Introduction to Environment & Sustainability

A new analysis of whales suggests that each one is worth about $2 million in carbon sequestration — and the global population is thus worth about $1 trillion.

How do whales sequester carbon? By eating stuff, getting big, then drifting to the bottom of the ocean after they die. This makes them carbon sinks on a scale even bigger than most trees

Source: Whales worth about $1 trillion in carbon sequestration, analysis finds

Source: Nature’s Solution to Climate Change: A strategy to protect whales can limit greenhouse gases and global warming

Many traced the issue to the 1980s when a massive flood left turmeric crops wet and relatively dull in color. Demand for bright yellow curry led turmeric processors to add lead chromate—an industrial yellow pigment commonly used to color toys and furniture—to their product. The practice continued as a cheap, fast way to produce a desirable color.

More: Researchers find lead in turmeric

There’s a new trend in tea — out with the old, flat paper tea bags and in with the pyramid-shaped mesh bags that allow bigger leaves extra breathing room. The bags, which have been around since at least 2006, are sometimes called “silken” sachets. They can be made from hemp, corn-based plastics, nylon or PET (polyethylene terephthalate). But most often it’s one of the latter two: plastics.

But research out this week in Environmental Science & Technology reveals that plastic tea bags are doing a lot more than holding on to your tea. When you steep them in hot water — AKA make tea — they break down just enough to release billions of plastic microparticles right into your beverage.

More: Plastic Tea Bags Release Billions of Microplastics Into Every Cup

In September 2018, a project in Myanmar used drones to fire “seed missiles” into remote areas of the country where trees were not growing. Less than a year later, thousands of those seed missiles have sprouted into 20-inch mangrove saplings that could literally be a case study in how technology can be used to innovate our way out of the climate change crisis.

More: These tree-planting drones are firing ‘seed missiles’ into the ground. Less than a year later, they’re already 20 inches tall.

Cheap and non-flammable, SF6 is a colourless, odourless, synthetic gas. It makes a hugely effective insulating material for medium and high-voltage electrical installations.

It is widely used across the industry, from large power stations to wind turbines to electrical sub-stations in towns and cities. It prevents electrical accidents and fires.

However, the significant downside to using the gas is that it has the highest global warming potential of any known substance. It is 23,500 times more warming than carbon dioxide (CO2).

It also persists in the atmosphere for a long time, warming the Earth for at least 1,000 years.

Read More: Climate change: Electrical industry’s ‘dirty secret’ boosts warming (BBC)

Related to comments by Edward Pullen, ABM (campus housekeeping, recycling, etc.) during the last STF meeting.

Source: Wastedrive: The Recycling Partnership launches tool to simplify recycling for consumers

The World’s Largest Electric Truck

Youtube Video

Electric vehicles are everywhere now. It’s more than just Leafs, Teslas, and a wide variety of electric bikes. It’s also trains, buses, and in this case, gigantic dump trucks. This truck in particular is being put to work at a mine in Switzerland, and as a consequence of having an electric drivetrain is actually able to produce more power than it consumes.

Read More: Electric Dump Truck Produces More Energy Than it Uses

Read More: eMining’s eDumper is the world’s largest electric truck

A New Generation of Students Is Teaching Us How to Reduce E-Waste

In colleges and universities across the United States, students are taking classes on how to repair our electronics that normally end up as e-waste.

For a decade, the right to repair movement has been quietly fomenting in technical writing classes at universities around the world.

At 80 participating colleges and universities, teachers work with iFixit—a company that provides repair toolkits for many consumer electronics—to train students to repair electronics and help others do the same at a time when device manufacturers are making it more difficult to do just that.

Read more: A New Generation of Students Is Teaching Us How to Reduce E-Waste

The climate crisis looms large for young people. We see teenagers like Greta Thunberg inspiring kids around the world to take part in political activism. Then, there are solution-seekers like Fionn Ferreira, an 18 year-old Irish wunderkind, who won the grand prize at the 2019 Google Science Fair for creating a method to remove microplastics from the ocean.

One of the major contributors to greenhouse gases is the methane that cows belch up as they break down cellulose, but five years ago, research from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation(CSIRO) found that adding small amounts of a pink seaweed called Asparagopsis to cows’ diets eliminated the gut microbes responsible for methane production and “completely knocks out” cows’ methane emissions.

Read More: Adding pink seaweed to cow feed eliminates their methane emissions