October 2020 environmental news

Hello environmental enthusiasts, this blog post is a recreation of a recent presentation I delivered to students in U-sustain, an environmental organization at Union college. Really hope you enjoy! 

    September 2020 was the hottest recorded month worldwide in recent history. The high was recorded in late August in Death Valley California where the temperature reached 131 F and 55 C. Additional heat waves were recorded in Pakistan, Sudan and South Sudan as well as flooding in Asia and Sudan, and this Fall, Europe is experiencing a drought. 

    This top photo shows the flooding in Sudan. Other sources also mentioned flooding in Egypt along the Nile. The flooding in Sudan threatens population centers along with agriculture regions and ancient UNESCO heritage sites. 

    The bottom photo captures the forest fires in Siberia caused by the heatwave there. These forest fires have destroyed thousands of acres of land and accelerate the release of soil carbon from Siberia's vast soil carbon sink. Siberia's soil carbon is a relatively new discovery and the release of this trapped soil carbon into the atmosphere was not considered in initial climate change models. A warming climate melts the ice in the soil destabilizing the structure that prevented carbon from escaping into the atmosphere.

    This October Hurricane Delta landed in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, causing Loss of power, building destruction and heavy flooding. Louisiana was still recovering from Hurricane Laura in August and was deeply affected by Hurricane Delta. 

    A new forest fire began in California in the North Bay region. The Glass fire named after nearby Glass mountain has burned thousands of acres and is still uncontained. Many people were evacuated. 

    In 2019 a bill was passed in Maryland to ban the use of foam food containers beginning July 1st 2020. This bill terminated the sales of styrofoam and its use in restaurants and schools. Due to covid this new law did not fully take effect until October 1st. Businesses could not purchase new containers, however could use ones left in stock. With an increased trend towards takeout and fast food, restaurants need to supply a new type of containers and many have switched to compostable alternatives*.    

    Compostable containers are much better for the environment than styrofoam because less water, materials, and energy is used in their construction. Additionally compostable containers break down quicker and can be composted! One downside to compostable containers is their cost. For small restaurants spending between $200 and $900 extra on containers each month is too economically costly. Large chains can more easily make the switch due to a wide range of possible reasons: lower cost per store, greater financial backing, greater profit margin. The issue here is that small restaurants are exactly what we need right now! Family run restaurants are much less environmentally destructive than chains and promote culture and community in the places where they operate. 

    To what extent should restaurants be made to switch to compostable take out containers? How do you feel about dining-in during covid? 

    *: Many cardboard containers are easily composed in a backyard composter while compostable containers made out of a plastic like material can only be composted in industrial composters which use higher temperature and pressure. Surprisingly, I had not heard of industrial composting before attending Union college. On campus there is a mix of regular composting (mainly in theme houses) and industrial composting in the dining halls and other eating venues. Take a look at what type of container you recieve. 

    Recently, a team at the University of Portsmouth in Hampshire England has created a new plastic digesting enzyme called PETase. A similar enzyme to the first the same team discovered back in 2016, this PETase is equally groundbreaking. The PETase enzyme is naturally coded in a species of bacteria. The process for creating a biologically free PETase enzyme involves: isolating the gene from the bacteria, mRNA processing, inserting into E.coli for translation, and then lysing the E.coli (placing the e-coli in a centrifuge, the solution spins creating a pellet of e-coli cells at the bottom and a supernatant liquid containing the enzyme (look up Hershey Chase Experiment)). From there the protein can be purified and put to work on plastic waste!

    This second PETase enzyme has a 3D crystalline structure and an activation site which accepts PET plastic polymers. What is so cool about this enzyme is that it breaks plastic polymers into basic building blocks not microplastic. This means any type of plastic can be synthesized from the products of this reaction. Industry can now produce PETase and recycle plastic in this new way. The new PETase breaks down plastic twice as fast as the first and a cocktail of both the first and second can degrade plastic 6x as fast.

There is an excellent 60 minutes report on Climate change by Scott Pelley which recently made its debut about forest fires and other environmental issues. I am always confused when interviewees are asked about their beliefs in climate change. In 2020 this type of question is non-productive to conversations about climate solutions; how do you feel about the science still being questioned at this time? Should 60 minutes discuss the idea of climate denyl on their shows?

Thank you so much for reading