Environment-Resource Extraction
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Kenyan recycles plastic waste into bricks stronger than concrete
The plastic waste is mixed with sand, heated and then compressed into bricks, which are sold at varying prices, depending on thickness and colour. Their common grey bricks cost 850 Kenyan shillings ($7.70) per square metre, for example.
Coal: Is this the beginning of the end?
<embed>https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50520962</embed> BBC 11/25/19
The report by three energy experts - published in the online journal Carbon Brief - draws on energy sector data from around the world for the first seven to 10 months of the year.
The record drop raises the prospect of a slowing of global CO2 emissions growth in 2019.
But the authors warn that, even with this decline, coal use and emissions remain far higher than the level required to keep the global temperature rise below 2C.
'Plastic recycling is a myth': what really
<embed>https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/17/plastic-recycling-myth-what-really-happens-your-rubbish</embed> The Guardian 8/17/2019
If you look at plastics, the picture is even bleaker. Of the 8.3bn tonnes of virgin plastic produced worldwide, only 9% has been recycled, according to a 2017 Science Advances paper entitled Production, Use And Fate Of All Plastics Ever Made. “I think the best global estimate is maybe we’re at 20% [per year] globally right now,” says Roland Geyer, its lead author, a professor of industrial ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Academics and NGOs doubt those numbers, due to the uncertain fate of our waste exports. In June, one of the UK’s largest waste companies, Biffa, was found guilty of attempting to ship used nappies, sanitary towels and clothing abroad in consignments marked as waste paper. “I think there’s a lot of creative accounting going on to push the numbers up,” Geyer says.
WELLS, WIRES, AND WHEELS
"We calculate that to get the same amount of mobility from gasoline as from new renewables in tandem with EVs over the next 25 years would cost 6.2x-7x more. Indeed, even if we add in the cost of building new network infrastructure to cope with all the new wind and/or solar capacity implied by replacing gasoline with renewables and EVs, the economics of renewables still crush those of oil. The clear conclusion of our analysis is that if we were building out the global energy system from scratch today, economics alone would dictate that at a minimum the road-transportation infrastructure would be built up around EVs powered by wind- and solar-generated electricity. And that is before we factor in the other advantages of renewables and EVs over oil as a road-transportation fuel, namely the climatechange and clean-air benefits, the public-health benefits that flow from this, the fact that electricity is much easier to transport than oil, and the fact that the price of electricity generated from wind and solar is low and stable over the long term whereas the price of oil is notoriously volatile."
How you're recycling plastic wrong, from coffee cups to toothpaste
<embed>https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/17/recycling-plastic-wrong-guide</embed> The Guardian 6/16/2019
While recycling continues to be an essential tool for dealing with the flood of plastic inundating the planet, it’s time for a reality check.
NY Times Rollback Car Rules- Marathon Petrol 12-2018 ♦
