Final report on household consumption and lifestyles across the island of Ireland now available

The CONSENSUS Research Project has published its final research report entitled CONSENSUS: Consumption, Environment and Sustainability. The CONSENSUS project involved researchers from NUI Galway and Trinity College Dublin, and has advanced understanding of the drivers that shape everyday household consumption practices, while also identifying a range of regulatory, technological and lifestyle interventions that could facilitate more sustainable living in the future.

The final report outlines the insights gained from foundational and exploratory CONSENSUS research in relation to household consumption and lifestyles across the island of Ireland. The report details international good practice and tools for governing that may enable consumption to become more sustainable. Novel methods and approaches are outlined, which support more collaborative and co-produced transdisciplinary action for addressing the complex dimensions of transforming consumption.

In response to the launch of the final CONSENSUS research report, Mr Kevin Woods of the Irish EPA said: ‘This research marks a significant and important step in moving towards sustainability in the key areas of water, energy, transport and consumer behaviour. This report has an important role to play in influencing policy as a greater understanding of why many people consume unsustainably is an essential prerequisite for building appropriately formed and coordinated policy to enable more sustainable consumption. Such understanding needs to be developed across different spaces of consumption and spheres of governance, recognising that consumption is influenced by many factors including but also beyond individual attitudes and values’.

Pictured at launch of the CONSENSUS Report at NUI, Galway (left-to-right): Dr Mary Jo Lavelle, Dr Ruth Doyle, Mr Richard Manton, Mr Kevin Woods (EPA), Professor Henrike Rau, Professor Anna Davies, Dr Frances Fahy, Dr Laura Devaney and Dr Jonathan Derham (EPA) at the CONSENSUS international conference on Sustainable Consumption Transformations: Implementation and Impacts, which took place at the National University of Ireland, Galway on Thursday May 21st 2015.