(Image courtesy of Wikipedia, via Anthropocene)
Manufacturing the fertilizer on which much of modern agriculture depends takes a heavy environmental toll. The phosphorus in commercial fertilizer comes from phosphate rock, a non-renewable resource, while nitrogen comes from natural gas and requires a lot of energy to produce.
But there’s an endless stream of renewable phosphorus and nitrogen available: yes, we’re talking about urine. And meanwhile, lots of energy and expense goes to removing nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus from municipal wastewater.
“Both conventional wastewater treatment and fertilizer production are carbon intensive processes,” says Gregory Keoleian, director of the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “Flushing urine with its valuable nutrients down toilets for processing in energy intensive wastewater treatment plants makes no sense.”
How so? As well as the anecdotal evidence of seeing masks lying around, according to a recent report by conservation group, OceansAsia, the number of single use face masks that are now in the world’s oceans may be as high as 1.5 billion.
The number of masks used is far higher? According to a report titled Pandemic Repercussions on the Use and Management of Plastics earlier this year in the Environmental Science & Technology journal, humans around the world are using and disposing of around 129 billion face masks and 65 billion plastic gloves each month.
Landfill? Environmental campaigners have warned that 20,000 tonnes of plastic masks could be in UK landfill sites by the spring of 2021. Charlotte Green from TradeWaste said: 6.3 billion face masks is the amount the UK will throw in the bin in just four months – if the rules on mask wearing continue throughout 2021, this could top 19.2 billion.”
Applying compost to landfills could have environmental benefits
Compost as daily cover outperformed its use as a soil amendment in almost 100% of simulations
Applying compost to landfills could have environmental benefits.
December 28, 2020
Many people think of composting organic matter as a way of keeping solid waste out of landfills, but a new U.S. National Science Foundation-funded study by North Carolina State University scientists finds there can be significant environmental benefits associated with using compost at landfills. The study appears in There are an increasing number of composting programs, and many of them are required to use the resulting compost beneficially, says James Levis, a civil, construction and environmental engineer at North Carolina State University. A lot of state and local regulations don’t recognize alternative daily cover as a beneficial use. But our work shows that using compost as alternative daily cover at landfills is competitive
On multiple environmental measures, “peecycling” almost always comes out ahead
December 22, 2020
Manufacturing the fertilizer on which much of modern agriculture depends takes a heavy environmental toll. The phosphorus in commercial fertilizer comes from phosphate rock, a non-renewable resource, while nitrogen comes from natural gas and requires a lot of energy to produce.
But there’s an endless stream of renewable phosphorus and nitrogen available: yes, we’re talking about urine. And meanwhile, lots of energy and expense goes to removing nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus from municipal wastewater.
“Both conventional wastewater treatment and fertilizer production are carbon intensive processes,” says Gregory Keoleian, director of the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “Flushing urine with its valuable nutrients down toilets for processing in energy intensive wastewater treatment plants makes no sense.”
Taking Geenhouse Gas Analysis on the Road, er, Rails Details
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Research-grade air quality sensors are costly around $40,000. For cities trying to monitor their greenhouse gas emissions, the cost may limit the number of sensors they can install and the data they can collect.
Research-grade air quality sensors are costly around $40,000. For cities trying to monitor their greenhouse gas emissions, the cost may limit the number of sensors they can install and the data they can collect.
Unless.
Since 2014, the University of Utah has maintained research-grade suites of air quality instruments installed on light rail trains that move throughout the Salt Lake Valley every day. These mobile sensors, researchers estimate in a new study, cover the same area as 30 stationary sensors, providing the Salt Lake Valley with a highly cost-effective way to monitor its greenhouse emissions and fill in gaps in emissions estimates. The study is published in Envir