Day: June 30, 2022

Supreme Court restricts the EPA’s authority to mandate carbon emissions reductions

Read the full story at NPR.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday dealt a major blow to the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate carbon emissions that cause climate change. The decision by the conservative court majority sets the stage for further limitations on the regulatory power of other agencies as well.

By a vote of 6 to 3, the court said that any time an agency does something big and new – in this case addressing climate change – the regulation is presumptively invalid, unless Congress has specifically authorized regulating in this sphere.

AIPG MN/WI 2022 Geology and Remediation Weekend

Sep 30, 2022 – Oct 2, 2022
La Crescent Area Events Center, La Crescent, MN
For more information and to register

Join us for a gathering of professional geologists and their guests to view and listen to presentations and then visit the unique natural and human areas of SE Minnesota and SW Wisconsin. Successful remediation and investigation projects (including per fluorinated chemicals PFAS and emerging contaminants) will be showcased by local consultants, regulatory and university professionals, and students. Event participants will be offered field trip options to bluff natural areas or karst areas, and a cruise on the Mississippi River to #7 Dam.

Volvo testing next-generation zero emissions hydrogen-powered truck

Read the full story at ESG Today.

Volvo Trucks announced today plans to add new fuel cell electric trucks powered by hydrogen to its product portfolio, in the second half of this decade. The company said that it has begun testing vehicles using the new technology.

The hydrogen-powered trucks would expand Volvo’s CO2-neutral portfolio, which currently includes battery electric trucks and trucks that run on renewable fuels, such as biogas.

U of I, MWRD exploring best use of water resources

Read the full story at Farm Week Now.

Water experiments are studying today’s precipitation, ponds and streams near Cuba at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) of Greater Chicago research site. But the University of Illinois researchers and their partners also are anticipating changes in water availability for agriculture.

Both current and future water needs were discussed during the Nutrient Stewardship Field Day Tuesday at the MWRD site in Fulton County.

Will your plastic be part of a safe and sustainable economy? You’ll need to pay attention to the additives.

Read the full story at Chem Forward.

As companies work to transition to a more sustainable, circular plastic economy, toxic additives are a barrier as their presence in waste is not labeled. They risk being recycled into new products, where they could pose significant threats to human health and the environment. Overcoming this challenge is  a critical part of achieving circularity in plastics, which is itself key to tackling multiple problems presented by plastic products and waste. Making plastic packaging less toxic to people coincides with making it less polluting to the natural world. Let us explain  how.

Closed-loop additive manufacturing fueled by upcycled plastic

Read the full story from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an upcycling approach that adds value to discarded plastics for reuse in additive manufacturing, or 3D printing. The readily adoptable, scalable method introduces a closed-loop strategy that could globally reduce plastic waste and cut carbon emissions tied to plastic production.

Results published in Science Advances detail the simple process for upcycling a commodity plastic into a more robust material compatible with industry 3D-printing methods.

Developing a degradation-triggerable plastic made of vanillin

Read the full story at Phys.org.

From inexpensive mass products to tailored high-tech materials, our modern world without plastics is unimaginable. The major downside to this is the use of fossil fuels and the growing quantities of waste. A new approach could be the production of high-grade plastics made from biomass that could be made to fall apart into recyclable components. The “destruct command” would be given with light of a specific wavelength, as demonstrated by researchers in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

Upcycling protein tech co Apparo seeks partner to commercialize ‘highly functional’ sunflower protein isolates

Read the full story at Food Navigator USA.

Minnesota-based startup Apparo – which developed technology now being deployed by AB InBev on a commercial scale to extract highly functional barley protein from brewer’s spent grains – has turned its attention to another upcycled protein it reckons could have just as much potential: sunflower.

Drivers of packaging design change

Read the full story in Recycling Today.

Several brand owners and an institute share how extended producer responsibility schemes in Europe are driving packaging design changes.

Organic farming or flower strips: Which is better for bees?

Read the full story from the University of Göttingen.

How effective environmental measures in agriculture are for biodiversity and wild bee populations depends on various factors and your perspective. This is shown by agroecologists. The research team found that when assessing the effectiveness of different measures, whether in the field (organic farming) or next to the field (flower strips in conventional farming), biodiversity benefits should be evaluated differently. Like-for-like comparisons of environmental measures could easily be misleading, according to the scientists.