blog posts

• The EV battery tech that’s worth the hype, according to experts

  by Laura BarnesDec 5, 2025 9:00 am

  Source: Inside Climate News, 11/9/25

  Major battery breakthroughs seemingly happen every day, but only some of that tech ever leaves the lab. Here's what’s is actually going to change EVs and what’s just a dream.

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• ‘It’s not too late’: New Cornell study maps the environmental cost of AI and how policy could limit the damage

  by Laura BarnesDec 4, 2025 9:00 am

  Source: Inside Climate News, 11/10/25

  When Cornell University systems engineer Fengqi You started modeling the environmental footprint of data centers three years ago, the AI boom was just beginning. Even then, You and his colleagues noticed that resource planning was missing from the conversation. They wanted to bring real numbers to AI's physical footprint. You and his team recently published a paper in Nature Sustainability that quantifies their enormous resource consumption.

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• A growing number of ‘repair cafes' are popping up around the world to curb consumer waste

  by Laura BarnesDec 3, 2025 9:00 am

  Source: Inside Climate News, 11/11/25

  Local communities are hosting events where people can bring in their broken goods for repairs—free of charge.

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• Breaking down rare earth element magnets for recycling

  by Laura BarnesDec 2, 2025 9:00 am

  Source: Ars Technica, 10/20/25

  Electronic waste is a treasure trove of rare earth elements (REEs), but separating out these materials for recovery and reuse is no easy task. A team of researchers from Rice University says it has developed a better way to separating REEs from waste magnets found in discarded electronics. The process uses less energy and isn’t nearly as emissions and pollution intensive as current methods. The team describes the technique in a paper recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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• Startup ‘SeaSol’ seeks to convert seaweed into compostable food packaging, replacing plastic

  by Laura BarnesDec 1, 2025 9:00 am

  Source: University of Connecticut, 10/8/25

  University of Connecticut PhD candidate Yidan Zhang is CEO of a startup called SeaSol Technologies, Inc. (DBA SeaSol), which is converting seaweed into a functional coating that makes food packaging compostable and high performance. The SeaSol team has developed a low-cost process that pares down the seaweed conversion process from 14 steps to one.

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• To study how PFAS moves in the air, MPCA turns to pine needles

  by Joy ScrogumNov 28, 2025 4:15 pm

  Source: Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, 11/5/25

  Volunteers across all of Minnesota’s 87 counties have been busy carefully plucking pine needles from coniferous trees in their neighborhoods and collecting them in plastic bags. Why? They’re gathering clues about how PFAS move through the air so the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) can better understand how to protect Minnesotans from PFAS pollution. Air monitoring equipment can detect PFAS in the air, but it has limitations. It requires a fenced-in area with electricity, trained staff to operate the monitoring equipment, and expensive analysis only available at a few laboratories. Pine needles, on the other hand, become a natural and much less expensive way to gather data.

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• Space pollution levels in the atmosphere are rocketing

  by Joy ScrogumNov 27, 2025 9:00 am

  Source: Chemical & Engineering News, 11/18/25

  As more rockets and satellites in low Earth orbit burn up in the atmosphere at the end of their lives, the amount of introduced vapors and particulate matter there is dramatically rising. A new study under review in Advances in Space Research calculates just how much waste this traffic is injecting into Earth’s upper atmosphere. The results show that last year, the mass of metals introduced to the atmosphere by human activity annually nearly doubled from the levels seen from 2015 to 2020. For 24 different elements, this influx now contributes more mass than natural sources. Both records are on track to be shattered this year.

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• Required PFAS testing at Minnesota WWTFs

  by Joy ScrogumNov 26, 2025 9:00 am

  Source: BioCycle, 11/18/25

  On September 1, 2025, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) began requiring all wastewater treatment facilities (WWTF) intending to apply biosolids to agricultural land or used for reclamation projects to collect at least one representative sample of their biosolids and test it for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) each year using draft EPA Method 1633A. The results from this sample must be received prior to biosolids being applied to land. 

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• Deadly in Small Doses: New Research Shows the Lethal Effects of Ingested Plastic on Marine Animals

  by Joy ScrogumNov 25, 2025 9:00 am

  Source: Inside Climate News, 11/17/25

  Ingesting just six pieces of rubber—each smaller than a pea—can all but seal a seabird’s fate, leaving it with a 90 percent chance of death. A 300-pound adult green sea turtle has about a 50 percent chance of survival after swallowing two golf balls’ worth of plastic bags and food wrappers. Gulping down less than a soccer ball’s volume of fishing line or nets is enough to kill nearly all sea lions, seals, dolphins and porpoises.

  These are just some of the fatal thresholds marine wildlife face when plastic ends up inside their bodies, according to a new analysis by scientists from the Ocean Conservancy, an international marine conservation nonprofit. In a study released Monday, researchers outline the amount of swallowed debris it takes to block an animal’s gut, tear its digestive tract or force its intestines to twist. 

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• Microplastics hit male arteries hard

  by Joy ScrogumNov 24, 2025 9:00 am

  Source: University of California - Riverside, 11/18/25

  A mouse study led by University of California, Riverside biomedical scientists suggests that everyday exposure to microplastics — tiny fragments shed from packaging, clothing, and countless plastic products — may accelerate the development of atherosclerosis, the artery-clogging process that leads to heart attacks and strokes. The harmful effects were seen only in male mice, offering new clues about how microplastics may affect cardiovascular health in humans.

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