Category: Ecology

Prospectors hit the gas in the hunt for ‘white hydrogen’

For more than a decade, the village of Bourakébougou in western Mali has been powered by a clean energy phenomenon that may soon sweep the globe.

The story begins with a cigarette. In 1987, a failed attempt to drill for water released a stream of odourless gas that one unlucky smoker discovered to be highly flammable. The well was quickly plugged and forgotten. But almost 20 years later, drillers on the hunt for fossil fuels confirmed the accidental discovery: hundreds of feet below the arid earth of west Africa lies an abundance of naturally occurring, or “white”, hydrogen.

Today, it is used to generate green electricity for Bourakébougou’s homes and shops. But geologists believe that untapped reservoirs of white hydrogen in the US, Australia and parts of Europe have the potential to provide the world with clean energy on a far greater scale.

READ MORE
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/12/prospectors-hit-the-gas-in-the-hunt-for-white-hydrogen

‘We turn waste into something golden’: the creatives transforming rags to riches

Rich nations’ unwanted clothes often end up in landfills, polluting the global south. But entrepreneurs in Ghana, Pakistan and Chile are turning rubbish into rugs, shoes and toys 

Every second, the equivalent of a lorry full of clothes ends up on a landfill site somewhere around the world. People are buying, and casting off, more clothes than ever. On average, each consumer buys 60% more clothing than 15 years ago and 92m tonnes of textile waste are created annually.

Production and consumption are on the rise, with severe environmental and social implications. Only 12% of the material used for clothing is recycled. A popular way to dispose of clothes is to give them to charity shops.

But many of these donations end up in countries in the global south, where there is big trade in second hand clothing.

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Prospectors hit the gas in the hunt for ‘white hydrogen’

The zero-emission fuel may exist in abundant reserves below ground. Now large sums are being invested to look for it

For more than a decade, the village of Bourakébougou in western Mali has been powered by a clean energy phenomenon that may soon sweep the globe.

The story begins with a cigarette. In 1987, a failed attempt to drill for water released a stream of odourless gas that one unlucky smoker discovered to be highly flammable. The well was quickly plugged and forgotten. But almost 20 years later, drillers on the hunt for fossil fuels confirmed the accidental discovery: hundreds of feet below the arid earth of west Africa lies an abundance of naturally occurring, or “white”, hydrogen.

 

Today, it is used to generate green electricity for Bourakébougou’s homes and shops. But geologists believe that untapped reservoirs of white hydrogen in the US, Australia and parts of Europe have the potential to provide the world with clean energy on a far greater scale.

Read more

Arctic spring is getting more erratic

Changing seasons

The timing of spring in the Arctic has become more and more erratic in the past 25 years, leading to growing discrepancies between the behaviour of animals and plants and the conditions they depend on.

Since 1996, Niels Schmidt at Aarhus University in Denmark and his colleagues have been monitoring the ecosystem at Zackenberg, a mountain in north-east Greenland.

When they analysed the first 10 years of data, they found that spring was arriving around two weeks earlier in 2005 compared with 1996.

But now that trend has been replaced by extreme variability from year to year, with animals and flowers emerging at different times. 

New Scientist – read

Locals in this British seaside town could revolutionise green energy – if the government lets them

Voters want climate action but don’t trust politicians to do it. Could projects like a Whitehaven windfarm be the answer?

  • Rebecca Willis is professor of energy and climate governance at Lancaster University

The seaside town of Whitehaven, in the north-west of England, found itself at the centre of a political storm in May, when the levelling up, housing and communities secretary, Michael Gove, gave his approval for the UK’s first new deep coal mine in more than 40 years just outside the town.

But Whitehaven may soon be known for more than climate-wrecking coal. That is the ambition of Project Collette, a £3bn proposal for a windfarm off the Cumbrian coast to be part-owned by the local community – instigated by the Green Finance Community Hub in collaboration with the engineering firm Arup and community energy specialists Energy4All – and with the potential to power nearby industry.

If Cumbrians could stand on the sandstone cliffs and look out at wind turbines they owned, and that had provided jobs for local people, that might just build the political support and engagement that is so vital to reaching our climate targets?
READ

UK solar energy firm offers ‘shared’ scheme that could save £200 a year

Company behind Devon venture hopes it will become a blueprint for projects owned by consumers

A solar power plant
A solar power plant.
A ‘shared’ solar park is an option for households who cannot afford solar panels
or who do not own their home.  Photograph: Fuyu Liu/Shutterstock

If you would love to have solar panels but don’t own your home or can’t afford the outlay, how about investing in Britain’s first “shared” solar park that is promising cheaper, zero-carbon electricity, direct to your energy bills for the next 40 years?

With two successful community energy schemes already behind it, Ripple Energy is looking for investors for its third: the construction of a 42MW solar park in Derril Water in Devon, not far from the Cornish town of Bude.

Once up and running in the summer of 2024, the project, which is being built by one of the world’s largest independent renewable energy companies, RES, will produce enough electricity to power 14,000 homes across Britain.

The Guardian – READ MORE

Restoring just nine groups of animals could help combat global warming

Protecting or expanding the populations of nine key groups of animals, including wolves and whales, would remove huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.

Restoring the populations of a few important groups of animals could help capture huge amounts of carbon from the air and thereby play a role in limiting global warming.

Climate change research has emphasised the importance of vast forests and seagrass meadows as the most efficient way of storing carbon. But bison, elephants, whales, sharks and other massive wild animals also store carbon in their bodies while promoting tree and seagrass growth, preventing carbon-releasing wildfires and packing down ice and soil to keep carbon in the ground, says Oswald Schmitz at Yale University.

“There’s been scepticism in the scientific community that animals matter, because if you just do the accounting, they’d say animals don’t make up much of the carbon on the planet, so they can’t be important,” he says. “What we’re doing is connecting the dots, showing that animals – despite their lack of abundance – have an outsized role, because of the multiplier effects that they create.”

To keep the average global temperature from rising more than 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level, scientists estimate that we need to remove 6.5 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere until 2100. Current models that focus on protecting and restoring forest, wetland, coastal and grassland ecosystems would fall short by an estimated 0.5 to 1.5 gigatonnes per year, says Schmitz.

He and his colleagues reviewed data from previous publications about the environmental effects – including dispersing seeds, trampling, carbon cycling, feeding behaviour, hunting behaviour and methane production – of dozens of kinds of wild animals.

NEW SCIENTIST

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Climate change and your contribution to a better future

This firm is committed to advising clients on better outcomes for the planet.  As an example, 20% of funds that we advise on are alternative energy investments. 

Our clients, with millions invested in clean energy, are making a real contribution.

Some other funds we support:  
– Developing better engineering solutions, such as medical devices and prosthetic limbs.
– Technology that saves energy by stopping the cold escaping from freezer cabinets in supermarkets. Software solutions to manage risk.
– Financing childcare facilities, GP practices ambulances and better care homes.

Britain claims to be at the forefront of the fight against climate change and our scientists and engineers are trusted to provide solutions; your savings and pension pots can make a difference for your children and grandchildren.

Alternative Energy – facts. 

The sector offers a range of funds to either provide capital growth, by investing in new developments, windfarms, solar, hydro, anaerobic digestion. Or income generated by buying into long term income contracts, usually 30 years.

Examples of Alternate Energy investments;
One provides money to build has returned 84.17% since its launch in June 2019
The other is an income fund gaining profit from long term energy contracts and returned 101,92% since December 2017. 
NOTE: These are no guarantee of future returns

Coal and gas generation is increasing in cost
whilst solar is substantially cheaper.
The economic argument for solar is strong.

Source: IEA estimates. Data sourced 30.06.2022, * Refers to same regions within the figure: Europe, United States, China, and India

For global warming issues . . . surely we want people to stop flying and travelling abroad to enjoy Britain’s own holiday spots?

For our economies, we want more people to spend on UK holidays – including Wales?

So why . . . https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-62956842

Tourism tax in Wales: Levy could apply to Welsh holidaying in Wales

By Brendon Williams BBC News

Visitors booking stays in Wales could face a tourism tax, including those who already live in Wales, the Welsh government has said.

Why are such important and valuable issues ignored by government

Green home upgrades could also create 140,000 new jobs by 2030, analysis by Cambridge Econometric finds

Greenpeace urged Kwarteng to devote £7bn to insulation and heat pump installations over the next two years. Photograph: Andrew Aitchison/Alamy

Insulating homes in Britain and installing heat pumps could benefit the economy by £7bn a year and create 140,000 new jobs by 2030, research has found.

But the uptake of these energy-saving measures depends heavily on government policy, according to analysis by Cambridge Econometrics, commissioned by Greenpeace.

Read more … https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/20/energy-saving-measures-could-boost-uk-economy-by-7bn-a-year-study-says

Indigenous leaders urge businesses and banks to stop supporting deforestation

Amazon ecosystem is on verge of collapse, leaders tell brands such as Apple and Tesla as UN gathers in New York

An aerial photo shows a burned section of Amazon rainforest, in the department of Madre de Dios, Peru, this month. Photograph: Renzo Ramirez Santa Cruz/EPA

Indigenous leaders from the Amazon have implored major western brands and banks to stop supporting the ongoing destruction of the vital rainforest through mining, oil drilling and logging, warning that the ecosystem is on the brink of a disastrous collapse.

Representatives of Indigenous peoples from across the Amazon region have descended upon New York this week to press governments and businesses, gathered in the city for climate and United Nations gatherings, to stem the flow of finance to activities that are polluting and deforesting large areas of the rainforest.

Read more https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/21/indigenous-leaders-amazon-rainforest-businesses-banks

Biotech firm electrocutes soil so that bacteria can eat ‘forever chemicals’

A biotech firm is trialling the removal of PFAS “forever chemicals” from soil at a test site in Wisconsin by injecting chemical-eating bacteria and electrocuting the ground.

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a class of thousands of different synthetic chemicals that contain carbon and fluorine atoms linked by strong bonds. The chemicals – which repel grease and water – have been in widespread use since the 1940s in everything from firefighting foam at airports to dental floss.

But the same qualities that make PFAS useful stop the chemicals from degrading, so many of them are persistent environmental contaminants. They are often called forever chemicals, and have been found in drinking water and in people’s blood all over the world.

Read about this

Soil laced with contaminating chemicals,
like at this site in Utah, can require significant clean-up efforts
Eric R. Hinson/Getty Images

UK mushroom growing uses 100,000 m³ of peat a year – can we do better?

Peat bogs are an important carbon store, so mushroom growers are searching for a way to grow their produce on other substrates

In a huge industrial shed on Leckford Estate, a farm owned by the supermarket Waitrose in a beautiful part of southern England, a revolution is stirring in the world of mushroom growing. UK production of this crop relies on peat, the incredibly carbon-rich organic matter found in bogs and fens across the country. Peatland contains so much carbon, it is sometimes described as “the UK’s rainforests”.
That is why the UK government has promised to restore 280,000 hectares of peatland in England alone by 2050, to help meet its climate change goals.

Read the story

Coca-Cola among brands greenwashing over packaging, report says

The Changing Markets Foundation, along with Zero Waste Europe, is calling for closed-loop recycling systems and effective deposit return systems to tackle the plastic pollution problem. “We must embrace systemic solutions, such as absolute reductions in plastic packaging and mandatory deposit return systems,” they said.

Plastic packaging in the UK makes up nearly 70% of all of the country’s plastic waste. Less than 10% of everyday plastic, including plastic packaging, gets recycled.

Tesco said: “All of the soft plastic we collect will be sorted in the UK from later this year, ensuring it stays out of landfill and is recycled into a range of items. We welcomed recent legislative measures to increase the consistency of kerbside collections for plastic recycling.”

Tesco said it was not the case that its soft plastic ended up in landfill or incinerated. The company said since 2021 it was finding a use for the soft plastic packaging it collects in stores, and has trialled recycling soft plastic into cheese packaging.

Coca Cola said: “We don’t want to see any of our packaging end up where it shouldn’t and we are working hard to be part of the solution.

“All of our bottles in Great Britain are 100% recyclable and we aim to collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one we sell by 2030 globally. In 2019, about 300 sample Coca-Cola bottles were developed using recovered and recycled marine plastics, with the aim to demonstrate that one day, ocean debris could be used in recycled packaging. Innovative trials like this are essential to finding scalable solutions to reduce the amount of packaging we use.”


Procter & Gamble said: “Our Head & Shoulders ocean clean bottle was one of the first steps on our ongoing responsible beauty journey and helped us to learn about the use of PCR within our products. This pack is no longer available to buy in the UK but we can confirm that it was recyclable. We don’t yet have all the answers but remain committed to ensuring Head & Shoulders is a force for good within beauty.”

A spokesperson for Perfetti Van Melle was not available to comment. The other brands named did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Claims about plastic packaging being eco-friendly made by big brands, including Coca-Cola and Unilever, are misleading greenwashing, according to a report.

The Changing Markets Foundation says claims that companies are intercepting and using “ocean-bound” or “recyclable” plastic to tackle the plastic pollution crisis are some of the most common examples of greenwashing.

 

The claims are made with little proof about how the products address the crisis in plastic pollution, their report says. It says this is done to obscure the real impact of plastic from consumers.

George Harding-Rolls, campaign manager at Changing Markets Foundations, said: “Our latest investigation exposes a litany of misleading claims from household names consumers should be able to trust. This is just the tip of the iceberg and it is of crucial importance that regulators take this issue seriously.

“The industry is happy to gloat its green credentials with little substance on the one hand, while continuing to perpetuate the plastic crisis on the other. We are calling out greenwashing so the world can see that voluntary action has led to a market saturated with false claims.”

The analysis, which is being presented on the CMF website, says claims by Kim Kardashian’s clothing company Skims on its compostable underwear packaging, which states “I am not plastic”, are undermined by the small print saying the product is plastic type 4 or LDPE (Low-Density Polyethylene).

Coca-Cola, the report says, has spent millions promoting an innovation which says that its bottles are 25% marine plastic, but does not mention that the company is the world’s biggest plastic polluter.

The makers of Mentos mints, Perfetti Van Melle, make grand eco claims about new cardboard box packaging, the report says. But they fail to mention the packaging is an unrecyclable composite material made out of card, aluminium and plastic.

In Spain, after the EU ban on plastic cutlery, the biggest supermarket chain, Mercadona, rebranded the cutlery as “reusable” instead of providing alternatives.

The report singled out Tesco for its claims that its flexible plastic packaging is new, improved and “recyclable”. But to be recycled, customers have to take the packaging back to larger stores – and even then it is unlikely to be recycled. Instead, it will almost certainly be exported, incinerated or sent to landfill, the report says.

Bottles of Procter & Gamble’s Head and Shoulders shampoo are being promoted as made out of “beach plastic”, but the bottle is dyed blue, meaning it cannot be recycled further, the report says.

Unilever has replaced recyclable PET bottles of washing liquid with pouches as part of its push to encourage refills. But the pouches are not recyclable and only contain two refills, the report says.

The examples show brands are presenting materials and selling products claiming they are better for the environment when they are either difficult to recycle, not recyclable at all, or are using just a small fraction of “ocean-bound” plastic collected through various clean-ups.

Sian Sutherland, A Plastic Planet co-founder, said: “Plastic is now a very powerful and emotional word. We all feel the plastic guilt when we fill our shopping baskets. Brands have been exploiting this over recent years, using age-old marketing techniques that are totally misleading or downright fake, pretending that the problem is being fixed when actually it is getting worse, with plastic production set to treble by 2040.

“Greenwash.com exposes these false green claims for what they are: daylight robbery of the consumer’s right and ability to judge the product.”

The Changing Markets Foundation, along with Zero Waste Europe, is calling for closed-loop recycling systems and effective deposit return systems to tackle the plastic pollution problem. “We must embrace systemic solutions, such as absolute reductions in plastic packaging and mandatory deposit return systems,” they said.

Plastic packaging in the UK makes up nearly 70% of all of the country’s plastic waste. Less than 10% of everyday plastic, including plastic packaging, gets recycled.

Tesco said: “All of the soft plastic we collect will be sorted in the UK from later this year, ensuring it stays out of landfill and is recycled into a range of items. We welcomed recent legislative measures to increase the consistency of kerbside collections for plastic recycling.”

Tesco said it was not the case that its soft plastic ended up in landfill or incinerated. The company said since 2021 it was finding a use for the soft plastic packaging it collects in stores, and has trialled recycling soft plastic into cheese packaging.

Coca Cola said: “We don’t want to see any of our packaging end up where it shouldn’t and we are working hard to be part of the solution.

“All of our bottles in Great Britain are 100% recyclable and we aim to collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one we sell by 2030 globally. In 2019, about 300 sample Coca-Cola bottles were developed using recovered and recycled marine plastics, with the aim to demonstrate that one day, ocean debris could be used in recycled packaging. Innovative trials like this are essential to finding scalable solutions to reduce the amount of packaging we use.”

Procter & Gamble said: “Our Head & Shoulders ocean clean bottle was one of the first steps on our ongoing responsible beauty journey and helped us to learn about the use of PCR within our products. This pack is no longer available to buy in the UK but we can confirm that it was recyclable. We don’t yet have all the answers but remain committed to ensuring Head & Shoulders is a force for good within beauty.”

A spokesperson for Perfetti Van Melle was not available to comment. The other brands named did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Guardian article