Katrien Steenmans and Rosalind Malcolm
The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that property rights can have on the implementation of circular waste economies, in which waste is reused, recycled or…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that property rights can have on the implementation of circular waste economies, in which waste is reused, recycled or recovered, within the European Union’s Waste Framework Directive.
Design/methodology/approach
A theoretical lens is applied to the legal definition as well as production and treatment cycle of waste to understand the property rights that can exist in waste.
Findings
This paper argues that even though different property rights regimes can apply to waste during its creation, disposal and recovery, the waste management regulatory and legal system is currently predominantly set up to support waste within classic forms of private property ownership. This tends towards commodification and linear systems, which are at odds with an approach that treats waste as a primary wanted resource rather than an unwanted by-product. It is recommended that adopting state or communal property approaches instead could affect systemic transformative change by facilitating the reconceptualisation of waste as a resource for everyone to use.
Research limitations/implications
The property rights issues are only one dimension of a bigger puzzle. The roles of social conceptualisation, norms, regulations and policies in pursuing circular strategies are only touched upon, but not fully explored in this paper. These provide other avenues that can be underpinned by certain property regimes to transition to circular economies.
Originality/value
The literature focused on property rights in waste has been very limited to date. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to consider this question in detail from a legal perspective.
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Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the Ecodesign Directive and the extent to which it provides a regulatory framework for life‐cycle assessment approaches which underlie…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the Ecodesign Directive and the extent to which it provides a regulatory framework for life‐cycle assessment approaches which underlie integrated product policy (IPP), thus providing a horizontal approach to product legislation as a new approach to regulating pollution.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on academic commentary as well as official papers, European communications and legislation.
Findings
The development and application of the Ecodesign Directive is highlighted along with the different regulatory approach it poses which is shown to result from the application of life‐cycle assessment and IPP.
Practical implications
The impact on the development of products will be extensive in that they will be required by mandatory rules to be designed with a view to the reduction of their whole life environmental impacts.
Originality/value
The approach is to highlight a new paradigm for regulating pollution and environmental impacts.
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Scottish Publishers Association
Describes the background to publishing in Scotland and outlines the nature and range of current Scottish publishing houses. Sets Scottish publishing within its UK and European…
Abstract
Describes the background to publishing in Scotland and outlines the nature and range of current Scottish publishing houses. Sets Scottish publishing within its UK and European context and indicates a number of major trends. Presents broad statistics of current Scottish publishing. Describes the nature, activities and achievements of 30 Scottish publishing houses, from large to small and from general to specialist.
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Philip MacKinnon, William D. Rifkin, Damian Hine and Ross Barnard
Success in research – or ‘mastery’ as we call it – can lead to interdisciplinarity arising among the increasingly fragmented disciplines of science: researchers in molecular…
Abstract
Success in research – or ‘mastery’ as we call it – can lead to interdisciplinarity arising among the increasingly fragmented disciplines of science: researchers in molecular biology can be assisted by advances in the physics of atomic imaging, when they become aware of a development's potential and feel motivated to take advantage of it. The unpredictability of advances in scientific research makes the location and nature of interdisciplinarity largely unpredictable. This unpredictability means that organisational structures in which scientific research takes place – and in which our students are trained – are likely to lag behind interdisciplinary synergies developing in the laboratory. The lag time suggested by our model explains the challenges faced by leaders of interdisciplinary programmes in higher education. One can conclude that opportunities for interdisciplinarity in science are held back by discipline-bound institutions.
Can we broaden the boundaries of the history of economic thought to include positionalities articulated by grassroots movements? Following Keynes’s famous remark from General…
Abstract
Can we broaden the boundaries of the history of economic thought to include positionalities articulated by grassroots movements? Following Keynes’s famous remark from General Theory that ‘practical men […] are usually the slaves of some defunct economist,’ we might be wont to dismiss such a push from below. While it is sometimes true that grassroots movements channel preexisting economic thought, I wish to argue that grassroots economic thought can also precede developments subsequently elaborated by economists. This paper considers such a case: by women at the intersection of the women’s liberation movement and the claimants’ unions movement in 1970s Britain. Oral historical and archival work on these working-class women and on achievements such as their succeeding to establish unconditional basic income as an official demand of the British Women’s Liberation Movement forms the springboard for my reconstruction of the grassroots feminist economic thought underpinning the women’s basic income demand. I hope to demonstrate, firstly, how this was a prefiguration of ideas later developed by feminist economists and philosophers; secondly, how unique it was for its time and a consequence of the intersectionality of class, gender, race, and dis/ability. Thirdly, I should like to suggest that bringing into the fold this particular grassroots feminist economic thought on basic income would widen the mainstream understanding and historiography of the idea of basic income. Lastly, I hope to make the point that, within the history of economic thought, grassroots economic thought ought to be heeded far more than it currently is.