Ecological consumption and production [Webinar]

The aim of the webinar was to present data on ecological consumption and production that are available at a European level and more specifically in the Czech Republic. The presenters also talked about what the data tell us about how people think about the environmental consequences of food production.

Firstly, Martin Vávra demonstrated how to search for data on ecological consumption and pro-environmental behaviour in various data repositories (e.g. CSDA and GESIS). His data discovery demonstration was followed by the presentation by Jan Vávra who talked about his research study on ecological production and self-supplementation. He showed how widespread gardening is in the Global North and what role it plays in individuals' lives and the economies of nation states. The data he presented are available via the CSDA data catalogue. The final presentation was on “Environmental behaviour of Czech households and individuals with a focus on food waste” and it involved the issue of ecological consumption. Researcher Radka Hanzlová introduced the “Food for the future” research project. It was based on a survey of Czech people’s opinions on food waste and other aspects of ecological consumption that took place in 2022.

Following the presentations, a few points were raised in the discussion, namelly 1) the surprisingly low percentage of alleged vegetarians in the presented population sample of the Public Opinion Research Centre, 2) the sociodemographic background of people buying organic food and 3) the difficulty to compare across borders due to different methodologies being used in the research.