Videos

Every package you order has a hidden journey—and a carbon footprint 🌍📦 In this short clip, Rafael Arévalo Ascanio (UAntwerp - VITO) explains how supply chains work, what challenges they create, and how he's developing a model to make them smarter and more sustainable.

How can we refine EU climate policies to better harness forests for capturing and storing carbon? That's the question Britt Bocken is exploring as she investigates the extensive and complex EU Green Deal - the EU's climate policy. She wants to clarify the complexities of this regulation, and examine how countries like Belgium apply the rules in practice, to see if there is room for improvement.

Did you know that many products in your shopping cart contain 'surfactants'? For example, this 'magic' ingredient provides foaming soap to longer-lasting food! But did you also know that almost half of surfactants come from petroleum? In her research, bioengineer Elvira Bytyqi is working on an eco-friendly alternative: biosurfactants! 🌱

You buy strawberries in the supermarket, but when you want to bite into one of those juicy strawberries at home, you stumble upon a moldy one in the package. Yuck. But did you know that the solution to this problem may be right under our feet? Bioengineer Jasmine De Rop (UGent) explains how soil bacteria might offer an unexpected way to tackle this issue.

Sinterklaas is almost here, and for many in Belgium, it's a time for chocolate. 🍫 But have you noticed chocolate is getting more and more expensive? 💸 Eliza Van de Sande is looking to unravel the mystery behind the cacao pollinators, to make cocoa farming more efficient and cheaper...

Plastics are everywhere: from the plastic packaging that keeps our food safe and fresh, to, unfortunately, the (micro)plastics that end up in our seas and oceans. "We can't avoid plastics, so we have to improve them," argues Hannelore Geeraert (VUB - FWO). Thus, with the help of bacteria, she worked on biodegradable bioplastics.

The rise of CO2 levels has many harmful effects on our planet. A part of the solution is capturing CO2 emissions and transforming them into valuable chemicals and fuels, while potentially slowing climate change. Wenjian Hu explains how this carbon conversion works. His research aims to make the process more efficient, paving the way for scaling up from lab experiments to big industrial plants.

Industries release enormous amounts of wasted heat: over 67% of all energy generated worldwide is estimated to be lost as heat! What if we could harness this industrial waste heat to warm our homes? For this, Praharsh Pai Raikar is optimizing the design process of heat exchangers. Heat what?! He will tell you more in this video.

Cows burp - a lot. Those burps contain methane, a potent greenhouse gas that, like CO2, causes global warming. Can we make cows produce less methane? "Yes, by adjusting their feed," Nico Peiren (ILVO) explains in this video.

Why do scientists sometimes call microalgae "the green gold"? Well, in addition to biofuels and astronaut food, you could use them to make sunscreen. These tiny algae contain substances that protect them from sunlight, which can also come in handy for humans. Unfortunately, they don't naturally produce enough of those substances. Elke Vereecke researches how to grow microalgae packed with those sunlight-protecting components.