In the past three decades, the seed sector has experienced, and is now again experiencing, corporate concentration trends. The fallout of this consolidation is the subject of numerous concerns. However, the seed sector is rather poorly understood. Thus, it is useful to understand it better and...

This article, focusing on produce and grain, discusses the environmental and climate change impacts of food production, processing, packaging, and distribution, which ultimately contributes to both economic and social costs. The article addresses environmental energy costs in the food supply

When confronted with market weaknesses and failures determining sustainability problems for environmental common-pool resources, economic analysis has proposed government intervention as the only alternative available. Elinor Ostrom showed that this dichotomy between market and government is not...

The paper aims to reveal one integrated global map which points out the major geographical inequalities in providing basic utilities across the countries using multivariate analysis and thematic cartography. Sixteen indicators with global coverage were selected, including waste collection...

This paper explores the role that energy regimes, and the search for energy security, has had in shaping humans and their societies, and the effects thereof. Energy enrollments through the domestication of plants and animals and the extraction and burning of increasingly energy-rich fuels...

To truly reform material supply chains, new solutions for markets, capital, and policy are required. COMET (the Coalition on Materials Emissions Transparency)—an alliance launched at Davos in January 2020 by CCSI, RockyMountain Institute, MIT’s Sustainable Supply Chains initiative, and the...

One of the basic aspects of sustainable development strategy involves investments in green technologies, including energy production from renewable sources. Biomass, special organic waste which belongs to “green sources” of energy can be used in the methane fermentation process of biogas...

The objective of this paper is to provide an axiomatic foundation to the concept of ecological footprint indices. For this purpose, we propose five axioms representing general properties which any ecological footprint measure should fulfill. It can be shown that there exists a unique index which...

We live in the plastic age (the "plasticene"), producing over 300 million tonnes (mt) of plastic every year globally, 5–15 mt of which flow into already polluted oceans. Plastic remains a key material in the global economy, but low rates of collection, reuse and recycling, emissions of...

Circular economy (CE) is a new trend in balanced development, directed at limiting consumption of resources and minimising waste production. In consideration of the European Commission’s (EC) postulates of the CE implementation, the article aims at verifying whether coal power plants in...