Despite all improvement initiatives such as the national action plan [De-]Regulate Healthcare by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport in 2018 to create more time for care within the Netherlands, the administrative burden for care workers is still increasing. Managers of healthcare institutes struggle with efficiently implementing government legislations in day-to-day operations. They indicate that the time spent on administrative tasks demanded by municipalities and national authorities is too much. In addition, they also indicate that there is a lack of consistency and uniformity when it comes to the way care workers handle administrative tasks. This way of working causes additional, and often ad hoc, work in the run-up to an audit. It seems that before laws and regulations are effectively implemented, new laws or regulations again demand attention. This looks like a vicious circle, but research to confirm this is not found yet. Therefore, the following research question is formulated: "What is the impact of laws and regulations on the administrative burden with regard to the primary and supportive processes of Dutch long-term care?" An explanatory multiple case study was conducted to answer the research question. Three case studies were carried out during September 2019 to January 2020. Based on these studies, we have concluded that between 29% and 62% of the total perceived administrative burden by long-term care professionals can be related to legislation.
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Purpose: Small and medium-sized entities (SMEs) operating in the alternative financing sector are typically heterogenous in nature making them differ greatly from traditional banks. Where traditional banks must comply with strict banking regulations, developing uniform regulations for the alternative financing sector remains a challenge. This paper examines the current challenges and solutions from a sociological and institutional perspective in developing standards for SMEs operating in the alternative financing sector in the Netherlands. Adopting minimum quality standards should lead to increased transparency and public trust in the non-banking sector.
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Due to the existing pressure for a more rational use of the water, many public managers and industries have to re-think/adapt their processes towards a more circular approach. Such pressure is even more critical in the Rio Doce region, Minas Gerais, due to the large environmental accident occurred in 2015. Cenibra (pulp mill) is an example of such industries due to the fact that it is situated in the river basin and that it has a water demanding process. The current proposal is meant as an academic and engineering study to propose possible solutions to decrease the total water consumption of the mill and, thus, decrease the total stress on the Rio Doce basin. The work will be divided in three working packages, namely: (i) evaluation (modelling) of the mill process and water balance (ii) application and operation of a pilot scale wastewater treatment plant (iii) analysis of the impacts caused by the improvement of the process. The second work package will also be conducted (in parallel) with a lab scale setup in The Netherlands to allow fast adjustments and broaden evaluation of the setup/process performance. The actions will focus on reducing the mill total water consumption in 20%.
The energy transition is a highly complex technical and societal challenge, coping with e.g. existing ownership situations, intrusive retrofit measures, slow decision-making processes and uneven value distribution. Large scale retrofitting activities insulating multiple buildings at once is urgently needed to reach the climate targets but the decision-making of retrofitting in buildings with shared ownership is challenging. Each owner is accountable for his own energy bill (and footprint), giving a limited action scope. This has led to a fragmented response to the energy retrofitting challenge with negligible levels of building energy efficiency improvements conducted by multiple actors. Aggregating the energy design process on a building level would allow more systemic decisions to happen and offer the access to alternative types of funding for owners. “Collect Your Retrofits” intends to design a generic and collective retrofit approach in the challenging context of monumental areas. As there are no standardised approaches to conduct historical building energy retrofits, solutions are tailor-made, making the process expensive and unattractive for owners. The project will develop this approach under real conditions of two communities: a self-organised “woongroep” and a “VvE” in the historic centre of Amsterdam. Retrofit designs will be identified based on energy performance, carbon emissions, comfort and costs so that a prioritisation strategy can be drawn. Instead of each owner investing into their own energy retrofitting, the neighbourhood will invest into the most impactful measures and ensure that the generated economic value is retained locally in order to make further sustainable investments and thus accelerating the transition of the area to a CO2-neutral environment.
The textile industry faces a significant environmental challenge, annually generating 45 million tons of waste cotton textiles, of which 75% are incinerated or sent to landfills, causing environmental harm. Additionally, 67% of garments are made of plastic fibers, and when disposed of in landfills, 5% of them turn into microplastics that can end up on our plates. Chicfashic proposes an innovative biotech process to address these issues by recovering and recycling plastic fibers while transforming natural fibers into bio-based molecules. These molecules are then used as secondary raw materials to produce bio-based pigments for textiles. The project aims to optimize this process and test it on a larger scale with the assistance of HAN BioCentre. This initiative aligns with Dutch government and EU regulations mandating textile recycling by 2050. The technology used is patent pending and does not involve the use of toxic chemicals or the release of harmful wastewater or fumes, contributing to a shift towards a more circular and sustainable textile industry by reintegrating natural colorants into textile production.
