Energy efficiency has become a key objective in the current context of increasing energy demand, decreasing resources and global warming. Key to efficient energy savings, however, are users' awareness and behaviour.

Vehicles seats are normally made of polyurethane foam, a thick material that is expensive to recycle and ends up in dumping sites or being incinerated.

How can policymakers change the way people think? This is what the InContext project, funded by the EU, hopes to answer. Leading European research institutions in the fields of transition, behaviour and sustainable development are trying to create a manual for change.

Bees are perceived as cuddly animals. They appear in cartoons as friendly species. Any harm on them--whether it is potential or actual--makes people rather emotional.

Lars-Otto Reiersen is a marine biologist by training, now working as an environmental scientist in Norway. He has led the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) for over two decades.

The European Commission, on 29 th April 2013, slapped a two-year ban on insecticides suspected of killing off bee colonies. This follows the European Food Safety Authority finding that they pose a high acute risk to honey bees.

The amount of nitrogen that is excreted by livestock is directly proportional to the amount it is fed . This is according to Chris Reynolds a researcher in nutritional physiology of ruminants  at  the University of Reading , UK.

Dealing with sludge is one of the biggest issues of waste water treatment.

Tyres are well suited for recycling. They are easy to collect and do not require any costly sorting process.  However, in Europe, still only about 50% of the tyres are recycled .

Silver has been used as biocide for medical purposes since the 1930s. Today nanometric size silver particles are used to prevent unpleasant odour caused by bacteria in sport shirts or socks .

We are used to the idea of vulnerable environments and species. We are also familiar with cultural vulnerability. For example when traditional peoples meet seductive modern ways of life.

Europe's tyre waste production is 3 million tonnes per year. Currently 65% to 70% of used tyres end up in landfills. Not only are they causing environmental damage, but a loss of added value in the form of new products that recycling can generate .

Forests and land ecosystems are the earth’s carbon reservoirs. They are key to limit the impact of greenhouse gases, as they fix those gases down.

People living in Arctic areas can be more sensitive to pollutants due to their genetics , says researcher Arja Rautio at the Centre for Arctic Medicine in the University of Oulu , Finland.

Ari Asmi talks to youris.com about the link between aerosols and global warming. His expertise stems from his previous role as coordinator in an EU funded project called EUCAARI .

Eco-innovation is at its best when the waste of one industry becomes the raw material of another. This is precisely what the EU funded research project CAPS, is attempting to do with waste sludge from the paper industry .

Large amounts of industrial contaminants, such as mineral oil, chlorinated hydrocarbons and heavy metals, are hidden in the soil and ground water across Europe.

Natural sensory system such as bacteria engineered to detect pollution and placed in a self-contained portable box could be the most effective way to track pollutants .

In 2010, nearly two tons of fish was found dead due to lack of oxygen on the coastal line of the Romanian Black Sea.  Oxygen depletion , or hypoxia , occurring in the water is thought to be responsible.

Scientists keep producing increasingly complex modelling tools to evaluate urgently needed mitigating strategies of our carbon footprint .  However, it is policy makers who have to decide on measures to curb our CO2 emissions.