5 research outputs found
New metaphors for plastic packaging
Packaging is typically viewed as a product delivery system to be discarded having fulfilled this function, thereby wasting the resources and potentially causing further harm. Changing this situation will likely involve new technologies, systems, and approaches, but will also require people to rethink their relationship with packaging, potentially in radical ways that embrace, rather than reject, the signs of previous use that are likely to accrue in more circular systems. The present research used an interactive online workshop to envisage potential metaphors for humanâs relationship with packaging and to consider how these might shift thinking and behaviour. In total, 16 new metaphors for peopleâs relationship with plastic packaging were generated during the workshop, including âI may have let myself go but you still love meâ (the idea that continued use despite wear signals commitment), âlost and foundâ (the idea that one personâs loss is anotherâs gain), and âbeing a parent to packagingâ (the idea that people have a responsibility to care for packaging). Activities might now be designed to disseminate these new metaphors. For example, we have established â(Pack)age Concernâ with the goal of âcalling out cruelty to plastic packaging and helping them live a long and happy lifeâ.</p
Consumer society, commodification and offender management
This article aims to set current developments in `offender management' services in England and Wales and in Scotland within the contexts first of a discussion of Bauman's analysis of crime and punishment in consumer society and second of wider debates about the commodification of public services. Rather than examining the formal commodification of offender management through organizational restructuring, `contestability' and marketization, the authors examine the extent to which the substantive commodification of offender management is already evidenced in the way that probation's products, consumers and processes of production have been reconfigured within the public sector. In the concluding discussion, they consider both some limitations on the extent of commodification to date and the prospects for the containment or moderation of the process in the future