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In a down economy, there is less demand for raw materials which leads to a drop in the price at which these raw materials can be sold. This has had a major impact on recyclers which process consumer waste and sort it by material to sell back to manufacturers. As a result, there is a huge supply of waste which no one really wants to buy right now and recyclers have to find a way to deal with it. So, all that hardwork many households put in to have a positive impact on the environment might go to waste as recyclers resort to the more cost effective solution and began to dump materials in landfills. Besides directly affecting recyclers, municipal governments which contract recyclers to handle city waste are also hurting as the income they receive from recycling is beginning to dry up. This has cause some to suspend recycling programs altogether, which is not good for the environment at all as more waste now resumes the path straight to a landfill. Some experts don’t see the market for recyclable goods bouncing back from the slump until 2010. Until then many firms will be faced with the dilemia to focus on being cost effective or provide benefits to the environment because as of right now both cannot mutually exist.

Full Article: Telegraph

Something beneath the surface is changing Earth’s protective magnetic field, which may leave satellites and other space assets vulnerable to high-energy radiation.

The gradual weakening of the overall magnetic field can take hundreds and even thousands of years. But smaller, more rapid fluctuations within months may leave satellites unprotected and catch scientists off guard, new research finds.

A new model uses satellite data from the past nine years to show how sudden fluid motions within the Earth’s core can alter the magnetic envelope around our planet. This represents the first time that researchers have been able to detect such rapid magnetic field changes taking place over just a few months.

“There are these changes in the South Atlantic, an area where the magnetic field has the smallest envelope at one third [of what is] normal,” said Mioara Mandea, a geophysicist at the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany.

Even before the newly detected changes, the South Atlantic Anomaly represented a weak spot in the magnetic field — a dent in Earth’s protective bubble.

The Earth’s magnetic field extends about 36,000 miles (58,000 km) into space, generated from the spinning effect of the electrically-conductive core that acts something like a giant electromagnet. The field creates a tear-drop shaped bubble that has constantly shielded life on Earth against much of the high-energy radiation flowing from the sun.

The last major change in the field took place some 780,000 years ago during a magnetic reversal, although such reversals seem to occur more often on average. A flip in the north and south poles typically involves a weakening in the magnetic field, followed by a period of rapid recovery and reorganization of opposite polarity.

Full Article: Live Science

This is interesting to see how dependent we are on the magnetic field that we go about our day without even feeling its direct affect. Hopefully as we learn more about Earth’s magnetic field we can create a plan to protect the satellites that we depend on heavily day in and day out. If they were to be taken out by solar storms we might be in some very deep trouble.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Idiocracy, you may have a vague fear of giant landfills toppling over and spilling into the streets. Fortunately, that fear may never become a reality now that the Powermaster ReCyclone is available.

The ReCyclone works by grinding trash into small pieces, thereby reducing landfill space up to 97 percent.

Trash compacted by the ReCyclone can be used to create energy or compost material—organic waste becomes diesel fuel, and plastic becomes oil. The machine can grind up any piece of waste ranging from 20 microns to 12 inches.

For some perspective, the ReCyclone can get more gold out of electronic devices than from a gold mine (one metric ton of circuit boards contains between 80 and 1,500 grams of gold, which is 40 to 800 times the concentration of gold available in gold ore mined in the United States) and 1 kilogram of plastic recycled in the machine can yield 95 percent of 1 liter of diesel.

Full Article: Clean Technica

What a great machine! While recycling would be the preferred method to take care of waste, not everyone subscribes to that thinking. And not everything can be recycled. So this is a perfect tool to help the cause out. It would also be great to reduce the current landfill contenants.

Some big retailers are promoting compact fluorescent light bulbs as a way to save energy. But improper disposal of the bulbs creates a hazard, because they contain small amounts of mercury.

Recycling them is about to get easier. Home Depot, the nation’s second-largest retailer, will announce on Tuesday that it will take back old compact fluorescents in all 1,973 of its stores in the United States, creating the nation’s most widespread recycling program for the bulbs.

“We kept hearing from the community that there was a little bit of concern about mercury in the C.F.L.’s,” said Ron Jarvis, Home Depot’s senior vice president for environmental innovation, using the industry abbreviation for the bulbs. “And if the C.F.L.’s were in their house, how could they dispose of them?”

Until now, consumers had to seek out local hazardous waste programs or smaller retail chains willing to collect the bulbs for recycling, like Ikea and True Value. Some consumers have waited for retailers like Wal-Mart to have a designated recycling day. Others bought kits to mail the bulbs to a recycling facility.

The Environmental Protection Agency has been looking into putting bulb drop-off boxes at post offices, said Jim Berlow, director of the agency’s hazardous waste minimization and management division.

But those plans are not final, and across most of the country, recycling the bulbs has been inconvenient at best. Industry professionals estimate that the recycling rate is around 2 percent.

Full Article: New York Times

I am glad Home Depot is going out and being the first retailer to do this. It is time someone take the initive to make recycling easier and more environmentally friendly. I know because of this I will be purchasing all of my CFLs in the future from Home Depot. It is just my way of thanking them for being first and showing that they care about the environment.

Computer chip maker Intel Corp. announced today that it would make a $50 million investment in solar energy through its Intel Capital division, forming a new company. The new venture, SpectraWatt Inc. will manufacture solar cells for distribution to solar panel manufacturers. Other investors in the company include Cogentrix Energy (a Goldman Sachs subsidiary), PCG Clean Energy and Technology Fund, and the German firm Solon.

According to CNET the company will begin construction of a new facility in Oregon sometime later this year and plans to begin shipments of solar cells by the middle of 2009.

Full Article: TreeHugger

Thumbs up to Intel for taking the iniative to help produce solar cells and promote solar energy growth. It seems like they plan on getting their product out quite fast, so they must have had some research into solar cells going on previously. It is good to see large companies take on problems that face society rather than waiting for others to take command.

300 garbage collection trucks in California will soon be fueled by the same trash that they haul. Landfill gas will be purified and liquefied, producing up to 13,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) daily.

This facility at Waste Management’s Altamont Landfill in Livermore, California will begin operation in 2009. It comes with a price tag of $15.5 million, with grants providing $1.4 million.

Waste Management is the largest waste management company in North America and operates the largest US fleet of heavy-duty collection trucks. The company has a goal to reduce fleet emissions by 15% by 2020.

The new facility will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 30,000 tons per year, according to Linde North America. LNG is a cleaner burning transportation fuel that emits less nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and particulates than diesel-fueled vehicles.

Full Article: CleanTechnica

Huge props to Waste Management for coming up with an innovative idea to use waste byproducts to forgo using gas. Instead of letting all that methane gas float into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming, it will be used for a positive purpose. I know there is an old dump around here that has been converted into a golf course, but still produces methane gas from decomposition. So they tapped into it and began using it to create electricity for thousands of homes. I hope more waste management companies take these ideas into account and use them theirselves. There are really no downsides since natural gas is very clean burning and it replaces need for gas.

Men living in polluted areas are more likely to go bald than those breathing cleaner air, a new study suggests.

The ground breaking research, by academics at the University of London, has linked the onset of male pattern baldness, to environmental factors, such as air pollution and smoking.

The scientists believe toxins and carcinogens found in polluted air can stop hair growing by blocking mechanisms that produce the protein from which hair is made. Baldness is known to be hereditary, but the new research suggests that environmental factors could exacerbate hair loss.

It raises the hope that scientists may be able to develop treatments for balding men, with topical creams that are able to combat the effects of pollution on hair follicles.

Mike Philpott, from the school of medicine at Queen Mary University of London, said: “We think any pollutant that can get into the bloodstream or into the skin and into the hair follicle could cause some stress to it and impair the ability of the hair to make a fibre.

“There are a whole host of carcinogens and toxins in the environment that could trigger this. It suggests that if you stop smoking or live in an area with less air pollution, you may be less predisposed to hair loss.”

Full Article: Telegraph

Just when you thought you avoided the baldness gene, the environment gets you. While this study won’t help all bald men, it will help out those who are affected by environmental baldness. If anything else, it gives men more incentive to protect the environment if it can help them retain their hair longer. It should be noted that there haven’t been any in-depth research into this hypothesis, so it may not tell the entire story.