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The Cost Of Air Pollution | Earth Wise

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The environmental consequences of burning fossil fuels are a dominant topic.  The increasing changes in the climate have far-reaching effects across the globe and are a growing geopolitical crisis.  But the climate effects of fossil fuel emissions are by no means the only problem they cause.  

A new report by the Center for Research on Energy and Clear Air has, for the first time, attempted to quantify the global economic and health impacts of fossil fuel-caused air pollution.  In total, the estimate is that the economic and health costs of air pollution from burning fossil fuels totaled $2.9 trillion in 2018, calculated in the form of work absences, years of life lost, and premature deaths. The cost represents 3.3 percent of global GDP, or about $8 billion per day. 

The study focused on the health impacts of three specific types of pollutants:  nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and fine particulate matter, which has the greater impact.  Collectively, these pollutants cause about 1.8 billion days of missed work due to disease and $2.2 trillion in air pollution costs every year. Together, air pollution from these three pollutants is responsible for 4.5 million premature deaths around the world each year.

According to the report, the most premature deaths from fossil fuel-related air pollution in 2018 were in mainland China (1.8 million), India (1 million), and the United States (230,000). As a result, those three countries also faced the highest annual costs: $900 billion in China, $600 billion in the U.S., and $150 billion in India. 

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Toxic Air: The Price of Fossil Fuels (Full Report)

Photo, posted November 17, 2019, courtesy of Kristoffer Trolle via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Safer Disposal Of Printed Circuit Boards | Earth Wise

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Printed circuit boards are key elements of modern electronic devices that support and connect all of their electronic components.  On average, they are composed of 30% metallic and 70% nonmetallic substances.

Once the circuit boards have served their purpose, they are often burned or buried in landfills, and can pollute the air, soil, and water.  The biggest problem is that they have brominated flame retardants added to them in order to keep them from catching fire.  Compounds in brominated flame retardants have been linked to endocrine disorders and fetal tissue damage.

Many circuit boards are recycled to recover valuable materials – generally the metals they contain.  But recycling has its own problems.  Metallic components can be recovered from crushed circuit boards by magnetic and high-voltage electrostatic separations.  When the metals are removed, what remains are resins, reinforcing materials, brominated flame retardants, and other additives, which are of little value and present various dangers.

Researchers at Sun Yat-sen University in China have developed a ball-milling method to break down these potentially harmful compounds, enabling safe disposal.  A ball mill is a rotating machine that uses small agate balls to grind up materials. The researchers also added iron powder, which helps remove bromine from organic compounds by breaking the carbon-bromine bonds in the flame retardants.  The result was particles with half of their bromine content removed as well as decomposition of phenolic resin compounds.

The ever-increasing proliferation of device technology had led to a new set of pollution and waste challenges facing society.  Research on ways to reduce the impact of high-tech garbage is an important need for society.

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Toward safer disposal of printed circuit boards

Photo, posted February 18, 2018, courtesy of Diego Torres Silvestre via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

American Households and Food Waste | Earth Wise

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Food waste is a big problem.  According to the United Nations, approximately one-third of the food produced globally – more than 1.4 billion tons – goes to waste.  If food waste was a country adding carbon to the atmosphere, it would be the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases – behind only the U.S. and China.  All of this food waste takes place in a world where 815 million people – more than 10% of the people on the planet – are chronically undernourished.

A new study recently published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics has analyzed the level of food waste for individual American households. It found that American households waste, on average, nearly one-third of all the food they acquire.  This wasted food has an estimated aggregate value of $240 billion annually.  Divided by the number of U.S. households, this food waste could be costing the average household about $1,866 per year. 

According to researchers, the households with higher household incomes generate more food waste.  Those with healthier diets, which include more perishable fruits and vegetables, also waste more food.  

Meanwhile, households with greater food insecurity, especially those that participate in the federal SNAP food assistance program, as well as those households with a larger number of members, were associated with less food waste.  Households that use shopping lists and those that travel further to reach the grocery store were also associated with lower levels of food waste. 

When food is wasted, the resources used to produce food, including land, energy, water and labor, are wasted as well.  We have to do better. 

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SAVE FOOD: Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction

US households waste nearly a third of the food they acquire

Photo, posted March 22, 2009, courtesy of Nick Saltmarsh via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Problem Of Gas Flaring | Earth Wise

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Gas flaring is the burning off of flammable gas released by pressure relief values during over-pressuring of plant equipment at petroleum refineries, chemical plants, natural gas processing plants, and a variety of oil and gas production plants.  Flaring is also used during plant startups and shutdowns.

A new study by Rice University concludes that reducing gas flaring would benefit both the environment and the economy. Flaring and venting of gas in West Texas’s Permian Basin and certain other parts of the U.S. have reached levels that the intended result of burning gas to allow oil extraction now looks more like wasting one resource to produce another.

At current rates, enough gas is flared in the Permian Basin to yield nearly 5 million metric tons of exportable liquid natural gas if it was captured and liquified.  At these rates, the wasted gas could fill the largest sized LNG carrier every ten days.  If that liquified natural gas was exported to China and used in a power plant, it would displace 440,000 metric tons of coal burned to generate electricity.

Burning natural gas to heat homes, power industrial processes, or generate electricity all emit carbon dioxide, but at least these things also perform valuable functions. Flaring gas produces CO2 as well as other combustion products but doesn’t even do anything useful.  The venting of unburned gas, which also takes place with some frequency, is even worse since it is dumping methane directly into the atmosphere.

Across the U.S., some 14.1 billion cubic meters of natural gas was flared in 2018, equivalent to nearly 9 million metric tons per year of LNG.  In energy terms, that is equivalent to more than one-third of the total LNG volume U.S. firms actually exported that year.

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Reducing gas flaring will benefit economy and environment, says Baker Institute expert

Photo courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Potential For Offshore Wind

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According to a new report from the International Energy Agency, offshore wind technology has vast potential for meeting our energy needs.  In total, offshore wind has the potential to generate more than 420,000 terawatt-hours of electricity each year, which is more than 18 times the global electricity demand that exists today.

Based on current policy targets and plummeting technology costs, offshore wind could increase 15-fold by 2040, becoming a $1 trillion industry and eliminating 5 to 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

Offshore wind today generates just 0.3% of the world’s electricity, but its’ use is growing rapidly.  The industry has grown nearly 30% a year since 2010, and 150 new offshore projects are currently in development around the world.  The leading countries are in Europe – especially in the UK, Germany, and Denmark – but China is greatly expanding its offshore capacity and the US, India, Korea, Japan, and Canada are also expected to make large investments in offshore wind going forward.

Offshore wind is in a category of its own because it is considered a variable baseload power generation technology.  This is because the hourly variability of offshore wind is much lower than solar power or onshore wind.  Offshore wind typically fluctuates far less from hour-to-hour than the other variable energy sources.

Technology improvements and industry growth are driving steep cost reductions for offshore wind.  The cost of offshore wind is expected to be cut in half in the next five years, dropping to $60 per megawatt-hour, which is on par with solar and onshore wind and cheaper than new natural gas-fired capacity in Europe.

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Offshore Wind Has the Potential to Fulfill Global Electricity Demand 18 Times Over

Photo, posted August 9, 2016, courtesy of Lars Plougmann via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Electric Buses In Latin America

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Latin America has become increasingly urbanized.  In fact, about 80% of the region’s population lives in cities today and by 2050, that figure could climb to 90%.  Transportation is the largest and fastest-growing source of energy-related emissions in Latin America and accounts for about a third of all of the region’s carbon dioxide emissions. 

Private vehicle ownership is rising in Latin America but at the same time, the region’s rapidly growing cities have increased demand for buses, taxis, and motorcycles.  Currently, an estimated 64,000 people die prematurely every year in Latin America and the Caribbean as a result of air pollution, which is mostly caused by transportation emissions.

Given this situation, major cities across Latin America – from Colombia to Argentina – are starting to adopt electric bus fleets.   Latin America actually has the highest use of buses per person globally.  So, the transition to electric buses is an important step toward meeting climate targets, cutting fuel costs, and improving air quality.

Medellin, Colombia – whose metropolitan area has 3.7 million people – has started to add electric buses to its fleet, the rest of which runs on natural gas.  When new units arrive from China later this year, Medellin will have the second largest electric bus fleet in Latin America, after Santiago, Chile. 

Worldwide, 425,000 electric buses are in operation, 99% in China.  Europe has a couple of thousand while the United States has only 300.  But going forward, and especially in Latin America, electric buses are the wave of the future.  Estimates are that there will be 1.3 million on the roads by 2040.

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An Increasingly Urbanized Latin America Turns to Electric Buses

Photo, posted April 22, 2018, courtesy of Hans Johnson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

China And Rare Earth Mining

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Rare earth elements are a crucial part of much of modern technology.  Everything from computers to X-ray machines and aircraft engines needs one or more rare earth elements for magnets, lenses, and other functions.  The world’s tech giants such as Apple, Huawei, and Tesla depend on suppliers of rare earths.

Rare earth elements are not actually rare, but they are very expensive to extract in ways that are not extremely harmful to the environment.  China has been a major source of these elements since its rare earth mining industry took off in the 1990s.  The removal of rare earths from the earth’s crust, using a mix of water and chemicals, has caused extensive water and soil pollution.

Today, concrete leaching ponds and plastic-lined wastewater pools dot the hills of Southeast China.  Large wastewater ponds sit uncovered and open to the elements in many places.  Landslides or barrier failures can spill contaminated contents into waterways or groundwater.

Local and federal officials in China have started to shut down illegal and small-scale rare earth mining operations and have embarked on a cleanup of polluted sites.  The rare earth mining cleanup operation is part of wider efforts across China to address severe problems of water, air and soil pollution.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology estimated that the cleanup bill for southern Jiangxi Province could amount to more than $5 billion.  Many environmental experts and local officials say that the cost of the cleanup should not be shouldered by the Chinese government alone, but also by the rare earth industry and the global companies and consumers that benefit from rare earth technology.  As rare earth mining efforts start up elsewhere around the world, it is important not to repeat the mistakes made in China.

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China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining

Photo, posted April 21, 2019, courtesy of John Beans via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Meeting Climate Goals With Current Energy Infrastructure

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The Paris Climate Agreement set forth a goal to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius as well as a more optimistic (and preferable) goal of keeping the temperature rise to less than 1.5 degrees.  Reaching either of these goals requires getting to net-zero emissions by the middle of the century.

A new paper, published in Nature, looks at the issue of whether existing power plants and other fossil-fuel-burning equipment (including vehicles) can continue to operate until they age out of functionality, or whether they need to be retired early.

The results of the study are that future emissions from existing facilities would take up the entire carbon budget needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and almost 2/3 of the budget needed to keep warming below 2 degrees over the next 30 years.

So, the good news is that we can still avoid a 2-degree rise without having to shut down all the existing power plants early.  But we would definitely have to stop building new things with smokestacks and tailpipes that dump CO2 into the atmosphere. 

That good news is tempered by the fact that the number of fossil fuel-burning power plants and vehicles in the world has increased dramatically over the past decade, spurred by rapid economic and industrial development in China and India.  In fact, China is predicted to produce more than 40% of all the carbon emissions over the next 30 years.

The 2-degree climate goal is not at all the most desirable result.  The 1.5-degree target would be far better for the climate.  But if the world is to achieve it, there will be dramatic changes needed in the existing infrastructure – either shutting it down or retrofitting it to drastically reduce emissions.

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Two-Degree Climate Goal Attainable Without Early Infrastructure Retirement

Photo, posted March 5, 2010, courtesy of Tennessee Valley Authority via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Fighting Climate Change With Trees

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We cut down forests all around the world for a myriad of reasons, including livestock grazing, agricultural production, timber, and urban development.  But what if we stopped cutting down forests for these things and additionally grew new forests on vacant lots and any other available parcels of land on earth?  What impact could this have on our survival? 

For the first time, scientists have quantified what impact this plan could have.  According to a new study by researchers at ETH Zurich – a university that specializes in science, technology, and engineering – the planet could support nearly 2.5 billion additional acres of forest without shrinking current cities and farms.  When all those acres of forest mature, the trees could store an extra 200 gigatons of carbon.  This reforestation could stave off the most devastating impacts of global climate change. 

Russia could restore the most acres of forest – 373 million acres to be precise – followed by the United States with 255 million acres and Canada with 193 million acres.  Australia, Brazil, and China also have large areas well-suited for forest restoration. 

The average global temperature has risen by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the start of the industrial age with its surge in greenhouse gas emissions.  Temperatures are projected to rise even more in the coming years as the planet continues to warm.   

Trees absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in their roots and branches.  The absorbed carbon becomes part of the soil when trees die and decompose, and it can linger there for millennia depending on things like temperature and soil management.  Trees are critical in the fight against climate change. 

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How trees could save the climate

Photo, posted June 18, 2011, courtesy of K.W. Barrett via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Lots Of Renewable Energy Jobs

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According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, there were 11 million people employed in renewable energy worldwide in 2018.  This compares with 10.3 million in 2017.  So roughly three-quarters of a million new jobs were added last year.   As more and more countries manufacture, trade and install renewable energy technologies, renewables jobs continue to reach new high levels.

The geographic footprint of renewable energy jobs is changing.  Until now, renewable energy industries have remained relatively concentrated in a handful of major markets such as China, the US, and the European Union.  But more recently, East and Southeast Asian countries have emerged alongside China as key exporters of solar technology.  Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam were responsible for a greater share of growth in renewables last year.  Overall, Asia has a 60% share of renewable energy jobs worldwide.

Beyond climate goals, low-carbon economic growth has become a driver for renewables technology.  Renewables deliver on all the major elements of sustainable development:  environmental, economic and social.

The solar photovoltaic industry continues to be the most dynamic renewable enterprise.  It accounts for a third of the renewable energy workforce with more than three million jobs.  

Biofuel jobs were up by 6% to over 2 million.  Wind power supports 1.2 million jobs, with onshore projects predominant.  But the offshore wind segment is gaining traction.  Hydropower is still the largest installed capacity of all renewables but is now only expanding slowly.  The hydropower sector employs 2.1 million people directly, three-quarters in operations and maintenance.

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Renewable energy market employs 11 million in 2018 – IRENA

Photo, posted January 11, 2012, courtesy of the Oregon Department of Transportation via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Banning The Shark Fin Trade

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Shark fins are considered a delicacy in many parts of the world, especially in China.  Shark fin soup, for example, is often served at engagement parties and weddings.  But the use of shark fins has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, especially since an estimated one-third of fins are harvested from species deemed at risk.  

Many of the fins used in shark fin soup come from a practice known as “finning,” which is an inhumane and wasteful practice where the fins are hacked from live sharks and then the sharks are thrown back into the water and left to die.  According to U.N. estimates, 73 million sharks are killed every year for their fins.

The possession, sale, and distribution of shark fins is banned in 12 U.S. states, as well as in all European Union member states.

In 1994, Canada banned the practice of finning in its own waters, but allowed the import of fins to continue.  Canada has been one of the largest markets for shark fins outside Asia, importing nearly 300,000 pounds of shark fins last year.  But in late June, Canada passed a bill that bans both the import and export of shark fins harvested by shark finning.  They are the first G7 and the first G20 country to do so. 

But shark fins taken from sharks sustainably harvested for their meat will continue to be allowed in Canada.  While demand for shark fins is decreasing globally, demand for shark meat is rising.

Since sharks still face a myriad of environmental pressures, including illegal fishing and high bycatch rates, there are concerns that this Canadian ban oversimplifies the threats facing global shark populations. 

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Canada becomes the first G20 country to ban shark fin trade

Photo, posted January 4, 2013, courtesy of Andrew Currie via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Return Of An Old Threat

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The 1987 signing of the Montreal Protocol was one of the biggest victories for global environmental stewardship. The 197 signatory nations banded together to address a planetary emergency:  the depletion of the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere resulting from the use of chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs.

Over the years, there were celebratory headlines like “The Earth’s Ozone Hole is Shrinking” and “Without the Ozone Treaty, You’d Get Sunburned in 5 Minutes”.  And indeed, the hole in the ozone layer has shrunk over time.

However, the presence of CFCs in the atmosphere is continually monitored and studies in recent years reported new emissions of about 13,000 tons of CFC-11 a year from somewhere in eastern Asia starting in 2012.  That was two years after the 2010 date for ending all CFC production under the terms of the Montreal Protocol.

A new study published in Nature has pinned down the source of more than half of the new CFC emissions to the provinces of Shandong and Hebei on the northeastern coast of China.  The bulk of these emissions are believed to come from small factories using the chemical to manufacture foam insulation used in refrigerators and buildings.

The Chinese government has already shut down two manufacturing locations, but undercover agents have found that 18 out of 21 manufacturers in the region are using the banned substance.  They appear to be quite adept at circumventing enforcement.

The new emissions aren’t large enough so far to be catastrophic, but the Chinese government needs to crack down on this illegal activity.  It is difficult to stop because these are small companies operating in meth lab-like facilities.  Saving the earth’s atmosphere from ourselves is a tricky business.

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How an Illicit Chemical Is Jeopardizing Recovery of the Ozone Layer

Photo, posted July 28, 2012, courtesy of Beth Scupham via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Utility-Scale Solar On The Rise

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According to research from Goldman Sachs, utility-scale solar power capacity is expected to grow by double digits globally over the next two years.  The growth will be driven by expanding use of the technology in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and China.

Solar power is the world’s fastest growing source of electricity generation and is slowly taking market share from fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.  The transition is being driven by a combination of continuously lower prices for solar power and the impact of policies aimed at reducing emissions.

Utility-scale solar is defined as installations designed solely to feed electricity into the grid, in contrast to smaller-scale residential or commercial building units.  There are now solar farms larger than half a gigawatt in generating capacity.  According to the Goldman report, global utility-scale solar installations will reach 108 gigawatts in 2019, up 12% over the previous year, and will then grow another 10% to 119 gigawatts in 2020.

When residential and other smaller installations are included, most analysts expect global solar power capacity to soon hit 600 gigawatts.  To put this in perspective, the global capacity only reached 100 gigawatts in 2012 and was actually less than 10 gigawatts in 2007.

Even more dramatic than the growth of solar installations is the reduction in solar cost, and the two are obviously closely related.  Solar panel costs have dropped from around $70 per watt of electricity generated in 1980 to 36 cents per watt currently in the United States.  When favorable policies both from governments and related to corporate sustainability targets are added to the mix, the booming growth in solar power is easy to understand.

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Large-scale solar power set for double-digit growth: Goldman Sachs

Photo, posted March 7, 2019, courtesy of Hedgerow Inc via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Shipping And Invasive Species

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The increasing numbers of invasive species around the world are a major driver of biodiversity change and cause billions of dollars in economic damages annually.  Climate change is a major factor in the spread of invasive species, but a new study by McGill University suggests that global shipping growth will far outweigh climate change in the spread of non-indigenous pests to new environments in the coming decades.

One of the most significant ways in which the disparate regions of the world are interconnected is via transportation networks.   The global shipping network is the primary means by which materials and goods are moved worldwide, accounting for over 80% of world trade.  And for this reason, the global shipping network is responsible for much of the introduction of non-indigenous species across the planet.

Living organisms are often transported through ballast water, which is taken up to stabilize cargo vessels.  Other species are transported by biofouling, whereby they attach to the hulls of ships.  Taken together, these two pathways account for anywhere between 60 and 90% of marine bioinvasions.   (Terrestrial invaders are generally moved as a byproduct of shipping, for example by infesting wood packaging material).

The McGill study looked at trends in global shipping and how socioeconomic factors are driving change.  For example, China’s share of global container throughput has gone from 1.4% in 1990 to 20.1% in 2013.  So, the distribution and patterns of shipping have been changing dramatically and with it the spread of non-indigenous species.

Awareness of this issue is increasing.  For example, there have been policy initiatives such as the International Ballast Water Management Convention that is an effort to control bio-invasions through measures such as ballast exchange.  We need to take measures to limit the unintentional spread of species.

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Global forecasts of shipping traffic and biological invasions to 2050

Photo, posted December 3, 2009, courtesy of Roger W via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

China And Plastic Waste

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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