Regarding the price of meat product filling in comparison with the negligible cost of the collagen casings, whole roll of the casings is discharged only on suspicion of a small cut during handling. Once the casings are designed to be biologically resistant, they represent relatively problematic waste that is nowadays rather transported to landfills. This represents a significant cost; once the role is opened, it becomes extremely voluminous. The long-term study that was carried out on a commercial scale assessed two methods of utilization: composting of highly disintegrated casings and composting of charred casings. Robust qualitative and financial analysis revealed that the composting of charred casings was more meaningful both from agrochemical and financial point of view.

This paper focuses on compost use in overpasses and underpasses for wild animals over roads and other similar linear structures. In this context, good quality of compost may result in faster and more resistant vegetation cover during the year. Inter alia, this can be interpreted also as reduction of damage and saving lives. There are millions of tones of plant residue produced every day worldwide. These represent prospective business for manufacturers of compost additives called "accelerators". The opinions of the sale representatives' with regards to other alternatives of biowaste utilization and their own products were reviewed. The robust analyzes of several "accelerated" composts revealed that the quality was generally low. Only two accelerated composts were somewhat similar in quality to the blank sample that was produced according to the traditional procedure. Overlaps between the interests of decision makers on future soil fertility were weighed against the preferences on short-term profit. Possible causes that allowed the boom of these underperforming products and the possible consequences are also discussed. Conclusions regarding the ethical concerns on how to run businesses with products whose profitability depends on weaknesses in the legal system and customer unawareness are to follow.

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Grape seed oil is recognized for its high quality bioactive compounds, however, these are sensitive to increased temperatures during manufacture. Technical and economical potential of the pretreatment in combination with the mixture of hydrolyzing enzymes have been analyzed. It was confirmed that the shockwave pretreatment significantly enhances the subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis, which subsequently better liberates the vacuoles rich in oil (without exceeding the temperature limitation). The assessment of oil yields achieved together with the holistic cost analysis indicates that this technology has significant technical potential. Admittedly, it still faces difficulties linked with increased cost of production.

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Underpasses play an important role in ensuring permeability of line traffi c structures (motorways, expressways) for feral species. There are many studies, articles and methodological guidebooks available describing proper design principles for technical parameters of underpasses and their placement within the terrain. Width, height and length are the main technical parameters aff ecting wildlife migration. Wildlife behaviour and their requirements for the mentioned technical parameters of underpasses also have been examined in depth. In practically all cases, underpass functionality grows with increasing width and height. Of course, this also results in greater construction costs. The objective should therefore be to fi nd a balanced compromise enabling "suffi cient" functionality while maintaining "reasonable" costs. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) provides a way to identify "good" solutions in the sense of "suffi cient" underpass functionality with "reasonable" total costs. Underpass functionality calculations were based on a methodology for calculating migration potentials (Žák and Florian, 2013). Total costs were established according to actual construction work prices in the Czech Republic, including prices for preparations, design, construction, maintenance, and demolition. The results indicate that DEA can be used to fi nd "good" solutions and can be of assistance in particular when planning measures to ensure motorways are permeable to wildlife.

With growing evidence of natural resource depletion and environmental pollution, environmental issues became complementary to economic goals. Reduction of negative effects of human activities on the environment while enhancement of the use of alternative and renewable resources are now required together with satisfactory economic performance. The European Union made declarations to follow these goals in the Lisbon Strategy and consequently in the Strategy 2020. This paper examines to what extent these goals are fulfilled vis-à-vis EU member countries. Specifically, by performing Data Envelopment Analysis we provide an alternative way of assessing the ability of the individual EU countries to achieve these objectives. This ability is represented by relative efficiency scores of the EU members which reflect both economic and environmental goals. The paper finds that Denmark, Luxembourg, and Sweden are the most efficient countries, and also identifies the areas to be improved by the inefficient countries to reach the frontier.

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