SummaryConstructed wetlands have been used for decades on industrial areas to treat stormwater. European regulations and local ambitions for water quality dictate lower emissions before the water is discharged to the drainage system, surface water or infiltrated to ground water. The increase in the required removal efficiency requires a better understanding of the characteristics of pollutants and cost-effective performance of constructed wetlands. In this chapter detailed characteristics of stormwater from (industrial) areas is given together with monitored removal efficiencies and the cost of constructed wetlands. Some case studies with constructed wetlands are selected and reviewed in this chapter which can be regarded as Best Management Practices (BMPs). In most cases the constructed wetlands are not monitored in detail but perceived to be effective. Long-term performance, however, remains an issue. New monitoring techniques such as underwater drones and full scale testing can be applied to get new insights on optimizing the hydraulic capacity and removal efficiency of wetlands. Last but not least: international knowledge exchange on constructed wetlands and new monitoring techniques can be promoted by interactive online tools.
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Constructed wetlands are one type of Sustainable Urban Drainage System (SUDS) that have been used for decades in The Netherlands. They provide stormwater conveyance and improve stormwater quality. European regulations for water quality dictate lower and lower concentrations for an array of dissolved pollutants. The increase in the required removal efficiency for these systems imposed in the Netherlands requires a better understanding of thecharacteristics of stormwater and the functioning of constructed wetlands as SUDs. This paper presents a brief overview of 5 different constructed wetlands from the Netherlands that have been implemented at least more than 10 years ago. Their efficiency and functioning is reviewed and a new method of assessment is described.
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Floating wetland treatment systems (FWTS) are an innovative stormwater treatment technology currently being trialled on a larger scale in Australia. FWTS provide support for selected plant species to remove pollutants from stormwater discharged into a water body. The plant roots provide large surface areas for biofilm growth, which serves to trap suspended particles and enable the biological uptake of nutrients by the plants. As FWTS can be installed at the start of the construction phase, they can start treating construction runoff almost immediately. FWTS therefore have the potential to provide the full range of stormwater treatment (e.g. sediment and nutrient removal) from the construction phase onwards. A 2,100m 2 FWTS has been installed within a greenfield development site on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. A four-year research study is currently underway which will target the following three objectives; (1) characterise the water quality of runoff from a greenfield development in the construction and operational phases; (2) verify the stormwater pollution removal performance of a FWTS during the construction and operational phases of a greenfield development; and (3) characterise the ability of FWTS to manage urban lake health. This extended abstract presents the proposed research methodology and anticipated outcomes of the study
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High population growth, a lack of wastewater treatment plants and poor wastewater management are major challenges in wastewater management in Timor-Leste (East Timor). One of the approaches of the government of Timor-Leste is to separate wastewater into greywater and blackwater from domestic, commercial, residential, and industrial areas. Three methods were applied to obtain insight into the locations and discharge of grey- and blackwater to develop a cost-effective wastewater strategy: a field survey and data collection, interviews with over 130 participants from local authorities and communities, and the open-source mapping of locations of wastewater discharge. This research concluded that 47.7% of the grey wastewater is discharged into open sewers connected directly to the sea. Most communities discharge their wastewater directly due to the absence of wastewater management, policies and regulations, and lack of communities’ understanding of the possible health impacts of wastewater. The impact of poor wastewater management showed that most of the children in these communities have suffered from diarrhea (73.8%), and in the rainy season, there is a high possibility of infection with waterborne diseases. The literature review, field mapping, and interviews show that there is high demand for a cost-effective wastewater strategy for health improvement. Low-cost nature-based solutions such as constructed wetlands and bioswales can be implemented with local skills and materials to improve the wastewater situation and address other challenges such as biodiversity loss, heat stress, drought, and floodings. These installations are easier to rebuild than large-scale grey infrastructure given the multiple hazards that occur in Timor-Leste: landslides, earthquakes, strong wind, and pluvial and fluvial floodings, and they can serve as coastal protection.
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What does it mean to position anthropos in the center? Questioning anthropocentrism is far more than an academic exercise of debating the dominant cultural motif of placing humans at the center of material and ethical concerns. It is a fertile way of shifting the focus of attention away from the problem-symptoms of our time (be these symptoms as far-reaching as rapid climate change or as inconvenient as “just” jellyfish jamming the machine) to the investigation of root causes. And certainly the dominant beliefs, values, and attitudes guiding human action constitute a significant driver of the pressing problems of our day. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-014-9362-1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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This article will explore the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) framework for urban environments, focusing on the perception, utilization and maintenance of parks. The case study explores the perception of urban flora and the value of greenery in everyday life in The Netherlands. The reflection section addresses the difference between conventional and C2C approaches to greenery on the one hand and current green management policies and public opinion on the other hand. The author reflects on how urban planning policies can be better geared towards public awareness of C2C, and towards the implementation of ecologically benign management of urban flora. It is proposed that an implementation of urban green management consistent with C2C is feasible and desirable. It is feasible given the favorable shifts in public opinion in relation to urban sustainability, and it is desirable due to the basic cost-benefit analysis and increased need for urban sustainability. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Urban Ecosystems. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-015-0468-2 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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Social scientists of conservation typically address sources of legitimacy of conservation policies in relation to local communities’ or indigenous land rights, highlighting social inequality and environmental injustice. This chapter reflects on the underlying ethics of environmental justice in order to differentiate between various motivations of conservation and its critique. Conservation is discussed against the backdrop of two main ethical standpoints: preservation of natural resources for human use, and protection of nature for its own sake. These motivations will be examined highlighting mainstream conservation and alternative deep ecology environmentalism. Based on this examination, this chapter untangles concerns with social and ecological justice in order to determine how environmental and human values overlap, conflict, and where the opportunity for reconciliation lies, building bridges between supporters of social justice and conservation. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319713113#aboutBook LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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Environmental unsustainability is due to both structural features and historically specific characteristics of industrial capitalism resulting in specific patterns of production and consumption, as well as population growth. Sustainability literature criticises the established corporate and political power hegemonies, interested in maintaining economic growth, as well as inability or unwillingness of citizen-consumers to counteract these hegemonic tendencies. Yet, official policies are still targeted at social and economic ‘development’ as a panacea for unsustainability challenges. Instead, renewed accent on social and economic objectives are outlined by a set of sustainable development goals (SDG) that include objectives of fighting poverty, promoting better health, reducing mortality, and stimulating equitable economic growth. What is less commonly critiqued is the underlying morality of unsustainability and ethical questions concerned with the ‘victims of unsustainability’ outside of socioeconomic discourse. The achievement of SDG goals, as will be further elaborated on in this article, is unlikely to lead to greater social equality and economic prosperity, but to a greater spread of unsustainable production and consumption, continuous economic as well as population growth that has caused environmental problems in the first place and further objectification of environment and its elements. This article argues that an invocation of ethical duty toward environment and its elements is required in order to move beyond the current status quo. Such ethical approach to unsustainability can effectively address the shortcomings of the mainstream sustainability discourse that is mainly anthropocentric and therefore fails to identify the correct locus of unsustainability. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International "Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology" on 2015 available online: http://www.tandfonline.com https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2015.1111269 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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This overview can be regarded as an atlas or travel guide with which the reader can follow a route along the various professorships. Chapter 2 centres on the professorships that are active in the field of Service Economy. Chapter 3 is dedicated to the professorships that are focussed on the field of Vital Region. Chapter 4 describes the professorships operating in the field of Smart Sustainable Industries. Chapter 5 deals with the professorships that are active in the field of the institution-wide themes of Design Based Education and Design Based Research. Lastly, in Chapter 6 we make an attempt to discover one or more connecting themes or procedures in the approach of the various professorships. This publication is not intended to give a definitive answer to the question as to what exactly NHL Stenden means by the concept of Design Based Research. The aim of this publication is to get an idea of everything that is happening in the NHL Stenden professorships and to pique one’s curiosity to find out more.
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Our planet’s ecology and society are on a collision course, which manifests due to a contradiction in the assumptions of unlimited material growth fueling the linear economic paradigm. Our closed planetary ecosystem imposes confined amounts of space and a finite extent of resources upon its inhabitants. However, practically all the economic perspectives have been defiantly neglecting these realities, as resources are extracted, used and disposed of reluctantly (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2015). The circular economy attempts to reconcile the extraction, production and usage of goods and resources with the limited availability of those resources and nature’s regenerative capabilities This perspective entails a shift throughout the supply chain, from material science (e g non-toxic, regenerative biomaterials) to novel logistical systems (e g low-carbon reverse logistics). Because of this, the circular economy is often celebrated for its potential environmental benefits and its usefulness as a blueprint for sustainable development (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2017). Unfortunately, the promise of the circular economy aiming at enhanced sustainability through restorative intent and design (McDonough & Braungart 2010), is often inhibited by institutional barriers posed by the current linear economy of take, make, use and waste (Ghisellini et al. 2016). Underlying those barriers our cultural paradigm celebrates consumerism, exponential growth and financial benefit instead of human values such as diversity, care and trust. Based on a mapping exercise of the circular economy discourse in the Netherlands and an overview of international (academic) literature (Van den Berg 2020) supplemented with collaborative co-creation sessions, visiting events, conferences, giving talks and classes, we have defined a gap leading to the focus of the Professorship. First, we highlight the importance of a process approach in studying the transition from a linear to a circular economy, which is why we use the verb ‘entrepreneuring’ as it indicates the movement we collectively need to make. The majority of work in the field is based on start-ups and only captures snapshots while longitudinal and transition perspectives - especially of larger companies - are missing (Merli et al. 2019; Geissdoerfer et al. 2018; Bocken et al. 2014). We specifically adopt an entrepreneurship-as-practice lens (Thompson, Verduijn & Gartner 2020), which allows us to trace the doings – as opposed to only the sayings - of organizations involved in circular innovation. Such an approach also enables us to study cross-sector and interfirm collaboration, which is crucial to achieve ecosystem circularity (Raworth 2019). As materials flow between actors in a system, traditional views of ‘a value chain’ slowly make way for an ecosystem or value web perspective on ‘organizing business’. We summarize this first theme as ‘entrepreneurship as social change’ broadening dominant views of what economic activity is and who the main actors are supposed to be (Barinaga 2013; Calás, Smircich & Bourne 2009; Steyaert & Hjorth 2008; Nicholls 2008). Second, within the Circular Business Professorship value is a big word in two ways. First of all, we believe that a transition to a circular economy is not just a transition of materials, nor technologies - it is most of all a transition of values We are interested in how people can explore their own agency in transitioning to a circular economy thereby aligning their personal values with the values of the organization and the larger system they are a part of Second, while circularity is a broad concept that can be approached through different lenses, the way in which things are valued and how value is created and extracted lies at the heart of the transition (Mazzucato 2018). If we don’t understand value as collectively crafted it will be very hard to change things, which is why we specifically focus on multiplicity and co-creation in the process of reclaiming value, originating from an ethics of care Third, sustainability efforts are often concerned with optimization of the current – linear – system by means of ecoefficient practices that are a bit ‘less bad’; using ’less resources’, causing ‘less pollution’ and ‘having less negative impact’. In contrast, eco-effective practices are inherently good, departing from the notion of abundance: circular thinking celebrates the abundance of nature’s regenerative capacities as well as the abundance of our imagination to envision new realities (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2015). Instead of exploiting natural resources, we should look closely in order to learn how we can build resilient self-sustaining ecosystems like the ones we find in nature. We are in need of rediscovering our profound connection with and appreciation of nature, which requires us to move beyond the cognitive and employ an aesthetic perspective of sustainability This perspective informs our approach to innovating education: aesthetics can support deep sustainability learning (Ivanaj, Poldner & Shrivastava 2014) and contribute to facilitating the circular change makers of the future. The current linear economy has driven our planet’s ecology and society towards a collision course and it is really now or never: if we don’t alter the course towards a circular economy today, then when? When will it become urgent enough for us to take action? Which disaster is needed for us to wake up? We desperately need substitutes for the current neo-liberal paradigm, which underlies our linear society and prevents us from becoming an economy of well-being In Entrepreneuring a regenerative society I propose three research themes – ‘entrepreneurship as social change’, ‘reclaiming value’ and ‘the aesthetics of sustainability’ – as alternative ways of embracing, studying and co-creating such a novel reality. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-poldner-a003473/
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