Water from underground pipes often leaks. Particularly, in countries with an antiquated underground waterpipe infrastructure. In the case of Greece, for example, leaks are estimated to constitute up to 50% of total consumption.

The barely explored marine environment has already thrown-up a vast treasure-trove of high-value biomolecules .

Christophe Heyndrickx is bio engineer in environmental and agricultural economics at research consultancy Transport and Mobility, in Leuven, Belgium.  He specialises in modelling regional and national economic policy.

Coastal areas offer great challenges when balancing the need to protect natural habitats, with the requirement of human and economic activities . Dikes, for example, may not constitute the solutions of the future.

Vehicles seats are normally made of polyurethane foam, a thick material that is expensive to recycle and ends up in dumping sites or being incinerated.

Most of the animal proteins found in the meat industry waste have, until now, been underutilised. The challenge is to transform such waste into food of higher functionality and added value .

We know when something is valuable to our everyday lives. We do not need a price tag. This is precisely what the HighARCS project attempts to do:  to measure the socio-economic value of ecosystem services , but without counting in euros, renminbi or dollars.

How can policymakers change the way people think? This is what the InContext project, funded by the EU, hopes to answer. Leading European research institutions in the fields of transition, behaviour and sustainable development are trying to create a manual for change.

Tyres are well suited for recycling. They are easy to collect and do not require any costly sorting process.  However, in Europe, still only about 50% of the tyres are recycled .

Forests and land ecosystems are the earth’s carbon reservoirs. They are key to limit the impact of greenhouse gases, as they fix those gases down.

The quest for energy efficiency has become a modern mantra. But developing new energy sources and production methods is not sufficient.

Ragnar Löfstedt is an expert on risk management at King’s College London , UK, and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Risk Research . He spoke to youris.

Wim Symens and his team pioneered the development of the first robot ever to play badminton. But this robot is only a guinea pig to test a software application designed to optimise energy efficiency in machine design.

Professor Patrick Kolsteren is a researcher at the Unit of Nutrition and Child Health at the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp is the general coordinator of the EU funded SUNRAY research project. ...

The EU’s driest region is Murcia in Spain. But it is also an area of intensive agriculture for such arid land.

Non-ferrous metals are increasingly in demand because of the electronics industry. "They are used in LED’s, computers, smartphones; this is a much bigger business now," says Kate Hornsby , Waste in Social Environment manager at the Technical University Aachen , Germany.

Woodchips are one of the renewable sources of energy used in domestic and district-level heating systems. They can come from wood waste from construction, agriculture, landscaping, logging and sawmills.

Researchers working for the EU-funded research project SOPHIED have discovered that a fungus from the Solomon Islands produces special enzymes that act as nano-bio-catalysts.

The problems encountered by the traditional European colour industry go from lack of innovation and weak market competitiveness to toxicity, environmental hazards and health risks for those working in it.

In nanoelectronics , miniaturised electronic circuits are integrated on semiconductor chips where the basic element is the transistor. The size of the transistors produced is under 100 nm.