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This thesis presents some novel techniques to process Post Consumer Carpet waste and provides detailed cost comparisons between setting up and running small-scale decentralized units and large-scale centralized chemical facilities. The techniques presented include: a decentralized underlay manufacturing process which does not distinguish between the types of face fiber, a decentralized facility with twin screw extruder to depolymerize nylon 6 face fiber with a concurrent underlay manufacturing facility, a decentralized pallet production facility, and a centralized facility for chemically depolymerizing nylon 6, and nylon 6,6 with a concurrent underlay manufacturing facility The limiting factors to recycling are the collection of significant volumes of material and effective recycling techniques. This is illustrated in this study. The aim of this study is to enable recyclers to assess their recycling activities using various performance parameters, such as payback period of the venture, mass of carpet recycled, and energy used. Thus, this study aims to shed light on the impact of recycling on current carpet consumption per capita. The results indicate that decentralized facilities located in metropolitan areas with populations of over 2 million people have a lower payback period than the large scale centralized facilities that are sparsely distributed throughout the country. These decentralized facilities are also more efficient in reducing the current carpet consumption per capita. The reduced traveling distance for the post consumer carpet from the collection/disposal site to the processing facility should make a huge impact on energy consumption and the corresponding environmental emissions.

One of the key international policy challenges in the intellectual property (IP) regime is the issue of traditional knowledge (TK) protection. TK has a bearing on debates around biodiversity, food, agriculture, health, expressions of folklore, trade and development, and human rights. In the policy and academic debates around TK protection, a critical gender perspective is often underdeveloped. Guided by feminist legal methodology, an approach founded on women’s experience of exclusion, and using two feminist methods of gender impact assessment and qualitative interviews, the thesis makes a case for mainstreaming gender in TK law and policy. In most Indigenous and local communities around the world, women play a significant role in the generation, transmission, and use of TK. There are different contributions by Indigenous and local women to the TK system, and there is also differential impact of TK misappropriation on these women. Critical evidence to support the importance of gender as an influential factor in TK protection is based on in-depth examination of two case studies, namely Persian handwoven carpets and saffron. My fieldworks in Kashan, “the city of handwoven carpets”, and Khorasan, “the province of saffron” enabled me to examine the role of Iranian local women and their TK in handwoven carpet and saffron production. Iran is the undisputed centre of saffron production, where the tradition dates back over 3,000 years. The superiority of Iranian saffron comes not only from the climatic conditions but also the rich heritage of TK in growing and processing the crop with Iranian local women as the main performers in different stages of saffron production. Persian hand-woven carpet as an icon of Iranian culture, dating back about 2000 years, is another illuminating example of products in which women and their TK play a major role. From carpet weaving workshops to saffron farms, I found one common theme: the invisibility of women’s TK that is taken for granted while it is the very basis of production. Lack of proper attention to women’s TK in these sectors and its potential for women’s empowerment, has led to many local women and most of the younger generation losing their interest in carpet weaving and saffron production, which in the long run can put the TK in danger of becoming forgotten. Moreover, with the rural outmigration due to lack of employment opportunities, the knowledge of the older generations in handwoven carpet and saffron production is often no longer passed on to the younger generation. Therefore, if women’s TK is to remain alive and deliver its potential for empowering Indigenous and local women, which indeed should be among the main objectives of any TK instrument, these women should be incentivized through gender-responsive TK law and policy to continue practising their TK. Building on the fieldwork results, this research reconceptualizes the TK issue as a gender issue to which TK law and policy fora should respond with gender-sensitive instruments, implementation plans, and adequate resources. The objective of the research is to call for and contribute to a policy change in the realm of TK by translating fieldwork insights (as a knowledge-based gender advocacy) into policy recommendations for a gender-responsive alternative approach to TK laws and policy. More specifically, the thesis provides recommendations for gender mainstreaming in both the process of crafting, and the contents of legal modalities for TK protection.

Rebar carpet is an innovation that favors the working environment of the rebar workers and saves time. Reinforcement workers today are a vulnerable group. Heavy lifts and backbreaking postures are a part of their everyday work. It is already established that work with rebar carpets is both time-saving, economically beneficial and from a working environment point of view better than traditional reinforcement work. Despite all benefits it is used in rather few projects today. The purpose of this study is to identify how the construction industry embraces new innovations related to in situ concrete with post-tensioned reinforcement. The goals are to find out how designers, contractors and manufacturers are working to adopt rebar carpets in the construction process and to shed light on, factors affecting the adoption. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with designers, contractors and a representative of a rebar manufacturing company. Designers and contractors have not, generally speaking, been actively working to adopt rebar carpet. The governing factors for the use of rebar carpets is the designers and contractors knowledge and previous experience of rebar carpet. The contractors who have previous experience of rebar carpet can imagine using rebar carpet again and contractors with no previous experience believe that they need more knowledge of rebar carpet before they dare to try. Design engineers who have designed for rebar carpet before has it in mind when they design other projects. Designers who have no previous experience of rebar carpet demand more knowledge about how they can facilitate the use of rebar carpet.

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This Master’s Thesis seeks to explain the process of initiation undergone by Henry James’s characters. Characters are chosen for initiation into forbidden knowledge, and, like the Biblical Adam and Eve, are exiled as a result. Though initiation is erotic, it is not sexual, and society falsely perceives a sexually charged relationship between the initiator and the initiate, also called the complementary pair. The initiate faces exile and death because of his forbidden knowledge. He no longer has a place in his society, which leads to his social death and eventually physical death. James’s reader is initiated along with the characters, becoming a critical reader who no longer sees reading as a passive activity but brings his own judgment to the text. The Jamesian Reader does not face the same fate as the initiate, but he does change substantively as a result of his new perspective on the text.

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