EU-funded researchers have completed the most comprehensive assessment ever of Europe's "urban mine" — the critical raw materials embedded in waste streams including electronics, batteries, vehicles, wind turbines, and demolition debris. The  FutuRaM (Future Availability of Secondary Raw Materials) project mapped 42 critical elements across seven waste categories in 31 countries, finding that annual recovery could reach 4.1–5.7 million tonnes by 2050, potentially substituting up to 56% of primary material imports. Recovery of key metals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel could grow dramatically, reducing dependence on China and other suppliers. The project's Urban Mine Platform makes all data publicly accessible to guide investment and policy decisions.

Anyone seeking to purchase healthy products at the supermarket needs clear guidance. Nutritional labelling schemes, such as Nutri-Score labels, are designed to help with that. The Nutri-Score front-of-pack label shows a five-colour system from favourable nutritional composition in green (A) through to unfavourable in red (E). The scheme is optional on products across the EU but has been adopted by companies in several countries, for instance, Germany and the Netherlands. Some supermarkets also print a grey version on the price tag, but the colourful version on the shelf also attracts more attention here. Researchers at Göttingen University – in collaboration with Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences, the German Institute of Food Technology and Giessen University – studied consumers’ visual attention on these label formats. Their research showed colourful labelling catches the eye more frequently and for longer than monochrome. Particularly frequent and prolonged glances at the dark green A or the yellow C were usually accompanied by choosing this particular product. The red E, on the other hand, did not have the desired warning effect: even when this unfavourable rating was viewed frequently, the products still ended up in shopping baskets. The study was published in the journal Food Quality and Preference.

JMIR Publications invites submissions to a theme issue on “ Digital Inclusion in the Global South: Navigating Access, Agency, and Impact” in its open access journal the Journal of Medical Internet Research.