As if there isn’t enough economic incentive to dispense with credit cards these days, a new card issued by Discover Financial Services [ed. note: no relation to DISCOVER, though they own Discover.com] now adds an environmental perk as well.

A new biodegradable credit card, released in December, will break down when exposed to microorganisms into carbon dioxide, water, and a mild salt. The New York Times reports that the card is made of biodegradable polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, and bears the same durability as a traditional plastic credit card. Yet it will decompose in a microorganism-filled environment, which the company says can be just about anywhere, including water, soil, a compost heap, or even a landfill, because the microbes operate anaerobically.

With 1.5 billion credit cards in use in the U.S. as of 2006, the ability to decompose will surely ease the burden on landfills, which have their fair share of other plastic to deal with. The trick behind the card is a secret that BIOPVC, the company that created it, will not give up, but they say no toxic PVC remains once the microbes break down the plastic. A Columbia University professor took a stab at how the process works, and said it can be activated by coating PVC with a material that attracts fungi, or alternatively one that attracts rather than repels water, which contains microbes that will then break down the PVC. (more…)

It’s water! (Albeit with a little salt and electrolysis.)

Electrolyzed water is the new cleaning agent of choice for the housekeeping staff at the Sheraton Delfina in Santa Monica. Employees have abandoned their bleach and ammonia to clean toilets and sinks with an elixir made—on site—from table salt and tap water. The salt water is then zapped by an electrolysis machine with low-voltage electricity, which converts the sodium ions into sodium hydroxide, an alkaline liquid with the cleaning abilities of detergent. Meanwhile, the chloride ions become hypchlorous acid, also known as acid water, a powerful disinfectant.

The “magic” water is also being used by the kitchen staff at the Sheraton to disinfect produce, which they say now lasts longer. A New York poultry processor uses it to kill salmonella on chicken carcasses, and it is used to clean the floors of a Michigan prison, leaving inmates without access to potentially lethal cleaners.

(more…)

Used rubber tires and discarded glass have been recycled into asphalt for some time. Now, add old electronics to the creative, eco-friendly ingredient mix for the production of new road materials.

Researchers in China have developed a process to recycle electronic hardware into a material that makes “high-performance paving material that is cheaper, longer lasting, and more environmentally friendly than conventional asphalt.”

Where most people see a global environmental crisis, the research team in China saw opportunity. Electronics are discarded by the millions of tons every year, and they contain toxic metals that make disposal difficult, hazardous, and controversial. The researchers report in a new study, however, that electronic circuit boards also contain glass fibers and plastic resins that would strengthen asphalt paving.

(more…)

India’s capital city has issued a ban on all non-biodegradable plastic bags, effective immediately, although enforcement will be gentle initially. In time however, plastic toters in New Delhi will face up to five years in prison and up to 100,000 rupees ($2,034) in fines. The ban prohibits the “use, storage and sale” of all polyethylene bags of any size, shape, and thickness.  If these punitive measures seem particularly harsh, officials say laws already in place that ban all but the thinnest plastic bags have been—like jaywalking laws in New York City—largely ignored in a city that generates about 10 million plastic bags per day.

But still, should plastic pollution be a top priority for a country where more than a quarter of the population live in abject poverty (the poverty threshold as defined by the Indian government is $0.40/day)? One hopes that the fines will be targeted to those who can afford them, shoppers at the new sprawling shopping malls and foreign tourists, for example, and not those who live in the slums where much of the plastic rubbish accumulates.

(more…)

• Asexuals, unite! Just don’t start recruiting too many to your cause.

• Endangered oceans, rejoice: You have a secret weapon. And it’s fish poop.

• And it’s a good thing, since the best option we humans have come up with for saving all aquatic life is re-naming fish “sea kittens.”

• Facebook graduates from a civil litigation tool to a crime-fighting tool.

• This latest eco-trend actually makes some sense: cat hair clothing and accessories.

•  Today in animal intelligence: Just how smart are bees, anyway?

Is “Don’t Be Evil” Google in fact a sinister pollution-spewing machine? A Sunday Times article cited new research by Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, claiming that every Google search emits 7 grams of CO2, about half the amount released from boiling a kettle of water (15 grams). It portrays Google as “secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint” and refusing to “divulge” the locations of its power-sucking data centers.

There’s more:

When you type in a Google search for, say, “energy saving tips”, your request doesn’t go to just one server. It goes to several competing against each other.

It may even be sent to servers thousands of miles apart. Google’s infrastructure sends you data from whichever produces the answer fastest. The system minimises delays but raises energy consumption. Google has servers in the US, Europe, Japan and China.

The article also implicates other online activities, like Twittering or maintaining an avatar in Second Life (by one estimate, that avatar uses almost as much electricity as the average citizen of Brazil).

Google promptly put out a response on their blog challenging Wissner-Gross’ claims and touting the company’s green credentials. Each search emits a mere 0.2 grams of CO2, says Google.  Besides, isn’t online searching greener than driving to the library?

(more…)

Sometimes to make a point, you have to release some greenhouse gas. On September 29, artist Francesca Galeazzi climbed to a pristine spot on the Jakobshavn fiord in Greenland and—to the shock and horror of her fellow travelers—released a 6 kg tank of CO2 gas. “The CO2 came out violently, freezing the air around the nozzle,” she wrote on her website.

Galeazzi’s act of pollution may have been blatant, but it was just a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of carbon emissions each of us produces, and we do so no less consciously. In the U.S., that number is nearly 20 metric tonnes per person per year. Before Galeazzi pulled the stunt, she purchased an equivalent offset from one of the online Gold Standard Carbon Offsetting schemes—demonstrating how many of us justify our bad behavior. Buying carbon offsets seems to be a growing trend among the green-conscious, a form of environmental penance in which you can pay cash to have someone else wipe away your carbon footprint. In a recent interview, Galeazzi explained her criticism of carbon offsets:

(more…)

At a bar, intoxicated people may fall victim to the notorious “beer goggles” effect. Now, researchers have discovered that in the fish world, pollution can have the same effect as a six-pack of Heineken.

Scientists already know that female African cichlids are partially blind, and have evolved into a new species over the past 30 years. The cichlids in Lake Victoria’s polluted waters are vanishing, causing “the largest human-witnessed mass extinction of vertebrates.” And now, pollution is also causing closely-related species of cichlids to interbreed, all because they can’t see each other.

(more…)

DISCOVER has covered many of the high-tech ways that people have tried to lower their energy consumption. Real estates developers in Los Angeles, however, have turned to an old-fashioned low-tech way to clear land for redevelopment: goats.

Rather than using gas-burning weed trimmers to remove the patchy plants from this plot of land near 4th and Hill streets, the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency brought in 100 goats, erected an electric fence, and set the creatures to munching. Goats have a tendency to wander and ignore fences, however, so George Gonzales watches over the group. His wife, Liz, acts as the veterinarian, in case all that eating makes the goats sick.

(more…)

Yesterday we wondered whether the U.S. Navy’s plan to intentionally sink some of its old warships, so that they’d become new homes for fish and attractions for recreational divers, would be such a great idea in the long run. Today, a new study looking at a different shipwreck suggests that not only might intentionally sinking old ships be a bad idea, but officials might have to remove shipwrecks from sensitive ecosystems before they cause too much harm.

Back in 1991, a 100-foot-long ship sank in Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge near Hawaii. Now, 17 years later, scientists studying the area say the coral reef is under attack by an organism called Rhodactis howesii. It is a corallimorph, a relative to anemones and corals that clears out competitors with it stinging tentacles. Rhodactis is an invasive species to the Palmyra Atoll, and it doubled its presence between 2006 and 2007, pushing out the diverse mix of corals that is native there.

(more…)