All things green and planet saving.
Alternative energy farms are getting a lot of flack on the ground as they’re big and interrupt wildlife which is why we’re putting them in the ocean. Dutch engineers are putting a new spin on them by building solar islands that follow the sun, like a sun flower!
Snow, most people are pretty annoyed when it starts falling but maybe in the future it will be a boon to our electricity bills. New device can create electricity from snowfall which may also go on to bridge the gap for solar usage in areas were it snows a lot. The triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) can make sustainable energy an option even for frozen wastelands.
More work needs to be done to lessen light pollution says the Campaign to Protect Rural England. Over the 12 years since the issue was first raided, it hasn’t improved which is a shame not just for the night sky but the well being of nocturnal animals and even our own health.
Plastic is everywhere. Really. Thanks to microplastics, smaller fibers and such, plastic is being carried by all sorts of weather patterns to the furthest reaches of the Earth and this isn’t great news but it does illustrate how pervasive the problem has really become.
Plastic in the ocean has been a popular topic for the past few years, probably most famously around the Pacific Garbage patch but the issue of plastic straws and bags hasn’t escaped notice either. This isn’t a new issue though, turns out we’ve been tossing trash in the ocean since the sixties.
Tote bags, the answer to the plastic bag issue. Well, as we brought up before, not always and you have to be careful about what materials you’re replacing plastic with but a solid rule of thumb is to try to stick with upcycled and re-purposed materials when buying new. Rareform is the company that makes bags (and other things) from billboards.
If you needed yet another reason to fight against climate change, here’s one that should get you ready to do what it takes to press back against this scourge: it’s making our allergy seasons worse. That’s right, the warming climate is also why you’re sneezing with itchy eyes even longer each year.
We’ve been using satellites for a lot of things, including monitoring things here on the surface. Can they be used to help track plastic and assist in clean up efforts though? The answer is yes! But it’s sort of difficult.
The glaciers are melting around the world which we knew but there’s a bit more bad news, they’re melting faster than we previously thought. So fast that if they continue at this rate, they won’t last the century in a number of regions. Which means come 2100, we’ll be living in a very wet, very hot world.
Part of many cities fight against emissions involve areas of the city where they enforce low emissions from cars. This means that only those that pass current emission standards can drive in those zones or incur a fine. London has recently taken steps to institute one of the toughest with the ULEZ, Ultra Low Emissions Zone.
There are some harsh places to live in the world but that doesn’t mean that you can’t be as Eco-friendly as possibly when living in them. A school in India is located in one of the harshest environments in the world and they’re focused on green education, despite very little actual greenery.
CO2 levels are sort of an abstract idea when it comes to the public. They are very real, and can be measured in real ways but most people really only here about them yearly, or when some big report comes out that manages to come across their radar. The Guardian wants to change that by reporting the CO2 level daily with the rest of the weather.
People generally know that plastic bags aren’t great for the environment but are you aware your cotton tote isn’t either? Sure it’s not going to end up in the ocean or sitting around a landfill forever and ever but it has some drawbacks as well. Which isn’t to say dump it, it’s just use it as much as you can before you replace it.
In order to get the climate numbers where we need them to you know, not die, scientists have said that not just making changes to our carbon output is needed but also carbon capture. To this end, Carbon Engineering has developed a process that is effective at removing carbon from the air.
When we talk about climate change, there are a few “bad actors” on the global stage that get mentioned a lot. One of them is China and honestly, they don’t deserve it. Although they are responsible for a good deal of carbon emissions, they’re really cleaning up their act and more importantly, climate change is everyone’s problem.
