Inspiring: Healing Our Earth News Articles
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Aloe vera unveiled a new weapon in its arsenal: its discarded peels. Previously discarded as agricultural trash, these peels are now set to become nature’s response to crop-munching pests. Scientists at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley developed a mechanism for converting this underutilized resource into a powerful natural insecticide, presenting a novel approach to pest management. Humans have already used aloe vera for a plethora of reasons. However, none of these applications takes advantage of the peel. “Millions of tons of aloe peels are likely discarded globally each year,” the driving force behind this botanical discovery, Dr. Debasish Bandyopadhyay, stated. The idea came to Bandyopadhyay after he noticed bugs biting plants at an aloe manufacturing center but leaving the aloe vera leaves alone. Based on this discovery, the team embarked on an adventure to unearth the hidden potential of aloe peels. Bandyopadhyay emphasizes the dual benefit of inventing a pesticide that avoids dangerous synthetic chemicals, which not only maintains agricultural output but also saves public health. The researchers ... extracted a number of compounds, each with its own set of properties. Octacosane stood out among these for its ability to repel mosquitos. In terms of insecticidal activity, DCM, a separate molecule, outperformed hexane extract. During this procedure, more than 20 compounds were isolated from aloe vera peels, six showing considerable insecticidal activity.
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Somewhere in the vast ocean, a little boat covered in solar panels is doing something extraordinary: making its own hydrogen fuel from the seawater underneath it. The Energy Observer uses a patchwork of different cutting-edge technologies to generate enough energy to power nine homes each day. During the day, 200 square meters of solar panels charge up the boat's lithium ion batteries. Any extra energy is stored as hydrogen, thanks to a special fuel cell that goes by the name Rex H2 (short for Range Extender H2). The Rex H2 was made by Toyota, using components from Toyota's hydrogen-powered Mirai vehicle line. The fuel cell brings in seawater, removes the salt and then separates the H from the pure H20 with electricity. When the Energy Observer began its journey in 2017, it could only produce hydrogen while stopped. That changed in a big way with the addition of the Oceanwings, 12-meter sails that improved the efficiency of the Energy Observer from 18% to 42%, to the point where it can now produce hydrogen even while sailing. One of the main benefits of hydrogen is its ability to store more more electricity by weight than its lithium ion competition. This benefit is especially useful at sea. Because fossil fuels have had more than a century's head start, we now find ourselves far beyond the point of any one technology being a silver bullet for our growing energy needs. A sustainable future will require a patchwork of new technologies, like the one powering the Energy Observer.
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About 100 miles southeast of Paris ... a charming stone aqueduct cuts across the green fields. “That’s the Aqueduct of the Vanne,” says [farmer] Zoltan Kahn. The Vanne, which supplies a fifth of Paris’s tap water, is fed by the water sources in these parts. The region is rich in biodiversity and has been a key drinking water catchment area for centuries. Since 2020, Eau de Paris, the city’s public water service, has been supporting farmers near its watersheds ... to reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizers on their crops. In other words, to go organic. When Kahn was approached by Eau de Paris with support to go fully organic, he jumped at the opportunity. In exchange for switching to organic, he would receive a so-called “Payment for Environmental Services” for each hectare of his farmland. As part of the €48 million ($51.8 million) project, Eau de Paris and the Seine-Normandy Water Agency, a public institution fighting water pollution in the region, are supporting 115 farmers based in watersheds that supply the city to either reduce their use of chemicals or go fully organic (as 58 percent of the farmers have). Already €32 million of that funding has been granted, according to Anne-Sophie Leclere, deputy director general of Eau de Paris. “It’s better for us to have cleaner, purer watersheds,” says Leclere. “This will save Paris from having to pay much more to process the water once it arrives in the city.”
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Michel Costa had become a frustrated veteran of an obscure yet devastating war in Europe. The enemy: invasive Asian hornets, which had been massacring his honey bees. When Costa, a retiree and avid beekeeper, discovered a new weapon with the potential to change the course of the entire war, he was intrigued. Several companies had begun selling so-called “electric harps,” which they claimed could kill the hornets in droves by electrocuting them as they flew through. Although the harps take different forms, each one is made of some sort of large frame, which is then “strung” with conductive metal wires. These are then connected to a source of electricity, often solar panels, so that the wires conduct simultaneously positive and negative charges. When a hornet flies through, its wings touch the wires on either side, completing a circuit, and thereby delivering a fatal current of electricity. Beekeepers then place the harps around their hives in positions along the hornets’ frequent flight paths. The harps can reduce predation pressure by 89 percent — enough to give hives the chance to replenish their stores. In one study only 56 percent of unprotected hives survived through winter, while 78 percent of those protected by harps did. Harps are also cheaper than other methods for beekeepers to install and operate. Beekeepers can buy them in complete kits that cost around $300 ... as Costa did. When combined with solar panels, maintenance costs are minimal.
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When Stephen Buchmann finds a wayward bee on a window inside his Tucson, Arizona, home, he goes to great lengths to capture and release it unharmed. This March, Buchmann released a book that unpacks just how varied and powerful a bee’s mind really is. The book, What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories and Personalities of Bees, draws from his own research and dozens of other studies to paint a remarkable picture of bee behavior and psychology. It argues that bees can demonstrate sophisticated emotions resembling optimism, frustration, playfulness and fear, traits more commonly associated with mammals. Experiments have shown bees can experience PTSD-like symptoms, recognize different human faces, process long-term memories while sleeping, and maybe even dream. Approximately one-third of the American diet, including many fruits, vegetables and nuts, relies on bees for pollination. In the past, bee research has focused on their role in crop pollination, but the work being pioneered by Buchmann and his contemporaries could force an ethical reckoning with how the animals are treated. Can large-scale agriculture and scientific research continue without causing bees to suffer, and is the dominant western culture even capable of accepting that the tiniest of creatures have feelings, too? Buchmann hopes an ethical shift will happen as details about the emotional lives of invertebrates – especially bees – are shared with the public.
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Certain mushroom species have the ability to consume polyurethane, one of the main ingredients in plastic products. Some scientists believe that these natural composters could be the key to cleaning up our planet. Mycoremediation is the natural process that fungi use to degrade or isolate contaminants in the environment. A 2020 study published in Biotechnology Reports found that mycoremediation applied to agricultural wastes like pesticides, herbicides, and cyanotoxins is more cost-effective, eco-friendly, and effective. A project using the mycelium (the vegetative part of the mushroom similar to a plant’s root system) of two common mushrooms made headlines in 2014. Using Pleurotus ostreatus, also known as the oyster mushroom, and Schizophyllum commune, aka the split gill mushroom, the team was able to turn plastic into human-grade food. The mushrooms were cultivated on circular pods made of seaweed-derived gelatin filled with UV-treated plastics. As the fungus digests the plastic, it grows around the edible base pods to create a mycelium-rich snack after just a few months. According to a study by the University of Rajasthan in India, plastic-eating mushrooms can sometimes absorb too much of the pollutant in their mycelium, and therefore cannot be consumed. If more research is performed regarding the safety aspects, however, mycoremediation through mushroom cultivation could perhaps address two of the world’s greatest problems: waste and food scarcity.
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Underwater noise due to human activities at sea can harm marine biodiversity, leading for example to hearing impairment and behavioural disturbances. EU experts have adopted recommendations on maximum acceptable levels for impulsive (for example from oil and gas exploration and extraction) and continuous (such as from shipping) underwater noise. The new limits mean, that to be in tolerable status, no more than 20% of a given marine area, can be exposed to continuous underwater noise over a year Similarly, no more than 20% of a marine habitat can be exposed to impulsive noise over a given day, and no more than 10% over a year. These underwater noise pollution limits deliver on the Zero Pollution Action Plan and are the first of this kind at global level. The threshold values will contribute to set limits on where and for how long marine habitats can be exposed to underwater noise. Impulsive underwater noise, such as from oil and gas exploration, occurs in about 8 % of the EU’s seas: it is particularly present in large areas of the Baltic, North and Celtic Seas, and the Mediterranean area. Maritime traffic is the main source of continuous underwater noise. With 27% of its area subject to shipping, the Mediterranean Sea sees the highest shipping traffic in the EU. This is followed by the Baltic Sea (19 % of the area). Overall, only 9% of the EU’s sea area has no shipping traffic. EU Member States will now need to take these threshold values into account when they update their marine strategies.
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The artist, writer and technologist James Bridle begins "Ways of Being" with an uncanny discovery: a line of stakes tagged with unfathomable letters and numbers in thick marker pen. The region of [Greece] is rich in oil, we learn, and the company that won the contract to extract it from the foothills of the Pindus mountains is using "cognitive technologies" to "augment ... strategic decision making." The grid of wooden stakes left by "unmarked vans, helicopters and work crews in hi-vis jackets" are the "tooth- and claw-marks of Artificial Intelligence, at the exact point where it meets the earth." "Ways of Being" sets off on a tour of the natural world, arguing that intelligence is something that "arises ... from thinking and working together," and that "everything is intelligent." We hear of elephants, chimpanzees and dolphins who resist and subvert experiments testing their sense of self. We find redwoods communicating through underground networks. In the most extraordinary result of all, in 2014 the Australian biologist Monica Gagliano showed that mimosa plants can remember a sudden fall for a month. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, science and technology have been used to analyze, conquer and control. But "Ways of Being" argues that they can equally be used to explore and augment connection and empathy. The author cites researchers studying migration patterns with military radar and astronomers turning telescopes designed for surveillance on Earth into instruments for investigating the dark energy of the cosmos.
Note: Read a thought-provoking article featuring a video interview with artist and technologist James Bridle as he explores how technology can be used to reflect the innovative and life-enhancing capacities of non-human natural systems. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.
Mathematical analysis of the electrical signals fungi seemingly send to one another has identified patterns that bear a striking structural similarity to human speech. Previous research has suggested that fungi conduct electrical impulses through long, underground filamentous structures called hyphae – similar to how nerve cells transmit information in humans. It has even shown that the firing rate of these impulses increases when the hyphae of wood-digesting fungi come into contact with wooden blocks, raising the possibility that fungi use this electrical “language” to share information about food or injury with distant parts of themselves, or with hyphae-connected partners such as trees. Prof Andrew Adamatzky at the University of the West of England’s unconventional computing laboratory in Bristol analysed the patterns of electrical spikes generated by four species of fungi – enoki, split gill, ghost and caterpillar fungi. The research, published in Royal Society Open Science, found that these spikes often clustered into trains of activity, resembling vocabularies of up to 50 words, and that the distribution of these “fungal word lengths” closely matched those of human languages. The most likely reasons for these waves of electrical activity are to maintain the fungi’s integrity – analogous to wolves howling to maintain the integrity of the pack – or to report newly discovered sources of attractants and repellants to other parts of their mycelia, Adamtzky suggested.
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Venture into New Mexico's beautifully stark high desert and you may well stumble across some fantastical and unconventional homes – some palatial and sculpturally rounded; others with an ancient temple-like form – that look like they're from a Star Wars movie. Set in and around the town of Taos where they were invented almost 40 years ago, these are Earthships: net-zero, sustainably designed homes built mostly from both natural and waste materials, such as old tyres, empty wine bottles and wood and mud. Earthship construction requires less in the way of toxic or carbon-emitting construction materials like concrete and plastics, and doesn't require precious woodland and other natural resources. An earth berm (a purposefully built bank of soil) surrounds the Earthship on three sides, providing insulating mass that controls temperature. Each has a greenhouse ... either on the north or south side depending on location. Most Earthships are purely solar powered; some also have wind turbines to supplement or a wood-burning stove as back up. Taos has cold snowy winters and often dry, hot summers, but in an Earthship, the internal temperature remains close to 72F (21C) year-round, regardless of outside weather conditions. What does it feel like to stay inside an Earthship? "It feels like you're inside the womb," says Earthship construction manager Deborah Binder. "You feel constantly hugged and snuggled. The temperature is always comfortable."
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Dutch sewage waste is being seen as a reliable heat source for millions of homes that the government wants to be unhooked from the country’s gas system by 2050. Lieven de Key, a housing corporation in Amsterdam, is planning what is believed to be the first sewer warmth project that will tap into a main district sewage pipe to warm 1,600 existing social and student homes. “We have a photo of the street covered with snow, and the manhole covers all without snow,” says Jeroen Rademaker, the project leader. “Even when there’s snow in the winter, the sewer is warm. Warm sewage water flows 24 hours a day and we should capture it. This can happen wherever there is a big sewage pipe.” “The warmth comes from showers, the toilet, wastewater from washing, from the dishwasher, from the washing machine,” says Postuma. “Together it all gives, throughout the year, a temperature between 15 and 18 degrees. And we are going to make a bypass around the main sewer, put a heat exchanger around it and bring it to the houses in insulated pipes. We place it in an electric heat pump, and the water is heated up to 60 or 70C – medium temperature.” The heat exchanger transfers that source heat from the drain to a working fluid that can be transported to the buildings without needing to circulate the actual sewage waste. Then the blocks’ heat pumps, fired by solar energy, can amplify that heat in the opposite way to the workings of a refrigerator.
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Beyond human hearing, a cacophony of natural clicks, whistles and hums pass all around us, linking billions of living beings in networks of sound. Mother whales whisper to their young so predators can't hear them. Bees emit unique buzzing signals to distinguish threats from specific predators. Turtle embryos synchronise their collective moment of birth by making sounds through their shells. And unknown fish species buzz to one another in the depths – their very identities one of nature's countless sonic mysteries. What if tapping into these sounds could allow us to not only to learn more about the natural world, but actually help to begin healing it? An emerging appreciation for the biological importance of sound has led to new strategies for environmental conservation. From microscopic larvae lost at sea to birds that travel hundreds of miles from home, conservationists are now starting to use the sounds of nature to guide them back to where they belong. "Sound is so important," says Cheryl Tipp, curator of wildlife and environmental sound at the British Library. "In the natural world, it's used in mating displays, in territorial disputes, as alarm signals." For humans trying to support nature, meanwhile, sound can be used to identify new species, monitor populations and assess the health of ecosystems, she says. There is now a growing interest in the use of sound to accelerate habitat restoration itself, by coaxing certain species to certain locations using their very own sounds.
Note: Listen to a fascinating interview with biologist and innovation consultant Janine Benyus, who explores the power of biomimicry, a practice that learns from and mimics the strategies used by natural systems and species alive today. Benyus proposes that biomimicry can solve some of the gravest of societal and environmental problems by discovering how nature has already solved some of these challenges.
MIT researchers have developed a portable desalination unit, weighing less than 10 kilograms, that can remove particles and salts to generate drinking water. The suitcase-sized device, which requires less power to operate than a cell phone charger, can also be driven by a small, portable solar panel, which can be purchased online for around $50. It automatically generates drinking water that exceeds World Health Organization quality standards. The technology is packaged into a user-friendly device that runs with the push of one button. Unlike other portable desalination units that require water to pass through filters, this device utilizes electrical power to remove particles from drinking water. Eliminating the need for replacement filters greatly reduces the long-term maintenance requirements. This could enable the unit to be deployed in remote and severely resource-limited areas, such as communities on small islands or aboard seafaring cargo ships. It could also be used to aid refugees fleeing natural disasters or by soldiers carrying out long-term military operations. “This is really the culmination of a 10-year journey that I and my group have been on. We worked for years on the physics behind individual desalination processes, but pushing all those advances into a box, building a system, and demonstrating it in the ocean, that was a really meaningful and rewarding experience for me,” says senior author Jongyoon Han, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and of biological engineering.
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Americans throw out about 40% of food annually – a waste of both money and natural resources. Reducing food waste can increase food security, promote resource and energy conservation, and address climate change. The Bay Sate has become a leader in reducing food waste. In fact, it’s the only state to significantly do so – to the tune of 13.2% – according to a 2024 study. Massachusetts was among the first five states to enact a food waste ban in 2014. (The others were California, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont.) “The law has worked really well in Massachusetts,” says Robert Sanders, an assistant professor of marketing and analytics at the University of California San Diego and co-author of the study. “That’s due to three things: affordability, simplicity, and enforcement.’” If food waste were its own country, it would be the third-highest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the United States. It’s also the largest category of waste – at 25% – sent to landfills in the United States. Vanguard Renewables specializes in turning organic waste into renewable energy. The Massachusetts-based company partners with dairy farms to convert food scraps and manure into biogas through anaerobic digestion. Each of Vanguard Renewables’ five digesters produces enough energy to heat 1,600 to 3,500 homes per year. Since 2014, Vanguard has processed more than 887,000 tons of food waste in New England, producing enough natural gas to heat 20,000 homes for a year.
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Water hyacinths are native to South America, but were introduced as an exotic ornamental to many other countries. They’ve since taken over freshwater environments and are labeled an alien invasive species on every other continent aside from Antarctica. As well as their impact on biodiversity and livelihoods, the floating plant can clog hydroelectric and irrigation systems, meaning that one does not need to live in their proximity to be affected. It’s the highest-profile example of an invasive aquatic plant crisis that has cost the global economy tens of billions of dollars historically, and now more than $700 million annually. Now a Kenyan company is addressing the problem as well as the country’s plastic pollution issue by turning the invasive plant into a bioplastic. HyaPak Ecotech Limited, founded by Joseph Nguthiru, began life as a final year project by the former Egerton University civil and environmental engineering student. Nguthiru’s bioplastic is made from dried water hyacinth combined with binders and additives, which is then mixed and shaped. The product, which biodegrades over a few months, was first used as an alternative for plastic packaging. HyaPak has gained widespread attention, winning the Youth category at the East Africa Climate Action Awards, a prize at UNESCO’s World Engineering Day Hackathon, and a Prototype for Humanity Award 2023 announced at the COP28 climate conference.
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[Robert] Brito and his family, who live along the Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazon, only saw the monetary value of logged trees. Now, when Brito looks at a tree, everything has changed. "We stopped thinking about price and started thinking about [a different kind of] value. For example, when I see a beautiful cumaru [Brazilian teak] tree, 300 to 400 years old ... I still touch it, but with a different mindset. I have access to education, technology, a future for the young people living here, and I still contribute to the preservation of our planet in relation to climate change." Brito's transition ... required the support and alignment of financial, social and environmental incentives. In 2008, the government of the Brazilian state of Amazonas created the Rio Negro Sustainable Development Reserve, in order to preserve nature and to support communities living within it. The designation of the sustainable development reserve led to organisations including the Foundation for Amazon Sustainability (FAS) establishing education and health projects there. Brito recalls that one day Virgilio Viana, the director general of FAS, suggested that he might like to work in community-based tourism. "I started receiving people in my own home," Brito says. This trial was a success. He realised that he earned more in a week than he had ever seen in three months of logging. In 2011 – three years after the creation of the sustainable development reserve and over two decades since he cut down his first tree – Brito opened his nature lodge. And he put down his chainsaw. Moving away from blaming or shaming individuals can bring more people into the environmental movement. So can valuing people's prior experiences, such as Brito drawing on his decades of logging as he guides visitors around the forest in his flip-flops.
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It is the break of dawn in the Serena community, in the middle of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Elsa Cerda, a 43-year-old indigenous Kichwa woman, brews guayusa leaves – a native plant from the rainforest – in a pot. It marks the start of the Guayusa Upina, a ritual performed by Amazonian indigenous peoples before beginning their daily activities. This tradition is more than a routine; it's a spiritual connection to their ancestral roots. As the first rays of light begin to filter through the tree canopy, a diverse assembly of 35 women, ranging from 23 to 85 years old, arrives one by one at the ceremony. The group goes by the name of "Yuturi Warmi". Their role as Amazonian guardians involves safeguarding the territory from pollution and preserving the land and rivers from activities that jeopardise biodiversity – such as deforestation and mining operations. The women undergo regular training sessions, with younger women teaching older members how to operate these phone cameras and drones. Each patrol involves a rotation of members, particularly the younger ones, who primarily patrol the land, ensuring continued presence and surveillance. The women do not carry any weapons, relying instead on their collective presence to act as a deterrent. In the event of witnessing illegal mining activities, the women prioritise non-violent measures such as contacting the authorities and gathering evidence.
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Scientists have developed a "self-digesting plastic", which, they say, could help reduce pollution. Polyurethane is used in everything from phone cases to trainers, but is tricky to recycle and mainly ends up in landfill. However, researchers have come up with a sci-fi like solution. By incorporating spores of plastic-eating bacteria they've developed a plastic that can self-destruct. The spores remain dormant during the useful lifetime of the plastic, but spring back to life and start to digest the product when exposed to nutrients in compost. There's hope "we can mitigate plastic pollution in nature", said researcher Han Sol Kim, of the University of California San Diego, La Jolla. And there might be an added advantage in that the spores increase the toughness of the plastic. "Our process makes the materials more rugged, so it extends its useful lifetime," said co-researcher, Jon Pokorski. "And then, when it's done, we're able to eliminate it from the environment, regardless of how it's disposed." The plastic is currently being worked on at the laboratory bench but could be in the real world within a few years, with the help of a manufacturer, he added. The type of bacteria added to the plastic is Bacillus subtilis, widely used as a food additive and a probiotic. Crucially, the bacteria has to be genetically engineered to be able to withstand the very high temperatures needed to make plastic.
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At first glance there's nothing particularly remarkable about waxworms. The larval form of wax moths, these pale wriggling grubs feed on the wax that bees use to make their honeycomb. For beekeepers, the pests are something to swiftly get rid of without a second thought. But in 2017 molecular biologist Federica Bertocchini ... stumbled on a potentially game-changing discovery about these creatures. Bertocchini, an amateur beekeeper, threw some of the waxworms in a plastic bag after cleaning her hive, and left them alone. A short time later, she noticed the worms had started producing small holes in the plastic, which begun degrading as soon as it touched the worms' mouths. The worms were doing something that we as humans find remarkably difficult to do: break down plastic. Not only that, but the worms appeared to be digesting the plastic as though it was food. Bertocchini and her fellow researchers began collecting the liquid excreted from the worms' mouths. They found this "saliva" contained two critical enzymes, Ceres and Demeter – named after the Roman and Greek goddesses of agriculture, respectively – which were able to oxidise the polyethylene in the plastic, essentially breaking down that material on contact. Bertocchini is now chief technology officer at bioresearch startup Plasticentropy France, working with a team to study the viability of scaling up these enzymes for widespread use in degrading plastic.
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Humans have created 8 billion metric tons of plastic. More than half the plastic ever produced —some 5 billion metric tons — lies smeared across the surface of the Earth. Chemists were creating “synthetic” plastics decades before the oil industry took off, from, among other materials, waste oat husks and vegetable oil. One of the tacks toward more sustainable plastics is to turn back to such biological sources. The ideal materials are not just biodegradable but also compostable — a narrower category that indicates the material can break down into organic components that are harmless to plants and animals. Compostability, unfortunately, is not easily achieved. The natural world already supplies promising polymers that are all compostable, says David Kaplan, a biomedical engineer at Tufts University. [Physicist Eleftheria] Roumeli, for example, has mined the promise of algal cells. They’re small, and therefore easily manipulable; they contain large amounts of proteins, which are biological polymers, alongside other useful materials. She and her students took powdered algae and passed it through a hot presser. After several trials ... they found they could produce a material that was stronger than many commodity plastics. The material was also recyclable: It could be ground back to powder and pressed again. If it were to be carelessly tossed into the dirt, the material would break apart at the same rate as a banana peel.
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