“Wood may be present in people’s life more than we think”, says Mariana Hassegawa, a researcher at the European Forest Institute . She is one of the authors of a case study on new wood-based products by the BioMonitor EU project.

If you walk into a council office or a recycling centre in Germany today you might see a poster for the #wirfuerbio campaign , which states that no plastics including compostable plastics should be added to organic bins.

In our fast-moving world, biotech is at the forefront of developments – but, by its very nature, it can provoke ethical and moral concerns .

For the first time in its history, the Global Seed Vault on the Svalbard Islands, Norway, has authorised a withdrawal. It was requested in 2015 by Syria, a country where the war is endangering the local agricultural seed collections.

Each year, the European Union produces three billion tonnes of waste. This equates to six tonnes of solid waste for every EU citizen, according to Eurostat. A major challenge is findings ways to reduce and reuse a large amount of such waste .

Scientists have long known that high levels of cholesterol around mid-life greatly increase the risk of developing dementia 30 years later.

Natural enzymes are very clever molecular machines. They are the catalyst for many of nature’s chemical transformations. And the conditions they need to perform their task are rather precisely defined.

Many people in Europe are critical of genetically modified (GM) food, due to safety concerns. A Eurobarometer survey, published in 2010, revealed that the European public tends to be worried on a “mediate level” about GM food , with people in Austria being particularly concerned.

Custom officers are not the only ones with a keen interest in luggage content. Scientists too want to know what travellers are bringing into European airports.