Marc Angelo Coppola

5 Solar Innovations That Are Revolutionizing the World

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Solar power is lighting up the world, and not just on rooftops. Forward-thinking minds are discovering ways to harness the sun’s energy in many exciting ways, from the ground beneath our feet to the shirt off our back. The following innovations are shining beacons in a renewable energy future.

1. Strides in solar efficiency
Most solar generators can convert up to 23 percent of sunlight into electricity. However, Swedish company Ripasso Energy claims they can covert 34 percent of the sun’s energy into power with their contraption (see photo above), making it the world’s most efficient solar electricity system. According to The Guardian, independent tests found that a single Ripasso dish can generate 75 to 85 zero-emission megawatt hours of electricity a year, or enough to power 24 typical homes in the UK. To compare, to create the same amount of electricity by burning coal would release roughly 81 metric tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, the newspaper reported.

2. Battery technology and shared solar untether us from Big Power
Elon Musk really is Tony Stark. The billionaire entrepreneur recently unveiled a revolutionary suite of Tesla batteries that he says could ” fundamentally change the way the world uses energy” and get us off dirty fossil fuels. Musk’s sister company SolarCity is now offering Tesla batteries at a price point that’s more than 60 percent less than previous solar power storage products, paving the way for more people to peel themselves off the grid.

For people who don’t have the funds or the right roof for photovoltaic panels, peer-to-peer solar startup Yeloha is offering a genius solution: solar sharing. The company allows customers to “go solar” without owning a single panel by essentially feeding off their neighbors who do (and at a price that’s less than what they’d normally pay to their utility).

3. Portable solar brings light to developing world
For places recovering from disaster or communities lacking access to electricity, solar systems provide an alternative or a complement to traditional power sources such as fossil fuel generators (diesel or gasoline is not only expensive, it emits noxious fumes and can cause fires). For example, after the first of two devastating earthquakes struck Nepal, solar company Gham Power deployed solar power systems to help power lights and mobile charging stations for relief workers and the displaced. And in Haiti, the nonprofit organization Field Ready is trying to use a solar powered 3D-printer to make a whole range of simple, life-saving medical supplies at a fraction of the cost.

4. Solar desalination: solution to drought?
Scientists are solving the planet’s fresh water worries with a little help from the sun. Recently, a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Jain Irrigation Systems have come up with a method of turning brackish water into drinking water with a solar-powered machine that can pull salt out of water. It then further disinfects the water with ultraviolet rays. With parts of the planet running perilously low on fresh water, realization of this technology can’t come soon enough.

5. Solar transportation
In the air and on the road, solar technology is going the distance. Currently, the Solar Impulse 2, the first solar airplane able to sustain flight at night with a pilot on board, is making its historic round-the-world trip powered only by the sun.

Over in the Netherlands, SolaRoad, the world’s first “solar road,” has defied expectations and has generated about 3,000 kWh of power, enough to provide a single-person household with electricity for a year. Considering it’s only a 230-feet bike path, the potential for this technology could be big, kind of like photovoltaic technology itself.

Sanders to unveil free college tuition bill

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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is set to unveil on Tuesday legislation that would provide free tuition at four-year public colleges and universities.

Sanders, who’s running for president on the Democratic ticket, had originally called earlier this year for two years of free tuition.

The Vermont independent argued in a statement Sunday that the U.S. needs the “best-educated workforce” in order to remain competitive globally.

“That will not happen, if, every year, hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college, and if millions more leave school deeply in debt,” said Sanders, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee.

His legislation would eliminate undergraduate tuition at public colleges and universities, the statement said, and would expand work study programs. The measure would also “substantially lower” student debt and bring down rates on student loans, it said.

Sanders, who has been trying to cast himself as the most progressive candidate, called in February for federal and state governments to invest $18 billion per year in public higher education in order to make tuition free for two years.

Hillary Clinton, considered the Democratic frontrunner, hasn’t discussed too many specific policy proposals yet, including college tuition and student debt. MSNBC reported late last month that Clinton would soon unveil a college student debt plan.

Watch John Oliver’s Hilarious Rant Exposing the Horrors of the Chicken Industry

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Last night on Last Week Tonight, John Oliver exposes how chicken farming in the U.S can be cruel and inhumane-and not just for the chickens. “The U.S. poultry industry is dominated by four gigantic companies: Pilgrim’s, Tyson, Perdue and Sanderson Farms,” he explains. Oliver readily admits that animal cruelty is a major issue in modern chicken production, but, in his weekly segment, he focused on the often glossed over life of a chicken farmer, which “has been tough for a long time,” he says.

Oliver cites the many studies that show most chicken farmers live below or near the poverty line. Oliver explains how chicken farmers are contracted out by the chicken companies and how these chicken farmers often have to go into massive amounts of debt to build their chicken houses. The chicken farmers own the property and the equipment and the chicken companies own the chickens, he explains. That means chicken farmers own everything that costs money and the chicken companies own everything that makes money, says Oliver.

What happens when chicken farmers complain about the cruel conditions they are subject to? “Every time that I’ve spoken out against the poultry companies’ wrongdoings, they retaliate by cutting my pay, cutting my chickens back or cutting the quality of my chickens that I get,” said one poultry farmer.

Watch how the chicken industry and government officials have responded to chicken farmers’ concerns:

Sea Level Rise Is Happening Faster Than Anyone Thought

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CREDIT: Shutterstock

Global sea level rise isn’t just happening – it’s happening much faster than previously thought, according to new research from climate scientists at the University of Tasmania, in Australia.

The study, published Monday in Nature Climate Change, found that sea level rise has been speeding up over the past two decades compared to the rest of the 20th century. This contradicts previous satellite data dating back to 1993, which appeared to show sea level rise accelerating in the 1990s, but slowing slightly over the past decade.

“That slowing has puzzled scientists because it coincides with an increase in water entering our oceans from Greenland and West Antarctica,” Christopher Watson, the study’s lead author, said in a press statement.

To understand the apparent slowdown in sea level rise, researchers at the University of Tasmania looked at other factors that might impact sea level measurement, such as changes in the height of the Earth’s land surface. First, Watson and his colleagues compared data from tide gauges – which measure sea level height relative to a specific set of coordinates – to satellite data, which measures the height of the sea surface using radar.

Data collected from tide gauges can be skewed by things like earthquakes or sediment settling, which can change where the tide gauge is located relative to the coordinate points it’s measuring. That change in location can affect the gauge’s measurement of sea level. To account for these issues, Watson and his colleagues used GPS stations to understand how tide gauges have risen or fallen – where no GPS stations existed, they used computer modeling to estimate how the tide gauges might have changed position.

Using the newly recalibrated data, the researchers found that sea level rise between 1993 and 1999 – the earliest segment of satellite data – was overstated. According to satellite data, over that six-year period, global sea level rose 3.2 milimeters (about .12 inches) per year; using Watson’s recalibrated data, sea levels probably rose closer to between 2.6 to 2.9 mm (about .1 to .11 inches) per year. This over-estimation of sea level rise gave the appearance of sea level rise slowing in the previous decade, when it was actually accelerating at a rate of between 0.041 and 0.058 mm (.001 to .002 inches) per year.

“We see acceleration, and what I find striking about that is the fact that it’s consistent with the projections of sea level rise published by the IPCC,” Watson told the Guardian. “Sea level rise is getting faster. We know it’s been getting faster over the last two decades than its been over the 20th century and its getting faster again.”

Because sea levels can naturally fluctuate as water is exchanged between land and sea, Watson notes that the rate of increase is too small to be statistically significant – though he told the Washington Post that it’s clear that sea levels are now rising at roughly double the rate observed in the 20th century, something that will have potentially huge ramifications for coastal areas across the world.

“Accelerating sea level is a massive issue for the coastal zone – the once-in-a-lifetime inundation events will become far more frequent, and adaptation will need to occur,” Watson told the Post. “Agencies need to fully consider the impact of accelerating sea level and plan accordingly.”

Is Your Nail Polish Toxic? ” EcoWatch

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It has long been known that exposure to toxic chemicals in many beauty products can lead to an array of negative health conditions. So when The New York Times released the second part of an investigative report on nail salon workers, it confirmed something that many of us know (and perhaps willfully ignore): the beauty industry has an ugly truth.

You’ve probably smelled the pungent fumes that hit your nose as soon as you enter a nail salon-now imagine working in it. As nail salon employees across the country pamper, slough and polish their customers hands and feet, they inhale clouds of acrylic dust, nail polish fumes and removers and other harsh chemical ingredients day in and day out.

The outcome is not pretty. The Times described tragic instances of workers’ “children who are born slow or ‘special,'” or how they suffered miscarriages, cancers, chronic coughs and painful skin afflictions. The paper described:

The prevalence of respiratory and skin ailments among nail salon workers is widely acknowledged. More uncertain, however, is their risk for direr medical issues. Some of the chemicals in nail products are known to cause cancer; others have been linked to abnormal fetal development, miscarriages and other harm to reproductive health.

A number of studies have also found that cosmetologists-a group that includes manicurists, as well as hairdressers and makeup artists-have elevated rates of death from Hodgkin’s disease, of low birth-weight babies and of multiple myeloma, a form of cancer.

In one particularly memorable vignette, Ki Ok Chung, a manicurist for nearly 20 years, said that her fingerprints have nearly disappeared due to her work with files, solvents and emollients.

Not only are they at risk to many serious medical concerns, many of these workers (who are mostly women and many undocumented) are also subject to exploitive treatment and receive shockingly low pay, the newspaper revealed in the first part of the series.

“There are so many stories but no one that dares to tell them; no one dares to tell them because they have no one to tell,” Nancy Otavalo, a 39-year-old manicurist who suffered a miscarriage last year, told the Times. “There are thousands of women who are working in this, but no one asking: ‘What’s happening to you? How do you feel?’ We just work and work.”

The report also pointed out what’s commonly known as the ” toxic trio ” in many nail polish varieties: toluene, dibutyl phthalate (or DBP) and formaldehyde, that have been linked to a slew of health conditions.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, overexposure to toluene “may cause irritation to eyes and nose, weakness, exhaustion, confusion, inappropriate feelings of happiness, dizziness, headache, dilated pupils, runny eyes, anxiety, muscle fatigue, inability to sleep, feeling of numbness/tingling, skin rash, and in more serious cases of overexposure or intentional abuse, liver and kidney damage. DBP, which has banned in the European Union (EU) since 2003, “can cause irritation to eyes, stomach and upper respiratory system, and prolonged exposure to high concentrations may be hazardous to human reproduction and development,” the EPA said. Formaldehyde, can cause skin irritation and rashes, and will be banned in the EU by 2016.

Cosmetics industry officials, however, have denied that the chemicals lead to any health problems. DBP, toluene and formaldehyde “have been found to be safe under current conditions of use in the United States,” Lisa Powers, a spokeswoman for the Personal Care Products Council, the main trade association and lobbying group for the cosmetics industry, told the publication. “The safe and historical use of these ingredients is not questioned by the Federal Drug Administration.”

But one doctor, who has treated many nail salon workers, described the awful symptoms he’s commonly seen.

“They come in usually with breathing problems, some symptoms similar to an allergy, and also asthma symptoms-they cannot breathe,” said Dr. Charles Hwu, who works in Flushing, Queens in the report. “Judging from the symptoms with these women, it seems that they are either smokers, secondhand smokers or asthma patients, but they are none of the above. They work for nail salons.”

While limited exposure to these chemicals is fine for the occasional mani-pedi, it’s the health of the person wielding the brushes and solvents we should also be thoughtfully considering. With summer around the corner and flip-flop season approaching, perhaps you should think carefully about your next visit to the nail salon.

Bottled Water Companies vs. California’s Epic Drought ” EcoWatch

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As the drought in California rolls into its fourth year, causing mandatory water cutbacks by cities and private citizens and concern about the state’s enormous agricultural sector, bottled water plants in the state are attracting increasing attention attention and controversy. Bottled water accounts for a tiny fraction of the water consumed in the state but it’s become something of a symbol of who gets access to water for profit and who is being forced to cut back.

Last week, Starbucks announced that it would be moving the production of its “globally responsible” Ethos Water brand from California to Pennsylvania within the next six months. Its Pennsylvania facility already bottles the water sold on the east coast.

Starbucks’ senior vice president of global responsibility and public policy John Kelly said, “We are committed to our mission to be a globally responsible company and to support the people of the state of California as they face this unprecedented drought. The decision to move our Ethos water sourcing from California and reduce our in-store water reductions by more than 25 percent are steps we are taking in partnership with state and local governments to accelerate water conservation.”

Ethos Water was founded in 2002 in Southern California, promising to donate a percentage of each sale to water projects in developing countries, currently amounting to five cents on the sale of each $1.95 bottle of water. The company was bought by Starbucks in 2005. Ethos has created partnerships with organizations such as the Oscars. Environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio was seen carrying a bottle at the awards ceremony, and fellow environmentalist Matt Damon has appeared in an ad for the brand.

The move follows a recent article in Mother Jones calling attention to the fact that its West Coast bottling plant is located in Merced, California, drawing its water from private springs in Baxter a few hours north of Merced, as well as from Merced city water. Both Baxter and Merced are in areas of “exceptional drought.”

“While bottled water accounts for just a small fraction of California’s total water use, some residents are nonetheless fed up with bottling plants that profit off their dwindling water supply,” said Mother Jones. “Protesters have begun staging events at Nestlé’s bottling facility in nearby Sacramento.”

Nestlé’s facility buys millions of gallons of Sacramento municipal water and also bottles spring water shipped in from Northern California counties. A grassroots group called the Crunch Nestlé Alliance has been organizing to shut down the plant.

Residents in Merced are also concerned about the Safeway-Lucerne Foods bottling plant in the city that’s pulling groundwater from local wells as they’re being asked to cut back on showers and stop watering their lawns.

The Merced Sun-Star quoted area resident Jandrea-Marie Gabrielle saying at a city council meeting, “Perhaps watering lawns are the least of California’s worries. You might think that in the midst of a drought emergency, diverting public fresh water supplies to bottle and selling them would be frowned upon.”

And while Starbucks is closing its bottled water facility, another will soon be opening in the arid state. The Crystal Geyser Water Company will be opening a plant in Mount Shasta that will take hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day from an aquifer that feeds the Sacramento River and provides drinking water for millions of people. The converted Coca-Cola plant is expected to begin operations this fall. While a company executive said it’s working with area residents to make sure its activities “will not impact the environment in any detrimental way,” local citizen Raven Stevens pointed out, “Crystal Geyser in one day plans to pump more water than any three of my neighbors will use in an entire year.”

California currently has no limits on the amount of groundwater that can be pumped from private property, although state regulations on water withdrawal from the most endangered aquifers with start phasing in after 2020-when the drought could be a decade old. Bottled water companies using water tapped on private property are exempt from the mandatory water cuts placed on cities and towns in March.

“Bottling water is a legal use of water under the law,” said Nancy Vogel, spokeswoman of the California Department of Water Resources.

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This giant straw is actually a vertical bladeless wind turbine

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At the risk of getting slammed with comments claiming that small wind turbines aren’t viable, here’s a look at another bladeless wind generator hoping to disrupt the wind energy industry.Small-scale wind generators, especially vertical designs, are the renewable energy pariahs, and the clean energy concept that many cleantech enthusiasts love to hate.

But that hasn’t stopped anyone from continuing to develop new versions of wind generators that break with the conventional windmill design, and the team behind the Vortex Bladeless design believes their creation is a leap forward in wind energy, and is a “more efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly way to produce energy.”

I’ve previously covered other designs of bladeless wind turbines here on TreeHugger, with the comments mostly resembling that of Eeyore saying, “It’ll never work,” but like many innovations intended for established industries, that’s par for the course. That’s not to say that there aren’t any clean energy startups (or startups in general) that mislead the public about the claims of their products, or that there aren’t any scams or hoaxes in the green energy field, but rather that it’s easy to take a quick look and say something’s a scam, even if you’re only talking about a company that overpromises and underdelivers on its marketing claims.

The Vortex wind generator represents a fairly radical break with conventional wind turbine design, in that it has no spinning blades (or any moving parts to wear out at all), and looks like nothing more than a giant straw that oscillates in the wind. It works not by spinning in the wind, but by taking advantage of a phenomenon called vorticity, or the Kármán vortex street, which is a “repeating pattern of swirling vortices.”

Here’s a quick video overview of the device:

And here’s a little background on the principles behind the Vortex design:

The company claims that its design can be reduce manufacturing costs by 53%, cut maintenance costs by 80%, and would represent a 40% reduction in both the carbon footprint and generation costs, when compared to conventional bladed wind turbines. The Vortex is also said to be quieter (than standard wind turbines), and to present a much lower risk to birds and the local environment.

According to Vortex, the devices can be used to generate more power in less space, because not only is the wind wake narrower than a traditional turbine, but installing them closer together can actually be beneficial to the technology, based on wind tunnel testing.

“We tested in a wind tunnel to put one Vortex just in front of another and the second one actually benefits from the vortices given off by the first structure.” – David Suriol, Vortex

The first model that Vortex will introduce is the Mini, a 4 kW unit that stands 12.5 meters in height, which is intended for small-scale and residential wind energy applications. Also in the works is a Gran version, a 1+ MW model that is designed for large-scale wind generation for utilities and other similar applications.

According to an interview in Renewable Energy Magazine, the company has already raised over 1 million Euros from both private and public funds in Europe, and is expected to roll out its pre-commercial prototype within the year.

The company’s website states that it will be launching a crowdfunding campaign in June of this year, although no other details about the goal of the campaign are listed on the site yet.

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‘Too Big to Exist’: Sanders Introduces Bill to Break Up Big Banks

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U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who in April announced his candidacy for president for the 2016 election, on Wednesday will introduce a bill to break up the country’s biggest banks-just a day after the Senate passed a Republican budget that takes aim at many progressive issues.

Under the proposal, called the Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act, regulators on the Financial Stability Oversight Council would compile a list of institutions which say they are so large that their collapse could trigger an economic crisis-otherwise known as “too big to fail.”

The Treasury Secretary would then have a year from the bill’s passing to break them up.

“If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” Sanders said Tuesday. “No single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure could send the world economy into crisis.”

The firms on that list would also be banned from using customer money to make “risky or speculative activities on the financial market,” Reuters reports.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) is co-sponsoring the bill.

While the proposal is unlikely to pass, Sanders’ stance on the issue indicates his support of more progressive policies than his fellow Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Clinton has been criticized for what some see as a friendly relationship with Wall Street, having taken millions of dollars in contributions from financial firms and other big corporations throughout her political career.

Canada’s Land Of Tar Sands Just Elected A Left-Wing Government

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CREDIT: The Canadian Press video screengrab

Something pretty crazy happened in Alberta, Canada, last night.

The province, known for its prolific oil reserves and strong conservative leanings, elected a left-wing government. Not only that, it elected a left-wing government by a landslide.

If you don’t know much about Canadian politics and want to understand how unprecedented this is, it’s useful to think of it as a comparison to Texas. As Bloomberg’s Dave Weigel put it on Twitter, abbreviations extended: “Imagine if Democrats took not only Texas Governor, but supermajority control of [the] Legislature and all state offices. That’s what [Alberta’s election] is like in Canada.”

CREDIT: The Canadian Press

As it happens, Alberta is “often thought as being the Texas of Canada” – that’s at least according to Ed Whittingham, the executive director of the Pembina Institute, a leading environmental and energy think tank in Canada. And just like oil-rich Texas, oil-rich Alberta is has grown accustomed to having strong conservative governance (the Progressive Conservative party has been in the leadership there for more than four decades).

Now with the votes in and counted for, Whittingham told ThinkProgress that Tuesday’s elections results would likely mean changes for Alberta’s oil country. He put an emphasis on “likely” – based on the left-wing New Democratic Party’s (NDP) policy platform, he said it’s “too early to tell” what they’ll do exactly – but there is hope for change particularly when it comes to mitigating human-caused global warming.

“What we hope they’re going to do is coming out the gate as tackling climate change,” Whittingham said. “That’s going to include somehow regulating the oil sands emissions.”

When Whittingham says oil sands, he’s talking about the thick mixture of sand, water, clay and bitumen also known as tar sands. It’s not like regular oil, and producers must use what is called “non-conventional” methods of getting it out of the ground. Those methods are more carbon-intensive, meaning they emit more greenhouse gases than regular oil production.

There are currently regulations on carbon emissions from Canada’s tar sands reserves, but according to the Pembina institute, they’re very weak. Because of tar sands extraction, Canada’s energy industry recently became the largest producer of climate-change causing greenhouse gases in the country, surpassing transportation for the first time.

Whittingham said he’s hopeful that stronger climate policies will come out of the new NDP government, because tackling climate change is a specific tenet of the party’s platform. Newly elected NDP premier Rachel Notley has said that delaying Alberta’s climate change strategy is “profoundly irresponsible,” and has said she’d work with other provinces to come up with a more comprehensive strategy to reduce carbon emissions.

“[The NDP’s] position is that it wants Alberta to take leadership on the issue of climate change, and that’s something we applaud,” Whittingham said. “But the starting point is coming up with credible plans, and we don’t yet know what those might be.”

For now, signs do not point to radical changes, like stopping tar sands development altogether. Notley told Canadian media following her election that she planned on contacting key leaders in the energy industry to “work collaboratively” with them.

“What I said very clearly during the campaign is that, while we may believe that there’s some new consideration that needs to occur, that it will be done collaboratively and in partnership with our key job creators in this province,” she said.

One thing that’s for sure is that Notley is opposed to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline project. She pledged to stop spending taxpayer money to lobby for it in Washington, D.C. She is, however, not opposed to other pipelines, arguing that they are a better alternative to crude-by-rail.

The environmental and energy policies Whittingham said he was hopeful for would not necessary have to do with pipelines or tar sands, though. If it were up to him, he said, he’d like to see stronger programs for energy efficiency, an acceleration of the phase-out of coal-fired electricity, and some sort of incentive program to replace those sources with renewables like wind and solar. He emphasized again that he’s not sure it will happen, but he does know one thing from the unprecedented election results: Progress is happening.

“It was very slow,” he said. “What we’re hoping is that, giving the gravity of these issues, we’re going to get to faster progress.”

Plastic Pollution = Cancer of Our Oceans: What Is the Cure? ” EcoWatch

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By now, many people know that the ocean is filled with plastic debris.

A recent study estimates that the amount of plastic waste that washes off land into the ocean each year is approximately 8 million metric tons. Jenna Jambeck, the study’s lead author, helps us visualize the magnitude by comparing it to finding five grocery bags full of plastic on every foot of coastline in the 192 countries included in the study.

As someone who lives in a highly urbanized coastal city in California, this estimate didn’t shock me. I grew up watching loads of plastic trash spew from river outlets into our ocean. Our beaches are covered with things like plastic bottles, bags, wrappers and straws-all mostly single-use “disposable” items.

For years, I’ve watched polluted water flow beneath the bridge at the end of the San Gabriel River, a channel that drains a 713 square mile watershed in Southern California. This bridge is special … it’s where my fascination with plastic waste began-it’s where our plastic trash becomes plastic marine debris.

As Algalita ‘s education director, it’s my job to help people wrap their heads around the complexities of this issue. Many times, it’s the simple questions that require the most in-depth responses. For example: “Why can’t we clean up the trash in the ocean?”

I won’t say extracting plastic debris from our ocean is impossible; however, I will say most plastic pollution researchers agree that its output is not worth its input. They believe our cleanup efforts are best focused on land and in our rivers. Here’s why:

The ocean is imperious and is constantly changing.

The ocean is complex, and is influenced by an endless list of processes. It’s three-dimensional, interconnected, and unpredictable. It’s massive, dynamic, and acts as one giant imperious force. The fact that the ocean is ever-changing makes it impossible to fully understand.

Our experience of the ocean is entirely defined by our interactions with it. Most researchers who have studied plastic marine debris will tell you that, logistically, working in the open ocean is arduous and unpredictable. Some days you are completely powerless against its will.

Waste management ends at the end of the river.

Humans lose the ability to manage plastic trash once it enters the ocean and becomes marine debris. Ocean cleanup is not a form of waste management. It is simply an attempt to extract plastic debris from our complex ocean.

There are different types of plastic marine debris.

Our ocean is filled with all sorts of plastic-from fully intact items like bottles and toothbrushes to plastic fragments, filaments, pellets, film and resin. Recently, a team of researchers from six countries calculated that an astounding 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic weighing 269,000 tons can be found floating in the global ocean. Most of the 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic are small, between just 1mm and 4.75mm in size.

Each piece of debris is unique, with its own shape, size, and chemical composition. Its structure and buoyancy change as communities of organisms adhere to its surface. Some pieces have been completely transformed into artificial habitats that harbor dozens of species.

Some plastics, like fishing nets, line and film have a tendency to snag and accumulate other pieces of debris. Imagine a kind of snowball effect as tangled debris rolls around in the ocean’s currents. These composite mixtures come in all shapes and sizes, from massive ghost nets to tiny clusters of monofilament fibers invisible to the naked eye.

The heterogeneous nature of the debris poses critical challenges that, if not addressed properly, can have significant negative consequences and potentially jeopardize the health of the ocean.

As you can imagine, ocean cleanup is a controversial issue. Let me try to simplify things-think of ocean plastic pollution as a type of cancer. The cure for ocean plastic pollution is eliminating disposable plastics all together. I’ll be the first to admit that this is never going to happen. So let’s see what prevention and treatment look like.

Redesigning plastic products to be valuable and sustainable is our biggest leap toward prevention. When designed in cradle-to-cradle systems, plastic products have a much better chance of being recovered and recycled. Also, better product design may ease many of the challenges plastic recyclers face. Waste reduction also falls into the prevention category as it helps scale down the amount of waste to be managed.

Waste management can be viewed as treatment for the disease. This is how we keep things under control.

Ocean cleanup is comparable to invasive surgery-and that’s why it’s so controversial.

Most plastic pollution researchers agree that ocean cleanup is a radical approach to the issue. Many will even denounce it as impractical and overly idealistic. However, this engineering challenge should not be ignored completely … just as surgery for a cancer patient is sometimes our last-ditch effort.

Surgery is most successful when done by a specialist with a great deal of experience in the particular procedure. The problem is, ocean plastic pollution is a relatively new disease and therefore, there are no specialists in this type of “procedure”-there are no textbooks, courses or degrees related to ocean cleanup. Experience starts now.

An understanding of the ocean and this “disease” is best gained through experience. If we are to attempt ocean cleanup, our best approach is to connect the proponents of clean-up schemes with people who understand the complexities of the disease-experienced plastic pollution researchers. And if these plastic pollution experts denounce certain methods of cleanup, we should pay close attention to what they’re saying. Those who propose ocean clean up schemes should embrace the critiques of these individuals, as there is immeasurable value in their scrutiny.

Tesla’s $3,000 Powerwall Will Let Households Run Entirely On Solar Energy

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You almost certainly associate Tesla with cars – very cool cars – but the company has an even grander vision beyond that. Today, CEO and founder Elon Musk unveiled ‘Tesla Energy’ – a new business arm that is focused on ending our dependence on grid power and switching instead to solar energy.

The first Tesla Energy product is ‘Powerwall Home Battery,’ a stationary battery that can power a household without requiring the grid. The battery is rechargeable lithium-ion – it uses Tesla’s existing battery tech – and can be fixed to a wall, removing much of the existing complexity around using a local power source.

“The issue with existing batteries is that they suck,” Musk said in a press conference announcing Tesla Energy. “They are expensive, unreliable and bad in every way.”

Tesla’s solution, he said, is different.

For one thing, the company’s batteries cost $3,500 for 10kWh and $3,000 for 7kWh – add your snarky Apple Watch price comparison here. They are open for pre-orders in the U.S. now, the first orders will be dispatched “in late summer.”

Like regular batteries, they can be used together – up to nine can stacked up together to create a strong and reliable power source. Musk said he believes they can help people in emerging markets or remote locations ‘leapfrog’ the need for existing power systems, in a similar way that mobile phones have become more important than landlines in remote parts of the world.

A Tesla car is (sadly) not included with your puchase

The Tesla Powerwall charges up using solar power, but it also integrates with the grid “to harness excess power and give customers the flexibility to draw energy from their own reserve”. The batteries recharge in a ‘smart’ way, saving money by picking low rate periods when electricity is cheapest. They store solar energy for later, for example overnight, and can act as a back-up in the event of a power outage.

Removing dirty energy is an ambitious plan – much like space travel – but Musk believes it can be done. He explained that 160 million battery packs could “transition” power usage in the U.S. to renewable energy, while 900 million units could shift the entire world’s energy needs. Then there is the potential to make the world’s cars run on clean energy.

“This is within the power of humanity to do,” Musk said. “It is not impossible, it is something that we can do. But there’s going to [need to] be other companies involved.”

Musk added that Tesla will continue its policy of open-sourcing patents to help make that happen.

Contrary to most companies these days, Tesla’s press conference – which ran entirely on solar energy – was direct and to the point with little hyperbole.

Musk has made electric cars a (stylish) reality, and is pioneering space exploration with SpaceX. Tesla Energy is another concept which, though beyond the realm of most people’s understanding, has potentially huge consequences if Tesla can execute as Musk believes it can.

4 Steps to a Greener Home ” EcoWatch

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Going green is easier said than done, but even the smallest steps towards living a more environmentally-friendly life can make a difference. We know we should walk rather than drive where possible, and we know we should drive the car that emits the least carbon monoxide possible-but what about at home?

If you are serious about going green there are many ways, big and small, that you can ensure your house is more ecological. Have a look at a few ways you make a difference at home:

1. Invest in Solar

Yes, solar power is still more expensive than energy powered by fossil fuels, but if you are determined to boost your green credentials then investing in renewable solar energy is probably the most significant step you can take. Using 86 percent less water than coal, solar power produces clean, pollution-free energy and is 95 percent less toxic to humans compared to fossil fuels. By going solar, each household will save enough water to fill a large swimming pool-every single month. That’s a lot of water each year.

As solar continues to advance it is becoming more and more cost effective, and because it is so valuable to the environment it’s the first power source to be given substantial government backing. You can cut the cost of a solar power system by up to 50 percent if you utilize all the tax rebates and incentives available to you. Don’t be put off by the first figure you see; if you do your research you may be surprised at just how inexpensive a solar powered house can be.

2. Manage Your Household Appliances

The average American household wastes huge amounts of energy each year. As technology advances, more and more eco-conscious people are installing home automation systems which allow you to manage your energy consumption to reduce both waste and expenditure. Features like motion sensor lights have been popular for a while but the latest systems take control to a new level and prevent any unnecessary energy waste.

Fretting over whether you’ve forgotten to turn the thermostat down or switch off the lights while away may soon be a thing of the past, as no matter where you are located you can now remotely control your home’s energy output. You can even set smart schedules to manage your energy based on your usual daily habits-so for example, the heating will automatically decrease while you’re sleeping. Not only does this type of system avoid wasting energy but it will also save you money in your utility bills.

3. Insulate Your Home

A properly insulated home saves enormous amounts of energy-and like home automation systems, an added benefit is the fact that you’ll also save money. Insulation not only reduces the loss of heat during the winter months but also ensures that less cool air escapes during the summer, so you can often make savings on your yearly heating and air-conditioning bill by up to 20 percent.

Most households in the U.S. lack proper insulation and as a result have significant air leaks. If you add up all the leakages and holes in the outer walls, windows and doors of the average home it’s comparable to the effect of leaving a window open every day of the year.

4. The Small Things

If you don’t have the budget to implement any of the above, there are still multiple smaller ways you can work towards a greener home. Exchanging your home cleaning products for natural ones means that far fewer toxic chemicals are being washed down the drain and re-entering our environment-and you’ll be surprised at how effective natural methods like vinegar water solution can be.

The global meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all transport combined. The more meat people eat, the more livestock is required and the more gases are emitted. Reducing the amount of meat you eat means you’ll have far less impact on the environment, and movements such as Meatless Mondays aim to encourage people to have at least one day a week where they don’t eat any meat.

Who’s Really Paying for Our Cheap Clothes? ” EcoWatch

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Can the fast fashion industry ever truly be sustainable?

Earlier this month, H&M released its 110-page Conscious Action Sustainability Report, its 13th annual review of its green practices and efforts towards fair wages within its factories. Although many of its figures and initiatives are commendable (e.g. its in-store recycling program brought in around 13,000 tons of clothing; it aims to use 80 percent renewable electricity by year’s end; it’s inspecting more textile suppliers in order to improve working conditions), environmental and social advocates have pointed out some of the report’s inconsistencies.

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H&M’s latest sustainability report touts the brand’s commitment to environmental and social responsibility, but who’s really paying for our cheap clothes? Photo credit: Shutterstock

 

First, Quartz shed light on the Swedish fashion giant’s use of cotton. While the company is the world’s number-one user of organic cotton, only 13.7 percent of the cotton H&M uses is organic. As we mentioned before, cotton is one of the most toxic crops in the world. The Organic Consumers Association says that cotton uses more than 25 percent of all the insecticides in the world and 12 percent of all the pesticides. Cotton is also incredibly water-intensive. The World Wildlife Fund says it takes 20,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of cotton-the equivalent of a single T-shirt and a pair of jeans.

And although Greenpeace East Asia called H&M one of its leaders in their Detox Catwalk report last month for eliminating toxic perfluorinated chemicals in its products and banning the use of endocrine disrupting APs/APEOs and phthalates during manufacturing, the whole buy-and-discard mentality of fast fashion has been called into question.

As Quartz pointed out, H&M manufactures at least 600 million items annually for its 3,200 stores around the world, and that’s not even including its thousands of subsidiary brand stores, such as COS. The fashion chain also plans to open a net total of 400 new H&M stores and nine new online markets this year alone.

Fast fashion and e-commerce have presented people with more shopping choices than ever before, in turn causing more waste as more and more clothes are being discarded for new items. In fact, the average U.S. citizen tosses around 70 pounds of clothing and other textiles a year.

“Fundamentally, there is a disconnect between the idea that you are selling a tremendous amount of clothing in fast fashion and that you are trying to be a sustainable company,” said Linda Greer, who, as Natural Resources Defense Council ′s (NRDC) senior scientist and director of Clean By Design, has helped H&M clean up its chemical-intensive textile dyeing and finishing process.

NRDC has partnered up with H&M and other prominent brands such as Target, Gap Inc. and Levi Strauss and Co. through the Clean By Design program to improve their environmental practices in textile mills in China. NRDC produced a new report last week which found that these sustainable fashion leaders save $14.7 million annually through major cuts in water, energy and chemical use.

“Great fashion can also be green fashion. Although apparel manufacturing is among the largest polluting industries in the world, it doesn’t have to be,” said Greer. “There are enormous opportunities for the fashion industry to clean up its act while saving money, and Clean By Design offers low-cost, high-impact solutions to do just that.”

In addition to fast fashion’s environmental input, another major concern is the poor conditions of the textile workers, especially in light of the 2013 Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Bangladesh where more than 1,100 workers were killed (H&M did not have a contract with that factory.)

In 2013, the brand committed to paying 850,000 textile workers a “fair living wage” by 2018. The sustainability report said H&M is testing out a “pay-structure improvement method” in two factories in Bangladesh and one in Cambodia, where H&M is the sole client. The report said that its first evaluation has been carried out in its Cambodian factory and that “overtime has decreased, wages have risen, productivity has increased and dialogue between employer and employees has improved.”

However, the Clean Clothes Campaign, an alliance of garment industry labor unions and NGOs, has criticized the brand’s latest report for having “no real figures to show progress towards this goal” of a fair living wage.

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In the web series “Sweatshop,” three fast fashion consumers visited a Cambodian garment factory for one month to learn about the true cost of cheap clothing. Photo credit: Heather Stilwell

 

“H&M’s report does not accurately reflect the reality on the ground in Cambodia or Bangladesh and their PR rings hollow to workers who are struggling everyday to feed their families,” said Athit Kong, Vice President of the Cambodian garment workers’ union C.CAWDU. “A ‘sustainability’ model that is put forth and wholly controlled by H&M but is not founded in genuine respect for organized workers and trade unions on the ground is never going to result in real change for H&M production workers and only serves as a public relations façade to cover up systemic abuse.”

Also what exactly is a “fair living wage,” as defined by H&M? Bangladesh has the world’s lowest minimum wage at $38 a month. Last November, Cambodia increased the monthly minimum wage for garment workers by 28 percent to $128, falling short of union workers’ demands and creating the potential for further strikes in the country, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“Any kind of credible wage pilot project needs to have defined benchmarks and include clear and time-bound plans for making progress happen in all factories, not just the few,” Clean Clothes Campaign’s Carin Leffler said.

As the second biggest garment retailer in the world and the biggest buyer of clothes from Bangladesh, H&M could be a major player in changing the dirty textile industry for the better. H&M said their CEO Karl-Johan Persson has met twice with the Bangladeshi government and visited the Cambodian prime minister to discuss labor topics such as increasing the minimum wage and reducing overtime.

Earlier this year, the web documentary series Sweatshop: Dead Cheap Fashion took three young Norwegians-fashion blogger Anniken Jørgensen and fast fashion consumers Frida Ottesen and Ludvig Hambro-on a surprise trip to a Cambodian garment factory to work for a month. They were horrified to learn about the workers’ impoverished conditions, where some workers and their families have died of starvation because they can’t make ends meet due to low wages.

Although H&M has denied buying items from any of the shops featured in the show, as Ottesen said in episode five, “I can’t understand why the big chains, like H&M, don’t act? H&M is a big company with massive amounts of power. Do something!”

The truth is, cheap clothing has a real cost. “It is not fair that anybody sit 12 hours sewing and sewing until they collapse of dehydration and hunger,” Hambro said. “And the truth is that we are rich because they are poor. We are rich because it costs us 10 Euro to buy a T-shirt at H&M, but somebody has to starve for you to be able to buy it.”

Nation’s Strongest Fracking Ban Bill Introduced to Protect Public Lands | EcoWatch

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Congressmembers Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, both Democrats, have made no secret of their strong opposition to fracking. Last December, for instance, as new rules were being formulated on the opening new areas of public lands to energy exploration and extraction, they introduced a bill to ban fracking entirely on public lands.

“Federal lands should be preserved for the public good,” said Pocan at the time. “We should not allow short-term economic gain to harm our environment and endanger workers.”

Today they upped the ante with the reintroduction of the Protect Our Public Lands Act, which they announced at a press conference in Washington DC. H.R. 1902 would prohibit fracking, the use of fracking fluid and acidization for the extraction of oil and gas on public lands for any lease issued, renewed or readjusted. The bill is being touted as the strongest bill against fracking introduced in Congress so far.

“Today is Earth Day‚ a time to renew our commitment to protecting the air we breathe, the water we drink and the planet we all call home,” said Schakowsky. “Our public lands have been preserved and protected by the federal government for over one hundred years. We owe it to future generations to maintain their natural beauty and rich biodiversity. I believe the only way to do that is to enact the Protect Our Public Lands Act, and I will continue to fight to see that happen.”

Schakowsky and Pocan were joined by environmental leaders, including Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, Hilary Baum of the American Sustainable Business Council, Andrea Miller of Progressive Democrats of America and Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. The legislation is also endorsed by Environment America and Friends of the Earth.

“Our public lands are a shared national heritage, and shouldn’t be polluted, destroyed and fracked to enrich the oil and gas industry,” said Hauter. “Ironically, the President is speaking in the Everglades today, a unique and fragile ecosystem that is threatened by nearby fracking on public land. Congress must follow Congressman Pocan and Congresswoman Schakowsky’s bold leadership and ban fracking on these land, so that future generations can enjoy these special places.”

Other co-sponsors include Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva, who is the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Rhode Island Congressman David Cicilline and California Congressman Mark DeSaulnier. All are Democrats.

The reintroduction of the bill follows the new rules for fracking on public lands, which were announced by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management in March. Their release followed a comment period that solicited more than a million responses, including more than 650,000 supporting a ban on oil and gas operations. While those rules strengthened some environmental and public health protections, for instance, requiring companies to disclose chemicals used within 30 days of completing operations, Schakowsky called them only “a step in the right direction.”

H.R. 1902 proposes to take another giant step.

“Our national parks, forests and public lands are some of our most treasured places and need to be protected for future generations,” said Pocan today.”It is clear fracking has a detrimental impact on the environment and there are serious safety concerns associated with these type of wells. Until we fully understand the effects, the only way to avoid these risks is to halt fracking entirely. We should not allow short-term economic gain to harm our public lands, damage our communities or endanger workers.”

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