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- Heiskanen, Eva, et al.
(författare)
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Educating sustainability change agents : The importance of practical skills and experience
- 2016
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Ingår i: Journal of Cleaner Production. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-6526. ; 123, s. 218-226
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sustainability professionals are agents for change towards sustainable development. Such professionals require knowledge from a variety of disciplines, but also competencies to accomplish real-word change. This article evaluates an innovative course, Strategic Environmental Development, which immerses students in a real-life solution-oriented consultancy project in order to develop critical sustainability change agent skills and confidence in using them. Since 1996, students have worked in 127 projects in 28 countries. The evaluation builds on a post-graduation survey and personal interviews with graduates. Our findings indicate that the course, which is conducted as teamwork and often overseas, helps to prepare students for their challenges at work. It does so by requiring them to work with interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary situations, and to find, translate and combine information outside their own area of expertise, including knowledge from the field. We also argue that working in real-life contexts helps to build up the confidence and leadership that practicing sustainability professionals direly need. A real-life consultancy course helps students become professionals by helping them experience that they are able to access the necessary knowledge for problem-solving quickly and decisively. Moreover, students develop a sense of agency through the experience of being capable to accomplish change. Our findings contribute to a small but growing body of knowledge on the value of using real-world learning experiences in the education of sustainability professionals.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Thidell, Åke, et al.
(författare)
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T h e Nordic Swan 2015 – Performance indicators for ecolabelling
- 2015
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Nordic Swan is a voluntary environmental and consumer policy instrument that was launched in the Nordic countries in 1989. Ever since, the scheme has grown with increasing numbers of product groups and licence holders. Similarly, the number of ecolabelled products in the market place has also grown, resulting in a growing financial turnover. The Nordic Swan has furthermore also been joined by additional parallel ecolabelling schemes. Just like other policy instruments, the Nordic Swan is subject to evaluations. As of yet, the scheme has been evaluated three times and questions regarding quantitative information on performance and efficiency of the Nordic scheme and comparability with other schemes have been recurrent issues in connection to these evaluations. Beside policy-makers and people in charge of the scheme, market actors are also interested in the question, to decide to what extent they should consider the ecolabel when acting on the market. These market actors could be consumers who seek for guidance, producers in need for trustworthy market communication channels, consumer and environmental NGOs needing to know if they should promote the ecolabel among their members, etc. These and other reasons call for appropriate information systems that bring forward the requested information in, for instance, suitable systematically selected and standardised indicators. Such indicators could be used for various purposes, for example documenting trends in performance and efficiency of the scheme, making comparisons of different schemes, benchmarking studies for mutual learning and continual improvements, to name a few. We propose that the Nordic Swan scheme prioritises developing indicators to track changes in internal performance and efficiency. Pilot studies could be developed on comparisons of differences between the national competent bodies of the Nordic Swan, as well as the EU Ecolabel. Pushing joint development of indicator sets for comparisons as collaborative projects with other schemes, for instance the EU Ecolabel, is on one hand desirable but can also become time-consuming. We therefore suggest that such projects are given lower priority
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| 4. |
- Thidell, Åke, et al.
(författare)
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The Nordic Swan: Possibilities and limitations for synergies with Green Public Procurement before 2014
- 2015
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This report was initiated and conducted as input to the discussions based on the “Vision 2015” document for the Nordic Swan that explicitly states a wish to find ways to make use of ecolabelling in the green public procurement (GPP) setting. In 2014, the Directive (2004/18/EG) on public procurement was revised and replaced by Directive (2014/24/EU). Some of the restrictions in using ecolabelling in GPP mentioned in this report may thus not be valid while the discussion on the relation between the two policy instruments as such still is considered relevant.
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| 5. |
- Tojo, Naoko, et al.
(författare)
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Material recycling without hazardous substances : Interplay of two policy streams and impacts on industry
- 2018
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Ingår i: Preventing Environmental Damage from Products : An Analysis of the Policy and Regulatory Framework in Europe - An Analysis of the Policy and Regulatory Framework in Europe. - : Cambridge University Press. - 9781108422444 - 9781108500128 ; , s. 253-275
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Governments of different levels have been implementing various policies to enhance the closure of material loops, as well as to reduce the risk of hazardous substances. Manufacturers and distributors of products have a crucial role in the selection and/or verification of materials for their new products. This study sought to obtain concrete knowledge on perception, experiences, and future outlook of manufacturers and distributors who have been proactive in at least one of the two areas; the increased use of recycled materials and the decreased use of hazardous substances. The study covered four sectors - interior products, clothing, toys, and electrical and electronic equipment - and based on in-depth interviews to 10 manufacturers, sought to identify similarities and differences between the sectors.
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