Sustainability, Volume 4, Issue 10

Adamorobe is a village in Ghana where the historical presence of a hereditary form of deafness resulted in a high number of deaf inhabitants. Over the centuries, a local sign language emerged, which is used between deaf and hearing people in everyday...

Several options for designing fast reactors to operate in the Breed-and-Burn (B&B) mode are compared and a strategy is outlined for early introduction of B&B reactors followed by a gradual increase in the fuel utilization of such reactors. In the fir...

Purpose: The objective of this study is to discuss the implications of product loss rates in terms of the environmental performance of bottled wine. Wine loss refers to loss occurring when the consumer does not consume the wine contained in the bottl...

Prefabricated engineered solid wood panel construction systems can sequester and store CO₂. Modular cross-laminated timber (CLT, also called cross-lam) panels form the basis of low-carbon, engineered construction systems using solid wood panels that...

Forty years ago, The Limits to Growth study addressed the grand question of how humans would adapt to the physical limitations of planet Earth. It predicted that during the first half of the 21st century the ongoing growth in the human ecological foo...

The paper retraces the implementation of a biogas energy programme within the Best Ray project run in Tanzania 2008–2011. The objective of the Best Ray project was to empower rural communities by providing them with modern and renewable energy...

Following the critical analysis of the concept of “sustainability”, developed on the basis of exergy considerations in previous works, an analysis of possible species “behavior” is presented and discussed in this paper. Once more, we make use of one...

Rammed earth construction is an ancient technique which has recently attracted renewed interest throughout the world. Although rammed earth is currently regarded as a promising material in the construction industry in the context of sustainable devel...

This is a discussion paper that the authors presented at the International Workshop on Rammed Earth Materials and Sustainable Structures and Hakka Tulou Forum 2011: Structures of Sustainability, 28–31 October 2011, Xiamen University, China. A S...

This paper discusses different rammed earth construction technique in Asia. Rammed earth construction techniques from China, Indian, Nepal and Bhutan are examined. It is shown that these techniques are demonstrably different from each other, and argu...

In this research article the sustainability of different practices to collect the metal fraction of household waste in the Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland is examined. The study is carried out by calculating and comparing the greenhouse gas reduc...

The purposes of this study are to investigate and analyze the actual conditions of the urban residential energy consumption, and hence to ascertain what will be the important factors that influence the annual energy consumption in Kunming, which has...

The main purpose of this work was the development of a tool to detect daily deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, using satellite images from the MODIS/TERRA [1] sensor and Artificial Neural Networks. The developed tool provides the parameterizatio...

In order to incorporate climate adaptation in spatial planning change is required, because climate change impacts the way we live. This implies that spatial planning, as the arranger of the spatial organisation and layout needs to be able to support...

Intercropping has a strong potential to counteract the severe degradation of arable land in the North China Plain (NCP). However, a rapid decline of intercropping can be observed in the last decades. The present paper investigates the reason for this...

Given that we must farm land in order to eat, the total environmental burden imposed by farming a crop, such as winter wheat in the UK, appears to be close to the minimum given current production techniques. The value of the services other than food...

A thorium-fueled water-cooled reactor core design approach that features a radially uniform composition of fuel rods in stationary fuel assembly and is fuel-self-sustaining is described. This core design concept is similar to the Reduced moderation B...

This article examines the effects of globalization dynamics on the use of Catalan among Latin American migrants living in Catalonia. The globalization process pushes towards an increasing mobility of workers and companies. Barcelona is one of the cit...

This paper reviews the major issues involved in Hardin’s [1] tragedy of the commons, written over 44 years ago, and examines whether these issues are still relevant today. We assert that this model still provides important insight to aid in the solut...

In 2000, Mexico’s National Commission of Protected Areas (CONANP) was created to encourage the protection, management and restoration of natural and cultural resources and their conservation. Protected areas were recently increased by more than 3 mil...

The nuclear fuel cycle is the series of stages that nuclear fuel materials go through in a cradle to grave framework. The Once Through Cycle (OTC) is the current fuel cycle implemented in the United States; in which an appropriate form of the fuel is...

The most important target of the concept “sustainability” is to achieve fairness between generations. Its expanding interpolation leads to achieve fairness within a generation. Thus, it is necessary to discuss the role of nuclear power from the viewp...

The Apipucos Reservoir is located in Pernambuco-Brazil. Several districts of the metropolitan area use this reservoir to dispose of rubbish, waste and sewage. Dating sediments uses the ²¹⁰Pb from the atmosphere. ²¹⁰Pb is a daughter of the ²²²Rn, whic...

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a decision support tool that can be used to assess the environmental performance of an integrated waste management system or to identify the system with the best performance through a comparative analysis of different s...