Science to enable the circular economy

Landfills And The Circular Economy

Promotion of resource efficiency and development towards a circular economy is widely supported. Many products and materials that are brought into the economy contain hazardous substances. These substances may be acceptable during the consumption stage, but due to accumulation in the environment may also cause impact to human health and the environment after consumption. The primary goal of was...

Waste and circular economy

Different Pathways to Integrate Anaerobic Digestion and Thermochemical Processes: Moving Toward the Circular Economy Concept

As one of the most environmentally friendly and cost-effective method, anaerobic digestion (AD) has been widely studied and developed as a conventional technology to degrade biodegradable materials and produce biogas simultaneously. Various substrate sources are used in this process such as organic fraction of municipal solid waste (MSW), waste activated sludge (WAS), animal manures, agro-indus...

The economy of science.

We are in the midst of an era of plummeting pay lines at the NIH. History shows that when the federal deficit is high, NIH pay lines tend to fall, and the impact on biomedical research can be disastrous. Equally bad is the disincentive for the future generations of biomedical researchers who observe their mentors struggling to get adequate funding. How many bright young people will be turned aw...

The EU Circular Economy and Its Relevance to Metal Recycling

This paper provides an overview of ongoing European policy actions to improve the circular management of non-ferrous metals. After explaining why metals are at the center of the European Union’s circular economy initiative, the authors outline a number of issues that still need tackling to “close the loop”, and prevent Europe’s metals from being landfilled, incinerated, or exported without guar...