Rachel Slater

Composting municipal waste in the UK: some lessons from Europe

Composting is an important element in sustainable waste management for the UK and could potentially have a vital role to play in meeting the obligations of the Landfill Directive. This paper evaluates the current state of the composting industry in the UK using the survey data from 1999 and compares its performance and profile with other countries in Europe. The UK industry profile shows that most waste (92%) is managed by relatively small, centralised sites which typically employ unsophisticated technology. These centralised sites also tend to compost green (garden) waste almost exclusively and this material is usually obtained from collection at civic amenity sites. In relation to the longer-term requirements of the Landfill Directive, it would appear that continued reliance on composting green waste would not be sufficient to meet the targets. Major structural changes will be needed if the industry is to meet the challenges ahead and kerbside collection and composting of both kitchen and green waste will probably have an important role to play. The results from the 1999 survey of composting also suggest that there is a renewed interest in using mechanical and biological treatment to process municipal solid waste directly. After several years of sustained growth, it is clear that the UK composting industry is at a crucial stage in its development. It is the opinion of the authors that the experience of the more advanced composting countries in Europe should be used as a model for the continued development of the UK industry in order to deliver sustainable waste management in the longer term.

Institutional change for improving accessibility in the design and delivery of distance learning – the role of faculty accessibility specialists at The Open University

The Open University (OU) has an established infrastructure for supporting disabled students. Historically, the thrust of this has focused on providing accessible adjustments post-production. In 2012, the OU implemented securing greater accessibility (SeGA) to raise awareness and bring about an institutional change to curriculum design so that the needs of all students, including disabled students, are taken into account from the outset of module design and production. A core component of SeGA is the introduction of faculty accessibility specialists (AS). This case study discusses the successes and challenges for AS in motivating and supporting production teams in the adoption of inclusive anticipatory practices to make new curriculum accessible. It also outlines the process of reasonable adjustment during presentation. It shows how collaborative working between AS has helped standardise design and production processes for accessibility, principles with wider relevance for supporting disabled students in other higher education institutions.

Mapping muck: stakeholders’ views on organic waste

[Editors’ introduction] In this chapter the authors explore stakeholders’ understanding of what to do with organic waste within the United Kingdom. They discuss two projects that were both commissioned and funded under the same Government research programme specifically to support policy making. Although looking at the same broad environmental sustainability issue of how to treat organic waste as a resource to be exploited rather than a waste product to be disposed of, the two projects use mapping and involve participants in different ways. Both projects also highlight how the use of quantitative survey data is informed by, and in turn informs, the use of diagrams within the overall methodology. The authors also look at these projects through the different ways diagrams can be used that were discussed in Chapter Two.

Teaching Environmental Management Competencies Online: Towards "Authentic" Collaboration?

Abstract Environmental Management (EM) is taught in many Higher Education Institutions in the UK. Most this provision is studied full-time on campuses by younger adults preparing themselves for subsequent employment, but not necessarily as environmental managers, and this experience can be very different from the complexities of real-life situations. This formal academic teaching or initial professional development in EM is supported and enhanced by training and continuing professional development from the major EM Institutes in the UK orientated to a set of technical and transferable skills or competencies expected of professional practitioners. In both cases there can be a tendency to focus on the more tractable, technical aspects of EM which are important, but may prove insufficient for EM in practice. What is also necessary, although often excluded, is an appreciation of, and capacity to deal with, the messiness and unpredictability of real world EM situations involving many different actors and stakeholders with multiple perspectives and operating to various agendas. Building on the work of Reeves, Herrington, and Oliver (2002), we argue that EM modules need to include the opportunity to work towards the practice of authentic activities with group collaboration as a key pursuit. This paper reports on a qualitative study of our experiences with a selected sample taken from two on-line undergraduate EM modules for second and third year students (referred to respectively as Modules A and B) at the Open University, UK where online collaboration was a key component. Our tentative findings indicate that on-line collaboration is difficult to ensure as a uniform experience and that lack of uniformity reduces its value as an authentic experience. Whilst it can provide useful additional skills for EM practitioners the experience is uneven in the student body and often requires more time and support to engage with than originally planned.