Local authorities throughout the UK are refining or implementing curbside recycling schemes as they attempt to achieve challenging statutory recycling targets. Despite the importance of curbside schemes there are few published studies that have reported on actual measured levels and frequency of participation by residents, hindering transferability of lessons learned nationally and internationa...

The usage of valuable resources and the generation of emissions during the life cycle of photovoltaic (PV) technologies dictate our proactive planning for a sound PV recycling infrastructure to ensure its sustainability. Some global PV manufacturers have begun recycling PV wastes generated from the PV manufacturing processes and the Endof-Life (EoL) PV modules. Therefore, it is vital to develop...

Much current research in photovoltaic technology is directed towards using “abundant” base metals like copper and zinc (e.g., CZTS or more recently CZTSSe) to overcome the the challenges of material scarcity posed by the use of tellurium, indium, germanium, and gallium in current generation products (e.g., CdTe, CIGS, aSi/thin-film Si). The supply of these materials is limited because they are ...

Recycling provides a key strategy to move towards a more sustainable society by partially mitigating the impact of fast-growing material consumption. Recent advances in reprocessing technologies enable recyclers to incorporate low-quality secondary materials into higher quality finished products. Despite technological development, the use of these materials in the re-melting stage to produce fi...

The purpose of this study was to quantify the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction that could be achieved by replacement of fossil-derived materials with biodegradable, biomass-based materials for household plastic containers and packaging, considering a variety of their treatment options. The biomass-based materials were 100% polylactide or a combination of polybutylene succinat...

The purpose of this study was to quantify the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction that could be achieved by replacement of fossil-derived materials with biodegradable, biomass-based materials for household plastic containers and packaging, considering a variety of their treatment options. The biomass-based materials were 100% polylactide or a combination of polybutylene succinat...

The issue of waste management has been studied simultaneously along with the development of the ARIES heavy-ion-driven inertial fusion energy (IFE) concept. Options for waste management include disposal in repositories, recycling, or clearance from regulatory control, following a reasonable cooling period. This paper concerns the feasibility of recycling the heavy-ion-beam targets, in particula...