Memo+19-3+Field+Sties

// Selected Cases // This study will develop out of data collected through semistructured interviews, analysis of policy documents and participant observation in several locations in the United States and Germany. I will examine the bioplastics debate at three scales: New York State, the United States as a whole, and internationally. These sites have been selected in order to acquire a breadth of actors and networks associated with the development of bioplastics in and the agenda setting surrounding this field. The critical sites that frame the analysis are:New York's developing bioplastic community. As an intern with the Governor's office, I will continue collaborating with groups that have expressed interest in promoting bioplastics as they develop markets for these goods, determine feedstock availability, advocate for government support, and arrange a commodity chain from land to manufacturer to consumer to post-consumer management. The Institute for Local Self Reliance: Minneapolis, MN and Washington, DC. The Institute for Local Self Reliance is an advocacy based research institution that has both a sustainable plastics division as well as a carbohydrate economy division. They are one of the first and few groups with both an activist agenda and a devotion to sustainability. They are a key site for understanding the development of bioplastics because they have both state level and national level interests in bioplastics, mirroring my experiences in New York and the analysis of U.S. policy documents. The ILSR is also a long running advocate of a carbohydrate based economy, lending history to this study, as well as an initial advocate for bioplastics. These two locations will be analyzed through participant observation at the physical location as well as through interviews of members.  ·  The Sustainable Biomaterials Collaborative. The Collaborative represents a wide range of stakeholders including green product businesses, social investment firms, recycling professionals, and academics, along with advocates focused on environmental health, environmental justice, or rural communities. This consortium provides a broad mix of individuals where the movement for bioplastics is developing as well as a central node in the network of groups and individuals interested in this technology. Presently there is no single physical location for the Collaborative however there are primary coordinators that shape the agenda of this group:  ·  Mark Rossi, Clean Production Action (CPA, Spring Brook, NY) – Collaborative Co-Coordinator  ·  Brenda Platt, Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR, Washington, DC) – Collaborative Co-Coordinator  ·  Tom Lent, Healthy Building Network (HBN, Washington, DC)  ·  Jim Kleinschmit, Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy (IATP, Minneapolis, MN)  ·  Cathy Crumbley, Lowell Center for Sustainable Production (LCSP, University of Massachusetts-Lowell)European Union and Germany. I will be performing a public policy analysis of legislation created and pending in the EU, with a special emphasis on Germany. The EU is slowly developing guidelines for biobased goods, e.g. 7th EU Research Framework Program and Biomass Action Plan of 2005, however binding agreements and specific plans are limited. Germany's Bundestag on the other hand has made more explicit goals of promoting and regulating bioplastics through packaging legislation and changing regulations on composting in order to create transition opportunities for bioplastics. Germany has been critical further for developing certifications for biodegradability and compostability for bioplastics which are now the default certifications for Europe and other nations. ·  Further observation will occur in industry conferences and public meetings of advocate communities as the opportunities arise. Presently there exists only one international forum for bioplastic industries that is annually held in Germany. I will observe the proceedings of the European Bioplastics Conference in 2010 and any U.S. based forums as they appear. These later conferences act as contextualizing data for the interviews as participants in the meetings interact with less biasing interaction that is unavoidable in interviewing.

// Interview Data // I have structured the plan of research to allow for a breadth of interviews with participants in various positions of influence on bioplastic development and post-consumer handling of these products. The expected number of individuals I will be capable of working with within the time frame of this project is 40. Interviews will focus on the following groups:  ·  Activists: This includes the activists and volunteers associated with the groups in the Sustainable Bioplastics Consortium, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, as well as the Health Building Network which is hosting the Consortium and targets consumer goods in the construction industry. These interviews represent the social movement portion of the research questions and participants will be engaged to determine both their group history as well as personal stake in this field.  ·  Recycling Industry: Interviews will also take place among the Bioplastics Recycling Consortium, a predominately industry and university representative body. The members in this Consortium will be part of a set of data that engages with industry perspectives on bioplastics as well as one portion of my policy analysis. Additionally, other members of the recycling community, including the Container Recycling Institute and National Recycling Institute will provide the downstream market effects of technology introduction.  ·  Government: Policy makers will be interviewed from New York as well as from suggested individuals derived from interviews with previous interlocutors in order to develop the connections between the social movements, industry representatives and government officials. ·  Bioplastic Industry: most interviewees will be drawn from the pool of members of the industry aligned Sustainable Bioplastic Consortium. The Consortium includes such diverse members as the Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers, Climate Neutral, NatureWorks LLC, Primo Water Corporation, and the U.S. EPA Office of Solid Waste.

Interviews and observations will focus on the following broad questions: 1. Why is it important to find alternatives to plastics? 2. Who has and who should influence the pathways of innovation? 3. What are the most important people, institutions and actions in the making of a bioplastic industry? 4. What complications are occurring or are likely to occur as bioplastics become more prevalent? 5. How are bioplastics and sustainability conceptualized? // Policy Formation in Context // Another method of contextualizing and orienting the analysis will be developed in a discursive public policy analysis. I will utilize the methodology explained by Frank Fischer ⁠ to develop a picture of the social construction of public policy out of relevant documents and visual material from the United States and the EU, with a particular emphasis on Germany. The methodology focuses on the development of social meanings and values within the language and discourse of public policy. Agendas in this light are formed not only through the simple legislative documents or policy reports, but through the construction of forums for debate and the limitations placed on groups within these forums. The politics within the two national arenas are interesting in that both regions have promoted the formation of a bioplastic industry and yet the formulations of the technology and the handling of this technology are substantially different. Germany has become the de facto leader in European industry standards, plastic regulation, recycling industry, and bioplastic company formation. Germany via government action and industry centralization has also been the most vocal country in the the promotion of bioplastics. There exist discursive differences in Germany in that more forums exist for public involvement in the debates over regulatory changes. The differences in Germany over the U.S. experiences are important to include in this study due to the more pronounced interest in changing the consumption patterns of the population, advancing dramatic recycling measures, and embodying a more developed precautionary principle than the United State. There is a final component of this comparative analysis that has overarching possibilities for both stages of this project. Due to the institutions and culture prevalent in Germany there exists several interesting variables for bioplastic formation. On the one hand the socialist environmental policies that have shaped the nations manufacturing, recycling, composting and waste collection would seem to create limited possible avenues for bioplastic innovation in comparison to the United States deregulated markets. However, due to the passage of a packaging ordinance in Germany under the sweeping 1991 Waste Act a coalition of industry members was created to comply with a packaging "take back" clause. This coalition has worked with a variety of communities to change the technologies of packaging and recycling. Using the Waste Act and subsequent legislative and regulatory acts as a focus I will draw out the discursive politics of waste and consumption in this country. This methodology will be repeated in the United States in order to find the similarities and differences in alternative industry pathway formation. In the example of the most widely used biopolymer, polylactic acid (PLA), Germany has options of collecting for recycling, composting the product in existing industrial facilities, or incineration for energy. In the United States these options seem to be closing down in the eyes of the people I have been communicating with and many find incineration not only the most pragmatic option because of institutional limitations but also the best option due to assumed zero-emission characteristics of the product. Analyzing the existing policy documents from each region will enable a construction of how different values and institutions embedded in different cultures can shape future policy formation as well as constrain and enable future technological pathways.

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