PRESENTATION OF THE RESEARCH

Towards sustainable living in households
Environmental problems (air and water pollution, waste, the Greenhouse effect, the hole in the ozone layer) are caused by production of goods, transportation, and consumption. For many problems, governments and companies have found solutions: cleaner production and products, less materials, regulation, and new technologies. However, we as consumers consume more and more; and globally there will be more and more consumers. This will lead to increased levels of environmental pollution, instead of less.
How can we change consumer behaviour? In the SusHouse Project a new approach is tried out. We focus on the household: the smallest social group in which we live together. In the household we use energy by heating our house and cooling our refrigerator; by buying food and drinks, clothes, and other products. In the household we discuss our next holiday: shall we fly to Australia this time? We observe that our neighbour has a new car, and think of buying a bigger one.
In short, in the household we decide how to consume, and on which products and services our money is spent. These products and services are then produced by producers, because we create a demand on the market. In order to influence production of goods and services, we should think of new types of consumer demand and behaviour. But how can we do that?
Nobody likes to consume less. Up till now, we consumers have thought that technology would solve our environmental problems. If this does not work out, we may have to change our behaviour.
In the SusHouse project, the starting point is not less consumption, but other ways of consuming. Maybe we could share our kitchen and our shopping with our neighbours? Would it be possible to have our laundry done as a service instead of doing it ourselves? Would it be possible to save energy in the house by some clever service, so that we do not have to think about it ourselves?

In the SusHouse project, the aim has been to develop new solutions, that are attractive for the consumer, that may or may not involve new technology, and that are beneficial for the environment. Moreover, they should offer be attractive to business. These solutions are radical in the sense that they are different from our present behaviour. Sometimes they may seem old-fashioned, sometimes they may seem very modern. They offer possibilities to think about, to experiment with, to develop and to modify. They do not forsee the future, but they offer possibilities for future behaviour of consumers in a sustainable way.
The starting point is the notion of Factor 20, that is, how to consume with a twentieth of the current environmental burden. Factor 20 assumes a doubling in world population, a five-fold per capita increase in consumption (especially in developing countries), and a halving of the environmental burden.
In order to break away from our present consumption behaviour, we brainstorm about possible sustainable futures in the year 2050. We do this in a creativity workshop, to which stakeholders are invited. These stakeholders are producers, consumers, technical experts, and government bodies and, if possible, future stakeholders are invited. Future stakeholders may include innovative thinkers or innovative new business entrepreneurs.
From the brainstorm sessions, the project team constructs scenarios, which are possible futures of a sustainable household. From these scenarios proposals are derived, which may be innovative products and services that may help reaching the future desired situation.
The scenarios are investigated in three ways. First, will they be environmentally friendly; will they bring about the desired Factor 20? Secondly, what are the business opportunities and the economic possibilities and effects. And thirdly, how acceptable are these solutions to consumers?
After these assessments, a second workshop investigates the practical possibilities for implementation of some of these proposals. Are there stakeholders who want to start a business. Which extra knowledge do they need? What collaboration could be helpful? What could government regulation do?
Thus, the result of the project is a series of proposals or projects that aim at a sustainable household with a factor 20 environmental gain in 50 years. But another result is a tested methodology. It turns out that this methodology does indeed help to create new ideas, and identify steps towards implementation.

Research consortium:
Delft University of Technology
UMIST:University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology
CIRIS Politecnico di Milano
Avanzi
University of Szeged College of Food Industry
University of Hanover, Department of Marketing and Consumer Research

SOFT CARE



A fifth cluster, less focused and less rich in scenarios than the four others, describes a household scenario characterised both by a high attention/implication of the household members in the fulfilment of the domestic tasks and a highly sophisticated system assisting them in these tasks.
Clothing care is fulfilled as a succession of small interventions over the week, (e.g. ventilation of bad smells; soft low-temperature cleaning; use of local stain remover), through a full range of dedicated appliances. Part of the food comes from local production in a high-tech greenhouse proposed as an evolution of the house garden. Short cuts in the domestic heating is compensated by sophisticated heating clothes.
As already stated, the ’soft care” function scenarios provide characteristic examples but are not exclusive of this cluster and, thus, the description of this vision will be less complete than the other ones.
In environmental terms, the aim of the “soft care” scenarios are to create a synergy/cross-fertilisation between, on the one hand, a lifestyle more aware and careful of the environment and, on the other hand, the implementation of a technical infrastructure maximising the sustainability of the household. The energy control system allows the energy used to be visualised at any moment by each of the separate appliances of the household providing a feed-back mechanism to the household members’ patterns and raising awareness of activities with higher environmental impacts.



The daily care of clothes is done with the help of the technology allowing the extension of the period of use before thorough washing. The dirt monitoring system and the wear control labels integrated in clothes allow objective individual judgement whether a piece of clothing is or not clean.
Technical systems are thought to reinforce environmental friendly behaviours and also those new behaviours extend the sustainable performance of the technical systems.
Most of the scenarios from the Functions are presented as a complement to each other or existing processes: for example,
- wearable heating and cooling systems compensate for the difference between the temperature in the household and the comfort you require;
- food locally produced in the garden completes household consumption provided by other food systems;
- daily soft care of clothing extends time before a different system is used for deep cleaning.
In this sense their strategies for implementation emerge naturally as an extension of existing process or patterns: for example,
- the climatised wardrobe requires no more effort than a normal wardrobe where clothes have to be hung every night;
- the high-tech greenhouse turns hobby gardening into real production.

Household members are required to balance efforts between eco-performance and technical systems. The atmosphere of a “soft care” household appears
- to be a reinforcement of one aspect by the other resulting in a light (or soft) atmosphere characterised by values such as complete freedom and local determination by individuals (but balanced by an environment providing feed-back



on consumption to incentive changes in life-styles), or;
- a sophisticated high-tech environment (renewing the image of old sustainable patterns and habits such as home gardening to provide the household with fresh products, detachable garments to wash only parts of clothes particularly exposed to dirt or put on one more peace of clothing when it is cold inside).

• Soft-care household scenarios may be considered as an evolution of the High-care scenarios’ key concepts towards the Easy-care’ scenarios, or vice versa.
In the first case, it is a scenario characterised by a user social behaviour similar to the one of the High care scenarios, but with a new, and improved, role for technology to face the demand of care (moving from enabling solutions towards relieving solutions).
In the second case, the scenario can be seen as presenting technology as a relieving factor similar to what happens in the Easy-care scenario, but it requires a new user social behaviour with a shift towards increased attention to contexts of use.

OUTSOURCING CARE



The scenario is characterised by a certain deconstruction of the household as it is traditionally thought of as a place for the fulfilment of domestic functions. The household is emptied of domestic appliances and is either the point of arrival for incoming services delivered to the home or a central life-base from which the household members reach external services installed in the neighbourhood.
A range of services provides the household members with ready-to-consume solutions, such as: warmth and light; prepared food; clean clothes…like a hotel. In a less luxurious/cocoon-like solution, local service points propose the same solutions at a short distance from the household.
The environmental goals of the scenario refer to bigger scales than the level of the single household would allow. Both management and processes of the various functions are externalised to qualified, bigger structures such as restaurants or clothing care centre which are more likely to implement and control sustainable technology. Even household heating and lighting systems are managed and upgraded by external comfort management services to guarantee the eco-efficiency.



In terms of organisation, the scale of a larger community allows the implementation of a certain level of sharing of equipment and products intensifying their use. Clothes are not owned anymore but leased by clothing centres offering many possibilities from quick turnover subscriptions to the leasing of seasonal wardrobes.
The strategy of implementation of this externalisation scenario is to provide household members with solutions relieving them completely of both material tasks and their management. Their involvement is less based on property, more on having access to more flexible and specific solutions. Home protection is constantly optimised for each season. Leasing of clothes allows individuals to change them more often than when owning them.
The result is a certain feeling of dissolution of the household. On one hand, household members relate to outside structures for most of the basic domestic functions, such as eating or cleaning their clothes. On the other hand, the household has less control on what happens inside it where comfort management services penetrate to monitor and upgrade the heating and lighting systems.



Turning this into a positive statement, the appealing proposition of externalising the fulfilment of domestic functions is the progressive shift away from the present immutable model of the private home to the opening of the market to alternatives solutions.
Key concepts for the “care outsourcing” household DOSs are:
User social behaviour: search for collective care-free solutions. The quality of life, in this case, is intended as having free access to different kinds of services, i.e. the individual freedom to get whatever result by paying somebody else for doing the job for you.
• Technical system role: solutions are (mainly) based on relieving service, socio-technical systems are able to solve different kinds of practical problems, i.e. services that integrate the knowledge, power and organisation that, otherwise, would be required to the user.

CARE SOCIALISING



The “care socialising” scenarios are based on a certain level of community life, of collective resources, of sharing of products and services.
The household opens to different levels of collective spaces dedicated to the fulfilment of certain domestic functions together with other households from the neighbourhood (e.g. cooking and eating together, helping each other taking care of and repairing clothes).
Other collective places are also dedicated to collective forms of work, (e.g. participation in a clothing care centre providing the human work necessary to the process in exchange for access to the service for the cleaning of your own clothes).
The values are focused on the community favouring typical collective notions such as:
-”the efficiency of the group”, (e.g. sharing/exchanging clothes allow intensification of use, less waste and cutting costs);
- the “feeling of belonging to a community”, (e.g. sharing the dining table with neighbours; exchanging clothes…all with the symbolic value those actions involve); and,
- the “personal investment in the building and management of common resources”, (e.g. “community work” complementary to “paid work” as source of structure and identity for individuals).



In terms of environment, the benefit of the “care-socialising” scenarios is that scale economies are possible between the level of local community and the present system based on the individual. A collective kitchen or a local centre for clothing care corresponds to a semi-industrial scale in terms of equipment and quantity processed.
Sharing of living areas, (e.g. collective dinning room, living room), sharing of appliances and products, (e.g. particular cooking tools; tableware for parties) allow the increase in the intensity of use. A common management of resources provides a higher level of professional efficiency (as a company would do) than spontaneous group behaviour.
The scenario shows particularly the benefits of the systematic inversion of individualistic values, promoting a collective dynamic, opening of personal property, animation of a neighbourhood life, local organisation of events, proximity of generations etc.
Strong differences are mentioned with extremist and exclusive forms of community. The scenarios insist on notions such as:
- “chosen community”, (e.g. collective living spaces that do not exclude the existence of the private home);
- “flexible community”, (e.g. the neighbourhood food and eat centres favour collective cooking and eating together as well as



offering take-away and home delivery);
- “aided community”, (e.g. a “headmaster” pays attention to the management of common resources; textile experts take care of the clothing care centre; special measure systems like “wear-value” rationalise the use of clothes in exchange systems).
The result pictures a living and creative community with strong binds where collective values provide identity to individuals.
More than the previous notions of “chosen/flexible/aided community”, the scenario differs from classical vision of communities by the technical system it relies on: sophisticated machines assure the cleaning process in clothing care centres and food is partly processed, leaving to the community the easy task of assembling pre-prepared dishes. Thus, the “care-socialising” scenario proposes the social benefit of community with the reduction of constraints to the collective management of resources, and looking thus like a local small locally self-managed company.
Key concepts for the “care socialising” household scenarios are:
User social behaviour: search for collective care-demanding solutions. The quality of life, in this case, is given by the necessity/opportunity to share some caring activities, i.e. the necessity to share the required efforts and, at the same time, an opportunity to make it the ground for new forms of socialisation.
Technical system role: results are (mainly) based on community enabling tools, such as socio-technical systems whose main characteristic is to enable communities to organise themselves; and, managing (at the best) the efforts, the knowledge and the responsibility that are needed for a result.

HIGH-CARE



The “high-care” scenario is based on a lifestyle in line with natural models. Daily rhythms adapt to the seasonal variations of natural daylight. Diet is based on food available in the householder’s region. Clothing is developed and cared for maximum durability. The scenarios also require commitment from the household members in terms of:
- personal contribution to domestic tasks, (e.g. preparation of food from basic ingredients or repairing and cleaning of clothes); and,
- general eco-management of the household (e.g. adaptation of the isolation system of the house according to seasonal climate changes or management of the energy production systems).
In environmental terms, the “high-care” scenario is based above all on the drastic reduction of the household members’ expectations considering the possibilities and limits of the local natural resources. Consumption tends to be cut down (e.g. the wardrobe is restricted to a few pieces of clothing; food is limited to the varieties and species available in the region; consumption of energy for heating and lighting is limited to the possibilities of local production). Products and equipment are used intensively (e.g. architectural components allow reconfiguration of the living space according to seasonal climate changes; clothes are repaired and up-graded in order to optimise their life-time).
The various scenarios developed for each Function do not show a strategy of implementation of the household “high-care” scenario but the apparent austerity



does not seem to be imposed either but rather chosen by the household members.
The technical systems involved show appealing high performance (e.g. clothes are produced from high quality technical textiles with high durability and dirt resistant characteristics; insulation materials performance used for the house partly balance the limitations in heating).
Scenarios also describe the various affective and psychological motivations that make them attractive such as:
- the “feeling of autonomy” (the household is involved in a sort of challenge to the local climate by only using local resources to produce energy and eco-management knowledge to use them in the best way); or,
- the “structuring dimension of local production” (self-identity emerging strongly from the consumption of fruit from one’s garden or the personal re-design of one’s clothes).

The resulting atmosphere for the household is characterised by values like
- a “high-care for artefacts” (e.g. deep involvement in personal clothes that are perceived as a “second skin”);
- the “interest in the local dimension” (e.g. the wide variety of forgotten local vegetables, the amazing resources of regional cooking culture); and,
- the “quality of a life in harmony with nature” (e.g. bio-rhythms).
But the scenarios differ from a simple “back to nature and past tradition scenario” on one hand, because of the high-tech technical system described above, and on the other hand, by the high level of ecological awareness and knowledge on the environment (e.g. eco-architecture; management of local eco-systems).



In social terms, the scenarios are focused on individualistic solutions, (e.g. local production based on the single household level; high involvement with belongings like personal clothes); but a certain collective dimension may emerge from a focus on local systems, (e.g. regional food co-operatives, short distribution chains, convergence of life-styles based on the same local resources)
Key concepts for the “high-care” household scenarios are:
User social behaviour: search for individual care-demanding solutions. The quality of life, in this case, is intended as a personalised and localised habitat asking for attention and care, i.e. the time, the effort and the attention needed for some results may be perceived as a positive aspect of our way of living.
Technical system role: solutions are (mainly) based on “natural” materials and enabling tools: materials and tools whose main characteristic is to leave for user/consumer the skill (knowledge) and the responsibility (decision making) related to what has to be done (for a result).

EASY CARE



The “easy-care” household is characterised by high-tech equipment helping users in their daily life. The various tasks are fulfilled automatically or with very low personal involvement. Shopping is conducted virtually and delivered to the household. Automatic cookers quickly prepare food in the kitchen. Clothes have microchip labels which automatically provide cleaning information to clothing washing equipment. The home is fully equipped with intelligent appliances able to regulate the heating, control the lighting and optimise the fulfilment of the various household functions.
Behind this easy/automated domestic space, the environmental goal is to relate as much as possible the eco-efficient equipment and products to push the household members life-styles towards sustainability through rationalisation and optimisation of their behaviours. Intelligent kitchen storage equipment suggests the best methods to cook the available ingredients with the least environmental impact. A ‘dirt’ detector indicates automatically when it is time to clean each piece of clothing. An automatic energy control system works to match the limited amount of energy allocated to each household with the various requirements of the household members.



The strategy of implementation of this easy-care household is to automatically exchange/control the self-determination of the user demands with an optimised set of both care-free and sustainable solutions. This apparent paradox (between higher comfort/less user involvement and sustainability) is turned into a way to influence the market demand. The scenario takes advantage of the natural trend in the population towards more comfort to orient consumption and daily life patterns towards sustainability. For convenience, household members choose ready-to-eat food that happens to be cooked with sustainable ingredients. In the same way easy to care clothes require the generalisation of waterproof dirt resistant fabrics that lower the needs for deep washing, etc.
Hence the involvement of the household members in the fulfilment of the various functions is very low. Householders either have fully automatic appliances, e.g. food packaging is equipped with microchips to program the kitchen cooker, or take part only in general management of functions, e.g. deciding the comfort preferences in the automatic control system of the household or when the cleaning cycle should begin.



Householders not only have a low involvement but appear to lose their control over what happens in the household. The householders do not have to decide to switch toward a more sustainable household but their choices are guided by appealingly convenient solutions that happen to be more sustainable (through responding to legislation and norms favouring the environment). The result is a paradoxical (and maybe dangerous) life-style taking environment into consideration but giving to the population the impression it is doing the opposite.
Key concepts for the EASY-CARE household scenarios are:
User social behaviour: search for individual care-free solutions. The quality of life, in this case, is intended as the use and consumption of tools and goods that “solve the problem”, i.e. the individual freedom to do what you want by yourself and with the minimum of time, effort and attention.
Technical system role: solutions are (mainly) based on ‘relieving’ products, physical artefacts that integrate technical possibilities “to solve problems”, i.e. products that integrate the knowledge and power that, otherwise, would be required by the user.