Waste recovery using packaging waste recovery notes: a cost-effective way of meeting targets?

To comply with EU recycling targets for packaging waste, the UK relies on an industry run and market based eco-tax levied by reprocessors on obligated businesses. After examining the details of this approach, the use of Packaging Waste Recovery Notes is assessed in terms of its allocative impact and the contribution made to eco-efficiency. The evidence indicates the UK system has minimized the cost of delivering current EU targets, but has not been able to deliver allocative efficiency or to demonstrate dynamic improvements in resource use. Its effectiveness in meeting impending higher targets remains open to question.     

Greening the Fife Economy: Ecological Modernization as a Pathway for Local Economic Development

Progress in the greening of UK local government has been hampered by uncertainty about the relationship between resource use and environmental protection. Ecological modernizationmay offer the most appropriateparadigm to reconcile economic, social and environmentalinterpretationsof sustainability. The transition from corporate to strategic environmental management currently being attempted by some 'green' authorities can be construed as an attempt to promote ecological modernization in the form of institutional learning. Fife Council in Scotland provides an interesting case study. Progress with corporate environmental management has become bound up with a radical devolution of decision making. Efforts to link the authority's Sustainable Development Policy to a Local Agenda 21 programme have been initiated with the piloting of sustainability indicators.     

Effectiveness of biodiversity-conservation marketing

Conservation marketing holds potential as a means to engage audiences with biodiversity conservation and help to address the human dimensions of biodiversity loss. Empirical evaluations of conservation marketing indicatives are growing, so we reviewed the literature on this research to inform future directions in the field. We used a systematic search strategy to identify studies that evaluated the effects of conservation marketing interventions (techniques and campaigns) on psychosocial outcomes, categorized as cognitive, affective, or behavioral. Six academic databases (Business Source Complete, Communication & Mass Media Complete, Greenfile, Proquest, Scopus, and Web of Science Core Collections), 3 gray-literature databases (BASE, Zenodo, and Google Scholar), and 2 websites (Rare and WildAid) were searched. Articles were subjected to critical appraisal to assess their methodological quality, and data were extracted from each article and analyzed using narrative synthesis. Altogether 28 studies from 26 articles were included in the review. Twenty-five studies were conducted from 2014 through 2016. Methodological quality of most studies was weak (n = 16, 57%) (moderate quality n = 8, 29%; high quality n = 4, 14%). The proportion of studies that evaluated a conservation-marketing technique (e.g., variants of texts, images, or videos) versus a campaign (e.g., community-based campaigns targeting locally relevant issues, such as unsustainable palm oil agriculture, light pollution, or wood fuel fire use) was relatively balanced. Although many studies reported statistically significant results in the intended direction, the utility of findings was limited by persistent methodological limitations, such as a lack of a comparator group, use of non-validated assessment tools, and a focus on self-reported data and subjective outcomes. Conservation marketing is clearly a nascent field of scientific enquiry that warrants further, high-quality research investigations.     

Study of new reinforcing materials for cementitious panel production

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The development of building materials using new types of raw materials is currently on demand by society and the industry. It is intended to reduce...     

Arsenic exposure in Hungary, Romania and Slovakia

Inorganic arsenic is a potent human carcinogen and toxicant which people are exposed to mainly via drinking water and food. The objective of the present study was to assess current exposure to arsenic via drinking water in three European countries. For this purpose, 520 individuals from four Hungarian, two Slovakian and two Romanian countries were investigated by measuring inorganic arsenic and methylated arsenic metabolites in urine by high performance liquid chromatography with hydride generation and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Arsenic in drinking water was determined by atomic absorption spectrometry. Significantly higher concentrations of arsenic were found in both the water and the urine samples from the Hungarian counties (median: 11 and 15 microg dm(-3), respectively; p < 0.001) than from the Slovakian (median: 0.94 and 4.5 microg dm(-3), respectively) and Romanian (median: 0.70 and 2.1 microg dm(-3), respectively) counties. A significant correlation was seen between arsenic in water and arsenic in urine (R(2)= 0.46). At low water arsenic concentrations, the relative amount of dimethylarsinic acid (DMA) in urine was increased, indicating exposure via food. Also, high body mass index was associated with higher concentrations of arsenic in urine (p= 0.03), mostly in the form of DMA. Smokers had significantly higher urinary arsenic concentrations than non-smokers (p= 0.03). In conclusion, elevated arsenic exposure via drinking water was prevalent in some of the counties. Exposure to arsenic from food, mainly as DMA, and cigarette smoke, mainly as inorganic arsenic, are major determinants of arsenic exposure at very low concentrations of arsenic in drinking water.     

How to do Animal Ethics

Many think doing animal ethics demands we see moral humanism as a speciesist prejudice of the kind found with sexism and racism. The only serious case for this rests on the Argument from Marginal Cases. We find that argument to the point, but show that properly understood it supports humanism. Understanding why it does this lets us see how we ought to go on in animal ethics.     

Aging and compressibility of municipal solid wastes

The expansion of a municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill requires the ability to predict settlement behavior of the existing landfill. The practice of using a single compressibility value when performing a settlement analysis may lead to inaccurate predictions. This paper gives consideration to changes in the mechanical compressibility of MSW as a function of the fill age of MSW as well as the embedding depth of MSW. Borehole samples representative of various fill ages were obtained from five boreholes drilled to the bottom of the Qizhishan landfill in Suzhou, China. Thirty-one borehole samples were used to perform confined compression tests. Waste composition and volume-mass properties (i.e., unit weight, void ratio, and water content) were measured on all the samples. The test results showed that the compressible components of the MSW (i.e., organics, plastics, paper, wood and textiles) decreased with an increase in the fill age. The in situ void ratio of the MSW was shown to decrease with depth into the landfill. The compression index, Cc, was observed to decrease from 1.0 to 0.3 with depth into the landfill. Settlement analyses were performed on the existing landfill, demonstrating that the variation of MSW compressibility with fill age or depth should be taken into account in the settlement prediction.     

Conditioning of aluminium-based water treatment sludge with Fenton's reagent: effectiveness and optimising study to improve dewaterability

Alternative conditioning of aluminium-based drinking water treatment sludge using Fenton reagent (Fe2+/H2O2) was examined in this study. Focuses were placed on effectiveness and factors to affect such novel application of Fenton process. Experiments have demonstrated that considerable improvement of alum sludge dewaterability evaluated by capillary suction time (CST) can be obtained at the relative low concentrations of Fenton reagent. A Box-Behnken experimental design based on the response surface methodology was applied to evaluate the optimum of the influencing variables, i.e. iron concentration, hydrogen peroxide concentration and pH. The optimal values for Fe2+, H2O2, and pH are 21 mg g(-1)DS(-1)(dry solids), 105 mg g(-1)DS(-1) and 6, respectively, at which the CST reduction efficiency of 48+/-3% can be achieved, this agreed with that predicted by an established polynomial model in this study.     

Assessing climate change adaptation strategies—the case of drought and heat wave in the French nuclear sector

Regional Environmental Change - Nuclear energy is a very important component of overall power supply in France. If the effects of future extreme weather events or climate shifts are not addressed,...     

Contaminant mass flux and forensic assessment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons: Tools to inform remediation decision making at a contaminated site in Canada

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and metal(loid) mass flux estimates and forensic assessment using PAH diagnostic ratios were used to inform remediation decision making at the Sydney Tar Ponds (STPs) and Coke Ovens cleanup project in eastern Canada. Environmental effects monitoring of surface marine sediments in Sydney Harbor indicated significantly higher PAH concentrations during the first year of remediation monitoring compared to baseline. This was equivalent to PAH loadings of ～2,000 kg over a 15‐month period. Increases in sediment PAH concentrations raised serious concerns for regulators, who requested cessation of remediation activities early in the $400 M (CAD) project. Historically, the STPs were reported as the primary source of PAH contamination in Sydney Harbor with estimated discharges of 300 to 800 kg/year between 1989 and 2001. Mass flux estimates of PAHs and metal(loid)s and PAH diagnostic ratios were used to evaluate if increases in PAH concentrations in marine sediments were the result of the STPs remediation activities. PAH mass flux estimates approximated that 17 to 97 kg/year were discharged from the STPs during three years of remediation and were corroborated by an independent PAH flux estimate of 119 kg in year 1. PAH fluxes to the Sydney Harbor were mostly surface water derived, with groundwater contributing negligible quantities (0.002–0.005 kg/year). Fluxes of metal(loid)s to harbor sediments were stable or declining across all years and were mirrored in sediment metal(loid) concentrations, which lacked temporal variation, unlike total PAH concentrations. Flux results were also corroborated using PAH diagnostic ratios, which found a common source of PAHs. Coal combustion was likely the principal source of PAHs and not migration from the STPs during remediation. Although short‐term residual sediment PAH increases during onset of remediation raised concerns for regulators, calls for premature cessation of remediation early in the project were unwarranted based on only one year of monitoring data. Mass flux estimates and forensic assessments using PAH diagnostic ratios proved useful tools to inform remediation decision making that helped environmental protection and reduced costs associated with lost cleanup time.