Environmental or ‘green' education is an important driving force behind the ‘greening' of society as it plays a critical role in raising environmental awareness and preparing students for green jobs. None of the existing environmental attitudes and behavior measures is focused on the evaluation of green education, especially in relation to consumption. To date, no longitudinal studies of children and students' attitudes towards consumption influenced by education exist. Also, little has been done to explore the socio-cultural context in which attitudes toward consumption are being formed and to explain the cross-cultural differences in environmental attitudes. This pilot study is designed to take the first step towards developing methods complementing existing quantitative measurements with qualitative strategies, such as consumption diaries, focus groups, and concept mapping. While this research is just a first attempt to tackle children's knowledge and attitudes consumption, preliminary results of the research on which this chapter is based and enthusiasm of the research participants encourage the author to stress the importance of consumption studies as part of green education for educational program developers. As a chapter of this volume, the author hopes that this study will add to the anthropological depository of research on the cultural variants in the perception of the environment in children. This chapter draws upon the consumption diaries collected from the upper-elementary school children in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, between September 2009 and May 2010. Consumption diaries are chronological documents recording purchase, use, and waste of materials, which can be used both as analytical tools and the means to stimulate environmental awareness. The four main methodological steps involved in this research were as follows. Children were asked to complete the consumption diary, paying specific attention to use and waste materials. Consequently, focus group meetings were held with parents and their children to discuss the diaries. Finally, interviews with the children were conducted in order to generate statements that supplement those generated by focus groups for carrying out the concept mapping analysis. The concept mapping analysis was then conducted to organize the order and analyze the ideas expressed in the focus group and interview sessions. This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge/CRC Press in "Environmental Anthropology Today" on 8/5/11 available online: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203806906 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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The availability of time has played a pivotal role in the analysis of tourism. An examination of social theory and time suggests that tourists experience time in multiple ways, which has implications for the traditional temporal and spatial reference frame. This article calls for a better understanding of 'time' in tourism and sets the agenda for further research into time and the sustainable development of tourism. It analyses the role of time in shaping tourism consumption and illustrates the challenges posed by new temporal understandings and distance concepts to create less greenhouse-gas-dependent tourism in our society.
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Recent economic crises, environmental problems and social challenges have urged us to drastically change our consumption and production patterns and transform organisations to contribute to socio-technical transitions that positively impact these challenges. Therefore, sustainable development and the transition towards a circular economy are gaining increased attention from academics and are being widely adopted by national and local governments, companies and other organisations and institutions. Since the implementation of more sustainable solutions lags behind expectations and technological possibilities, scholars and practitioners are increasingly seeing sustainable business model innovation as the key pathway to show the value potential of new sustainable technology and stress the importance of integrating the interests of multiple stakeholders and their economic, environmental and social value goals in the business model’s development. However, there is limited research that elucidates which stakeholders are actively involved, how they interact and what the effect is on the collaborative business modelling process for sustainability. This thesis addresses this research gap by building on the notion of business models as boundary-spanning activity-systems and studies stakeholder interaction from the level of a focal firm, as well as from the level of cross-sector actors collaborating in innovation ecosystems. Through four independent studies, three empirical studies and a design science study, this thesis aims to provide a better understanding of how stakeholder interaction affects collaborative business modelling for sustainability.The first study (Chapter 2) took a process perspective on interaction with network ties from the perspective of a focal firm. Based on two case studies of SMEs successfully introducing sustainable technology in the market, value shaping was identified as the operative mechanism describing the relation between networking and business modelling, from ideation to growth of the business. A stage model with five successive forms of value shaping describes how, in each stage, interaction with network ties help firms to clarify the types of economic, environmental and social value that a sustainable technology can deliver and who possible beneficiaries are. In return, changes in the business model clarify what other network ties are needed, demonstrating how the boundary-spanning function of business models spurs firms to expand and strengthen the value network.The second study (Chapter 3) focused on the commercialisation stage, in which a cognitive change in the manager’s mind was found during the development of a sustainable business model. Based on three empirical cases of business model innovations for sustainability, the study explored how stakeholder interaction may trigger and support managerial cognitive change and hence business model innovation. The findings suggest that the influence of stakeholders on the manager’s understanding of the business runs via three interrelated shaping processes: market approach shaping, product and/or service offering shaping and credibility shaping. In these shaping processes, new or latent stakeholders are found to have a bigger impact than existing ones. A research agenda is presented to further unravel the role of stakeholders affecting managerial cognition around business model innovation for sustainability.The third study (Chapter 4) examined innovation ecosystems’ processes of developing a collaborative business model for sustainability. Based on a study of four sustainably innovative cross-sector collaborations, this chapter studied how innovation ecosystems resolve the tensions that emerge from the collaborating actors’ divergent goals and interests. This study finds that innovation ecosystems engage in a process of valuing value that helps the actors to manage the tensions and find a balance of environmental, social and economic value creation and capture that satisfies all involved actors. The findings reveal that valuing value occurs in two different patterns – collective orchestration and continuous search – that open up a research agenda that can shed further light on the conditions that need to be in place in order for an innovation ecosystem to develop effective sustainable business models. The final study (Chapter 5) used a design science approach, developing a tool for innovation ecosystems’ actors to manage the degree to which stakeholders are involved throughout the process of collaborative business modelling for sustainability. The resulting ‘degree of engagement diagram’ and accompanying stepwise approach makes it possible to identify stakeholders from six cross-sector stakeholder groups that represent economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainable value and visualise their roles. By discriminating between four concentric and permeable circles of engagement, the tool integrates different degrees of involvement of stakeholders and enables users of the DoE diagram to accommodate changes that may occur in the evolving business model and its context. The tool enables innovation ecosystems’ actors to keep the collaboration manageable during the development of a joint and viable sustainable business model. Overall, this thesis extends the understanding of the dynamics of collaborative business modelling for sustainability and the role of stakeholder interaction therein. The research makes three key contributions to the sustainable business model innovation literature. First, it extends the literature by exploring the interplay between stakeholder interaction and business modelling over time. It establishes that stakeholder interaction and business modelling have a reciprocal relationship and contributes with two frameworks – value shaping and valuing value – that explain this reciprocal relationship for firms and innovation ecosystems. Second, the thesis unravels the micro-processes and mechanisms that elucidate how stakeholder interaction actually influences the direction into which the sustainable business model develops. Third, this thesis enriches the scholarly understanding of stakeholder interaction by identifying the main contributors to business model innovation for sustainability, by differentiating between stakeholders and their roles and by providing a tool that accommodates this. The research contributes to practice by offering practitioners useful insights on how they can increase, improve and effectuate stakeholder interaction in order to develop viable business models for sustainability and hence contribute to the desired socio-technical transitions.
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%.
Synthetic ultra-black (UB) materials, which demonstrate exceptionally high absorbance (>99%) of visible light incident on their surface, are currently used as coatings in photovoltaic cells and numerous other applications. Most commercially available UB coatings are based on an array of carbon nanotubes, which are produced at relatively high temperature and result in numerous by-products. In addition, UB nanotube coatings require harsh application conditions and are very susceptible to abrasion. As a result, these coatings are currently obtained using a manufacturing process with relatively high costs, high energy consumption and low sustainability. Interestingly, an UB coating based on a biologically derived pigment could provide a cheaper and more sustainable alternative. Specifically, GLO Biotics proposes to create UB pigment by taking a bio-mimetic approach and replicate structures found in UB deep-sea fish. A recent study[1] has actually shown that specific fish have melanosomes in their skin with particular dimensions that allow absorption of up to 99.9% of incident light. In addition to this, recent advances in bacterial engineering have demonstrated that it is possible to create bacteria-derived melanin particles with very similar dimensions to the melanosomes in aforementioned fish. During this project, the consortium partners will combine both scientific observations in an attempt to provide the proof-of-concept for developing an ultra-black coating using bacteria-derived melanin particles as bio-based, sustainable pigment. For this, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences (Zuyd) and Maastricht University (UM) collaborate with GLO Biotics in the development of the innovative ‘BLACKTERIA’ UB coating technology. The partners will attempt at engineering an E. coli expression system and adapt its growth in order to produce melanin particles of desired dimensions. In addition, UM will utilize their expertise in industrial coating research to provide input for experimental set-up and the development of a desired UB coating using the bacteria-derived melanin particles as pigment.
Buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 36% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the EU, and the largest energy consumer in Europe (https://ec.europa.eu/energy). Recent research shows that more than 2/3 of all CO2 is emitted during the building process whereas less than 1/3 is emitted during use. Cement is the source of about 8% of the world's CO2 emissions and innovation to create a distributive change in building practices is urgently needed, according to Chatham House report (Lehne et al 2018). Therefore new sustainable materials must be developed to replace concrete and fossil based building materials. Lightweight biobased biocomposites are good candidates for claddings and many other non-bearing building structures. Biocarbon, also commonly known as Biochar, is a high-carbon, fine-grained solid that is produced through pyrolysis processes and currently mainly used for energy. Recently biocarbon has also gained attention for its potential value with in industrial applications such as composites (Giorcellia et al, 2018; Piri et.al, 2018). Addition of biocarbon in the biocomposites is likely to increase the UV-resistance and fire resistance of the materials and decrease hydrophilic nature of composites. Using biocarbon in polymer composites is also interesting because of its relatively low specific weight that will result to lighter composite materials. In this Building Light project the SMEs Torrgas and NPSP will collaborate with and Avans/CoE BBE in a feasibility study on the use of biocarbon in a NPSP biocomposite. The physicochemical properties and moisture absorption of the composites with biocarbon filler will be compared to the biocomposite obtained with the currently used calcium carbonate filler. These novel biocarbon-biocomposites are anticipated to have higher stability and lighter weight, hence resulting to a new, exciting building materials that will create new business opportunities for both of the SME partners.
