Determining how best to manage the garbage that is continuing to collect in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch must begin by understanding the pervasiveness of the issue at hand, and when we are talking about an area that is thought to be twice the size of Texas, this is no simple task. Simply gathering the information needed to provide scientific assessments and data, and accumulating the images required to increase public awareness is a challenging task, but this is a task that the members of the Project Kaisei team enthusiastically undertook when we set out to sea to begin exploring the garbage patch, gathering data and establishing a foundation for developing a global plan of action.

Now that we have returned from this initial voyage of discovery, we are even more aware of the devastating effects of allowing plastics to end up in our oceans and the importance of raising public awareness around this issue. Both individual and global actions will be necessary to heal our oceans, but each of us can begin to work towards this goal right now by understanding that even a simple everyday decision, like choosing which type of shopping bag to use, can mean the difference between life and death for a marine animal and whether or not increased toxins enter the food chain.

It may be difficult to develop a deep concern for something that you do not see on a daily basis, but Project Kaisei’s first expedition has shown that we simply cannot afford to have an out of sight, out of mind attitude about the waste we produce.

French officials have discovered that there is an invasion of bee-eating Chinese hornets, Vespa veluntina that may be causing bee colony collapse.  It only takes a few hornets to wipe out an entire bee hive.  The hornets first kill all the bees and then proceed to eat the honey and feed the bee larvae to their young.

The hornet is not in other European countries yet, but they are rapidly expanding with over 1000 known nests.  Quentin Rome, a researcher at the National History Museum in Paris said, “They multiply quite quickly, and they settle in a new department every year.”

“When bee-keepers find nests nearby, their hives are destined for destruction,” General Secretary of the National union of Bee-keepers Yves Vedrenne said. “We don’t have the means to get rid of them.”  Although the hornet problem is the not the worst of all the problems, they definitely do not help the overall bee population.

The YouTube video below shows the carnage.

via reuters

image via wikimedia

1.  Many people leave the water running when doing the dishes.  This is not necessary.  This is how I do the dishes.  I turn the water on about 1/4 to 1/3 of full blast.  During this time, I scour the dining ware.  Then I wash a small sized (perhaps tupperware container), and put about a teaspoon of dish soap in there along w/ a quarter cup of water (all this is approximated).  Then I just dip my scouring brush in there when I need soap to clean the dishes.  This way you save soap and water.

2.  Take a shower with a loved one.  This one is a bit steamy .  Well, this one only works if you save the hanky panky for the bedroom.  You could potentially cut your water expenditure in half and strengthen your relationship.

3.  Dont water the lawn when it is raining.  This seems like an obvious one, but it happens all the time.  Just google “rain sensor for sprinklers” or something related, and there will be thousands of results.  This also happens many times at places of business.  If you do see it happening, bring it up to the company that manages the building.  They will prob thank you for helping them save hundreds or thousands of dollars on their water bill.

4.  If you own a home, collect your rain water to water your lawn and/or your garden.  Search for rain barrels and there are even instructional videos on how to make one.  All you need to do is redirect a down spout into a rain barrel and in a matter of hours you could have up to 50 gallons of water for later use.  Just make sure that mosquitoes can’t get into the water supply, so they can’t breed in the standing water.

5.  Don’t leave the water running when you shave or brush your teeth.  When you brush your teeth, fill a cup with water and rinse instead of leaving it running.  When you shave, either fill the sink with water, or just turn the water on when you are rinsing the blade.

6.  If you have fish or in my case turtles.  Give the nutrient rich water to your plants.  Both will appreciate it.

7.  Insulate your water pipes.  This way hot water will come out faster, and you wont be standing there watching all that water and money go down the drain.

8.  Compost your refuse food instead of putting it in the garbage disposal.  Your plants will appreciate it, and you wont waste water trying to get rid of it.

9.  Wash fruits and vegetables in a basin or plug the sink.

10.  Be conscious of your water usage.  Most of the time we waste anything whether its water, electricity, food, or anything else it is because we are not really thinking about what we are doing.  It usually only takes a few seconds to turn off the water when not in use.  That is the start to saving water.

image via http://letsgetgreen.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/water_drop1.jpg

“These worms seem to be able to tolerate incredibly high concentrations of heavy metals, and the metals seem to be driving their evolution,” said lead researcher Mark Hodson of the University of Reading in England.

“If you took an earthworm from the back of your garden and put it in these soils, it would die,” Hodson said.

DNA analysis of lead-tolerant worms living at Cwmystwyth, Wales, show they belong to a newly evolved species that has yet to be named, he said.

Two other superworms, including an arsenic-munching population from southwest England, are also likely new to science, Hodson said.

“It’s a good bet they are also different species, but we haven’t categorically proved that,” he said.

The toxicity of the metal particles once they have passed through the worms isn’t yet known, since the protective protein wrappings will degrade over time, the study authors noted.

But experiments suggest the superworms make the metals easier for plants to extract from the soil, Hodson said.

“The earthworms don’t necessarily render the metals less toxic, but they do seem to make them available for plant uptake,” he said. This raises this possibility of using the earthworms as part of efforts to clean up land contaminated by mining and heavy industry.

via nationalgeographic

via autoblog

Both sewage and the organic matter in garbage decompose and produce methane on their own, resources that are both already tapped for their energy potential at many waste facilities. This occurs because anaerobic microorganisms in the waste process the organic matter and produce methane as a by-product. The greater the amount of bacteria and organic matter, the faster the decomposition.

Landfill garbage breaks down relatively slowly due to the small amounts of bacteria and the separation of the organic matter by plastic bags and other non-degradable materials. While landfills do promote decomposition and the production of methane, this process is quite slow. With the Septage Bioreactor Landfill technology, septage is blended with ground garbage, allowing the organic matter to decompose much faster than it otherwise would. This creates large quantities of methane in a short period of time, which can be tapped for fuel. The other advantage of this technology as a fuel source, is it produces methane constantly as long as there is organic material fed into it. We have no shortage of garbage or sewage, so this will create a very plentiful and reliable source of energy.

The accelerated decomposition also results in less space being used in the landfill, extending its lifespan, as well as reducing groundwater leaching or runoff. On a similar note, separating septage from the rest of the sewage flow would allow for much smaller, decentralized wastewater treatment facilities since only greywater would be left; a substance that can be easily and quite effectively treated with natural systems.

via greengeek

Reasearchers from the University of Calgary have come up with a way to pull the CO2 out of the air using air scrubbing towers.  The system takes the CO2 and reacts it with sodium hydroxide, and the innovative part is that after a few more chemical processes, the sodium hydroxide is recovered again.  The end result is the CO2 can be piped away and the sodium hydroxide is reacted with more CO2 in the air.

With their current design, according to the university, they can capture around a ton of carbon dioxide for less than 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity. At that rate, for every bit of electricity used to run the scrubber, you’re actually capturing ten times as much CO2 as was released to create that electricity in the first place. That means that in terms of emissions, it is efficient… but financially, not-so-much-so. As far as the researchers have reported, the technology is expensive, and not near ready for large-scale development yet. But, it could potentially fill a unique role, taking on that 50 percent of diffuse CO2 emissions that no smokestack extractors will ever be able to keep out of the skies.

Hopefully in the future, we will not need this technology, but in the mean time, it looks like a good option.

via popsci

“Because bacteria have simple single-celled bodies, it is relatively easy to equip them with a sensor and a brightly coloured reporter protein which shows up under a microscope, alerting us to different substances leaking into the soil or seawater,” said Professor Jan Van der Meer, from the University of Lausanne, in Switzerland.

“Our own tests, and checks by other laboratories, have shown that pollution testing using bacteria is a remarkably robust technique and produces reliable results,” he added.

“The heart of our colour sensor system is the bacteria themselves. They reproduce themselves in a growth medium, which makes the whole set-up really cheap.”

In the future it is speculated that the bacteria could reside in buoys that would continuously monitor the waters around them to detect pollution.

via edie.net