The increasing rate of urbanization along with its socio-environmental impact are major global challenges. Therefore, there is a need to assess the boundaries to growth for the future development of cities by the inclusion of the assessment of the environmental carrying capacity (ECC) into spatial management. The purpose is to assess the resource dependence of a given entity. ECC is usually assessed based on indicators such as the ecological footprint (EF) and biocapacity (BC). EF is a measure of the biologically productive areas demanded by human consumption and waste production. Such areas include the space needed for regenerating food and fibers as well as sequestering the generated pollution, particularly CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels. BC reflects the biological regeneration potential of a given area to regenerate resources as well to absorb waste. The city level EF assessment has been applied to urban zones across the world, however, there is a noticeable lack of urban EF assessments in Central Eastern Europe. Therefore, the current research is a first estimate of the EF and BC for the city of Wrocław, Poland. This study estimates the Ecological Footprint of Food (EFF) through both a top-down assessment and a hybrid top-down/bottom-up assessment. Thus, this research verifies also if results from hybrid method could be comparable with top-down approach. The bottom-up component of the hybrid analysis calculated the carbon footprint of food using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. The top-down result ofWrocław’s EFF were 1% greater than the hybrid EFF result, 0.974 and 0.963 gha per person respectively. The result indicated that the EFF exceeded the BC of the city of Wrocław 10-fold. Such assessment support efforts to increase resource efficiency and decrease the risk associated with resources—including food security. Therefore, there is a need to verify if a city is able to satisfy the resource needs of its inhabitants while maintaining the natural capital on which they depend intact. Original article at: https://doi.org/10.3390/resources7030052 © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI.
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Chapter 6 in Consumption culture in Europe. The chapter focuses on cultural differences in consumption across Europe and describes general attitudes towards consumption and brands, the significance of shopping, and how these are linked to the motives of consumption of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. These topics have been analysed using the Hofstede dimensions, and the evaluation also considers regional differences within the European Union. The main objective of this research is to attempt to understand consumption patterns and national cultural dimensions, general consumption values, and what their connections are to alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinking patterns. The main research question is how cultural styles influence consumption styles within Europe. This analysis concluded that some European societies are more adaptable to cross-cultural influence than others in relation to beverage consumption. The authors’ findings suggest that the cultural dimensions identified by Hofstede supported the understanding of cultural differences related to purchasing, brands and beverage consumption both at national and individual levels. However, there is an overlap between some countries in their drinking behaviour, which supports the claim that existing cultural patterns cannot fully explain the new beverage trends, especially in alcohol consumption. This indicates the necessity of a shift toward new dimensions with regard to beverage consumption and/or eventually consumer behaviour.
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Purpose: Food waste occurs in every stage of the supply chain, but the value-added lost to waste is the highest when consumers waste food. The purpose of this paper is to understand the food waste behaviour of consumers to support policies for minimising food waste. Design/methodology/approach: Using the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) as a theoretical lens, the authors design a questionnaire that incorporates contextual factors to explain food waste behaviour. The authors test two models: base (four constructs of TPB) and extended (four constructs of TPB plus six contextual factors). The authors build partial least squares structural equation models to test the hypotheses. Findings: The data confirm significant relationships between food waste and contextual factors such as motives, financial attitudes, planning routines, food surplus, social relationships and Ramadan. Research limitations/implications: The data comes from an agriculturally resource-constrained country: Qatar. Practical implications: Food waste originating from various causes means more food should flow through the supply chains to reach consumers’ homes. Contextual factors identified in this work increase the explanatory power of the base model by 75 per cent. Social implications: Changing eating habits during certain periods of the year and food surplus have a strong impact on food waste behaviour. Originality/value: A country is considered to be food secure if it can provide its citizens with stable access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. The findings and conclusions inform and impact upon the development of food waste and food security policies.
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PBL is the initiator of the Work Programme Monitoring and Management Circular Economy 2019-2023, a collaboration between CBS, CML, CPB, RIVM, TNO, UU. Holidays and mobility are part of the consumption domains that PBL researches, and this project aims to calculate the environmental gains per person per year of the various circular behavioural options for both holiday behaviour and daily mobility. For both behaviours, a range of typical (default) trips are defined and for each several circular option explored for CO2 emissions, Global warming potential and land use. The holiday part is supplied by the Centre for Sustainability, Tourism and Transport (CSTT) of the BUas Academy of Tourism (AfT). The mobility part is carried out by the Urban Intelligence professorship of the Academy for Built Environment and Logistics (ABEL).The research question is “what is the environmental impact of various circular (behavioural) options around 1) holidays and 2) passenger mobility?” The consumer perspective is demarcated as follows:For holidays, transportation and accommodation are included, but not food, attractions visited and holiday activitiesFor mobility, it concerns only the circular options of passenger transport and private means of transport (i.e. freight transport, business travel and commuting are excluded). Not only some typical trips will be evaluated, but also the possession of a car and its alternatives.For the calculations, we make use of public databases, our own models and the EAP (Environmental Analysis Program) model developed by the University of Groningen. BUAs projectmembers: Centre for Sustainability, Tourism and Transport (AT), Urban Intelligence (ABEL).
In line with the ‘Natuur- en milieubeleidsplan Caribisch Nederland 2020-2030 (NMBP)’ the consortium intends with this research proposal to contribute to a prosperous society with a resilient population and healthy natural environment. The Caribbean Netherlands are dealing with a situation where imported vegetables and fruits are mostly imported and hardly affordable. This leads to consuming unhealthy food and high obesities rates as a consequence. A lack of good agricultural practices with regard to water-smart and nature inclusive agriculture, as well as limited coping capacities to deal with hazards and climate change, results in very limited local production and interest. Initiatives that focused only on agrotechnological solutions for food resilient futures turned out to be ineffective due to a lack of local ownership, which jeopardizes sustainability. Moreover, the ‘green’ and ‘blue’ domains are not seen as attractive career perspectives among youth, hampering a bright future for those domains. The aim of this research is to contribute to water-smart and nature inclusive food resilience embedded in a local participatory perspective in the Caribbean Netherlands. To address the above challenges, a living lab approach is adopted, where youth will be trained as (co)-facilitators (WP1) who will contribute to a participatory envisioning process and an articulation of food resilient futures (WP2). Finally, based on the envisioning process local stakeholders will select and implement experiments for food resilient futures followed by dissemination of results among key stakeholders as well as children and youth at the BES islands (WP3). This project strategy will lead to a network of a living lab where professionals and youth work together on food resilient futures. Training manuals and the results of experiments with regard to water and food system alternatives will be used actively to encourage youth to be involved in sustainable agriculture and consumption.
The composition of diets and supplements given to bovine cattle are constantly evolving. These changes are driven by the social call for a more sustainable beef and dairy production, interests to influence the nutritional value of bovine products for human consumption, and to increase animal health. These adaptations can introduce (new) compounds in the beef and milk supply chain. Currently, the golden standard to study transfer of compounds from feed or veterinary medicine to cows and consequences for human health is performing animal studies, which are time consuming, costly and thus limited. Although animal studies are increasingly debated for ethical reasons, cows are still in the top 10 list of most used animals for animal experiments in Europe. There is, however, no widely applicable alternative modelling tool available to rapidly predict transfer of compounds, apart from individual components like cattle kinetic models and simple in vitro kinetic assays. Therefore, this project aims to develop a first-of-a-kind generic bovine kinetic modelling platform that predicts the transfer of compounds from medicine/supplements and feed to bovine tissues. This will provide new tools for the efficacy and safety evaluation of veterinary medicine and feed and facilitates a rapid evaluation of human health effects of bovine origin food products, thereby contributing to an increased safety in the cattle production chain and supporting product innovations, all without animal testing. This will be accomplished by integrating existing in silico and in vitro techniques into a generic bovine modelling platform and further developing state-of-the-art in vitro bovine organoid cell culturing systems. The platform can be used world-wide by stakeholders involved in the cattle industry (feed-/veterinary medicine industry, regulators, risk assessors). The project partners involve a strong combination of academia, knowledge institutes, small and medium enterprises, industry, branche-organisations and Proefdiervrij, all driven by their pursuit for animal free innovations.
