Issue 3

Urbanization, industrialization and economic growth have considerable challenged the orientation of waste management policies and practices. Intrinsically, major concerns appear in urban environments, as they receive increased volumes of waste, which in turn pose threats for the environment and public health. Prioritization of waste prevention is proven to be the optimal solution in preserving resources and coincide with international sublime strategies for sustainable waste management. However, the citizens’ awareness and active involvement, in decision making for sustainable waste management policies practices, are preconditions for their implementation. The study examined the citizens’ views on the local waste management policies and strategies in the urban environment of Neapolis-Sykies Greece. The application of factor analysis, hierarchical log-linear analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis provided important correlations regarding the citizens’ demographic characteristics, littering behavior, sources of information on waste management issues, perceptions about quality of life and provided cleanliness services. In particular, collection points and collection system are positively assessed, while the value of recycling is widely acknowledged. Albeit, the citizens are not properly informed about local policies and practices related to existing waste management issues in their municipality. Unfortunately, this is deemed to be a barrier in promoting public participation in decision making processes.

Natural products have always been appreciated due to the awareness about environmental standards for global health by using green technologies in their isolation and extraction. Thereupon natural dyes have been used in all fields due to having ecofriendly, therapeutic and aesthetic nature. For the current study, microwave radiations (MW) have been used as a green extraction tool to explore the natural coloring potency of Tea leaves for the dyeing of cotton fabrics. For isolation of natural dye from tea leaves in aqueous and basic media MW irradiation for 1-6 min has been given and used to dye cotton fabric. It has been evaluated that an increase in color yield (K/S) with the use of 6 min of microwave energy when basic extract of tea leaves was used to dye onto cotton fabric. It has been also revealed that in the case of the pre-mordanting method, 6% of Cu and 8% of Fe as a post mordanting method give the best fastness properties and the highest color yields. It is concluded that MW energy has an excellent ability for isolation of colorant from Tea leaves for dyeing of cotton fabric under reduced optimal dyeing conditions.

The current study investigates the ability of Nano magnetite as an adsorbent to remove organic materials from oilfield-produced water (PW). The effect of several variables on the removal procedure was investigated, such as nano magnetite dose, pH of solution and adsorption period. The adsorbent was carefully examined and completed using several approaches FTIR, SEM and surface area analyzer. The results show that the best organic removal reached more than 89 % at 0.8 g Nano magnetite dose in 120 min through pH = 6.0 at room temperature. Three mathematical isotherm models of adsorption were used in this study: Langmuir, Freundlich and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller. It seems that the Langmuir model and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller was best fitted model over the experimental variety with a correlation coefficient of 0.994 and 0.995 respectively.

Chromium is a common heavy metal pollutant found in industrial wastewaters which may pollute agricultural soils through groundwater and watering. Phytoremediation is an economical and highly applicable method for removal of pollutants from agricultural soils. This research was carried out for the removal of hexavalent chromium (Cr (VI)) contamination from the soil with the phytoremediation method. For this purpose, only 30 mg kg-1 hexavalent chromium (Cr (VI) as Chromium CrO3, only 10 mL bacteria Rhodobacter capsulatus DSM1710 and chromium plus bacteria applied to the pots and Malabar spinach (Basella alba L.) grown in the pots. At the end of experiment the results showed that side branching, leaf width, plant dry weights were the highest agro-morphological traits when bacteria were applied to chromium polluted soil. Some macro and micro nutrient elements which are essential for plant nutrition were analyzed (N, P, K, Ca, Mg, Fe, Cu, Mn and Zn). Among them, N, P, Fe, Cu, Mn and Zn were found to be statistically significant at the level of 5%. The Cr content of Malabar spinach in control soil was 0.31mgkg-1, but it was 2.33mgkg-1 when the soil was contaminated with Cr at the end of experiment. Moreover, when bacteria were additionally applied the Cr content increased to 4.02 mgkg-1 of Malabar spinach. Chromium pollution antagonistically affected both some nutrient element (P, K, Ca; Mg) and some heavy metals (Fe, Cu, Zn, Mn) in the soil. This study shows that phytoremediation can be used to remove the soil pollution caused by containing high hexavalent chromium. For this reason, the nitrogen fixing bacterium Rhodobacter capsulatus and the hyperaccumulator Malabar spinach plant can be used. It is the first study where Malabar spinach was used a hyperaccumulator plant for chromium pollution in the soils.