Recycling and Waste News

July 26, 2024

Top Headlines

Manufacturing Perovskite Solar Panels With a Long-Term Vision

July 23, 2024 — Researchers working at the forefront of an emerging photovoltaic (PV) technology are thinking ahead about how to scale, deploy, and design future solar panels to be easily recyclable. Solar panels made of perovskites may eventually play an important ...

Waste Styrofoam Can Now Be Converted Into Polymers for Electronics

July 19, 2024 — A new study describes a chemical reaction that can convert Styrofoam into a high-value conducting polymer known as PEDOT:PSS. Researchers also noted that the upgraded plastic waste can be successfully incorporated into functional electronic devices, ...

Converting Wastewater to Fertilizer With Fungal Treatment

July 18, 2024 — Creating fertilizers from organic waste can help reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and promote sustainable production. One way of doing this is through hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL), which converts biomass into biocrude oil through a ...

Minerals Play Newly Discovered Role in Earth's Phosphorus Cycle

July 18, 2024 — Plants and microbes are known to secrete enzymes to transform organic phosphorus into bioavailable inorganic phosphorus. Now, researchers found that iron oxide in soil performs the same transformation. Discovery is important for food security, which ...

Latest Headlines

updated 9:42pm EDT

Researchers Develop Innovative Battery Recycling Method

July 24, 2024 — A research team is tackling the environmental issue of efficiently recycling lithium ion batteries amid their increasing ...

A Promising New Method Uses Light to Clean Up Forever Chemicals

July 23, 2024 — A room-temperature method to decompose perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) using visible LED light offers a promising solution for sustainable fluorine recycling and PFAS ...

Researcher Finds Lithium Ion Batteries a Growing Source of Pollution

July 8, 2024 — The use of certain substances in batteries is polluting air and ...

Mining Rare Earth Metals from Electronic Waste

July 9, 2024 — A small molecule that naturally serves as a binding site for metals in enzymes also proves useful for separating certain rare earth metals from each other. In a proof of concept, the process extracts ...

How to Increase the Rate of Plastics Recycling

July 3, 2024 — A US nationwide bottle deposit program could increase recycling of PET plastic to 82 percent, with nearly two-thirds of all PET bottles being recycled into new bottles, at a net cost of just a penny ...

Some Landfill 'Burps' Contain Airborne PFAS

June 26, 2024 — Many municipal landfills 'burp' gas from decomposing organic matter rather than letting it build up. And burps from buried waste containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) can release ...

Small, Adsorbent 'Fins' Collect Humidity Rather Than Swim Through Water

June 26, 2024 — Clean, safe water is a limited resource and access to it depends on local bodies of water. But even dry regions have some water vapor in the air. To harvest small amounts of humidity, researchers ...

Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Pose an Acute Challenge for Cities With Combined Sewer Systems

June 27, 2024 — Older coastal cities, like Philadelphia, New York and Boston are at risk of being inundated by untreated sewage during floods. Due in part to the ...

Mashed Up Purple Marine Bacteria Makes an Excellent Eco-Friendly Fertilizer

June 24, 2024 — New research reports that biomass made from the purple photosynthetic marine bacterium Rhodovulum sulfidophilum is an excellent nitrogen fertilizer. The biomass fertilizer proved to be just as ...

Drowning in Waste: Pollution Hotspots in Aquatic Environments

June 28, 2024 — A new study explores waste management systems and reveals that achieving zero waste leakage by 2030 is unlikely, potentially jeopardizing related Sustainable Development Goals. The authors emphasize ...

Waters Along Bar Harbor, Acadia Home to Billions of Microplastics

July 24, 2024 — Researchers reveal there are an estimated 400 billion microplastic fibers on the surface of Frenchman Bay, which borders Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park in Maine, and several connected rivers and ...

Whale Remains Tracked to Highlight Sustainable Disposal Benefits

July 10, 2024 — A new study highlights the sustainable, cultural and ecosystem benefits of offshore removal or decomposition of whale remains. The study tracked the remains of a humpback whale that was intercepted ...

Team Aims to Improve Safety of Fertilizers Made from Wastewater Sludge

June 25, 2024 — Fertilizers manufactured from the sludgy leftovers of wastewater treatment processes can contain traces of potentially hazardous organic chemicals, according to a new study. The research provides one ...

Climate Change: Rising Temperatures May Impact Groundwater Quality

June 17, 2024 — As the world's largest unfrozen freshwater resource, groundwater is crucial for life on Earth. Researchers have investigated how global warming is affecting groundwater temperatures and what ...

Wear It, Then Recycle: Designers Make Dissolvable Textiles from Gelatin

June 17, 2024 — Researchers hope their DIY machine will help designers around the world experiment with making their own, sustainable fashion and other textiles from a range of natural ingredients -- maybe even the ...

Mushroom Stump Waste Could Be Inexpensive, Healthy Chicken Feed Supplement

June 7, 2024 — Feed costs for producing broiler chickens accounts for 60% to 70% of total production costs, and stump waste from the production of button mushrooms comprises nearly 30% of total mushroom weight. ...

Uptake of Tire Wear Additives by Vegetables Grown for Human Consumption

June 5, 2024 — Car tires contain hundreds of chemical additives that can leach out of them. This is how they end up in crops and subsequently in the food chain. Researchers have now detected these chemical residues ...

A Cracking Discovery -- Eggshell Waste Can Recover Rare Earth Elements Needed for Green Energy

June 5, 2024 — A collaborative team of researchers has made a cracking discovery with the potential to make a significant impact in the sustainable recovery of rare earth elements (REEs), which are in increasing ...

Innovative Demand Strategies for Clean Energy

June 4, 2024 — A perspective piece describes innovative strategies that significantly reduce both resource consumption and fossil fuel ...

Fungus Breaks Down Ocean Plastic

June 3, 2024 — A fungus living in the sea can break down the plastic polyethylene, provided it has first been exposed to UV radiation from sunlight. Researchers expect that many more plastic degrading fungi are ...

Mussels Downstream of Wastewater Treatment Plant Contain Radium, Study Reports

May 31, 2024 — Burrowed into streambeds and rarely moving for their decades-long lifespans, freshwater mussels are biomonitors, meaning they indicate how clean their environment is, according to researchers. As the ...

Trout in Mine-Polluted Rivers Are Genetically 'Isolated'

May 30, 2024 — Trout living in rivers polluted by metal from old mines across the British Isles are genetically 'isolated' from other trout, new research ...

Novel Mobile Air Monitoring Technology Yields Greater Insight Into Post-Disaster Pollution Levels

May 30, 2024 — A team has found that high resolution mass spectrometry could be a valuable tool for identifying and assessing air-borne contaminants produced by natural and human-made ...

New Method Makes Hydrogen from Solar Power and Agricultural Waste

May 30, 2024 — Engineers have helped design a new method to make hydrogen gas from water using only solar power and agricultural waste such as manure or husks. The method reduces the energy needed to extract ...

High Groundwater Depletion Risk in South Korea in 2080s

May 30, 2024 — Team utilizes advanced statistical techniques to project the future groundwater depletion ...

Improved Refrigeration Could Save Nearly Half of the 1.3 Billion Tons of Food Wasted Each Year Globally

May 28, 2024 — A new study concludes that nearly half of the food waste, about 620 million metric tons, could be eliminated by fully refrigerated food supply chains worldwide. At the same time, fully refrigerated ...

Study Suggests 'Biodegradable' Teabags Don't Readily Deteriorate in the Environment and Can Adversely Affect Terrestrial Species

May 28, 2024 — New research looked at commonly available teabags made using three different compositions of polylactic acid (PLA), which is derived from sources such as corn starch or sugar cane. The teabags were ...

Developing Novel Methods to Detect Antibiotics in Vegetables and Earthworms

May 23, 2024 — Researchers have managed to analyze, simultaneously, several families of antibiotics in vegetables and earthworms. Sampling carried out in various locations has yielded data on the existence of ...

Iron Could Be Key to Less Expensive, Greener Lithium-Ion Batteries, Research Finds

May 23, 2024 — Chemistry researchers are hoping to spark a green battery revolution by showing that iron instead of cobalt and nickel can be used as a cathode material in lithium-ion ...

Rising Temperatures Will Significantly Reduce Streamflow in the Upper Colorado River Basin as Groundwater Levels Fall

May 23, 2024 — The Colorado River makes life possible in many Western cities and supports agriculture that sustains people throughout the country. Most of the river's water begins as snowmelt from the ...