Call to Action: Building Momentum around Climate Change in Rural Sanitation

On 28th October 2021, the Sanitation Learning Hub (Institute of Development Studies) and the Institute for Sustainable Futures (University of Technology Sydney) convened a workshop that brought together rural sanitation practitioners and researchers from across the world. This ensuing call to action sets out immediate, medium-term and long-term actions needed to ensure progress is made in rural sanitation and hygiene access, in the face of growing climate impacts

The use of ecodesign strategies and tools: state of the art in industrial design praxis, comparing Australian and German consultancies

This paper assesses the use of ecologically sustainable design approaches by industrial design (ID) consultancies in Australia and Germany. Whilst much academic research has focussed on the development of ecodesign strategies and tools, it remains unclear to what extent these are actually applied by practitioners. This paper investigates the extent to which design consultancies integrate ecodesign into their services and portfolios and their proactive promotion of sustainable design tools and strategies to their clients. This was achieved through a content analysis of commercial websites of ID consultancies in Australia (n=96) and Germany (n=217). The review criteria included: their general awareness of environmental issues related to product design, the share of ecologically responsible products in their portfolio and the kinds of sustainable design expertise that they advertise. The paper concludes that the majority of ID companies in Germany and in Australia do not appear to actively practice ecodesign. Nevertheless, amongst those that were found to practice ecodesign, a broad range of ecodesign strategies is visible; selection of low impact materials was the most prominent strategy used in Australia while reduction of impact during use was most common in Germany. Industrial design consultancies have significant potential to foster ecodesign implementation. A major barrier for ecodesign appears to be the lack of marketing arguments for ecodesign on the behalf of the consultancies. The legislative framework in Germany, often seen as progressive for ecodesign appears to have minor impact on the extent ID consultancies take up ecodesign

Water conservation behaviour in Australia

Ensuring a nation's long term water supply requires the use of both supply-sided approaches such as water augmentation through water recycling, and demand-sided approaches such as water conservation. Conservation behavior can only be increased if the key drivers of such behavior are understood. The aim of this study is to reveal the main drivers from a comprehensive pool of hypothesized factors. An empirical study was conducted with 3094 Australians. Data was analyzed using multivariate linear regression analysis and decision trees to determine which factors best predict self-reported water conservation behavior. Two key factors emerge: high level of pro-environmental behavior; and pro-actively seeking out information about water. A number of less influential factors are also revealed. Public communication strategy implications are derived