Sustainability articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Achieving high selectivity of Li+ and Mg2+ is of paramount importance for effective lithium extraction from brines, and nanofiltration (NF) membrane plays a critical role in this process. Here the authors report the fabrication of polyamide NF membranes with ultra-high Li + /Mg2+ selectivity by modifying the interfacial polymerization process with an oil-soluble surfactant.

    • Quan Peng
    • , Ruoyu Wang
    •  & Lei Jiang
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conventional blue denim dyeing has both environmental and health-related consequences. Here, Bidart et al. use enzyme engineering to develop a viable method for the bulk production of indican and demonstrate dying processes which could significantly reduce the negative consequences of this billion-dollar industry.

    • Gonzalo Nahuel Bidart
    • , David Teze
    •  & Ditte Hededam Welner
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Development of high-performance, comfortable and sustainable air filters is challenging. Here, authors design an ultrathin, ultralight dual scale fiber mat composed of true nanofibers and submicron-fibers to integrate the high protection, thermal wet comfort and save raw materials.

    • Yuchen Yang
    • , Xiangshun Li
    •  & Yuekun Lai
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Xu and colleagues find that the average trophic level of aquatic food items in the human diet is declining (from 3.42 to 3.18) because of the considerable increase in low-trophic level aquaculture species output relative to that of capture fisheries since 1976. Additionally they find that trade has contributed to increasing the availability and trophic level of aquatic foods in >60% of the world’s countries.

    • Kangshun Zhao
    • , Steven D. Gaines
    •  & Jun Xu
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The semi-hydrogenation of alkynes faces the trade-off between activity and selectivity due to undesirable over-hydrogenation. Here the authors report an efficient additive-free WO3-based single-atom Pd catalytic system with a vertical size effect of hydrogen spillover to mediate the trade-off between activity and selectivity.

    • Jinqi Xiong
    • , Shanjun Mao
    •  & Yong Wang
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reduction of CO2 with solar energy is an attractive route to new fuel sources. Here a nanostructured Ru/MnOx photo-thermal catalyst composed of well-defined Ru/MnO/Mn3O4 is reported for CO2 hydrogenation with high selectivity and a CH4 production rate at a mild temperature of 200 °C.

    • Jianxin Zhai
    • , Zhanghui Xia
    •  & Buxing Han
  • Article
    | Open Access

    While the reported methods for the synthesis of organoselenium compounds mainly employ preformed activated selenium reagents, the direct utilization of elemental selenium in the synthesis is a more attractive but challenging strategy. Here, the authors report the rapid synthesis of versatile organoselenium compounds via mechanical stimulation.

    • Shanshan Chen
    • , Chunying Fan
    •  & Xiaofeng Wei
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Towards optimizing the conjunctive operation of surface and groundwater resources in arid and semi-arid regions, here the authors propose a hybrid method involving moth-swarm and symbiotic organism search algorithms and artificial neural networks and demonstrate it for the HalīlRood basin.

    • Saeid Akbarifard
    • , Mohamad Reza Madadi
    •  & Mohammad Zounemat-Kermani
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Domestic attempts to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a country can have synergistic and/or trade-off effects on the advancement of SDGs in other countries. Here the authors demonstrate that while high-income countries make up only 14% of the global population, they drive over 60% of worldwide SDG interactions.

    • Huijuan Xiao
    • , Sheng Bao
    •  & Jianguo Liu
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors demonstrate how managed urbanization in China could halve reactive nitrogen pollution to both the atmosphere and water resources. Investing 61 billion USD could provide 245 billion USD in benefits, while contributing to multiple SDG goals.

    • Ouping Deng
    • , Sitong Wang
    •  & Baojing Gu
  • Editorial
    | Open Access

    Climate change is exacerbating challenges both for global food production and from its environmental impacts. Sustainable and socially responsible solutions for future world-wide food security are urgently needed.

  • Q&A
    | Open Access

    Summary: Cultivated or cultured meat is promising to revolutionize the food industry in the coming years to decades, helping to resolve concerns related to the environmental impact and ethical implications linked to conventional meat production. We talked to Dr. Sandhya Sriram, the Group CEO and Co-founder of Shiok Meats Pte. Ltd., Singapore; Prof. Shulamit Levenberg, the former Dean of the Biomedical Engineering Department at the Technion, current Director of the Technion Center for 3D Bioprinting and The Rina & Avner Schneur Center for Diabetes Research, as well as the Co-founder and Chief Scientific Adviser of Aleph Farms, Israel; and Dr. Timothy Olsen, Head of Cultured Meat in the Life Science business at Merck KGaA, Germany; about this relatively new and quickly developing sector. They explain what their teams are working on, including the biggest recent accomplishments, speak about the main challenges facing the field and how they can be resolved, and share their visions about the future of cultivated meat, aiming to provide more equitable and sustainable access to nutritious food for the growing world population.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The coal chemical sector uses coal to produce chemicals and emits substantial greenhouse gases, which are hard to abate by electrification alone. Deploying green H2 for China’s coal chemical plants can reduce ~50% of emissions at a low cost.

    • Yang Guo
    • , Liqun Peng
    •  & Denise L. Mauzerall
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Superblack materials could innovate light-centered technologies, however, advances in superblack materials have been constrained by their complex and costly fabrication routes. Here, the authors report a simple top-down strategy, guided by computational methods, to develop robust superblack materials following metal-free wood delignification and carbonization.

    • Bin Zhao
    • , Xuetong Shi
    •  & Bruno D. Mattos
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Electrocatalytic nitrate reduction to ammonia has emerged as an alternative strategy for effluent treatment and ammonia production. Here, the authors report a pulsed potential approach to overcome the sluggish reaction kinetics caused by the limited distribution of negatively charged nitrate near the working electrode and the competing side reactions.

    • Yanmei Huang
    • , Caihong He
    •  & Yifu Yu
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Englander and Costello note that African coastal waters are among the world’s most biologically rich, but African countries earn much less than their peers from selling access to foreign fishers. They find forming a “fish cartel" would increase African fish biomass by 16% and profits by 23%.

    • Gabriel Englander
    •  & Christopher Costello
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Converting waste plastic into valuable chemicals is of high interest. However, transformation of N-containing polymers is still challenging. Here the authors report hydrogenolysis of various polyamides using Pt-group metal supported on CeO2 with different selectivity of the alkane using varied Pt-group metals.

    • XinBang Wu
    • , Wei-Tse Lee
    •  & Paul J. Dyson
  • Article
    | Open Access

    A study of 1,028 global cities from 2000-2018 shows increased human exposure to greenspace, reducing greenspace inequality. Notably, cities in the Global South improved nearly four times faster than those in the Global North. These insights can guide city greening strategies.

    • Shengbiao Wu
    • , Bin Chen
    •  & Peng Gong
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Livestock grazing may drive grassland degradation. Here, the authors use process-based modelling validated with empirical data to define a stocking rate threshold across grassland on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, identify vulnerable areas and predict threshold shifts under future climate scenarios.

    • Qiuan Zhu
    • , Huai Chen
    •  & Yanfen Wang
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The development of robust catalysts that could work under industrial-scale current densities bring promise but also a challenge for hydrogen production. Here, the authors report an in situ activation method to produce ferromagnetic ruthenium clusters that can catalyze the hydrogen evolution reaction at high current densities.

    • Jun Qi
    • , Yadong Du
    •  & Jieshan Qiu
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Food production, especially of animal products, is a major source of air pollutants. Here, the authors quantify the impacts dietary changes towards more plant-based diets could have for air quality, labour productivity, and human health.

    • Marco Springmann
    • , Rita Van Dingenen
    •  & Adrian Leip
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Iron is an ideal catalytic material due to its abundance, low cost, and low toxicity, but conventional iron catalysts show low activity and lack air stability. Here, the authors report an iron phosphide nanocrystal catalyst, which exhibits high stability in air and high activity for the liquid-phase nitrile hydrogenations.

    • Tomohiro Tsuda
    • , Min Sheng
    •  & Takato Mitsudome
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Despite recent advancements in mechanochemical polymerization, understanding the unique mechanochemical reactivity during the ball milling polymerization process still requires extensive investigations. Here the authors use solid-state anionic ring-opening polymerization to synthesize polyethers from various functional epoxide monomers.

    • Jihye Park
    • , Ahyun Kim
    •  & Byeong-Su Kim
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The nucleophilic substitution reaction (SN2) is one of the oldest yet very useful organic transformations, but surprisingly, the nucleophilic character of isocyanides has never been explored in SN2 reactions. Here the authors show that isocyanides react as versatile nucleophiles in SN2 reactions with alkyl halides in a general manner to afford highly substituted secondary amides by in situ hydrolysis of the intermediate nitrilium ion.

    • Pravin Patil
    • , Qiang Zheng
    •  & Alexander Dömling
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Electrocatalytic conversion of low-cost organic compounds to high-value chemicals urgently demands the development of efficient electrocatalysts. Mao et al. report the synthesis of Cu single-atom dispersed Rh metallene arrays for electrochemical aniline synthesis and biomass upgrading with enhanced electrocatalytic activity.

    • Qiqi Mao
    • , Xu Mu
    •  & Hongjing Wang
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The sustainability of the majority of multispecies reef fisheries around the globe remains unassessed. This study provides context-specific sustainable reference points for coral reef fish using environmental conditions. Using these reference points, they show that most reef fish stocks have failed at least one fisheries sustainability benchmark.

    • Jessica Zamborain-Mason
    • , Joshua E. Cinner
    •  & Sean R. Connolly