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In a highly relevant contribution, Santana et al. (2021) outlined the challenges for qualitative enquiries during the pandemic. We agree that overcoming these challenges is very important since qualitative research is vital for understanding both the impacts of COVID-19 on human communities around the globe and its significance for sustainable futures. However, we argue that a more fundamental approach is needed to address problems within scientific organisations, thinking and practices that directly affect qualitative research capabilities. In this comment, we focus on justice, research organisation, the ways social scientists position themselves and changed understandings of social worlds.

In this paper we discuss current challenges to the sustainability concept. This article focuses on seven dimensions of the concept. These dimensions are crucial for understanding sustainability. Even today, the literature contains basic misunderstandings about these seven dimensions. This article sketches such fallacies in the context of global and planetary sustainability. The sustainability concept has been criticized as a content-empty ‘fuzzy notion’ or non-committal ‘all-purpose glue’. This article thus has a critical intention of reflecting the sustainability concept accurately. The aim is to contribute a better understanding of the concept. This paper focuses on questions related to the normative content of sustainability. Even today, the literature contains basic misunderstandings about this content. So, this article sketches seven such fallacies in the context of global and planetary sustainability. They are partly to blame for the recent discourse about the environment and development ending up in a cul-de-sac, discrediting the term sustainability. This article thus has a critical intention of reflecting the sustainability concept accurately by discussing current challenges. The aim is to contribute a better understanding of the normative aspects of sustainability. By presenting a differentiated analysis of its content the article will provide a reflected version of the sustainability concept, characterized by the following dimensions: (1) ecological: reflection on the conditions and consequences of human activities; (2) political: sustainability as a cross-sectional political guideline; (3) ethical: intergenerational and global responsibility; (4) socio-economic: operationalizing the principle of sustainability; (5) democratic: pluralism, participation and democratic innovation; (6) cultural: lifestyle and a new model of wealth; (7) theological: belief in creation and sustainability. We do not want to offer limited definitions, but rather to stimulate a debate about rehabilitating the sustainability concept. Therefore, these dimensions are crucial for understanding sustainability.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, established in 2015, aim to achieve global sustainability by 2030 through the improvement of environmental, social, and economic parameters. However, unlike earlier concepts such as the Agenda 21 of 1992, the SDGs overlook radioactive waste management and related challenges of radiation itself. First, we investigate the historic consideration and unexplained disappearance of radioactive waste in earlier sustainability concepts. Then, we propose amending seven SDGs to address this gap. For SDGs 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), 14 (Life Below Water), and 15 (Life on Land), new or revised indicators should monitor the release of hazardous materials. SDGs 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions), and 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) require additional targets and indicators to integrate international cooperation and social implications of nuclear facilities' operation. Redefining “hazardous waste” in SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) and “environmentally sound technologies” in SDG 17 is necessary to encompass radioactive waste. Implementing these changes demands statistical efforts, but the existing monitoring infrastructure, particularly in Europe and North America, can facilitate this. As 2030 approaches, it is crucial to reintroduce radioactive waste management into sustainability agendas, whether within the SDGs themselves or in a subsequent framework.

Purpose and scope Two ISO-compliant approaches on modelling the recycling of plastics and metals are frequently applied in life cycle assessment case studies and intensively debated: the recycled content or cutoff approach and the end of life recycling or avoided burden approach. This paper discusses the two approaches from three different perspectives: (1) the kind of sustainability concept served, (2) the risk perception involved and (3) the eco-efficiency indicators resulting from the two approaches. Results and discussion The analysis shows that the recycled content approach serves the strong sustainability concept. It is based on a risk-averse attitude and results in higher eco-efficiency of metal scrap recycling as compared to primary metal manufacture. The end of life recycling approach serves the weak sustainability concept (losses in natural capital can be compensated by man-made capital). It corresponds to a risk-seeking attitude and results in higher eco-efficiency of primary metal manufacture as compared to secondary metal production. Conclusions It is concluded that a harmonisation of the approaches is hardly possible due to the value choices involved. It is the task of (private and public) life cycle assessment commissioners to decide on the appropriate modelling approach. National authorities may have a rather long-term and risk-averse perspective, whilst industries may prefer a short-term perspective leading them to select the recycled content and end of life recycling approach, respectively. Life cycle inventory databases need to be flexible to serve such opposing perspectives and to enable practitioners to adapt the modelling approaches according to the needs of the commissioner.

This study explores how mixed reality (MR) game environments, enabled by sensor-based motion tracking and interactive visualization technologies, can be effectively integrated into blended learning to promote sustainability education. Using eight Macau bakeries as empirical cases, field investigations collected and categorized surplus bread samples, while carbon emission frameworks informed pedagogical design. Employing a multidimensional research methodology combining questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, the study delved into the intrinsic link between bread waste and carbon emissions. Through perceptual interaction design and task-oriented challenge modes within the MR environment, users were immersed in experiencing the pathway of sustainable behavioral impact. Post-instructional engagement with the MR game revealed that >90% of participants expressed strong affinity for the system design, and >85% perceived it as intuitively operable. Analysis of user feedback and performance data demonstrates the system’s potential to deliver solutions for reducing bread waste and carbon emissions. By establishing a replicable MR game framework and technical mechanisms, this research offers novel perspectives for future sustainability education studies in the field of behavioral mixed reality design.

The sustainable movement has grown and evolved rapidly in the 21st century. This movement is a response to the various problems of the relationship between humans and the earth that appear more disruptive and seemingly intractable problems. After the era of sustainable development emerges, many concepts and new methodologies such as biophilia, cradle-to- cradle, resilience planning, natural step, permaculture, living buildings, eco-districts, transition cities, and integrative and biomimetic design, etc. The superabundance of these theories indicates the notion of sustainability that is still not yet rigid and massive and rises curiosity to seek its end-line. This paper has done the extensive literature reviews on the field of Green Building Sustainable Development, Biophilic, Biomimetic, Resilience, Restorative and Regenerative for mapping it, created the constellation, and seed the relationship between these strategies and how they fit together. The mapping results with the matrix method of relevant research factors have succeeded in displaying the focus and assumptions built by each sustainability method. The results of this study have also provided a picture of a complex and complicated universe of how to achieve sustainability. One way or one method is not enough to gain sustainability Therefore, situational and contextual problems encountered must be handled with various approaches, and complex strategy must be elaborated in a systemic, organic, holistic and nonlinear way. The wave of sustainability ideas still seems continuously find the united and rigid concepts based on the existing theory and method.

Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science has emerged as a viable answer to current sustainability crises with the aim to strengthen collaborative knowledge production. To expand its transformative potential, we argue that Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science needs to thoroughly engage with questions of unequal power relations and hierarchical scientific constructs. Drawing on the work of the feminist philosopher María Puig de la Bellacasa, we examine a feminist ethos of care which might provide useful guidance for sustainability researchers who are interested in generating critical-emancipatory knowledge. A feminist ethos of care is constituted by three interrelated modes of knowledge production: (1) thinking-with, (2) dissenting-within and (3) thinking-for. These modes of thinking and knowing enrich knowledge co-production in Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science by (i) embracing relational ontologies, (ii) relating to the ‘other than human’, (iii) cultivating caring academic cultures, (iv) taking care of non-academic research partners, (v) engaging with conflict and difference, (vi) interrogating positionalities and power relations through reflexivity, (vii) building upon marginalised knowledges via feminist standpoints and (viii) countering epistemic violence within and beyond academia. With our paper, we aim to make a specific feminist contribution to the field of Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science and emphasise its potentials to advance this field.

Seeking to improve strategies and practices turned to education for sustainability, this research aimed to identify how the process of building sustainability conceptions in elementary school students takes place in a Brazilian institution. The present qualitative research complies with interpretive paradigm assumptions, and its main research method is the phenomenography analysis using drawings. The educational institution investigated in the study was the Pessoense Institute of Integrated Education (IPEI), in which students from the second, third, and fifth grades of elementary school participated in the research. As for the results, the students identified five different ways to understand sustainability, going from more external or superficial to broader. We were also able to notice that the process of creating these conceptions over elementary school years works progressively, that is, these conceptions expand along the school years. The findings in the research cooperate to improving practices of education for sustainability that is aimed at the teaching level studied for, when explaining the dynamics in the process of creating these sustainability conceptions from the students investigated, it supports a bolder choice of educational strategies, models and methods for such audience.

Many scientists have expressed concern that declining agricultural diversity threatens agricultural sustainability. We draw on the available literature to outline and examine mechanisms that reduce agricultural diversity and identify the at-risk attributes of agricultural sustainability. Using a three-pillar concept embodying ecological, social and economic dimensions, this article provides a comprehensive general assessment of the sustainability of agricultural systems. It pays particular attention to consequences for agricultural diversity and sustainability of the increasing dependence of agriculture on the market system and new agricultural technologies. As an illustrative example, it examines changes in the diversity and sustainability of Bangladeshi agriculture by applying a novel index of the diversity of cropping land use, an output decomposition method, and statistical techniques. Crop diversity in Bangladesh is very low and dominated by the cultivation of rice, which now depends very heavily on a limited number of high yielding varieties (HYVs). Higher rice yields in Bangladesh and seasonal changes in rice cultivation have resulted in land sparing, which make room for greater crop diversity. Nevertheless, Bangladesh’s food dependence on its rice output is very high and is critically dependent on groundwater irrigation. We recommend that Bangladesh consider increasing the diversity of its crops as a food security measure and as a hedge against a decline in its agricultural sustainability.