Phytoremediation potential depends on the degree of soil pollution: a case study in an urban brownfield.

Phytoremediation is a cost-effective nature-based solution for brownfield reclamation. The choice of phytoextraction or phytostabilization strategies is highly relevant when planning full-scale treatments. A suitable approach to identify such species involves the evaluation of plants that grow spontaneously on the contaminated sites.

A structured methodology to understand municipal waste generation at local level with minimized effort: development and case study.

Understanding municipal solid waste (MSW) generation is a key requirement for designing and optimizing MSW collection services. The present contribution proposes a statistical methodology to identify MSW generation patterns from MSW collection records. The methodology aims at finding statistically distinct household waste generation patterns within the days of the week and within months (seasonal variation).

Turning waste management into a carbon neutral activity: Practical demonstration in a medium-sized European city.

A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with focus on carbon footprint, followed by Life Cycle Costing (LCC) of municipal solid waste (MSW) management were conducted in a residential area of a medium-sized European city of 80,000 inhabitants. The initial results showed high environmental impacts and lack of economic sustainability, due to the high amounts of waste landfilled, the low extent of separate collection, low performance of mechanical-biological treatment as well as absence from alternatives to landfilling of non-recyclable materials. Taking this result as a baseline scenario, three improvement.

Arsenic release from pyrite ash waste over an active hydrogeological system and its effects on water quality.

Arsenic is a potentially toxic element of concern for environmental compartments, and it is a frequent pollutant in many abandoned industrial sites. In this study, geochemical and hydrogeological tools were used to determine the long-term effects of As-rich pyrite ash disposal (83,000 m as estimated by geostatistical tools) in a brownfield located over a quaternary alluvial aquifer. Throughout the site, soil pollution and water table oscillation led to leachates in the form of both run-off and infiltration waters, thereby reducing (ground)water quality (e.

Looking beyond the banning of lightweight bags: analysing the role of plastic (and fuel) impacts in waste collection at a Portuguese city.

The purpose of this work is to assess the environmental impacts of the collection of mixed municipal solid waste (MSW) in a selected neighbourhood of the Portuguese city of Aveiro. To this purpose, the main elements necessary for the collection process (carrier bags, dustbins, street containers and vehicles) were analysed applying the life cycle assessment methodology, making use of locally gathered data. The main impacts associated with this activity are mostly related to the use of polyethylene plastic bags to carry the waste from the household to the waste container, and to the fuel consumption of collection vehicle that picks MSW from street containers and transports it to the treatment facility.