Don’t want to drink water and get microplastics? The easiest way is actually… | Environmental Trumpet

Hello everyone, this is the 6th issue of the Environmental Trumpet column. In this column, you can see different topics such as climate, pollution, energy, agriculture, etc., and learn about the recent changes in our environment and what good and bad news there are.

In this issue, we have collected the following environmental research and news worth reading:

1) Hermit crabs use trash such as bottle caps and light bulbs as their homes

2) There is a safer and more environmentally friendly dye for dyeing jeans

3) Chinese study finds boiling hard water and filtering can remove microplastics

4) Climate change causes some words in a language to disappear

5) Musk: Artificial intelligence and electric vehicles are developing rapidly and may not be able to meet electricity demand by 2025

Hermit crabs use bottle caps and light bulbs as homes

In your impression, do hermit crabs and their homes look like this?

Hermit crabs that use shells as their home｜britannica.com

However, hermit crabs now live in such garbage homes↓.

Using light bulbs as a tool | References [1]

There are also those who use bottle caps as their products, and the red plastic bottle caps are particularly eye-catching.

References[1]

Is it true that broken glass shards won’t pierce crab legs?

References[1]

In a study recently published in Science of the Total Environment, Polish researchers studied 386 photos of hermit crabs living in "garbage homes." Based on the photos, the researchers found that 85% of the "garbage homes" were plastic products (usually bottle caps), and another 5% were metal or glass. Of the 16 terrestrial hermit crab species in the world, 10 have used garbage as shelter.

Hermit crabs usually use shells as portable shelters and retreat into their shells when they encounter danger. As they grow, hermit crabs will continue to look for larger shells to live in. Although shells are the first choice for hermit crabs, some hermit crabs choose to find homes in garbage dumps.

Because there is no information on the number of shells, we don't know whether hermit crabs are forced to choose plastic garbage due to "housing shortage" or just prefer to use garbage as their home. Compared with real shells, plastic may be lighter and easier to carry with family. In addition, plastic soaked in the sea will emit the smell of food , which is very attractive to hermit crabs.

Hermit crabs that use Lego as their home｜smithsonianmag.com

Scientists are concerned about plastic waste. Plastic waste is more conspicuous, which may make hermit crabs more likely to be eaten. Microplastics may also harm the health of hermit crabs.

A safer and more environmentally friendly way to turn jeans blue

The special blue color of jeans is inseparable from a substance called indigo .

Indigo itself is insoluble in water at room temperature, so during the dyeing process, some reducing agents and other auxiliary chemicals are added to convert indigo into a water-soluble form for dyeing. However, the toxic chemicals added during the dyeing process are harmful to human health, and will also pollute the environment if discharged at will.

Wastewater discharged from a jeans dyeing factory in Africa | Robin Hammond/Panos

To make the dyeing process safer and more environmentally friendly, a research team from the Technical University of Denmark has developed a new process using indigo’s natural precursor, indoxyl glycoside.

Indoxyl glycosides are soluble, so textiles can be directly soaked in them , thus eliminating many toxic chemicals. However, this substance is colorless , and there are two ways to convert it into indigo: one is to use plant enzymes; the other is to place it under a light source for a few hours . There is no limit to the light source, sunlight or a light bulb at home can be used.

The research team evaluated the new dyes based on 18 impact categories (including carbon dioxide emissions, human exposure to carcinogens, water pollution, etc.) and found that the method using plant enzymes can reduce environmental impact by 92%, and the method using light sources can reduce environmental impact by 73%.

Using new dyes will make jeans dyeing safer and more efficient, but based on the production of 4 billion pairs of jeans per year, 80,000 tons of indoxyl glycosides are needed. Rebuilding this supply chain is not easy.

Boil water to remove plastic

Previously, a study in PNAS pointed out that one liter of bottled water contains about 240,000 nano- and micro-plastic particles (90% nano-plastics, 10% micro-plastics), which is 100 times higher than previous estimates. Recently, a study from China found an unexpectedly simple way to remove micro-plastics - boiling water.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters and conducted by a team from Guangzhou Medical University and Jinan University, found that boiling and filtering tap water containing calcium could help remove nearly 90 percent of nanoplastics and microplastics .

The researchers collected hard tap water samples from Guangzhou, China, added varying doses of nanoplastics and microplastics (NMPs), boiled the samples for five minutes and cooled them before measuring free-floating plastic particles.

Boiling hard water is rich in minerals and will form scale. It is this scale that "seals" plastic particles and reduces the plastic content in boiled water. Then use some simple filters, such as coffee filters, to filter out the scale in the water and pour it out.

Removing microplastics from tap water by boiling and filtering

This method works better in harder water . In hard water samples containing 300 mg of calcium carbonate per liter of water, up to 90% of NMP was removed after boiling. In soft water (less than 60 mg of calcium carbonate per liter of water), about 25% of NMP was removed after boiling.

You would never have thought that hard water, which has long been criticized, has turned into a magic weapon for removing microplastics.

Climate change is causing words to disappear from a language

The Sami people have lived in the extremely cold Arctic environment for thousands of years, and today their population is estimated to be between 50,000 and 100,000. Traditionally, the Sami people fish and herd reindeer, and their language has a large number of words to describe these professional activities and the Arctic weather.

In Sami, there are more than 300 words for snow , eight words for the different seasons, and six different words for a reindeer wandering alone. The expression “frightened reindeer” also has different words depending on the sex and age of the reindeer.

Sami people and reindeer | visitnatives.com

However, the Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet . Rising temperatures are changing the Arctic ecosystems that the Sami depend on, threatening their traditional way of life of fishing and reindeer herding. As a result, some words are at risk of extinction.

An endangered Sami word is jiekŋaguolli, which refers to the salmon that emerge in the early spring, just after the ice breaks up on the river. But fishermen have no chance of seeing early spring salmon because of changes in ocean currents, fewer salmon are returning, and a shorter official fishing season.

There are also some special words that capture various nuances, which are rarely used now. For example, ealát, which refers to the looseness of the snow. This allows reindeer to dig for nutritious lichens without being hindered by ice. But now with more extreme weather, freezing cold snaps can produce hard snow and ice, sealing off the lichens that reindeer want to eat. Jassa, which means snow that does not melt in the summer on hills or highlands, is now only available in a few places.

Sami people fishing｜Gleb Raygorodetsky

Of course, there are some words that are becoming more common. For example, suttádat or njáhcu or sievlladat, which refer to warm winters, when the snow begins to melt. There is also a new word, dálkkádatrievdan, which means warming, which has become a popular word. Reindeer herders often talk about the climate and use this word.

Artificial intelligence is going to compete with electric cars for electricity!

On February 29, at the Bosch Connected World 2024 conference, Elon Musk gave a closing answer. He said he had never seen any technology develop faster than artificial intelligence . The computing power of artificial intelligence seems to increase 10 times every 6 months.

Musk previously predicted that artificial intelligence would face many obstacles, such as chip shortages. Now the chip shortage problem may be over, and artificial intelligence and electric vehicles are expanding at an astonishing rate. They both require electricity and transformers (equipment for converting voltage) , which creates a huge demand for electricity and electrical equipment.

Musk answered questions at the conference｜Bosch Connected World conference

The International Energy Agency predicted in a report released in January that electricity demand from data centers, cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence will double in the next three years. By 2026, overall global electricity demand is expected to grow by 3.4% . However, renewable energy and nuclear energy cannot meet such huge demand.

According to Bloomberg, in order to cope with the surge in electricity demand, some power companies in the United States are considering unblocking fossil fuel power plants that have been sealed . Although many technology companies hope to use green renewable energy to meet their power supply needs, they will accept any electricity if there is a power shortage.

Author: Austenite

Editor: Little Towel, Mai Mai

Title image source: Tuchong Creative