Researchers at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, have developed a new technology for drinking-water production. They use metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that remove ions dissolved in salt or brackish water, producing potable water. The MOFs can be regenerated quickly, under the … Read more
This book is what a review should be all about: lengthy (365 pg), thorough, several tables and hundreds of references. Overall, this is a complete book on a highly relevant topic. Biostimulants: natural substances supporting vegetative growth, uptake of nutrients, … Read more
Mankind has known leather for about seven thousand years, now. Leather is durable and versatile. And biodegradable. But it is produced as a by-product of the meat industry, in a process with much environmental pollution. So here’s the good news … Read more
The Dutch Wadden islands aimed to attain energy autarky in 2020. They fail to reach that target. For in order to do this, energy production and consumption don’t just need to match over a year; they also need to match … Read more
The European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC) urges the European Commission to base its carbon accounting on science and the real effects on climate. The present accounting rules favour energy from biomass. Whereas often, burning biomass doesn’t lower CO2 emissions … Read more
Battery recycling is an area long neglected by battery producers. Performance and cost were much more important. So now we are stuck with a rapidly growing heap of worn-out batteries of which we don’t know how to treat it. Or … Read more
Much excitement in the universe of battery technology. Battery storage is rapidly growing world-wide, important for the energy transition. Batteries are improving and their costs are falling, all the time. And the million-mile battery might be coming soon. Meaning that … Read more
‘Biobased materials and chemicals are driven by performance,’ we wrote in 2016. They do not compete primarily on cost, but on the new functionalities they offer. Now, in the middle of record low oil prices, this principle receives support from … Read more
Food loss and waste currently causes an estimated $1 trillion in economic losses globally each year, according to Lux Research, a Boston-based tech and advisory company. This constitutes not just an economic crisis but also a major humanitarian one. It … Read more
Solar energy is rapidly becoming so cheap that it can crowd out other land uses, like agriculture. The farmer may earn a lot more from a monoculture of solar panels than from any crop. But this is an unfortunate development; … Read more
The energy transition has progressed quite a bit. To the extent that we can predict the outcome: renewable energy sources will win. But the real problems are surfacing now. The old energy system and the new energy sources have a … Read more
In Europe, just 16% of bio waste is processed to some form of useful application. Meaning: food and garden waste. An upcoming report by the Biobased Industries Consortium and Zero Waste Europe calculates the potential, and maps interesting and successful … Read more
We met Wijnand Schonewille many times at biobased economy conferences – we, the late Paul Reinshagen and I. And we talked, because Wijnand had refreshing ideas and innovative views. He passed away last week, in the age of 58. He … Read more
In the neoliberal climate that has reigned the past two decades, better efficiency was the ultimate goal of economic policy. So important that it could hardly be challenged. Competing concepts like avoiding a climate crisis fought an uphill battle against … Read more
PHAs are versatile, biodegradable and promising, we wrote a few years ago. There was just one problem: they were not competitive. So demand didn’t develop. And therefore, they remained not competitive. Gradually however, this vicious circle is being broken. PHAs … Read more
Bio is in. Chemistry is out. Green is in. Grey is out. And the Netherlands (my home country) should rid itself from its dependence on natural gas. These are popular opinions in ‘climate conscious’ circles. Yet there are ‘chemical’ processes … Read more
It its latest report, Boston-based Lux Research investigates a global and sustainable energy infrastructure. Can areas with high energy demand but not endowed with much domestic wind and solar energy become self-sufficient? Or will they need to import sustainably sourced … Read more
The Waltzing with Nature manifesto is a logical sequel to the recent books by the authors, Alle Bruggink and Diederik van der Hoeven. Particularly to their latest book Naturally! Of course. How nature keeps surprising us (in Dutch). A surprising … Read more
By the end of 2019, both USA and EU became aware of their dependence on China and India in generic medicines supply. Particularly the dependence on China was judged to be worrisome, as their share doubled to 13% in ten … Read more
The major pharmaceutical industry is going through a difficult time. Industry should find a new track. Biomedicines could open up a new chapter. This is the third of four articles on the pharmaceutical industry. Biomedicines, yes or no? For over … Read more
The major pharmaceutical industry (big pharma) is going through a difficult time. Industry needs to come on track again. Can the new superpowers India and China lead the way? This is the second of four articles on the pharmaceutical industry. … Read more
Major pharmaceutical companies (big pharma) are having a difficult time. Shareholders complain about falling profit margins; governments, insurance companies and patients complain about sky-high medicine prices. Industry should find a new direction – but which one? This is the first … Read more
Sustainable biomass is a subject dominated by strong and enduring disagreement. Michael Moore’s latest film Planet of the Humans is a recent reminder of that. In the Netherlands, always looking for consensus, the government now tries to develop a ‘widely … Read more
In the 100th year of his life, James Lovelock wrote an important book: Novacene, The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence. A book that astonishes by the broad view of the author. And that calls for dissent through its consequent logic. A … Read more
Will the corona pandemic speed up the energy transition? The question is much debated. Those who would like to accelerate the transition seem to have the upper hand, if we can judge by the headlines of the news. Fine particulate … Read more
Biobased Press published its manifesto ‘Waltzing with Nature’ on May 1, 2020. In this manifesto, we testify to the importance of science for solving mankind’s major global problems. Like global heating, plastic littering everywhere, insect decline, nutritional diseases because … Read more
Frances Arnold won the 2018 chemistry Nobel prize for her research on directed evolution. Directed evolution speeds up nature’s variation and selection process, and researchers use it to find the best enzymes for industrial applications. As Arnold summed it up: … Read more
Reductions in resource use, emissions, and waste production are key strategies for corporate success. Sustainability is crucial, says Lux Research, a Boston-based technology development and advisory company. Sustainability is crucial For a long time, the business community has belittled sustainability. … Read more
Recently, Knowable Magazine devoted an article to the question how far conventional agriculture is on the way to becoming more sustainable. The problem is: conventional agriculture pollutes too much (fertilizer runoff, toxic pesticides). But organic agriculture produces too little, meaning … Read more
Quietly, industry is perfecting the art of using mycelium as a construction material. Mycelium is the invisible part of mushrooms: their ‘roots’ that consist of minuscule threads called hyphae. There is just one disadvantage to mycelium as a construction material: … Read more
Crises are an opportunity to review our present structures and habits; and to create new ones. Many observers judge that we wasted the 2008 financial crisis: the mechanisms that caused this crisis were largely restored afterwards. Will we wisely use … Read more
Whereas the artificial hamburger has been launched with a lot of fuss a few years ago, artificial seafood has been developed in relative quiet. But it may come to the market much sooner. Texture and taste seem to be good, … Read more
At present, the world is under the spell of a new influenza virus, Covid-19. One region after another goes into complete lockdown; in particular to prevent the virus to spread with such speed that hospitals would be overburdened. The virus … Read more
Chemical and Engineering News recently ran an article that sheds light on the importance of traditional Chinese medicine for modern scientific development. Traditional treatments inspire the discovery of insecticides and antimalarial drugs. Useful symbiotic microorganisms The herb Stemona sessilifolia has … Read more
Last month, Chemical and Engineering News devoted an article to biobased aromatics: aromatic compounds derived from biobased resources. Much is going on here. This developing sector holds the promise that it will be able to produce aromatic compounds cheaper than … Read more
As plastic waste can now be found in the remotest areas of the Earth, plastic recycling becomes urgent. We know that biodegradable plastics are a niche solution, so we need to organize and implement recycling of non-degradable plastics fast now. … Read more
The decline of insects has been well established now. It concerns both their abundance and their diversity, and spans all continents. If they decline even more, we will run into unknown risks, because we depend on them in many ways, … Read more
A publication in Science last year triggered a debate: can we stop climate change by planting billions of trees? These trees would capture CO2 and in so doing, save the earth from overheating. Indeed: trees planted in sufficient numbers could … Read more
Plastics in the Circular Economy are hot. The last EFIB-conference in October 2019 featured a track dedicated to ‘The future of plastics’. The last edition of Dutch magazine Agro&Chemie also featured an article on bio-plastics. And the recently announced European … Read more
Figures on global 2019 climate have come in and global warming does not seem to slow down. Many new records were set, like that on ocean water temperatures. That 2019 is not the hottest year on record is only due … Read more
The report The better job (in Dutch) by the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) is ground-breaking. For the first time in forty (!) years, there is attention for job quality in Dutch politics. A subject that had been … Read more
Reading the book Naturally! Of course. How nature always keeps surprising us (in Dutch) by Alle Bruggink and Diederik van der Hoeven was a great pleasure to me. Even stronger, I studied it with great interest. Almost all subjects have … Read more
By the end of last year, Dutch Rathenau Institute produced a thought-provoking report on the energy transition (in Dutch). We need artificial intelligence, sensors and other data applications in the energy transition, according to the report. Because we need to … Read more
Resistance to antibiotics is a growing problem; and yet, the development of new antibiotics stagnates. Why? Don’t we need new antibiotics, on second thoughts? Or does industry judge that new developments will not earn them enough money? New antibiotics from … Read more
The Conversation, that invaluable source of balanced information, ran an article on carbon storage in the soil. Potentially, one of our main instruments for controlling the rise of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. But present developments point the other way: … Read more
Antibiotics resistance of harmful organisms becomes a major problem – in agriculture, in human and veterinary medicine. Scientists now try to come up with new methods. They think that CRISPR (discovered less than 10 years ago) might be a solution. … Read more
Quickly, the world gets critical of plastic waste. It litters land, waterways and oceans. Until quite recently, rich countries could export their waste to poorer countries – for them to sort out the difficult tail of consumer society. But since … Read more
During a workshop at the latest European Forum on Industrial Biotechnology (EFIB) in Brussels, the BBI JU funded ReSolve-project introduced a number of newly developed, less hazardous, viable bio-based renewable solvents. These new solvent molecules proved to have better performance … Read more
Once upon a time, energy from biomass like wood, manure, whale oil and other sources was the primary supplier of heat, light and food processing. If we should like to contain climate change effectively, would we have to return to … Read more
When researchers discovered the CRISPR-Cas mechanism, it was looked upon as the perfect instrument for genetic modification (GM). But it appears to have its flaws. Flaws that might be inherent to life and to nature as such. This is a … Read more