Showing papers by "Oksana Mont published in 2011"

Overview of sustainability initiatives in European food retail sector

Abstract: This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of sustainability practices in food retailing sector. Report is structured to reflect on overall sustainability trends among European food retailers, outline drivers and barriers to address sustainability issues in retailer’s supply chain operations and provide classification of sustainability initiatives undertaken by EU retail organizations that could be classified as forerunners in environmental field. Proposed classification embraces wide range of initiatives targeted towards greening particular aspects of business activities in upstream and downstream supply chain, as well as in-shop. Furthermore, analysis of initiatives is undertaken to reflect on how widespread different sustainability activities among retail organizations. Eventually, drawing on examples of ‘best practice’ among European forerunners, recommendations for retailers and policy-makers are provided on how to further sustainability work in food supply chain. (Less)

The role of values and public perceptions in policy making for sustainable consumption

Abstract: Summary of key messages for policy makers • Systemic approach is critical Climate change and natural resource depletion continues to be driven not least by unsustainable levels and patterns of consumption. There is growing recognition that the shift required to achieve sustainable consumption and production is a momentous paradigm shift in Western culture. Due to the holistic nature of shifting cultural values, policy makers need to take a systemic and comprehensive approach to working with cultural dynamics. This requires a comprehensive strategy within which a variety of approaches to engaging with citizen’s consumptive behaviours can be applied. • Policy makers in shaping public opinion Values are fairly stable, but do change over time and sometimes surprisingly quickly. Policy makers continuously influence cultural values and their leadership potential in shaping public opinion, even on controversial issues, is backed up historically. Using their inevitable influence with greater awareness and transparency could significantly enhance the potential for positive systemic change. Indeed, it is probable that without their leadership, the necessary changes won’t occur. • A bold positive vision of a sustainable society A vision of a sustainable society that is based on we-centred values is potentially very appealing, as it could be based on values that are already important to people, such as developing relationships with family, friends and community, self-development, trust, personal and societal health and well-being. • Importance of framing policy messages Awareness of how policies and communications are ‘framed’, i.e. what language is used and how messages are put into context, is necessary to ensure one is communicating the appropriate message and underlying values. This is also important in order to secure synergistic effects of individual policy instruments to promote systemic change to enable sustainability. • The role of social marketing in changing values Social marketing is a useful potential tool for activating and strengthening we-centred values – affiliation, self-acceptance and community. Care is needed to avoid the familiar practice of ‘selling’ sustainability using the dominant consumerist, I-centred values - financial success, conformity, status from material possessions - that hinder the achievement of sustainable consumption in the longer run. (Less)

Mainstreaming best practices in energy demand

Abstract: It is becoming increasingly clear that we need an integrated approach to understanding and encouraging transitions towards a sustainable energy system. Current overall unsustainable ‘practices’ are locked into cultural, material, institutional and infrastructural settings. This limits the scope for individual choice and action. Even when actions are taken on individual or project level, they often remain stand-alone niche experiments and little further diffusion takes place. This paper addresses this problem by investigating how new more sustainable practices in the field of energy demand at the micro level can become mainstream and how energy demand side management projects can encourage this. We first discuss how a multilevel systems approach and practice theory may be fruitfully combined to address the problem of mainstreaming. Second, we analyse four empirical cases of energy demand side management. We explore efforts at diffusing these sustainable energy practices, the encountered challenges, employed solutions and achieved outcomes with the goal of learning about opportunities to mainstream best practices in the field of energy demand. The analysis reveals that the case that involved the most radical innovation faced the highest resistance to mainstreaming from the incumbent system. The more incremental initiatives were more successful at diffusing, but had rather modest outcomes in terms of environmental and efficiency gains. An important finding is that in order to shift everyday practices to a more sustainable direction, an understanding of possibilities to trigger changes in social norms is needed. When these changes are quite invasive, more time for negotiation and discussion might be needed before they become regarded as legitimate. Furthermore, connecting supply and demand (instead of merely addressing the demand side) can be crucial in mainstreaming sustainable energy practices. Although lessons learned from the cases do not offer clear-cut ‘do’s and don’ts’ for future efforts, they do highlight important issues for mainstreaming sustainable practices. These issues can sometimes be addressed within the scope of a single energy demand side project, but often policy has an important facilitating role to play in making sustainable energy practices legitimate and mainstream. (Less)