The world is good

2021-08-17 10:05:52 Open / Comment

2021-08-17 10:05:43 Clean Ocean Sailing strives to collect hard-to-reach plastic

Steve Green and his partner Monika Hertlová have started an ocean cleaning movement from their unique home base on the Helford River in Cornwall. The base is a 113-year-old, 55-ton former icebreaker; a boat specially designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters.

The pair launched Clean Ocean Sailing (COS) in 2017, an initiative that unites sailors, surfers, swimmers, and divers who love the ocean so that they can work collaboratively to clear out hard-to-reach marine plastic and trash.

So far, they have coordinated more than 300 volunteers to help clean the ocean. The couple’s icebreaker functions as a mobile basecamp from which teams can disembark in flotillas of smaller boats to access the hard-to-reach parts of Cornwall’s coastline and clear as much litter as possible.

COS also has a “rapid response unit” that allows people to “send [them] a photo or location,” Green explains. “We have about 20 volunteers who are set up and ready to pick up any ‘ghost gear,’ before it gets washed out to sea again on the next tide. We have found fish crates and fishing gear from South Africa, China, South and North America. It’s crazy.”

Since COS began, the group has extracted 250,000 individual pieces of plastic—that’s over 50 tons of waste. Approximately 85 percent of the litter is recycled and repurposed. A portion of what is collected gets melted down and made into smaller pellets at the Ocean Recovery Project in Exeter before being donated back to COS as recycled sea kayaks that can be used to find and collect more litter.

Locals who can’t come on COS expeditions themselves still contribute to the cause by providing the group with goods like groceries. “An awful lot of Cornish people aren’t particularly financially motivated. It’s almost an island attitude: we all lean on each other and look after each other. It is an ideal place for a testing ground for a circular economy,” says Green.

The concept of local volunteers sailing out to reach heavily polluted areas on the coast is spreading. In 2018, Surfers Against Sewage representatives on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, crowdfunded a boat and started embarking on litter collecting missions, too.

Green hopes that people who witness COS’s work will be motivated to join the effort. On top of collecting trash and cleaning the ocean, Green says that COS is about “other people seeing us doing that and perhaps they start to think about not dropping it in the first place—or even better, not buying it. That’s what’s really going to change the world.” Open / Comment

2021-08-16 10:33:33 Open / Comment

2021-08-16 10:33:22 This ultra light microbattery uses its own casing to store more energy

Improving the way current batteries store and deliver power is key to enabling faster charging and enhanced performance of electronic devices. However, the structural composition of most batteries today prevents the rapid transport of electrons and ions, limiting power density.

Scientists have been trying to overcome this hurdle by using the structural components of a battery to store energy. Using the same principles, a team of scientists at the University of Pennsylvania has recently created a microbattery light enough to be carried by insects that can store up to four times the energy density as a result.

The research was spurred after the scientists decided to investigate new designs for compact and durable batteries to power increasingly small wearables and electronic devices. These batteries require protection from the elements to keep running, but this usually involves casings that only add to their weight and size, without improving their power performance.

The team created the energy-efficient microbattery by essentially reimagining the way tiny batteries are typically designed. As explained by New Atlas, these devices usually feature ultra-thin electrodes that allow electrons and ions to travel fast, but this slim profile limits the number of chemicals they can contain, thus restricting the amount of energy they can pack up.

As such, the team redesigned the battery’s cathode, which is typically made of crushed particles compressed together in a way that creates a porous make-up with air gaps, which influences the speed ions can move through the battery.

For the new mircobattery, the scientists used a much denser cathode material that could be “electroplated” directly onto thin metal foils, which also act as the casing — thus enabling the battery’s packaging to also store energy. “We essentially made current collectors that perform double duty,” says study leader James Pikul. “They act as both an electron conductor and as the packaging that prevents water and oxygen from getting into the battery.”

The resulting microbattery showed a record energy density four times that of the current state-of-the-art designs. While the tiny battery doesn’t weigh more than two grains of rice, it has the energy density of a battery 100 times its size, making it ideal for a number of applications, including tiny flying robots, wearables, or the increasing number of devices that make up the Internet of Things. Open / Comment

2021-08-15 10:28:23 Open / Comment

2021-08-15 10:28:16 Deloitte to provide climate education program to all its employees

While the number of big companies setting climate targets has grown rapidly in recent years, few of them have actually made climate change literacy a priority.

That, however, is not the case for Deloitte, which has recently announced that it’s rolling out a new climate change-focused training program for its 330,000 employees, developed in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund. “To address climate change, we need to understand it,” said Punit Renjen, Global CEO of Deloitte.

Some employees at the consulting company have a good understanding of climate science because Deloitte has been working with clients on sustainability strategies for about 20 years already. The new digital program, however, aims to provide everyone else with a good understanding of how climate change works and what they can do to address it.

According to the company, the training program consists of videos and data visualizations (and even spoken word poetry) to go beyond a collection of dry statistics. On top of that, the program also dives into concrete examples of climate impacts in specific communities, as well as examples of solutions — including details about what the company is doing internally to reduce its environmental footprint.

As it becomes ever more important for big businesses to step up and do their part in tackling climate change, Deloitte’s initiative should act as an example for other companies to follow. Open / Comment

2021-08-14 10:41:14 Open / Comment

2021-08-14 10:41:00 How cargo delivery bikes can curb road congestion and pollution in cities

Online shopping has seen a surge during COVID-19. This, of course, went hand in hand with an increased number of double-parked delivery vans blocking traffic in urban areas and emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. A new report proposes that logistics companies start parting ways with delivery vans and adopt electric cargo bikes instead to curb both road congestion and air pollution.

According to the study, opting for cargo bikes rather than vans could mean 60 percent faster deliveries in city centers, coupled with a significant decrease in carbon emissions — even when compared to electric delivery vans.

The report, which is part of a UK-based project called Car Free Megacities, was spurred by the growing number of delivery vans on the road — a trend exacerbated by the pandemic.

As reported by Fast Company, in the UK, the number of van miles traveled has doubled over the last 25 years, contributing to air pollution and road accidents. “We believed it was important to look at alternatives to this damaging model of urban freight,” says Ersilia Verlinghieri, lead author of the report.

For the study, the researchers used GPS data from cargo bike company Pedal Me to calculate how long it would have taken a delivery van to make the same trips in central London. To do so, they accounted for differences in speed, payload capacity, and the time to unload the vehicles. Since cargo bikes can more easily cut through traffic, take shortcuts, and spend less time trying to find parking, the report concluded that they can make deliveries more quickly.

On top of faster deliveries, cargo bikes also have a significantly smaller environmental footprint even when compared to electric vans. In fact, cargo bikes have a carbon footprint three times smaller than electric delivery trucks, and 90 percent smaller compared to diesel vans.

What also matters is whether a city has a good cycling infrastructure, which can impact how well cargo bikes can work. “Good bike infrastructure is crucial both for enabling cargo bikes to deliver safely and rapidly to various destinations,” says Verlinghieri, who also notes that governments can do more to encourage cargo bike adoption. Such actions may include subsidies for bikes and reduced taxes on their operations, support for infrastructures like charging stations, and low-emissions zones that prioritize pedestrians and cyclists over cars. Open / Comment

2021-08-13 12:04:44 Open / Comment

2021-08-13 12:04:35 Barnacle-inspired glue can stop bleeding in less than 30 seconds

Currently, most bleedings during surgery or traumatic injury are stopped with hemostatic agents, materials that induce the blood to clot. These, however, can take a few minutes to work and don’t always do their job properly if there’s too much blood, which can make it difficult to get adhesives to stick to the injured area.

In an effort to solve the issue, MIT scientists have taken inspiration from barnacles and developed a super-strong surgical glue that can stop bleeding within 30 seconds. In lab tests, the glue stayed put for weeks before breaking down as the tissue injured tissue healed. With that said, the glue can also be removed earlier by applying a solution that dissolves it.

The idea for the glue came to the researchers by observing how barnacles firmly attach themselves to rocks, ship hulls, and other dirty surfaces that are wet and often dirty.

“It’s very interesting because to seal bleeding tissues, you have to fight with not only wetness but also the contamination from this outcoming blood,” says Hyunwoo Yuk, lead author of the study. “We found that this creature living in a marine environment is doing exactly the same thing that we have to do to deal with complicated bleeding issues.”

As explained by New Atlas, barnacles secrete two different liquids to glue themselves to surfaces. One is an oil that repels and displaces the water, allowing the other liquid — a protein-based adhesive — to stick to a cleaner slate.

Developing an adhesive that mimics the gluing process of barnacles, the team found that their material worked better than existing hemostatic agents. The researchers now plan to improve the material and claim that it could one day allow first responders to stop bleeding in an injured patient as soon as they reach them, or for surgeons to more easily control bleeding during operations. Open / Comment