Poor air quality costs Europe more than €700 million per year, in health expenditures and loss of economic performance, according to official EU sources.

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 .

Renewable energy sources play an important role in securing future energy supply and mitigating climate change.

News of increased desertification has made headlines. Yet this process is not well understood.

When a coastal area is about to be hit by the waves of a tsunami, time is everything. The earlier we know where and when it is going to hit the coast, the more chances there are to evacuate the area.

Going green is one of the fastest growing trends, particularly in industry. But smaller size companies are often left wondering how best to become more environmentally friendly .

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.

Dealing with sludge is one of the biggest issues of waste water treatment.

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 .

Gara Villalba, who is a chemical engineer and a professor at the institute of environmental science and technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona , has tracked the flows of materials to see how recycling rates could be improved.

Europe's tyre waste production is 3 million tonnes per year. Currently 65% to 70% of used tyres end up in landfills. Not only are they causing environmental damage, but a loss of added value in the form of new products that recycling can generate .

Potatoes, oranges, onions and shellfish; all are packaged in flexible and sometimes colourful nets. These are mainly made of polyethylene, the most common plastic. The problem is its biodegradability is low.

More than 3.3 million tonnes of used tyres were disposed in landfills in 2010, according to the European tyre & rubber manufacturers’ association.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are set to become an important material for the future. That’s because they are light, robust, and highly conductive, both electrically and thermally whilst still being chemically stable.

We can blame all sorts of things on the weather. But a stomach bug?  It seems unlikely. Yet, scientists say greater quantities of rainfall and bigger storms will lead to more stomach upsets in parts of Europe.

By 2030, two planets might not be sufficient to sustain human activities. Estimates suggest that we are currently using resources equivalent of 1.5 planets . And the trend is going upwards.

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

Not all countries are equal in the face of floods. To provide support for the variety of scenarios encountered, the RAMWASS research project developed a tool for gauging and managing the dangers of floods in specific river zones.

Each season the fashion industry surprises with new fabrics in a myriad of colours. Producing multi-coloured textile, however, has an environmental cost. Indeed, heavy polluting dyes find their way to the textile industry’s waste water .

Compared with modern hybrids, traditional crop varieties are not only cheaper and easier to access but also more genetically diverse and therefore more resilient to environmental stress such as lack of water or nutrients.