Ready for interplanetary time keeping?
Catch up with some of the most inspiring and hopeful news happening around the planet this month
Good morning! I’m Sarah Hartley and this is my curated Sunday read from across the globe, The Planet on Sunday. As you’ve received this newsletter then either you subscribed, or someone forwarded it to you. If the latter, then you can repay the favour using the handy little button below.
If spring forward last week caught you by surprise and, like me, you find moving one hour at a time confusing enough, then this planetary news takes the issue to a whole new dimension. Earthlings may soon be able to tell the time on the moon.
Scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) say that lunar timekeeping is needed to prevent docking spacecraft tumbling into each other or astronauts getting lost on the lunar surface. NPR goes into the details here. The move also comes as the impact of climate change has been shown to cause our own Earth days to get longer by slowing down the planet’s rotation. The melting of the polar ice caps is affecting how fast our planet spins, reports James Ashworth at the Natural History Museum in this fascinating article. As the polar ice caps melt, the speed of the Earth’s rotation is slowing down, making days slightly longer than they might otherwise be.
Returning to ground level, here’s some of the positive environmental stories that have been happening around the planet:
🇩🇰 The Danish city reimagining reuse
Every morning, about 50 to 100 people gather in line in front of a center owned by the municipality of Aarhus, the second-largest city in Denmark, writes Yael Berman at Reasons to be Cheerful. Here, they can give — and take — all sorts of materials for free. More than two metric tons of objects pass through the centre each day, from sofas to dishes, lamps to wardrobes, electronic devices to tables, all of which can be brought to new homes via cargo bikes the city lends to citizens.
The project started in 2015 when Kredsløb, a company owned by the city, noticed how much the citizens of Aarhus were throwing away. To solve this problem, they created a centre called Reuse, explains Peter Christensen, its coordinator: a reimagined recycling station where goods can be taken for free.
Read the full story here.
🇨🇭Whey to Gold: How the diary byproduct could help with electronic recycling
Researchers at the University of Zurich have succeeded in extracting gold from electronic waste using a new method. This method is based on a protein fiber sponge made from whey, a by-product of cheese production, writes The Swiss Times.
In addition to copper and cobalt, old computers and smartphones also contain small amounts of gold. However, previous processes for recovering the precious metal were energy-intensive and often required highly toxic chemicals.
This new developments is efficient, inexpensive. They have developed a sponge made from a protein mesh produced from whey.
Read the full story here.
🇫🇮 World’s largest sand battery set to slash emissions in Finnish town
A huge sand battery is set to slash the carbon emissions of a Finnish town. The industrial-scale storage unit in Pornainen, southern Finland, will be the world’s biggest sand battery when it comes online within a year, reports EuroNews.
Capable of storing 100 MWh of thermal energy from solar and wind sources, it will enable residents to eliminate oil from their district heating network, helping to cut emissions by nearly 70 per cent.
Read the full story here.
And talking of batteries…..
🇬🇧 Battery train sets distance record
Great Western Railway’s (GWR’s) innovative fast charge battery train trial broke records for UK distance without recharging. Then, a few days later, it set another UK record — this one of 86 miles (138 km) travel on battery power without recharging, writes Carolyn Fortuna at cleantechnica.com. That meant the battery train operated in a real-world environment at speeds of up to 60 mph, stopping and starting over a hilly route, with elevation changes of up to 200 meters. At West Ealing, where the GWR technology will be trialed in a real-world environment for the first time this spring, the UK train will charge for just 3 ½ minutes before restarting its journey on the Greenford branch line. GWR has already carried out simulations on other branch lines in the Thames Valley to explore how it could be rolled out even further in the future. This could reduce GWR emissions alone by over 1,700 tons of CO2e per year. It is hoped the technology could one day see battery trains in operation across the UK’s approximately 2,000 miles of 80-plus branch lines.
Read the full story here.
This video explainer from ClimateXchange caught my eye: Humans breathe out greenhouse gas. Is that a problem?
The three most clicked links from last month were:
BioHome3D is the first 3D-printed house made entirely with bio-based, recyclable materials
The 3D-Printed Affordable Housing of the Future Will Be Recyclable
🇸🇰 Slovakia has just shut down its last coal power plant
Slovakia stopped production at its last coal-fired power plant this week, reports EuroNews. Its electricity will now come almost entirely from nuclear and renewable sources.
The Vojany power station, located in the Michalovce district in eastern Slovakia, opened in 1966.
Slovenské elektrárne, the company that owns the plant, announced that all of the electricity generated in the Eastern European country will be free of direct CO2 as of June 2024.
Read the full story here.
🇫🇷 France’s lower house votes to limit ‘excesses’ of fast fashion
France’s lower house of parliament has backed a string of measures to make low-cost fast fashion, especially items from Chinese mass producers, less attractive to buyers reports AFP in The Guardian
The vote made France the first country in the world “legislating to limit the excesses of ultra fast fashion”, said Christophe Bechu, minister for the ecological transition. The measures still require a vote in the Senate.
Key measures include a ban on advertising for the cheapest textiles, and an environmental charge on low-cost items.
Read the full story here.
🇺🇲 The artist using mushrooms to address LA’s poor air quality
In California a Fungus Garden has opened featuring work by Los Angeles artist Alice Könitz, whose geometric sculptures are filled with growing mycelium mushrooms.
Lisa Yin Zhang reports for Hyperallergic that inside a converted water tower, stands a little wooden chamber about six feet tall with amoeba-shaped openings that let in sunlight and allow, of course, for art-viewing.As mycelium needs relatively airtight and moist environments to thrive and avoid mold, tiny spores are carefully placed flat within glass trapezoidal glass panes fitted with metal-edged closures. But Könitz’s mycelium experiment-turned-sculpture represents innovations in air quality: Mushroom walls, for example, have been proven to be sustainable air purifiers and an alternative insulation material.
Read the full story here.
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