Enhancing engagement with community sector organisations working in sustainable waste management: a case study

Voluntary and community sector organisations are increasingly being viewed as key agents of change in the shifts towards the concepts of resource efficiency and circular economy, at the community level. Using a meta-analysis and questionnaire surveys across three towns in the East Midlands of England, namely Northampton, Milton Keynes and Luton, this study aimed to understand public engagement with these organisations. The findings suggest that these organisations play a significant and wide-spread role, not only with regard to sustainable environmental management, but also a social role in community development and regeneration. The surveys indicated that there were generally high levels of awareness of the organisations and strong engagement with them. Clothes were the items most donated. Key reasons for engagement included the financial value offered and the perception that it helped the environment. However, potential limitations in future public engagement were also determined and recommendations for addressing these suggested

Rural Development Programme measures on cultivated land in Europe to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions – regional ‘hotspots’ and priority measures

© 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.Agriculture is a significant source of GHG emissions, contributing 10% of total emissions within the EU-28. Emissions from European agriculture have been reduced, albeit at the expense of crop yield and the risk of production displacement (the transfer of production, and associated emissions, to land outside of Europe). This article assesses the impact on GHG emissions of selected European Rural Development Program measures, representative of a diversity of management strategies implemented on cultivated land, within nine European Member States. Climatic zone and underlying spatial environmental variables were accounted for using a novel technique, “Regional Variation Categories,” developed with European-scale GIS data sets. Production displacement is assessed with two benchmarks: (1) compared with existing crop production and (2) relative to a “minimum requirement” land management scenario, where an emissions reduction of less than this does not constitute mitigation. Most measures reduce emissions relative to the baseline crop scenario; however, many do not reduce emissions beyond the “minimum requirement,” this being limited to measures such as catch crops and within-field grass areas to prevent soil erosion. The selection and targeting of measures to maximize agricultural GHG mitigation on cultivated land within Europe is discussed...Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Oil and Cocoa in the Political Economy of Ghana-EU Relations: Whither Sustainable Development?

Oil and cocoa represent strategic export commodities for the Ghanaian economy, prioritised within the Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda. This article examines these sectors in the context of Ghana’s relations with the European Union (EU). Notably, the EU constitutes the most important market for Ghanaian exports. The European Commission, moreover, has pledged to tangibly assist private sector development in Ghana, with particular reference to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through its focus on oil and cocoa, the article problematises certain aspects of EU aid and trade interventions with respect to normative SDG development pledges

PROMISE: first-trimester progesterone therapy in women with a history of unexplained recurrent miscarriages - a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, international multicentre trial and economic evaluation

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Progesterone is essential to maintain a healthy pregnancy. Guidance from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and a Cochrane review called for a definitive trial to test whether or not progesterone therapy in the first trimester could reduce the risk of miscarriage in women with a history of unexplained recurrent miscarriage (RM). The PROMISE trial was conducted to answer this question. A concurrent cost-effectiveness analysis was conducted. DESIGN AND SETTING: A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, international multicentre study, with economic evaluation, conducted in hospital settings across the UK (36 sites) and in the Netherlands (nine sites). PARTICIPANTS AND INTERVENTIONS: Women with unexplained RM (three or more first-trimester losses), aged between 18 and 39 years at randomisation, conceiving naturally and giving informed consent, received either micronised progesterone (Utrogestan(®), Besins Healthcare) at a dose of 400 mg (two vaginal capsules of 200 mg) or placebo vaginal capsules twice daily, administered vaginally from soon after a positive urinary pregnancy test (and no later than 6 weeks of gestation) until 12 completed weeks of gestation (or earlier if the pregnancy ended before 12 weeks). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Live birth beyond 24 completed weeks of gestation (primary outcome), clinical pregnancy at 6-8 weeks, ongoing pregnancy at 12 weeks, miscarriage, gestation at delivery, neonatal survival at 28 days of life, congenital abnormalities and resource use. METHODS: Participants were randomised after confirmation of pregnancy. Randomisation was performed online via a secure internet facility. Data were collected on four occasions of outcome assessment after randomisation, up to 28 days after birth. RESULTS: A total of 1568 participants were screened for eligibility. Of the 836 women randomised between 2010 and 2013, 404 received progesterone and 432 received placebo. The baseline data (age, body mass index, maternal ethnicity, smoking status and parity) of the participants were comparable in the two arms of the trial. The follow-up rate to primary outcome was 826 out of 836 (98.8%). The live birth rate in the progesterone group was 65.8% (262/398) and in the placebo group it was 63.3% (271/428), giving a relative risk of 1.04 (95% confidence interval 0.94 to 1.15; p = 0.45). There was no evidence of a significant difference between the groups for any of the secondary outcomes. Economic analysis suggested a favourable incremental cost-effectiveness ratio for decision-making but wide confidence intervals indicated a high level of uncertainty in the health benefits. Additional sensitivity analysis suggested the probability that progesterone would fall within the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence's threshold of £20,000-30,000 per quality-adjusted life-year as between 0.7145 and 0.7341. CONCLUSIONS: There is no evidence that first-trimester progesterone therapy improves outcomes in women with a history of unexplained RM. LIMITATIONS: This study did not explore the effect of treatment with other progesterone preparations or treatment during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. FUTURE WORK: Future research could explore the efficacy of progesterone supplementation administered during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle in women attempting natural conception despite a history of RM. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN92644181; EudraCT 2009-011208-42; Research Ethics Committee 09/H1208/44. FUNDING: This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment programme and will be published in full in Health Technology Assessment; Vol. 20, No. 41. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information

Participation in environmental enhancement and conservation activities for health and well-being in adults: a review of quantitative and qualitative evidence

PUBHLT

Mobility justice in low carbon energy transitions

Mobility systems raise multiple questions of justice. Work on mobility justice and policy often treats different elements of the debate separately, for example focussing on environmental justice or accessibility. This is problematic as it can privilege policy solutions without a full view of the winners and losers and the values implicit in that. Using analysis of current policy, we investigate how mobility justice can reconcile its different components, and find two major consequences. First, is doubt about the justice of the existing policy approach which tries to tackle transport pollution primarily through a shift to low emission vehicles. This approach privileges those with access to private vehicles and further privileges certain sets of activities. Second is a need to reassess which basic normative ideas should be applied in mobility justice. Work on mobility justice has tended to appeal to conceptions of justice concerned with access to resources including resources enabling mobility. These conceptions say little about how resources should be used. We show that avoiding stark inequalities means collectively thinking about how resources are used, about how we value activities involving mobility, and about what sorts of goods and services we create

The nutrition of women on low incomes

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:q97/12253 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Food supplement claims A survey of over 700 nutritional and health claims being made by over 300 food supplements showing a need for clearer and stronger regulations to prevent consumers being misled

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:GPE/4676 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Bovine Somatotropin A product in search of a market; report to the London Food Commission's BST Working Party

7.50Available from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:88/22628(Bovine) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo