(This article first appeared on the UCL ISR website)
Authors from the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources (ISR) and the UCL Energy Institute (EI) have published a paper in the journal Nature Communications titled ‘Diffusion of flue gas desulfurization reveals barriers and opportunities for carbon capture and storage’.
Find another use for it. Steve Buissinne/Pixabay, CC BY
(The original article was published here by The Conversation.)
Every year, we buy 30 billion tonnes of stuff, from pizza boxes to family homes. We throw out or demolish 13 billion tonnes of it as waste – about 2 tonnes per person. A third of what we discard was bought the same year. The extraction, use and discarding of so much stuff creates a large environmental burden, from the depletion of minerals to the destruction of rainforests.
The article focuses on EU waste legislation and the need to balance between regulating waste for environmental and health protection, and promoting waste prevention through resource cycling. We suggest a new requirement for “recognising use potential” to counterbalance the very restrictive definition of waste. Access the article here.
(This news article first appeared on the UCL ISR website)
The report, by UCL ISR Research Associate and PhD graduate Stijn van Ewijk, was written for the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra).
(This news article first appeared on the UCL ISR website)
Stijn van Ewijk, ISR PhD student, is author on a new study published in Resources, Conservation and Recycling.
(This news article first appeared on the UCL ISR website)
Last month we published this paper on the limitations of the waste hierarchy for achieving absolute reductions in material throughput in the economy. The waste hierarchy is an established rule of thumb for waste management and prioritizes waste prevention over reuse, recycling, incineration, and landfill. The paper describe the origins of the waste hierarchy and compares its original aims with its current use and implementation. The paper concludes that the hierarchy in itself is not sufficient and instead needs to be used within an overarching framework to achieve dematerialization of the economy. The article was published with Open Access in the Journal for Cleaner Production.
(This article first appeared at the ISR blog)
The success of a country is commonly measured by its total economic output, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Acknowledging the pivotal role of natural resources in creating such wealth, the European Union is now promoting resource productivity as a leading indicator of progress. Resource productivity is measured as the ratio between economic output and material input, and is supposed to show advancement towards sustainable growth.
(This article first appeared at the ISR blog)
A sustainable society without circular flows is hard to conceive. For instance cradle-to-cradle, bio-mimicry, and industrial ecology heavily emphasise recycling and reuse activities. Today, all those philosophies seem to have been summarized and trumped by the concept of the circular economy. This week, the circular economy was being celebrated at the “Resource Event” in London, where some 100 speakers shared their views on the circular economy.
(This article first appeared at the Climate Week Blog)
The use of natural resources is intricately tied up with climate change. Most notably, the consumption of fossil fuels leads to carbon emissions which in turn cause climate change. Also, carbon sinks like forests regulate the climate by taking up carbon dioxide. Just like fossil fuels, these carbon sinks are increasingly being traded. However, the commodification of carbon sinks may be harmful and counterproductive.