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More Vulnerable but Happier? A study of older residents in the first lockdown

The national lockdowns in 2020 affected people in different ways, depending on age, social habits and living situation. In this blog, Dr David Tross, an Associate Lecturer in the Department of Geography discusses the findings of a study of how the first lockdown affected their wellbeing.

The hands of a person joined together

Asked to record her feelings about lockdown during the first wave of the COVID -19 pandemic, Alice*, a 71-year-old divorcee living in Cheshire, describes it as ‘the longest and best holiday I have ever had’ while Catherine, a 60-year-old married retiree living in Essex, states: ‘if it wasn’t for this virus, I would consider this my ideal life-style’.

These are a few snippets from 24 written accounts of the first lockdown by older individuals, volunteers responding to a Summer 2020 of the Mass Observation Project, a longstanding social research initiative that generates written commentaries about a range of contemporary social issues from residents across the UK (my older sample are part of a broader age-based panel). While Catherine and Alice were unusual in being quite so enthusiastic about the experience of lockdown, the older age group is of particular interest sociologically because of a paradoxical theme emerging about the impact of the pandemic: despite being more vulnerable to dying or being hospitalised by COVID-19, older people’s wellbeing seemed less affected than that of other age groups. While overall levels of subjective wellbeing in the UK declined (unsurprisingly but still noticeably- given that this was the first national drop in the 10 years of measurement), older people’s self-reported levels of loneliness, anxiety and depression rose at a much lower rate than other age groups. The main losers? Young people, whose self-reported anxiety and depression tripled.

One explanation is about relative change to lifestyle. For my older cohort, it was the lack of fundamental change to their normal routine that characterised the majority of responses. As one put it, ‘’my life just seems to have trundled on regardless’ and her explanation, being retired and ‘not being directly or indirectly affected by the pandemic’ also illustrates a wider point. Provided you or others you knew hadn’t suffered from the virus, three key disruptions in the lives of many UK households: work routine, threats to income and home-schooling children, were not generally a factor for this group. Indeed, when prompted to describe changes in her routine, Catherine writes that ‘for the first time in our lives we now take a multi-vitamin every day’. With all due deference to the restorative powers of Vitamin D, this is not quite the seismic change the pandemic wrought upon many.

Another explanation is about relative expectations. Take loneliness. Despite having larger social networks and more frequent communication with friends and family, younger people self-reported as the loneliest age group in lockdown, surely underlining the discrepancy between the expectations of this age group and the reality (to take one example, students confined to their university halls). However, experiencing less disruption wasn’t always a lockdown advantage. In June 2020, an ONS survey indicated that almost half of UK working-age adults were reporting benefits of lockdown- not commuting, a slower pace of life, spending more time with family- precisely because of the forced but not necessarily unwelcome upheaval in their lives. Although many older respondents did write about enjoying popular activities of lockdown highlighted by the survey- gardening, walking, spending more time in nature, taking up creative hobbies- this was often only a slightly extended version of their pre-pandemic routines.

The boosterish narrative of lockdown was brilliantly satirised by the Financial Times opinion writer Janan Ganesh as ‘Oh! What a lovely curfew’. Decrying the tendency to ‘frame the lockdown as a disguised gift to the species’ as ‘tasteless’, he highlights that what ‘started out as twee high jinks about banana bread’ only reflects the deeper truth that there were winners and losers of lockdown, and socio-economic circumstances were one important dividing line.

Because, as the MO writers were penning their responses, it was already clear that one nation under lockdown had revealed two nations experiencing very different realities. One, living in affluent areas, in decent-size homes with access to gardens, furloughed from jobs or working from home and saving money; another, living in crowded accommodation in less affluent areas, disproportionately non-white, more likely to self-report as depressed and anxious, and, if still employed, having to take their chances with the virus in public-facing roles.

My writers belong mostly to the first tribe. They have gardens, own their homes and generally live in more rural and affluent areas of the UK. This may help to explain their relative lack of proximity to COVID deaths and hospitalisations. If they are lucky, then many acknowledged this. Take three indicative comments: ‘I felt so sorry for families in high-rise flats‘; ‘we have been very busy in our garden, it must be terrible to be in lockdown with nowhere to get out’; lockdown ‘is mostly easy, being retired, well off and a white woman’. These are the voices of privileges being checked.

While statistics tend to flatten the difference within social groups, qualitative research highlights the diversity of experience. Lockdown was a miserable experience for older writers whose culturally and socially gregarious lives were dramatically curtailed (limited space precludes exploring other negative factors, including those with health conditions whose treatment was disrupted). While Alice declared ‘it wouldn’t bother me if I never went to cinemas, restaurants and celebratory events again’, for others for whom these social and cultural engagements really matter, any benefits conferred by lockdown could not compensate for their lack. As one male retiree wrote, ‘I saved money but lost my social contacts’.

One significant loss was volunteering. The older writers broadly align with the demographics of what researchers have termed the ‘civic core’, the segment of the population who do the most volunteering and civic participation (including voting). This core is generally older, female, rural and live in less deprived areas. Over half of the cohort volunteered regularly pre-pandemic (compared to 25% of the UK adult population as a whole), and for some, the combination of service closures and personal vulnerability meant that they could no longer do so. ‘My friend and I who have worked together in Citizens Advice (CAB) and have done for many years, were over 70 and at risk and asked not to come’ writes one 80-year-old; ‘I have volunteered at CAB first as an adviser and latterly doing admin for over 45 years so this was a huge loss’. Another who organised events for other older residents in the village hall has moved some of these online but laments that this is ‘just not the same. I miss my social connections’.

The loss of volunteering opportunities also provides a more nuanced understanding of the unprecedented community response in the first wave of the pandemic. In what has been described as the largest peacetime civilian mobilisation in UK history, an estimated three million people in April and May of 2020 formed the vanguard of neighbourhood covid support groups delivering key medical services, food provision and support to vulnerable people across the UK. The Local Trust calls this as ‘an extraordinary response to the crisis, and evidence of a surge in community spirit’. And yet the spontaneous emergence of informal and locally focused covid mutual support groups ran alongside a sharp drop in formal volunteering, as charities and voluntary associations closed services and furloughed staff, or where older volunteers were too vulnerable to participate. This doesn’t mean that older people weren’t part of the bottom-up community response; some in the cohort took active roles. But it did mean that many older citizens who formed the bedrock of UK Civil Society were now, at the apotheosis of voluntary contribution, left without a contribution to make.

*names have been invented

 

 

 

 

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How words can misfire in a foreign language. A look at the impact of our research on the role of multilingualism in psychotherapy

In this blog, Jean-Marc Dewaele, Professor in Applied Linguistics and Multilingualism in the Department of Applied Linguistics & Communication, discusses the origins of his research and why multilingualism needs to considered in the practice of psychotherapy.

Two women speaking

Two women speaking

Early experiences in life can shape future research interests, just as a butterfly flapping its wings in one place can ultimately trigger a typhoon across the world.  I remember standing in a little beach restaurant in Crete, aged 10, amid the sound of waves and the smells of thyme in the summer heat. I was with my new Greek friend. We communicated almost entirely in gestures because he did not know Dutch or French and I only knew a few words of Greek.  He had just convinced me to walk to the table where his dad was having an Ouzo, and firmly utter the mysterious word “μαλάκας”.  Little did I realise that I was about to call a colonel in the Greek army a “wanker”. I planted myself in front of the dad, looked him in the eye, said the word, and watched with astonishment as he went pale and then very red, before noticing his son smiling behind a pillar.  Though I have forgotten whether or not I was punished, I remember being amazed that a word that was gibberish to me could have such a powerful impact on somebody else.

This embarrassing episode triggered a research question that came to fruition thirty years later, as I embarked on a series of studies on the language preferences of multilinguals in communicating emotions.  I demonstrated that multilinguals’ first language(s) (L1) typically have more emotional resonance than foreign languages (LX), and that L1s are typically preferred to communicate emotions (Dewaele 2010).  The reason is that L1(s) are more embodied, having been acquired in early childhood, a period of intense affective socialization, when languages develop together with autobiographical memory and emotion regulation systems.  In contrast, LXs are acquired later in life and typically in a classroom, where words lack any rich emotional connotations, making those words feel uncalibrated and “detached”.  Although this perception may disappear after intense secondary affective LX socialisation, many LX users may occasionally struggle with emotion words and emotion-laden words.

The detachment effect of the LX has both positive and negative psychological consequences. LX users may feel inauthentic expressing their emotions in the LX, but its reduced emotional resonance can also allow them to talk about topics that would be too painful to discuss in the L1. Cook (2019) observed this in her interviews with refugees who had had been tortured in their L1.  Although some complained about feeling blunt and clumsy in English LX, they also considered it to be a liberating tool, which enabled them to bear witness to their trauma, and which contributed to the [re]invention and performance of a new self.

The insight that LX users may switch languages unconsciously or strategically in discussing their emotions was a central point of Dewaele (2010). It led Dr Beverley Costa, a psychotherapist who ran a counselling service that offered therapeutic support to Black, Asian and minority communities in the UK, to contact me. There began our joint interdisciplinary mixed-methods research into the problems facing both therapists and patients who are English LX users (Costa & Dewaele, 2012, 2019; Dewaele & Costa, 2013; Rolland et al., 2017, 2020).  It was the first research in the field to collect both quantitative and qualitative data from large numbers of multilingual patients and therapists in the UK, and thus marked a departure from the traditional approach in the field which was based on case-studies.  Statistical analyses and thematic analyses of interview data revealed that patients who are LX users in English sometimes struggled with expressing their emotions, and felt alienated when therapists ignored their multilingualism and multiculturalism, which are a central part of their identity. Many therapists were reluctant to allow other languages but English in the session for fear of losing control.  These fears were very much rooted in the monolingual ideology that dominates mental healthcare in the UK. There is very little training for therapists and counsellors to equip them to treat multilingual and multicultural patients.

In order to raise awareness about multilingualism, we have jointly presented our research to charities and service providers.  Costa trained over 3,640 British therapists between 2013 and 2020.  This training had a significant effect on the therapists’ beliefs, attitudes and practices regarding their multilingual patients. The sessions increased practitioners’ confidence about working with patients’ multilingualism, and how it could be a therapeutic asset in treatment (Bager-Charleson et al., 2017).  The techniques developed from our research are helping LX-using patients dealing with anxiety and depression more effectively (Costa, 2020).  The key points of our research have been incorporated into the core competencies for supervisors for the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, and in training programmes for clinical supervisors for the NHS at Universities of Reading and Southampton.

References
Bager-Charleson, S., Dewaele, J.-M., Costa, B., & Kasap, Z. (2017) A multilingual outlook: Can awareness-raising about multilingualism affect therapists’ practice? A mixed-method evaluation. Language and Psychoanalysis 6, 56-75.
Cook, S. (2019) Exploring the role of multilingualism in the therapeutic journey of survivors of torture and human trafficking. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Birkbeck, University of London.
Costa, B. (2020) Other Tongues: Psychological therapies in a multilingual world. London: PCCS Books.
Costa, B., & Dewaele, J.-M. (2012) Psychotherapy across languages: beliefs, attitudes and practices of monolingual and multilingual therapists with their multilingual patients. Language and Psychoanalysis 1, 19-40. Winner of the Equality and Diversity Research Award (2013) from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.
Costa, B., & Dewaele, J.-M. (2019) The talking cure – building the core skills and the confidence of counsellors and psychotherapists to work effectively with multilingual patients through training and supervision. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research 19, 231–240.
Dewaele, J.-M. (2010) Emotions in multiple languages. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dewaele, J.-M. & Costa, B. (2013) Multilingual clients’ experience of psychotherapy. Language and Psychoanalysis 2, 31-50.
Rolland, L., Dewaele, J.-M., & Costa, B. (2017) Multilingualism and psychotherapy: Exploring multilingual clients’ experiences of language practices in psychotherapy. International Journal of Multilingualism 14, 69-85.
Rolland, L., Costa, B., & Dewaele, J.-M. (2020) Negotiating the language(s) for psychotherapy talk: A mixed methods study from the perspective of multilingual clients. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/capr.12369

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Caring about Homecare

Caroline Wiemar and Kerry Harman from the Centre for Social Change and Transformation in Higher Education discuss the ongoing challenges faced by homecare workers since the homecare sector was privatised in the 1990s.

A carer with and elderly person in a carehome

Photo courtesy of Matthias Zomer

The invisibility of women’s work has been documented by feminist scholars for decades (see DeVault, 2014) and here we are in 2020 and, for paid homecare workers in the UK (and many other countries), the situation has not improved. Indeed, things have gotten a lot worse. While the COVID-19 crisis has drawn attention to the importance of ‘key workers’, particularly those employed in the care sector, proposed government immigration policy which prevents ‘low skilled’ workers entering the UK, including care workers, makes the weekly ‘clap for our carers’ feel like shallow rhetoric. Indeed, Hayes and Walters point to ‘the exploitation of care workers for political profit’ during the pandemic.

So what do we know about these homecare workers that, until quite recently, have been largely invisible? Annual reports on adult social care workforce data provide an overview of the workforce in England. Approximately 295,000 care jobs are in care home services with nursing; another 305,000 jobs in care only home services and the majority of jobs are in homecare, with 520,000 employed in this work. In other words, the provision of paid care is a major industry in the UK. Of the homecare workforce, approximately 50% were employed on zero-hours contracts, 84% were female, the average worker was 43 years old, 83% were British, 7% were EU (non-British) and 9% were non-EU. Across the care sector, there are large variations in ethnicity by region with London having the most diverse workforce (67% BAME) and the North East the least diverse (96% white). So homecare workers are likely to be more mature women, on precarious employment contracts, and Black or from a minority ethnic background if they work in London and white if they work in the North East.

While the outbreak of COVID-19 has contributed to a recognition of the ‘crisis in care’, a number of reports over many years indicate the homecare sector was in crisis well before the pandemic (BBC Panorama, 2019; Gardiner, 2015; Holmes, 2016; Koehler, 2014; UNISON, 2016). A shift to the outsourcing of this work to the private sector by local authorities during the 1990s had resulted in a race to the bottom in terms of hourly rates of pay and overall employment conditions for homecare workers (Hayes, 2017). This is exacerbated by an aggressive tendering process which often forces smaller, local agencies to eventually close their doors. The experience of working in the sector and changes that have taken place since the 1990s is provided in the following account by one of the authors:

I started working in the care sector 31 years ago when I got a part-time job as a ‘home help’ with the local council. My role was to help elderly disabled people in their own homes and to maintain their independence by doing shopping, laundry, housework, getting medications. The pay and conditions were good, with paid annual leave and sick pay. It was a satisfying job to strike up a relationship with the people I helped, hearing their stories of the past. I had time to have a conversation with them, which they enjoyed as sometimes I was the only person they might see that week. Then after a few years we were renamed ‘homecare workers’. With this title came changes –service users times were cut and they started to charge for their care. We had to do more in less time.

When the council outsourced homecare we were transferred to a non-profit organisation and we all had to take a pay cut. Our hours were cut, as well as sick pay and annual leave. If we did not take these cuts we did not have a job. You keep going because the vulnerable need your assistance. It’s not their fault we now work for less than previously. Then the non-profit organisation lost the contract and we were transferred over to a profit making company. I cared for a lady called Edna for just over ten years and she saw the changes with me. Edna had no family and I became her family. I used to get half an hour in the morning to give her a bath, dry her, help her dress, give her a drink, breakfast and medication. I used to go in earlier, just so I didn’t have to rush, as I knew I could not do all that in the time I had been given. We would have our conversation while I was carrying out my tasks. I would do all the things she no longer could because she was hard of hearing, like making phones calls. I’d organise appointments to doctors, hospital, medications and go with her in my own time. I’d make sure she had food, clean clothes – all things we able people take for granted. Over the years carers have lost pay, conditions, working hours and time to care.

Homecare is a low paid job and carers are not recognised for what they do . All I ever wanted was to have time to care, to give the person that I care for their dignity and independence – make them feel valued as a person and that they matter. Carers are everything to our service users – we are carers, nurse, secretary, friend, relative, the go to person who can sort everything out. Most of it is done in our own time. Sadly, my Edna passed away. She was classed as a vulnerable adult, but how vulnerable did she have to be to get the time and care she should of had? How long can carers go on giving their all and not being recognised and respected, on low pay and zero hours contracts? Carers look after the vulnerable but who looks after the carers?

(also listen to Caroline at a recent ‘How might we recognise the value of homecare provision?’ event at Birkbeck)

The ongoing ‘crisis in care’ resulting from the privatisation of the care sector since the mid-1990s points to the urgency of public policy interventions, backed by the resources to enable local authorities to bring homecare services back in-house. This would make it possible for fair wages to be paid and better working conditions for homecare workers across the country. Public policy interventions would also make it easier for trade unions to organise care workers, which is extremely challenging in the private care sector.

Another possible solution to the crisis in care in the UK has been a call for the professionalisation of the sector and this is usually accompanied by proposals for training and development. However, will more training and development get to what we believe is the heart of the problem, which is the ongoing failure to attend to the often embodied skills and knowing that homecare workers have developed in and through their everyday practices and experience at work? Indeed, many training and development programmes are underpinned by the same set of assumptions on what counts as ‘good care’ and who knows about ‘good care’ that work to make the everyday knowing in practice of homecare workers invisible.  As Weimar points out above, carers are also: ‘nurse, secretary, friend, relative, the go to person who can sort everything out’ and this is not ‘low skilled’ work.

During 2018/19, a participatory project with homecare workers was started in two boroughs in London called the ‘Invisible work, invisible knowledges?’ project. The authors met during that project. The purpose of the project was to make contact with homecare workers and find out more about their everyday experiences at work as part of a planned larger project on ‘Reimagining care’. One of the authors met with 13 homecare workers overall, in either individual or small group meetings, and the conversation usually started with: ‘Can you tell me what happens during a normal day at work? Is there such a thing as a ‘normal’ day?’ She was interested in hearing from homecare workers about what they actually do and, as part of these conversations, the homecare workers would often talk about the challenges they experience in their daily work. The resounding problem identified by care workers was the lack of time in the Care Plans[1] they are given to complete their work in a way that enables the people they care for to be treated with dignity and respect. This has resulted in many homecare workers providing additional hours of unpaid care to provide a level of care to care recipients that they consider adequate. As one care worker said, ‘If you see that there’s no food in the fridge, are you going to let someone go hungry?’ This is a reminder that, sometimes, care workers are the only point of contact that care recipients have with the outside world.

Another issue raised was the precarity of homecare workers’ employment contracts. The majority of care workers in London are employed by private agencies, with a large percentage on zero-hour contracts. Many care workers spoke about contracts that had eventually dwindled to very few hours work each week and the need to look for work elsewhere. A reduction in weekly hours was often connected with concerns raised by the care workers about the welfare of their clients/their working conditions. This is an issue that has been raised recently by the MP for Nottingham East, Nadia Whittome.

One outcome from the first stage of the project has been establishing a core group of homecare workers who are interested in documenting their embodied skills and knowledges which are so often overlooked. A crucial aspect of the research is recognising these workers as active producers of knowledge on care rather than passive recipients of knowledge produced in the academy and it is for this reason that homecare workers must be paid as co-researchers on the project. We are hoping the research will contribute to changing the ways care is able to be imagined as well as more democratic processes for developing policy on care, which includes homecare workers getting a seat at the policy making table.

To find out more about the ‘Reimagining Care’ project contact Kerry Harman.

References

DeVault, M. L. (2014). Mapping Invisible Work: Conceptual Tools for Social Justice Projects. Sociological Forum, 29(4), 775-790. doi:10.1111/socf.12119

[1] These are the plans which are put together, usually by an Occupational Therapist, after conducting an assessment with the person requiring care. They specify how many visits per day are required, the duration of each visit and the key activities to be undertaken at each visit.

 

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COVID-19 induced travel restrictions are not enough to mitigate crises like climate change. Could a circular economy be the answer?

Research by the Department of Management’s Dr Fred Yamoah and colleagues points to a new way to rebuild the global economy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Image of a reuse logo

There is no doubt that COVID-19 is first and foremost a human tragedy, resulting in a massive health crisis and huge economic loss.

While the impact on life as we know it has been unthinkable, a side effect of the way of life forced upon us by the pandemic is an unprecedented reduction in global carbon dioxide emissions, which are projected to decline by 8%. If achieved, this will be the most substantial reduction ever recorded, six times larger than the milestone reached during the 2009 financial crisis.

However, these changes should not be misconstrued as a climate triumph. They are not due to the right decisions from governments, but to a temporary status of lockdown that will not linger on forever; economies will need to rebuild, so we can expect a surge in emissions in the future. Indeed, the relatively modest reduction in emissions prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic has proven that zero-emissions cannot be attained based on reduced travel alone; structural changes in the economy will be needed to meet this target.

The case for a circular economy

Before coronavirus prompted this dramatic shift in our way of life, it seemed that the world had been waking up to the need for change to protect our environment. The linear model of our industrial economy – taking resources, making products from them and disposing of the product at the end of its life – jeopardizes the limits of our planet’s resource supply. Girling (2011) found that around 90% of the raw materials used in manufacturing become waste before the final product leaves the production plant, while 80% of products manufactured are disposed of within the first six months of their life. Similarly, Hoornweg and Bhada-Tata (2012) reported that around 1.3 billion tonnes of solid waste is generated by cities across the globe, which may grow to 2.2. billion tonnes by 2025.

Against this backdrop, the search for an industrial economic model that satisfies the multiple roles of decoupling economic growth from resource consumption, waste management and wealth creation, has heightened interests in concepts about circular economy.

What is circular economy?

Circular economy emphasises environmentally conscious manufacturing and product recovery, the avoidance of unintended ecological degradation and a shift in focus to a ‘cradle-to-cradle’ life cycle for products.

In our current situation, there has never been a better time to consider how the principles of circular economy could be translated into reality when the global economy begins to recover. Strategies to combat climate change could include:

  • material recirculation (more high-value recycling, less primary material production)
  • product material efficiency (improved production process, reuse of components and designing products with fewer materials)
  • circular business models (higher utilisation and longer lifetime of products through design for durability and disassembly, utilisation of long-lasting materials, improved maintenance and remanufacturing).

Building back better

A circular economy could also act as a vehicle for crafting more resilient economies. The pandemic has forced a rethink of the way our global economy operates, revealing the inability of the dominant economic model to respond to unplanned shocks and crises. The lockdown and border restrictions have reduced employment and heightened the risk of food insecurity for millions.

To prevent a repeat of the events of 2020, it is necessary to devise long-term risk-mitigation and sustainable fiscal thinking, moving away from the current focus on profits and disproportionate economic growth. Circular economy concerns optimised cycles: products are designed for longevity and optimised for a cycle of reuse that renders them easier to handle and transform. Future innovations under this model would focus on the general well-being of the populace, alongside boosting the market and competitiveness.

This economic model would also support the achievement of social inclusion objectives, for example by redistributing surplus food from the consumer goods supply chain to the local community.

The benefits of a circular economy are therefore obvious in that it strives for three wins in terms of social, environmental and economic impact. The pandemic has instigated a focus on the importance of local manufacturing for a resilient economy; fostered behavioural change in consumers; triggered the need for diversification and circularity of supply chains and evinced the power of public policy for tackling urgent socio-economic crises.

Governments are recognising the need for national-level circular economy policies in many aspects, such as:

  • reducing over-reliance on other manufacturing countries for essential goods
  • intensive research into bio-based materials for the development of biodegradable products
  • legal frameworks for local, regional and national authorities to promote green logistics and waste management regulations which incentivise local production and manufacturing
  • development of compact smart cities for effective mobility.

Post COVID-19 investments needed to accelerate towards more resilient, low carbon and circular economies should be integrated into the stimulus packages for economic recovery being promised by governments, since the shortcomings in the dominant linear economic model are now recognised and the gaps to be closed are known. The question is no longer should we build back better, but how.

This blog was adapted from T. Ibn-Mohammed, K.B. Mustapha, J. Godsell, Z. Adamu, K.A. Babatunde, D.D. Akintade, A. Acquaye, H. Fujii, M.M. Ndiaye, F.A. Yamoah, S.C.L. Koh, ‘A critical analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on the global economy and ecosystems and opportunities for circular economy strategies’ in Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 164. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.105169

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