network

Deconstructing buildings

July 24, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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 wood was a niche pursuit by people who valued the fine grain and enduring quality of older wood. Reclaimed old-growth lumber offers character and strength. These people pursued construction that uses wood with a story – timber recovered from historic structures, collapsing barns, and other demolished buildings.

Now, there are multiple companies in the business of salvaging wood from buildings. Cities and businesses are embracing the use of reclaimed materials. Ordinances in cities like Portland, Oregon, Boulder, Colorado, and San Antonio, Texas require older buildings to be taken apart for repurposing their materials. Palo Alto, California has banned demolition completely.

Portland was the first U.S. city to require old residential homes to be deconstructed. After a decade, contractors have deconstructed more than 650 homes in the city, salvaging 2,000 tons of reusable wood.

Using reclaimed wood in local buildings stores carbon and reduces emissions by avoiding the need to cut new trees, process materials, and ship them long distances.

Deconstructing buildings is not a widely available skill. Contractors have to be trained on how to dismantle buildings piece by piece. But there is now a national registry of deconstruction trainers and a network of practitioners.

**********

Web Links

Deconstructing Buildings: The Quest for New Life for Old Wood

Photo, posted May 16, 2018, courtesy of Alexandre Prevot via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Hot water in Boise

May 9, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Boise is the capital of Idaho, and the Idaho Statehouse is the only one in the United States to use geothermal heat. Geothermal heating is possible in Boise because of fault lines that expose its groundwater to hot rocks. The underground water supply in Boise is heated to around 170 degrees Fahrenheit. It is the basis of the largest municipally-run geothermal system in the country.

People in Boise began using this natural resource to supply heat to buildings in the 1890s by drilling wells into aquifers that yielded hundreds of thousands of gallons of piping hot water a day. The water heated pools and public baths, a Victorian mansion, and, eventually, hundreds of homes in what was called the Boise Warm Springs Water District.

The number of buildings that the city of Boise heats with its geothermal resource has grown more than sixfold over the past 40 years. The water is drawn from wells in the nearby foothills and pumped into a closed-loop network of pipes that reach into buildings. In each building, the geothermal heat is transferred to water in separate adjoining pipes that distribute the heat throughout the building. The well water goes back to the aquifer to be heated again.

Today, there are four separately run geothermal water systems in Boise. One is run by the city, another by the Boise Warm Springs District, and two others that serve the Capitol and Veterans Affairs Buildings.

In 2024, city officials calculated that using geothermal heat reduced annual carbon dioxide emissions by 7,000 tons, the equivalent of removing 1,500 gas-powered cars from the road each year.

**********

Web Links

They’re in Hot Water in Idaho. Here’s Why That’s a Good Thing.

Photo, posted May 26, 2010, courtesy of Jason W via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Restoring English hedgerows

January 14, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Hedgerows are lines of different types of bushes and small trees growing very close together typically placed between fields or along the sides of roads in the countryside. The network of hedges throughout rural England dates back to the Bronze Age, or even possibly Neolithic times. As the first farmers began clearing areas of land for cultivation, they left strips of trees as boundaries. Hedgerows act as field boundaries but also protect livestock, support biodiversity, and help mitigate climate change.

There are currently about 250,000 miles of hedgerows in England. However, about half of these important habitats were lost in the post-WWII years due to agricultural intensification. Furthermore, a 2007 survey found that fewer than half of remaining hedgerows were judged to be in good structural condition.

The UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology has set a target to create or restore 45,000 miles of hedgerow by 2050. While the overall length of managed hedgerows in England has not changed much since 2007, the proportion in good structural condition has improved significantly and hedgerow height has increased.

England’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs aims to create or restore 30,000 miles of hedgerow by 2037. However, the Climate Change Committee recommends that the national hedgerow network be increased by 40% by 2050 and the organization Natural England’s long-term aspiration is a 60% increase in hedgerow extent to support thriving plants and wildlife.

For more information on this topic and other environmental news visit us at: earthwiseradio.org or Find us on Facebook.

**********

Web Links

Urgent need to enable more farmers and contractors to revive England’s network of hedgerows

Photo, posted May 27, 2016, courtesy of Dave S. via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Fungus And Carbon Storage | Earth Wise

July 26, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

It is well-known that plants and trees store enormous amounts of carbon. What has not been common knowledge is that the vast underground network of fungi across the world’s lands stores billions of tons carbon, roughly equivalent to 36% of yearly global fossil fuel emissions.

These mycorrhizal fungi form symbiotic relationships with almost all land plants. The fungi transport carbon, converted by sugars and fats by plants, into soil. They have been supporting life on land for at least 450 million years and form sprawling underground networks everywhere – even beneath roads, gardens, and houses – on every continent on earth.

An international team of scientists analyzed hundreds of studies looking at plant-soil processes to understand how much carbon is being stored by fungi on a global scale. The findings, published in the journal Current Biology, revealed that over 13 billion tons of CO2 is transferred from plants to fungi each year, more than China emits annually. This process transforms the soil beneath our feet to a massive carbon pool and constitutes the most effective carbon storage activity in the world.

Given that fungi have such a crucial role in mitigating carbon emissions, the researchers are recommending that fungi should be considered in biodiversity and conservation policies. More needs to be done in protecting the underground networks of mycorrhizal fungi. The UN has warned that human activities are degrading soils and that 90% of the world’s soils could be degraded by 2050. Not only would this obviously be very bad for the productivity of crops and plants, but we now know this could be catastrophic for curbing climate change and rising temperatures.

**********

Web Links

Fungi stores a third of carbon from fossil fuel emissions and could be essential to reaching net zero

Photo, posted May 28, 2023, courtesy of Geoff McKay via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Shipping And Invasive Species

May 7, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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.

**********

Web Links

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.