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Category: sustainability – Page 574

New type of silicon promises cheaper solar technology

An international research team led by The Australian National University (ANU) has made a new type of silicon that better uses sunlight and promises to cut the cost of solar technology.

The researchers say their world-first invention could help reduce the costs of renewable electricity below that of existing coal power stations, as well as lead to more efficient solar cells.

Senior researcher ANU Professor Jodie Bradby said was used as the raw material for solar cells because of its abundance, low-cost and non-toxicity.

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Creating sustainable bioplastics from electricity-eating microbes

Electricity harvested from the sun or wind can be used interchangeably with power from coal or petroleum sources. Or sustainably produced electricity can be turned into something physical and useful. Researchers in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis have figured out how to feed electricity to microbes to grow truly green, biodegradable plastic, as reported in the Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology.

“As our planet grapples with rampant, petroleum-based plastic use and plastic waste, finding sustainable ways to make bioplastics is becoming more and more important. We have to find new solutions,” said Arpita Bose, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences.

Renewable energy currently accounts for about 11% of total U.S. energy consumption and about 17% of electricity generation.

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Man Makes and Sells Compostable Wild Grass Straws

Imagine being able to use grass instead of plastic for #Straws…Zero Waste Saigon, which also sells the straws, says that finding a human use for the grass, helps preserve wetlands, which provide habitat for Sarus Crane birds, because it prevents them from being turned into crop land.

This man has come up with a super sustainable — and truly biodegradable —substitute for plastic straws.

As plastic straw bans come into effect around the world, a Vietnamese man has come up with a creative, natural alternative.

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Adidas unveils running shoes that never have to be thrown away

The Futurecraft Loop performance running shoes can be returned to Adidas, where they will be ground up to make more shoes, again and again.

So, recycling is a mess. Manufacturers have sold us on the idea that it’s the consumer’s responsibility to recycle the manufacturer’s product, ostensibly relieving the manufacturer of responsibility for all the trash their products generate. Meanwhile, despite many of us trying our best to uphold our end of the deal, recycling is complicated – and in the end, 91 percent of plastic, for example, is not recycled.

Given plastic’s nearly eternal durability, it’s little wonder that we’re finding it literally everywhere on the planet. And we keep making new plastic at a prodigious rate – National Geographic notes that “If present trends continue, by 2050, there will be 12 billion metric tons of plastic in landfills.”

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Canada’s $5,000 EV incentive starts next month, Tesla officially disqualified

Canada’s newly announced $5,000 incentive for electric vehicles is officially going into effect on May 1st next month and the federal government has released the list of eligible vehicles.

Tesla vehicles are officially ineligible for the incentive.

As we reported last month, the Canadian federal announced a new $5,000 incentive for electric cars with a $45,000 price limit, which virtually excluded Tesla vehicles.

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Scientists restore some functions in a pig’s BRAIN hours after it died

Scientists bring some functions in a pig’s BRAIN ‘back to life’ — four hours after the farm animal died„.

Scientists have been able to partially revive the brains of decapitated pigs that died four hours earlier in a groundbreaking study.

Experts used tubes that pumped a chemical mixture designed to mimic blood into the decapitated heads of 32 pigs to restore circulation and cellular activity.

Echoing Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein, billions of neurons began acting normally and the deaths of other cells was reduced over the course of six hours.


Solar evaporator offers a fresh route to fresh water

About a billion people around the world lack access to safe drinking water. Desalinating salty water into drinkable water can help to fill this dangerous gap. But traditional desalination systems are far too expensive to install and operate in many locations, especially in low-income countries and remote areas.

Now researchers at the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering have demonstrated a successful prototype of one critical component for affordable small-scale desalination: an inexpensive solar evaporator, made of . The evaporator generates steam with and minimal need for maintenance, says Liangbing Hu, associate professor of science and engineering and affiliate of the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute.

The design employs a technique known as interfacial evaporation, “which shows great potential in response to global water scarcity because of its high solar-to-vapor efficiency, low environmental impact, and portable device design with low cost,” Hu says. “These features make it suitable for off-grid water generation and purification, especially for .”

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These machines pull clean drinking water out of thin air, and they might be a solution to the global water crisis

World Water Day aims to raise awareness of the global water crisis, which could leave one in four people with a recurring water shortage by 2050. As the global population continues to climb, that means more than 2 billion people could soon be starved for world’s most precious resource.

To tackle this mounting issue, one company has turned to a solution in nature.

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