Utilization of Waste Lignin and Hydrolysate From Chromium Tanned Waste in Blends of Hot-Melt Extruded PVA-Starch

The demand for biodegradable plastic material is increasing worldwide. However, the cost remains high in comparison with common forms of plastic. Requirements comprise low cost, good UV-stability and mechanical properties, as well as solubility and water uptake lead to the preparation of multi-component polymer blends based on polyvinyl alcohol and starch in combination with waste products that are hard to utilize—waste lignin and hydrolysate extracted from chromium tanned waste. Surprisingly the addition of such waste products into PVA gives rise to blends with better biodegradability than commercial PVA in an aquatic aerobic environment with non-adapted activated sludge. These blends also exhibited greater solubility in the water and UV stability than commercial PVA. Tests on the processing properties of the blends (melt flow index, tensile strength and elongation at break of the films) as well as their mechanical properties showed that materials based on these blends might be applied in agriculture (for example as the systems for controlled-release pesticide or fertilizer) and, somewhat, in the packaging sector.     

Social representations of governance for change towards sustainability: perspectives of sustainability advocates

There is a substantial body of literature on public understandings of large-scale ‘environmental’ phenomena such as climate change and resource degradation. At the same time, political science and economics analyse the governance arrangements to deal with such issues. These realms of research rarely meet: there has been little research into people’s understandings of the governance of environmental change. This study adds a psychological perspective to governance research by investigating social representations of governance that promotes societal change towards sustainability, and related practices. It examines data from qualitative interviews with sustainability-interested people in seven European countries (n = 105). The analysis identified building blocks of representations suitable as an analytical framework for future research on governance representations. The diversity of their content reflected a range of pathways to societal change. Representations often seemed to have a creative function as a guiding vision for individuals’ own practices, but their wider transformative potential was constrained.     

The spillover of race and racial attitudes into public opinion about climate change

The relationship between racial attitudes and public opinion about climate change is examined. Public opinion data from Pew and American National Election Studies surveys are used to show that racial identification and prejudices are increasingly correlated with opinions about climate change during the Obama presidency. Results show that racial identification became a significant predictor of climate change concern following Obama’s election in 2008, and that high levels of racial resentment are strongly correlated with reduced agreement with the scientific consensus on climate change. These results offer evidence for an effect termed the spillover of racialization. This helps further explain why the public remains so polarized on climate change, given the extent to which racial grievances and identities have become entangled with elite communication about climate change and its related policies today.     

The IPBES Conceptual Framework: An Unhelpful Start

The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) have recently launched themselves as the UN-sanctioned instrument for conserving nature. They seek to establish themselves as the authority in this field alongside the well-known Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in climate science. Quickly following or even before recent publication of their conceptual framework in two biology journals, they were already underway building upon it. This headlong push, we believe, is ill advised. We show how the framework is unsound as a foundation for further work—in a number of ways and perhaps even by its authors’ own lights. It is therefore urgent that the IPBES thoroughly and thoughtfully reconsider their framework before too much effort is wasted.     

Institutional Constraints on Cost‐Effective Water Management: Selenium Contamination in Colorado's Lower Arkansas River Valley

Ground and surface water selenium (Se) contamination is problematic throughout the world, leading to harmful impacts on aquatic life, wildlife, livestock, and humans. A groundwater reactive transport model was applied to a regional‐scale irrigated groundwater system in the Lower Arkansas River Basin in southeastern Colorado to identify management practices that remediate Se contamination. The system has levels of surface water and groundwater Se concentrations exceeding the respective chronic standard and guidelines. We evaluate potential solutions by combining the transport model with an assessment of the cost to employ those practices. We use a framework common in economics and engineering fields alike, the Pareto frontier, to show the impact of four different best management practices on the tradeoffs between Se and cost objectives. We then extend that analysis to include institutional constraints that affect the economic feasibility associated with each practice. Results indicate that although water‐reducing strategies have the greatest impact on Se, they are the hardest for farmers to implement given constraints common to western water rights institutions. Therefore, our analysis shows that estimating economic and environmental tradeoffs, as is typically done with a Pareto frontier, will not provide an accurate picture of choices available to farmers where institutional constraints should also be considered.     

Molecular tools for bathing water assessment in Europe: Balancing social science research with a rapidly developing environmental science evidence-base

The use of molecular tools, principally qPCR, versus traditional culture-based methods for quantifying microbial parameters (e.g., Fecal Indicator Organisms) in bathing waters generates considerable ongoing debate at the science–policy interface. Advances in science have allowed the development and application of molecular biological methods for rapid (~2 h) quantification of microbial pollution in bathing and recreational waters. In contrast, culture-based methods can take between 18 and 96 h for sample processing. Thus, molecular tools offer an opportunity to provide a more meaningful statement of microbial risk to water-users by providing near-real-time information enabling potentially more informed decision-making with regard to water-based activities. However, complementary studies concerning the potential costs and benefits of adopting rapid methods as a regulatory tool are in short supply. We report on findings from an international Working Group that examined the breadth of social impacts, challenges, and research opportunities associated with the application of molecular tools to bathing water regulations.     

Changing ideas in forestry: A comparison of concepts in Swedish and American forestry journals during the early twentieth and twenty-first centuries

By combining digital humanities text-mining tools and a qualitative approach, we examine changing concepts in forestry journals in Sweden and the United States (US) in the early twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Our first hypothesis is that foresters at the beginning of the twentieth century were more concerned with production and less concerned with ecology than foresters at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Our second hypothesis is that US foresters in the early twentieth century were less concerned with local site conditions than Swedish foresters. We find that early foresters in both countries had broader—and often ecologically focused—concerns than hypothesized. Ecological concerns in the forestry literature have increased, but in the Nordic countries, production concerns have increased as well. In both regions and both time periods, timber management is closely connected to concerns about governance and state power, but the forms that governance takes have changed.     

Preparation and characterization of green bricks using pharmaceutical industrial wastes

This paper reports on recycling of industrial wastes (three pharmaceutical industrial sludges) into environmental friendly value-added materials. Stabilization/Solidification (S/S or bricks) process was applied to make a safer way for the utilization of pharmaceutical waste. The additives in this study include binders (cement, lime and bentonite) and strengthening material (pulverized fuel ash (PFA), silica fume and quarry dust) was used at different compositions. Bricks were cured for 28 days, and the following analysis-like compressive strength, leachability of heavy metals, mineralogical phase identity by X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and thermal behaviour by thermogravimetric-differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA) had done. All the bricks were observed to achieve the standard compressive strength as required for construction according to BIS standards. Metal concentration in the leachate has reached the dischargeable limits according to Brazilian standards. Results of this study demonstrate that production of bricks is a promising and achievable productive use of pharmaceutical sludge.     

Use of modeling to protect,plan, and manage water resources in catchment areas

The degradation of water resources by diffuse pollution, mainly due to nitrate and pesticides, is an important matter for public health. Restoration of the quality of natural water catchments by focusing on their catchment areas is therefore a national priority in France. To consider catchment areas as homogeneous and to expend an equal effort on the entire area inevitably leads to a waste of time and money, and restorative actions may not be as efficient as intended. The variability of the pedological and geological properties of the area is actually an opportunity to invest effort on smaller areas, simply because every action is not equally efficient on every kind of pedological or geological surface. Using this approach, it is possible to invest in a few selected zones that will be efficient in terms of environmental results. The contributive hydraulic areas (CHA) concept is different from that of the catchment area. Because the transport of most of the mobile and persistent pollutants is primarily driven by water circulation, the concept of the CHA is based on the water pathway from the surface of the soil in the catchment area to the well. The method uses a three-dimensional hydrogeological model of surface and groundwater integrated with a geographic information system called Watermodel. The model calculates the contribution (m³/h or %) of each point of the soil to the total flow pumped in a well. Application of this model, partially funded by the Seine Normandy Basin Agency, to the catchment of the Dormelles Well in the Cretaceous chalk aquifer in the Orvanne valley, France (catchment area of 23,000 ha at Dormelles, county 77), shows that 95 % of the water pumped at the Dormelles Well comes from only 26 % of the total surface area of the catchment. Consequently, an action plan to protect the water resource will be targeted at the 93 farmers operating in this source area rather than the total number of farmers (250) across the entire 23,000 ha. Another model, developed from Epiclès© software, permits the calculation of the under-root nitrate concentrations for each field based on soil type, climate, and farming practices. When the Watermodel and Epiclès© are coupled, nitrate transfers from the soil to the catchment and the river can be modeled. In this study, the initial pollution due to the actual farming practices was simulated and we were also able to estimate the efficiency of the agronomic action plan by testing several scenarios and calculating the time needed to reach the target nitrate concentration in the well.