eco-friendly, enviroment, reduce waste

6 Eco-Friendly Ideas to Implement in 2020

As our needs grow and resources become more scarce, we need to pay attention to how we are using what we have so we don’t end up exploiting and polluting the Earth. There are eco-friendly things you can start doing right away that will go a long way toward protecting the environment. 6 eco-friendly things ...

Raven Montmorency

A reusable water bottle.

Study Finds African Smoke Is Fertilizing Amazon Rainforest and Oceans

A new study led by researchers at the University of Miami’s (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science found that smoke from fires in Africa may be the most important source of a key nutrient — phosphorus — that acts as a fertilizer in the Amazon rainforest, tropical Atlantic, and Southern oceans. Nutrients found ...

Troy Oakes

The Amazon rainforest.

Simple Way to Massively Improve Crop Loss Simulations

In a new study, researchers with NASA, the University of Chicago, and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research added data on when each specific region plants and harvests its crops — and found it was the single most effective way to improve crop loss simulations. Droughts or heat waves have consequences that spread beyond ...

Troy Oakes

Half of the World’s Annual Rain Falls in Just 12 Days, Study Finds

Currently, half of the world’s measured annual rain falls in just 12 days, according to a new analysis of data collected at weather stations across the globe. By the century’s end, climate models project that this lopsided distribution of rain and snow is likely to become even more skewed, with half of the annual precipitation ...

Troy Oakes

Ways to Improve Wind Farm Productivity

You’ve probably seen them, perhaps on long road trips — wind turbines with enormous, hypnotic rolling blades, harnessing the clean power of wind for conversion into electric energy. What you may not know is that for the explosion in the number of wind turbines in use as we embrace cleaner sources of energy, these wind farms ...

Troy Oakes

Why Earth’s Oceanic Plates Suddenly Stop

In a study published in Nature Geoscience, the team explored the physics of “stagnant slabs.” These geophysical oddities form when huge chunks of Earth’s oceanic plates are forced deep underground at the edges of certain continental plates. The chunks sink down into the planet’s interior for hundreds of miles until they suddenly — and for reasons ...

Troy Oakes

Details of the True Impact of China’s Ban on Plastic Waste Imports

While recycling is often touted as the solution to the large-scale production of plastic waste, upwards of half of the plastic waste intended for recycling is exported from higher income countries to other nations, with China historically taking the largest share. But in 2017, China passed the “National Sword” policy, initiating China’s ban on plastic ...

Troy Oakes

The Story of Pain in Plants and Animals

Is it possible to demonstrate that there is pain in plants and animals? There is an old folk tale from the Solomon Islands that goes something like this: If there is an old tree that needs to be felled and is too big to use an ax, it can be brought down without actually cutting it ...

Emma Lu

A fallen dead tree.

The Aqueous Storage Device That Needs Just 20 Seconds to Charge

A KAIST research team developed a new hybrid energy aqueous storage device that can be charged in less than half a minute. It employs aqueous electrolytes instead of flammable organic solvents, so it is both environmentally friendly and safe. It also facilitates a boosting charge with high energy density, which makes it suitable for portable ...

Troy Oakes

The Aqueous Storage Device

Are Microwaves Bad for the Environment? Yes!

Are microwaves bad for the environment? Well, researchers have found the carbon dioxide emitted from microwave usage across the European Union (EU) alone reaches almost the same as 7 million cars. Despite microwaves accounting for the largest percentage of sales of all types of ovens, with numbers set to reach nearly 135 million by 2020 ...

Troy Oakes