Greek universities addressing the issue of climate change

Nowadays, a great challenge, that most countries are struggling to assess, is the rapid change of earth’s climate. At the same time, the sea level is constantly rising, floods and droughts are increasing and global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. Climate change (CC) is a wide world problem, which requires international partners, such as industries, educational institutions, individual citizens, in order an environmental and energy revolution process to be somehow initiated. Universities, as having the important mission of the education of world’s future decision makers, can contribute to mitigating and adapting CC. The purpose of this survey is to assess whether or not Greek universities have incorporated CC issue into their curricula and research efforts. Additionally, it is aimed to identify the outreach of the Universities to the society, meaning communicating through civic ecology procedures on global CC and its impacts on the region. Greece is a country that generates electricity by burning coal, in a high percentage, to cover citizens’ energy needs. The results of this research could give information whether the higher educational institutions in Greece have given the appropriate attention to the issue of CC

CIRCULAR ASSESSMENT TOOLS: ASSESSING CIRCULARITY IN OLIVE OIL MILLS

In the last few years, since the implementation of circular economy (CE) is necessary for the transition to a sustainable food system, academics and practitioners have paid increasing attention to the CE concept. CE evaluations today have not demonstrated satisfactory results to meet the context of CE, as most of the indicators are focused on resource efficiency, waste disposal and recycling rates, or a particular stage of the product or process, ignoring the system perspective. In spite of the research community's extensive work, an effective tool to measure circularity in the agri-food industry has not yet been developed. This study aims to highlight the CE tools, based on scientific literature and practice, so as to identify those that could assess circularity in olive oil mills. Due to the uncontrolled disposal of waste from olive oil mills, the Mediterranean countries that produce the majority of olive oil have to cope with major environmental issues. Therefore, the assessment of circularity in order to identify the transition to CE in this sector is of great importance for these countries