Peter Hopkinson

Sustainable graduates: linking formal, informal and campus curricula to embed education for sustainable development in the student learning experience

The paper hypothesises that student learning about sustainable development (SD) might usefully be configured within a broad framework combining formal, informal and campus curriculum. Student learning about sustainable development is a form of education for sustainable development (ESD), a term which has many definitions and interpretations. In this paper we refer to both student learning about SD (referring to multiple influences, actions and levels of engagement) and ESD as an overarching formal term (in our work based upon the UNESCO framework for ESD). The term campus sustainability is used when the focus of learning and engagement is based upon or designed around campus‐focused projects and activities. We discuss why we believe our broad framework approach is useful and illustrate the practical development of some of these ideas through the early work of our institutional Ecoversity project. Our approach requires bringing together and meshing widely disparate institutional processes and drivers to support wide and multiple levels of student learning about SD. Such institution‐wide engagement requires that a number of key ‘enablers’ are developed, including: academic policy of ESD and SD; academic school engagement with ESD and SD including staff development and training; strategically focused processes and projects around the informal curriculum; and campus management practises and processes that support open and transparent decision‐making processes and treat all campus projects as educational opportunities. We describe some of the early achievements from our cross institutional ESD projects and reflect on some key learning points.

A Multivariate Analysis of Work–Life Balance Outcomes from a Large-Scale Telework Programme

A multivariate analysis identified six predictors to explain positive work–life balance (WLB) among 1,566 teleworkers. Time flexibility variables were found to be most dominant. Gender or having dependent children was not significant. These results demonstrated that controlling working hours was the most important ability for sampled teleworkers to achieve positive WLB.

Practical pedagogy for embedding ESD in science, technology, engineering and mathematics curricula

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review and highlight some recent examples of embedding education for sustainable development (ESD), within science and related curricula in ways that are meaningful and relevant to staff and students and reflect on different embedding strategies and discourses.Design/methodology/approach – A review of recent selected UK and international teaching and learning practice drawing on an expert workshop and link to wider debates about student competencies and embedding ESD in the curriculum.Findings – There are a number of practical ways of bringing sustainable development into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) related subjects. Successful implementation requires linking teaching activities to the core activities of the STEM discipline. Reformist approaches to curriculum re‐orientation are more likely to be successful than calls for radical, transformational models.Practical implications – Embedding ESD into the core curricula of STEM subjects is p...

Environmental performance evaluation in the water industry of England and Wales.

The appropriate means of benchmarking environmental performance within and between companies is a matter of considerable debate and raises issues such as what information to compare and the reliability and consistency of data. Comparing environmental performance through company environment reports is an approach which has been widely used but, as this paper shows, is difficult and has severe limitations. This paper presents a unique analysis, based on the UK water industry, which compares data reported in company environmental reports and data on the same companies reported through the industry regulators. In turn, this is compared with the environmental performance indicators proposed by two other systems, one advanced by the UK water industry itself. The results demonstrate the difficulty of specifying environmental indicators that enable meaningful comparison. The difficulty of comparing environmental performance in a sector with a comprehensive approach to, and long history of, environmental performance reporting presents some hard lessons for other sectors.

THE STANDARDISATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE INDICATORS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING: WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THE UK WATER INDUSTRY?

The ability to utilise corporate environmental reports to benchmark environmental performance requires the development and inclusion of standardised environmental performance indicators. Most systems for benchmarking corporate environmental reports are measures of environmental activities rather than performance. The UK Water Industry has considerable experience in measuring and reporting standardised environmental performance indicators to the regulator and publishing corporate environmental reports. An analysis of corporate environmental reports shows that the inclusion of industry standardised environmental performance indicators is patchy and inconsistent. Moreover, slight differences in units of measurement make comparisons very difficult. A new set of standardised environmental performance indicators developed by the water industry itself, shows similar findings when compared against corporate environmental reports. At the current time corporate environmental reports cannot be used to benchmark performance. There is no reason why corporate environmental reports could not be adjusted to include the two sets of standardised environmental performance indicators examined. In their absence there seems to be little purpose in benchmarking corporate environmental reports.

Institutional Change towards a Sustainability Agenda: How far can theory assist?

This paper offers a case study of a major university initiative to embed sustainability into practices in a number of ways, with a focus here on embedding the sustainability agenda across the curriculum. The purpose of this is to examine how far the concepts and axioms around change processes which run out of two theoretical traditions are borne out by this case. Those traditions are, first, social practice theory, an ontological perspective on the social world which has implications for how both stability and change are accomplished in organizations and beyond them. Second is an approach to the management of change specifically, a more immediately practical theory termed complex-adaptive systems theory. The paper’s intent is to consider how far such theories of change offer managers lenses for seeing the issues involved, while illuminating some of the key factors that the social practice and complex-adaptive systems theory viewpoints foreground.

Ecoversity: the potential for sustainable development to reshape university culture and action

This paper describes an institutional strategy (Ecoversity) to embed sustainable development across the full range of university activities and services and reflects on two different phases of Ecoversity providing illustrations and case examples of specific actions and changes that have occurred. The programme has begun to deliver tangible benefits to the institution and has begun to act as a catalyst for, and link up with other, internal initiatives that are seeking to reshape the university culture and core activities around sustainable development. The paper reflects on the process of change and describes a process model that captures many of the key elements that needed to be addressed to initiate change and scale up activities. The process model is helpful in analysing barriers to change and how change can be achieved. The project illustrates a conscious and deliberate process for embedding SD within a university culture and offers a coherent conceptual framework for describing change processes.

The treatment of landscape in project appraisal: consumption and sustainability approaches

Two approaches to incorporating landscape impacts into project appraisal are considered—the consumption approach and the sustainability approach. The sustainability approach is preferred because, if properly applied, it wiU ensure that the stock of landscape wiU not deteriorate; it avoids the need to assess consumer valuations of landscape change; and damage to landscape cannot be offset by measures to increase consumption of what remains.

Value Creation from Circular Economy led Closed Loop Supply Chains: A Case Study of Fast Moving Consumer Goods

Abstract The role of closed loop supply chains (CLSC) for creating and recovering value is widely acknowledged in supply chain management and there are many examples, mainly in the business-to-business sector, of successful OEM remanufacturing. The integration of value creation and recovery activities into retail customer value propositions is, however, under researched and raises many challenges, especially in Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) retail where few real-world examples have been published. The recent emergence of the term ‘circular economy’ has initiated further debate about closed loop value propositions and closed loop supply chain implications. This paper selects four circular economy-led closed loop product case examples from a major European FMCG company, and assesses, at a high level, how these cases created value, for whom value was created, and key challenges in their implementation. The findings highlight that each case is different. Closing loops and creating successful value propositions is complex and requires simultaneous reconfiguration of key building blocks to ensure customer acceptance and business viability. The paper proposes the term ‘circular supply chain’ for cases where circular economy principles are explicitly incorporated in CLSC for value creation.