Comunicação, cultura e design em tempos de consumo sustentável. O caso McGreen

O presente estudo visa estabelecer a relação comunicação-cultura-design por meio da importância do design de comunicação no processo de comunicação gerado na reconstrução de uma imagem corporativa já consolidada para uma empresa que busca responder à cultura do consumo consciente e sustentável. Esse processo resulta no imaginário e consequentemente na imagem corporativa expressa por meio do redesign verificado em campanhas publicitárias, fachadas e internet. Para isso, será tomado por base o referencial teórico dos estudos que relacionem cultura e consumo, além de teóricos que discutem os temas da imagem e do imaginário. Será utilizada como metodologia além da pesquisa bibliográfica, a pesquisa qualitativa. Por isso, no intuito de averiguar na prática a teoria apresentada, revela-se um estudo de caso sobre a mudança na comunicação e identidade visual na rede de McDonald s no Brasil, observando-se descritivamente as alterações ocorridas na Europa como uma ousada estratégia de redesign para a rede. Parte-se da premissa de que tal ação tem o intuito de fortalecer uma imagem corporativa de ambientalmente amigável naquele país cuja cultura visa assegurar criteriosamente a proteção à saúde de seus habitantes, cada vez mais rigorosos no controle dos produtos consumidos.

Consumer behaviour and lifestyle patterns of Hungarian students in view of environmental awareness

The aim of this paper is to describe the consumer behaviour and everyday lifestyle patterns of Hungarian university and college students. The results are gained from an international survey, carried out by the Department of Environmental Economics and Technology at the Corvinus University of Budapest, supported by the Norwegian Financial Mechanism. As background literature, characteristics of the consumer society and the development of sustainable consumption as a concept are interpreted in the paper. The empirical analysis aims to describe the most important clusters of students, based on the factors of their consumer behaviour, environmental activism and pro-environmental everyday habits. Our results identify two extreme clusters which most significantly differ from each other: the environmental activists and the indifferent group. However, a third cluster has the most modest consumer behaviour, namely the group which considers product features, energy consumption and the behaviour of producers. They spend the least on consumer goods. The three other clusters show quite mixed lifestyle patterns.

A fiatalok fogyasztási és életmódbeli szokásai a környezeti nevelés tükrében

A tanulmány egy olyan kutatás mélyebb elemzésének eredményeit mutatja be, amelynek során a Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem Környezetgazdaságtani és Technológiai Tanszékének munkatársai kérdőíves felmérést hajtottak végre a Norvég Alap támogatásával, a „Fenntartható fogyasztás, termelés és kommunikáció” c. projekt keretében. A válaszok alapján összehasonlíthatjuk a fiatalok egyes csoportjainak környezettudatosságát és a fogyasztáshoz való viszonyát, amelynek alapján meghatározhatjuk a környezeti nevelés legfontosabb fókuszait és eszközeit. Két iskolatípus (egyetemisták és középiskolások) tanulóinak adatai alapján többdimenziós skálázás segítségével vizsgáltuk azt, hogy a diákokat leíró jellemzők közül melyek mozognak együtt, és melyek előfordulása mutat ellentétes irányba. Klaszterelemzéssel azt is feltártuk, hogy a mintába került személyek milyen hasonlóságokat és eltéréseket mutatnak, milyen, többé-kevésbé homogén csoportok képezhetők belőlük. Az eredmények alapján szakmai javaslatokat fogalmazunk meg a környezeti nevelés területére. _______ This paper presents the in-depth analysis of results from a survey of students from secondary and tertiary education. The survey was conducted by researchers from the department of environmental economics and technology of the Corvinus University of Budapest in the framework of the project titeld „sustainable consumption, production and communication” supported by the Norwegian Fund. The environmental consciousness and consumer behaviour of different groups of young people are compared, allowing identification of the main focus points and tools of environmental education. Multidimensional scaling is used to examine which characteristics of the students are related and which point in opposite directions. Similarities and differences between respondents were mapped through cluster analysis and relatively homogeneous groups were indentified. The results are used to make suggestions for the development of environmental education.

North Sea Oil and Genuine Saving in the Scottish Economy

The World Bank has published estimates of sustainability of consumption paths by adjusting saving rates to take account of the depletion of non-renewable resources. During the period of North Sea oil production Scotland has been in a fiscal union with the rest of the UK. The present paper adjusts the World Bank data to produce separate genuine saving estimates for Scotland and the rest of the UK for 1970-2009, based on a ‘derivation’ principle for oil revenues. The calculations indicate that Scotland has had a negative genuine saving rate for most of the period of exploitation of North Sea oil resources, with genuine saving being positive in the rest of the UK during this period.

From environmental concerns towards sustainable food provisioning. : Material flow and food consumption scenario studies on sustainability of agri-food systems

Agriculture is an economic activity that heavily relies on the availability of natural resources. Through its role in food production agriculture is a major factor affecting public welfare and health, and its indirect contribution to gross domestic product and employment is significant. Agriculture also contributes to numerous ecosystem services through management of rural areas. However, the environmental impact of agriculture is considerable and reaches far beyond the agroecosystems. The questions related to farming for food production are, thus, manifold and of great public concern. Improving environmental performance of agriculture and sustainability of food production, sustainabilizing food production, calls for application of wide range of expertise knowledge. This study falls within the field of agro-ecology, with interphases to food systems and sustainability research and exploits the methods typical of industrial ecology. The research in these fields extends from multidisciplinary to interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, a holistic approach being the key tenet. The methods of industrial ecology have been applied extensively to explore the interaction between human economic activity and resource use. Specifically, the material flow approach (MFA) has established its position through application of systematic environmental and economic accounting statistics. However, very few studies have applied MFA specifically to agriculture. The MFA approach was used in this thesis in such a context in Finland. The focus of this study is the ecological sustainability of primary production. The aim was to explore the possibilities of assessing ecological sustainability of agriculture by using two different approaches. In the first approach the MFA-methods from industrial ecology were applied to agriculture, whereas the other is based on the food consumption scenarios. The two approaches were used in order to capture some of the impacts of dietary changes and of changes in production mode on the environment. The methods were applied at levels ranging from national to sector and local levels. Through the supply-demand approach, the viewpoint changed between that of food production to that of food consumption. The main data sources were official statistics complemented with published research results and expertise appraisals. MFA approach was used to define the system boundaries, to quantify the material flows and to construct eco-efficiency indicators for agriculture. The results were further elaborated for an input-output model that was used to analyse the food flux in Finland and to determine its relationship to the economy-wide physical and monetary flows. The methods based on food consumption scenarios were applied at regional and local level for assessing feasibility and environmental impacts of relocalising food production. The approach was also used for quantification and source allocation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of primary production. GHG assessment provided, thus, a means of crosschecking the results obtained by using the two different approaches. MFA data as such or expressed as eco-efficiency indicators, are useful in describing the overall development. However, the data are not sufficiently detailed for identifying the hot spots of environmental sustainability. Eco-efficiency indicators should not be bluntly used in environmental assessment: the carrying capacity of the nature, the potential exhaustion of non-renewable natural resources and the possible rebound effect need also to be accounted for when striving towards improved eco-efficiency. The input-output model is suitable for nationwide economy analyses and it shows the distribution of monetary and material flows among the various sectors. Environmental impact can be captured only at a very general level in terms of total material requirement, gaseous emissions, energy consumption and agricultural land use. Improving environmental performance of food production requires more detailed and more local information. The approach based on food consumption scenarios can be applied at regional or local scales. Based on various diet options the method accounts for the feasibility of re-localising food production and environmental impacts of such re-localisation in terms of nutrient balances, gaseous emissions, agricultural energy consumption, agricultural land use and diversity of crop cultivation. The approach is applicable anywhere, but the calculation parameters need to be adjusted so as to comply with the specific circumstances. The food consumption scenario approach, thus, pays attention to the variability of production circumstances, and may provide some environmental information that is locally relevant. The approaches based on the input-output model and on food consumption scenarios represent small steps towards more holistic systemic thinking. However, neither one alone nor the two together provide sufficient information for sustainabilizing food production. Environmental performance of food production should be assessed together with the other criteria of sustainable food provisioning. This requires evaluation and integration of research results from many different disciplines in the context of a specified geographic area. Foodshed area that comprises both the rural hinterlands of food production and the population centres of food consumption is suggested to represent a suitable areal extent for such research. Finding a balance between the various aspects of sustainability is a matter of optimal trade-off. The balance cannot be universally determined, but the assessment methods and the actual measures depend on what the bottlenecks of sustainability are in the area concerned. These have to be agreed upon among the actors of the area

Building more sustainable solutions in production-consumption systems: the case of food for people with reduced access

In new product development, the ability to integrate different dimensions of sustainability at a value chain level is still a complex, problematic goal. As product-service approaches are increasingly enabling the introduction of more sustainable paths, this paper describes the authors' experience thus far when building insights into conditions for the implementation of integrated solutions in a process of co-development and testing in real life conditions, which are driven by a social need focusing on food for people with reduced access. Throughout this process, which brought together producers, consumers and other stakeholders to design and test industrialised, sustainable solutions, empirical evidence demonstrates feasibility and usefulness of the approach and insight into the conditions for implementing interactive, comprehensive multi-stakeholder processes in real life situations. In addition, results show that the delivery of innovative solutions enabled to offer social added value, economic profits and environmental improvements under specific experimental conditions. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.