Read the full story from Michigan State University.
Most Michigan residents would prefer policymakers prioritize the environment over economic growth, finds a new survey by Michigan State University researchers.
Day: March 9, 2017
Urban jungle: saving city wildlife with trees, green roofs and pools
Read the full story in The Guardian.
From brush turkeys to powerful owls, Australia’s rarest wildlife lives in cities –protecting it has benefits for humans too.
The Latest Solution For Cleaning Up Oil Spills? It’s A Sponge
Read the full story in Fast Company.
Oil spills are catastrophic for marine environments, especially if they’re not cleaned up quickly. That can be difficult when a spill occurs in the middle of the ocean and crews can’t reach the area until hours after the oil has started to spread and sink deeper into the water. Scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory have engineered a new material called the Oleo Sponge that uses foam and oil-absorbing molecules to soak up oil both on and below the water’s surface—and after the sponge is wrung out, both the sponge and the recovered oil can be reused.
Bees Are Adapting To Our Littering By Building Nests Out Of Plastic
Read the full story in Fast Company.
Bees that usually make their homes out of leaves have capitulated to pollution and begun to incorporate man-made materials.
The high toll of costly water: Who will pay for America’s quiet water crisis?
Read the full story at Fusion.
When Elizabeth Mack wondered about a future in which Americans wouldn’t be able to pay for water, a couple of colleagues waved her off. “Don’t be ridiculous,” they said. But the idea niggled at Mack, an assistant professor at the Department of Geography, Environment and Spatial Sciences at Michigan State University. And in January, in an article published in the science journal PLOS ONE, she asks a new question: Is there a burgeoning water affordability crisis in the United States?
Mack, along with research assistant Sarah Wrase, determined that if water rates increase at projected amounts over the next five years, the percentage of households that can’t pay their water bills could triple from 11.9% to more than a third. Nearly 14 million households nationwide already struggle to afford water services. An additional 27.18 million—or 8.5% of the country’s population—could soon face the same challenges.
Corporate Sustainability Efforts Yield Millions in Increased Sales, Cost Savings
Read the full story in Environmental Leader.
Corporate spending on sustainability and circular economy initiatives is on the rise — and yielding increased sales and cost savings, according to consulting firm Pure Strategies, which says its latest survey found more than 80 percent of companies expect a sustainability budget increase from 2016 to 2017 with a third anticipating double-digit growth.
How One Community is Educating its Residents on Proper Disposal of Home Medical Waste
Read the full story in Waste360.
When household medical waste—from sharps and tubing to IV bags—is improperly disposed of in recycling containers, it slows the work at materials recovery facilities (MRFs) and can put workers’ health in jeopardy.
Recently motivated by medical waste thrown into residential recycling carts, the Region of Peel, which provides waste management services in the cities of Brampton and Mississauga and in the Town of Caledon, in Ontario, Canada, reached out to remind its 1.4 million residents what constitutes household medical waste and sharps and how they need to properly dispose of them.
Proposed NOAA Budget Cuts Would Jeopardize Essential Tools
Read the full story in Pacific Standard.
Experts say that cutting back on satellite programs is a bad idea.
New data summary report: Spotlight on Illinois’ Manufacturing Sector
In 2015, the Great Lakes Regional Pollution Prevention Roundtable (GLRPPR) began a project to analyze data from U.S. EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), Greenhouse Gas Emissions database, and the Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns database to determine the impact of manufacturing on the economy and environment of the six states in U.S. EPA Region 5. GLRPPR’s most recent paper summarizes findings for Illinois’ manufacturing sector (NAICS 311-337).
The full report, The Economic and Environmental Impact of Great Lakes Manufacturing: Snapshot of Emissions, Pollution Prevention Practices, and Economic Impact Using Public Data, is available in IDEALS, the University of Illinois’ institutional repository.
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