumption. Quantified meal and diet examples are given. It also discusses the causes of food waste and raises the question how a reduction of food waste is possible and can help decreasing the resource consumption in the food sector.
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to summarize and discuss the results from the LIVING LAB design study, a project within the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union. The aim of this project was to develop the conceptual design of the LIVING LAB Research Infrastructure that will be used to research human interaction with, and stimulate the adoption of, sustainable, smart and healthy innovations around the home.
Design/methodology/approach - A LIVING LAB is a combined lab-/household system, analysing existing product-service-systems as well as technical and socioeconomic influences focused on the social needs of people, aiming at the development of integrated technical and social innovations and simultaneously promoting the conditions of sustainable development (highest resource efficiency, highest user orientation, etc.). This approach allows the development and testing of sustainable domestic technologies, while putting the user on centre stage.
Findings - As this paper discusses the design study, no actual findings can be presented here but the focus is on presenting the research approach.
Originality/value - The two elements (real homes and living laboratories) of this approach are what make the LIVING LAB research infrastructure unique. The research conducted in LIVING LAB will be innovative in several respects. First, it will contribute to market innovation by producing breakthroughs in sustainable domestic technologies that will be easy to install, user friendly and that meet environmental performance standards in real life. Second, research from LIVING LAB will contribute to innovation in practice by pioneering new forms of in-context, user-centred research, including long-term and cross-cultural research.
Increasing resource efficiency can potentially deliver important economic and environmental benefits. Many of these benefits are regularly foregone because the financial sector's capacity to adequately take the opportunities and risks arising from resource utilization and related climate change aspects into account has so far remained relatively undeveloped. Focusing on the case of Germany, a number of barriers to the inclusion of resource efficiency and climate change aspects into financial services' considerations are presented. Corresponding measures for improving the capacity of the financial sector to better integrate resource efficiency considerations and climate change related risks into its operating procedures are introduced. The measures encompass the areas of risk controlling, company reporting, institutional reporting requirements, as well as additional supporting measures.
The article estimates the natural resource consumption due to nutrition from the supply and demand sides. Using the MIPS (Material Input per Service Unit) methodology, we analyzed the use of natural resources along the supply chains of three Italian foodstuffs: wheat, rice and orange-based products. These figures were then applied for evaluating the sustainability of diets in 13 European countries. The results outline which phases in food production are more natural resource demanding than others. We also observed different levels of sustainability in the European diets and the effect of different foodstuffs in the materials, water and air consumption.