But new modeling published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that 84 percent of airborne microplastics in the American West actually comes from the roads outside of major cities.

The researchers demonstrated that with the right catalysts, both of these reactions work extremely well and produce a mix of hydrocarbons with properties similar to that of jet fuel.

That number will continue to spike up to 74 million metric tons by 2030, almost double the amount recorded in 2014.E-waste, which includes batteries, appliances, phones, screens, and cables, might seem like junk at the end of its lifecycle to the people tossing it out, but those items contain traces of valuable components like iron, copper, and gold.

Regardless, Athey and her colleagues landed on a startling figure: A single pair of jeans may release 56,000 microfibers per wash.This landed them at an even more startling figure: Those two plants alone could be unloading a billion indigo denim microfibers per day into the lake.

To power something that energy hungry, he says, means “the mass of the battery would be significantly greater than the mass of the vehicle.” Instead, the company is looking at applications where it is either impossible or impractical to regularly change a battery, such as sensors in remote or hazardous locations at nuclear waste repositories or on satellites.

While the latter number is a small fraction of the total e-waste humanity produces each year, standard electronics recycling methods don’t cut it for solar panels.

“The job of the model was to integrate the data that we could collect for all of the different geographical archetypes around the world,” says Bailey.

Its economics are supposedly simple: A company has to make more money on the resulting recycled material than what it costs to gather plastic waste and process it.So it’s more tempting than ever to just pump out more virgin plastic and let the recycling industry languish.

If oil, and therefore plastic, is cheap to begin with—and the coronavirus crisis has thoroughly cratered the price of oil—it doesn’t make economic sense for a company to process and sell recycled materials if they end up being more expensive than the virgin plastic another company is making.

For natural materials, breaking down isn't an issue, as microbes have evolved ways of digesting them to obtain energy or useful chemicals.The microbes that currently digest PET break down that ring as well, making them unsuitable for recycling.

Since early March, Sinnott-Armstrong has been making the rounds of the Bay Area’s wastewater treatment plants, collecting samples that may offer clues to Covid-19’s spread around the region.

On this episode of the Gadget Lab podcast, WIRED science writer Matt Simon joins Mike, Lauren, and Arielle to talk about where microplastic comes from, how it gets into our bodies, and what, if anything, we can do about it.

Instead, spent fuel rods are sitting at 95 nuclear plants around the country in either “fuel pools,” where the waste cools down for a few years after the rods finish producing energy, or in special steel-and-concrete casks that sit above ground like nuclear garbage cans.

Figure 2: Community Emissions Profile for Cotonou, Benin (Source: EDGE Cities) Some recommendations include the promotion of solar rooftops, public transportation, green building standards for new construction, energy performance labels for existing buildings, improved solid waste and waste water treatment, and vehicle electrification.

Like most municipal recycling programs, those cities contract with Duong’s company to collect and sort recyclable waste at its materials recovery facility, where they are baled and sent to end-market processors.

“You may think burning plastic means ‘poof, it’s gone’ but it puts some very nasty pollution into the air for communities that are already dealing with high rates of asthma and cancers.” Hugging the western bank of the Delaware River, which separates Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Chester City was once a humming industrial outpost, hosting Ford and General Motors plants.

The Water in Your Toilet Could Fight Climate Change One Day Organic matter sits in open-air tanks where microbes feed on it and release CO2 as a byproduct.

The Bank has been working with the Maldives to increase the use of renewables and has invested in a $16 million solar power project on the islands of Male and Hulhumale in the Greater Malé region.

Best case: insects that eat something people don’t , or can’t —solving a recycling problem while freeing up land to grow food for humans instead of human prey.

The 25 current members include manufacturers, consumer goods companies, retailers, converters and waste management firms, along with leaders in government and intergovernmental organizations “Compared to alternatives like glass and steel, plastics provide dramatic reductions in energy use, material consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, but it’s time to solve the problem of plastic waste in our environment and oceans,” concluded Lashier.

As we gather contributions from public and private stakeholders around the world, here’s where the conversation on transport and climate stands so far: Waste-to-energy technologies offer a promising alternative to more traditional renewable energy.

The World Bank has been actively supporting countries develop strategies, policies, infrastructure, and capacities in their solid waste management sectors. Japan is a global leader in the development and application of environmental policies in the solid waste management sector.

Reclaiming and bringing into production some of India’s wastelands could partially offset some of the projected crop production declines expected because of climate change.

Its hog farms are a major part of the state economy, with many of them concentrated in the eastern part of North Carolina, where Hurricane Florence is expected to drop 20 to 30 inches this week.

In the Carolinas this means not only homes, schools and towns but ponds of coal ash, Superfund sites, chemical plants — and thousands of industrial hog farms with lagoons filled with pig waste.

First path entirely made of recycled bottles, cups and packaging opens in Zwolle The world’s first plastic bicycle path made of recycled bottles, cups and packaging has opened in the Netherlands, as part of a pilot that could see similar roads open up across the country.

Food waste costs Australia A$20 billion each year and is damaging our planet’s resources by contributing to climate change and inefficient land, fertiliser and freshwater use. Healthy and sustainable dietary recommendations promote the consumption of fewer processed foods, which are energy-dense, highly processed and packaged.

Review: Teenagers Tackle Environmental Enemies in ‘Inventing Tomorrow’Sahithi Pingali experiments in “Inventing Tomorrow,” a documentary directed by Laura Nix.CreditCreditIQ190 ProductionsInventing TomorrowDirected by Laura NixDocumentary1h 45mMore InformationFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.I’ve seen more than a few documentaries in recent years addressing vital environmental issues, chief among them climate change, and they all have one thing in common: they’re terrifying.

Maybe it’s a good idea for the international community, and specifically the World Bank, to look into this as part of our work on solid waste management to see if we can help countries manage their waste and its consequences while contributing to their infrastructure development.

Makers of packaging for the food and beverage industry may also have similar issues, Wagner said. Moody’s analysts plan to scrutinize how the trend impacts companies, though plastic risk hasn’t prompted any change in credit ratings yet, Wagner said.