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The paper explores the human-environment relationship in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. It argues that every impact on humans by the environment or by human-made objects is initially triggered by human actions. The paper questions humans' and objects' agency. Furthermore, the essay argues that the environment either helps or impedes the novel's characters, which according to the book, can be solved by collaboration.

This thesis is a comprehensive study describing and quantifying material flows of waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) in the Czech Republic; specifically the material flow of small waste electric and electronic equipment (s-WEEE) as well as representative substances. The studied material flows were estimated regarding aspects of the environmental impact. The End-of-Life mobile phone is seen as a typical representative of s-WEEE ; therefore material flows of mobile phones are described in this thesis as well. To put it in concrete figures, approximately 124 thousand tons of WEEE from households originated in the Czech Republic in 2010, where each inhabitant got rid off 4 pieces of WEEE in average. Further, total production calculating also consumer-like WEEE from companies and institutions was around 141 thousand tons in 2010. S-WEEE present around 15% from the total amount of WEEE originating in 2010; however it is more than 80% as regards the number of pieces. Despite of that fact the recycling potential of Au for instance is slightly higher by s-WEEE than by large WEEE (63kg/year compared to the 59kg/year respectively). As regards estimation of the total production of EoL mobile phones, around 45 thousand pieces originated in the Czech Republic between the years 1990-2000 and 6,5...

<p>Promoting sustainable consumption is critical to meet the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Food systems can cause considerable environmental impacts, which are exacerbated by the rapidly increasing global population and urbanization. Policy makers are seeking strategies to promote sustainable food consumption to reduce food-related environmental footprints. However, literature assessing environmental implications of food consumption has several gaps: first, studies using national average diets or one-day dietary recall data are likely to neglect the heterogeneous food purchasing patterns in different households and over longer time spans; second, few studies have considered reducing the overall food-emissions-water-land (FEWL) impacts and the FEWL impact reduction potentials have not been fully examined due to lack of considering changing consumption patterns of food items within food groups. Additionally, knowing the environmental impacts of food consumption is only the first step towards sustainable consumption. Providing the information to consumers to guide their decision making is also critical. Ecolabels are increasingly used to inform consumers about the environmental performance of products. However, the effectiveness of ecolabels is unclear because methods used in existing studies may not show consumers’ naturalistic behavior.</p> <p> </p> <p>This dissertation aims to address these research gaps to provide better understanding of the reduction potentials and trade-offs of food environmental impacts, and the effectiveness of ecolabels to facilitate consumer decision making for sustainable consumption. To achieve the objective, a variety of models and methods are used: (1) detailed food purchasing records from 57,578 U.S. households were analyzed and a process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) model is developed to evaluate the food carbon emissions and identify reduction pathways; (2) the LCA model was then expanded to also quantify food-related blue water footprint and land footprint. The FEWL impact reduction potentials were evaluated in two dietary change scenarios: (a) only adjusting intake in each food group to the recommended amount and (b) in addition to adjusting food group intake amount, changing consumption patterns to shift towards the food item that minimizes the overall FEWL impacts within each group). A food-item level analysis was also conducted to examine the FEWL impact trade-offs associated with food item substitutions; and (3) survey and attention data were collected from 156 participants in a naturalistic shopping environment using eye tracking glasses to evaluate the effectiveness of ecolabels on informing consumers’ product selection for sustainable consumption. </p> <p> </p> <p>By assessing the environmental impacts of food consumption and the effectiveness of ecolabels, this dissertation proposed pathways to reduce food-related environmental impacts (i.e., through identifying target households and food groups for impact reduction) and strategies to improve ecolabels’ effectiveness in consumers’ decision making. The results can provide insights to policy makers to promote sustainable consumption. </p>

Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an analytic method for evaluation of environmental impacts of products, services and technologies. It is associated with all the stages of a product's life. The environmental impacts are evaluated on the basis of material and energetic flows, which are in influence with the environment. These impacts are always determined in the relation with the function of the product or the service and so it is possible to compare them with the other alternatives. One of the most important reasons why I have chosen this dissertation thesis subject was the growing public interest in impacts of the building constructions on the environment and human organism. Only a few experts and scientific research centres deal with the problem of environmental impacts of the buildings in the Czech Republic so the main goal of this thesis is to help with a spreading a knowledge about it. There are four main problems to solve in the thesis: determination of environmental impacts of selected materials which are missing in available databases, creation of life cycle models of evaluated buildings, determining the most appropriate functional unit and determining the contents of the recommended LCA protocol for building analysis. In the first phase of the thesis there was built a detailed life cycle model of the reference building on the basis of available documents and databases. This "cradle to cradle" LCA model was then optimized for a large number of life cycle scenarios to determine the significance of the impact of individual variables on the overall environmental impact of the building. The knowledge gained from this analysis was applied to the lifecycle models of other buildings and then there was assembled the recommended form of the LCA protocol. In the final stage, the results of the environmental impacts were quantified on the different functional units which were used for determining the appropriate form.

As has been the case for onshore wind systems, the environmental effects of offshore wind farms are expected to play an important part of the development of future large-scale wind energy systems. This paper presents a detailed review of the status of, and recent developments in, research on the environmental impacts of fixed and floating offshore wind turbine systems. The primary information that has been reviewed has come from European sources where there are a significant number of offshore installations, but some work on this subject has been carried out recently in the United States. Information, from an extensive review, is presented on the environmental impacts of fixed and floating offshore wind turbines on benthic organisms, fish, marine mammals, avian species and bats. The environmental impacts of fixed and floating systems are anticipated to vary due to multiple parameters that need to be taken into account when identifying environmental impacts. Additionally, there are variations in the impact throughout the lifecycle of the offshore wind turbines. The primary focus for this paper is on the environmental impacts through the scope of barrier and habitat impacts in addition to the anticipated avian and bat fatalities. A noise propagation model is used to determine the extent of effects due to the installation of fixed and floating support structures using piling installation methods. Finally, a summary of progress in all the major environmental impact areas is given along with recommendations for future research.

This thesis is a comprehensive study describing and quantifying material flows of waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) in the Czech Republic; specifically the material flow of small waste electric and electronic equipment (s-WEEE) as well as representative substances. The studied material flows were estimated regarding aspects of the environmental impact. The End-of-Life mobile phone is seen as a typical representative of s-WEEE ; therefore material flows of mobile phones are described in this thesis as well. To put it in concrete figures, approximately 124 thousand tons of WEEE from households originated in the Czech Republic in 2010, where each inhabitant got rid off 4 pieces of WEEE in average. Further, total production calculating also consumer-like WEEE from companies and institutions was around 141 thousand tons in 2010. S-WEEE present around 15% from the total amount of WEEE originating in 2010; however it is more than 80% as regards the number of pieces. Despite of that fact the recycling potential of Au for instance is slightly higher by s-WEEE than by large WEEE (63kg/year compared to the 59kg/year respectively). As regards estimation of the total production of EoL mobile phones, around 45 thousand pieces originated in the Czech Republic between the years 1990-2000 and 6,5...

Digitalization has been reshaping the media landscape in recent years, often conveying an implicit promise of becoming less dependent on physical resources. At the same time, the current understanding of digital reading goes beyond dedicated e-readers or definable digital media products such as magazines or newspapers. In fact, it must be perceived as a function or service obtained from existing and ever-expanding “digital ecosystems”. There is furthermore a clear and unambiguous trend that relatively small and mobile devices are on the rise for consuming all kinds of media. Next to potentially enabling environmental gains compared to traditional paper-based media consumption, there are agreeing indications of a shift from overall electricity consumption dominated by end-user devices towards an increasing importance of less tangible data transmission networks and data centers. Therefore, a bottom-up analysis is deemed to compliment more general top-down observations and assessments. To this end, an elaborated reference scenario is proposed as to bridge the mere analytical method of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with behavioral aspects based on German market observations and surveys. The prevailing aim of this study is to detect environmental hot-spots and absolute impacts linked to the service of accessing text-based content via connected electronic devices. In doing so, this study takes the position that both types of media consumption – digital and paper-based - are incommensurable due to the very evident differences in provided functions, markets, and industries. Therefore, an attributional and stand-alone LCA is considered appropriate. The perceived current situation (reference scenario) evolves around substantiated estimates and assumptions concerning production of devices, use of devices as well as operation of essential data transmission network components. Looking at potential hot-spots, electricity consumption linked to data transmission could be a decisive factor for the environmental performance of digital reading. However, the actual importance of data transmission infrastructures depends on both methodological choices and a range of parameters or trends. For instance, the relative importance is shifted when more recent estimates of electricity intensities are incorporated. Depending on actual and localized electricity intensity of data transmission, the amount of data required to provide an expected function may inhibit environmental potentials of digital media consumption. Postulating average annual consumption of digital contents and assuming actual substitution of equivalent printed media products, about 50 kg CO2-equivalents. could potentially be avoided. This theoretical potential is based on the calculated global warming potential (GWP) associated with digital reading according to the reference scenario which amounts to about 29 kg CO2-equivalents. Therefore, this study supports findings from previous studies that indicated environmental benefits of digital reading. Compared to other functions or services (e.g. video/music streaming, podcasts, audio books) embedded in the same “digital ecosystems”, reading requires little amount of data. If allocation of upstream effects is based on time, the relative importance of data transmission networks could be gauged and compared by adopting a “data-to-service time” ratio. Taking the reference scenario as a starting point, a perceivable ratio for digital reading is 0.015 GB/h, including systemic inefficiencies. In contrast, streaming of high-definition video contents can easily consume 3 GB/h, a 200-fold increase. The audience of this study comprises providers of digital reading services and/or other media services as well as end-users as integral element in “digital ecosystems”. Besides, the report proposes a conceptual assessment framework which can be applied to other contemporary digital services or functions. / De senaste åren har digitalisering omformat medielandskapet, med ett implicit löfte om att minska beroendet av fysiska resurser. Dessutom finns det tydliga trender som pekar mot en ökad användning av små, mobila enheter för att konsumera alla sorters media. En uppdaterad bottom-up analys bedöms komplettera mer generella observationer och bedömningar. Om man antar årliga genomsnittliga konsumtionsmönster i Tyskland, så är tillverkningen av elektroniska slutanvändarenheter – oavsett om de är till för enskilda ändamål (e-läsare) eller om de är multifunktionella (smartphone, surfplatta) – onekligen en miljömässigt kritisk punkt för digitalt läsande. Elförbrukningen, som sker i samband med dataöverföringen, kan också vara en avgörande faktor för den övergripande miljöpåverkan av digital läsning. Dock beror den faktiska påverkan av dataöverförningsinfrastrukturer dels på metodologiska val men även på ett antal andra parametrar och trender. Genom att undersöka indikatorn för global uppvärmning kan denna studie konstatera att resultaten stödjer tidigare forskning, som redan pekar på de miljömässiga vinsterna av digitalt läsande. Målgruppen för denna studie innefattar både distributörer av digitala läs-tjänster och/eller andra media tjänster såväl som slutanvändare som ett integrerat element i ”digitala ekosystem”.

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