Why recycle? A comparison of recycling motivations in four communities

Four Illinois communities with different sociode-mographic compositions and at various stages of planning for solid waste management were surveyed to determine the influence of sociodemographic variables and planning stages on the factors that motivate recycling behavior. A factor analysis of importance ratings of reasons for recycling and for not recycling yielded five factors interpreted as altruism, personal inconvenience, social influences, economic incentives, and household storage. The four communities were shown to be significantly different in multivariate analyses of the five motivational factors. However, attempts to explain these community differences with regression analyses, which predicted the motivational factors with dummy codes for planning stages, a measure of self-reported recycling behavior, and sociodemographic measures were unsatisfactory. Contrary to expectation, the solid waste management planning stages of the cities (curbside pickup, recycling dropoff center, and planning in progress) contributed only very slightly to the prediction of motivational factors for recycling. Community differences were better explained by different underlying motivational structures among the four communities. Altruistic reasons for recycling (e.g., conserving resources) composed the only factor which was similar across the four communities. This factor was also perceived to be the most important reason for recycling by respondents from all four communities. The results of the study supported the notion that convenient, voluntary recycling programs that rely on environmental concern and conscience for motivation are useful approaches to reducing waste.     

Material Flow Analysis: a tool to support environmental policy decision making. Case-studies on the city of Vienna and the Swiss lowlands

This paper discusses the use of Material Flow Analysis (MFA) as a tool to support policy decision making in the field of resource and environmental management. In terms of policy, MFA can be used for early recognition, priority setting, to analyse and improve the effectiveness of measures and to design efficient material management strategies in view of sustainability. MFA has a high potential to be implemented as a guiding tool at the regional level, for example as part of a regional environmental management and audit system or as a part of the Local Agenda 21 process. Material management based on MFA is complementary to traditional environmental and resource management strategies, which have tended to focus heavily on specific environmental compartments, and measure the concentration of substances in various media. MFA, in contrast, provides an overview of the total system by linking the anthroposphere (that part of the biosphere in which humans' activities take place) with the environment. This system approach shifts the focus away from the back-end so-called 'filter strategies' to more pro-active front-end measures. MFA examines short- and long-term loadings rather than concentrations and highlights current and potential material accumulations, called material stocks. These stocks represent either potential environmental problems (e.g. large stocks of hazardous materials) or a potential source of future resources (e.g. urban mining). In this way, MFA can assist precautionary policy making by highlighting future environmental or resource issue problems without relying on signals of environmental stress. The objective of materials management is: firstly, to analyse material flows and stocks; secondly, to evaluate these results; and thirdly, to control material flows in view of certain goals such as sustainable development. MFA is an excellent tool for the first objective and is well suited to generate a base for the other two objectives. MFA results can be compared against environmental standards or can be interpreted using assessment or indicator methodologies (such as environmental impact assessment or ecological footprints). Selected results from two studies, carried out for the city of Vienna (substance management) and the Swiss lowlands (timber management), illustrate the use of MFA as a tool for early recognition (resource depletion and environmental quality), for priority setting and for effective policy making.     

Introduction to the special issue: Place,identity and environmental behaviour

Research on identity has proliferated in recent decades, particularly within environmental psychology; the physical environment has been shown to have strong connections to a sense of self, and identity has proved to be an important mediator of behaviour. The concept of identity has been defined and measured, however, in a wide variety of ways. The goal of this special issue is to present some of the recent work tying identity to place and behaviour. In our opening essay we describe some of the distinctions among approaches to identity at different levels of specificity and scale and suggest some criteria to determine meaningful sources of identity, including impacts on cognitive processing, emotional responses, and behaviour. Although a monolithic framework is neither practical nor desirable, we encourage greater conceptual and methodological integration in future research on the interconnections among place, identity, and behaviour.     

An introduction to issues of habitat fragmentation relative to transportation corridors with special reference to high-speed rail (HSR)

Potential environmental impacts on wildlife result from siting and construction (short-term impacts) and habitat removal and fragmentation (long-term impacts) as a consequence of transportation corridor construction. Especially in rural districts, wildlife migration corridors and dispersal orientation are altered or destroyed and wildlife populations and their gene pools are isolated. This significantly weakens the wildlife community. Prudent selection of construction corridors reduces fragmentation impacts by maximizing preserved fragment sizes, and by running parallel to, not through, natural areas. Corridor width determines the degree to which wildlife movement is restricted except that culverts, underpasses, overpasses, and one-way gates, can aid wildlife in cross movements. Minimum underpass dimensions for large wildlife should be no smaller than 14 ft×14 ft and should include natural substratum inverts. Rail corridors have four characteristics that minimize adverse environmental impacts. The railbed is dry, ballast fillters runoff, there is little runoff beyond the toe of slope, and drainage ditches serve to control sheet flow and erosion, sediment movement, and uncontrolled channel flow. Rail corridors usually occupy smaller land areas because they are narrower and are more feasible to elevate so as to allow free movement of wildlife across the corridor.     

Product life cycle: The key to integrating ehs into corporate decision making and operations

A consensus is emerging that traditional environmental health and safety (EHS) programs—characterized by EHS professionals serving a support function to a company's main operations—represent only part of effective EHS management. In order to be truly successful, EHS management must go beyond this format and integrate EHS considerations into the corporation itself, from its strategic corporate decision making to its everyday operations on the manufacturing floor. Only when EHS becomes part of the fabric of a business's activity will EHS risks and costs be truly minimized—and the many potential benefits fully realized. This article discusses how to make this goal a reality by use of the manufacturing and product life cycle (PLC) perspective. It will first stress the importance of integrating EHS considerations into corporate decision making and operations. It will then trace the critical steps for achieving such integration through the use of the PLC, concentrating particularly on a General Electric Company (GE) chemical management process that weaves EHS concerns into every stage of day-to-day operations.     

Place attachment and place identity: First-year undergraduates making the transition from home to university

This paper examines the issues emanating from the transition into a new social and cultural environment distant from the home, the context of which is provided by the transition from home to university. The study analyses the transitional process over a period of 5 months, using data obtained from in-depth semi-structured interviews and participant observation of ten first-year undergraduates who moved to study at the University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham. It explores the mediating variables that impact place attachment and place identity during the transition from home to university. Within this context consideration is given to how participants made sense of changes in their socio-spatial environment, the ensuing problems and challenges of doing so, and how these meanings affected self-perceptions and self-evaluations. The analysis demonstrates how participant's stories of the transition evince an abiding concern with the loss of place, manifest in terms of an erosion of a sense of belonging, attachment and continuity and an undermining of home's capacity to symbolise the self. The implications of such accounts for our understanding of place attachment and identity are then explored. The paper concludes by advocating a holistic approach to our conceptualisation of place, given that place meanings are constantly being evaluated and redefined in light of changing social and physical relationships with place and between people and place.     

Soil profile distribution of phosphorus and other nutrients following wetland conversion to beef cattle pasture

Largely influenced by the passage of the Swamp Land Act of 1849, many wetlands were lost in the coastal plain region of the southeastern United States, primarily as a result of drainage for agricultural activities. To better understand the chemical response of soils during wetland conversion, soil core samples were collected from the converted beef cattle pastures and from the natural wetland at Plant City, FL in the summers of 2002 and 2003. Data collected from the natural wetland sites were used as reference data to detect potential changes in soil properties associated with the conversion of wetlands to improved beef cattle (Bos taurus) pastures from 1940 to 2003. The average concentration of total phosphorus (TP) in pasture soils (284 mg kg(-1)) was significantly (p 相似文献   

Pattern of representation of countries in cognitive maps of the world with special reference to Africa

Although for a long time environmental psychologists have been concerned with the nature and process of environmental perception and its representation in map forms, global sketch maps have not been popular in mainstream research. Further, conceptual and theoretical insights into the subject are yet to be fully achieved; and quite significantly, comparative analysis has been limited by the concentration of research efforts in the developed countries of Europe and America. In the same vein, the challenge of clarifying the psychological, spatial and social underpinnings of cognitive maps and their contributory role in day-to-day space-related problem solving and decision-making brings to the fore the need for cross-disciplinary and across-regional studies. This paper examines the world's image from an African perspective, exploring those countries of the world that are best known to Africans and the factors responsible for the pattern of recall and representation in the maps drawn by them. Some 656 maps were collected from 13 sites in 11 countries. Analysis of the frequency of inclusion of countries was first carried out; chi-square analysis was then performed on the frequency of inclusion by level of a country's economic development, population, geographical size and relative location from Nigeria and Africa. The results from qualitative interpretation show that while images of countries may have been influenced by composite and multifaceted factors, embracing historical and cultural associations, media images and invocations, Africans, nevertheless, tended to recall nations following some descending hierarchy, with ‘developed/geographically prominent countries’, ‘we’ (i.e. Africa), ‘others’ and ‘unknown’ countries as discernible clusters. From statistical test, population and spatial size of countries, the proximity of countries to the assessors and to some extent, level of economic development, were found to be significant in accounting for the pattern of recall and representation in cognitive maps. The paper shows that in spite of the evident limitations of mental sketches they hold some promise for our understanding of cross-regional variations in the images of the world, which could be important to the building of relevant social and geographical education to foster global understanding.     

The role of analytical science in natural resource decision making

There is a continuing debate about the proper role of analytical (positivist) science in natural resource decision making. Two diametrically opposed views are evident, arguing for and against a more extended role for scientific information. The debate takes on a different complexion if one recognizes that certain kinds of problem, referred to here as “wicked” or “trans-science” problems, may not be amenable to the analytical process. Indeed, the mistaken application of analytical methods to trans-science problems may not only be a waste of time and money but also serve to hinder policy development. Since many environmental issues are trans-science in nature, then it follows that alternatives to analytical science need to be developed. In this article, the issues involved in the debate are clarified by examining the impact of the use of analytical methods in a particular case, the spruce budworm controversy in New Brunswick. The article ends with some suggestions about a “holistic” approach to the problem.     

Groundwater quality assessment of Nawa Tehsil in Nagaur district (Rajasthan) with special reference to Fluoride

In recent years, the problem of fluoride in Nawa tehsil (Nagaur district) has reached at an alarming proportion. In the last decades, the water table of the Nawa tehsil has fallen. With the lowering of the water table, the amount of fluoride has increased in the subsoil water which is used by the villagers when drawn through hand pumps, tube wells etc. So the present study illustrates the groundwater quality of randomly selected villages of Nawa tehsil. The highest fluoride concentration was found in Rulaniyo ki Dhani i.e. 14.62 ppm. The excessive intake of fluoride resulted in dental and skeletal fluorosis.     

Collateral geochemical impacts of agricultural nitrogen enrichment from 1963 to 1985: a southern Wisconsin ground water depth profile

In this study, we used chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) age-dating to investigate the geochemistry of N enrichment within a bedrock aquifer depth profile beneath a south central Wisconsin agricultural landscape. Measurement of N(2)O and excess N(2) allowed us to reconstruct the total NO(3)(-) and total nitrogen (TN) leached to ground water and was essential for tracing the separate influences of soil nitrification and ground water denitrification in the collateral geochemical chronology. We identify four geochemical impacts due to a steady ground water N enrichment trajectory (39 +/- 2.2 micromol L(-1) yr(-1), r(2) = 0.96) over two decades (1963-1985) of rapidly escalating N use. First, as a by-product of soil nitrification, N(2)O entered ground water at a stable (r(2) = 0.99) mole ratio of 0.24 +/- 0.007 mole% (N(2)O-N/NO(3)-N). The gathering of excess N(2)O in ground water is a potential concern relative to greenhouse gas emissions and stratospheric ozone depletion after it discharges to surface water. Second, excess N(2) measurements revealed that NO(3)(-) was a prominent, mobile, labile electron acceptor comparable in importance to O(2.) Denitrification transformed 36 +/- 15 mole% (mol mol(-1) x 100) of the total N within the profile to N(2) gas, delaying exceedance of the NO(3)(-) drinking water standard by approximately 6 yr. Third, soil acids produced from nitrification substantially increased the concentrations of major, dolomitic ions (Ca, Mg, HCO(3)(-)) in ground water relative to pre-enrichment conditions. By 1985, concentrations approximately doubled; by 2006, CFC age-date projections suggest concentrations may have tripled. Finally, the nitrification induced mobilization of Ca may have caused a co-release of P from Ca-rich soil surfaces. Dissolved P increased from an approximate background value of 0.02 mg L(-1) in 1963 to 0.07 mg L(-1) in 1985. The CFC age-date projections suggest the concentration could have reached 0.11 mg L(-1) in ground water recharge by 2006. These results highlight an intersection of the N and P cycles potentially important for managing the quality of ground water discharged to surface water.