Day: July 27, 2018

Spring Is Springing Sooner, Throwing Nature’s Rhythms Out Of Whack

Read the full story from NPR.

There’s a cycle that starts when the snow melts and the earth thaws high in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. It’s a seasonal cycle based on timing and temperature, two variables that climate change is pushing increasingly out of sync.

To the outsider, it can be hard to see: Plants still grow, flowers bud, bears awake, and marmots breed. Broad-tailed hummingbirds still trill around a landscape that evokes the opening scene of The Sound of Music, with flowery meadows and granite peaks.

But those who know this ecosystem will tell you something is a little off. The flowers are blooming earlier. The marmots are mating in early May. Spring is springing sooner across the Northern Hemisphere, changing natural cycles around the world.

In Alaska, brown bears are changing their feeding habits to eat elderberries that ripen earlier.

In California, birds are nesting and breeding a week earlier than they did a century ago.

Beavers released in Forest of Dean as solution to flooding

Read the full story in The Guardian.

Four hundred years after the beaver was hunted to extinction in the UK, two of the mammals have been reintroduced on government land in an English forest as part of a scheme to assess whether they could be a solution to flooding.

The crane who fell in love with a human

Read the full story in the Washington Post Magazine.

Early one summer morning, as rain is misting the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a middle-aged man is courting a crane. Chris Crowe, 42, bends forward in a slight bow and then flaps his arms slowly, like wings. “Hey, girl, whatcha think,” he coos.

Walnut has heard that line before. The stately bird ignores Crowe, reshuffles her storm-cloud-gray wings, and snakes her head gracefully to the ground, looking for something tasty to eat.

Why recycling is now a money loser, not a moneymaker for Philly

Read the full story from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Five years ago, Philadelphia was getting paid good money by contractors for recyclables — about $65 a ton.

By last year, it was paying $4 a ton just to get rid of it. Now, it’s paying $38 a ton.

The change has not gone unnoticed. That plastics and other scraps meant for recycling are ending up in landfills — at a cost to taxpayers — was an issue raised through Curious Philly, our new question-and-response forum that allows readers to submit questions about their community in need of further examination.

The future of recycling for people, packagers, policymakers

Read the full post at WasteDive.

Recycling is a bigger part of the public conversation than it has been in years, if not decades, as ripple effects continue to emanate one year afterChina’s import ban announcement.

As this disrupts global trade flows, reshapes local recycling programs and creates new investment opportunities, it has also resurfaced long-running questions about whose responsibility it is to ensure the whole enterprise remains viable.

Without a national policy in place, the short answer is often that it’s everybody’s responsibility. Brands and packaging manufacturers have a role in thinking about what they sell. Consumers have a role in what they buy and what happens once they’re finished using it. MRF operators have a role in responsibly managing the material that reaches their lines. State and local policymakers have a role in shaping long-term environmental goals and regulating regional systems.

Yet for all of the work going on across these sectors, true accountability often remains elusive. Waste Dive caught up with four people for their take about how this might be a turning point for a new era of recycling.

TimberFish Launches IndieGoGo to Raise Trout on Brewery Waste and Wood Chips

Read the full post at The Spoon.

TimberFish Technologies‘ eponymous technology promises to offer a more palatable alternative to aquaculture. The company launched in 2008 and have so far raised or won $260K, which they used to build a test facility at Five & 20 Spirits & Brewing facility in Westfield New York.

There, they feed their fish not with animal parts or corn, but with a combination of nutrient-rich wastewater from food processors (such as breweries, distilleries, and wineries) and woodchips. Microbes grow on the woodchips, small invertebrates (like worms and snails) eat the microbes, and the fish eat the invertebrates. The fish poop is grub for the microbes, and the whole cycle starts again.

Sustainability in Treasury: A View Beyond Financing

Read the full post at HSBC.

There have historically been questions around whether or not treasuries can actively contribute towards their companies’ sustainability objectives. However, in an age where sustainable financing has become more readily available, treasuries now have a seat at the table and are more engaged in helping to drive the sustainability agenda for their firms. As Lance Kawaguchi, Managing Director, Global Head – Corporates, Global Liquidity and Cash Management at HSBC explains, there are several other areas that corporate treasurers can focus on in today’s environment to influence their sustainability goals positively.

Plastic Packaging Alternative Derived From Crab Shells and Trees

Read the full story in R&D Magazine.

A new material made from substances common in crab shells and tree fibers could replace the flexible plastic packaging used to keep food fresh.

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology sprayed multiple, alternating layers of chitin—a fibrous substance consisting of polysaccharides that is present in shellfish, insects and fungi—and cellulose, a biopolymer present in plants and trees, to form a flexible film that can compete with plastic packaging film.

Lawsuit: Blame Monsanto for widespread Kansas crop losses

Read the full story in FastCompany.

A new lawsuit alleges that Monsanto knew that a potent herbicide would harm crops that weren’t resistant, but sold a product based on it anyway. As a result, potentially thousands of acres of crops that weren’t resistant to the herbicide died, the lawsuit says. The legal complaint was filed by 4-R Farms, which lost 200 acres of soybeans, the Topeka Capital-Journal reports.

Old Landfill in Wisconsin Gets New Life

Read the full story at Fox11.

A new conservation park is now open for business at what used to be a dump in Oshkosh, Wis.