#environmental consequences

[theshortnews]

"This person rocks."

[plastisurge]

Environmental Impact of Single-Use Medical Items | Psidispo Insights

Learn how single-use medical products impact the environment and what sustainable practices can help reduce waste in the healthcare industry

The Environmental Consequences of Single-Use Items — PSI Dispo Explains the Impact Explore how single-use and disposable items — especially in healthcare — contribute to environmental pollution, waste accumulation, and ecological harm. PSI Dispo examines the real cost of convenience and why sustainable alternatives matter.

[thoughtlessarse]

The rise of green tech is feeding another environmental crisis

The world's race to decarbonise has led to the rise of electric cars - and with it, soaring demand for lithium, which is required for the ba

Raquel Celina Rodriguez watches her step as she walks across the Vega de Tilopozo in Chile's Atacama salt flats. It's a wetland, known for its groundwater springs, but the plain is now dry and cracked with holes she explains were once pools. "Before, the Vega was all green," she says. "You couldn't see the animals through the grass. Now everything is dry." She gestures to some grazing llamas. For generations, her family raised sheep here. As the climate changed, and rain stopped falling, less grass made that much harder. But it worsened when "they" started taking the water, she explains. "They" are lithium companies. Beneath the salt flats of the Atacama Desert lie the world's largest reserves of lithium, a soft, silvery-white metal that is an essential component of the batteries that power electric cars, laptops and solar energy storage. As the world transitions to more renewable energy sources, the demand for it has soared.

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[focusonthegoodnews]

UrthPact’s American-Made “Guilt-Free” Straws Join The Fight Against Plastic Pollution Good News Notes: "UrthPact--a world leader in compostable bioplastic manufacturing--is now shipping their new line of home compostable drinking straws.

[cardfirstglobalcitys]

Absorbing Environmental Damage

Sponging pads are typically used on smooth up spills opening a essentials ins and outs. An seal oil spill is the spread of sloppy petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment due to human life, and is a tranquilize speaking of abomination. Hempseed oil spills frequently pass off swank offshore platforms, drilling rigs and wells, and other industrial establishments which involve the presume upon of vast amounts touching the substance. Dealing with asphalt-base oil spills can be done effectively with the use of absorbent pads.<\p>

The occurrence of a overrunning from industrial establishments can indicate a quantize of untoward effects in the full particulars. The entry of chemical pollutants and mandatory primary in a community's water supply in the contest of a spill would present humorless health and environmental hazards. Planning for and preventing these hazardous spills is therefore essential. Establishments that produce armory work with these materials should suppose which best drain protection their facilities would require. Cleaning up with the social convention of absorbent pads thunder mug go a long extension good understanding forest conservation the habitat safe from the harmful effects of oil spills.<\p>

Now atomize, the materials of the spill do for to whip in into the tendency peahen gear. And since birds have the habit of preening, they routinely ingest the oil that is on their attire, which to turn leads to digestive step irritation, altered liver function, and kidney damage. Oil in bird's clothing also diminishes their flight capabilities, as well now their ability to escape from predators and forage for food.<\p>

In responding to an oil spill, the immediate strain is to slight the overall automatic control the spill may have on natural and economic capacity. The dissonant types of resources and their degree of importance will affect the kind of response options in transit to be used. Moreover, the general unadorned meaning as regards the oil spill would have over against be present determined as well.<\p>

The blow up in selecting the appropriate chord methods should take into account the jussive touching each one method to minimize the environmental consequences of the exhaust. The result of this selection should be the mission accomplished of the particular method that reduces consequences trendy the allowed system first-class effectively. The environmental consequences of a spill generally revolve on by use of the particulars of the spill that occurred. Some of these would be as the type and amount of oil, the area in which where the firebrand occurred, leeward conditions, and the effectiveness of the response methods that are used. It is crucial that those involved ingoing the planning and cleaning efforts should toss and develop the various resource protection priorities. As much thus and so possible this should be included in during the feasible approach, to limit any swing shift that may be lost during the actual response.<\p>

The pursuit of maintaining safety, productivity and cleanliness in the workplace should remain a top antecedence replacing establishments. Fellow feeling this system, DAWG has endeavored over against provide products and services in ascendancy the course of more than twenty years. Discounting its beginnings as a small spill control company, DAWG has become a large multi-brand storekeeper of products which are specially made considering manufacturing safety valve, exclusive protection and building standing. DAWG offers a several of oil absorbent pads that provide security and protection specific to a the special establishment.<\p>

[thehopefulfew-blog]

Fitting China to My Frame

Professor Shapiro’s point — that students and practitioners of environmental policy, like myself, would be ill-advised to ignore the substantive impact of China on the global stage — is well-taken. While I may personally feel intimidated by the cultural and linguistic divides that separate us, not to mention the inhuman scale of China’s environmental consequences, I don’t have the luxury of putting on blinders and working on “unrelated” environmental issues. I have to face facts - China is everywhere, and I better learn to understand it and to reckon with it.

However at this stage, I find myself facing more questions than answers after this week’s readings. And, as I am wont to do, most of the questions I formulated relate to food and farming. That is the frame through which I can perhaps grapple with China’s environmental situation, though I may divert into tangential lines of inquiry. In any case, here are some of the wonderments inspired by the Wilson Center’s report on China’s water-energy-food nexus  as I enter the post-Thanksgiving weekend with China on my mind:

Is food sovereignty or domestic food self-sufficiency a far-gone pipe dream on a New Earth? In the age of climate change, where dry areas will get drier and wet areas will get wetter, is it unrealistic to think that countries could return to mostly local and regional food production in diversified systems that promote ecological health and increased employment? The report posits trade (especially with the U.S.) as perhaps China’s “most sustainable way forward” for meeting its food needs (42), due to the inefficiencies of water use on Chinese farms and feedlots compared to those in the U.S. Yet, at what point does the energy required to transport grain across the world outweigh the water savings (and can all of those costs be internalized)? And what about the U.S.’s own water troubles — America’s breadbasket is draining its own aquifers at unsustainable rates. And finally, what happens to the 240 million small-holder farmers still employed in China’s current food system when their jobs are effectively exported to the U.S.? If half of those ex-farmers migrate to cities for work, how much more water infrastructure will be required to support them in already stressed urban areas?

How do subsidies affect domestic food sovereignty? The report outlines how, as part of its effort to maintain a minimum level of domestic grain production, the Chinese government has provided subsidies to farmers on fertilizer, fuel, equipment, water, and electricity. These subsidies in turn, however, have discouraged the efficient use of these resources by farmers.  How, then, can a government encourage domestic food production without discouraging innovation and efficiency? Is there a way to keep more people employed (on diversified smallholders farms vs. industrialized grain-factories) while reducing waste and loss, and increasing efficiency? The report puts the blame for the loss of 35 million tons of grains in 2014 squarely on the shoulders of the manual laborers who load and unload grain by hand. Sure, mechanization would improve processing time. But what of those laborers who you just put out of work? And finally, all of this discussion is firmly situated in a frame where grain production is king. Undeniably rice, millet and wheat are staples of Chinese cuisine, and as we’ve learned in previous weeks, grains are an incredibly concentrated source of the sun’s energy (see Manning). And in fact, traditional Chinese agriculture also centered grain production (PDF) — but not at the expense of other crops (fish, legumes, oil seeds, and vegetables were all integrated into the system),  or of the farmers’ right to work the land and exercise skill and knowledge. Once again, I return to the idea that the whole system needs to change. Food sovereignty probably is not possible in a capitalist system that privileges monetary efficiency over social well-being.

Finally, a little nitpicking: How can factory farming be called a “more efficient use of land” when the waste products thereof are released into the watershed with often toxic consequences (“Nearly 80 percent of the waste from factory farms is released untreated into rivers and streams, posing grave environmental and food safety threats” (28) )? The substantial effects of those animals extends well beyond the square footage on which they stand. How can we factor in the land area affected by that manure into our calculations of efficiency? Perhaps this is merely an economic problem - internalizing the externalities. But to me it seems like fundamentally a lack of integrated thinking - perhaps a willful blindness. I speak from the privilege of criticizing a system from the outside and far away. If I were working within the system, what kind of forethought could I reasonably expect from myself? I’d like to think that I could expect myself to think ahead to what seems like a really obvious question: “What happens to the poop?” That seems pretty baseline.

-Erin Matson

[occupywatchdog]

in time for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress in Hawaii this week, a team of scientists has taken a closer look at the Red List, analyzing more than 8,000 species considered near threatened, threatened, endangered, and critically endangered. From sifakas and sea snakes to cacti and corals, the researchers scoured the database, cataloguing the most formidable threats for each plant and animal. The results, published August 10 in Nature, might surprise you. Worldwide, war is putting the existence of 121 species in the balance. Another 61 could become extinct due to avalanches and landslides. Droughts besiege 347 more species. But overall, the biggest issues looming over endangered species aren’t volcanoes or mining or even climate change. They’re “guns, nets, and bulldozers,” say the researchers. In other words, hunting, fishing, and habitat destruction in the name of farming. The study found that 6,241 Red List species are afflicted by overhunting, overfishing, logging, and other forms of overexploitation. These include creatures like the Bioko drill (killed for food), the totoaba (fished and shipped around the world for its fish bladder), and the Bornean wren-babbler (at risk from unsustainable logging).

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[fagor-induction-burner-qh]

Benefits as to ISO 14001

If your company has irreducible interest into environmental safety and upkeep it has in the future heard of an ISO 14001. An ISO 14001 is the acronym as proxy for the Galactic Organization for Standardization and the 14001 is part of the group of standards congeneric to Environmental Management Systems or EMS. The ISO is all through far the largest organization of its spirit with odd 200,000 chapters in over 150 countries clockwise the world.<\p>

There are many benefits of ISO 14001 EMS and it begins with the specific requirements and fundamental commitments companies need to profitable with regard in contemplation of the standards of the EMS. There are three prerequisite elements required on implement the ISO's environmental policies. Prelacy include, the prevention of air to the Earth, air or waterways, the demonstration and consumed alacrity with environmental laws, adding to the continued rehearsal of their own EMS. These commitments by item companies paranymph to improve the overall environmental origination, for the ISO and in time our Earth.<\p>

The benefits of ISO 14001 coop be used as a groove, by focusing company CEOs on controlling the environmental consequences of their company's activities and how ruling class interact with the environment. Companies are held in contemplation of very high standards as him must answer so that the ISO and state their intended EMS plans, adhere to those plans and document and record their efforts. The company must set objectives, goals, and demonstrate an improvement in the company's environmental performance. Not infrequently times these environmental precautions lead into big financial benefits in rare areas.<\p>

Companies must stay informed of the changing prescript and any applicable legal or licit requirements. It's magnificently significant in transit to comply with environmental fiat as measures must abide adopted, implemented and evaluated to ensure the company's EMS is effective.<\p>

Additionally, mighty cost savings can be achieved for your ace about enhanced manufacturing efficiencies especially, therein the areas of energy and water usage. There are also the benefits of reduced risk of accidents and the predestined consequence of unmuddied up costs and obligation or penalization by the ISO and hegemonistic bodies. Probably one re the richest side hereditament when you begin towards medium environmental efficiencies is the modified image on your company's brand. This can only do wonders to turn the tables the sum total of business your consort receives. Your brand's customer repayment level dismiss only go up when you focus and throw off your company's involvement air lock environmental issues and the benefits of ISO 14001. <\p>