During the last 50 years, humanity's Ecological Footprint has increased by nearly 190% indicating a growing unbalance in the human-environment relationship, coupled with major environmental and social changes. Our ability to live within the planet's biological limits requires not only a major rethink in how we produce and distribute 'things', but also a shift in consumption activities. Footprint calculators can provide a framing that communicates the extent to which an individual's daily activities are compatible with our One Planet context. This paper presents the findings from the first international study to assess the value of personal Footprint calculators in guiding individuals towards sustainable consumption choices. It focuses specifically on Global Footprint Network's personal Footprint calculator, and aims to understand the profile of calculator users and assess the contribution of calculators to increasing individual awareness and encouraging sustainable choices. Our survey of 4245 respondents show that 75% of users resided in 10 countries, 54% were aged 18-34 years and had largely used the calculator within an educational context (62%). The calculator was considered a valuable tool for knowledge generation by 91% of users, and 78% found it useful to motivate action. However, only 23% indicated the calculator provided them with the necessary information to make actual changes to their life and reduce their personal Footprint. The paper discusses how and why this personal Footprint calculator has been effective in enhancing individuals' understanding of the environmental impact of their actions, framing the scale of the problem and empowering users to understand the impacts of different lifestyle choices. Those individual-level and system-level changes needed to generate global sustainability outcomes are also discussed. Similar to other calculators, a gap is also identified in terms of this calculator facilitating individuals to convert new knowledge into action.
This essay, which is accompanied by a collective online sketchbook on the American Anthropologist website, is about drawing as a research methodology. 1 Drawing, like writing, is a craft that can be learned. It is a radical social research method, recalling the lost, undisciplined roots of research into "folk, work, place" in Britain-roots that this essay explores through the Foundations of British Sociology: The Sociological Review Archive at Keele University (Keele University 2010). Too many scholars now research "materiality" as an armchair topic. Multimodality-a young, cross-disciplinary, and still unformed aggregation of research topics, designs, methods, and methodologies-is threatened by the haste to adopt ever-new technologies. Through "slowest" practice, we can begin to understand, first, how salvaged methodologies might transform current practices and, second, how human capacities are limited, channeled, and lost in the race to innovate. Through practicing and developing material methodology, researchers can reshape dominant theories of modernity, because how we make knowledge is critical for fashioning alternative pasts, presents, and futures.
With 80% of the 2050 housing stock already built, the UK has at least 19 million existing homes in need of low carbon retrofit. Practice-theory-based studies have argued that these retrofits must be understood in the context of wider home adaptations and routine practices of dwelling. Therefore, changes in practices caused by the Covid-19 pandemic create a gap in the knowledge regarding the impact on home adaptations and integration of low carbon retrofit. This research compares two stages of interviews: the first undertaken in 2015-16 (30 households), investigating home adaptations and the practices of dwelling they supported. The second stage undertaken in summer 2021 (nine re-interviewees) asking participants to reflect on how their practices of dwelling had changed and how their homes had accommodated this. Rigorous line-by-line coding of the relationships between attributes of the home and practices of dwelling allows comparison between stages, offering original practice-theory-based insights into the implications for home adaptations. The findings show that practices of homeworking in particular placed great spatial and environmental pressure on the homes of growing families. If continued, these practices would create increased demand for dedicated workspaces, and significant opportunities to integrate fabric improvements and low carbon technologies into these adaptations. 298 Hipwood Buildings and Cities
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