Thallium (Tl) is a rare but highly toxic element. Mineral exploitation and utilization lead to a risk of thallium (Tl) leakage to the aqueous environment, greatly threatening human health. In this study, we propose a novel Tl wastewater treatment process based on a regenerable adsorptive membrane to achieve Tl removal and recovery from industrial wastewaters. Specifically, a composite membrane was

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The COVID-19 pandemic has changed people's habits, causing them to use large amounts of disposable items and exacerbating the already existing issue of pollution. One way to reduce the environmental impact of this shift in daily habits is to recycle these items, e.g. surgical masks that are the most common personal protective equipment against the virus, to produce panels for building applications

Cascading keeps wood in products for a longer duration and delays the embedded biogenic carbon emission. Carbon is kept out of the atmosphere for longer, giving forests time to sequester equivalent amounts of carbon. The storage period and time needed to sequester the same amount of carbon affect the GWP - an aspect often overlooked in LCA. This study compares alternative wood cascading scenarios producing

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The mechanisms behind energy efficiency improvement of coal-fired power generation in China have not been well investigated. We proposed new concepts of learning-by-manufacturing (LBM) and learning-by-operating (LBO) to explain the reduced coal consumption rate of coal-fired power generation. The former results in lower initial coal consumption rates for newly commissioned electric generating units

Dealing with heterogeneous plastic waste – i.e., high polymer heterogeneity, additives, and contaminants – and lowering greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from plastic production requires integrated solutions. Here, we quantified current and future GHG footprints of direct chemical conversion of heterogeneous post-consumer plastic waste feedstock to olefins, a base material for plastics. The net GHG footprint

This study examines energy recovery, specifically electricity generation, from waste in incineration plants. This study decomposes the incinerator system into waste treatment process and energy generation process via a two-stage network structure. We build a Russell multi-activity network data envelopment analysis (RMNDEA) model considering the weak disposability technology, and measure productivity

Reduction of food waste in low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) can provide multi-layered benefits for their sustainable development, through improved food security, enhanced income as well as the creation of environmentally friendly secondary markets. Food systems, however, are often characterised by a complex network of actors across the value chain, where a parochial intervention at a local scale

Environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) has recently gained traction among academics, practitioners, and policymakers as a critical driver of sustainable development. However, the impact of ECSR on actual pro-environmental behavior remains unclear in the literature, particularly in the context of developing countries. Grounded in the social exchange and social network theories, this study

Significant volumes of waste materials such as plastics is generated every year worldwide with a potentially harmful impact on the environment. At the same time, the demand for asphalt modifiers has seen an increase over the year with consequent higher costs for these types of additives. Therefore, combining large amounts of available waste plastics with asphalt binder as an extender or modifier would

The urban green infrastructure (UGI), with special focus on street trees, is a very complex engineered ecosystem which plays an important role in generating ecosystem services and, if improperly managed, a number of dis-services to be prevented. This study applies the Emergy Accounting method to the cost and benefit evaluation, in order to establish a non-monetary “supply-side” assessment framework

The selective and efficient cesium recovery from natural brines resources is a significant and challenging issue. Here we reported a green method for the facile construction of mesoporous Prussian blue analogs (PB) through an ionic liquid-assisted strategy and used for cesium recovery from salt lake brines and geothermal water. The unique nanostructures endowed this mesoporous PB with the improved

China is attempting to establish a feasible pattern for boosting economic structural transition, transforming energy structure, improving energy efficiency, and assuming responsibilities in the international community synchronously. This paper aims to investigate the nexus between green technology innovation (GTI), Information and Communication Technology (ICT) employment, and low carbon development

Reducing food waste and reusing it as animal feed are often regarded promising solutions to enhance sustainability. Hitherto, food waste policy assessments rarely account for interdependencies between reduction and reuse interventions, and how their market - including trade - feedbacks influence sustainability outcomes. Here, we apply a global agricultural economic model to assess the impact of food

Mining diverse resources from electroplating wastewater are critical for maximizing wastewater economic value and minimizing adverse environmental impacts. We have demonstrated an autonomous electrochemical-osmotic system (EOS), which can simultaneously recover copper metals, water, and electric energy from electroplating wastewater. In this study, we enhanced water production, electricity generation

The accounting of aluminum in-use stocks (ALIS) has received widespread attention, but the systematic assessment of China's ALIS at the provincial level remains unclear. Based on a bottom-up approach, this study utilizes Henan Province as an example to investigate the ALIS and its spatial patterns at China's provincial level. In 2017, the total and per capita of ALIS in Henan were 12 Tg and 125 kg/capita

The fast-growing construction industry has a vast potential to rise to the plastics challenge by using them in both primary and recycled forms as a sustainable solution to some challenges in the built environment. Improving existing plastics and developing innovative polymers and polymer nanocomposites requires knowledge of interatomic interactions and their influence on macroscopic properties. Coarse-grained

Food waste is a growing global issue with widespread environmental, economic, and social impacts. Households are both a major driver of waste generation and a key enabler of solutions such as source reduction and composting. In the U.S., household food waste is still predominantly landfilled, motivating this study to understand the beliefs, experiences, and barriers that individuals face when deciding

The out-of-this-world hype cycle describes expectations and realities for extra-terrestrial resource production. Triggered by a technological innovation cluster in communication/automation/transport for the space industries, it inspires visions of prospecting and inter-planetary travel for economic gains. Visionary narratives are founded on (1) techno-futurism, a linear process of capital accumulation

Accounting for carbon should be undertaken at multiple scales to create awareness of the negative environmental impacts of consumption. We undertake a comprehensive consumption-based supply-chain assessment of a community's emissions for a selected council area in the Greater Sydney region of Australia using multi-regional input-output analysis, by constructing a customised input-output table with

Life cycle engineering of new products and technologies must consider not just the single product and product life cycle, but also the foreseeable growth in market volume that results from increases in population and affluence, in order to allow the associated total environmental impact to be taken into account during the product development. The emphasis should not only be on eco-efficiency but also

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International trade has been considered a critical driving force of material flows and their environmental pressures, which has been a global research hotspot. The United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN Comtrade) is the original and probably the most widely-used data source to support the physical trade analysis. However, data discrepancies have been discovered in UN Comtrade, which

Excess greenhouse gas emissions from human and industrial activities are believed to be the key cause of catastrophic climate change. According to the United Nations, carbon neutrality by 2050 is the world's most urgent mission. Many countries recently made commitments to this mission; however, at a supply chain level, little is known about barriers to carbon neutrality, circumventing strategies, and

Water leakages and unplanned water supply interruptions are relevant variables in the provision of drinking water since they directly impact customers and the economic and environmental performance of water companies. For the first time, in this study, we estimated specific efficiency scores for these two quality-of-service variables using the multi-directional data envelopment analysis technique for

The UN Comtrade is one of the most widely used data sources for physical trade analysis. However, the issue of outliers would result in misleading interpretations and biased results, limiting its applications. Assuming that no deals would be made at unreasonable prices, we define an outlier as the data record whose unit price (trade value divided by net weight) is unusually high or low. To address