Read the full story at e360 Digest.
The shutdown of hundreds of coal-fired power plants in the United States over the past decade has saved an estimated 26,610 lives, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. This closure of coal plants also has reduced carbon dioxide emissions and lowered air pollution and ozone levels, and has even increased nearby crop yields, the study found.
Read the full story at Food Navigator.
Quorn, the world’s largest meat alternative brand, has said it plans to adopt carbon labelling. ‘We believe all food brands should do the same,’ marketing director Alex Glen tells FoodNavigator.
Read the full story at Food Navigator.
Public pressure to find solutions to plastic pollution means companies are ‘on the verge’ of swapping to other materials with ‘new, and potentially greater, environmental consequences’, a new report warns.
Read the full story in Fast Company.
‘Vogue Italia’ replaced photo spreads with drawings to reveal the environmental cost of making a fashion magazine. The stunt doesn’t offer any real solutions.
Read the full story and view the photos at Insider.
Los Angeles has had air pollution problems since before smog was a term. In 1943, people began to notice the smog when it covered Los Angeles so thickly that residents thought Japan had launched a chemical attack. The city continued to have smog problems for decades. President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, which introduced air pollution regulations, and it was a major factor in combating the city’s smog problem.
Read the full story at Leapsmag.
While research on climate anxiety—or, more broadly, the effects of climate change on mental health—has been slowly but surely piling up, the actual experience of diagnosing and treating it is less well-documented in both media and academia. An ongoing Yale University study of American perceptions of climate change shows an increasing proportion of concern: In 2018, 29 percent of 1,114 survey respondents said they were “very worried” about climate change, up from 16 percent in 2008. But there are no parallel large-scale studies of whether a similar proportion of people are in therapy for climate change-related mental health issues.
Read the full story in Waste360.
Natural Machines has created a 3D food printer called Foodini, which uses food rather than ink to “print” dishes and reduce food waste.
Read the full story in Nature.
Researchers need guidance on how to handle published work whose ethics have been questioned, argue Graeme D. Ruxton and Tom Mulder.
Read the full post from the Rocky Mountain Institute.
In farming, companion planting of certain crops in close proximity can provide an array of benefits, from pest control, to flavor enhancement, to increased productivity. The same concept can be applied to rural solar projects, which have the opportunity to integrate with other land uses such as crops or pollinator-friendly plantings and create win-win outcomes for rural communities.
Read the full story in GreenBiz.
Exactly 20 years ago, in late December 1999, I put pen to paper at a friend’s house in East London and began to write a personal manifesto for the new millennium.
The resulting document, “Sustainability is Dead — Long Live Sustainability” (PDF), had a short, modestly viral life. It was emailed around the internet, released by my book publishers as a standalone tract, condensed into a magazine article, included in university courses and ultimately anthologized in Marco Keiner’s “The Future of Sustainability” (Springer, 2006).
Environmental News Bits 