The ConsEnSus (Consumption, Environment and Sustainability) Project is a 4 year, large scale project exploring sustainable consumption in Ireland. It is a collaboration of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and NUI Galway.

The project will respond to national and international research objectives on sustainable consumption in three main ways:
1) It will generate important baseline data for Ireland in key areas of consumption that impact directly on the environment, including transport, energy, water and food.
2) It will address existing gaps in the international body of literature dealing with (sustainable) consumption
3) Advance possibilities for measuring sustainable consumption through the development and application of innovative social research methods. These include the design and testing of a multi-method strategy for evaluating virtual mobility tools.


Each stage of this project involves employing practical methods for the integration of the research into polices and programmes at a range of levels. The overall project will provide an overview of international best practice and design recommendations for national programmes concerning sustainable consumption and production policies, in addition to recommendations about procedures, techniques and policies for advancing sustainability at the local level.
The project involves collaboration with a number of key international and national agencies and organisations, such as SCRI in the UK and BordBia and the Sustainable Energy Agency in Ireland, and will assist these organisations in their decision making by providing essential relevant and timely information and research results. One of the key outcomes of the project is the development of an All-island Sustainable Consumption Research Network (SCRN). As the project focuses on the communication and dissemination of knowledge gained and on the substantial participation of the public and collaboration with relevant agencies and organisations, the overall project can be considered as a programme of science communication.

The interim reports which are available for download below are the outcomes of Work Package 1 of the ConsEnSus project, which focused on "Tools for governing sustainable living".
Both reports are the result of a desktop study conducted between April 2009 and March 2010. The objective of the desktop study was to first review the state of the EU Directives on sustainable consumption and production
(SCP) and catalogue international best practice models and tools for Quality of Life Proofing
in the area of sustainable consumption policies in Europe (see report 1 on 'best practice'). This review provided the basis for assessing Ireland's performance in the area of SCP policies and for developing a model of good governance of sustainable living for Ireland, which is discussed in the second report (Irish Policy Review).

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Pape, J.   "ConsEnSus". Associated datasets and digitial information objects connected to this resource are available at: Secure Archive For Environmental Research Data (SAFER) managed by Environmental Protection Agency Ireland https://eparesearch.epa.ie/safer/resource?id=09c589f6-6d15-102d-b891-8d8f2407b579 (Last Accessed: 2024-12-13)

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SAFER-Data Display URL	https://eparesearch.epa.ie/safer/iso19115/display?isoID=147
Resource Keywords	consumption, environment, sustainability, crossborder household analysis Ireland
EPA/ERTDI/STRIVE Project Code	2008-SD-LS-1-S1
EPA/ERTDI/STRIVE Project Theme	Socio-Economics
Resource Availability:	Public-Open
Limitations on the use of this Resource	NONE
Number of Attached Files (Publicly and Openly Available for Download):	2
Project Start Date	Wednesday 1st April 2009 (01-04-2009)
Earliest Recorded Date within any attached datasets or digital objects	Sunday 1st November 2009 (01-11-2009)
Most Recent Recorded Date within any attached datasets or digital objects	Monday 1st February 2010 (01-02-2010)
Published on SAFER	Wednesday 17th February 2010 (17-02-2010)
Date of Last Edit	Thursday 13th October 2011 at 13:00:19 (13-10-2011)
Datasets or Files Updated On	Thursday 13th October 2011 at 12:12:29 (13-10-2011)

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Description of Geographical Characteristics of This Project or Dataset
A cross-border household survey on sustainable lifestyles will be carried out in Ireland (both North and South), 1500 face to face interviews in Dublin, Galway and Derry regions. The focus will be on individual consumption patterns in the areas of food, transport, energy and water. Respondents will be asked about their behaviour, motivators and barriers for more sustainable consumption behaviours. The data collection will be conducted in 2010 (finish presumably 12/2010). The information gathered will be processed in SPSS and a larga dataset will be created allowing to find out correlations between independent variables (demographics, values, etc) and dependent variables (sustainable consumption patterns).

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The following is a list of similiar projects and resources on SAFER. Usually these resources share a similiar thematic area to the resource ConsEnSus you are currently viewing. You can view the full description for these projects and resources by using the links supplied.

• IPPC emissions to air and water View Full Metadata Description
• Energy crops in Ireland: An assessment of their potential contribution to sustainable agriculture, electricity and heat production View Full Metadata Description
• Economy wide material flow analysis and ecological footprint of Ireland View Full Metadata Description
• Establishing an Eco-Industrial Network for Small to Medium-Sized Enterprises in the Mid-West Region View Full Metadata Description
• Urban Environment Project View Full Metadata Description

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