Tag

environment

London Marathon Replaces Plastic Bottles with Edible Seaweed Pods

About 41,000 people joined the London Marathon last May, whowere handed with edible seaweed pods for rehydration after reaching their23-mile point.

The goal was to replace about 200,000 plastic bottles withOoho seaweed capsules, made by a London-based startup, the Skipping Rocks Lab.It’s just one of the many ways the event organizers have thought to reduce theamount of generated plastic waste during the run.

According to Skipping Rocks Lab, the seaweed pods can evenbe cheaper to produce than plastic bottles, and its thin membrane is edible andtasteless.

“What we use is the building blocks of seaweed,”said one of the startup’s founders, Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez in an interviewwith CNN. “We remove all the green stuff and the smelly stuff,”Garcia Gonzalez added.

The seaweed pods decompose within six weeks if not eaten; a massive leap ahead from plastic bottles that take 450 years or more to biodegrade. At the London Marathon, it was the first time the pods were used in a humongous endurance race, involving thousands of people.

According to Garcia Gonzalez, “the London marathon is amilestone … we are hoping we will demonstrate that it can be used at scale inthe future.”

These seaweed pods can hold liquids like water or energy drinks, perfect for people on the move like marathoners, or attendees of music festivals.

“Espresso Martinis have been the most popular productat festivals, where eating the packaging is also part of the experience,”said Pierre-Yves Paslier, one of the founders of the Skipping Rocks Lab.

Partners Garcia Gonzalez and Paslier studied innovativedesign engineering in London, where the two of them met. Their company’s goalis to “make plastic packaging disappear.”

Apart from the edible liquid pods, the Skipping Rocks Lab isalso working on biodegradable alternatives for cling films and one-time-useplastic lids of coffee cups.

The London-based startup is now working on machines that canproduce the pods at a large scale. The company plans on leasing the machines tobusinesses that want to use it for creating product packages, which is one wayto solve the pressing environmental issue of plastic use.

Innovative solutions to reduce the globe’s plastic waste is highly needed now more than ever. Over the years, recycling has done little to reduce the amount of plastic waste. In fact, only 9% of 8,300 million metric tons of plastic produced have been recycled, while 12% is burnt in incinerators. 79% of the plastics produced goes to landfills or discarded improperly, some reaching the ocean.

Additionally, producing plastic bottles demands massiveamounts of water and energy. According to the advocacy group Water FootprintNetwork, to create a 500 ml plastic bottle, it requires more than five litersof water.

The London Marathon came up with other ways to run asustainable event. During the run, compostable cups are used for energy drinks,while other water bottles used recycled plastics. Some plastic containers thatare discarded are also recycled after use.

London Marathon’s event director, Hugh Brasher, said theyaim to lead the way to sustainability.

Brasher added, “the changes and the trials we’reintroducing for this year have the potential to change how mass participationevents are delivered in future.”

August 30, 2019 0 comment

World

Meal Kits Are Environment-Friendlier Than Grocery Shopping, Study Says

written by Feras Antoon

Astudy published in the scientific journal Resources, Conservation andRecycling, claims that meal kits are a better choice than grocery shopping ifyou care about the environment. But how? With all of these plastics used formeal kits, how can it be possibly better than buying one’s food stash from astore? Well, according to the study, the use of plastics is only the tip of theiceberg when it comes to carbon footprints.

Meal kits offered by brands like Blue Apron or HelloFreshprovide the convenience of gourmet food delivery. It saves their customersloads of time and effort for preparing healthy and delicious food. In thestudy, it showed that apart from convenience, meal kits also have a smallercarbon footprint when measured pound for pound. It concluded that meal kitdelivery is a better choice for the environment than buying ingredients andpreparing food at home.

In the study, researchers examined the life cycle of food from food harvesting to disposal. They found that grocery shopping results in a 33% more greenhouse gas emissions than meal kit delivery. The reduced carbon footprint of meal kits roots down to lesser food waste and a more streamlined supply chain.

Meal Kits are Environment Friendlier than Groceries

In an interview with National Public Radio, Shelie Miller,an environmental scientist at the University of Michigan and the leader of thestudy said, “folks are really focused on the plastics and packaging inmeal kits.”

“That’s important, but it’s not the full story,”Miller added.

“When you zoom out and look at the whole life cycle,packaging is a relatively small contributor to the overall environmentalimpacts of a meal. What really ends up mattering is the quantity of food wastedthroughout the supply chain,” said Ph.D. candidate at the University ofMichigan and the first author of the study, Brent Heard.

Food production is responsible for 19% to 29% of the world’sannual gas emissions. The plastic used for packaging of food is only a smallpart of food production. According to Heard, to truly see the massivecontribution of food production to yearly gas emission, we have to considerother factors than plastic-use such as fertilizer production, farm equipment,and the processes involved in food distribution.

Food waste plays a significant aspect of the food’s carbonfootprint, which is produced during distribution and consumption. Based on aU.N. report, food waste would have the third-largest carbon footprint next tothe U.S. and China if it were a country. In 2010, USDA estimated the foodwasted in the U.S., which is about 31% of the country’s food production. 10%reflected the retail level, and 21% was on the consumers.

In the study, experts claim that because meal kits deliveronly the food that a consumer needs, the amount of waste they produce off-setstheir use of plastic.

In the study, the researchers ordered five meals from BlueApron and did grocery shopping of the ingredients to produce the equivalentamount of food they ordered. Then, they prepared the food in parallel to themeal kits and “measured every bit of food, plastic, bits of cardboard,everything for each type of meal,” Miller said. “I think they had alot of fun.”

The meal kits ordered were all consumed. On the other hand, the store meals required them to buy food ingredients in larger amounts than necessary. The researchers measured the leftovers and estimated the food waste according to USDA data about consumer habits.

The researchers conducted measurements between the two mealtypes based on its life cycle: agricultural production, distribution, packagingproduction, supply chain losses, consumption, and food waste. They estimatedthe carbon footprint of the meal types for each stage.

The results showed that meal kits produce more plastic wastethan store meals, but the latter has more considerable food waste. When itcomes to distribution, meal kits also have lower gas emissions due to astreamlined supply chain. Typically, grocery stores couldn’t predict thedemand. Therefore, they buy more food than they can sell, in contrast to mealkit deliveries that go directly to consumers. Therefore, cutting down foodwaste and carbon emission.

Meal kits save a few percent of their gas emissions as thedelivery usually goes alongside mail routes. According to researchers, when itcomes to distribution, meal kits have a 4% carbon footprint, while grocerystore meals have 11%.

According to the economist, Rebecca Boehm, who studies food and environment at the Union of Concerned Scientists, “this study is a good first step towards understanding the environmental impacts of meal kits.”

“But more research will be needed to understand thewhole picture,” she added. Boehm is not involved in the research,

Miller mentioned in a press release from her university,“even though it may seem like that pile of cardboard generated from a BlueApron subscription is incredibly bad for the environment, that extra chickenbreast bought from the grocery store that gets freezer-burned and finally getsthrown out is much worse, because of all the energy and materials that had togo into producing that chicken breast in the first place.”

Millers hopes that this study broadens the way consumersthink about food and how it affects the environment. To truly see the wholepicture of the impact of food consumption on the environment, people must beaware of the other factors than plastic use.

“We really want to have people to think beyond justwhat their automatic gut reaction,” Miller said.

“Yes, plastic is bad, but it’s not necessarily thewhole environmental story,” he added.

“To understand the actual environmental impacts [offood production] and how to reduce them, we need to look at the wholesystem.”

August 23, 2019 0 comment

Business World

Britain Has Gone a Week Coal-Free

written by Feras Antoon

For the first time since 1822, Britain went coal-free, generating electricity for a week. It’s a massive leap towards the government’s pledge to completely eradicate the use of coal as an energy source by 2025.

Based on the National Grid Electricity System Operator, the coal generator stopped running since May 1, 1:24 pm and it was off the system for about week or so. National Grid Electricity System Operator handles the electricity network across England, Scotland, and Wales.

Coal-powered stations still play a significant role in the energy source of the UK, as it stands as a back-up when the power demand is high. However, due to the increase of renewable energy sources like wind power, the need for coal has become less required. The surging cost for fuel also makes it a less attractive option for energy.

This milestone of being coal-free for a week since 1822, took place only two years from the Industrial Revolution where Britain has gone a day without using coal for energy.

With today’s pressing issues about climate change and heavy pollution, the Britain government pledged to phase out the use of coal for energy by 2025.

According to the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), decreasing the coal use since 2013 reduced the emissions from electricity generation to half. This report from CCC resulted in the UK’s objective to have net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Director of National Grid ESO, Fintan Slye believes that Britain can achieve a zero-emission electricity system by 2025.

“Zero-carbon operation of the electricity system by 2025 means a fundamental change to how our system was designed to operate – integrating newer technologies right across the system – from large-scale offshore wind to domestic-scale solar panels to increased demand-side participation, using new smart digital systems to manage and control the system in real-time,” Slye said in an interview with The Guardian.

Business secretary, Greg Clark, commended Britain’s milestone, saying that the UK is “on a path to become the first major economy to legislate for net-zero emissions.”

In the government’s world-changing challenge to be emissions-free, some of its policies still face criticisms. According to Chris Stark, CCC’s chief executive, proposals for VAT increase on solar panels and the government’s failure to adequately support onshore wind power generation makes the goal more difficult towards a carbon-free electricity system.

On the business committee, Stark said, “we will need to throw everything at this challenge, including onshore wind and solar.”

“Anything that makes it harder is really not in line with the net-zero challenge overall,” he added.

Watch this video on the subject:

August 9, 2019 0 comment

Tech

100% Clean Energy for California

written by Feras Antoon

California is now the second US state mandating transition to 100 percent clean energy by 2045. Hawaii is the first state to commit in emission-free energy sources.

According to a report from CBS, the California Assembly passed S.B. 100, the proposal to move the state to 100 percent clean electricity sources in less than 30 years.

The bill passed with 43 to 32 votes, as climateassessment.ca.gov released a detailed report exposing future effects of climate change. The report found that California could lose up to two-thirds of its beaches and a comparable amount of the state’s water supply. Additionally, summer heat would rise to 5 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit, and yearly wildfires would soar up to 75%.

The majority of residents in California agrees to the bill. About 72 percent thinks moving to 100 percent energy is a good step. However, the minority, including some businesses and utilities aren’t in favor due to job-related concerns.

Clean Energy for California

Currently, California acquires only one-third of the state’s energy from solar, wind and geothermal sources. The information from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, also found that the other 9 percent of the nation’s largest state come from nuclear plants. While 49 percent of California’s energy source is natural gas, which is a “cleaner” fossil fuel.

Supporters of the bill, such as Dan Jacobson, Environment California’s state director believes that the state, which is also the world’s fifth-largest economy, would set an example for the rest of the nation to utilize other sources of electricity besides fossil fuel.

In 2017, Hawaii was the first US State that committed to 100 percent emission-free energy.

Clean Energy for California

November 9, 2018 0 comment

Tech World

Electric Buses Are Becoming a Threat in the Oil Industry

written by Feras Antoon

Many of us didn’t see it coming, but electric buses are taking the world by storm. The reality far from what happened at an industry conference in Belgium seven years ago where electricity-powered vehicles were seen as a joke. The Chinese manufacturer BYD Co. showed the first electric bus model in the said conference, and now it seems the company had the last laugh.

“Everyone was laughing at BYD for making a toy,” said Isbrand Ho, the company’s managing director in a statement with Bloomberg. “And look now. Everyone has one.”

Buses with battery-powered motors are becoming the potential revolutionary-triggers towards the transformation of city transport. China is the leading manufacturers of these electric buses that are a serious threat to the oil industry.

In 2017, China produced 99 percent of the 385,000 electric buses worldwide. 17 percent of the coaches in China are battery-powered. 9,500 electric buses are created by the nation every five weeks, which is equivalent to the entire number of buses in London. The jaw-dropping numbers came from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

With this amount of zero-emissions transport being used all over the world, it’s no surprise that the demand for oil has substantially reduced. Buses consume 30 times more fuel than the regular passenger sedans, like what the companies Tesla Inc. to Toyota Motor Corp. produce.

Electric Buses

According to the calculations from BNEF, every 1000 electric buses replaces 500 barrels of oil in the market. BNEF expects that this year, a rise of 37 percent of not needed fuel to 279,000 barrels per day may be observed due to battery-powered vehicles including cars and light trucks. According to BNEF, it’s the same amount of fuel that Greece consumes. About 233,000 of those barrels account for buses.

“This segment is approaching the tipping point,” according to the head of advanced transport at the London-based research unit of Bloomberg LP, Colin McKerracher. “City governments all over the world are being taken to task over poor urban air quality. This pressure isn’t going away, and electric bus sales are positioned to benefit.”

Based on non-profit Berkeley Earth, China contributed to the deaths of 1.6 million people in 2015 due to over-population, high demands for energy, and pollution leading to the country’s deadly smog. One of the nation’s crucial steps in preventing the situation from getting worse is by creating battery-powered buses and other types of vehicles.

Ten years ago, Shenzhen was one of the most polluted cities in China. Due to the region’s notorious smog, the government decided to run a pilot program for energy conservation and zero-emissions transport in 2009. After two years, BYD established a headquarters on Shenzhen where they produced battery-operated buses. In less than a year, all of Shenzhen’s buses were zero-emissions.

Electric Buses

Around 2016, BYD holds 13 percent of China’s electric buses. The company produced 14,000 of the vehicles in Shenzhen. Ho said in an interview with Bloomberg that BYD could produce 15,000 vehicles a year, and now it has built 35,000 battery-operated transport.

Ever since BYD produced electric buses, the company estimates, their vehicles logged 10 billion miles and had saved 1.8 billion gallons of fuel. According to Ho, their zero-emissions transport helped avoid 18 million mass of carbon dioxide pollution each year. It’s the same amount of pollution that 3.8 million fueled cars produce.

“The first fleet of pure electric buses provided by BYD started operation in Shenzhen in 2011,” Ho told Bloomberg. “Now, almost ten years later, in other cities the air quality has worsened while—compared with those cities—Shenzhen’s is much better.”

Cities all over the globe are also moving towards the zero-emission transport change. 13 cities including Paris, London, Mexico City and Los Angeles committed to this fully adopt it by 2025.

Electric Buses

In fact, London already has electric buses in the city’s four routes. London’s single-decker units in the city center are being transformed into electric-powered vehicles. By 2037, London plans to clean its public transport and make it all emission-free, including the city’s retrofitting 5,000 old diesel ones.

The shift towards emission-free transport of these cities will have an impact in the oil market. Just a single network in London draws 1.5 million barrels of fuel a year. For every 1,000 buses, 430 barrels of fuel a day will be displaced from the market if the entire city goes emissions-free. According to BNEF, that’s 0.7 percent of United Kingdom’s diesel consumption.

In 2017, there were 344 battery-operated and electric-hybrid buses across the UK. BYD has its fingers-crossed to be picked as one of the suppliers who will add to the amount of transport. The company partnered with a bus manufacturer based in Scotland, who will provide the batteries for the 11 emissions-free buses that will hit the road in March.

The Alexander Dennis Ltd. in Falkirk has become the leader in the production of electric buses European market since 2016. The company has more than 170 vehicles in U.K. alone.

“The tech is ready,” Ho told Bloomberg. “We are ready, we have our plants in China, and Alexander Dennis in Scotland is geared up for TfL. Once we’re given the word, we are ready to go.”

Enjoy this video that sheds light on the Proterra Electric bus setting a world record for distance traveled on a single charge:

October 12, 2018 0 comment

Business Tech World

Apple Is Now Running on 100% Sustainable Energy

written by Feras Antoon

Apple’s data center in Reno, Nevada is made up of five huge white buildings lined up, side by side, on the dry land off I-80 with connecting corridors of quarter-mile long. This headquarters is gigantic, and it’s where Siri, iCloud, Apple Music, and Apple Pay lives. Their humble abode is 50 spacious, dark rooms that have 200,000 identical servers with blinking lights on their front panes.

Just imagine how much energy this massive data center needs. It requires a constant supply of power to work and to cool off. For Apple, it gets its uninterrupted energy source from its different solar farms.

Apple’s first solar farm is the Fort Churchill. It’s near Yerington town in Nevada where an empty, flat dry land lies, surrounded with rugged hills. From the main road, you’ll see long and seemingly endless lines of solar models with concave mirrors focusing on the sun’s direction.

The tech giant’s many other sources of renewable energy look similar to Churchill. The company’s massive data centers demand loads of uninterrupted power flow, and Apple was able to reach their goal to run all the computing machines on 100% renewable energy in 2014.

However, the 100% figure only pertains to the firm’s private operations. It doesn’t include the company’s suppliers and manufacturers, which do a significant portion of work when bringing ideas into life. However, Apple said it’s getting the rest of its facilities to work on green energy including its distribution centers and retail stores around the globe. The tech giant has also convinced 23 companies in its supply chain to use renewable energy on the parts of their business related to Apple products.

Apple Running on Sustainable Energy

Over the past six years, the conglomerate has been financing and building renewable energy sources near the company’s facilities. They were able to establish 25 renewable energy projects in different parts of the world, and there are 15 more on-going constructions. From 16% eight years ago, Apple had 93% of their facilities running on 100% renewable energy by 2015. In just one year, they quickly increased the number to 96%.

Apple’s serious moves towards its green energy goals began in 2013 when the company hired Lisa Jackson as the VP of environment, policy, and social initiatives. Jackson is also the former EPA administrator. CEO Tim Cook put Jackson in the position, so she can focus on the company’s environmental projects and act as a representative to Washington, D.C.

“If you look at our trajectory, for the last couple of years we’ve been close to 100%,” Jackson said in a statement with Fast Company.

“It’s just four percent more, but it’s four percent done the right way. So this announcement feels like a classic Apple product release. Like our products, we sweat the details, we have pretty strict standards, and we prefer to wait and meet our standards than to rush and make a claim.”

Jackson is a chemical engineer from New Orleans. She talks unhurriedly, plainspoken, and is frank about what she has seen and done over the five years she’s worked with Apple.

Apple’s primary goal over the company’s 100% green energy venture lies in reducing harmful emissions from fuels. Since 2011, the company lowered its greenhouse gas emissions (CO2e) by 58%. It’s equivalent to 2.2 million metric tons of CO2e preventing to reach the atmosphere. Apple’s attempts don’t end with numbers, though. The company has been urging places in establishing new solar and wind farms places by working with regulators and local utilities. According to Jackson, the multi-national prioritizes implementing its green energy ambitions in markets where the majority of power sources come from ecologically unfriendly such as coal or oil.

Apple Running on Sustainable Energy

“It’s an approach that’s really important because you’re growing the clean energy market around you,” Jackson says.

Former Vice President Al Gore who is also Apple’s board member since 2003 believes the company is sending a message that going green can also be useful for business. “It is proving the business case that well-managed companies can reduce the greenhouse gases that are causing the climate crisis while simultaneously reducing their energy costs,” Al Gore said in a statement to Fast Company.

“Its efforts are transforming the way the tech sector uses power, both domestically and around the world.”

August 31, 2018 0 comment

World

Great Pacific Garbage Patch & the First-Ever Ocean Cleaning Machine

written by Feras Antoon

A piece of candy wrap may look small and harmless, but it can kill thousands of sea creatures when thrown out to the ocean as garbage. There’s a massive amount of plastics in the sea that’s slowly destroying our water. It’s a fact that motivated scientists to create and launch the first-ever ocean-cleaning machine that’s set to gather the planet’s biggest plastic trash.

The idea initially came from a teenager. It’s made of a system that will be shipped to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch this summer. The patch located between Hawaii and California was discovered in 1997, which contains 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic trash. This step is the world’s first attempt to solve the issue about our sea garbage.

According to experts, the sea-cleaning machine should be able to gather half of the plastic waste in the patch, which is about 40,000 metric tons within five years.

Developers of the system have been working together to form giant tubes that will be placed on top of the ocean, serving as the skeleton of the sea-cleaning machine. Once done, it will be the most massive floating sea barrier in history.

The GPGP or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch stretches about 617,763 sq. miles, twice the size of France. Researchers found last month that it now contains at least 79,000 tons of plastic garbage, mostly made up of “ghost gear.”

Ghost gear are fishing gears that have been lost or abandoned in the sea. It’s made up mostly of nets and cords that are usually used as illegal fishing tools.

More than 100,000 sea creatures such as dolphins, whales, and seals die each year because of ghost gear. Based on scientific surveys, besides fishes, the number of seabirds dying due to plastic trash increases every year as well. These animals were found to have a stomach full of small plastics that cause their death.

Ocean Cleaning Machine

Many sea creatures mistake the plastics as food. The animals eat the garbage discarded in the sea, making them starve to death. Other marine life gets trapped and die of starvation due to plastic, get strangled, or suffocated.

According to US-based Plastic Oceans Foundation, humans dump about 8 million tons of plastic to the sea every year. 90 percent of these plastic wastes are never recycled. Experts believe that each plastic still exists somewhere or in other forms, in landfills or the environment. Each plastic waste, especially single-use plastic, takes 450 years to decompose.

The first-ever system that tackles gigantic plastic sea-trash is designed by a non-profit technology company, The Ocean Cleanup. The system came from Dutch inventor Boyan Slat when he was 18 years old and was studying aerospace engineering.

“The plastic pollution problem has always been portrayed as something insolvable. The story has always been ‘OK, we can’t clean it up – the best we can do is not make it worse’. To me that’s a very uninspiring message,” according to Mr Slat in his interview with independent.co.uk.

“What I really hope is that the ocean clean-up in this century can be a symbol for us using technology to make things better.”

The machine consists of 40ft plastic pipes, formed together to create a long, snake tube. The tube will be filled with air, so it can float on the ocean surface in an arc, where nylon screens are attached, hanging below under the sea, forming a giant dustpan. The dustpan will be able to catch the plastic sea wastes that are being carried by the water current. However, the screens won’t be able to collect microplastic or tiny fragments. The Sea creatures will be able to escape the nets by swimming underneath them.

Ocean Cleaning Machine

The non-profit org, Ocean Cleanup, plans to launch the system and begin de-cluttering starting from the shores of San Francisco Bay. They’re set to work by July, which will eventually extend further.

The team plans to use 60 giant floating pipes that’ll reach a mile from end to end. Then, every six to eight weeks, boats will collect the garbage gathered by the machines.

Inventor, Mr. Slat, was 16 when he saw the ocean trash with his own eyes while driving in Greece. It was the first time he witnessed the massive amount of garbage polluting the ocean.

“There were more bags than fish down there,” Mr. Slat said in an interview.

Two years after, Mr. Slat, invented a solution. When he reached his sixth month in the university, he decided to quit and established The Ocean Cleanup as a company.

The company was able to raise £1.57m from their crowdfunding campaign. In addition to later investment, they now have a total of £28.56m. The Ocean Cleanup has 65 paid staff, including researchers and engineers.

“We as [a] humanity created this problem, so I think it’s our responsibility also to help solve it,” Mr. Slat said.

Slat, 23, believes that the first batch of plastic trash that will be brought to the shore will be a significant milestone.

According to Mr. Slat in his interview with Fast Company, “Most of the plastic is still large, which means that in the next few decades if we don’t get it out, the amount of microplastics can be tenfold or 100-fold. It’s this problem that’s waiting out there to magnify many times unless we can take it out.”

Enjoy this short video that explain the situation :

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ocean-plastic-cleanup-machine-great-pacific-garbage-patch-launch-boyan-slat-a8317226.html

August 10, 2018 0 comment