Suchergebnisse

The Millennium Development Goals and the 17 Global Goals for Sustainability Development have been acting as a global and inclusive framework for the implementation of a new and sustainable development model (United Nations, 2015). Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are a privileged space for the analysis of the necessary conditions for a sustainable future, and can represent a crucial role in providing the theory and practice of sustainability, by reducing their own impacts (UNEP, 2013) and extending their engagement to the activities that support and extend teaching and research: i) the management of campi and operations; ii) campus planning, design, construction and rehabilitation of buildings and infrastructures; iii) purchasing practices; iv) mobility and v) involvement with the community (Leal Filho et al., 2015). But, HEI face important sustainability challenges over resource use, being Energy one of the most significant. This paper focus on the energy consumption, and associated indicators, over a 10-year period, in a HEI in Portugal. Although literature on sustainable consumption of energy in HEI is not abundant, two studies stand out, Altan (2010) and Lo (2013). Altan (2010) analyse the energy efficiency of several types of interventions (technical, non-technical and management) in UK HEI, while Lo (2013) does a similar study for eight Chinese HEI, stressing the role played by stakeholders, such as administrators, governmental agencies, networks, students and non-governmental organizations. This paper adds to this literature by enriching benchmark data on: energy consumption in HEI, the efficiency of technical, non-technical and management energy interventions, and by providing evidence of the need for the development of new indicators in a context of continuous and rapid change of future demands for higher ...

Composting has been proven to be an environmentally friendly process for urban organic waste, that can represent an opportunity for new uses under the circular economy framework. The binding of cadmium to fulvic-like and humic-like acids extracted from compost of algae and urban residues were evaluated, and the results show significant differences. The fulvic and humic acids from algae compost bind cadmium more efficiently than those from urban residues compost. Furthermore, data from humic acids from both composts display significantly higher ability to bind to cadmium than both their corresponding fulvic acids and the generic soil extracted humic matter. ; Cooperation Program Interreg V-A Spain-Portugal (POCTEP) 2014-2020 and the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund -FEDER within the scope of the project «RES2VALHUM -Valorization of Organic Waste: Production of Humic Substances» (0366_RES2VALHUM_1_P).The authors want to thank LIPOR for the supply of COUR sample. Members of the USC are also grateful to CRETUS Strategic Partnership (ED431E 2018/01) co-funded by FEDER and the Galician Competitive Research Group GRC ED431C/12.Members of the Department of Chemistry are also grateful toCenter of Chemistrythrough projects UID/QUI/00686/2016 and UID/QUI/00686/2019 (CQUM) funded by Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, ...