Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
To ensure the future wellbeing of the Earth we must be more conscious of what we consume and what we throw away. SDG 12 calls for more sustainable consumption and production patterns. EUC researchers are working collaboratively across diverse sectors to ensure practical consumption, production and waste solutions for all.
Deriving Ontario Municipal-level Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity data
Fall 2024 marked the release of the first Ontario municipal Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity dataset. In 2022, the Rural Ontario Institute (ROI) hired former MES student and current ES PhD student Peri Dworatzek as a data analyst to generate environmental data for Ontario municipalities. Peri’s experience as a data analyst for the Ecological Footprint Initiative, knowledge of ecological economics, and as a planning student garnered a perfect fit for generating local-level data accounts for Ontario communities.
Brewing change: Rethinking coffee cup habits for a sustainable future
Every day, countless people in Toronto grab a coffee to go, but the environmental cost of this convenience is staggering. Disposable coffee cups have become a visible symbol of urban waste, contributing to pollution, overflowing landfills, and rising greenhouse gas emissions in cities like Toronto. Daniela Palma‘s master research, “Towards a Sustainable Coffee Cup Culture: A Comprehensive Framework for Preventing Paper Cup Waste in Toronto, Ontario,” aimed to explore the reasons behind the persistence of unsustainable coffee consumption habits and identify practical solutions to catalyze change within the city.
Measuring and managing the Earth’s carrying capacity
The Ecological Footprint Initiative is a collaborative group of EUC researchers working together to measure the Earth’s Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity. These outputs quantify the demand on nature created by various human activities of production and consumption. The data from this initiative has been used by over 20 national governments to guide policy, shaping the future of global sustainability.
Why the war on plastics can do more harm than good
From an early age Canadians are taught the importance of recycling plastics, however, only nine percent of Canada’s plastics are actually recycled every year. Calvin Lakhan and Mark Winfield’s collaborative project Waste Wiki is working towards a world without waste. They advocate for a responsible waste management system that adopts a “macro approach” by looking at the product’s entire life cycle to create more sustainable outcomes for all.
Modelling alternative economic and environmental futures
Peter Victor is a global leader in the field of ecological economics with over 50 years of experience tackling environmental issues. Victor’s work has contributed to promoting human prosperity within the environmental constraints of the planet through sustainable international policies and public education. His latest book Escape from Overshoot gives an approach to thinking about the future and presents an escape scenario for the Canadian economy over the next 50 years.
Eco-modulation: What is it, does it work, and how can it apply to packaging waste?
Eco-modulation is a term that is gaining significant traction in recent legislative discussions surrounding extended producer responsibility for packaging waste. While eco-modulation is not a new concept, its application to managing end of life packaging waste is still in its relative naissancey. This article by EUC Researcher and Waste Wiki Co-Investigator, Calvin Lakhan, attempts to shed light on what eco-modulation is, how it is being implemented for packaging waste, its perceived efficacy, and the challenges/issues associated with its adoption.
TC Energy’s name change: Rebooting Canadian pipeline empires
Anna Zalik’s research investigates and critiques the political ecology and political economy of industrial extraction. She partners with academic colleagues and community organizations to explore the political economy of hydrocarbons, industrial transparency, and the contested regulation of extractive industries in oceans beyond national jurisdiction. She advocates for supporting developing countries to strengthen their capacity to move towards more sustainable patterns of consumption and production.
Committing to the discomfort of care and curiosity: Investigations of cows’ welfare, lives, and relations
In Carley MacKay’s dissertation research, she investigates cow welfare on grass-fed beef farms to, in part, question and examine the possibility of grass-fed beef farming in providing cows with more care than conventional beef farming. She analyzes cow welfare to explore the agencies, subjectivities, and relationships of cows whose lives are taken in the name of food and unpack grass-fed beef farmers’ understandings and practices of cow welfare and use animal geographies, biopolitics, and critical food studies to unearth the ethical complexities of farmer—cow relations, which complicate and strengthen cow welfare’s multidimensionality.
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