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Success in Chinese urban food waste recycling - through the linking of theories with practice

Professor Marie Harder to speak at CES

 

19 March 2015

12:00 – 13:00

CES, University of Surrey, 45AZ04

 

Marie will show how the viewpoints of different stakeholders, as to why behaviour change occurred, can be simply analysed with respect to a common framework to pin down which determinants were key to some very successful, durable, urban food waste sorting/recycling schemes in dense urban areas of Shanghai.  The framework consists of twelve domains pooled from many theories (cf Michie) and operationalised for this context.  Because of its ease of use by practitioners and transferability, it will be developed into a handbook for general use.

 

Registration

 

There is no cost to attend this seminar, however, please ensure you register your attendance by emailing Moira Foster.

 

For logistical information, please visit the CES website.

 

About

 

Marie is currently a China National Thousand Talents Professor based at Fudan University in Shanghai, one of the top five universities in China, where she was invited to set up an international level group from scratch in an area of need in sustainable development over five years. Her choice: residential food waste separation. Shanghai’s population of 23 million consists of 25,000 gated communities, each with their own waste station: this sets the stage for of multiple experimental interventions in behaviour change. Over the last three years Marie has worked to systematically explore determinants of behaviour change as food waste separation systems are rolled out, and to draw generalizable lessons from the plethora of case studies in waste management and investigations of narrow sets of parameters in social psychology, with the aim of producing clear advice and handbooks for NGOs and local groups to facilitate behaviour change.

Marie is still based 25% at the University of Brighton where she has been a Professor of Sustainable Waste Management since 2008. She has considerable experience in applied research across discipline boundaries, working with businesses, government agencies, civil society and NGOs. Her work spans recycling and behaviour change, values and indicators.

 

During 2008-2011 Marie coordinated an international EU: FP7 research project on Values-based Indicators for Sustainable Development, which has now blossomed into works in several disciplines: the elicitation of local group shared values, business ethics, participatory evaluation, measuring effectiveness in environmental projects, and ways for measures for the ‘fourth’ cultural/ values pillar of sustainable development.  She is currently leading an AHRC funded project to reveal ‘intangible legacies’ from university-community partnerships. The overarching concepts used across her work are increasingly captured in her publications in the field of design: she designs frameworks which bridge practice and theory.