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Increases in population and urbanization leads to generation of a large amount of food waste (FW) and its effective waste management is a major concern. But putrescible nature and high moisture content is a major limiting factor for cost effective FW valorization. Bioconversion of FW for the production of value added products is an eco-friendly and economically viable strategy for addressing these issues. Targeting on production of multiple products will solve these issues to greater extent. This article provides an overview of bioconversion of FW to different value added products.

Climate change issues have been considered some of the most complex and messy situations which the decision sciences face. In the last decade many countries have carried out studies related to climate change mitigation. The relevance of the outcomes of such studies depends on how well technical analysis, the priorities of the decision makers and technical/political feasibility are integrated. This paper focuses on a framework suggested by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) to study the costs and impacts of national policies for abating greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. It illustrates how the quest for the inclusion of MCDA assessment in national greenhouse abatement costing studies can, without departing from the established analysis framework, be a pretext to provide a process which enhances stakeholder participation, validation, and ownership of the planning process. Such a process was used in a national study in Peru.

China's massive carbon emissions and air pollution concerns have led its government to embrace clean energy innovation as a means of transitioning to a more sustainable energy system. We address the question of whether China's wind industry has become an important source of clean energy technology innovation. We find that in terms of wind capacity expansion, China has delivered enormous progress, increasing its wind capacity from virtually no wind capacity in the early 2000s to 140 GW by 2015. However, in terms of innovation and cost competitiveness, the outcomes were more limited: Chinese wind turbine manufacturers have secured few international patents and achieved moderate learning rates compared to the global industry's historical learning rate. Leading China-based indigenous producers are likely to remain important global players for the foreseeable future, but further progress in reducing the cost of capital equipment may slow relative to the recent past. However, opportunities in lowering curtailment rates and improving turbine quality can reduce China's overall levelized cost of electricity for wind.

The development of sustainable and low carbon impact processes for a suitable management of waste and by-products coming from different factors of the industrial value chain like agricultural, forestry and food processing industries. Implementing this will helps to avoid the negative environmental impact and global warming. The application of the circular bioeconomy (CB) and the circular economic models have been shown to be a great opportunity for facing the waste and by-products issues by bringing sustainable processing systems which allow to the value chains be more responsible and resilient. In addition, biorefinery approach coupled to CB context could offer different solution and insights to conquer the current challenges related to decrease the fossil fuel dependency as well as increase efficiency of resource recovery and processing cost of the industrial residues. It is worth to remark the important role that the biotechnological processes such as fermentative, digestive and enzymatic conversions play for an effective waste management and carbon neutrality.

The success of China’s transition to a low-carbon energy system will be key to achieve the global level of emissions reductions needed to avoid large negative consequences from climate change. China is undergoing an impressive build up of renewable capacity, in particular wind. Using data from the Clean Mechanism Development project database between 2004 and 2012, this study shows that while China made progress in bringing down the levelized cost of wind electricity and cost of carbon mitigation (CCM), serious grid-connection issues and high wind curtailment rates resulted in a levelized cost of wind electricity that is one-half to two times higher than expected, and a CCM that is four to six times higher. Sharp drop in electricity demand, utilization rate, and coal prices in recent years may lead to even higher results.

Recent legislation has stressed the need to decide the best end-of-life (EoL) option for post-consumer products considering their full life-cycle and the corresponding overall environmental impacts. The life cycle assessment (LCA) technique has become a common tool to evaluate those impacts. The present study aimed to contribute to the better understanding of the application of this technique, by evaluating the influence of the selection of the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method in its results and conclusions. A specific case study was chosen, using previous information related to an anti-glare lamellae (AGL) for highway use, made with virgin and recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE). Five distinct LCIA methods were used: Eco-indicator 99, CML 2 (2000), EPS 2000, Eco-indicator 95 and EDIP 97. Consistent results between these methods were obtained for the Climate change, Ozone layer depletion, Acidification and Eutrophication environmental indicators. Conversely, the Summer smog indicator showed large discrepancies between impact assessment methods. The work sheds light on the advantages inherent in using various LCIA methods when doing the LCA study of a specific product, thus evidencing complementary analysis perspectives.

Climate change is driving dramatic environmental changes and posing new demands to citizens, health authorities, and policy makers worldwide.This is due to an increased frequency, intensity, and duration of associated extreme weather events.Recent calls for better understanding of how citizens adapt to such demands and the role that psychological processes’ play in that adaptation, have been put forward.We contributed in this regard by (1) applying the Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge and Threat (e.g. Blascovich 2008) to the study of human responses (psychological, physiological, and behavioural) to extreme weather events; (2) using it as the conceptual basis for a mixed methods study aimed at exploring citizens’ perceptions, beliefs, and appraisals of the demands posed by such events and available resources to cope with them.Preliminary qualitative results are presented and potential implications for stakeholders and policy makers in the climate change domain are discussed.An example of how such conceptual and methodological approaches may contribute to developing evidence-based strategies for incrementing citizens’ resilience and adaptation to climate change, will be provided.This allow a better understanding of citizen appraisals and perceptions’ role in shaping adaptive behaviour, in order to provide them with the necessary personal and social resources to cope with extreme weather events and increment future resilience.