Day: December 13, 2019

Books, Climate change

Novels To Give Your Favorite Climate Change Skeptic This Holiday Season

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Read the full story in the Chicago Review of Books.

These books aren’t just great stories; they might also help to broach the subject of climate change in a non-threatening way. According to a recent study on the effects of climate fiction on readers, “almost half (48.4 percent) of respondents discussed the [cli-fi] book they had read with friends or family, which often occasioned conversations about climate change.” If books can lead to conversations, and conversations can lead to change, why not give try giving the gift of good literature? To help, here’s a list of some of my favorite cli-fi books that you might consider giving the climate change skeptic in your life this year.
Recycling, Video

Opinion: The Great Recycling Con

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Watch the video from the New York Times.

In the Video Op-Ed above, we debunk a recycling myth that has lulled us into guilt-free consumption for decades.

This holiday season, the United States Postal Service expects to ship almost one billion packages — cardboard boxes full of electronics and fabric and plastic galore. And the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that Americans generate 25 percent more waste in the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s than during the rest of the year, an additional one million tons per week.

But hey, most of it is recyclable, right?

Well, not really.

Packaging, Sustainable design

New sustainable label material based on grass paper

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Read the full story at Packaging Strategies.

Grass — or rather sun-dried hay, to be specific – is a major component of this eco-friendly paper by HERMA. Processing these fibers for paper production is very resource-friendly and generates very little CO2, compared with paper produced from fresh fibre or even recycled cellulose.

Energy efficiency, Green business

Starting simple with sustainability

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Read the full story in IndustryWeek.

These small steps have been a giant leap for companies’ bottom lines.

Scientific publishing

Predatory journals: no definition, no defence

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Read the full story in Nature.

Leading scholars and publishers from ten countries have agreed a definition of predatory publishing that can protect scholarship. It took 12 hours of discussion, 18 questions and 3 rounds to reach.

Environmental justice, Natural resources, Urban ecology, Workplace issues in STEM

Seeing himself in the science

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Read the full story in the University of Washington Magazine.

Ecologist Christopher Schell believes that tapping into who he is as a person makes his research better.

Climate change, Energy, Green business, Water

Water efficiency is key To climate action, says Ecolab

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Read the full story at Triple Pundit.

Many companies looking to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change are in a bind. They want to transition to net-zero carbon emissions, but it’s often unclear how to reach that goal. 

The water, energy and hygiene solutions firm Ecolab is the latest to commit to a net-zero trajectory—pledging to halve emissions by 2030 and zero them out by mid-century, while signing on to the U.N. Global Compact’s Business Ambition for 1.5⁰C campaign. 

Though executives admit they don’t know how they’ll get there, they’re following a roadmap that could work for anyone: Put one foot ahead of the other, and the rest will follow.

Wildlife

The octopus from outer space

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Read the full story from Seattle Met.

Seattle’s most beguiling sea creatures were once feared and hunted—and even wrestled—for sport. But new research and a few surprising encounters are changing how we view them. A story in eight parts.

Food and beverage manufacturing, Materials science, Packaging, Sustainable design

Researchers use banana plants to create eco-friendly packaging

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Read the full story from FoodBev Media.

Researchers in Australia have discovered a way to turn banana plantation waste into packaging material that they say is biodegradable and recyclable.

Climate change, Communicating science, Public opinion polls

Americans are warming up to climate science, survey shows

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Read the full story at Triple Pundit.

The majority of people in the U.S. now agree that human activity is influencing climate change, according to a recent poll conducted by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation. Further, those viewing climate change as a “crisis” has leapt from 23 percent to 38 percent in the past five years.

These findings are in line with several other recent surveys (here and here for just two examples). It is likely no coincidence that minds began to change during a time period peppered with extreme weather events, such as five major hurricanes, successive extremely hot years, wildfires and riparian flooding. Local television meteorologists have also become more inclined to cite climate change as a contributing factor to extreme weather events in recent years.

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