global briefs
Chinese Chokepoint
U.S. Waste Paper Turned Away Companies that recycle cardboard boxes were overwhelmed after record- breaking holiday shopping online. The U.S. Postal Service estimated it delivered 10 percent more packages in 2017 than the year before. Amazon, the leader in online shopping, said it shipped more than 5 billion items for Prime members in 2017. All of this cardboard is a huge recycling challenge.
Americans routinely toss food waste and other garbage into their recycling carts, and China, the country that receives the bulk of these contaminated recyclables, says it has had enough.
Top Polluters Just 100 Companies Emit
Most Global Emissions In July 2017, historic new research from environmental nonprofit CDP, in collaboration with the Climate Accountability Institute, revealed in The Carbon Majors Report that 71 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions since 1988 can be traced to just 100 fossil fuel producers. It’s the first in a series of planned publications to improve transparency and highlight the role companies and their investors could play in tackling climate change.
Offenders ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron are among the highest-emitting investor-owned companies. If fossil fuels continue to be extracted at the same rate for the next 28 years as they were between 1988 and 2017, global average temperatures would be on course to rise by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century, likely causing catastrophic consequences, including substantial species extinction and global food scarcity risks.
Read the report at
Tinyurl.com/ CarbonTop100List.
18 Central Florida
China, by far the world’s biggest importer and processor of recyclables, has put the U.S. on notice that it will begin turning away all but the most pristine used plastics and unsorted waste paper by this fall and early next year. The pronouncement has alarmed U.S. government and industry officials, especially on the West Coast, that face the challenge of either cleaning up the vast, never-ending stream of recyclables to meet China’s strict standards or finding other places to dump the messy items—perhaps in landfills. The uncertainty caused by China’s looming ban is beginning to slow down the entire West Coast system for sorting and shipping off recyclables. In Hong Kong, which ships its waste paper and cardboard to the Chinese mainland, mounds of the materials already are piling up at docks and in cargo ships being kept at sea.
Waxworm Wonders
Caterpillars Offer Clues to Plastic Cleanup Waxworms, a type of caterpillar, are vexing to beekeepers because they devour the wax that bees use to build honeycombs. It turns out that they can do the same to plastic. Ongoing worldwide research reveals several types of bacteria found in waxworms that digest some kinds of plastic at rates that vary from weeks to months.
Scientist Federica Bertocchini, at the Spanish National Research Council, mashed up a quantity of the greater wax moth and applied the paste to polyethylene. After half a day, about 13 percent of the plastic had disappeared. She collaborated with biochemists at the University of Cambridge to analyze this chemical decomposition of the plastic. They discovered that some of the substance is converted into ethylene glycol, a sign that it was genuinely being degraded. The carbon-to-carbon bonds found in polyethylene are also present in the wax that the caterpillars eat.
Susan Selke, director of the Michigan State University School of Packaging, remarks, “The hunt for organisms that can degrade plastics is on. Right now, we don’t have a good solution for dealing with the plastics that are piling up on our planet.”
Photomontage/
Shutterstock.com monticelloSefa Kaya
SageElyseShutterstock.com
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