Tradeoffs and synergy between material cycles and greenhouse gas emissions: Opportunities in a rapidly growing housing stock.

Management of building materials' stocks and flows is a major opportunity for circularity and de-carbonization. We examine the relationship between material consumption and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under different scenarios in Israel, a developed country with an already high population density that expects tremendous growth in its housing stock by 2050. We created scenarios of varying housing unit sizes and additional material efficiency practices: fabrication yield, lifetime extension, material substitution, recycling, and their combination, resulting in 18 scenarios.

Recycling and consumption reduction following the COVID-19 lockdown: The effect of threat and coping appraisal, past behavior and information.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created sudden, rapid, and unprecedented change in almost every possible aspect of the general population's behavior. Despite its devastating consequences, the COVID-19 pandemic can alter individual behavior towards responsible environmental actions. This study provides an in-depth analysis of how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed pro-environmental beliefs and behavior.

Paradigm shifts and the interplay between state, business and civil sectors.

The recent rise of the civil sector as a main player of socio-political actions, next to public and private sectors, has largely increased the complexity underlying the interplay between different sectors of our society. From urban planning to global governance, analysis of these complex interactions requires new mathematical and computational approaches. Here, we develop a novel framework, grounded on evolutionary game theory, to envisage situations in which each of these sectors is confronted with the dilemma of deciding between maintaining a scenario or shifting towards a new paradigm.