Mikko Jalas

A time use perspective on the materials intensity of consumption

Abstract The ecological requirements to drastically increase the productivity of materials use call for improvements in the efficiency of consumption. This (eco-)efficiency discussion often takes a functional view on consumption, noting that present consumption is inefficient and that it is not the products that the consumers want, but the services that the products yield. However, contemporary consumption serves many needs that are not functional and universal, but subjective and obscured from the producers. This paper develops a time use approach towards consumption, which makes allowance for the subjectivity of needs, while still enabling the analysts to approach the concept of a sustainable lifestyle. A distinctive premise of the analysis is that it assumes time and money not to be interchangeable and consumption to be limited by available consumption time instead of purchasing power. This approach is demonstrated by linking the direct and the indirect energy use of Finnish two-person households to the data of a national time use survey. The results are used to point out some of the potential time use rebound effects of such new eco-efficient services that transfer activities from private households to the market actors.

Situated lifestyles: I. How lifestyles change along with the level of urbanization and what the greenhouse gas implications are—a study of Finland

An extensive body of literature demonstrates how higher density leads to more efficient energy use and lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transport and housing. However, our current understanding seems to be limited on the relationships between the urban form and the GHG emissions, namely how the urban form affects the lifestyles and thus the GHGs on a much wider scale than traditionally assumed. The urban form affects housing types, commuting distances, availability of different goods and services, social contacts and emulation, and the alternatives for pastimes, meaning that lifestyles are actually situated instead of personal projects. As almost all consumption, be it services or products, involves GHG emissions, looking at the emissions from transport and housing may not be sufficient to define whether one form would be more desirable than another. In the paper we analyze the urban form?lifestyle relationships in Finland together with the resulting GHG implications, employing both monetary expenditure and time use data to portray lifestyles in different basic urban forms: metropolitan, urban, semi-urban and rural. The GHG implications are assessed with a life cycle assessment (LCA) method that takes into account the GHG emissions embedded in different goods and services. The paper depicts that, while the direct emissions from transportation and housing energy slightly decrease with higher density, the reductions can be easily overridden by sources of indirect emissions. We also highlight that the indirect emissions actually seem to have strong structural determinants, often undermined in studies concerning sustainable urban forms. Further, we introduce a concept of ?parallel consumption? to explain how the lifestyles especially in more urbanized areas lead to multiplication of consumption outside of the limits of time budget and the living environment. This is also part I of a two-stage study. In part II we will depict how various other contextual and socioeconomic variables are actually also very important to take into account, and how diverse GHG mitigation strategies would be needed for different types of area in different locations towards a low-carbon future.

The Everyday Life Context of Increasing Energy Demands.Time Use Survey Data in a Decomposition Analysis

An epicardial lead having an electrode extending from the bottom thereof in combination with an anchoring system adapted to secure the lead to the heart without the use of complex procedures or tools. In a preferred embodiment the epicardial lead comprises an electrode body having two oppositely disposed arms, each arm fixed for rotation, each arm having an arcuate anchor mounted to the bottom surface, each arcuate anchor having as the center of the arcuate shape the axis of rotation of the respective arm. Rotating the arms causes each arcuate anchor to move in a circular fashion such that when each arm is moved from an open position to a closed position the respective anchor is moved to engage and move through the cardiac tissue and thereby secure the lead to the heart.

Situated lifestyles: II. The impacts of urban density, housing type and motorization on the greenhouse gas emissions of the middle-income consumers in Finland

The relationship between urban form and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has been studied extensively during the last two decades. The prevailing paradigm arising from these studies is that a dense or compact urban form would best enable low-carbon living. However, the vast majority of these studies have actually concentrated on transportation and/or housing energy, whereas a growing number of studies argue that the GHG implications of other consumption should be taken into account and the relationships evaluated. With this two-part study of four different area types in Finland we illustrate the importance of including all the consumption activities into the GHG assessment. Furthermore, we add to the discussion the idea that consumption choices, or lifestyles, and the resulting GHGs are not just a product of the values of individuals but actually tied to the form of the surrounding urbanization: that is, lifestyles are situated. In part I (Heinonen et al 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 025003) we looked into this situation in Finland, showing how the residents of the most urbanized areas bring about the highest GHG emissions due to their higher consumption volumes and the economies-of-scale advantages in the less urbanized areas. In part II here, we concentrate only on the middle-income segment and look for differences in the lifestyles when the budget constraints are equal. Here we also add the variables housing type and motorization into the assessment. The same time-use and private expenditure data as in part I and the same GHG assessment method are used here to maintain high transparency and comparability between the two parts. The results of the study imply that larger family sizes and economies-of-scale effects in the less dense areas offset the advantages of more dense living when the emissions are assessed on per capita basis. Also, at equal income levels the carbon footprints vary surprisingly little due to complementary effects of the majority of low-carbon lifestyle choices. Motorization was still found to increase the emissions, but a similar pattern regarding housing type was not found.

Stacking wood and staying warm: Time, temporality and housework around domestic heating systems

This paper presents a study of the socio-technical ordering of time around wood-fuelled heating systems of detached houses. It analyses the sequences and rhythms that organize the work of domestic heating, its synchronization with other daily activities, and tempo as the subjective experience of time in these activities. The study is based on a large, pre-existing Finnish free-form diary collection. We suggest that domestic energy technologies become useable and useful through the gradual embedding that involves the temporal organization of everyday life. As a result, technologies that organize time are not only convenient in an invisible way but also act as taken-for-granted coordinates and rhythms of human pursuits in everyday life. In many countries, wood-fuelled heating systems remain a common renewable energy technology in detached houses and stand as one option to lower related carbon emissions. However, the broader use of wood is compromised by time and convenience.

Object relations in accounts of everyday life

Theories of social practice routinely acknowledge the significance of the material world, arguing that objects have a constitutive role in shaping and reproducing the practices of which daily life is made. Objects are also important for those who approach ‘everyday life’ as an ontology, a tradition in which scholarly interest in the material reaches beyond the somewhat pragmatic concerns of practice theory. In this article we identify traces of both schools of thought in the ways in which people describe their immediate material environments. By drawing on an archive of diary material, we illustrate multi-faceted object relations with reference to the example of keeping warm. We conclude that in keeping warm, diarists weave together encounters, tactics and judgements, encountering objects in ways that extend beyond the ‘mere’ enactment of social practice. In analysing these encounters we explore ways of conceptualising the object-world that are especially relevant for studies of everyday life.

Making time - The art of loving wooden boats

This article adopts a point of view of practice theories and elucidates how temporal orientations commence in the interactions of humans and the material world. Empirically the article focuses on the contemporary practices of wooden boating. Such practices offer a variety of different temporal orientations, which include emancipatory uchronias, flow states, altruistic care of common heritage and craft identities of mastering traditional skills. These positions within wooden boating result out of a distinct historic development. The practices of wooden boating also frequently imply stress and heavy toll on time, and entail subtle negotiations between self-determination and duties as a practitioner.

Moving home: houses, new occupants and the formation of heating practices

ABSTRACT This paper examines the formation of heating practices at the time of moving house. Interviews on occupant changes in Finnish single-family houses with a focus on heating arrangements and thermal comfort reveal that practice formation in and around occupant changes is a complex process of aligning elements where the house stands out as a coordinative and coordinated aggregate. As houses pass from one set of occupants to the next, they carry practices and delineate new ways of operation to the new occupants. The study demonstrates the temporal unfolding of the hidden complexity to what seems like a straightforward process of residents interacting with a new heating system and home. The findings contribute to the understanding of the domestic sphere as a space for practice formation.

Debating the proper pace of life: sustainable consumption policy processes at national and municipal levels

Time, harriedness and various time-related strategies of slowing down the pace of life have been introduced as critical standpoints in the literature on sustainable consumption. However, the pace of life has received relatively little attention in official policy documents on sustainable consumption. Slow living and wealth-in-time appear as promising and catchy slogans that nevertheless leave few or no marks on environmental policy as it unfolds. Focusing on the policy processes of Local Agenda 21 in Helsinki and of the Finnish National Committee on Sustainable Consumption, an attempt is made to understand how expertise and lay understandings about the pace of life are constituted, and to account for how these themes are introduced, debated and marginalised in policy formulation.

Time-use Rebound Effects: an Activity-based View of Consumption

Energy-efficiency innovations frequently contribute to and depend on changes in the time allocation of households. In this chapter I argue that a focus on such changes in time use can broaden the scope of the rebound debate and help to account for transformative types of rebound effects. In simple terms, I argue that one can reframe the debate by shifting the focus from monetary effects to the time use of individual consumers.