Social representations of governance for change towards sustainability: perspectives of sustainability advocates

There is a substantial body of literature on public understandings of large-scale ‘environmental’ phenomena such as climate change and resource degradation. At the same time, political science and economics analyse the governance arrangements to deal with such issues. These realms of research rarely meet: there has been little research into people’s understandings of the governance of environmental change. This study adds a psychological perspective to governance research by investigating social representations of governance that promotes societal change towards sustainability, and related practices. It examines data from qualitative interviews with sustainability-interested people in seven European countries (n = 105). The analysis identified building blocks of representations suitable as an analytical framework for future research on governance representations. The diversity of their content reflected a range of pathways to societal change. Representations often seemed to have a creative function as a guiding vision for individuals’ own practices, but their wider transformative potential was constrained.     

Determining the role of the method used to recycle polypropylene waste materials from automotive industry using sepiolite and zeolite fillers

Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management - In this work, the effectiveness of a rapid recycling method of waste polypropylene (WPP) with the addition of inorganic fillers was investigated....     

Determination of δ13C and δ15N and trophic fractionation in jellyfish: implications for food web ecology

Application of stable isotope analysis (SIA) in jellyfish allows definition of trophic patterns not detectable using gut content analysis alone, but analytical protocols require standardization to avoid bias in interpreting isotopic data. We determined δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N in Aurelia sp. from the northern Gulf of Mexico (30°00′N, 89°00′W–30°24′N, 88°00′W) to define differences in stable isotope composition between body parts and whole body, the effect of lipid extraction on δ¹³C in tissues, and fractionation values from medusa to prey. The isotopic composition of bell and whole Aurelia sp. was not different. The increase in δ¹³C values after lipid removal suggested a correction is needed. To aid future analyses, we derived a correction equation from empirical data for jellyfish samples. Laboratory feeding experiments indicated medusae increased +4 ‰ in δ¹³C and +0.1 ‰ in δ¹⁵N compared to their diet. These results suggest protocols commonly applied for other species may be inaccurate to define Aurelia sp. trophic ecology. Because Aurelia spp. are commonly found in marine ecosystems, accurately defining their trophic role by use of SIA has implications for understanding marine food webs worldwide.