Evaluating the environmental and economic impact of fruit and vegetable waste valorisation: The lettuce waste study-case

The fruit and vegetable sector generates large amounts of waste, which poses both environmental and economic issues. Different strategies can be applied to valorise fruit and vegetable waste (FVW) by turning it into value-added products. However, the economic and environmental impact of such strategies is largely unknown. In this paper, the environmental and economic impact of FVW valorisation on an industrial scale was evaluated by developing a Decision Support System (DSS). To this aim, the lettuce waste study-case was considered, since different innovative laboratory-scale strategies have been recently proposed for its valorisation. Investment and running costs, energetic demand and yields of lettuce waste valorisation processes were collected based on laboratory tests and industrial surveys. The application of the DSS estimated that if 30% of lettuce waste annually produced by a large company was valorised by using a system configuration that involves not only anaerobic digestion and composting, but also high pressure homogenisation to produce fresh juices, and ultrasound-assisted extraction to produce antioxidant extracts, this configuration would lead to an investment lower than 10 million \u20ac, a 1 year-pay-back time and a 72 tons-reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, thus representing a rational compromise between economic returns and environmental advantage. The developed multi-objective DSS is a valuable tool to identify the most sustainable and investment-worthy processes for the valorisation of FVW

Adecision support systemfor industrial waste heat recovery: the CE-HEAT Project

The exploitation of the huge potential for industrial waste heat recovery detected in Europe represents an opportunity to accomplish the objectives set by the European Union with the aim to reduce resources consumption, greenhouse gases emissions and to fightclimate change. The CE-HEAT project, financed by the Interreg Central Europe Programme, aims to improve the governance of energy efficiency by focusing on the field of waste heat utilization in Central Europe space. In order to aid the decision-making process of investors and policy makers, an online decision support tool for the preliminary assessment of investments in waste heat recovery projects has been implemented. Different operating scenarios could be compared combining various heat recovery technologies, some of which considering single companies (absorption chiller, heat exchanger, heat pump) and others network oriented (district heating, ORC). The operation of the online tool is based on a multi-objective decision support system (DSS) which hasbeen specifically developed. The objective functions evaluate environmental impact minimization and economic performances maximization, ensuring a sustainability analysis. In order to evaluate the main parameters that interest the stakeholders, decision variables such as incentives, grant, thermal and electrical energy costs have been considered. The developed DSS is aimed at helping final users in the decision-making process through a conscious comparison between different waste heat recovery options based on the exploitation of different technologies. Once the input variables are selected by the user, the program will provide the decision support suggestions in terms of sustainability performance indicators, displayed by graphs and tables, allowing a comparison of these option

Beyond the Cut Hunter: A Historical Epidemiology of HIV Beginnings in Central Africa

International audienceIn the absence of direct evidence, an imagined ''cut hunter'' stands in for the index patient of pandemic HIV/AIDS. During the early years of colonial rule, this explanation goes, a hunter was cut or injured from hunting or butchering a chimpanzee infected with simian immunodeficiency virus, resulting in the first sustained human infection with the virus that would emerge as HIV-1M. We argue here that the ''cut hunter'' relies on a historical misunderstanding and ecological oversimplification of human-chimpanzee (Pan Tro-glodytes troglodytes) interactions that facilitated pathogenic transmission. This initial host shift cannot explain the beginnings of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Instead, we must understand the processes by which the virus became transmissible, possibly between Sangha basin inhabitants and ultimately reached Kinshasa. A historical epidemiology of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, provides a much-needed corrective to the major shortcomings of the cut hunter. Based on 62 oral historical interviews conducted in southeastern Cameroon and archival research, we show that HIV emerged from ecological, economic, and socio-political transformations of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The gradual imposition of colonial rule built on and reoriented ecologies and economies, and altered older patterns of mobility and sociality. Certain changes may have contributed to the initial viral host shift, but more importantly, facilitated the adaptation of HIV-1M to human-to-human transmission. Our evidence suggests that the most critical changes occurred after 1920. This argument has important implications for public health policy, underscoring recent work emphasizing alternative pathways for zoonotic spillovers into human beings