Grégoire Meylan

ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences | ZHAW · Department International Business

Despite the many advantages of sustainable intensification (SI), the level of adoption of SI practices in African smallholding farms is still very low, highlighting the need for adequate methods for monitoring farm sustainability. Research on SI and related poverty alleviation strategies focus either on the “problems” or on the “solutions” for agri...

Institutional change is crucial for the transitions of socio-technical systems. This study addresses why some actors have strong agency by uncovering the determinants of their influence on formal institutions. We focused on a recent and major policy process in Swiss waste management as the empirical case. We carried out content analysis of consulta...

There has been a growing interest in transition studies on the role of agency in bringing about disruptive change. Previous studies have examined how actors perform institutional work to create legitimacy and transform institutions. In doing so, they have provided insights into specific practices and strategies that actors follow. This paper seeks...

Solid waste management (SWM) is a significant challenge for the Seychelles. Waste generation, fueled by economic development and tourism, increases steadily, while landfilling continues to be the main disposal path, thus exacerbating the island nation’s specific weaknesses. Due to the small scale of the Seychelles economy, there is little capital a...

Multiple international and supranational organizations call upon changes in current waste management practices to play a key role in developing more sustainable economies. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a popular method used to assess the sustainability of future waste management options. The uncertainties about future energy systems and waste comp...

As a complex socio-technical system, waste management is crucially important for the sustainable management of material and energy flows. Transition to better performing waste management systems requires not only determining what needs to be changed but also finding out how this change can be realized. Without understanding the political context, i...

Decision-makers traditionally expect “hard facts” from scientific inquiry, an expectation the results of Material Flow Analyses (MFAs) can hardly meet. MFA limitations are attributable to incompleteness of flowcharts, limited data quality, and model assumptions. Moreover, MFA results are mostly less based on empirical observation and rather on soci...

Growing consumption of single-use bottled water has received criticism due to potentially adverse environmental outcomes. Networks of public-sphere water delivery stations have been proposed as a sustainable alternative for water consumption on-the-go, yet the life-cycle impacts of such stations are poorly understood. Here we evaluate the potential...

Zinc is a key metal of industrial society that saw an unprecedented growth of its use between 2000 and 2010, largely driven by demand in China. Nonetheless, a contemporary understanding of multi-level stocks and flows of zinc is lacking. This paper presents the cycles of relevant countries, eight world regions, and the globe for 2010, relying on ma...

Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is one of the fastest growing waste streams, worldwide. In addition to the increasing amount, WEEE consists of numerous toxic, precious and scarce metals which makes its recycling and safe disposal an important environmental issue. Switzerland has a well-established recycling system operating since 1...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is one of the most popular methods of technical-environmental assessment for informing environmental policies, as, for instance, in municipal solid waste (MSW) management. Because MSW management involves many stakeholders with possibly conflicting interests, the implementation of an LCA-based policy can, however, be bloc...

In policy support of municipal solid waste (MSW) management, life cycle assessment (LCA) can serve to compare the environmental or economic impacts of two or more options for waste processing. The scope of waste management LCAs generally focuses less attention on future developments, e.g., where will recycling take place, and more on the environmen...

Residues from municipal solid waste (MSW) incineration in Switzerland have been a hot topic in recent years, both in the research and practice communities. Regarded by many as an economically and environmentally sound solution to this issue, technological retrofitting of existing grate incinerators has the dual purpose of enhancing the metal recove...

All municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems—even “high quality systems” or those employing “best practices”—face multiple challenges, e.g., decreasing prices of secondary raw materials recovered by municipalities, increasing complexity of waste composition, technological lock-ins. Policy-making involves translating these challenges into goal...

Interdisciplinary scientific knowledge is necessary but not sufficient when it comes to addressing sustainable transformations, as science increasingly has to deal with normative and value-related issues. A systems perspective on coupled human-environmental systems (HES) helps to address the inherent complexities. Additionally, a thorough interacti...

Les analyses économiques de l’environnement permettent d’évaluer en termes monétaires les impacts environnementaux d’activités économiques. Depuis 1997, le secteur du ciment au Maroc recourt à ce type d’analyses (Ecosys & sba, 2004, 2007, 2008) afin de rendre compte des bénéfices environnementaux résultant de l’investissement de plus de 1 milliards...