Read the full story from Evanston Patch.
In a third year of its annual environmental book award, the Evanston Public Library has named joint winners.
Library staffers launched the Blueberry Awards in 2021 because no other American Library Association award exclusively honored nature books that promote climate stewardship, according to library officials.
The Senate Environment Committee is holding a hearing this morning on PFAS as hazardous substances. Witnesses include:
Download the fact sheet. You can find more information about the final rule on EPA’s website.
On March 18, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced amendments to the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) for integrated iron and steel manufacturing facilities. This final rule will limit emissions of hazardous air pollutants (HAP) previously unregulated from these sources, including mercury, hydrochloric acid, and dioxins/furans. This final rule affects all integrated iron and steel manufacturing facilities engaged in the production of steel from iron ore and includes the processes of sinter production, iron production and iron preparation (hot metal desulfurization).
RMI’s Accelerating Clean Regional Economies (ACRE) initiative works with economic development organizations, policymakers, business, labor, and community stakeholders to help plan and support regional green growth investment strategies and the policy frameworks needed to accelerate them. ACRE recently focused on the Great Lakes region.
Competitiveness, Constraints, & Coordination: A Strategy For Accelerating Energy Transition Investment In The Great Lakes is a summary of ACRE’s research into the dynamics of clean energy-based economic development across the Great Lakes region. This research is designed to help stakeholders identify priority actions to improve industry competitiveness, overcome investment constraints, and find opportunities for regional cooperation.
RMI’s sector-based experts have also engaged in regionally specific techno-economic analysis of three priority industries for the Great Lakes: the electric vehicle (EV) battery supply chain, sustainable aviation fuels, and near-zero Emissions Steel.
These deep-dive reports provide an overview of these emerging technologies and the trends that are reshaping their industries.
RMI has also worked with the Brookings ‘Workforce of the Future’ initiative to use the tools and insights of economic complexity to better understand the economic and workforce composition of the energy transition, and the feasibility of transitioning into emerging sectors for metro areas across the Great Lakes.
The Brookings team has helped to develop the Great Lakes Clean Growth Tool, which every metro in the Great Lakes region can use to understand the complexity, feasibility, and workforce dynamics of the energy transition and identify the clean energy industries where it is most feasible for them to transition based on their existing economic makeup and industrial capacities.
Finally, ACRE contracted the economic consultancy, OCO Global, to conduct a preliminary assessment of the Great Lakes region’s attractiveness as a destination for investment, particularly from overseas. The report, Green Investment & Innovation Pipelines: Great Lakes Investment Strategy, identifies major opportunities in the region, key factors underlying investment decisions, and early strategies for bolstering the region’s attractiveness into the future.
Read the full story at Environment + Energy Leader.
AtmosZero has closed on a $21 million Series A funding round that will support commercialization of its Boiler 2.0 system, a zero-emissions technology used to generate high-temperature steam for industrial applications.
The boiler may replace conventional, fossil fuel-based boiler systems, which reportedly account for about 8% of global energy use. Boiler systems are needed across a variety of industries, from the built environment to chemical manufacturing, and they make up about half of process heat used in industry overall. These fossil fuel-based systems currently cause about 2.25 gigatons of carbon emissions each year.
Read the full story in Environment + Energy Leader.
The Food Foundation and Human Nature Places have received permission to proceed with a new development in Lewes, East Sussex, which is expected to be the most sustainable neighborhood in the United Kingdom.
The new development, called The Phoenix, will be walkable and encourage shared living, and aims to create a neighborhood built around community, health, and food.
The multi-use development plans to include 685 homes, with 30% of homes designated as affordable housing. It is also expected to deliver a significant biodiversity net gain and aims to prioritize positive social impact. The Phoenix aims to be a blueprint for future sustainable development — will be built on a nearly 20-acre brownfield, or a former industrial site, and it will reportedly be the largest timber-structure neighborhood in the U.K.
Chapardar, H. (2024). “Industry hybrid regulation: Exploring a model for business-driven circular economy.” Resources, Conservation & Recycling Advances, 21, 200205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rcradv.2024.200205
Government is often seen as the arbiter for environmental protection. Alternatively, firms can volunteer to proactively take collective action toward sustainability, called industry self-regulation. But, what happens when neither of the two alternatives can deliver the expected outcomes? This inductive study addresses such a situation in managing hazardous consumer waste in the province of Ontario, Canada, where waste management and later circular economy have been on the agenda since the 1980s. However, both self- and government regulation failed to spur the advancements required to close material loops effectively and efficiently. Finally, after three decades, actors developed a new path to transition to circular economy. This longitudinal process study focuses on this process to explore the changes in business-policy interactions that realized this transition. I analyze extensive qualitative data, including 55 interviews with top-level decision-makers in all stakeholder groups (businesses, policy-makers, NGOs, consultants, etc.). Based on the unearthed patterns, I propose a hybrid model for regulation. In this model, both business and government coordinate throughout the process to set the rules and enforce them. By allowing organically shaped competition, this model can spur proactivity and innovation, which are crucial for the transition to circular economy but are hard to incentivize in conventional policy-making. The model can be used in any situation where an urgent issue needs immediate proactive responses by business.
Read the full story from The Grocer.
With the rising impact of environmental and economic issues for supermarkets, find out how rooftop solar panels can enhance their sustainable footprint and win kudos with consumers.
Byrne, P., Mayes, W. M., James, A. L., Comber, S., Biles, E., Riley, A. L., & Runkel, R. L. (2024). “PFAS River Export Analysis Highlights the Urgent Need for Catchment-Scale Mass Loading Data.” Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 11(3), 266–272. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00017 [open access]
Source apportionment of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) requires an understanding of the mass loading of these compounds in river basins. However, there is a lack of temporally variable and catchment-scale mass loading data, meaning identification and prioritization of sources of PFAS to rivers for management interventions can be difficult. Here, we analyze PFAS concentrations and loads in the River Mersey to provide the first temporally robust estimates of PFAS export for a European river system and the first estimates of the contribution of wastewater treatment works (WwTWs) to total river PFAS export. We estimate an annual PFAS export of 68.1 kg for the River Mersey and report that the yield of perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in the catchment is among the highest recorded globally. Analysis of river and WwTW loads indicates approximately one-third of PFOA emitted from WwTWs is potentially stored in the catchment and approximately half of PFOS transported by the River Mersey may not originate from WwTWs. As governments move toward regulation of PFAS in WwTW effluents, our findings highlight the complexity of PFAS source apportionment and the need for catchment-scale mass loading data. This study indicates that strategies for reducing PFAS loading that focus solely on WwTW effluents may not achieve river water quality targets.
Bækgaard, A. S., Engberg, C., & Hasselbalch, J. A. (n.d.). “The technocentric consensus: A discourse network analysis of the European circular economy debate.” Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2024.2317793
How do different framings of the circular economy structure relations between key European policy actors? The circular economy is emerging as a dominant environmental governance framework, but multiple interpretations of what it entails and how it is to be implemented abound. This article investigates the way policy actors in the European Union frame the circular economy, and how certain framings facilitate coalition-building. A Discourse Network Analysis, which combines content and network analysis, allows us to draw connections between frames and actors. Building on an existing typology of circular economy discourses, we combine inductive and deductive coding of selected policy documents from policy actors (EU institutions, business associations, think tanks, trade unions, NGOs). This content analysis is visualized as a discourse network, which disaggregates discourses into their subcomponents and connects them to policy actors. The strongest discourse coalition emerges around technocentric framings of circular economy. In particular, we identify production, innovation and waste management as central sub-components which strengthen the congruence of this coalition. More transformative frames advanced by environmental organizations struggle to break the technocentric consensus. We argue that the current framing of a technocentric circular economy is unlikely to change unsustainable patterns of production and consumption.
Read the full story at Total Food Service.
Voyage Foods is addressing – head on – the alarming reality of chocolate’s dark side and has created the most sustainable chocolate to ever come to market as it uses 99% less blue water consumption and up to 84% less greenhouse gas emissions than the typical chocolate bar.
The company’s unique and differentiating strength lies in its proprietary technology used to combine upcycled seeds and fruits to create a delicious, clean label, plant-based cocoa-free chocolate at a price point accessible to the mass market.
Total Food Service sought out Adam Maxwell, CEO & Co-Founder Voyage Foods, to share his vision for the company and the benefits of a cocoa-free chocolate industry.
Read the full story from Retail Dive.
Advancing toward its goal of more sustainably produced garments, Lululemon has teamed up with Samsara Eco, an Australian environmental technology company, to introduce the first enzymatically recycled nylon 6,6 product, according to a press release on Tuesday.
Using recycled nylon 6,6, Lululemon has created samples of its Swiftly Tech Long-Sleeve Top — the first time this type of nylon has been recycled in this way, according to the retailer. The samples are a “key milestone” that brings fashion closer to creating a circular ecosystem, according to Samsara Eco.
Lululemon currently uses nylon 6,6 for many of its products, including its Align and Wunder Train leggings. The Swiftly samples take Lululemon nylon apparel at the end-of-life stage — including leggings — and combine it with other non-textile materials to create recycled nylon for use in new Lululemon products.
The economic and planetary case for transforming our food systems is compelling. But negotiating change across a multitude of diverse stakeholders with unequal power and varying prospects from the transformation is an enormous challenge. The report confronts this challenge head on, highlighting practical ways to dismantle barriers to change and develop achievable transformation
strategies. Evidence shows that embracing equity and inclusion is key to making a transformation politically viable and thus essential for success.The report summarizes the findings of a four-year investigation by the Food System Economics Commission (FSEC), an independent commission expressly created to assess options for comprehensive food system transformation. FSEC findings are based on rigorous economic modeling, in-depth literature reviews, and case studies.
Read the full story at e360.
The U.N. named Eleni Myrivili its first-ever global chief heat officer based on her record as a city official in Athens. In an e360 interview, she talks about why extreme heat is a health crisis and what cities must do to protect the most vulnerable from rising temperatures.
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