we-make-haste-blog

[we-make-haste-blog]

[we-make-haste-blog]

"Flying doesn’t come cheap—for your wallet or the planet. If you’re taking a round-trip, economy-class flight from New York (JFK) to Los Angeles (LAX), for example, you’re adding more than 1,200 pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere, per calculations from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Airlines, for their part, are beginning to reduce those emissions through various avenues. Delta, for example, has partnered with The Nature Conservancy to show you the approximate environmental impact of your flight and offer an option to donate to various forest protection projects to offset the damage done. The same goes for United’s Eco-Skies CarbonChoice program, which has teamed up with Sustainable Travel International. In fact, international airlines must offset extra carbon emissions by 2021, per a resolution passed by the United Nations last year. So important progress is being made."

[we-make-haste-blog]

[we-make-haste-blog]

"Like any other city, Atlanta is woven with power lines, trams and buses. The electricity that makes Atlanta run comes mostly from coal, natural gas and nuclear energy. Only 6% to 8% comes from renewable sources. "Obviously, going from that number to 100% by 2035 is a bold goal," said Amol Naik, Atlanta's chief resilience officer. He says the green energy plan, approved by the Atlanta City Council in March - which aims to get to 100% green in 16 years - is "ambitious and achievable". But, he admits, there's no easy path to get there."

[we-make-haste-blog]

[we-make-haste-blog]

"Typically, the aftermath of a marathon is a sea of plastic waste. But in an effort to make the event more sustainable, the London Marathon will replace thousands of plastic water bottles with edible seaweed pouches this year. More than 40,000 people plan to run the marathon on Sunday. And they're in for a bit of a different experience when they reach Mile 23 — Ooho seaweed capsules instead of plastic bottles or cups. The capsules can be filled with a variety of liquids, but the ones provided at the marathon will be filled with Lucozade Sport, an electrolyte drink. "

[we-make-haste-blog]

[we-make-haste-blog]

"This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. If you want to hear some alarming facts about climate change, Bill McKibben has them. He writes in his new book that as the Earth warms, we're now seeing lethal heatwaves in some parts of the world and that the largest physical structures on our planet - the ice caps, coral reefs and rainforests - are disappearing before our eyes. McKibben's been writing about and advocating for action on climate change since the 1980s, but his new book isn't just a warning of impending disaster. And it isn't just about climate change. McKibben says there are also threats to humanity as we know it from human genetic engineering and from the unbridled development of artificial intelligence. Bill McKibben has written 15 books and is the founder of the environmental organization 350.org. His new book, which offers some dark visions of the future and hope for real change, is called "Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?""

[we-make-haste-blog]

[we-make-haste-blog]

"Every time you order a burrito, you probably don't think much about the plastic gloves your tortilla-roller wears. But millions of these gloves end up in the trash every year, which has a serious impact on the environment. At fast-casual dining chain Chipotle, workers are required to swap gloves hourly, plus any time they switch tasks. That piles up quickly: Each location goes through around 150,000 gloves per year, 95 percent of which end up in landfills. Enter Little Rock-based Revolution Bag. Founded in 2010, the company manufactures garbage bags from recycled plastic; Revolution then sells the bags to clients like Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport and the city of Austin. Last year, Revolution quietly began a pilot program with Chipotle to collect used gloves from a handful of restaurants and melt them down to create bags. Now the pilot is expanding to 25 total restaurants on the West Coast. Its success will determine whether the program goes nationwide."

[we-make-haste-blog]

[we-make-haste-blog]

"Around 12 million of the most affected children live in and around the powerful river systems which regularly burst their banks, UNICEF’s Dhaka spokesman, Jean-Jacques Simon, told the AP. “In the big cities ... thousands of children arrive every day with their parents ... who are quite vulnerable to all kinds of exploitations,” Simon said."

[we-make-haste-blog]

[we-make-haste-blog]

"AT CITY WASTE Recycling in Accra, Ghana, owners Jürgen Meniel and Vivian Ahiayibor mostly focus on plastics and metals, but they also reclaim refrigerants from old equipment. Several years ago, they learned of a large cache of unused canisters of a refrigerant called CFC-12. The containers looked like small propane tanks, but the gas inside was illegal. Outlawed thirty years ago by the Montreal Protocol because of their harmful effects on the stratospheric ozone layer, CFCs have also been found to have a second, destructive effect on the climate."

[we-make-haste-blog]

[we-make-haste-blog]

"UCLA researchers designed a water vapor capture system that could purify industrial wastewater and agricultural runoff three times more efficiently than existing methods. The study, published in the April issue of Science Advance, was led by Yongho Sungtaek Ju, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor. Ju said he was initially awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to create a system to cool power plants with dry air instead of fresh water. This system also happened to be efficient at collecting water vapor from the air and was later adapted for this purpose, Ju said."

[we-make-haste-blog]