Read the full story from CNN.
When beaches in Cocoa Beach reopened last weekend, people flocked to the sand — and the trash came with them. While a lot of visitors did the right thing and disposed of their trash in cans, others left their items strewn on the beach, according to Keep Brevard Beautiful.
Read the full story in Philanthropy News Digest.
A large majority of people around the globe believe billionaires should contribute to and help close the funding gap for the United Nations‘ Sustainable Development Goals, a report from Global Citizen and Dutch research agency Glocalities finds.
Read the full story from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Volcanoes can pulse and inflate before they erupt. Earthquakes can tear the ground along fault lines like a losing raffle ticket. Satellites can see these landscape events from space, and, now, a new tool will help scientists to better visualize them.
This spring, a team of scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Alaska Satellite Facility released SARVIEWS 2.0, a free online service to monitor data from earthquakes and volcanoes.
Read the full story in PV Magazine.
Opposition to solar project siting can be turned into broad support by designing projects with “pollinator-friendly” landscaping — a trend gaining momentum across the country.
Read the full story in Parks & Recreation.
In Story County, Iowa, an undevelopable wild area sat in the middle of a planned commercial development. The developer, Iowa State University’s Research Park, saw the potential for an amenity rather than an obstacle. What began as discussions between the research park and the county quickly grew into multi-agency conversations about a shared vision — a learning corridor that would provide a place where people could see first-hand how the urban-rural interface was not only possible, but also could improve the economy, environment and quality of life.
Read the full story in Environmental Factor.
A new method developed by NIEHS researchers and collaborators can help assess how exposures to chemical mixtures affect human health. The approach, published Apr. 7 in Environmental Health Perspectives, could provide better evidence for public health interventions that target multiple chemical exposures at the same time. Dietary recommendations, changes in consumer behavior, and regulations of industrial sources are examples of such interventions.
Read the full story at edie.
Providing an update to Unilever’s flagship Sustainable Living Plan as it enters its 10th and final year, chief executive Alan Jope reflects on the need to double down to protect the planet and society during the pandemic by “driving a new model of capitalism”.
Read the full story in Time.
It was supposed to be a blockbuster moment for the U.S. plastic industry. With an abundance of cheap natural gas at hand, thanks to the country’s fracking boom, U.S. energy giants were pouring billions of dollars into building new plants to turn that gas into plastic. As the world was poised to slowly turn away from fossil fuels as an energy source, plastic seemed to be a feasible replacement and possibly even a potential cash cow—overseas, demand for plastic was projected to explode in the coming decades.
But the rosy projections may not be panning out. With the oil industry in freefall, and a pandemic gripping the globe, the U.S.’s other major fossil fuel play—petrochemicals, of which plastic is the biggest part—may also be in trouble.
Read the full story at Signal360.
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed many supply chains to their breaking point. But those that stayed intact offer clues for preparing for the next crisis.
Read the full story from U.S. EPA.
Today, air sensors are widely available from a variety of commercial vendors, and their use has become increasingly popular with both researchers and the public. They have been used to fill the gaps in understanding of local air quality. Despite the opportunities these air sensors provide to measure air pollutants, questions regarding their operations and performance capabilities remain.
One challenge is that air sensors often overestimate or underestimate pollutant concentrations when compared to regulatory-grade instruments operated in the same location. This is because sensors can be affected by factors like environmental conditions such as temperature and relative humidity. EPA scientists aim to account for these factors and improve the accuracy of sensor data by generating mathematical equations to ‘correct’ the sensor data.
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