Posts tagged waste

Part of a huge fatberg blocking a 250 metre stretch of London’s sewer network could go on display to the public after the Museum of London expressed an interest in obtaining a section of the 130 tonne mass of waste and fat. The museum, which is planning a move to a new site at Smithfield, contacted Thames Water about acquiring a section of the congealed block of wet wipes, nappies, fat and oil for their general collection following its discovery in a Victorian sewer in Whitechapel, east London.

via https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/sep/13/fatberg-blocking-london-sewer-could-become-museum-exhibit

China is the world’s biggest consumer of raw materials. Each year it buys billions of tonnes of crude oil, coal and iron ore. But there is one commodity market in which the country may soon play a less dominant role: waste. Last month China told the World Trade Organisation that by the end of the year, it will no longer accept imports of 24 categories of solid waste, as part of a government campaign against “foreign garbage”. Government officials say restricting such imports will protect the environment and improve public health. But the proposed ban will threaten billions of dollars in trade and put many Chinese recyclers out of business. Why is Beijing so eager to trash its trade in rubbish?

via https://medium.com/@the_economist/why-china-is-sick-of-foreign-garbage-d3ff837f3734?source=ifttt————–1

Illegal waste activity costs England £1bn a year and more than 1,000 illegal waste sites were discovered last year, more than in the previous two years combined, with 662 still active as of the end of March. […] “Waste is the new narcotics,” said Sir James Bevan, chief executive of the Environment Agency. “It feels to me like drugs felt in the 1980s: the system hadn’t quite woken up to the enormity of what was going on and was racing to catch up.”

via https://medium.com/invironment/waste-crime-is-the-new-narcotics–17b004bee3b9

Enter the mighty mealworm. The tiny worm, which is the larvae form of the darkling beetle, can subsist on a diet of Styrofoam and other forms of polystyrene, according to two companion studies co-authored by Wei-Min Wu, a senior research engineer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford. Microorganisms in the worms’ guts biodegrade the plastic in the process – a surprising and hopeful finding.

http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2015/pr-worms-digest-plastics–092915.html