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Urban population growth has permanently increased the commodity demands and freight flow within urban areas. The retail/postal industry is intent on finding appropriate internal approaches and a new business model to respond to the adverse impacts generated by urban freight activities. Usage of emerging transport modes is an efficient solution for these industries. Nevertheless, considerable research has paid less attention to the implementation status of distribution innovations, as well as to their suitability and application restrictions. Concurrently, a comprehensive consideration of various distribution innovations that operate together as a system is lacking. To this end, this paper adopted a literature review method and GE multifactorial analysis. Specifically, this paper reviewed the related articles that were published in the past six years (2013–2018) to define the concept of distribution innovations. In addition, we adopted the approach of GE multifactorial analysis to analyze the application status of distribution innovations from the perspective of academic research and company implementation. Following the suitability assessment and application of restriction analysis, we proposed the concept of sustainable inner-urban intermodal transport (SIUIT) for the retail/postal industry. This paper contributes to the sustainable urban freight literature by exploring possible future research directions of SIUIT.

The levels of production diseases (PD) and the cow replacement rate are high in dairy farming. They indicate excessive production demands on the cow and a poor state of animal welfare. This is the subject of increasing public debate. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of production diseases on the economic sustainability of dairy farms. The contributions of individual culled cows to the farm’s economic performance were calculated, based on milk recording and accounting data from 32 farms in Germany. Cows were identified as ‘profit cows’ when they reached their individual ‘break-even point’. Data from milk recordings (yield and indicators for PD) were used to cluster farms by means of a principal component and a cluster analysis. The analysis revealed five clusters of farms. The average proportion of profit cows was 57.5%, 55.6%, 44.1%, 29.4% and 19.5%. Clusters characterized by a high proportion of cows with metabolic problems and high culling and mortality rates had lower proportions of profit cows, somewhat irrespective of the average milk-yield per cow. Changing the perception of PD from considering it as collateral damage to a threat to the farms’ economic viability might foster change processes to reduce production diseases.

(1) The amount of plastic discharges in the environment has drastically increased in the last decades negatively affecting aquatic ecosystems, societies, and the world economy. The policies initiated to deal with this problem are insufficient and there is an urgency to initiate local actions based on a deep understanding of the factors involved. (2) This paper investigates the potential of massive open online courses (MOOCs) to spread environmental education. Therefore, the conclusions drawn from the implementation of a MOOC to combat the problem of marine litter in the world are presented. (3) This work describes the activity of 3632 participants from 64 countries taking an active role presenting useful tools, connecting them with the main world associations, and defining applied action plans in their local area. Pre- and post-questionnaires explore behavioral changes regarding the actions of participants to combat marine litter. The role of MOOCs is contrasted with social media, formal education, and informal education. (4) Findings suggest that MOOCs are useful instruments to promote environmental activism, and to develop local solutions to global problems, for example, clean beaches, supplanting plastic bottles, educational initiatives, and prohibition of single-use plastic.

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are currently being discussed as one of the most promising tools in environmental and sustainability governance. However, much criticism has been voiced against overly optimistic assumptions of PES’ management potential towards sustainability. Several contributions to the debate show that PES fail both in reducing poverty and strengthening social justice. Additionally, they neglect problems of deliberation in decision-making, as well as the legitimacy of the applied environmental practices. Our empirical investigation on participatory and deliberative structures in already existing PES initiated by non-state actors contributes to the latter body of research. Based on the assumption that playing an active part in scheme design facilitates the consideration of justice and fairness, our case studies from Germany and the UK. present interesting results on the involvement of conflicting interests and their argumentation in the design process. Summing up these findings, we conclude that paying for ES rarely contributes to sustainable development in and of itself, but deliberatively designed schemes provide a formal setting to take aspects of justice into account.

Based on an analysis of challenges and enablers of circular economy (CE) practices for outdoor brands and retailers, we aim to identify which of these CE practices are best suited for the outdoor sporting goods industry. To develop the study, we used a qualitative methodology through a content analysis of 21 expert interviews. From these interviews, we derived challenges and enablers for different CE elements in the categories reduce, circulate products, circulate materials, and shift towards renewable resources. Our findings indicate trade-offs related to the high complexity and functionality of many products, the juxtaposition of extremely technical and less technical products, and the low product return rate as challenges, while design for durability, design for repairability, and linking the degree of circularity to product types were identified as enablers. Based on our data, we argue that among circular practices reduce should form a basis upon which other aspects can build, with durability and repairability best suited for technical outdoor gear. As our study adds an industry-specific perspective, it contributes new knowledge to the CE literature. It also helps managers with the practical implications, as we argue they should be aware of potential downsides of CE elements and thus consider carefully which of those elements can help support their overall business and sustainability strategies.

The complexity of sustainable development and societal transitions require both analytical understandings of how coupled human-environment systems function and transdisciplinary science-to-practice approaches. The academic discourse has advanced in developing a framework for defining success in transdisciplinary research (TDR). Further empirical evidence is needed to validate the proposed concepts with TDR case studies. This paper applies a widely used TDR framework to test and critically evaluate its design principles and criteria of success with five TDR case studies the author is intimately familiar with. Overall, the design principles of the framework are validated for the five cases. Additional design principles are derived from the case analysis and proposed to complement the applied framework: (1) A project origin from society as opposed to with and for society; (2) Quickly available initiation funding; (3) Flexibility in time, objectives and methods throughout the research process; (4) Acceptance of process vs. project results; (5) Inclusion of public science communication; and (6) A demand-driven transition to a prolonged or new project partnership. The complementing principles are proposed for integration in the applied framework and are subject to further empirical testing. The reflexive empirical approach I have taken in this paper offers a key step towards removing institutional barriers for successful TDR, demonstrating how conceptual frameworks can be applied.