china

China And Plastic Waste

April 26, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In January 2018, China enacted its “National Sword” policy which banned the import of most plastics and other materials headed for that country’s recycling processors. Those processors had handled nearly half of the world’s recyclable waste for the past quarter century. China took this step because the deluge of soiled and contaminated materials was overwhelming its processing facilities and creating yet another environmental problem for the country, this time not even of its own making.

Prior to China’s ban, 95% of the plastics collected for recycling in the European Union and 70% in the U.S. were sold and shipped to Chinese processors. A combination of favorable rates for shipping in cargo vessels that carried Chinese goods abroad and low Chinese labor rates made it a very profitable enterprise.

Before China’s ban, only 9% of globally discarded plastics were being recycled and 12% were burned. The rest ended up in landfills or simply dumped into the environment. Over the coming decade, as many as 11 million tons of plastic will have to find a new place to be processed or otherwise disposed of. There is already evidence that plastic waste is accumulating in countries that are dependent on exporting. In many places, including a number of American cities, there are curtailed collections and new restrictions on what kinds of plastics are accepted.

Some experts are hopeful that China’s ban might actually have an upside if it leads to better solutions for managing the world’s waste. North America and Europe need to expand processing capabilities and manufacturers need to make their products more easily recyclable. Mostly, the Chinese ban should be a wake-up call to the world on the need to greatly reduce single-use plastics.

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Piling Up: How China’s Ban on Importing Waste Has Stalled Global Recycling

Photo, posted August 8, 2017, courtesy of Sino-German Urbanisation Partnership via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Rosewood Trade

April 3, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Illegal trafficking in endangered flora and fauna is a topic of great interest and concern. We hear a lot about elephant ivory, rhino horn, and even pangolin scales. It turns out that the most trafficked form of flora or fauna in the world is actually rosewood. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, rosewood is traded more than ivory, rhino horn, and pangolin scales put together as measured either by volume or economic value. According to Earthsight, a London-based nonprofit that investigates environmental crime, rosewood might account for 40% of overall illegal species trade.

Almost all rosewood is headed to China, where the beautiful wood is used in traditional hongmu furniture. A single bed made from particularly desirable Madagascar rosewood can cost a million dollars.

The illegal rosewood trade has decimated many species of the trees around the world. A tiny village in Madagascar has seen its population grow by 5,000 in recent years because of migrants coming to work as rosewood loggers. The rosewood trade has been banned in Madagascar for decades, but a well-established system of bribes has effectively eliminated that problem. Corruption at all levels allows Madagascar rosewood to find its way onto ships and off to China.

In 2017, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora listed all of the world’s rosewood species under its Appendix II, prohibiting all trade except in the rare cases where a local CITES authority issues sustainability permits.

As is the case for other trafficked endangered species, until the demand for the products disappears, people will find a way to make them available. And meanwhile, these beautiful trees are rapidly disappearing.

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The Rosewood Trade: An Illicit Trail from Forest to Furniture

Photo, posted November 17, 2007, courtesy of Larry Jacobsen via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Sand Mining And The Environment

April 2, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In discussions of the environment, we don’t hear much about sand mining. But sand mining is the world’s largest mining endeavor, responsible for 85% of all mineral extraction. Sand and gravel are mined on a huge scale around the world. The UN estimates that the total exceeds 40 billion tons a year. Most of this activity is unregulated and unmeasured, and much of it is corrupt and environmentally destructive.

Concrete is the predominant use for sand. Every ton of cement requires six to seven tons of sand and gravel in order to make concrete. But sand also makes up 90% of asphalt on roads and it is used for land reclamation in places like Singapore. Sand is also widely used in industries such as glass manufacturing and fracking.

There are different sorts of sand. Desert sand is mostly useless for making concrete because its grains are too rounded by erosion and don’t bind well in the concrete. Marine sand is not great for concrete either because it has to be washed clean of corrosive salts.

As a result, salt miners mostly get sand from pits on land and dredged up from lakes and riverbeds. Dredging massive quantities of sand from rivers and lakes drastically alters river flow, erodes riverbanks, dries up tributaries, lowers water tables, and trashes wetlands and fisheries. In many countries, this even goes on in national parks where officials turn a blind eye to the activity. India is the world’s second-largest sand mining country (after China) and widespread illegal extraction occurs throughout the country run by highly organized and even violent “sand mafias.”

Sand mining is a huge problem and, to date, is one that is pretty much off of most people’s radar.

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The Hidden Environmental Toll of Mining the World’s Sand

Photo, posted June 3, 2017, courtesy of Andrey Talalov via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Sustainable Plastics

January 28, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

According to the United Nations, plastic accounts for up to 90% of all the pollutants in the ocean. Conventional plastics take hundreds of years to decay, so all the plastic that gets into the oceans piles up and endangers marine life and pollutes the environment. Unfortunately, there are few comparable, environmentally friendly alternatives.

An often-proposed solution is bioplastics, which are not made from petroleum and degrade quickly. The downside of bioplastics is that growing the plants or bacteria used to make the plastic requires fertile soil and fresh water, which are scarce commodities in many places.

One such place is Israel. So, researchers there at Tel Aviv University have developed a process to make a bioplastic polymer that doesn’t require land or fresh water. The new polymer is derived from microorganisms that feed on seaweed. It is biodegradable, produces zero toxic waste and recycles into organic waste.

The polymer is called polyhydroxyalkanoate, or PHA for short. The raw material is multicellular seaweed, cultivated in the ocean. These algae are eaten by single-celled microorganisms, which also grow in salty seawater and produce a polymer that can be used to make bioplastic. PHA is already produced in commercial quantities, but it is currently made from plants that require agricultural land and fresh water. The new process would enable countries with limited fresh water, such as Israel, China and India, to switch from petroleum-based plastics to biodegradable plastics.

Plastics from fossil sources are one of the world’s biggest pollution problems. The new study shows that it is possible to produce bioplastic completely based on marine resources in an environmentally-friendly process.

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Sustainable ‘plastics’ are on the horizon

Photo, posted March 14, 2015, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Smog And Solar Power

January 22, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

China has been struggling with some of the worst air pollution in the world. Beijing frequently sits under a brown blanket made of exhaust gases from industry, cars and coal fires, which dump harmful particulate matter, soot, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the air.

The human health consequences are severe. According to the World Health Organization,air pollution contributes to about 1.6 million premature deaths in China each year. World-wide, air pollution is implicated in over 7 million deaths annually.

Faced with this air pollution crisis, China has undertaken a wide variety of measures to improve its air and curb carbon dioxide emissions alongthe way. Among other things, China has invested heavily in the deployment of solar power and has plans for ever greater expansion of solar power in the future.

A study by researchers at ETH in Zurich looked at the impact of China’s air pollution on the production of solar energy. The smog in China’s cities reduces the amount of solar radiation that reaches the ground and therefore significantly reduces the power output of solar energy systems. According to the study, solar radiation would increase by an average of 11% nationwide as a result of strict air pollution control measures. In some places, cleaning up the air would result in 26% more energy production.

China’s electric power industry is the world’s largest electricity producer, having passed the United States in 2011. Two-thirds of the electricity in China still comes from coal, which, apart from the serious climate and health consequences associated with its use, continues to make it more difficult to switch to clean solar power. Much work remains to be done.

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Fighting smog supports solar power

Photo, posted February 7, 2014, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Problem Of Urban Growth

January 2, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The rapid expansion of cities around the world has accelerated in recent decades. If current trends continue, the equivalent of a city the size of London could be created every seven weeks by the year 2050, according to a study at Texas A&M University.

Cleaner Air For China

December 5, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

For more than 15 years, the Chinese government has been grappling with some of the deadliest air pollution in the world. Extreme pollution events are a regular wintertime occurrence and health experts estimate that more than a million people die each year in China from particulate air pollution.

Trading Rhino Horn And Tiger Bone

November 21, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Historically, rhino horn and tiger bone were used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat various illnesses, despite the lack of any evidence of their effectiveness. In fact, rhino horn is simply keratin, a protein that is found in human fingernails and hair. Rhino horn is used to treat everything from cancer to gout in traditional Chinese medicine. Similarly, a paste made from crushed tiger bone is thought to treat a variety of ailments, including rheumatism and back pain.

How To Measure Carbon Emissions

November 5, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Paris climate accord by nearly 200 countries seeks to reduce global carbon emissions. But how can the actions of these countries be monitored, reported, and verified? It is not an easy task.

Electric Buses On The Rise

November 2, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Electric buses are replacing conventional diesel-fueled buses at an accelerating rate that is outpacing the adoption of battery-powered cars. According to forecasts by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, by 2030 some 28% of car sales will be electric vehicles while 84% of new buses will be electric buses. So far, some 12 years away, the actual adoption of electric buses is outpacing this optimistic projection.

A Million Electric Cars

September 25, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Last year, China was the first country to reach the milestone of having one million electric cars. This year, China will add another million plug-in vehicles. Of course, with its huge population, China sells four times as many cars in total per year as any other country.

Carbon And North American Forests

September 24, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Researchers have for the first time calculated the capacity of North American forests to sequester carbon. The detailed analysis by UC Santa Cruz and collaborators in China and Arizona considers two key factors: the natural process of forest growth and regeneration, and effects brought about by climate change.

Traffic Air Pollution And Health

July 27, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

There are frequent stories in the news about the terrible air pollution problems in major Chinese and Indian cities. With pollutant levels far in excess of any recommended safety thresholds, the air in these places represents a health crisis.

Bursting The Carbon Bubble

July 25, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

One way or another, the fossil fuel industry seems to be destined to shrink away. A combination of technological advances and climate policies are going to drastically reduce the global demand for fossil fuels over the course of time. New research shows that the demise of the fossil fuel industry will have profound consequences.

Trouble With China And Climate Progress

July 12, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

With the United States backing away from the Paris climate agreement and with Europe taking a less active role in climate negotiations, China has become the bellwether on global climate change. Recent climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany were rather acrimonious as countries accused other countries of not doing their part or keeping their promises.

Green Solutions To Storm Water Runoff

July 5, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Philadelphia, America’s fifth largest city, has struggled with storm water runoff problems since the days of Benjamin Franklin. The city’s numerous streams that run into the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers were eventually covered with brick arches or cemented into underground sewers. The network of underground-to-riverfront outfalls through increasingly-larger pipes is pretty much how all U.S. cities have been coping with storm water for over 200 years.

Tourism And Greenhouse Gas Emissions

June 29, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Tourism is a significant contributor to global gross domestic product. Furthermore, it is growing at an annual rate of 4%, more than many other economic sectors. There are many places around the world where it is the largest industry. But until recently, there really wasn’t very good information about its carbon footprint.

Renewable Energy Jobs

June 26, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

According to a new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency, more than half a million new jobs were generated by the renewable energy industry last year, an increase of 5.3% when compared with 2016. The total number of people working in the renewables sector – which includes large hydropower facilities – has now exceeded 10 million people worldwide.

Climate Change And Temperature Variations

June 20, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

It’s no surprise that not everyone on the planet is equally responsible for the effects of climate change. For instance, the Northern Hemisphere, which is home to 13 of the 15 largest countries by GDP, emits far more greenhouse gases than the Southern Hemisphere does. But the whole planet heats up as a result.

An Electric VW Bus

June 19, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

For baby boomers, the Volkswagen bus was the iconic vehicle of the 1960s counterculture. It was introduced in 1950, was popular among Gen Xers coming of age in the 1980s, and lasted in one form or another until 2013, when the last one was built in Brazil.

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