Carlos Afonso Teixeira

Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro | utad · Departamento de Biologia e Ambiente

The increase of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) generated over the last years forces waste managers pursuing more effective collection schemes, technically viable, environmentally effective and economically sustainable. The assessment of MSW services using performance indicators plays a crucial role for improving service quality. In this work, we focus...

This article describes an accurate methodology for an operational, economic, and environmental assessment of municipal solid waste collection. The proposed methodological tool uses key performance indicators to evaluate independent operational and economic efficiency and performance of municipal solid waste collection practices. These key performan...

The construction and use of buildings represent about half of the extracted materials and energy consumption, and around one third of the water consumption and waste produced in the European Union. Therefore it is becoming more important to use sustainable materials that reduce the environmental impacts of construction, by conserving and using reso...

Plano Estratégico para os Resíduos Sólidos Urbanos 2020+ (PERSU2020+) - Portaria n.º 241-B/2019. Este Plano constitui um ajustamento às medidas vertidas no Plano Estratégico para os Resíduos Urbanos (PERSU 2020), aprovado pela portaria n.º 187-A/2014, de 17 de setembro e disponível no sítio na internet da Agência Portuguesa do Ambiente, I. P, com...

Estudo que propõe estratégias para valorizar biorresíduos na Região Norte. Avalia a co-compostagem de lamas e biorresíduos de unidades de tratamento mecânico e biológico e analisa questões relacionadas com a integração das lamas e biorresíduos, alterações climáticas, compostagem e combate à desertificação.

The primary aim of this study is to conduct a comprehensive review of the existing literature to identify the most relevant environmental variables and other factors influencing the life cycle assessment of the wine industry. This research seeks to determine whether the type of wine significantly impacts the carbon footprint and to highlight the im...

The Municipal Solid Waste Management e-book contains papers that present innovative methodologies, technologies, and strategies that significantly improve waste management practices. These insights can help policymakers, waste management professionals, and stakeholders make informed decisions for sustainable waste management. By ensuring efficient...

The world is changing, and climate change has become a serious issue. Organizations, governments, companies, and consumers are becoming more conscious of this impact and are combining their forces to minimize it. Cooperatives have a business model that differs from those in the private or public sector. They operate according to their own principle...

High food waste values have been reported in university canteens in different countries. This study aims to evaluate food waste related to the consumption stage in a Portuguese university canteen and its environmental, economic, and nutritional impact. Data collection was performed at a Portuguese university with about 7000 students. Food waste (le...

The environmental consequences of human activities, e.g., the depletion of non-renewable fuel resources, consumption of natural raw materials, and release of huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, resulted in new challenges in materials engineering. Based on these challenges, building materials must fulfil not only mechanical performance criteria...

Sustainable development is today’s big challenge that we need to overcome in order to assure well-being and resources for future generations, and at the same time protect ecosystems and guarantee biodiversity. Circular economy seems to be a key tool to slow down the environmental degradation of the planet. Implementing circular economy requires a g...

The adverse consequences of producing ordinary Portland cement (OPC) on the environment have introduced cement production as the fourth largest source of anthropogenic carbon emissions after petroleum, coal, and natural gas. Managing and reducing the environmental concerns regarding the impacts of cement production on the environment, namely the de...

Corn cob is considered an agricultural bio-waste that can be reused and incorporated in the building industry as a thermal insulation material. However, more research is required to obtain a more detailed analysis in what concerns building materials' thermal performance using this waste as raw material and, consequently, their sustainability profil...

Projetos apresentados à Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, de conclusão das Bolsas de Inicio à Investigação atribuídas aos formandos da Escola de Verão “EcoCampus Living Lab - Educação para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável”

Most existing life cycle assessment models of waste management have so far underplayed the importance of the waste collection phase, addressing it only in a simplified fashion, either by requesting the total amount of fuel used as a direct user input or by calculating it based on a set of input parameters and fixed diesel consumption factors. Howev...

Municipal solid waste (MSW) management faces interesting challenges related to climate change, circular economy, and dematerialization. Additionally, food-waste prevention and reducing environmental impacts through multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) are emerging themes. The purpose of this Special Issue is to ga...

Anthropogenic transformations of the catchment area and river bed are responsible for the changes in the geomorphology of the river valleys, the hydrological regime of rivers, the river continuum, as well as the river ecosystems. Transformed valleys offer ecological niches that are different from the natural ones, which are inhabited by organisms t...

With the increase of animal slurry produced from livestock production, the monitoring and mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) and ammonia (NH3) emissions represent a major issue. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used to evaluate the long-term environmental effects of applied strategies and technologies on cattle slurry management for mitigation...

Landfill site selection is a relevant and necessary issue for waste management. However, it is an extremely complex task since it must take into account different environmental, economic and socio-political criteria that need to comply with strict regulations and meet different opinions. Accordingly, in this paper we propose a multi-criteria EVIAVE...

There are different types of effluents from farming operations including untreated slurry (a mixture of manure, urine, split feed, and water), and treated slurry that normally is filtered to separate the solid fraction from the liquid fraction. With the amount of slurry applied on the soils as fertiliser every year, there are necessary to measure t...

Plasma gasification is a thermal treatment successfully applied to waste streams, especially for solid residues. It sets an upgrade to more common waste-to-energy (WtE) techniques as incineration or gasification, granting lower levels of pollutant emissions, less landfilled materials and higher conversion efficiencies and producer gas quality. A li...

Transformation of the river catchment and the river bed cause significant changes in the functioning of river ecosystems. The main effects of anthropogenic transformations are hydrological changes, such as lower current velocity or an increase of nutrient content, and higher temperature. Zooplankton reacts rapidly to the new environmental condition...

Low temperature gasification for solid residues is herein presented, its environmental impacts evaluated through life cycle assessment (LCA) and further compared with those from other techniques, including incineration. One tonne of municipal solid waste (MSW) was established as functional unit and investigated within defined boundaries. The enviro...

Environmental evaluation of the waste treatment processes for the area of Greater Porto (Portugal) is presented for the year 2015. The raw data for the energy recovery plant (ERP) provided by the waste management entity were modelled into nine environmental impact categories, resorting to a life cycle assessment dedicated software (GaBi) for the tr...

An important strategy to promote a strong sustainable growth relies on an efficient municipal waste management, and phasing out waste landfilling through waste prevention and recycling emerges as a major target. For this purpose, effective collection schemes are required, in particular those regarding selective waste collection, pursuing a more eff...

Any strategy of water demand management needs the collaboration of the population involved and so it is important to know how characteristics as residence area, number of residents, presence/absence of children/elders, income level, and educational level, among others, may influence the use of water. Empirical studies that quantify relationship bet...

Nowadays, there is an increasing discussion among specialists about water use efficiency and the best measures to improve it. In Portugal, there have been a few attempts to expand the implementation of in situ water reuse projects. However, there is a lack of information about indoor water uses and how they are influenced by sociodemographic charac...