Reducing single-use plastic in everyday social practices: Insights from a living lab experiment
(2024)
Plastic is ubiquitous in everyday social practices, and few consumer activities do not involve its direct or indirect use. Single-use plastic (SUP) based on fossil fuels is particularly problematic, as it seems virtually unavoidable, especially in everyday products, from plastic wrapping cucumbers to shampoo bottles. Although reducing SUP is crucial, there is little evidence of achieving this in everyday social practices. This paper examines the practicality of reducing SUP and consumer frustration. We studied the social practices of 20 adults using diary records and workshops over the course of two weeks. Our findings suggest that everyday practices shape SUP use, and
reducing it disrupts daily life, even for eco-conscious consumers. Packaging-free shops are a popular approach to reducing SUP. However, consumers are hindered from using this alternative by limited availability, convenience and product variety. Future research should explore the seamless integration of alternatives to reduce SUP into
everyday social practices.
Rurale Regionen sind mit besonderen Herausforderungen konfrontiert. Doch gerade hier, wo aufgrund vielfältiger Veränderungen neue Wege beschritten, Experimente gewagt und neue Formen des Zusammenlebens entwickelt werden, hängt die Zukunftsfähigkeit der Region entscheidend davon ab, dass soziale Innovationen wichtige gesellschaftliche Umgestaltungsprozesse anstoßen. Im Zentrum des Projekts WIRinREGIONEN steht die Frage: Wie lassen sich soziale Innovationen in regionalen Innovationskontexten verorten und welche Rolle spielen sie insbesondere in ruralen Regionen für die Transformationsfähigkeit? Gemeinsam mit den lokal vernetzten Praxispartnern, den Vereinen „Wertewandel“, „Netzwerk Zukunftsorte“, „heimat-BEWEGEN“ und dem Bundesverband Soziokultur werden die Bedingungen sowie die Bedarfe und Potenziale sozialer Innovationsprozesse ermittelt.
Mit diesem Papier konzipiert das WIRinREGIONEN Team einen ersten Analyserahmen für das Projekt. Dieser Rahmen wird im Laufe des Projekts empirisch und konzeptionell weiterentwickelt. Ziel ist es ein Verständnis von regionaler Transformationsfähigkeit zu konzipieren, dass die Verortung von sozialen Innovationen und ihren Prozessen in Feldern und Netzwerken konzeptionell fundiert. Dabei greifen wir auf unterschiedliche theoretische Ansätze zurück.
Das Papier ist wie folgt aufgebaut: 1) Zunächst nähern wir uns dem Begriff regionaler Transformationsfähigkeit an, indem wir ein praxeologisches Verständnis kollektiver Fähigkeiten vorschlagen. 2) Danach diskutieren wir verschiedene Perspektiven auf soziale Innovation und das Potential von sogenannten Dritten Orten, um darauf aufbauend das Konzept regionaler Innovativität einzuführen. 3) Anschließend beschäftigen wir uns mit unterschiedlichen Konzeptionalisierungen von Regionen, die in der Literatur als relational oder territorial verfasste Konstrukte diskutiert werden. 4) In einem vierten Teil beleuchten wir die Ansätze Regionaler Innovationssysteme, der Ökosysteme sozialer Innovation sowie sozialer Felder als bekannte theoretische Rahmen zur Analyse von Innovationsprozessen und fragen, inwiefern sie uns hilfreich sein können bei der Untersuchung und Bewertung regionaler Transformationsfähigkeit. 5) Im Synthesekapitel fassen wir unsere Erkenntnisse kompakt zusammen, verweisen auf nützliche Konzepte für unsere Untersuchungen und schärfen unsere Forschungsfragen für die empirische Arbeit.
Citizen Science
(2023)
Citizen Science
(2023)
Sustainable transformation toward a circular society, in which all ecosystems and livelihoods are protected and sustained, requires the integration of sufficiency in circular production and consumption practices. Beyond the technological promises to decouple resource use from economic growth, sufficiency measures to reduce production and consumption volumes in absolute terms are necessary. Businesses integrating sufficiency act as agent of change to transform current unsustainable practices along the entire supply chain. By observing the operationalization of sufficiency in 14 pioneer businesses, this study identifies dimensions and practice elements that characterize sufficiency in business practices. This study observed that the sufficiency in business practices mainly represents a rethinking of business doings on three dimensions: (1) rethinking the relation to consumption; (2) rethinking the relation to others; and (3) rethinking the social meaning of the own organization. Sufficiency practitioners understand production and consumption as a mean to fulfill basic human needs instead of satisfying consumer preferences. They co-create sufficiency-oriented value with peers in a sufficiency-oriented ecosystem and they redefine growth narratives by envisioning an end to material growth. Additionally, this study revealed that care, patience and learning competences are essential characteristics of sufficiency in business practices. Sufficiency practitioners reshape their business doings by caring for others and nature; they demonstrate patience to create slow, local, and fair provision systems; and they accept their shortcomings and learn from mistakes. Integrating elements of care, patience and learning in business practices reduce the risks of sufficiency-rebound effects. Ambivalences between the sufficiency purpose and growth-oriented path dependencies persists for sufficiency-oriented businesses. Further research should investigate pathways to overcome these ambivalences and shortcomings that sufficiency practitioners experience, for instance, by exploring political and cultural settings that foster sufficiency-oriented economic activity.
There is an increasing desire for regenerative consumption and production systems that—through the concept of the circular economy—enable longer and better use of resources and products. Circular products and services designed for repair, reuse and recycling require alternative consumption patterns, consumer roles and daily routines—a topic that is still under-researched in the current circular economy literature. We conducted a systematic review of the literature on circular practices with the following objectives: (1) to identify the circular consumer practices studied, (2) to determine the necessary conditions for their appropriation and routinisation, and (3) to suggest how their appropriation and routinisation can be better studied. The analysis of 44 articles revealed 15 circular consumer practices. Meanwhile, Circular consumer practices relating to sufficiency, such as refuse and reduce, have received less attention. We find that elements of practice such as consumer competence, meaning and material play an important role in the appropriation and routinisation of circular consumer practices. However, components such as socio-structural contexts, trade-offs and rebound effects, all of which influence the likelihood of appropriation and routinisation of circular products and services, have not been sufficiently explored. We also find that circular consumer practices are often described as momentary doings rather than ones that are continuously integrated into existing everyday consumption routines. Our findings suggest that circular consumer practices, although interconnected and likely to compete or reinforce each other, are currently conceptualised as isolated practices. Future research should explore how circular consumer practices interlock with and reconfigure other practices and contribute to the improvement of the framework proposed in this review.
Citizen Science
(2023)