In the EU, an estimated 42 per cent of plastic packaging waste was recycled in 2017. In seven EU member states, more than half of the plastic packaging waste generated was recycled in 2017.

Compared with 2005, the recycling rate of plastic packaging waste increased by 18 percentage points (pp) in the EU (from 24 per cent in 2005 to 42 per cent in 2017). This increasing trend is observed at varied levels in all EU member states, except Croatia.

In 2017, the highest recycling rate of plastic packaging waste was recorded in Lithuania (74 per cent), ahead of Bulgaria (65 per cent), Cyprus (62 per cent, 2016 data), Slovenia (60 per cent), Czechia (59 per cent), Slovakia (52 per cent) and the Netherlands (50 per cent).

In contrast, less than a third of plastic packaging waste was recycled in Malta (24 per cent, 2016 data), Estonia, France and Finland (each 27 per cent), Ireland (31 per cent), Hungary (32 per cent), Luxembourg and Austria (33 per cent).

MEMO: Questions and answers on the projects of common interest (PCIs) in energy. All infrastructure documents including the new PCI list can be found online.

Naomi Rachel Long MEP

After years of slow and steady progress and under Long's leadership, the party made a massive breakthrough at the recent local elections with a 65 per cent rise in its representation and also gained one of Northern Ireland's three MEP seats.

Naomi Rachel Long MEP (née Johnston) has been leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland since 2016.

Starting out in politics as a local councillor in 2001, she has served as the lord mayor of Belfast, a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), a Member of Parliament (MP) and currently as a Member of the European Parliament.

In fact, she is the only active politician in Northern Ireland to have served in every elected position and in 2016, Long was elected Alliance leader unopposed following the resignation of David Ford.

The Alliance party considers itself an anti-sectarian party, committed to building a "united, open, liberal and progressive" society with policies including the harmonisation and strengthening of equality and anti-discrimination measures, the introduction of civil marriage equality, development of integrated education and a Northern Ireland framework to tackle climate change.

Eager to learn more about this politician and to see if her engineering background was in any way connected to her political success, I recently interviewed her.

Did you always want to be an engineer?
I think it was a gradual process. I grew up in East Belfast where there is a strong engineering tradition and my father worked in the Harland and Wolff shipyard.

He was also the house handyman and I grew up watching him do the DIY - in a way he was my first engineering hero. After he died, when I was 11 years old, I took over that family role and that helped me develop a technical mind.

I then followed in his footsteps spending my first work experience in the shipyard’s apprentices’ workshop, gaining valuable practical experience. It was an amazing experience and helped me make up my mind up to study engineering.

I studied civil engineering at Queen’s University. Queen’s opened my mind to both my professional potential and to the benefits of integration and diversity. I graduated in 1994 and would subsequently go back after a few years to conduct industrial research and training.

What engineering projects did you work on?
After graduation, I worked in a mixed civil and structural engineering consultancy. Part of my role was assessing bridges by taking core samples and calculating the load bearing capacity, then deciding if they needed such things as weight restrictions, repair or rehabilitation.

A major project I worked on was the rehabilitation of the Belfast Gasworks site. This was one of my favourite projects, as it transformed this contaminated land into a modern office and hotel complex, while retaining and restoring the original Victorian architecture.

In particular, I was delighted to work on the entrance pillars and water feature which provide an impressive vista to visitors to the reinvigorated buildings and are also some of the few bits of my work which aren’t buried underground!

After my postgraduate research, I worked with an environmental and hydraulic engineering consultancy, and my role was in sewerage rehabilitation schemes - not glamorous work but absolutely essential to protecting public health and the environment.

Would you encourage more women to become engineers?
I most definitely would encourage women to take up engineering whether at professional, technical and trade level, the latter being an area where women are particularly unrepresented.

Currently, women tend to enter hardworking jobs that traditionally pay less and provide fewer opportunities. My own experience as an engineer was a positive one: most people judged me on ability rather than gender and as more women become engineers and apprentices, it diminishes as an issue.

Engineering and trades provide adaptable skills that are in high demand, so it gives people the freedom and confidence to make life choices that suit their needs.

You recently opened up about your battle with chronic pain due to endometriosis. Can you tell me more?
I feel there is a stigma around women's health that needs to be tackled head on. In my own situation, I would struggle through the pain but still get my job done both in my engineering and political positions, and then collapse in exhaustion once I got home.

It affected my personal life, pretending everything was normal, only letting myself succumb when I wasn't working or on holidays. I encourage other people, and especially women, to be open and upfront about hidden disabilities and especially those that affect women.

A lot of work still needs to be done with employers and employees in regard to communication on these issues, particularly where you have women working in non-traditional sectors where discussion of personal health issues can be more awkward.

What got you into politics?
Like many in Northern Ireland, I was frustrated at the failure of politics with mostly male politicians shouting at each other and not listening.

The Good Friday Agreement gave me hope: I saw an opportunity for change and wanted to be part of it. I started helping out with the Alliance party and was asked to run for the local council.

I was initially reluctant; in fact, I only agreed because I thought I would never be elected. I did campaign hard as the issues mattered to me and I won the seat.

Are there any parallels between engineering and politics?
Both are about solving problems and making things work better. I believe that politics would work better if politicians took an evidence and logic based approach to problems and policy. I would love if some politicians spent less time looking for someone to blame and instead sought compromise and solutions that benefited all. As engineers, we have to manage large projects, teams and budgets, not overpromise and control project creep, but still deliver. That’s a skill I think would be very useful for politicians to have!

Would you encourage other engineers to get into politics?
Most definitely. If all politicians are lawyers, they will only look at issues from a legal perspective and not consider more diverse and equally valid viewpoints.

I'd also like to see more scientists, business people, and women in politics and, in the end, councils, assemblies and parliaments which are more representative of the people are better able to produce solutions to match society’s needs.

What is your opinion on the proposed bridge to Scotland - speaking from both an engineering and political perspective?
In my opinion it is a purely political proposal which will face many obstacles. It's a political umbilical cord dreamt up by unionists in order to provide some kind of physical reassurance that Northern Ireland will forever remain attached to Britain.

From an engineering perspective, it faces major obstacles such as the Beaufort Dyke (full of dumped munitions), extremely high winds and rough seas, the fact that it crosses busy shipping lanes, the visual aesthetic on the Irish coastline and the exorbitant costs not to mention the lack of demand.

While I love ambitious engineering projects, this one isn’t viable and I'd rather see the money spent on more practical and required infrastructure projects such as the A5, new sewerage treatment works and building a high speed train line from Derry to Dublin.

Author: Kenneth Mitchell, BEng, HDip, MSc CEng, MIEI, is a chartered engineer in the fields of chemical and environmental engineering

Europe’s cities are getting greyer. The EU’s 2018 ageing report claims that by 2070, more than half of Europeans will be over the age of 65. Poor health and a limited income mean older people can be more susceptible to isolation, depression and mental decline.

But what if city design could instead be used to boost wellbeing? A combination of neurologists, architects, artists, and epidemiologists are now seeing how to do just that, by testing people’s emotional response to spaces such as redeveloped buildings and plazas before a single brick is laid.

As part of the MINDSPACES project, artists and architects first come up with a blueprint for a city square, for example, which can then be turned into a digital simulation. Locals can then ‘see’ what the simulated blueprint looks like by donning a pair of virtual reality (VR) goggles.

"During the VR experience, the (physical) space in which the person will react will interact with the (digital) space," says Dr Stefanos Vrochidis, senior researcher at the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece.

‘You might walk in the square and you see a bench that you don’t like. And then when you revisit it in the next two seconds the bench is not there, and there is something else.’
Dr Stefanos Vrochidis

Users also wear lightweight devices that measure their brain activity, skin response, and heart rate while they explore the virtual space. Using these devices, neurologists then use machine-learning programs to figure out the most pleasant, inspiring or emotionally appealing aspects about the proposed design.

"Based on the emotions, the space will be adapted in real time," says Dr Vrochidis. "This means you might walk in the square and you see a bench that you don’t like. And then when you revisit it in the next two seconds the bench is not there, and there is something else."

Emotionally friendly

One of the project’s test cases involves redesigning and refurbishing seniors’ homes in Paris, France, to make them more ‘emotionally friendly’ for the residents.

Working with the healthcare initiative eSeniors, architects and artists will redesign this space so that it offers different artworks and furniture to address emotions such as isolation and loss.

Artists will be first given the 3D plan of someone’s living space and information from interviews about their habits at home.

The resident will then use VR goggles to explore the virtual space, interact with the artwork and furniture and have their emotional reactions to their proposed living space recorded.

Dr Vrochidis is convinced this real-time feedback can also democratise urban planning for both older people and the wider community.

"This gives you the ability to implicitly have an important say in how the space is designed, and you see it in real time. That, I think, is a very important interaction capability which is very different to simply having an image," says Dr Vrochidis.

But it’s not just the physical design of cities that can impact mental health, according to Frank van Lenthe, professor of social epidemiology at Erasmus Medical Centre Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

"A city has a physical shape and a social shape that may be beneficial for the elderly," he says.

He leads a project called MINDMAP which is looking at what policies and designs in cities across Europe and North America could boost mental health among older city dwellers.

Bus passes

The project has already suggested a link between a UK initiative of giving the elderly free bus passes and an increase in mental wellbeing. This, says Prof van Lenthe, may be due to bus journeys helping people to go and meet others, and thus reducing loneliness.

The researchers have also found more nuanced features of urban design. Building high-density apartments helps to encourage walking and cycling, boosting mental health. But building apartments too densely has the opposite effect.

"If you make them even denser, the stress related to that would be worse than the benefits of more walking and cycling," says Prof van Lenthe.

The team is also comparing the policies and design of European and US cities to see how different factors affect wellbeing.

"American cities are built on completely different policies and different starting points," says Prof van Lenthe. "The huge car dependency for example is completely incomparable [to Europe], but also the very market driven economies."

The differences extend to low-income areas and nutrition. "In the small and dense cities that we have in Europe, for example, the availability of shops for healthy food is relatively easily accessible for everyone - whereas in the US, this differs much more by level of deprivation," says Prof van Lenthe.

Link between depression and alcoholism

In March, the project published a paper on the link between depression and alcoholism, and possible policy solutions, among the older adults in Los Angeles. Using data from a previous LA healthcare study, they used computer models to see what affected the alcoholism rate among the elderly.

These models include personal factors (for example, a history of depression) alongside city life (for example, living close to shops selling alcohol and alcohol taxes).

Their results suggest that although depression and alcohol abuse are linked, it is not as strong as some may believe. A combination of social-based therapy to fight depression and alcohol taxes could help lower the rate of alcoholism among the elderly.

The project, which ends later this year, aims to pull all their results together in a digital model so that policymakers can test different scenarios for their cities.

"Currently we’re in a bit of a situation where, given the challenges we face with urbanisation, policies need to be made - and I understand fully that policymakers can’t wait," says Prof van Lenthe.

"But I do hope that our project will provide lots of evidence to further underlie policies in different cities."