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One of the goals promoted by the ‘2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ is to make cities more inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable, responding to the challenges that cities face today, including the increase of urban temperature because of climate change effects, and the deficit of urban green spaces. Within this context, green urbanism aims to create more sustainable cities in terms of greenness, compactness, energy efficiency, zero emissions, and waste production, having as a result sustainable places, communities, and lifestyles. The approach arises to address some of the challenges mentioned above, through seven features expressed in emerging archetypal cities, where the ‘biophilic city’ is one of them. Biophilic cities are the materialization of the biophilic urbanism approach, which pursues the strategic integration of nature in cities through planning and design to achieve more livable cities in terms of the well-being and health of their inhabitants, as well as the creation of resilient urban environments. Firstly, this research compiled initiatives performed under the biophilic urbanism, defined here as biophilic urbanism initiatives (BUIs), where the main differences in its implementation can be traced back to income differences between countries. Secondly, it presents opportunities, as well as challenges for greening emerging and developing cities, based on one of the five categories of indicators associated with biophilic cities, ‘biophilic institutions and governance.’ The indicators comprising this group aim to describe the extent to which local governments are involved in encouraging green features and biophilic design. Finally, this research draws contributions already implemented by a group of Latin American cities located in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru. One of our main findings is that these initiatives have not yet been widely implemented in emerging and developing countries, compared with advanced economies, such as the USA, Germany, and Singapore, among others.

LEED, a green building rating system, provides a framework for sustainable building and assesses a building’s energy and resource efficiency. LEED prerequisites and credits are achieved by employing sustainable strategies. The efficiency and success of some of these strategies are dependent on future occupant behaviors. As occupant behaviors shape their building's energy-use, resource-use, and waste production, this paper aims to understand whether the achievement of LEED credits shapes occupant pro-environmental behaviors (energy-saving, resource-saving, and sustainable waste management). People spend the majority of their time at work; therefore, this paper takes the work environment as its setting. Further, it explores occupant behaviors in one LEED-certified (CAE) and one non-LEED-certified (ABBE) office building. Occupant surveys extract self-reported energy-saving, resource-saving, and sustainable waste management behaviors of building occupants in both settings. Results reveal a possible impact of LEED credit (SSc4.1) on commute behaviors and (M + R prerequisite) on sustainable waste management behaviors in LEED-certified building occupants. Results showed insignificant differences in both populations in terms of resource-saving behaviors. Further, a negatively significant difference was found in energy-saving behaviors of LEED-certified building occupants which were possibly influenced by limiting building policy.

Recycling of concrete construction and demolition waste is necessary for the increase of sustainability and reducing the environmental impact of concrete construction because of the increasing rate of such waste production and its accumulation. Coarse aggregates can be partially recovered from concrete waste. However, it is not clear whether hydrated cement paste can be converted back to clinker. However, concrete waste fines, which are a mix of fine aggregates, coarse aggregate debris, and the hydrated cement paste, are currently not a part of the recycling process. The ability of hydrated cement paste to be recovered back to clinker minerals that have binder properties has not been studied systematically. In the current research, the phase transitions in hydrated cement paste heated to a temperature in the range from 600 and 1450 °C were investigated by means of X-ray diffractometry and thermal analysis. The experimental results demonstrate that hydrated Portland cement paste can be recovered back to clinker minerals. The recovered cement paste contains all the main clinker minerals similarly to the initial cement. The results provide evidence for the possibility of recycling hydrated cement and concrete into the cement clinker. The recycled clinker will potentially have a lower carbon footprint in comparison to original Portland cement.

Generation of waste is an essential part of ecological cycle and is found in every element of ecosystem. With an increase in population and an expansion in urbanization, waste production has become area centric. In addition, the developments in technology and luxury appliances to meet the demands of this urban population have increased multiple types of solid waste which differ in composition and their ability to decompose. For example, recently we have seen an increase in medical waste, e-waste, and also chemical waste which had not been there before three decades. Hence waste management becomes an important responsibility of all the stakeholders producing waste and authorities handling human locale and ecosystem. Waste management refers to a waste collection system, including its transportation, disposal, or reusing, and it must be effectively handled to avoid its undesirable effect on the health and the environment.

Reducing our carbon footprint is an important way that we can cut back our greenhouse gas emissions. There are a number of carbon calculators that consider a range of greenhouse gases we produce and convert them into a single carbon equivalent based upon data we input. Using this number, we can set goals for reductions. In our home, the key sources of greenhouse gases are home heating and cooling, water heating, and general electricity use. Outside of the home, our transportation choices are responsible for another major source. In addition, we produce a significant amount of secondary greenhouse gases through our food use and waste production. Suggestions are made as to how we can make simple, hard and/or expensive, and innovative or life-changing choices to reduce our personal carbon footprint in our home, via our transportation choices, and through how we manage our food and waste.

The chapter deals with the subject of Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) and the role of recycling and reuse in reducing costs and negative environmental impacts, related to the extraction, processing and production of construction materials. The chapter analyses the characteristics of the CDW and investigates the key actions for reducing the general environmental impacts of the construction sector related to waste production, focusing on barriers and drivers for the development of a market of secondary materials and building components.

Fish and feed waste provide most of the nutrients required by the plants in aquaponics if the optimum ratio between daily fish feed inputs and the plant growing area is sustained. Thus, the fish feed needs to fulfil both the fish’s and plant’s nutritional requirements in an aquaponic system. A controlled fish waste production strategy where the nitrogen, phosphorus and mineral contents of fish diets are manipulated and used provides a way of influencing the rates of accumulation of nutrients, thereby reducing the need for the additional supplementation of nutrients. To optimize the performance and cost-effectiveness of aquaponic production, fish diets and feeding schedules should be designed carefully to provide nutrients at the right level and time to complement fish, bacteria and plants. To achieve this, a species-specific tailor-made aquaponic feed may be optimized to suit the aquaponic system as a whole. The optimal point would be determined based on overall system performance parameters, including economic and environmental sustainability measures. This chapter thus focuses on fish diets and feed and reviews the state of the art in fish diets, ingredients and additives, as well as the nutritional/sustainable challenges that need to be considered when producing specific aquaponic feeds.

On the basis of the annual monitoring, the situation in the selected food shop of the Coop retail chain was evaluated. More than half of the food waste was made up of fruits and vegetables (258 kg). The most often cause of its discard was the rot of fruits and vegetables (98%). Surprising findings were data on baked goods. Although baked goods are considered to be the most wasting food after fruits and vegetables, the opposite was found in the shop. For the whole year only 2 kg of baked goods were thrown away. The second most frequently food waste were dairy products (223 kg). Expired date of consumption has been identified as the most common cause of waste production for dairy products and dry goods (94%). According to the information, about 459 Mg of foodstuff was purchased in total in 2017 but only 483 kg of food was thrown away. Compared to the total cost of purchased food, the costs of the loss were minimal.

This paper proposes the implementation of a subregion district model to optimize the collection of solid waste generated in the residential and commercial zones of the Ibarra city in Ecuador. The work begins with a review of cases and methodologies previously applied. Later, the initial condition was determined and the optimum number of districts or sub-areas in which the zones should be divided, starting from the model proposed by the Pan American Health Organization, The City Development and Zoning Plan, and some guidelines given by the Department of Social Development of Mexico in the year 1997. Furthermore, the homogeneous distribution of the districts on the city was also carried out taking into account of factors such as: the components of the collection network, area of each district, current and available road network, surface slopes, waste production rates, collection frequency, and optimal vehicle fleet dedicated to harvesting operations. As support tools for the analyses carried out QGIS 2.18.2, MS-Excel, Global Mapper and LingoV17 were used. Finally, it proposes an optimal distribution of the districts in which the waste collection crews would operate in the city.

The increasing rate of waste production per capita, the technological advances in packaging products, and the new waste policy and the legal provisions adopted in developed countries created a constant change in the set of parameters that determine the design of solutions for integrated waste management, where waste collection plays a fundamental role. A vast spectrum of technologies for source-separated waste collection and devices was developed, making the evaluation and selection of the one to be applied a difficult task. The purpose of this chapter is to reduce the complexity of identifying, selecting, and benchmarking waste collection systems, presenting a taxonomic classification for the different technical solutions, related to the relevant parts of collection activities and critical equipment characteristics.

At present, the growth of waste production associated with the awareness of the environmental problems and the need of a sustainable development make waste management the key disposal method

In the past few years, there has been a tremendous increase in food waste generation due to rapid urbanization and industrialization. These food wastages have put an emphasis to employ novel techniques for management of waste generated so that waste generation could be reduced to a minimum or these wastes could be converted into some valuable products. Food waste consists of high levels of sodium and moisture and is usually mixed with other types of waste during its collection. Amount of waste generated is largely determined by two factors—population in a given area and its consumption patterns. In order to cope with this huge waste production, advanced and effective waste management systems are to be adopted that can overcome the gap between production and management of waste disposal. Therefore, in this view much technological advancement has occurred in the recent past which has proved to be useful for combating this problem. In this review, a brief introduction to bioremediation for various food industry waste management and advantages and limitation of bioremediation has been discussed.

The transformation of biological paradigms into building construction involves the transfer of structure and system-defining properties from biological role models to construction-specific and innovative non-construction-specific systems and processes. The challenge of manufacturing biomimetic and bio-inspired structures includes the provision of methods and procedures that allow the mapping of biological features on a production-related description. The methodological approach requires the validation and verification of existing production methods at the small scale (model, elementary cell) in order to transfer findings to the production of components at the construction scale. Additionally, the biological features that cannot be reproduced by existing methods require further adjustment or the development of new methods for appropriate transfer. A basic condition for the further development of such production procedures is the possibility of manufacturing complex structures based on biological strategies concerning resource and energy consumption, waste production and greenhouse gas emissions.

Due to a number of reasons including the effects of climate change and a shift towards a more widespread use of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) for housing development, overheating issues in British homes has become a greater concern in recent years. Some of the most important advantages of MMC are the reduced use of materials, reduced construction time (particularly on site), reduced weather dependency, reduction of waste production, the possibility of reuse and recycling of components, and the possible lightness of the structure. MMC systems can deliver highly insulated, almost airtight homes, in line with requirements to reduce energy use for heating. However, they will generally have lower thermal mass than traditional construction and hence be less able to passively control temperature swings in warmer periods. This may contribute to uncomfortably high temperatures, which can affect the well-being and health of the occupants.