Political Ecology

The U.S. harvests around 68 million metric tons of wheat each year. There are two ways to increase this amount: One is to change farming practices by, say, increasing the amount of cultivated or irrigated acreage. The other is to breed the crop to be more prolific by introducing attributes that make it mature at [...]

Studies show that a changing climate could have a significant impact on the deterioration of stone and brick buildings.Building deterioration is often caused by water from the ground rising up through the stone. As water evaporates, salts are left behind which crystallise at the surface. Damage can also be caused by the physical impact of [...]

London-based designer Yemi Awosile has developed a new fabric from an innovative combination of repurposed cork and elastane. Cork Fabric is suited to interior design applications such as upholstery, wall coverings, and wall panels, and benefits from the high elasticity of elastane fiber as well as the acoustic and thermal insulating properties found in cork. [...]

Basically, the generator works like an electromagnet. Powered by standard alternating current or battery, it runs electricity through a wire that is coiled around a metal cylinder, creating a harmless, low-energy magnetic field that extends for hundreds of meters. Just like radio, the field can carry an audio signal by modulating (raising or lowering) its [...]

We find that total consumption of PET resin grew at 2.7% per year over the period of the study, reaching 5.01 million metric tons in 2007. This growth was driven largely by the beverage packaging market, which accounted for 55% of consumption in 2007. About a quarter of PET bottles are collected for recycling, a [...]

The analysis of historical production trends of iron ore and crude steel for the major iron ore and steel producing countries indicates that, incidentally, the major iron ore producing countries are not the major steel producing countries and vice-versa. For example, in 2005, Brazil’s iron ore production was 322 Mt whereas its steel production was [...]

This paper shows how thermodynamics and in particular the exergy analysis can help to assess the degradation degree of earth’s mineral resources. The resources may be physically assessed as its exergy content as well as the exergy required for replacing them from a complete degraded state to the conditions in which they are currently presented [...]