Breadcrumbs
About Us
The Sustainable Consumption Institute is an interdisciplinary research institute established by The University of Manchester, to undertake a programme of research in environmental sustainability and consumption issues. The SCI is looking at ways to help households, businesses, governments, charities and NGOs move to more environmentally sustainable living.
The University of Manchester, after a competitive bid process in 2007, received a generous grant from Tesco to establish the SCI. Drawing from a range of disciplines, the SCI brings together the foremost academics, scientists and researchers in the field of sustainable consumption. Use of customer data and links with industry are helping the SCI to examine more thoroughly some of the most challenging problems posed by climate change.
Within this field, we look at how we can help make household consumption more sustainable, how we can drive environmental innovation processes through the supply chain, and how to model climate change scenarios with a focus on food and transport.
The SCI aims to become a leading authority on environmental sustainability and consumption issues. We do this by:
- Conducting world-class research on these issues across disciplines (humanities, natural
and physcial sciences), developing new theoretical understandings and empirical analysis
to test these findings;
- Drawing on the strength of the SCI’s core research staff and building links with international
quality researchers;
- Establishing dialogue with key stakeholders to share ideas for new research and to transfer
our high-quality research outputs into policy and action; and
- Developing future research capacity in environmental sustainability through a doctoral
training programme and studentships linked to SCI research themes.
In the 2008 RAE, The University of Manchester was ranked third in the UK, behind only Oxford and Cambridge, in terms of "research power". The Sunday Times (2009) noted that the establishment of the Sustainable Consumption Institute embodies " the university's spirit of academic endeavour ... seeking to place Manchester at the heart of the global debate over climate change, carbon emissions and sustainable consumer behaviour, production, distribution and development".