Browsing environmental news sources so you don't have to. Contact Laura Barnes (lbarnes@istc.illinois.edu) with questions, comments, and suggestions.
Follow ENB on TwitterRead the full story in FarmWeek.
Agriculture and science teachers across Illinois last week explored in-school biodiesel production as a new teaching tool offered by the Waste Management and Research Center (WMRC), one of the state’s scientific surveys.
Read the full story in the Wall Street Journal.
Rapidly improving technology and a consumer thirst for all the latest gadgets are leaving people with a growing number of old electronics. Even though they should be recycled, most end up in the trash or gather dust in the basement. Now, states and manufacturers are trying to make it easier for people to recycle old TVs, iPods and even fluorescent light bulbs.
Businesses and consumers have learned that sustainable development or “green technology” results in both environmental protection and economic growth. And with some help from EPA, college students around the country are also catching the “green wave.” Fifty-eight university teams were awarded $580,000 in EPA grants to work on sustainable solutions for environmental problems.
Read the full story at News.com.
For green-tech start-ups, 2008 could be the year of either break-neck speed or just hitting the brakes.
The 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games could be one of the most climate friendly Games in history if it follows the recommendations set out in a new David Suzuki Foundation report.
Read the full story at News.com.
Sugar or sunlight?
That’s one of the fundamental questions for companies trying to transform algae into transportation fuel or dietary supplements. Solazyme says it will grow algae through fermentation–for instance, feeding the algae sugars in a heated, sealed environment.
“We’re not growing it photosynthetically. We put it in stainless steel tanks similar to what you see in a brew pub,” said Solazyme President Harrison Dillon.
By contrast, GreenFuel Technologies and LiveFuels will exploit the sun to grow the single-celled creatures. And here there is a divide, too. GreenFuel grows its algae in sealed, transparent tubes it calls bioreactors. LiveFuels, by contrast, is setting up an open pond near the Salton Sea in Southern California.
Americans are famous for building big: the tallest sky scraper, the biggest jet, the widest plasma TV screen. But now U.S. entrepreneurs are considering thinking small. Nanotechnology uses particles 80,000 times smaller than a human hair; yet the new technology has the potential to quickly clean up pollution, cure serious illnesses, and make the computer silicon chip obsolete. While EPA looks forward to new environmental breakthroughs, the Agency’s first commitment is to protect human health and the environment. Therefore EPA has awarded 21 grants totaling $7.34 million to universities to investigate potential adverse health and environmental effects of manufactured nanomaterials.
Read the full story in the Buffalo News.
The mounting toll on migrating birds has stoked fears among researchers and ecologists that blame for the deaths lies with invasive populations of zebra mussels and round gobies spreading over the Great Lakes, effectively creating a new food chain.
Read the full story in the Detroit Free Press.
The Great Lakes are less polluted than in the past, but U.S. efforts to improve water quality are hampered by unclear lines of responsibility and inadequate funding, a witness told lawmakers Wednesday.
Read/listen to the full story from the Environment Report.
Some experts say water will be the “oil” of the next generation. As it become more scarce, prices are going to go up. For farmers, that’s serious business. Kyle Norris recently spent time with several farmers who say they think about water constantly:
Read the full story in the Macomb Daily.
The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality decided the body of water formerly known as a canal is so shallow and choked with weeds that it now qualifies as a wetland.
Read the full story in the Toronto Globe & Mail.
The premiers of British Columbia and Ontario will push their colleagues from other provinces today to reach a national accord on how to adapt to the fallout from global warming that is already evident on the country’s forests, lakes and wildlife.
