From the article: "This article evaluates the application of blockchain technology to improve organic or fair-trade food traceability from “Farm to Fork” in light of European regulations. This study aims to shed light on the challenges in the organic food chain to overcome, the drivers for blockchain technology, and the challenges in current projects."
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This article describes a method for promoting sustainable business practices in the hospitality sector and focusses on energy usage in hotels. It raises questions about the actual impact of eco-labels on actual environmental performance.
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This article analyses four of the most prominent city discourses and introduces the lens of urban vitalism as an overarching interdisciplinary concept of cities as places of transformation and change. We demonstrate the value of using urban vitalism as a lens to conceptualize and critically discuss different notions on smart, inclusive, resilient and sustainable just cities. Urban vitalism offers a process-based lens which enables us to understand cities as places of transformation and change, with people and other living beings at its core. The aim of the article is to explore how the lens of vitalism can help us understand and connect ongoing interdisciplinary academic debates about urban development and vice versa, and how these ongoing debates inform our understanding of urban vitalism.
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New consumer awareness is shifting industry towards more sustainable practices, creating a virtuous cycle between producers and consumers enabled by eco-labelling. Eco-labelling informs consumers of specific characteristics of products and has been used to market greener products. Eco-labelling in the food industry has yet been mostly focused on promoting organic farming, limiting the scope to the agricultural stage of the supply chain, while carbon labelling informs on the carbon footprint throughout the life cycle of the product. These labelling strategies help value products in the eyes of the consumer. Because of this, decision makers are motivated to adopt more sustainable models. In the food industry, this has led to important environmental impact improvements at the agricultural stage, while most other stages in the Food Supply Chain (FSC) have continued to be designed inefficiently. The objective of this work is to define a framework showing how carbon labelling can be integrated into the design process of the FSC. For this purpose, the concept of Green Supply Chain Network Design (GSCND) focusing on the strategic decision making for location and allocation of resources and production capacity is developed considering operational, financial and environmental (CO2 emissions) issues along key stages in the product life cycle. A multi-objective optimization strategy implemented by use of a genetic algorithm is applied to a case study on orange juice production. The results show that the consideration of CO2 emission minimization as an objective function during the GSCND process together with techno-economic criteria produces improved FSC environmental performance compared to both organic and conventional orange juice production. Typical results thus highlight the importance that carbon emissions optimization and labelling may have to improve FSC beyond organic labelling. Finally, CO2 emission-oriented labelling could be an important tool to improve the effects eco-labelling has on food product environmental impact going forward.
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This paper describes a study into consumers' reasons for buying socially responsible (SR) products, such as Fair Trade products and organic meat. As opposed to other studies, we use a qualitative approach based on 25 in-depth interviews and include several different products in the research. This leads to several new results, such as: (1) buying SR products is perceived as an imperfect moral duty; (2) low quality of SR products is a dissatisfier, but high quality not a satisfier; (3) the attitude towards SR products is related to the reputation of charitable funds; (4) the demand for SR products is negatively related to the frequency of purchasing SR products; (5) reflection on SR products raises the demand for SR products; (6) consumers that have witnessed the social problems that SR products aim to alleviate purchase more SR products. Finally, we find that the demand for different SR products is correlated: if a consumer buys one SR product, it is more likely that (s)he purchases other SR products as well.
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The paper forms a rejoinder to the paper by David Weaver ('Organic, incremental and induced paths to sustainable mass tourism convergence'). It fully agrees with David Weaver that a sustainable development of tourism should focus on sustainable mass tourism development and not, as is currently the case, so much on niche products labelled 'sustainable'. However, it critiques Weaver's operationalization of sustainability, his assumption that sustainable mass tourism (SMT) will be the 'emergent norm' due to external factors, and his destination development theory showing different paths that, however, all end in SMT. Finally it is shown that the path development idea might be at odds with systems thinking.
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Wat is de rol van prijs in duurzaam consumentengedrag? ‘Omdat het te duur is’ is een veelgehoord argument wanneer mensen wordt gevraagd waarom ze geen duurzame producten kopen. Maar is dat werkelijk zo, of is dit een makkelijk alibi van mensen om niet hun gedrag te hoeven veranderen? We zijn over het algemeen niet bepaald armlastig in de westerse wereld, dus is het werkelijk een gebrek aan geld, of is er een andere oorzaak van dit gedrag? Om daar een uitspraak over te kunnen doen, hebben we de literatuur onderzocht op de relatie tussen prijs en duurzaamheid. Overall conclusie: een bepaalde groep mensen geeft in onderzoeken aan best bereid te zijn om meer te betalen voor duurzamere oplossingen, tot wel 29%. Maar sociale wenselijkheid speelt daarbij waarschijnlijk een grote rol. Want gezien het nog geringe marktaandeel van duurzame producten is de realiteit weerbarstiger. De meerderheid van de mensen is kennelijk nog niet zodanig overtuigd van de meerwaarde dat ze er ook extra geld voor over hebben. Dit document is opgedeeld in twee secties: 1. sectie 1 beschrijft een analytische beschouwing van de literatuur. Dit onderzoek schetst de ontwikkeling van de artikelen die tot dusverre gepubliceerd zijn over bereidheid van consumenten om een meerprijs te betalen voor duurzame producten; 2. sectie 2 beschrijft een inhoudelijke beschouwing van een selectie van de literatuur: specifiek artikelen die (experimenteel) onderzoek beschrijven naar de willingness to pay voor duurzame producten en diensten.
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VHL University of Applied Sciences (VHL) is a sustainable University of AppliedSciences that trains students to be ambitious, innovative professionals andcarries out applied research to make a significant contribution to asustainable world. Together with partners from the field, they contribute to innovative and sustainable developments through research and knowledge valorisation. Their focus is on circular agriculture, water, healthy food & nutrition, soil and biodiversity – themes that are developed within research lines in the variousapplied research groups. These themes address the challenges that are part ofthe international sustainability agenda for 2030: the sustainable developmentgoals (SDGs). This booklet contains fascinating and representative examplesof projects – completed or ongoing, from home and abroad – that are linked tothe SDGs. The project results contribute not only to the SDGs but to their teaching as well.
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De productie en consumptie van voedselproducten is op dit moment verantwoordelijk voor een groot deel van de milieubelasting en uitstoot van broeikasgassen. Het wordt daarom steeds belangrijker om manieren te vinden om de milieueffecten van voedsel te verminderen, bijvoorbeeld door gedragsveranderingen bij consumenten. Het doel van het huidige onderzoek is om inzicht te krijgen in de huidige (wetenschappelijke) kennis over gedragsdeterminanten en digitale gedragsveranderingsinterventies die een duurzaam voedingspatroon stimuleren met als doel tot aanbevelingen te komen voor het stimuleren van een duurzaam en gezond voedingspatroon van inwoners van Noord-Nederland. Het onderzoek is uitgevoerd door het lectoraat Transformational Media van NHL Stenden Hogeschool en maakt deel uit van het door SNN-gesubsidieerde project ‘Van Veggie Lab naar Veggie Farm Fab’.
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The aim was to study the needs, opportunities and effects of citizen engagement in the urban food system transition. This addresses the issue of - ‘how’, ‘in what ways’ and ‘through what methods’ - citizens can be engaged in the developments towards a more sustainable and healthy regional food system. The research project sought to investigate the roles citizen engagement can take in the transformation of the urban food environment towards healthier and sustainable food consumption patterns. The study covers desired food futures; food discourse; the message our bodies convey about our eating habits; the effect of Covid-19 on food pattern transformations; the term 'organic' in relation to food; mass media as a source of information about food.
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