One of the main challenges facing the Spanish Mediterranean basin is the scarcity of water resources, a critical factor for agricultural production in the region. Agriculture is a vital economic sector, dominated by irrigated crops such as vegetables and, currently,...

Let’s talk about wildfires in Spain! Spain is well known for its Mediterranean climate, characterized by high temperatures and low precipitation, particularly during summer. These features attract many tourists every year that choose Spain as holiday destination to...

Over the past decades, hydrogen has been identified as a potential clean fuel, although its mass adoption has been hampered by the abundance of oil and low relative prices of fossil fuels, as well as, in recent years, by the advance of the battery electric vehicle....

Fermentation is perhaps one of the oldest technologies that has accompanied humanity for thousand of years. Throughout history, numerous evidences and traces have been found that demonstrate the use of fermentation by several cultures and civilisations, as a common...

Water security is an essential concept defined as ´the ability of humankind to protect sustainable access to water, ensuring well-being, livelihoods and socio-economic development´. This concept includes taking measures to protect the ecosystems that provide this...

In the fight against climate change, technological innovations is one of our most powerful allies. One of the most promising and challenging areas in this regard is the transformation of carbon dioxide (CO2), a prevalent greenhouse gas, into useful raw materials for...

Biogas as an energy source is becoming more and more popular, but what is biogas and how does it differ from natural gas? The difference is that natural gas is a fossil fuel, while biogenic gas is renewable. Natural gas was formed millions of years ago, at the age of...

The majority of plastics used in the world today come from non-renewable and non-biodegradable sources. In an effort to reduce the impact of plastics on the environment, alternative methods of production and waste management have been studied for decades. Several...

When we think in agriculture, we often focus on the development of the plant, but we rarely consider the importance of proper management of the soil in which crops are grown. Soil is a vital resource that sustains our lives and provides the food that is indispensable...

This past month (june 2023), eurodeputies provisionally agreed on new legislation for batteries sold in the EU. It has already been hailed as a "game changer" for batteries, creating a framework to foster a competitive and sustainable battery industry in Europe. After...

I think most people are familiar, in one way or another, with the characteristics of the chemical elements we are going to talk about in this post: nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). Nitrogen in its gaseous from (N2) is part of the composition of atmospherica air or we...

In the end, I coukd not resist...I went to see AVATAR 2. Even in 3D! The idea of recalling the sensations I experienced 13 years ago as a spectator of one of the greatest technological advances in animation of the 21st century, won over the laziness of being inside a...

Many people will have an accurate idea of what biomass is and what it represents in our society. In an energy context in which energy prices are continually breaking historical records, there are already many consumers who, in view of the imminent winter, have found...

Forest fire in Bitterroot

Water is essential for human survival and well-being and plays an important role for many economic sectors. However, water resources are unevenly distributed in space and time, and are under pressure from human activity and economic development. In addition to water...

Wildlife flyover crossings

land use planning

From the smartphone we carry every day, the tablet or the computer, till any other portable electric tool we use in our everyday have implicit the use of an electric energy accumulation system, or what is commonly known as batteries, in this case rechargable...

People hear a lot about the decline of bees, about the lack of pollinators, but what are pollinators? more importantly, what do they do for us and what do we do for them? The group of pollinators is very wide, not only honey bees, which belong to one specific family....

The education that people receive during all his life it´ s been influenced by the environment in which we live. When we are young and we start to be conscious about the world, the society usually provide us with the models and with the level of knowledge that it is...

On 2o July I could not stop myself from thinking about Jeff Bezos. He made a short journey to space, organizing his own private trip. There were plenty of headlines. And many different opinions on the subject. Was the issue that was of concern to me if he was returned...

During the confinement, we have witnessed how nature quickly returned to the cities in our absence. Wild flora took over the corner of our cities, growing in every available crevice and gradually recovering lost space. It became visible that the streets also belong to...

Mining activity has defined civilization since its inception and in approximately 90% of our daily activities we use chemical and mineral elements extracted from the interior of the earth. Currently, mining contributes to sustainable processes, such as the European...

In our daily life, we are surrounded by radioactivity, from natural or artificial origin. Most of the radioactivity in the environment results from natural elements. In fact, there are radioactive elements in many foods and drinking water. But… How do these elements...

More than a year ago, we invited you to think green and it has been almost two years since we presented the concept "re-naturing cities”. Time waits for no man and it is a great achievement for us to ascertain how these concepts, which we study theoretically, become...

Aquamundam project was briefly introduced in the previous chapter of this constructed wetland series. CARTIF is currently participating in the pilot setting and analysis within Aquamundam project. One of the main approved actions in this cross-border project is the...

One of the Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs) included in the United Nations Agenda 2030 is ‘ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’. It has been estimated that 25% of global population will inhabit countries affected with...

Last June 15 was a double celebration day in CARTIF. On the one hand, we celebrated the 25th Anniversary of the LIFE Programme, the EU’s funding instrument for the environment and climate action. It has passed 12 years for us since the first time we applied our first...

We are opening this post providing a written record of we are not sponsored by a well-known beer brand. We dare to make you a direct request because we would like to urge you to do exactly what the title says: think green. At the end of last year, Pantone® company (an...

The Cambridge dictionary defines the noun “label” as "a piece of paper or other material that gives you information about the object it is attached to." An active social network user would explain us tags are one of the most famous ways people use to find content on...

It is likely that many of us have taken advantage of weekends to take a walk in the forest or the mountain. When we return home, impressed by the beauty of the landscape, we may have reflected with sadness on the enormous damage that forest fires cause in these...

Currently, the 54% of world population lives im cities, and it is foreseen this figure rises by 70% in the middle of this century. Cities have been converted in denatured places in which is difficult to find interconnected nartural surroundings. Current urbanistic...

Food security of two-thirds of the world s’ population depends on the availability and use of fertilizers. In the transition from a fossil reserve-based to a bio-based economy, it has become a critical challenge to close nutrient cycles and move to a more effective...

August 8, 2016. 07:00h a.m. Radio turned on driving to work. Headlines begin. "Today is Earth Overshoot Day", I hear. Oh. Bad news. The Earth Overshoot day in 2016 has been brought forward again. I'm sure you are wondering about some things right now:1) If I am able...

We could read some time ago, as a headline in a national newspaper, that the Chairman of Repsol, Antonio Brufau, literally stated that "It is false that the electric car has zero emissions" and "(...) emissions must take into account not only CO2 emitted by the...

In the first part of this post, we talked about the conclusions we heard in an interesting conference about air quality. After that, we decided two to do two things. On the one hand, to share the figures and conclusions there exposed and on the other hand, to work at...

We are not angry, of course, what really happens is that air quality issue concerns us greatly in CARTIF. A few weeks ago, we attended a workshop entitled "Technical solutions for reducing emissions from mobility", held in MAGRAMA (Spanish Ministry). The panel of...

"What is the weather like this weekend?". We ask every week when Friday comes. "Sunny, but we can’t trust on weather" answers our colleague. "You’re right! It’s the climate change fault" both conclude. In our previous posts, you have been able to know how CARTIF is...

A few years ago, the magic company Pixar® showed us the story about the robot named WALL-E, who was designed to clean up an abandoned, waste-covered Earth far in the future, exactly in the year 2800. What we don’t know is if WALL-E knew the benefits of recycling, that...

When we work developing environmental technologies, to quantify the advantages to be obtained by using them can be an important added value. And if we put numbers, we are committed to communicate these numbers in an objective and traceable way, and it is when...

At this moment you are visiting our blog and after reading the title of this post, you are thinking about finding a text based on the current social context, where the word "change" appears again and again. Not this time. Here, we want to present our skills and it is...

The first month of the year is coming and it is time for reflection. The year ended with us still having in our pockets the boarding pass of our virtual trip to a historic event for the climate, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP21), held in Paris...