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San Francisco moves to ban plastic water bottles, scoffs at every other sad city

by MozelleNorthern Posted on March 12, 2014

San Francisco moves to ban plastic water bottles, scoffs at every other sad city

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Two big pieces of news out of San Francisco this week: Barry Bonds started a brief stint coaching for the Giants, and the city made significant progress toward outlawing plastic water bottles. As a result, the average level of self-satisfaction exhibited by San Franciscans increased by a factor of three.

And that’s just from Bonds’ ego! Did you really think we were going to shame a city for striving to be more environmentally conscious? Not that we’re ruling out that San Francisco might have done it just a little bit to make every other American city look even worse. (Oh, come on! You were thinking it too!) Still, this is downright cheery news.

On Tuesday, the city’s board of supervisors unanimously approved a ban on selling single-use plastic bottles of water on city property. The ban, which still needs a second vote and the sign-off of San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, will go into effect in October of this year for indoor events, and 2016 for outdoor events. Sporting events that require excessive water consumption — such as the San Francisco Marathon — could be excluded from these restrictions, but not without first attempting to secure other, more sustainable sources of water.

SFGate reports:

[Supervisor David] Chiu noted that it wasn’t until the 1990s that there was a plastic water bottle industry, which is now a $60 billion a year business. He said one goal of the legislation is to get people thinking about the waste, much like the city’s plastic bag ban, which has dramatically increased the number of consumers who use reusable bags.

“I want to remind people that not long ago, our world was not addicted to plastic water bottles,” he said. “Before (the 1990s), for centuries, everybody managed to stay hydrated.”

At which point, every other city supervisor struggled to recall what life was like at any point before approximately last Thanksgiving.

Chiu, however sassy about it, has a point. Since 1991, U.S. bottled water consumption per capita has tripled. And this is in spite of the fact that bottled water is widely acknowledged as an enormous scam: 25 percent or more of bottled water is just straight tap water, but you pay as much as 2,000 times more for it than the stuff that comes out of your kitchen faucet.

As scams go, bottled water also has an undeniable environmental impact. In 2007, production of water bottles for U.S. consumption alone used up to 54 million barrels of oil. Seventy-five percent of plastic water bottles are not recycled, instead ending up on beaches, in rivers, and partially full of unidentified liquid on nearly all the empty bus seats you’ve ever tried to sit in.

San Francisco, you’ll always be The City That Waits to Die to us. That said, Most Sustainable City in the United States has a pretty nice a ring to it, too.


Source
S.F. supervisors back ban on sale of plastic water bottles, SFGate

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.

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Here’s what to do with all that extra CO2 you’ve got hanging around

by KeeleyMarryat Posted on March 7, 2014

Here’s what to do with all that extra CO2 you’ve got hanging around

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What do fertilizer, superglue, and Plexiglas all have in common, aside from being things that you can hide in your roommate’s bed when she refuses to do the dishes? (Don’t even play like it’s never crossed your mind!) Apparently, they can all be manufactured using sequestered carbon dioxide.

With the help of scientists, a handful of entrepreneurs are delving into the market of carbon dioxide recycling. It’s one with seemingly unlimited potential, because lord only knows the planet’s supply of CO2 isn’t shrinking anytime soon.

Liquid Light, a New Jersey tech startup, has developed a CO2 converter that can transform emissions into feedstock for chemical-based products. Plastics, adhesives, and a whole slew of other products can now count recycled greenhouse gases as one of their crucial ingredients. The converter operates using low-energy catalytic electrochemistry.

As reported in New Scientist:

Inside [the converter] are catalysts that can produce more than 60 carbon-based chemicals, from just CO2 and electricity. By linking many of these devices together, a chemical plant could convert CO2 into hundreds of thousands of tonnes of products in a year, says co-founder Kyle Teamey.

Helping chemical companies switch their feedstock to CO2 does more than boost their green credentials. “Almost all of their expenses are based on buying oil or natural gas or biomass,” says Teamey. So releasing it into the air is perverse. “It’s not just pollution, it’s actually losing the value of the stuff they bought in the first place.”

Liquid Light’s first market product will be ethylene glycol, which is a key ingredient in both antifreeze and the polyester used to make Rick Ross’ favorite tracksuit. The company estimates that it could repurpose 31 million tonnes of CO2 by making ethylene glycol.

It turns out that there’s a bunch of ways to recycle CO2, and a wily startup to match each method. California’s Newlight Technologies, for example, uses a catalyst to transform methane and carbon dioxide into AirCarbon, a plastic that can be used to make any variety of products. In Australia, Mineral Carbonation is repurposing waste carbon dioxide for building materials by combining it with minerals such as magnesium and calcium to create carbonates.

At a TEDx event in Canberra, Mineral Carbonation founder Marcus Dawe acknowledged that the effectiveness of this technology in cutting emissions is still to be determined, and it’s by no means the ultimate solution:

Now, there are no silver bullets in storing CO2 and in dealing with our emissions. Mineral carbonation really just plays a part — it’s part of the portfolio of technologies that are to be developed, and we must prove whether they can work or not. It’s very important that we do that.

At least some entrepreneurs are now heeding the advice of every good grandma: When life gives you greenhouse gases, make antifreeze! But for the record, don’t even think about using that one in any roommate retaliation scheme — that way lies disaster, and potential for felony indictment.


Source
Don’t waste CO2, turn it into bottles and glue, New Scientist
Could future clothes, bottles and chairs be made from carbon emissions?, The Guardian

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.

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Here’s what to do with all that extra CO2 you’ve got hanging around

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Get off my lawn! Organic farmers just can’t get along with GMO-growing neighbors

by vserko45 Posted on March 5, 2014

Get off my lawn! Organic farmers just can’t get along with GMO-growing neighbors

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Another day, another bunch of old, white guys complaining about their neighbors screwing up their property – except this time, it’s quite warranted.

A new survey from Food & Water Watch has found that over 80 percent of organic farmers across the country are worried about how genetically modified crops in nearby fields are affecting their own. These farmers have incurred significant financial losses due to GMO contamination and the measures taken in attempts to prevent it.

It turns out that keeping organic crops and GMOs sufficiently separate is not cheap. To create a “buffer zone” around their fields, as required by USDA organic standards, the farmers surveyed said they set aside a median of five acres at a median cost of $2,500 per year. In some instances, the cost was more than $20,000 per year.

Organic farmers have also begun to delay planting, so that their crops won’t pollinate at the same time as neighboring GMOs and risk having their gene pool sullied. This results in further losses of about $5,300 a year for corn crops, and $3,300 for soybeans.

And even with these precautions, one-third of farmers are still seeing problems caused by GMO contamination, with more than half of them reporting that they’ve had crops rejected by buyers because of it. The median cost of each rejected load, which contains approximately 1,000 bushels, is $4,500.

To the typical organic farmer, these losses are no heirloom fingerling potatoes. They’re a significant percentage of their incomes.

It’s not all about the Benjamins, either. Animosity between organic and conventional farmers has noticeably mounted. The report notes:

The survey asked farmers if they had any non-monetary costs from the threat of GMO contamination. Several responses described strain between GMO and non-GMO farmers. One farmer wrote that, “…every time I walk into the local co-op they grit their teeth.” Others wrote that “conventional farming neighbors do not respect us,” that non-organic “neighbors feel that our farm is a thorn in their sides or a nuisance,” and that they “are considered to be a problem to them because we are not GMO like the rest of them.” Some relationships have gotten so strained that “neighbors get bent out of shape” when approached about GMO issues, and “some neighbors will no longer tell us what they plant.”

Food & Water Watch was inspired to conduct its survey after sustainable agriculture advocates across the country were disappointed by a 2012 report on the same topic from a USDA biotech advisory committee. That group, which was heavily loaded with Big Ag interests, declined to make any policy recommendations that would help stop GMO contamination of non-GMO fields and was widely attacked by organic farming groups.

“Can’t we all just get along?” is proving to be an unrealistic approach for an increasingly divided farming sector. Here’s hoping the USDA catches on to that soon.

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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Get off my lawn! Organic farmers just can’t get along with GMO-growing neighbors

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That old, rusty underwater pipeline? Nothing to worry about!

by dfonis5 Posted on March 4, 2014

That old, rusty underwater pipeline? Nothing to worry about!

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Kate Ter Haar

Recently, scenes from the frozen Great Lakes region have brought to mind the post-apocalyptic icy landscape of the Lands Beyond the Wall. The Straits of Mackinac in northern Michigan is currently facing its own “winter is coming” scenario, and it doesn’t involve a horde of aggressive snow zombies with a penchant for disembowelment (we hope). This threat, however, could result in the destruction of a vast ecosystem, threatening drinking water supplies and the livelihoods of local fishermen.

To stave off disaster, Michiganians are loudly voicing their concerns about a section of oil pipeline that runs along the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac, a five-mile-wide body of water separating the upper peninsula of Michigan from the rest of the state, and conjoining Lakes Michigan and Huron. Called Line 5, the segment, part of a pipeline built in 1953, has undergone minimal repairs in the past 60+ years. As production from Alberta’s tar sands has soared over recent years, many are beginning to question whether Line 5 can handle more of that oil. Pipeline owner Enbridge expanded the line’s capacity by about 10 percent last year, to nearly 23 million gallons per day. The National Wildlife Federation released a video in October 2013 showing broken supports that suggest corrosion along Line 5, and is demanding that it be replaced entirely.

Enbridge’s position is that the pipeline has “been operating there for decades and operating safely.” But plenty of things tend to operate less effectively after decades of use. A few examples: nuclear waste receptacles, Kobe Bryant’s legs, capitalism.

Enbridge already has a bad rep in Michigan after one of its pipelines burst in 2010 and poured over a million gallons of tar-sands oil into the Kalamazoo River watershed. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, that little oopsie was the costliest pipeline disaster in the nation’s history – and, because tar-sands oil is far more difficult to clean up than the standard variety,  the cleanup is still going on three and a half years later.

A cleanup in the straits — where parts of the pipeline lie under 270 feet of water — would be much harder still, as the Associated Press notes:

The Straits of Mackinac epitomizes a potential worst-case scenario for a pipeline accident: an iconic waterway, ecologically and economically significant, that could be fiendishly hard to clean up because of swift currents and deep water that’s often covered with ice several months a year.

In December, Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) sent a letter of concern to federal pipeline officials about environmental risks posed by the aging pipeline.

The oil and natural gas industry has a hell of a streak going when it comes to pipeline spills, so speaking strictly in terms of mathematical probability, Line 5 should be perfectly fine. That’s how statistics work – right?


Source
Sunken Great Lakes Oil Pipeline Raises Spill Fears, The Associated Press

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.

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That old, rusty underwater pipeline? Nothing to worry about!

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Rice is the new cocaine for European drug dealers

by RositaRCOdtxyl Posted on February 26, 2014

Rice is the new cocaine for European drug dealers

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It’s hard out here for a food eater! Between the rapid desiccation of some of the United States’ most productive farmland, cannibalism and disease on meat farms, and organized criminals in Europe selling long-grain rice as fraudulent basmati, the struggle is real. That last one is not a euphemism.

Departments of Interpol and Europol are beginning to crack down on gangs profiting off of a fairly new form of illegal activity: food fraud. Former drug dealers have hung up their dime bags and moved into the food counterfeiting game because, as it’s still in its nascent stages, legal consequences are almost negligible. The payoff for substituting cheap, low-quality, and often dangerous ingredients for certain in-demand foods and beverages far outweighs the risk — because that makes sense! Welcome to the modern food system; you must be new here.

So there’s now a black market to create additional profits on food that’s already dirt-cheap, thanks to well-oiled industrial food production. Drug runners don’t need to have MBAs to realize that the risks of their old ventures (jail time, turf wars, dead customers) far outweigh those of the new (angry foodies).

As reported by The Independent, some of these substitutions seem fairly benign: Spanish olive oil passed off as extra-virgin Italian; lower-proof alcohol masquerading as vodka; impostor tuna. But consider that the Spanish olives were washed in deodorant, the lower-proof alcohol was mixed with industrial solvent, and the tuna was mislabeled because its mystery-fish source couldn’t be traced … you can see where we’re going here.

The issue has gained some traction in the European press following a study that came out just this month, which found that 40 percent of 900 grocery store samples in the United Kingdom were counterfeit versions of the advertised product.

Who will be affected by this? Well, anyone in Europe who eats food, to start with — and also possibly heroin addicts whose dealers have abandoned the drug trade for greener pastures.

Here in America, ever the land of opportunity and unsustainably cheap food, the counterfeit food market has a lot of potential. But we also love Doritos Locos Tacos, so it’s possible our sky-high tolerance for engineered chemical substances means we might even enjoy a little Old Spice on our olives.

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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Rice is the new cocaine for European drug dealers

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Obama to trucking industry: “No more rampant gas consumption for you!”

by EzraQgnjoy Posted on February 19, 2014

Obama to trucking industry: “No more rampant gas consumption for you!”

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While members of Congress twiddle their thumbs and idly watch the Northeast and Midwest begin to resemble planet Hoth, California dry up into an approximation of Tatooine, and, across the pond, England transform into Dagobah, President Obama continues to push past them and take action against climate change.

That’s the end of the Star Wars references, we swear — please don’t go.

Obama announced on Tuesday that he has ordered new, stricter fuel-efficiency rules to curb greenhouse gas emissions from large trucks. This will build on an earlier set of standards that were developed in 2011 and took effect this year. The new standards, to be drawn up by the EPA and Department of Transportation, are supposed to be finalized by 2016, before Obama leaves office, and then go into effect starting in 2018.

“Improving gas mileage for these trucks is going to drive down our oil imports even further,” Obama said. “That reduces carbon pollution even more, cuts down on businesses’ fuel costs, which should pay off in lower prices for consumers. So it’s not just a win-win; it’s a win-win-win. We got three wins.”

Heavy-duty trucks make up just 4 percent of vehicles on the roads, but they emit 20 percent of CO2 emissions from the transportation sector, the second most polluting sector of the U.S. economy. And big trucks used over 28 billion gallons of gasoline in 2011. Taking these figures into consideration, it’s easy to see how the new rules could have a climate impact. Michelle Robinson of the Union for Concerned Scientists told The New York Times that the new standards could bring down oil consumption by one million barrels per day by 2035.

Obama is also urging Congress to repeal $4 billion worth of federal subsidies currently enjoyed by oil and gas companies each year, while proposing a $200 million tax credit for companies that work to develop vehicles and infrastructure that run on alternative sources of energy.

Obama declined, to our chagrin, to comment on how he’s going to address trucks that will not commit to a lane, trucks with stupid bumper stickers, and truck drivers’ indiscriminate use of both the middle finger and the horn — all issues of equivalent national import.

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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Just a fracking well exploding into flames — nothing to see here!

by ShastaSnoddy Posted on February 14, 2014

Just a fracking well exploding into flames — nothing to see here!

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Early on Tuesday morning, a Chevron-owned natural gas well in Greene County, Pa., burst into flames – and more than 72 hours later, it’s still burning. One contractor for Chevron is missing and presumed dead, and another was injured in the explosion.

Chevron has flown in experts from Houston’s Wild Well Control to put out the fire, and crews spent yesterday removing overheated pieces of metal that kept reigniting. Today, they await heavy-duty water tanks to extinguish the blaze, which could be delayed by the winter storms afflicting the region. Last year, five surface well blowouts with fires were “wild” enough to require the expertise of Wild Well Control.

An energy industry employee who had been in the area at the time of the explosion told Pittsburgh’s WTAE that he heard “there was a large propane truck that was parked near the actual well, which would have been a no-no.” No-no, indeed, sir! However, the cause of the explosion remains unknown.

The well lies on the Marcellus Shale, which is not just the only geological formation we know of that could plausibly share a name with a human, but also the No. 1 source of natural gas in the United States. Another gas well fire on the shale in Indiana Township, Pa., killed two people in July 2010. Yet another, also in the same region, caused three more deaths in February 2011.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) has been a consistent advocate for fracking in the state. He’s refused to levy significant taxes on gas companies and is pushing for the reversal of both a state Supreme Court ruling and former Gov. Ed Rendell’s (D) executive order that protect many regions of the state, including parks, from drilling. In spite of the supersized natural gas bonfire in his backyard, Corbett continues to laud the safety of the fracking industry.

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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Just a fracking well exploding into flames — nothing to see here!

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NFL Apprehensive About Its First Openly Gay Player

by CeciliaMiljanov Posted on February 10, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Michael Sam, a defensive end who was projected to be a mid-round choice in the NFL draft this year, announced today that he’s gay. So how did the league react?

“I don’t think football is ready for an openly gay player just yet,” said an NFL player personnel assistant. “In the coming decade or two, it’s going to be acceptable, but at this point in time it’s still a man’s-man game. To call somebody a gay slur is still so commonplace. It’d chemically imbalance an NFL locker room and meeting room.”

All the NFL personnel members interviewed believed that Sam’s announcement will cause him to drop in the draft. He was projected between the third and seventh rounds prior to the announcement. The question is: How far will he fall?

“I just know with this going on this is going to drop him down,” said a veteran NFL scout. “There’s no question about it. It’s human nature. Do you want to be the team to quote-unquote ‘break that barrier?'”

….The potential distraction of his presence — both in the media and the locker room — could prevent him from being selected. “That will break a tie against that player,” the former general manager said. “Every time. Unless he’s Superman. Why? Not that they’re against gay people. It’s more that some players are going to look at you upside down. Every Tom, Dick and Harry in the media is going to show up, from Good Housekeeping to the Today show. A general manager is going to ask, ‘Why are we going to do that to ourselves?'”

The former general manager said that it would take an NFL franchise with a strong owner, savvy general manager and veteran coach to make drafting Sam work. He rattled off franchises like Pittsburgh, Green Bay, San Francisco, Baltimore and Indianapolis as potential destinations. The former general manager added that a team with a rookie head coach would not be an ideal landing spot.

Moral of the story: Yes, we’ve made progress. But we still have a ways to go.

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Pennsylvania to start fracking sensitive state forestland

by Laura Posted on February 6, 2014

Pennsylvania to start fracking sensitive state forestland

By

Nicholas A. Tonelli

When Pennsylvania’s Republican governor looks at this, he sees green.

Pennsylvania has already leased out to frackers nearly half of the state forestland that sits above Marcellus shale natural-gas reserves. The rest is considered environmentally sensitive or difficult to access, and it has been protected from fracking since a Democratic governor imposed a limited forest-fracking moratorium in 2010.

But Gov. Tom Corbett (R), who took office in early 2011, thinks it’s time to frack the whole damn lot. He proposes opening up those lands to leasing, which his administration says could raise $75 million a year. The first year the money would go toward the general fund, but they say in subsequent years it would go to state parks and forests. 

The Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association loves Corbett’s proposal, which one of its officials described as being “way overdue.” Some Democrats and environmentalists, however, are not so sure. They’re particularly suspicious of claims that the fracking could be done without disturbing the park land. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review explains:

Natural gas wells would reach deposits under parks and forests through horizontal drilling from sites outside.

“There is no increase in overall surface impacts,” said Patrick Henderson, Corbett’s deputy chief of staff for energy issues. An executive order would be issued to ban leasing that could result in surface disturbance, Henderson said. …

John Hanger, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former state environmental regulator, cautioned there is no such thing as no-impact drilling: “More drilling always involves more road construction, more pipelines, more truck traffic.”

Other advocates for the environment expressed skepticism.

“This will place more and more of the budget burden on the backs of public lands,” said Cindy Dunn, CEO of PennFuture.

Worried? Don’t be. The oil and gas association claims it’s unlikely that any drilling company would ever want to work in the most sensitive areas. Because, you know, they care.


Source
Corbett hopes to raise $75M through natural gas leases in state forests, parks, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Corbett wants to lift ban on new gas drilling in state forests, The Philadelphia Inquirer

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Pennsylvania to start fracking sensitive state forestland

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Fracking company finds new way to screw over the environment

by John Basset Posted on December 24, 2013

Fracking company finds new way to screw over the environment

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cyenobite

Props are in order for Chesapeake Energy Corp., one of the country’s biggest natural gas producers, for finding yet another way to make a big mess with fracking. This time, it was irresponsible construction practices.

Company subsidiary Chesapeake Appalachia will pay a near-record $3.2 million in federal penalties for clean water violations at fracking facilities in West Virginia. It will also spend $6.5 million more to restore 27 sites that it damaged with construction activities and pollution. From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Most of the discharges subject to the consent decree are related to the construction of fracking facilities, but none of them involved actual fracking, said Donna Heron, spokeswoman for the EPA’s Mid-Atlantic region.

“In doing the construction, that’s where they were discharging fill material into the wetlands and the streams. And that’s what the violations were about,” she said.

The violations of the Clean Water Act involved discharges done without required Army Corps of Engineers permits, said Tom Aluise, spokesman for the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. …

West Virginia, which is a co-plaintiff in the settlement, will receive half of the civil penalty.

We get that that frackers are keen to make a buck. But why, oh why, must they do absolutely everything with nary a thought given to the environment?


Source
Chesapeake Energy subsidiary to pay fine for dumping into W.Va. streams, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Chesapeake Appalachia, LLC Clean Water Settlement, EPA

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Fracking company finds new way to screw over the environment

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