Title: Strategies towards sustainable households using stakeholder workshops and scenarios

Authors: Jaco Quist, Marjolijn Knot, William Young, Ken Green, Philip Vergragt

Addresses: Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, De Vries van Heijstpl 2, NL-2628 RZ Delft, The Netherlands. Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, De Vries van Heijstpl 2, NL-2628 RZ Delft, The Netherlands. CCEM, Huddersfield University Business School, Queensgate, Huddersfield, HD1 3DH, UK. CROMTEC, Manchester School of Management, UMIST, P.O. Box 88, Manchester, M60 1QD, UK. Design for Sustainability, sub-faculty of Industrial Design, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 9, NL-2628 BX Delft, The Netherlands

Abstract: Meeting the needs of present generations while ensuring that future generations can fulfil their needs properly requires sustainable development. Assuming that in the next 50 years the global population will double and global wealth will increase fivefold, while it will be necessary to halve the environmental burden, social needs will have to be fulfilled twenty times more environmentally efficiently by 2050. It requires great changes in consumption and production in the ||developed|| part of the world. This is the starting point of the EU-funded research project ||Strategies towards the Sustainable Household – SusHouse|| focusing on what households can contribute to such Factor 20 strategies. This paper describes the participatory approach of the SusHouse project, focusing on the key elements of stakeholder workshops and scenario construction, and presents first results for the household functions (areas) (Clothing Care, and Shopping, Cooking and Eating) studied in the Netherlands and the UK. It is concluded that it is possible to construct scenarios for future sustainable fulfilment of household functions based on the creative ideas and visions of stakeholders from different societal groups attending workshops. The paper ends with a discussion of the relevance of the applied methodology in the field of sustainability research.

Keywords: clothing; nutrition; scenarios; stakeholder workshops; sustainable households.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSD.2001.001547

International Journal of Sustainable Development, 2001 Vol.4 No.1, pp.75-89

Published online: 04 Jul 2003 *

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