Going Green Podcast, Video blog and Daily News

Stream restoration filters out pollutants from our local waterways and improves the health of the ecosystems that are within and around them. Researchers in Maryland found that the  homeowners in the least densely populated, and generally wealthier areas of their study region, were less willing to pay to restore streams, while those in the most densely populated areas, which tended to have lower incomes, were more willing to pay for restoration projects.  Stream restoration projects vary greatly with the  local environment , but they are all designed to improve the ability of a stream to absorb and process nutrient pollutants and prevent them from flowing downstream.

  Per- and polyfluorinated chemicals (PFAS) have very harmful effects on human health and the environment. They are still used in numerous everyday products. A team of researchers, from Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon investigated water samples from German and Chinese rivers affected by industrial point sources. They identified almost 60 substances that are overlooked by conventional analysis of well-known PFAS. Eight substances were detected in the environment for the first time. One fifth of the investigated blood samples from German children and adolescents were above the maximum safe level. They identified 86 PFAS – only about 30 of them are routinely analysed by specialized labs, eight substances have not been reported in the environment before. In the Xiaoqing River, the globally banned substance PFOA and traditionally non-investigated PFAS, such as chlorinated PFOA, were the most prevalent compounds. In contrast, replacement chemicals, such as hexafluoropropylene oxide-dimer acid ...

  The world is racing towards an electric vehicle (EV) rebirth because of issues ranging from environmental concerns to the high fluctuating oil prices that continue to push consumers toward alternatives to combustion engines. Today’s Electric Cars, however, is beyond anything nineteenth century drivers could imagine. From intelligent driving to proactive service and remote vehicle access, these new electrics cars can offer the safety and convenience today’s consumers crave. To push drivers toward “plugging in,” however, automakers must better educate them, as well as offer a uniquely “connected” driving experience. Equally important, they must embrace innovative business models and partnerships.

SUEZ recycling and recovery UK’s plans to develop the UK’s first carbon capture and storage plant from energy-from-waste at Teesside. SUEZ announced plans to develop a commercial scale carbon capture plant at its Tees Valley facility at Teesside in November 2020  The original project envisaged capturing the carbon dioxide from the facility’s flue gas emissions and transporting this to a geological storage site beneath the North Sea. SUEZ’s plans were given a boost last autumn when the East Coast Cluster, which covers the Teesside and Humber areas, was selected by the Government as one of the UK’s first two low carbon industrial clusters to receive support for deploying carbon capture utilisation and storage at scale.  Two carbon capture facilities would be created linked to the existing energy-from-waste plants at Haverton Hill. They would aim to capture 98% of all carbon emissions.

  Idenergie, a Canadian renewable energy company has unveiled a new hydrokinetic design turbine that harnesses power from flowing water and converts it to electricity. The river turbine converts the kinetic energy of the river current into  electricity. Its energy production depends on the  water velocity. So, the stronger the current, the more electricity the river turbine will produce. While solar panels and wind turbines have been put to the task in most use cases, both systems have limitations when it comes to power generation. While power output from wind turbines is highly dependent on wind speeds, solar panels are effectively non-generative for almost half a day. A turbine placed in water flow can generate power continuously, day or night. This turbine can generate between 4 to 12 kWh/day  depending on the water velocity available. Many of these types of turbines in the past have caused disruption to the habitats for aquatic animals and vegetation systems...

 Many new TV shows and movies use LED walls to create virtual environments. The Pandemic in the past two years, has transformed the entertainment industry, forcing studios to rethink the way productions are planned. Instead of costly scenes filmed on location, withal the costs of transporting staff all over the world to some exotic location to film a scene, all of this can now be done in the studio. This means smaller crews and smaller overheads and this has propelled these virtual productions into the forefront of the industry, allowing a team to create and environment, back in time, into the future and travel anywhere on a project without ever leaving the studio. These virtual sets which replace the traditional green screens can use 2D playback of photographic footage on LED walls, or 3D tracking that moves with the camera so the image changes like it would on a real set. Not only are productions saving a significant amount of money, they are also reducing the carbon footprint.

 In the summer of 1998, five of China’s longest rivers flooded, killing more than 3,000 people and costing the country at least 11.5 billion yuan (US$1.8 billion) in economic loss. These floods were in part caused by erosion and denudation of hillsides along major rivers, all caused by the clearing of forests to make way for arable and industrial land to feed the country. Even before the devastation was cleared, China banned logging in the basins of the flood-prone Yangtze and Yellow rivers and ordered trees to be planted on hillsides, as well as on some of the less successful cropland. The result is that the amount of forest in the world has increased by 25%, enough that the difference can be seen from space.  As well as acting as a large Carbon Dioxide Sink for the countries huge industry this huge investment in tree planting is slowing down the amounts of erosion, but as we have seen from last year’s floods in China still much more work needs to be done in investi...