scholarly journals Circular cities: an evidence map of research between 2010 and 2020

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fedra Vanhuyse ◽  
Neal R. Haddaway ◽  
Maryna Henrysson
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Circular Economy ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Wastewater Management ◽  
Evidence Map ◽  
Searchable Database ◽  
Recovery Strategies ◽  
The World

AbstractWorldwide, cities are implementing circular economy (CE) strategies to reduce the resources they consume and their environmental impact. To understand the CE strategies and sectors cities have been focusing on, we have conducted an evidence map describing the literature published in the last ten years. The main outputs are a searchable database comprising 178 publications showing which cities have been discussed, what CE strategy they are focusing on, and the sectors under review. The results show that most research has focused on European countries. Those efforts mainly concentrate on waste and wastewater management, and recycling and recovery strategies are considered the “lower-level” strategies in the CE taxonomy. It highlights the potential for further research in other cities and regions, looking across sectors and analyzing strategies that tackle the “higher-level” CE strategies. Higher-level strategies include reducing, repurposing, remanufacturing and reusing opportunities to achieve the potential attributed to a CE model by governments across the world.

scholarly journals Plastics as a materials system in a circular economy

2020 ◽  
Vol 378 (2176) ◽  
pp. 20190268 ◽  
Author(s):  
David G. Bucknall
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Large Volume ◽  
Circular Economy ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Business Practice ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Environmental Disaster ◽  
Technical Developments ◽  
The World ◽  
Technical Issues

Plastics have transformed our modern world. With a range of outstanding properties, they are used in an ever-widening range of applications. However, the linear economy of their use means that a large volume of plastics is discarded after use. It is believed that approximately 80% of the estimated total 6.3 Bt of plastics ever produced have been discarded, representing not only a huge loss of valuable resources, but mismanaged waste is also the origin of an ever-increasing environmental disaster. Strategies to prevent loss of materials resources and damage to the environment are elements of a circular plastics economy that aims to maintain plastics at their highest value for the longest time possible and at the same time improve the economy and prevent detrimental environmental impact. The latter in particular is driving recent changes in policies and legislation across the world that are rapidly being introduced in order to solve these environmental issues. The achievement of a circular economy will require not only innovative technical developments, but also major economic investment and changes to business practice coupled with significant changes in social behaviour. This paper summarizes the complex and highly interrelated technical issues and provides an overview of the major challenges, potential solutions and opportunities required to achieve and operate a circular plastics economy. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Science to enable the circular economy’.

scholarly journals Modelling of Regional Economic Metabolism

Climate ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Afonso Silva ◽  
Bruno Augusto ◽  
Sandra Rafael ◽  
Johnny Reis ◽  
Myriam Lopes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Circular Economy ◽  
Urban Metabolism ◽  
Regional Economic ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
The World ◽  
Over Time

The current linear economic system has led Europe to unsustainable development, aggravating several issues, such as climate change, limitation of resources, and pollution. As a sustainable alternative, circular economy (CE) has been promoted around the world. This economic system allows for the maximization of a product’s life, thus decreasing its environmental impact and increasing its value. The main goal of this work is to scrutinise the concepts of CE over time, from the beginning of the concept, to its implementation in Europe and its application in Portugal. In addition, the requirement for strategies that led to studies on regional urban metabolism are addressed. Another goal is to examine Portugal and see how the country is dealing with the implementation of strategies for CE, moving from concept to practice. This part of the work resulted in the creation of the REMET-UA model, a tool to assess the regional economic metabolism, which also has the potential to evaluate synergies of materials in terms of fluxes between regions, maximizing the amount of information available at this scale for municipalities and enterprises to be used, having taken into account the purpose of circular economy. The results showed that REMET-UA is fully operational and corresponds to the goal for which the model was made. Future developments have been identified and are underway to improve the model and bring it as close to reality as possible.

Biodiesel production from non-edible oils: A review

2020 ◽  
pp. 149-159
Author(s):  
Jatinder Kataria ◽  
Saroj Kumar Mohapatra ◽  
Amit Pal
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Edible Oils ◽  
Control Measure ◽  
Biodiesel Production ◽  
Pollution Level ◽  
Animal Fats ◽  
The World

The limited fossil reserves, spiraling price and environmental impact due to usage of fossil fuels leads the world wide researchers’ interest in using alternative renewable and environment safe fuels that can meet the energy demand. Biodiesel is an emerging renewable alternative fuel to conventional diesel which can be produced from both edible and non-edible oils, animal fats, algae etc. The society is in dire need of using renewable fuels as an immediate control measure to mitigate the pollution level. In this work an attempt is made to review the requisite and access the capability of the biodiesel in improving the environmental degradation.

Desecularization as Phenomenon at the Turn of 21st Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 49-57
Author(s):  
Sergey V.  Lebedev ◽  
Galina N.  Lebedeva
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Islamic Revolution ◽  
Islamic Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
Rational Alternative ◽  
Role Of Religion

In the article the authors note that since the 1970s, with the rise of the Islamic movement and the Islamic revolution in Iran, philosophers and political scientists started to talk about religious renaissance in many regions of the world. In addition, the point at issue is the growing role of religion in society, including European countries that have long ago gone through the process of secularization. The reasons for this phenomenon, regardless of its name, are diverse, but understandable: secular ideologies of the last century failed to explain the existing social problems and give them a rational alternative.

Atypical Presentation of Neurobrucellosis as Infection of Ventriculoperitoneal Shunt

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raul-Ciprian Covrig ◽  
Jasmina Petridou ◽  
Ulrich J. Knappe
Keyword(s):  
Case Report ◽  
Abdominal Surgery ◽  
Ventriculoperitoneal Shunt ◽  
Political Context ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The Political ◽  
Atypical Presentation ◽  
The World ◽  
Surgery First ◽  
Endemic Areas

AbstractBrucellosis is a frequent zoonosis in some regions of the world and may cause various symptoms. Neurobrucellosis is a rare but serious complication of the infection. Our case report describes the course of neurobrucellosis in a patient who had received a ventriculoperitoneal shunt in his native country 13 years prior to diagnosis of brucellosis. He initially presented to us with symptoms of peritonitis, which misled us to perform abdominal surgery first. After the diagnosis of neurobrucellosis was confirmed and appropriate antibiotics were initiated, the symptoms soon disappeared. Although the ventriculoperitoneal shunt was subsequently removed, the patient did not develop a symptomatic hydrocephalus further on. This case displays the challenges in diagnosing an infection that occurred sporadically in Europe and may be missed by currently applied routine microbiological workup. Considering the political context, with increasing relocation from endemic areas to European countries, it is to be expected that the cases of brucellosis and neurobrucellosis will rise. Brucellosis should be considered and adequate investigations should be performed.

scholarly journals Fish Waste: From Problem to Valuable Resource

Marine Drugs ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
Daniela Coppola ◽  
Chiara Lauritano ◽  
Fortunato Palma Esposito ◽  
Gennaro Riccio ◽  
Carmen Rizzo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Circular Economy ◽  
Bioactive Peptides ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
Economic Sector ◽  
Valuable Resource ◽  
Fish Waste ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Population ◽  
Aquaculture Production

Following the growth of the global population and the subsequent rapid increase in urbanization and industrialization, the fisheries and aquaculture production has seen a massive increase driven mainly by the development of fishing technologies. Accordingly, a remarkable increase in the amount of fish waste has been produced around the world; it has been estimated that about two-thirds of the total amount of fish is discarded as waste, creating huge economic and environmental concerns. For this reason, the disposal and recycling of these wastes has become a key issue to be resolved. With the growing attention of the circular economy, the exploitation of underused or discarded marine material can represent a sustainable strategy for the realization of a circular bioeconomy, with the production of materials with high added value. In this study, we underline the enormous role that fish waste can have in the socio-economic sector. This review presents the different compounds with high commercial value obtained by fish byproducts, including collagen, enzymes, and bioactive peptides, and lists their possible applications in different fields.

scholarly journals All around the world: Assessing optimality in comparative circular economy policy packages

2021 ◽  
Vol 286 ◽  
pp. 125493
Author(s):  
Oscar Fitch-Roy ◽  
David Benson ◽  
David Monciardini
Keyword(s):  
Circular Economy ◽  
The World ◽  
Economy Policy

scholarly journals APPLICATION OF THE RE-CYCLING METHOD TO SUPPORT DESIGN FOR AND FROM END-OF-LIFE.

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 511-520
Author(s):  
Jorge Martínez Leal ◽  
Stéphane Pompidou ◽  
Carole Charbuillet ◽  
Nicolas Perry
Keyword(s):  
End Of Life ◽  
Circular Economy ◽  
Design Approach ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Support Design ◽  
Innovative Design ◽  
Recycled Materials ◽  
Environmentally Conscious ◽  
Similar Score ◽  
The World

AbstractNowadays, the world is shifting towards a more sustainable way of life, and product designers have an important part in this change. They have to eco(re)design their products to make them environmentally conscious throughout their lifecycle, and especially at their end-of-life (EoL). However, one can observe that synergy between product designers and recycling-chains stakeholders is lacking, mainly due to their weak communication. While many design-for-EoL approaches coexist in the literature, design from EoL must also be taken into account to fully develop a circular economy.RE-CYCLING is an innovative design approach that supports both design for and from EoL. This paper focuses on the recycling EoL-option and the validation of the associated indicators. To validate the design-for-recycling indicators, the recyclability of three smartphones is assessed. It is expected that indicators provide a similar score as none of them was designed to be recycled; results comply with expectations. In parallel, the convenience of using recycled materials in smartphones is analysed to validate our design-from-recycling indicators. It is found that the proposed indicators can indeed support designers integrating recycled materials in products.

scholarly journals Paracoccidioidomycosis Diagnosed in Europe—A Systematic Literature Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 157
Author(s):  
Gernot Wagner ◽  
Deddo Moertl ◽  
Anna Glechner ◽  
Verena Mayr ◽  
Irma Klerings ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Latency Period ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Systemic Mycosis ◽  
Endemic Region ◽  
Travel History ◽  
Long Latency ◽  
Geographical Regions ◽  
The World ◽  
First Occurrence ◽  
Full Text Screening

Paracoccidioidomycosis is a systemic mycosis that is endemic in geographical regions of Central and South America. Cases that occur in nonendemic regions of the world are imported through migration and travel. Due to the limited number of cases in Europe, most physicians are not familiar with paracoccidioidomycosis and its close clinical and histopathological resemblance to other infectious and noninfectious disease. To increase awareness of this insidious mycosis, we conducted a systematic review to summarize the evidence on cases diagnosed and reported in Europe. We searched PubMed and Embase to identify cases of paracoccidioidomycosis diagnosed in European countries. In addition, we used Scopus for citation tracking and manually screened bibliographies of relevant articles. We conducted dual abstract and full-text screening of references yielded by our searches. To identify publications published prior to 1985, we used the previously published review by Ajello et al. Overall, we identified 83 cases of paracoccidioidomycosis diagnosed in 11 European countries, published in 68 articles. Age of patients ranged from 24 to 77 years; the majority were male. Time from leaving the endemic region and first occurrence of symptoms considerably varied. Our review illustrates the challenges of considering systemic mycosis in the differential diagnosis of people returning or immigrating to Europe from endemic areas. Travel history is important for diagnostic-workup, though it might be difficult to obtain due to possible long latency period of the disease.

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