When Recycling Is Bad for the Environment

Glass, metal, and paper are pretty straightforward, but when it comes to plastic, things get tricky. The truth is that what you can recycle depends on where you live and what materials your city’s facilities can handle. There are many different types of plastic, and they cannot all be recycled together. So unless you’re diligent about sorting all your plastics, then “recycling” that yogurt container may be doing more harm than simply throwing it away.

Recycling is generally far better than sending waste to landfills and relying on new raw materials to drive the consumer economy.

The Easiest Way to Fight Global Warming?

Discussions of climate change often make it sound as if carbon dioxide is the only villain. But climatologists have identified another, less notorious form of carbon that may be nearly as dangerous: soot. The fine, black, powdery pollutant may be responsible for the very different warming trends observed between the Northern and Southern hemispheres. If discovering yet another agent of global warming gets you down, take heart. This one may be a relatively easy target for action that will slow the progress of climate change.

Soot, which climatologists call black carbon, emanates from diesel engines, power plants, the clearing of forests or burning of fields, and open cookstoves common in developing countries. While drifting in the atmosphere or after settling on the ground, soot efficiently absorbs sunlight, warms up, and radiates heat.

Emission control technologies for carbon fiber processing

Carbon fiber and graphite reinforced polymers are materials that have, and will continue to revolutionize the products we use everyday by making them stronger, lighter and more durable. However, the manufacturing process can have serious environmental ramifications and immediate danger to human health if careful consideration is not given to emission control at the production phase of these materials.

A carbon fiber company in the Peoples Republic of China was faced with this challenge while designing a new facility and process line for their specialty fiber products. Company officials knew they would need a pollution control device that not only met the local regulations but also protected their employees and heavily populated neighborhood. The new line would include a furnace and oven with the potential to discharge significant levels of Carbon Monoxide (CO), Amonia (NH3) and lethal amounts of Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN).

Dust monitoring

Generally, two different approaches are used to measure the amount of dust deposited on a surface; Determination of the soiling of a surface, by a change in its properties; Determination of the quantity of dust deposited, by weight. WHAT IS DUST? Dust is a generic term used to describe fine particles that are suspended in the atmosphere. Dust comes from a wide variety of sources, including soil, vegetation (pollens and fungi), sea salt, fossil fuel combustion, burning of biomass, and industrial activities. It is formed when fine particles are taken up into the atmosphere (entrained) by the action of wind or other physical disturbances or through the release of particulate-rich gaseous emissions (primary particles). In addition, gases such as sulfur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen may react in the atmosphere over time to form fine particles, such as ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate (secondary particles).

Dust is typically classified according to its particle size, as follows:

• Deposited matter refers to any dust that falls out of suspension in the atmosphere.
• Total suspended particles (TSP) typically refers to particles 50μm (micrometers) (0.05mm diameter) in size or less.
• PM10 refers to particles 10μm (0.01mm) in size or less.
• PM2.5 refers to particles 2.5μm (0.0025mm) in size or less.

Is Paper Better Than Plastic?

Paper bags, which many people consider a better alternative to plastic bags, carry their own set of environmental problems. For example, according to the American Forest and Paper Association, in 1999 the U.S. alone used 10 billion paper grocery bags, which adds up to a lot of trees.

EarthTalk Bio

EarthTalk, an environmental question-and-answer column, is a regular feature of E/The Environmental Magazine. EarthTalk answers reader-submitted questions on a wide range of environmental topics, from global warming to buying organic. Nearly 400 outlets currently carry EarthTalk, which has a total weekly readership approaching 4 million.

EarthTalk is provided free each week to newspapers, news services, environmental organizations and green-friendly companies. Selected EarthTalk columns are reprinted on About.com Environmental Issues by permission of the magazine’s editors.

Cell Phone Recycling: How to Recycle Your Old Cell Phone

What happens to your old cell phone after you upgrade to a new model? Do stores really recycle old cell phones, or refurbish them and give them to the poor, or do they just end up in landfills? Learn how you can ensure your old cell phone is recycled and put to good use instead of damaging the environment.

Is Clean Coal Really Clean?

Clean coal supporters claim clean coal and liquid coal can help to free the United States of its dependence on foreign oil without damaging the environment, but critics say "clean coal" is dirtier than oil-based alternatives. Get the dirt on clean coal.

Benefits of Glass recycling

Glass recycling is both simple and beneficial. Glass recycling is good for environment.A glass bottle that is sent to a landfill can take up to a million years to break down. By contrast, it takes as little as 30 days for a recycled glass bottle to leave your kitchen recycling bin and appear on a store shelf as a new glass container.

Water on the Moon?

About to years ago Faith Vilas, director of the Multiple Mirror Telescope in Arizona, developed a sideline obsession with the Moon. Perusing archived data from the Galileo mission to Jupiter, she saw something different in the pictures taken of the Moon. When she started to study that picture for certain infrared wavelengths, a telling signal popped out at a few spots near the Moon's south pole. The signal, at least in asteroids, is associated with phyllosilicates, which are minerals that need two things to form: heat and water. Was this a clue pointing to all the water ice that many think hides within the Moon's polar craters?

Beijing bamboozled by no-car-day numbers game

Beijing car owners, many apparently puzzled by no-driving days designated by the last digit of their license numbers, now face revised rules which threaten even greater confusion.

The no-car days, introduced on Oct 11 to reduce gridlock and pollution, have apparently left so many drivers scratching their heads that one Beijing newspaper runs front-page notices each day to remind drivers which weekday they aren't allowed to drive.

Selfish use of rivers seen threatening political stability

Countries that selfishly use shared rivers threaten political stability at a time when water is scarce and demand is growing, a conservation group warned on Wednesday.

Disputes over shared rivers such as the Tigris and the Euphrates could be resolved if nations put borders aside and viewed the entire river basin as a unit instead, they added.

In the past some states have built dams or siphoned water from rivers for irrigation without consulting neighbors downstream -- stirring political tension.

Watermelon Juice May Be Next "Green" Fuel

According to a new U.S. government study, juice from unwanted watermelons could be a promising new source for making the biofuel ethanol.


Up to a fifth of all watermelons grown each year have odd shapes or scarred rinds that turn off consumers, said study co-author Wayne Fish, a chemist with the Agricultural Research Service in Lane, Oklahoma.
Instead of picking the fruit, farmers leave these reject melons on the vine.
"If you figure a field of watermelon may yield somewhere between 60 and 100 tons per acre of watermelon, a fifth of that can be substantial," Fish said.
When he and colleagues were experimenting with extracting antioxidant compounds from watermelon juice, they realized the waste stream of sugary fluids could be a source of ethanol.