Suchergebnisse

In recent times, the contribution of technology and standard energy indicators in urban governance for a wiser use of energy resources has been called in debate, emphasising the potential role of traditional ecological knowledge, individual lifestyles, and in general a wider long-term thinking about the sustainability goal of policy makers. A resilience perspective may help in exploring the contribution of community resilience when dealing with human factors and energy consumptions trends. The paper analyses these relations by observing a special portion of city represented by university campuses. In particular, energy data from the Sustainability Office of the Hokkaido University, in Japan, coupled with surveys with campus users in the effort to reduce their energy consumption, are red under a resilience lens. Results showed that although collective responses did produce sparkling and virtuous outcomes, there were not enough to reach the targets fixed by the national government in terms of electric and thermal energy percentage reduction. Conclusions outline the possibility of systematic efforts to break through the current curricular paradigms in reducing public building energy consumption, using new ways to foster cultural identity protection and resilience thinking in urban governance action toward a low carbon society.

Purpose
This paper aims to report strategies towards a green campus project at Politecnico di Torino University, a 33,000-students Italian higher education institution (HEI), and estimate the avoided ecological footprint (EF) of different scenarios accounted for open spaces.


Design/methodology/approach
A consumption-based study has been developed to analyse the current EF of the main campus site. Data were collected from different departments and administrative units to identify the measure of the pressure exerted by the campus activities on the ecosystem. Then, possible scenarios were accounted for open spaces along five different design layers: energy, water, landscape, food and mobility. Acting on the spaces by means of biophilic design and user-driven design requires complex considerations on university's anticipated future needs and a wide-ranging evaluation of the most appropriate pathways forward according to all university stakeholders, far beyond the mere accounting of avoided EF.


Findings
A reduction of the 21 per cent of the current EF can be achieved through the solutions envisaged in the green campus project along the open space layers. Moreover, universities have the opportunity to not only improve the sustainability of their facilities but also demonstrate how the built environment can be designed to benefit both the environment and the occupants.


Research limitations/implications
The acknowledgement of predicted behavioural change effects is a question left open to further researchers on methods and indicators for social impact accounting and reporting in truly sustainable university campuses.


Originality/value
This is the first research that estimates the EF of an Italian HEI. The research represents also an innovative approach integrating the EF reduction scenarios in the design process of the new masterplan of open spaces, trying to identify the connection between environmental impact reduction and improvement in users' perception.

Abstract
Background
Sustainable production and consumption are two important issues, which mutually interact. Whereas individuals have little direct influence on the former, they can play a key role on the latter. This paper describes the subject matter of sustainable consumption and outlines its key features. It also describes some international initiatives in this field.

Results
By means of an international survey, the study explores the emphasis given to sustainable consumption during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the degree of preparedness in individuals to engage in the purchase of green and sustainably manufactured products. The main results indicate that the pandemic offered an opportunity to promote sustainable consumption; nevertheless, the pandemic alone cannot be regarded as a 'game changer' in this topic.

Conclusions
Apart from an online survey with responses from 31 countries, which makes it one of the most representative studies on the topic, a logit model was used to analyse the main variables that affect the probability of pro-environmental consumption behaviour because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper lists some of the technological and social innovations that may be needed, so as to guide more sustainable consumption patterns in a post-pandemic world.