"This briefing paper provides a concise summary of some of the key issues surrounding the biodegradability of plastics in the oceans. It explores whether the adoption of biodegradable plastics will reduce the impact of marine plastics overall. The paper also addresses the lack of public...

The global use of delivery vehicles with combustion motors is increasingly responsible for air pollution and the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. For this reason, the use of electric vehicles is discussed in order to minimize the emissions of increasing freight traffic. In many...

This paper provides an explanation why garbage as a measure of consumption implies a several times lower coefficient of relative risk aversion in the consumption-based asset pricing model than consumption based on the official National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA): Unlike garbage, NIPA...

Foreword -- Acronyms -- Executive summary -- Assessment and recommendations -- Recycling of waste containing nanomaterials -- Incineration of waste containing nanomaterials -- Landfilling of waste containing nanomaterials and nanowaste -- The fate of engineered nanomaterials in sewage treatment...

This paper provides an explanation why garbage as a measure of consumption implies a several times lower coefficient of relative risk aversion in the consumption-based asset pricing model than consumption based on the official National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA): Unlike garbage, NIPA...

Safe and human friendly environment is one of the most important issues in world today. This paper has addressed one of such important issue, the treatment of environmental hazard in form of solid waste in Peshawar District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The study aimed at finding out the...

This paper critically discusses the worldview that technology can solve any problem regarding waste. A focus on technological fix may lead to an increase in problems in the future. The author argues that we might benefit from a cultural analysis of our notions of cleanliness and dirt, purity and...

Intensive discussions about discarding food in recent weeks were prompted by a study commissioned by the German Bundestag and supported by the German Federal Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection. Spiegel online said on March 13, 2012: "Europe's waste would suffice twice to...

Am 1. Juni 2012 tritt in Deutschland die Novelle des Kreislaufwirtschaftsgesetzes in Kraft. Mit ihr sollen gleichermaßen europarechtliche Vorgaben (Richtlinie 2008/98/EG) erfüllt, sowie der weitere Umbau zu einer Stoffstromwirtschaft vorangetrieben werden. Von besonderer Bedeutung für...

Vergleichsstudien zum Thema Hausmüllgebühren belegen, dass für die Erbringung identischer Entsorgungsleistungen teils gravierende Gebührenunterschiede zwischen den deutschen Kreisen bzw. Städten bestehen. Ziel des vorliegenden Arbeitsberichts ist es, mithilfe statistischer Methoden...

In den letzten Wochen wurde intensiv das Wegwerfen von Lebensmitteln diskutiert. Anlass war das Ergebnis einer Studie, die vom Bundesministerium für Ernährung, Landwirtschaft und Verbraucherschutz aufgrund eines Beschlusses des Bundestags gefördert wurde. In Spiegel online wurde am 13.03.2012...

All European Union (EU) member states have to comply with the demanding recycling rates targets that were set for the recovery of packaging waste in the Directive 94/62/EC. Nevertheless, each country has its own system for accomplishing these targets. Some already had national legislation when...

Picking a way through rubbish -- Consumers as workers in economies of waste -- Environmentally regimented rubbish : recycling systems in Sweden -- Market and state heterogeneity : recycling systems in England -- The three stages of recycling consumption work -- Comparing recycling consumption...

The United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Economic Research Service's (ERS) Food Availability Data System includes three distinct but related data series on food and nutrient availability for consumption. The data serve as popular proxies for actual consumption at the national level...

Verschiedene überregionale Hausmüllgebührenvergleiche haben gezeigt, dass für vermeintlich gleiche Leistungen teilweise stark unterschiedliche Gebühren erhoben werden. In diesem Arbeitsbericht soll auf Basis einer Literaturrecherche sowie eigener Überlegungen herausgestellt werden, durch...

We empirically test delinking of waste dynamics with regard to economic growth and the effectiveness of environmental and specific waste-related policies, by exploiting a newly constructed, integrated waste-economic-policy dataset based on official data for the EU15 for 1995-2007. We find that...

This paper provides analyses of municipal waste generation and landfill diversion dynamics based on an 8-year panel dataset for Italy covering 103 provinces. Although absolute declining for waste generation is a long way off, there are some first signals of increasing relative delinking and...

"The efficient use of natural resources is key to a sustainable economy, and yet the complexities of resource efficiency have not previously been studied in great depth. In this challenging book, the author proposes a major advance in our understanding of this topic by analysing resource...

Waste generation and waste disposal are issues that are becoming increasingly prominent in the environmental arena both from a policy perspective and in the context of delinking analysis. Waste generation is still increasing proportionally with income, and economic and environmental costs...