Exploring Worldwide Wardrobes to Support Reuse in Consumers’ Clothing Systems

Extending the use of garments is often seen as an important strategy to decrease the impact of the fashion industry. However, currently there are a lack of data on and understanding of consumers’ wardrobes. This study explores consumers’ wardrobes internationally, and we aim to explore the total amount, unused and second-hand garments in order to develop interventions to support reuse. Through an online course, data were gathered in a survey about the content of participants’ wardrobes, counting the amounts of garments in predefined categories, and the amount of unused and second-hand garments thereof. Differences were found between clothing categories, age groups and gender for unused and second-hand garments. Between nationalities only differences were found for second-hand garments. These insights are supportive to targeted interventions for gender and age groups related to specific categories of (unused and second-hand) garments, to elongate the practical service life of garments, support consumers’ sustainable clothing decisions and in the end reduce consumption. Additionally, this exploration provides insights how to improve international monitoring and the value of digital wardrobe studies. Recommendations are provided, especially focused on interventions to support motivations, capabilities, and opportunities to improve reuse. Ultimately, through consumers’ wardrobes this study supports the next steps towards a more circular clothing system.

Global libertarianism: how much public morality does international human rights law allow?

International human rights specialists and libertarian philosophers have rarely pursued meaningful exchanges, but this paper probes some of their common ground. In recent years, leading international monitoring bodies have developed a principle described here as the ‘Libertarian Principle of Human Rights’ (LPHR). It runs as follows: Governments cannot legitimately recite public morals as a sufficient justification to limit individual human rights. That principle might seem obvious in many societies today, but throughout history, including the history of liberalism, any notion that certain individual interests must trump religious or customary beliefs has stood as the rare exception. The seemingly Western and secular suggestion of a libertarian principle inherent within human rights may seem at odds with the view that human rights ought to reflect diverse cultural traditions; however, LPHR underscores an anti-authoritarianism, which, it is argued, must form part of any serious conception of human rights. LPHR can be substantiated even for highly controversial rights, such as LGBTQ+ rights, suggesting that it applies a fortiori to more settled rights.

Bolide Energetics and Infrasound Propagation: Exploring the 18 December 2018 Bering Sea Event to Identify Limitations of Empirical and Numerical Models

Infrasound observations are an important tool in assessing the energetics of bolides and can help quantify the flux of meteoroids through Earth’s atmosphere. Bolides are also important atmospheric sources for assessing long-range infrasound propagation models and can be used as benchmark events for validating the International Monitoring System (IMS) infrasound network, which is designed to detect nuclear tests in the atmosphere. This article exploits unique infrasound observations from a large bolide recorded on IMS infrasound arrays and high-density infrasound deployments in the United States to assess limitations in infrasound source scaling relationships. The observations provide an unprecedented sampling of infrasound propagation along a transect at an azimuth of 60° from the source to a distance of ∼8000 km. Widely used empirical laws for assessing bolide energetics and state-of-the-art numerical models for simulating infrasound propagation are assessed to quantify important discrepancies with the observations. In particular, empirical laws for equivalent yield, which are based on signal period and are assumed to be relatively unaffected by propagation effects, can be heavily contaminated by site noise. In addition, by modeling infrasound propagation over a range of ∼8000 km, we show that state-of-the-art models do not reproduce the observed amplitude decay over this long range (which decays by a rate of at least 2 higher than can be modeled).

Applying Waveform Correlation to Reduce Seismic Analyst Workload Due to Repeating Mining Blasts

ABSTRACT Agencies that monitor for underground nuclear tests are interested in techniques that automatically characterize mining blasts to reduce the human analyst effort required to produce high-quality event bulletins. Waveform correlation is effective in finding similar waveforms from repeating seismic events, including mining blasts. We report the results of an experiment to detect and identify mining blasts for two regions, Wyoming (U.S.A.) and Scandinavia, using waveform templates recorded by multiple International Monitoring System stations of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO PrepCom) for up to 10 yr prior to the time of interest. We discuss approaches for template selection, threshold setting, and event detection that are specialized for characterizing mining blasts using a sparse, global network. We apply the approaches to one week of data for each of the two regions to evaluate the potential for establishing a set of standards for waveform correlation processing of mining blasts that can be generally applied to operational monitoring systems with a sparse network. We compare candidate events detected with our processing methods to the Reviewed Event Bulletin of the International Data Centre to assess potential reduction in analyst workload.

Infrasound Thunder Detections across 15 Years over Ivory Coast: Localization, Propagation, and Link with the Stratospheric Semi-Annual Oscillation

Every day, about one thousand thunderstorms occur around the world, producing about 45 lightning flashes per second. One prominent infrasound station of the International Monitoring System infrasound network of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization for studying lightning activity is in Ivory Coast, where the lightning rate of this region is relatively high. Infrasound defines acoustic waves with frequencies below 20 Hz, the lower limit of human hearing. Statistical results are presented in this paper based on infrasound measurements from 2004 to 2019. One-to-one association between infrasound detections from 0.5 to 5 Hz and lightning flashes detected by the World Wide Lightning Location Network within 500 km from the infrasound station is systematically investigated. Most of the infrasound signals detected at IS17 in this frequency band are due to thunder, even if the thunderstorms are located up to 500 km away from the station. A decay of the thunder amplitude with the flash distance, d, is found to scale as d−0.717 for flashes within 100 km from the station, which holds for direct propagation. Interestingly, the stratospheric detections reflect a pattern in the annual azimuth variation, which is consistent with the equatorial stratospheric semi-annual oscillation.

Distribution, diet and relationships of the invasive ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi with anchovies and zooplankton, in the northeastern Adriatic Sea

Blooms of invasive ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi can have massive consequences on fish stocks and marine food webs. The distribution, abundance and diet of this ctenophore were investigated in the northeastern (NE) Adriatic between 2016 and 2019. The abundance of M. leidyi was determined daily along the coast of Rovinj (Croatia), and its spatial distribution monitored by visual census from research vessels and by pelagic trawl during acoustic surveys in September of each year. Mesozooplankton samples were collected along the western coast of Istria by vertical tows from the bottom to the surface. Spatial distribution and abundance of anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) assemblages were determined by geo-referenced hydro-acoustic sampling using a scientific echosounder. Large swarms of M. leidyi covering several km2 were regularly reported between July and November extending up to 25 NM from the western coast of the Istrian peninsula and reaching maximum offshore densities of 270 individuals per m2. The abundance of anchovy in the areas where M. leidyi was present evidently decreased. The content of M. leidyi’s digestive tract and plankton samples consisted both mainly of cladocerans, copepods, pteropods, echinodermata and bivalvia larvae. Results indicate that M. leidyi may accumulate and increase its abundance in the stagnant and trophically rich areas of the northern Adriatic gyres, spreading to the surrounding larger areas with currents. We assume that M. leidyi presence correlates with a decrease in anchovy population due to competition for food (zooplankton). Our findings support the importance of implementing an international monitoring program throughout the Adriatic Sea and demonstrate the ability of current MEDIAS surveys to detect changes in the pelagic ecosystem throughout surveyed areas.

Monitoring the human right to water in California: development and implementation of a framework and data tool

Ensuring the human right to water requires monitoring at national or subnational levels, but few comprehensive frameworks exist for industrialized contexts. This paper introduces a subnational-level framework – known as the California Human Right to Water Framework and Data Tool (CalHRTW) – developed by the authors at the California EPA's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. This paper has two objectives: (1) to present the theoretical foundations and methodology used to develop the first version of CalHRTW (CalHRTW 1.0) and (2) to showcase how results can be used. CalHRTW 1.0 measures three components of the human right to water: drinking water quality, accessibility and affordability for community water systems in California. Nine individual indicators grouped by component, and three indices that summarize component-level outcomes are used to quantify system-level results. CalHRTW allows users to: (1) summarize system-level conditions statewide and identify challenges, (2) explore social equity implications and (3) centralize information for planning. CalHRTW draws on approaches from existing international monitoring efforts and complements existing California efforts by being the first US effort to comprehensively and explicitly monitor the HRTW under one umbrella. This work offers other US states and countries a model to build monitoring efforts to realize the human right to water.