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Earth Wise offers a look at our changing environment. Eco-friendly business practices, the latest environmental news, and how nature impacts our environment in ways never before considered.

Latest Articles

AI and greener cement

July 28, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 28, 2025

Cement pretty much holds the modern world together.  The amount of cement required to create our infrastructure is almost incomprehensible.   By weight, humanity consumes more cement than food, about 3 pounds per person per day.  The cement industry produces around eight percent of global CO2 emissions, which is more than the aviation industry.  So, if […]

Raccoons are popular and prevalent in Europe

Raccoons in Europe

July 25, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 25, 2025

Tens of thousands of raccoons live in Kassel, a city of 200,000 people in central Germany known for its art scene.  Overall, there are an estimated 1.5 million raccoons in Germany.  The omnivorous mammals are native to North America, but they were brought to Germany in the 1930s for fur farming.  Fur farming ultimately ceased […]

Deconstructing buildings to reduce waste

Deconstructing buildings

July 24, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 24, 2025

An estimated 30 million tons of wood waste from construction and demolition in the U.S. ends up in landfills each year.  A growing number of cities have launched initiatives to reuse the wood instead.  It is a strategy to reduce carbon emissions, cut waste, and shift towards a circular economy. For a long time, salvaged […]

Biochar and poultry farm pollution

July 23, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 23, 2025

Poultry farms are a significant source of air and water pollution.  In the US, they are the largest source of ammonia emissions, followed by dairy and non-dairy cattle farms. Poultry farms emit over two million tons of ammonia per year. Ammonia is not directly produced or excreted by the birds but is a common by-product […]

Engineers are working on a more efficient method to cool data centers

More efficient cooling for data centers

July 22, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 22, 2025

Increasing reliance on digital technologies in general and artificial intelligence in particular are dramatically increasing the energy consumption of data centers.  Data centers consume far more energy per square foot than other commercial buildings.  By the year 2030, data center energy consumption in the US is projected to reach 9% of the country’s electricity generation.  […]

Marine heatwaves are spreading around the world

Marine heatwaves are spreading

July 21, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 21, 2025

Sea surface temperatures broke records in 2024 and a quarter of the world’s oceans are experiencing temperatures that qualify as a marine heatwave.  A marine heatwave is a prolonged period during which ocean temperatures are significantly warmer than average for that specific location and time of year.  Unusual heatwaves have occurred in all the major […]

A recycling lottery

July 18, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 18, 2025

Getting people to recycle isn’t always easy.  The bottled beverages we buy at the supermarket often require a small deposit that we can get back by recycling the bottle, but often, we just don’t. Researchers from the University of British Columbia tested the idea of giving people returning bottles a small chance of winning a […]

Developing technologies to waste less wastewater

Wasting less wastewater

July 17, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 17, 2025

Ultra-pure water is essential for multiple industries, for example semiconductors, batteries, and pharmaceuticals, as well as food and beverage companies.  Such water is produced by various processes including desalination plants that use reverse osmosis.  The byproduct of the processing is industrial brine:  salty wastewater. The brine produced by desalination is generally dumped into the ocean […]

Planting trees to cool the planet

July 16, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 16, 2025

Planting lots of trees is one of many strategies being pursued to combat climate change. Forests absorb carbon dioxide, provide shade, and help regulate temperatures. They also support biodiversity and improve air and water quality. According to a new study by researchers from the University of California – Riverside, restoring forests to their pre-industrial extent […]

Hidden hydrogen

July 15, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 15, 2025

The idea of using hydrogen as a fuel or an energy source has been around for a long time.  Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, but most of it is locked up in various chemical compounds, such as water.  Hydrogen is a clean fuel; burning it or using it to generate electricity […]

Climate change is harder and more expensive to produce food

Climate change and hunger

July 14, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 14, 2025

Worldwide, people are producing more food than ever, but most of that production is concentrated into only a handful of places.  For example, fully one third of the world’s wheat and barley exports come from Ukraine and Russia.  Across the globe, several major crop-growing regions, including some in the United States, are heading towards sharp […]

How outdoor pollution can impact indoor air quality

Indoor air and outdoor pollution

July 11, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 11, 2025

The majority of us spend about 80% of our time indoors.   The quality of the air that we breathe depends on the age and type of building we occupy along with any sources of indoor pollution that may exist and, ultimately, the quality of the air outdoors.  The HVAC used to heat, ventilate, and cool […]

Extending the shelf life of produce

July 10, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 10, 2025

More than 30% of the world’s food is lost after it has been harvested.  That’s enough to feed more than a billion people.  Much of that loss is fruits and vegetables that go bad before they can be eaten. Refrigeration is the most common way to preserve foods, but the energy and infrastructure required is […]

New nuclear power plant is coming in New York

New nuclear power for New York

July 9, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 9, 2025

Nuclear power has been around since the 1950s, but it has fallen out of favor in recent decades, in part due to a couple of traumatic disasters at nuclear power plants.  In fact, only two new nuclear power plants have been built in the US in the past 30 years, and they took a very […]

Birds cannot outfly climate change

Can birds outfly climate change?

July 8, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 8, 2025

As global temperatures continue to rise and ecosystems shift, animals are left with limited options. They must either adjust to the changing conditions in their habitats or relocate to cooler environments. For many species, neither choice is easy – or sometimes even possible. Ecologists had long assumed birds were among the most adaptable species in […]

More trouble from sea urchins

July 7, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 7, 2025

Sea Urchins are real troublemakers.  On the West Coast, the sea urchin population exploded when the sunflower sea stars that eat them were decimated by a wasting disease.  Urchins devour kelp and they ate up 96% of the region’s kelp forests.  Kelp forests serve as shelter and food for a vast array of marine life […]

Paris has waged a successful battle against air pollution

Solutions for cleaner air

July 4, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 4, 2025

Air pollution is a problem for most of the world’s cities.  Many cities in India and China continue to face major public health crises due to their polluted air.  American cities also don’t escape from polluted air.  Californian cities still struggle with smog despite decades of effort to reduce it.  But one major city that […]

A record amount of forest was lost last year

Record forest loss

July 3, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 3, 2025

The world lost a record amount of forests last year.  The biggest factor for the unprecedented losses were wildfires that raged around the world. According to the annual update by the University of Maryland and the World Resources Institute, pristine rainforests alone lost 17 million acres, which was nearly twice as much as in the […]

Global warming continues and the planet cannot withdraw from its consequences

It’s only getting warmer

July 2, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 2, 2025

Climate science is not popular with the current administration.  Phrases like “climate crisis”, “clean energy”, and “climate science” itself are prohibited from websites, reports, regulations, and other communications by government employees and federal funding recipients.  Once again, the United States is turning away from climate mitigation efforts and will have a drastically reduced ability to […]

A creative solution to save birds from buildings in Chicago

Saving birds from buildings

July 1, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:00 | Recorded on July 1, 2025

Researchers estimate that hundreds of millions of birds die hitting buildings every year in the United States.  Striking buildings is believed to be one of the major factors behind the nearly 30% decline in North American bird populations since 1970. Chicago is one of the most dangerous cities for migrating birds based on its location […]

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