Waste Management
Food Choices Can Squander Environmental Resources
Written by Peter, on March 28, 2018
It is often estimated that about a third of the food produced for human consumption globally is lost or wasted. But an even bigger waste, which is not included in this estimate, may be through dietary choices that result in the squandering of environmental resources. Read more »
Edible and Biodegradable Plastic from Seaweed
Written by Peter, on January 4, 2018
An Indonesian company, Evoware, has developed a method of producing biodegradable packaging from seaweed. Read more »
Coffee Cups Made from Coffee Waste
Written by Peter, on July 15, 2017
An Australian startup, Huskee, has developed reusable cups which are made from unwanted coffee bean husks. Read more »
Quickly Turning Food Waste into Fuel
Written by Peter, on June 28, 2017
Researchers at Cornell University have discovered this new process to generate energy from food waste that is much more efficient than previous methods. Read more »
Sponge Material Soaks Up and Releases Spilled Oil
Written by Peter, on March 7, 2017
Scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois have developed a new material can absorb up to 90 times its own weight in spilled oil and then be squeezed out like a sponge and reused. Read more »
Drinking Beer Could Help Reduce Energy Storage Costs
Written by Peter, on October 11, 2016
Engineers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, have developed an innovative bio-manufacturing process that uses a biological organism cultivated in brewery wastewater to create the carbon-based materials needed to make energy storage cells. Read more »
Turning Plastics into Liquid Fuel
Written by Peter, on June 26, 2016
The widespread use of large volumes of plastics has created serious environmental issues. Polyethylene and polypropylene make up more than 60% of the total plastic content of municipal solid waste. These plastics originate primarily from fossil fuels.
Scientists in the United States and China have now developed a method of efficiently turning these plastics back into useful fuels and chemical feedstocks. Read more »
Water You Can Eat
Written by Peter, on September 5, 2015
The London-based Skipping Rocks Lab has developed an edible alternative to plastic water bottles. Americans alone use approximately 50 billion plastic water bottles each year. Only 23% of these are recycled leaving 38 billion to decompose – a process which can take centuries. The new form of packaging, called Ooho!, is described by its makers as […] Read more »
Packing Peanuts Provide Power
Written by Peter, on March 30, 2015
Scientists have developed a heating process that converts the “peanuts” used for packaging into carbon anodes for lithium batteries.
As well as eliminating waste, the technique produces batteries that recharge much faster because the carbon anodes are only a tenth as thick as their commercially available counterparts. Read more »
Hydrogen from Wastewater
Written by Peter, on February 25, 2015
Researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have reported that they have developed an efficient way to obtain electrical energy and hydrogen in a wastewater treatment process. The system uses bacteria which consume the organic material and generate electricity which is used to produce hydrogen. Read more »
