California wildfires illustrate the consequences of climate change | PBS NewsHour
Energy
Is Plastic Recycling A Lie? Oil Companies Touted Recycling To Sell More Plastic
The industry's awareness that recycling wouldn't keep plastic out of landfills and the environment dates to the program's earliest days, we found. "There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis," one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech.
Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn't true.
"If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment," Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, known today as the Plastics Industry Association and one of the industry's most powerful trade groups in Washington, D.C., told NPR.
In response, industry representative Steve Russell, until recently the vice president of plastics for the trade group the American Chemistry Council, said the industry has never intentionally misled the public about recycling and is committed to ensuring all plastic is recycled.
NPR
At 121 degrees, Los Angeles County hit its highest temperature ever recorded this weekend, as the state swelters in a heat wave that has helped intensify the most devastating wildfire season California has experienced in years.
The record temperature was measured in Woodland Hills, northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
The "kiln-like" heat was exacerbated by a high-pressure system and a weak sea breeze, according to the National Weather Service.
NWS Meteorologist Dave Bruno told The New York Times that these factors "allowed basically the entire region to roast." Several other locations in the state also faced scorching temperatures.
From Lead to Ethanol | White Papers | EESI
A cornerstone of U.S. environmental policy has been the reduction of harmful tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks. Thanks to EPA regulations of mobile sources, air pollutants have been reduced by millions of tons in the urban environment. Several EPA fuel regulations have concerned octane. Octane is a gasoline additive that is needed for the proper functioning of modern engines. Octane sources have taken many forms throughout the years, both renewable and petroleum-based. They include lead, methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), benzene, toluene, ethyl-benzene and xylene (BTEX), and ethanol (a biofuel). As adverse health and environmental consequences have been discovered for lead and petroleum-based octane providers, they have been removed from the fuel supply or decreased.
This actually is a better article about the history of octane boosters in gasoline. ⛽
How do the ethanol and nitrogen in your gas affect the environment?
Ethanol and Octane For Beginners
In terms of its octane rating, ethanol has a rating of 113. As mentioned above, fuels with a higher octane rating reduce engine knocking and perform better. Also, almost all gasoline in the US contains 10 percent ethanol. When you mix 10 percent 113 octane ethanol with 85 octane gasoline it increases the octane two points to the normal 87 octane most consumers use. So the higher the ethanol content, the higher the octane. The octane rating for E15 (15% ethanol) is 88 octane and E85 (85% ethanol) is 108 octane.
Solar Panels Are Starting to Die, Leaving Behind Toxic Trash | WIRED
When solar panels reach their end of their life today, they face a few possible fates. Under EU law, producers are required to ensure their solar panels are recycled properly. In Japan, India, and Australia, recycling requirements are in the works. In the United States, it’s the Wild West: With the exception of a state law in Washington, the US has no solar recycling mandates whatsoever. Voluntary, industry-led recycling efforts are limited in scope. “Right now, we’re pretty confident the number is around 10 percent of solar panels recycled,” said Sam Vanderhoof, the CEO of Recycle PV Solar, one of the only US companies dedicated to PV recycling. The rest, he says, go to landfills or are exported overseas for reuse in developing countries with weak environmental protections.
Even when recycling happens, there’s a lot of room for improvement. A solar panel is essentially an electronic sandwich. The filling is a thin layer of crystalline silicon cells, which are insulated and protected from the elements on both sides by sheets of polymers and glass. It’s all held together in an aluminum frame. On the back of the panel, a junction box contains copper wiring that channels electricity away as it’s being generated.
At a typical e-waste facility, this high-tech sandwich will be treated crudely. Recyclers often take off the panel’s frame and its junction box to recover the aluminum and copper, then shred the rest of the module, including the glass, polymers, and silicon cells, which get coated in a silver electrode and soldered using tin and lead. (Because the vast majority of that mixture by weight is glass, the resultant product is considered an impure, crushed glass.) Tao and his colleagues estimate that a recycler taking apart a standard 60-cell silicon panel can get about $3 for the recovered aluminum, copper, and glass. Vanderhoof, meanwhile, says that the cost of recycling that panel in the US is between $12 and $25—after transportation costs, which “oftentimes equal the cost to recycle.” At the same time, in states that allow it, it typically costs less than a dollar to dump a solar panel in a solid-waste landfill.