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Anthropogenic water use and reuse represent major components of the water cycle. In the context of climate change, water reuse and recycling are considered necessary components for an integrated water management approach. Unplanned, or de facto, indirect water reuse occurs in most of the U.S. river systems, however, there is little real-time documentation of it. Despite the fact that there are national and state agencies that systematically collect data on water withdrawals and wastewater discharges, their databases are organized and managed in a way that makes it challenging to use them for water resource management analysis. The ability to combine reported water data to perform large scale analysis about water use and reuse is severely limited. In this paper, we apply a simple but effective methodology to complete a time series watershed-scale analysis of water use and unplanned indirect reuse for the Wabash River Watershed. Results document the occurrence of indirect water reuse, ranging from 3% to 134%, in a water-rich area of the U.S. The time series analysis shows that reported data effectively describe the water use trends through nine years, from 2009 to 2017, clearly reflecting both anthropogenic and natural events in the watershed, such as the retirement of thermoelectric power plants, and the occurrence of an extreme drought in 2012. We demonstrate the feasibility and significance of using available water datasets to perform large scale water use analysis, describe limitations encountered in the process, and highlight areas for improvement in water data management.

A fundamental lack of data on the potential impacts of carbon based nanomaterials on natural ecosystems currently exists. The gap between what we know about environmental impacts and new products that may contain nanomaterials continues to get wider especially related to knowledge about nanocomposites. In this paper we present ideas and concerns about the current state of knowledge on nanomaterials in the environment and present a number of points about what recent work has provided us about the novel materials.

Growing environmental concerns, coupled with public pressure and stricter regulations, are fundamentally impacting the way companies design and launch new products across the world. Companies are recognising that implementing design for environment (DfE) in their product development process provides opportunities both for improving environmental aspects of a product and for enhancing the product competitiveness. Therefore, integrating environmental and business aspects for decision-making during DfE consideration are crucial in the product design process. The environmental aspect of the product is captured by the lifecycle assessment, and the result is directly introduced to the selection of DfE strategies followed by the multi-criteria decision-making process, in order to integrate business aspects. The proposed method may help the company systematically develop appropriate and profitable design for environment strategies for their product systems.

Increasing demands for freshwater make it necessary to find innovative ways to extend the life of our water resources, and to manage them in a sustainable way. Indirect water reuse plays a role in meeting freshwater demands but there is limited documentation of it. There is a need to analyze its current status for water resources planning and conservation, and for understanding how it potentially impacts human health. However, the fact that data are archived in discrete uncoordinated databases by different state and federal entities, limits the capacity to complete holistic analysis of critical resources at large watershed scales. Humans alter the water cycle for food production, manufacturing, energy production, provision of potable water and recreation. Ecosystems services are affected at watershed scales but there are also global scale impacts from greenhouse gas emissions enabled by access to cooling, processing and irrigation water. To better document these issues and to demonstrate the utility of such an analysis, we studied the Wabash River Watershed located in the U.S. Midwest. Data for water extraction, use, discharge, and river flow were collected, curated and reorganized in order to characterize the water use and reuse within the basin. Indirect water reuse was estimated by comparing treated wastewater discharges with stream flows at selected points within the watershed. Results show that during the low flow months of July–October, wastewater discharges into the Wabash River basin contributed 82 to 121% of the stream flow, demonstrating that the level of water use and unplanned reuse is significant. These results suggest that intentional water reuse for consumptive purposes such as landscape or agricultural irrigation could have substantial ecological impacts by diminishing stream flow during vulnerable low flow periods.

The evolution and current status of sustainable production education (SPE) in the United States is reviewed, both as a discrete entity and as an intersection of multiple disciplines. This paper (a) examines the current array of compatible and conflicting theories that guide the alternative approaches to SPE, (b) reviews the wide array of applications to which such theories and associated methodologies have been applied, and (c) presents a case study of the emerging interdisciplinary approach to SPE at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA, and its network of national and international collaborators.

The dry anaerobic digestion process is an innovative waste-recycling method to treat high-solidcontent bio-wastes. This can be done without dilution with water by microbial consortia in an oxygenfree environment to recover potential renewable energy and nutrient-rich fertilizer for sustainable solid waste management. It generally takes place at solid concentrations higher than 10% and enables a higher volumetric organic loading rate, minimal material handling, lower energy requirements for heating, limited environmental consequences and energetically effective performance. The long retention time, poor startup performance, incomplete mixing and the accumulation of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) are considered as the main disadvantages for the solid-state fermentation process. In order to develop feasible dry anaerobic digestion processes, it is important to review the optimization techniques and suggest possible areas where improvements could be made. These include reactor configuration, mixing, solid retention time, feedstocks, organic loading rate, inoculation, co-digestion, pretreatment, percolation, additives and environmental conditions within the digester such as temperature, pH, buffering capacity and VFAs concentration.Key words: Solid organic wastes, dry anaerobic digestion process, biogas, optimization.

The wind power industry is growing rapidly. Wind turbines (WTs) are perceived as a low environmental impact energy generation technology. While the service life of a WT is relatively long (20-40 years), at some point a significant number of WTs will reach the end of their service lives. To recover maximum value from these WTs, planning for the end-of-service life of wind turbines (EOSLWTs) is paramount. Historically, environmental life cycle assessments of WTs have often only considered the materials extraction and processing, manufacturing, and use phases, leaving the management of EOSLWTs outside the scope of their attention. Four key EOSLWTs issues that are essential for the continuing development of wind energy technologies are presented: i) The challenges of managing of EOSLWTs given the fast growth rate of the industry and the large number of existing installed WTs; ii) The EOSLWT alternatives such as remanufacturing and recycling to recover functional and material value respectively; iii) The critical activities in the WT reverse supply chain such as recovery methods, logistics of transportation, quality of returns, and quality of reprocessed WTs; and iv) The economic and business issues associated with EOSLWTs. It is expected that the discussion provided will stimulate a dialog among decision makers and raise awareness of economic opportunities and unanticipated challenges in the wind power industry. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The fast expansion of the wind power industry has positioned wind turbines (WTs) as a low environmental impact technology with a promising future. Although the useful life of WTs is relatively long, since 2005 a significant number of WTs have reached their end-of use (EOU) phase. The market for WT technology is in the growth phase and recovery of value from these used WTs is an unrealized economic opportunity. Remanufactured WTs will play a key role in supplying the burgeoning demand and unattended markets. This paper examines and discusses the economic and environmental benefits of remanufactured WTs, and how this resource can be effectively utilized.

In the wind power industry, maintenance and technological evolution/improvement are critical factors to ensure low operations and maintenance (O&M) costs and keep the wind turbine (WT) available to generate power. In addition, these factors are critical in facilitating product recovery through remanufacturing at the end-of-use (EOU). Under a system dynamics (SD) approach, the interaction between maintenance, reliability, and technological obsolescence on the remanufacturing of a wind turbine was modeled. Findings suggest that regular preventive maintenance might avoid/slow functional obsolescence, and as a result, the remanufacturing cost is reduced. Technological change could lead to technological obsolescence. Both types of obsolescence might increase the overall remanufacturing cost. An increased remanufacturing cost will affect the attractiveness for recovery and profits obtained from original equipment manufacturers and the savings in the initial capital investment made by secondary customers.

Summary Industrial symbiosis describes the mutualistic interaction of different industries for beneficial reuse of waste flows or energy cascading that results in a more resource-efficient production system and fewer adverse environmental impacts. Research shows that many information and communication technology (ICT) tools for industrial symbiosis development have been created, but the results of those efforts are unclear. Drawing from advancements in knowledge-based economics and management, this article applies a knowledge-based framework to evaluate opportunities for ICT within industrial symbiosis development. ICT systems designed to enable industrial symbiosis are surveyed and evaluated within the proposed framework to identify strengths, trends, and opportunities for continued development. An appendix provides a capsule summary of the 17 ICT tools that are assessed in the article.