Water in a loop: how to combat water scarcity on remote islands

Every summer, thousands of tourists travel to Greece’s idyllic islands to enjoy their sunny beaches. Even the global pandemic couldn’t keep visitors away, but water scarcity might. Many Greek islands survive on water imports and are struggling to meet residents’ and agriculture’s water needs – let alone those of tourists. These islands illustrate the difficulties faced in other … Read more

Green fertiliser made from cow dung and chicken feathers could transform big agriculture

Farm waste is often full of nutrients that take time to break down before crops can use them. Image credit - Pxhere, licensed under CC0

A raft of strategies is being trialled in Europe to turn nutrient-rich farm waste such as chicken feathers, cow dung and plant stalks into green fertiliser. Full of phosphorus and nitrogen, recycled products could help reduce intensive agriculture’s emissions and reliance on fertiliser imports. European agriculture produces an abundance of high quality food, but also … Read more

In a zero-waste society, people will need to share and repair

Recycling can be inefficient when parts such as dashboards from cars are too hard to dismantle, says Felipe Maya.

Businesses and consumers need to stop thinking of products as things to own and move towards a culture of sharing and repairing if we are to fulfil the ambition of creating a circular economy, according to Felipe Maya, project and innovation manager at sustainable engineering firm Exergy, headquartered in Coventry, UK. Maya and his colleagues … Read more

Scientists want to use dirty nappies as a source of raw materials

The hardest part about recycling used nappies is opening them.

Thousands of soiled nappies that were destined to clog Italian landfill sites or incinerators are being redirected to a recycling plant that is turning them into streams of high quality raw materials, in a new process that it is hoped will be replicated around Europe. Every day, new parents find themselves sucked into the environmentally … Read more

Smart containers to reward people for recycling properly

Europe's waste plastic represents more than €10 billion in lost resources each year.

Smart recycling containers that reward people for proper use could help drive up the rate of plastic recycling, reducing the amount of plastic that goes into oceans and landfill, and creating business opportunities out of the challenge to cut back on waste. It’s part of a wave of innovations aiming to keep plastic circulating in the … Read more

Construction waste to be turned into gas masks and sports equipment

MDF is widely used in the walls of buildings and has so far proven hard to recycle.

Huge volumes of waste building materials that are discarded every year could be recycled into new products such as gas masks and sports equipment following research being conducted by scientists and recycling firms. Dr Kenny Vanreppelen, a renewable product researcher and founder of Belgian start-up Act&Sorb, set up the FibreCarb project to recycle waste fibreboard … Read more