“The city of living garbage” tours private houses in Austin transformed by their inhabitants into quasi-public places – art environments and permaculture systems made possible by urban waste. The creators of these micro-utopias collect and improvise with salvaged materials like roadside junk, greywater, unwanted animals, and half-forgotten cultural forms to cultivate habitats where undervalued things flourish. They revalue waste through a variety of practices like caring for, teaching, learning, enjoying, and tinkering. Becoming part of these relational patterns is a way to slow down and find wonder and pleasure in the ordinary, but also to act on ecological problems in the larger world. The landscape patches that emerge are lively but vulnerable assemblages that artists, activists, and their nonhuman allies belong to as local characters. By being open for tours, the places loosely connect publics that share modes of attention set on urban natures, salvageable garbage, and vernacular aesthetics. These informal institutions, non-profits, and vulnerable for-profit businesses are caught up in Austin’s current sustainable and cultural development strategies, but also share in an informal economy through their use of valueless wastes. Some articulate with contemporary localization movements that seek to reconfigure water, food, and energy production to decrease their precarious dependence on globalized economies. Others refuse the boundary between art and everyday life by recasting houses as never-ending aesthetic projects. Similarly, as wildlife habitats and urban gardens, they are thriving examples of cultivated places that disrupt an assumed antithesis between cities and ecosystems. These embodied critiques or dreams are small-scale manifestations of what urban natures might become. Borrowing from Deleuze & Guattari, Haraway, Latour, and Thrift, I attend to these places’ ecological and aesthetic relational dynamics that communicate directly through bodies, senses, and forms. This non-representational approach recognizes the contributions of nonhuman agents like plants, animals, microbes, and machines in composing affective landscapes. The writing strives to be a mode of research that is isomorphic with the phenomena it describes. It is impelled by a love of the places, people, and beings it researches; it aspires to preserve a little bit of them by redoubling their presence in the world. / text

QC 20100622

<p>This thesis suggests a method for measurement of corporate contribution to sustainable development, looking at how well a company stands up to its policies and commitments regarding sustainable development.</p><p>A sustainability index is developed and calculated for ITT Flygt AB over a three years period (2002-2004). The index structure is based on scientific literature and interviews with ITT Flygt and four other engineering companies.</p><p>The purpose of the index is to support corporate sustainability-management.</p><p>The index is calculated by aggregating some forty sustainability-indicators. These indicators are individual to each company and are designed to measure the significant sustainability aspects of the company.</p><p>Besides from providing one aggregated sustainability-value of the company, the index also provides sub-indices, which support the interpretation of the index result.</p>

4 pp. / Engaging with one's local government on sustainable development ideas can seem daunting. Understanding your local government's structure and public meeting protocol is key to any citizen's initiative to influence and bring about change to their community. Many examples of sustainability plans and policies developed by other communities across the country are available on the internet to help citizens create some action in their own neighborhood that fosters sustainable development.

Water security is becoming an increasing concern for communities in the southwestern United States. Projected decreases in water availability due to climate change combined with increased demands from a rapidly growing population have many concerned about the sustainability of the water supply in coming years. As water availability becomes an increasing concern, greater efficiencies must be made to increase the resilience of the water supply system. This dissertation analyzes the efforts of Tucson, Arizona households to conserve water during the hottest and driest decade in the city's recorded history, between 2000 and 2009. This study utilizes survey data to statistically examine the motivations for household adoption of five conservation methods: rainwater harvesting systems, graywater systems, xeriscaping, high-efficiency devices and volunteerism for public water conservation projects. Following the statistical analysis, interviews were conducted with participants to provide further context for analyzing the results. This mixed method approach reveals that drought alone did little to directly encourage household water conservation over the decade. However, public water conservation initiatives that were launched during the decade made a significant contribution to increasing household water conservation. Households consistently cited a desire for more information about the implications of the current drought status as well as additional information about their individual household's water use.

<p> This dissertation is a study of two water management systems and their respective potential for adaptive change. It compares the principles of traditional common-pool resource communities with the policies and practices of contemporary acequias and the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District. A review of the biophysical environment and relevant water laws and institutions provides a historical and environmental perspective on how the two distinct systems evolved into their current forms. The respective systems' capacities to continue to function in their basic forms in the face of climate change are evaluated through the conceptual lenses of resilience theory and the adaptive change cycle. The severe and extended drought that New Mexico is experiencing is causing a sharpened focus on how to limit water use. Shortage sharing is a traditional practice in common-pool resource cultures, as are other measures to manage a limited and vital resource, including monitoring, sanctions, exclusion of free-riders, equity of use, and reliance on democratic institutions to ensure collective decisions. These principles and practices are present to varying degrees in both systems and provide solid bases upon which to innovate and adapt to new conditions. The challenge will be to mobilize the will to change sufficiently to adapt while honoring the cultural values represented in each system; in other words, to build resilience into the systems. Opportunities to do so are explored and evaluated for their potential positive effects and possible downsides</p>

Water utilities are facing pressure to continue to provide high-quality potable water in an increasingly energy constrained world; managing the ageing infrastructure that exists in many countries is a challenge in and of itself, but recently this has been coupled with political and public attention to the environmental impacts of the distribution system. Utility managers need to take a holistic approach to decision-making in order to determine all of the impacts of their plans. The intention of this thesis is to present a set of considerations for utility planners and managers to provide clarity to the trade-offs associated with any pipe replacement decision. This research has examined the energy relationships between operational energy reduction and the embodied energy tied to replacing deteriorated pipes in water distribution networks. These relationships were investigated through the development and application of a life-cycle energy analysis (LCEA) for three different pipe replacement schedules developed with the intent to reduce leakage in the system. The results showed that the embodied energy for pipe replacement is significant even when compared against the large amount of energy required to operate a large-scale water utility. The annual operational energy savings of between 8.9 and 9.6 million kWh achieved by 2070 through pipe replacement comes at a cost; 0.88-2.05 million kWh/mile for replacement with ductile iron pipes with diameters of 6” to 16” respectively. This imbalance resulted in a maximum energy payback period of 17.6 years for the most aggressive replacement plan in the first decade. Some of the assumptions that were used to complete the LCEA were investigated through a sensitivity analysis; specific factors that were numerically queried in this chapter include the break rate forecasting method, pumping efficiency, the leakage duration and the flow rate per leakage event. Accurate accounting of energy requirements for pipe replacement will become even more important as energy and financial constraints continue to increase for most water utilities, this thesis provides guidance on some of the complex relationships that need to be considered. / Thesis (Master, Civil Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2013-08-21 16:51:18.963

The sustainability of publicly funded Canadian health care services is an ongoing debate. Timely access to services and the availability of qualified health care professionals are vital to the survival of emergency health care services in rural and small towns. One of many factors threatening sustainability is the lack of qualified professionals. The current nursing shortage and the aging nursing workforce present rural hospitals with recruitment and retention challenges that threaten the sustainability of emergency services and thus have the potential to compromise the health of Canadians living in rural communities. Health care decisions are primarily based upon economics without consideration of the diversity of rural communities. Challenges in health care delivery including access to emergency services affect Canadians living in rural communities. These challenges need to be highlighted in the context of rural health as a unique entity in order to build awareness in policy makers to ensure appropriate health care service delivery to rural communities. It is important for researchers and policy makers to recognize that rural hospitals are not mini-urban centres and thus have differing needs. This two phase study focused on the sustainability of emergency health care services in rural and small town Ontario. Using a mixed methods approach, this study explored a descriptive analysis of emergency departments in rural Ontario and concluded with in-depth case studies of three rural emergency departments with varying travel distances to tertiary care facilities. These findings have validated pre-existing frameworks and can be used to assist policy makers at all levels to develop recommendations for sustaining emergency health care services in rural Ontario including ways to recruit, train, retain, and maintain resources that are vital to the survival of rural emergency services. / Thesis (Ph.D, Nursing) -- Queen's University, 2013-09-24 16:23:27.162

The aim of this study is to investigate how inside and outside directors differ in their cognition and reasoning in regards to environmental sustainability issues. The theoretical background derives from a cognitive view and Stakeholder theory. The paper is further based on current research regarding insiders’ and outsiders’ relationship to environmental sustainability. In order to capture the cognition and reasoning of insiders and outsiders, a Think-aloud study was conducted, interviewing a total of 20 board members in the food industry. Results from this study showed that, when faced with environmental issues, outsiders are more likely to request, repeat, ponder as well as clarify the information given. Secondly, outsiders are more likely to consider a long-term perspective. Thirdly, outsiders are more likely to consider an environmental view. Lastly, both insiders and outsiders use analogical reasoning when contemplating around environmental issues. However, insiders are more likely to draw experience from their current position or company while outsiders are more likely to draw experience from outside their current position or company when solving environmental issues.

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are a definitive driving force of economic stability in the marketplace due to the number of jobs created by the small and medium sized business sector and there is a positive influence on a country’s national economy. While a considerable amount of research focuses on SME sustainability, empirical tests on the factors influencing sustainability of SMEs have not been piloted and researched to the completest prospective. The primary purpose of this study was to identify the determining factors that influence the sustainability of selected small and medium-sized enterprises. The empirical investigation was conducted among 135 SME owners and/-or managers in the Potchefstroom area of the North West province of South Africa. The methodology included the sampling procedure, data collection, questionnaire development and statistical techniques later used due to the nature of responses. Results were analysed with regard to the descriptive statistics and correlations between questions included in the questionnaire. The results of this study concluded that there are certain factors considered as important contributors for SME sustainability. The importance of this study is the contribution of a sustainability framework which will aid SMEs in the management of sustainability within their enterprises. The further development of a SME programme to equip the management members could be derived from the results in an attempt to ensure the encouragement of this very important commercial driver of the economy. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014