sustainability
Our Editors Discuss Solutions and Storytelling
As part of our winter membership drive, we are pulling back the curtain on what we do here at Reasons to be Cheerful. This is part three of a three-part series. You can find part one here and part two here. In this final installment, we bring you a conversation between Executive Editor Will Doig and Editorial Director Rebecca Worby about growing awareness of solutions journalism and what makes stories resonate. Want to learn more about our membership program? Click here.
Rebecca Worby: In the early days of RTBC, there was much less awareness about solutions journalism. How has awareness grown since RTBC launched?
Will Doig: A lot of big publications have added a section specifically for solutions stories in the last few years — like the New York Times section Headway — and then some of those stories get filtered onto the homepage. From the reader’s perspective, these stories might not even register as “solutions journalism” since they’re positioned as just another news story, which is exactly how they should be treated, in my opinion.
WD: What makes a RTBC story a RTBC story?
RW: A RTBC story will tell you not just what the solution to a problem is, but how that solution was implemented. Ideally, it’ll do that in a way that feels conversational and approachable: You don’t need to be an expert on sustainable timber construction to understand and enjoy a story about the Portland airport’s new wooden roof.
In November, Hannah Wallace reported for us about the Portland airport’s new sustainable timber roof. Courtesy of Port of Portland
At its best, a RTBC story is truly a story — that is, a narrative that you want to read from start to finish. Our stories may not always be as cheerful as the name suggests, but they do tend to be upbeat, and I hope they give the reader a sense of hope and buoyancy.
RW: What types of stories do you find that our audience is most drawn to?
WD: Climate, the environment, green energy — these have been our most popular topics since day one. They’re not only huge issues that affect everyone, they’re awash in promising solutions that often have a good narrative behind them.
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We saw a jump in interest in social justice stories during and after the 2020 protests, but because those solutions often aren’t as cut and dry, I think it’s harder for readers to walk away from them with a feeling that something has been solved. They might sometimes feel like they’re describing incremental progress in an intractably unfair world.
WD: What’s a common misconception about solutions journalism or RTBC?
RW: When people hear the name Reasons to be Cheerful, or when they hear about solutions journalism more generally, some might leap to the conclusion that our stories are all light and fun — or, worse, that we’re sugar-coating the truth. But our stories are always rigorously reported, and they don’t shy away from the negative when necessary. For example, we strive to always address not just what’s working well with a particular solution, but also the limitations or challenges it faces.
WD: What’s a story from this year that really resonated with our readers and why do you think it did?
RW: Contributing Editor Peter Yeung’s story about what Barcelona is doing to deal with overtourism was among our most popular this year. It came out in the middle of the summer, a time when a lot of readers are traveling (or dreaming of their next trip), and it spoke to an issue that a lot of us have experienced first-hand: What happens when a beloved place is, well, loved a little too much?
Interestingly, it’s not the most cut-and-dry solution story — as Peter writes, improvements in the impacts of tourism are tough to quantify — but I think there’s something satisfying about learning what a historic, beautiful city is doing to preserve itself.
Park Güell, designed by Antoni Gaudí, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site one of Barcelona’s most popular tourist attractions. Credit: dvoevnore / Shutterstock
RW: What’s a story from our archives that you still find yourself thinking about a lot?
WD: In 2020 our writer Klaus Sieg wrote about Berlin’s effort to incentivize residents to buy things used instead of new, and to repair their stuff instead of throwing it away. It was technically a story about policies that encourage reuse, but what it was really about was an entire city — from its government agencies on down to its residents — transforming its mindset around wasteful, consumption-oriented lifestyles.
RW: One of the first things I edited for RTBC was Elizabeth Hewitt’s story about “beaver dam analogues” in Colorado. Essentially, human impacts have degraded ecosystems — in this case, by wiping out beaver populations — and now humans are mimicking nature to try to restore those ecosystems and make them more adaptable to climate change. It’s a low-tech solution, and one that could ultimately help welcome beavers back to these places. I love when a solution is about undoing damage and helping nature do its thing.
RW: What’s a response from a reader that has stayed with you or impacted your thinking about the work that we do?
WD: We get a lot of notes from teachers who say they use Reasons to be Cheerful in their classrooms, which is really gratifying. One specific response that’s always stuck with me was from a soldier in a war zone who said he reads us to avoid losing hope — even though that’s just one person, it feels like a big impact.
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RW: I really appreciate the notes from teachers, too. I also enjoy hearing from folks whose life or work is closely tied to something we’ve covered. One of our writers recently told us that her mother was sharing Michaela Haas’ article about “The Power of Sharing Patients’ Life Stories With Caregivers” with all her friends. Old-fashioned word-of-mouth — I loved hearing that.
RW: A lot of online magazines struggle, and many shrank or disappeared after the pandemic, but RTBC just keeps growing. Why do you think this is?
WD: I think our name helps — we have a newsletter that has over 130,000 subscribers and being able to drop something that literally says “Reasons to be Cheerful” into someone’s inbox once a week almost feels like cheating.
Aside from that, I think the hunger for this type of journalism is real. There’s more of it than there used to be, but clearly not enough. We also just work really hard to make every story as good as it can possibly be, so maybe there’s an element of quality winning the day, as well.
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Time to Make a Material Difference
by Gary Gardner
The close of COP28. Cause for celebration? (United Nations)
Well, COP 28 ended yesterday with (seeming) agreement to (sort of) walk down the fossil fuel ladder toward a (not for a while) sustainable future. Geez! It’s almost 2024, more than half a century since Limits to Growth was published, and the human family is in a pouting mood. Why is it like pulling teeth to do the right thing, sustainability-wise? Why are we sleepwalking toward a cliff?
There are many reasons, of course. But maybe one is that we don’t dare to think creatively, imaginatively, and, least of all, systemically. Too many of us seem to be governed by inertia and comfort and content with incremental change. We seem to miss the radical urgency of the moment.
What would it look like if we insisted on living like responsible humans, caring for each other—and for the planet that cares for us? What might it look like, for individuals, companies, and governments? My guess is that at each level, the principals would step back, look at the big picture, and work to respond to our crisis in as comprehensive and systemic a way as possible.
The Power of One
Each of us is an economic actor with a responsibility to shape a sustainable economy. “Consumer” is a title we should take seriously, given that consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of the U.S. economy, and it’s largely folks like you and me doing the shopping. If individuals drive the economy, it follows that we could play a major role in shrinking its size, one person at a time.
Many people already live simply and soberly, but the poster child for simplicity might be Lauren Singer, who gained prominence a decade ago when her YouTube video showed her entire waste load for a year. Odds and ends like clothing labels and fruit stickers that she’d been unable to offload constructively were squeezed into a single, 16-ounce Mason jar. On later videos Singer reported that the same jar held five years’ waste, suggesting that she had mastered an essentially zero-waste lifestyle.
Buying in bulk is part of a zero-waste lifestyle. (Laura Mitulla on Unsplash)
And that’s her systemic secret: commitment to a zero-waste lifestyle. It’s a comprehensive philosophy that extends well beyond curbside recycling to minimize her materials imprint on the planet. Singer recycles, composts, buys in bulk, and favors second-hand goods over new. She steers clear of plastic. She avoids packaging almost entirely, largely by making her own toothpaste, lotions, deodorant, and cleaning supplies, as her Trash is for Tossers blog describes.
Singer is an extreme example, to be sure, but her experience suggests what a systemic approach to consumption might look like. A zero-waste ambition looks and feels different from a promise to recycle aluminum cans, or to embrace meatless Mondays. Yet however marginal Singer’s experience, she asserts that it’s not difficult once you learn how to do it. She adds that her zero-waste lifestyle has left her richer, healthier, and happier—not a bad return at all, and benefits fully realized only because of her comprehensive systemic approach to it.
We consumers may not be ready to follow Singer’s example fully, but we have ample room to reduce our consumption and waste. In contrast to the nearly unappreciable contents of Lauren’s mason jar, the average American garbage can ferries nearly 1,800 pounds of waste to the curb each year. Each pound eliminated saves material, of course, but also energy, and it avoids changing the climate. Add these to richer, happier, and healthier, and you have an incentive package for the comprehensive approach to reducing one’s personal materials footprint.
Tapping Corporate Engines
Corporate PR departments work hard to display corporate efforts to green their operations. Just check out any of the annual corporate sustainability reports—80 percent of Fortune 500 and S&P 500 firms have one—that claim steady improvements in firms’ efficiency and waste reduction.
Yet corporate efforts to reduce materials use are often narrow in scope and ambition. Consider Delta Airlines, which is seeking to ditch the single-use plastic cups used in its in-flight beverage service. The company has designed and is now testing new paper cups made of materials that work well with hot, cold, and alcoholic beverages and are recyclable. If trials of the new cups are successful and the cups are adopted across the Delta network, they will eliminate nearly 7 million pounds of single-use plastics each year, the airline says.
Kudos to Delta for working to eliminate plastic cups. But couldn’t it have thought more creatively and systemically about its plastic cup problem, with greater benefit to itself, society, and the environment? Why not stop providing cups altogether and encourage passengers to bring their own reusable versions? Offer incentives, or maybe collaborate with designers of water bottles to build a cup into their design, once a feature of thermoses. Those bottles are already tucked into the side pouches of many a backpack carry-on!
Broader thinking like this could help create a societal commitment to re-usable products and reduced waste, a continent-sized version of Lauren Singer’s reuse habit. It would require a savvy PR campaign to prepare the flying public, but if successful, wouldn’t Delta’s enlightened practice spread quickly to other airlines? And from there to cafeterias, coffee shops, and virtually all take-out restaurants across the land.
Today’s ubiquitous water bottles could be designed for reuse and could replace disposables. (Jonathan Shembere, Pexels)
And not just cups: Why not replace disposable dinnerware generally with beautifully designed mess kits that are lightweight, durable, collapsible, and portable? In the process, businesses that rely on disposables could convert a cost center (the current disposables), into a money-maker (the reusable eating ware), sold at any food establishment and even on Delta flights!
Of course, any systemic critique of Delta would extend beyond its beverage service. The elephant on the plane is not in the cabin, but in the wings, in the form of jet fuel. One of the most difficult economic sectors to mitigate, aviation sports a large and growing carbon footprint because each flight uses tons (literally) of fossil fuel. Indeed, if global commercial aviation were a country, it would have been sixth among the world’s largest emitters of CO2 in 2019 (before flying took a dive during the COVID pandemic). Passenger air travel constituted the highest and fastest growth in individual emissions, even as the efficiency of aircraft and flight operations increased steadily.
Meanwhile, initiatives like “sustainable” aviation fuel, electric aircraft, and hydrogen aircraft all have serious drawbacks, leaving the industry still heavily dependent on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. More creative and systemic thinking will be needed, outside-the-box thinking similar to swapping out disposables for reusables. A start in this direction is the innovative partnering practice some airlines have with rail companies to eliminate short-haul flights in favor of train travel. At least that starts to approach the solution—ending the habit of fossil-fueled flying—needed to reform airlines.
So yes, Delta’s work to eliminate single-use plastic is good. But it’s hardly the system-level overhaul we need from corporations.
Changing the Rules
If many individuals are slow to challenge the consumerist mindset, and if corporate efforts are unambitious in their sustainability ambition, governments are well positioned to set the stage for comprehensive, systemic change to alter patterns of materials use. On this front, encouraging news was announced by the European Union last week. The European Parliament and Council agreed provisionally to legislation “to make sustainable products the norm,” an unprecedented intervention in product design on the continent. The ‘take-make-use-dispose’ economic model used in industrial economies for decades “can be avoided,” they announced.
The new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) is one piece of the EU’s Green Deal, which seeks to put the entire EU economy on a sustainable footing. The ESPR will replace the EU’s 2009 Ecodesign Directive, which largely focused on energy efficiency. By contrast, ESPR covers a wide range of products and broadens the scope of requirements applied to each product, with the expected effect of decreasing the economy’s resource requirements and increasing their circularity.
Look at the adjectives describing the vision of the legislation; they are concepts that have excited sustainability researchers since the 1990s. Products should be durable, reusable, repairable, recyclable, and made of recycled materials. They should not contain “substances of concern” that reduce recyclability. Premature obsolescence—limiting a product’s lifetime via design features—will be prohibited. Destroying unsold products will be discouraged and in some cases, banned.
ESPR: Maybe we’ll value old and lasting over new and fleeting? (Wikimedia Commons)
The circularity and sustainability criteria should apply to a broad range of goods, including intermediate ones. So they will cover iron, steel, aluminum, chemicals, and textiles, as well as goods like, furniture, tires, detergents, paints, and lubricants,. And the law will apply to any product sold in the EU, including imported products.
The regulation also creates a “Digital Product Passport” to help consumers make more sustainable product choices. The ‘passport’ is essentially an eco-certification scheme that uses product tags to convey measures of the product’s sustainability.
Of course, the legislation could contain as many loopholes as it does inspiring passages of progressive law, so caution is in order. It’s not clear that it applies to online sales, for example, or to agricultural products, which have a huge environmental footprint. And it’s not clear if products will be evaluated using life-cycle analysis, to give the fullest understanding of their impacts, although some analyst believe it will. And it would be smart to expect industry blowback as the law is progressively applied.
The European Parliament and the Council must formally adopt the new regulation, which is expected in the first quarter of 2024. Within nine months after adoption, officials will unveil the first working plan, identifying the first products to be targeted. Product-specific requirements will be spelled out in further legislation. Each product will have its own transition period. If all goes well, the legislation’s impact could begin to be felt within a year or two.
Close, but no Cigar
Of course, none of the exemplary cases cited or suggested here would guarantee a steady state economy. They are about making resource use more efficient rather than capping or scaling back total materials use. But surely zero-waste lifestyles, redesigned travel, and rigorous rules for a materially simpler economy is more congruent with steady statesmanship than simply recycling, re-designing paper cups, or a focus on efficiency. A comprehensive, systemic approach could make all the difference.
Suppose, for example, that beyond a focus on minimizing waste, people worked to reduce their entire materials footprint. They’d be keen to reduce their carbon footprint, of course, and they’d likely find that the simplest and surest path is to greatly reduce the sheer volume of material in their lives.
Shopping for services rather than goods would likely help. Appreciating nature—at parks, on hiking trails, even on neighborhood walks—rather than seeking distraction at the mall or on TV would deliver meaning with a minimum of material. Pursuing friendships and community involvement is another materials-lite path (in principal, at least) to an enriched life. The guiding ethic: tread lightly on the earth.
The future of transatlantic travel? (For a few). (Dave Smith, Flickr)
Suppose, too, that corporate commitment extended beyond greening its margins to a wholesale rethinking of its very purpose. Airlines would have a particularly tough go of it, as there is no avoiding the reality that fossil-fueled flights would have to end, and alternative fuels and technologies are distant and in any case still materials-intensive. Airlines could think creatively and look to the long run, exploring investment in cleaner modes of transport such as airships and sailing ships. But the emissions and materials math would have to pencil out, and it’s hard to imagine that sustainable long-distance travel could survive at today’s scale. (Which points us back to the individual, who will have to lower expectations of the material base of their lifestyle.)
At the government level, suppose that the EU applied ESPR aggressively across all product categories, and that it continued to lower its population growth rate, which averaged less than 0.2% annually over the past decade. These developments would arguably constitute a credible down payment on a resource-use cap and a steady state economy. But it would require an unflinching commitment to radically reducing the material footprint of the EU economy.
Approached systemically and creatively, the timid signs of progress commonly cited today could be enlarged and multiplied, boosting our confidence that a steady state economy could be within reach. No more weasel words in final communiques of international sustainability conferences. It’s time to step up our game and insist on seeing a material difference.
Gary Gardner is CASSE’s Managing Editor.
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Asking SMART questions can link sustainability research to practitioner needs
Despite large investments in research and development, India struggles to translate sustainability research into tangible impacts that help solve environmental challenges across its large geography. Anjali Neelakantan and Veena Srinivasan suggest this is in part due to the challenge of finding sharply framed bottom-up research questions and discuss a new project to match such questions … Continued
NYC Is Giving Teens Free Online Therapy
Three great stories we found on the internet this week.
Help in hand
Good news for teens who need to talk: As part of a broader effort to address rising mental health concerns since the start of the pandemic, New York City has launched a program that will provide free online therapy.
The initiative, called NYC Teenspace, enables New Yorkers ages 13 to 17 to text, call and video chat with licensed therapists via the online platform Talkspace.
Though live sessions are limited to one per month, texting is unlimited — and valuable. “We have learned that when people face something stressful, messaging is a powerful tool at their fingertips,” said Talkspace CEO Jon Cohen.
Building resilience
Bamboo is having an architectural moment. Yasmeen Lori, an award-winning architect — and the first practicing female architect in Pakistan — is using the material to build structures for displaced Pakistanis. The Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, which Lori founded, has built nearly 40,000 homes since 2022’s devastating monsoon floods. And it’s aiming to hit one million in the next couple of years.
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Lori draws a key distinction: these aren’t disaster relief shelters, but rather disaster-resistant homes. They are designed to be easily repaired, added to and, of course, replicated. Plus, bamboo can be harvested much more quickly than traditional timber, and bamboo products can store carbon.
“Architects call it natural steel,” said Liu Kewei, an engineer who has worked on bamboo projects elsewhere. “It’s really a marvelous material.”
Read more at the Washington Post
Hatching plans
The kiwi, a brown bird that one observer recently described as resembling an “avocado with legs,” is New Zealand’s most iconic animal. But while these flightless, nocturnal creatures could once be found all over the country, today there are only an estimated 70,000, mostly in remote areas.
A baby kiwi being nursed in an avian nursery. Credit: K Ireland / Shutterstock
That’s why it’s a big deal that two hatchlings have been discovered just three miles from the bustle of Wellington — the first, experts say, to be born in the wild in the area in living memory. This marks a small but critical victory for a multi-year conservation effort, which included reducing predator populations and reintroducing kiwis into nearby farmlands.
There’s a long road ahead, and those Wellingtonian hatchlings still have to make it to adulthood. But it’s a “special moment,” says Pete Kirkman, the conservationist who found them.
Read more at the New York Times
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Samuel Olayinka’s Insights on Sustainable Production Operations
Fossil fuels have been a reliable energy source for many years. Recently, the oil and gas production industry has taken measures to develop procedures that deliver high efficiency and mitigate negative impacts on the environment. With over 23 years of professional experience in the industry, Samuel Olayinka gives his perspective on the sector’s shift toward sustainability and…
The post Samuel Olayinka’s Insights on Sustainable Production Operations appeared first on Peak Oil.
The Portland Airport’s Astonishing New Roof Tells a Local Timber Story
When passengers pass through the newly remodeled Portland International Airport in spring 2024, they’ll be able to point up to specific Douglas fir beams around the oval skylights and know that they came from the ancestral lands of the Coquille Indian Tribe in Southwestern Oregon.
This will be the first major US airport to have a mass timber roof, and all the timber for the project came from sustainably managed forests that are located less than 300 miles away. The soaring, nine-acre ceiling — which will have lots of natural sunlight streaming in through the skylights and windows — will feel a bit like a forest. (The renovation will also include the addition of 70 or so living trees that will be growing in recessed and above-ground planters.)
The process of sourcing the wood took six years of planning, research, forest visits and many, many phone calls between the Port of Portland, Portland-based ZGF Architects, regional tribes, family-run forests, mill owners and brokers.
All the wood for the nine-acre ceiling came from within 300 miles of the airport. Courtesy of Port of Portland
When ZGF principal Jacob Dunn joined the firm in 2017, his colleagues were already considering going with an all-wood roof. The Port of Portland, the public authority that oversees the airport and marine terminals in Portland, loved the idea. “The Port’s mandate was: We want it to be a mass timber roof. We’re the front door to the region, we really want to showcase this industry that is critical to managing and stewarding one of our region’s most precious natural resources,” recalls Dunn, who is ZGF’s sustainability lead for the PDX airport project.
The Port of Portland also wanted the roof to be the most sustainable version of a mass timber roof that it could possibly be — which meant traceability. “Most of the voices in the room said, ‘That can’t be done, that’s not the way the industry works,’” Ryan Temple, founder and owner of Sustainable Northwest Wood recalls. He was one of a handful of people who said that not only was it possible, it might even help redefine the timber industry — by making timber more traceable. He saw the project as a chance to identify and celebrate the people who are sustainably managing their forestland.
Ryan Temple. Courtesy of Port of Portland
This ambitious goal meant that Dunn’s first task was to figure out the answer to a big question: “What is sustainable forestry?” He knew that the supply chains that come with concrete and steel are resource- and energy-intensive. (Steel relies on either mining or melting down existing steel; concrete is made of cement, water, sand, and gravel. Cement comes from mining and heating limestone, iron ore, and other materials to high temperatures, which releases large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.) With wood, there was an opportunity to find regional landowners who practice regenerative and restorative forestry.
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The Galapagos Are Going Green
Just three blocks up from a seafront packed with hooting and howling Galapagos sea lions — adolescents chasing each other through rock pools, alpha males snoring in the midmorning sun and mothers teaching their pups how to swim — the daily market on the island of San Cristóbal is serving up its own endemic specialities.
Piles of ruby-red tomatoes, pinkish papayas and hulking great oranges line Marina Herrera’s stall. Beside them are bunches of thick plantains, sweet, finger-sized local bananas, as well as chunky chili peppers and heads of fresh lettuce.
“They’re all grown within a few kilometers of here,” says Herrera, a 73-year-old Galapagueña trader known by locals as Chambita. “The oranges come from Cerro Verde [a nearby mountain]. It’s cheaper than imported food. And it’s tastier.”
Marina Herrera. Credit: Peter Yeung
Herrera and her fellow stall holders are part of a community-led effort to transform the Galapagos Islands into a model of self-sufficiency, with their initiatives ranging from localized food systems to nature-based water treatment, renewable energy production, and a more equitable approach to the archipelago’s ecotourism.
The Galapagos Islands, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is the second-largest marine reserve in the world, and its remarkable abundance of wildlife found nowhere else on the planet inspired Charles Darwin’s groundbreaking Theory of Evolution.
The so-called Enchanted Isles are home to thousands of species, including more than 15 varieties of giant tortoise, the world’s only marine iguana, the only penguins found north of the equator, the ocean’s highest concentration of hammerhead sharks, pink flamingos, as many as 50,000 sea lions, and unique flora such as the lava cactus, a hardy species that is the first to grow after a volcanic eruption.
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Can Farmers Save the Great Salt Lake?
The Bear River flows out of Wyoming’s Uinta Mountains, winding 350 miles through sagebrush meadows and agricultural fields in Idaho and Utah before it fans out into wetlands 50 miles north of Salt Lake City. It’s the longest river on the continent that does not drain into the sea, and the largest source of water filling the Great Salt Lake.
One of the river’s last stops before it reaches the lake is Mitch and Holly Hancock’s farm, NooSun Dairy. Like hundreds of other farmers, the Hancocks divert water from the Bear River to irrigate crops like alfalfa hay and corn that feed their 3,000 cows.
Mitch Hancock. Courtesy of Holly Hancock
Since they live in the desert, the Hancocks spend a lot of time asking themselves how to protect and maximize their water, which Holly calls “one of our most valuable resources.”
“The only thing we can control on our farm is how efficient we are,” Holly explains. She was born on the farm in 1982, the same year her parents bought it. She says one of the family’s guiding principles for managing their business is: “How can we improve our processes so that we do more with less?”
Holly and Mitch recently made several improvements to their irrigation system to conserve water. They piped the farm’s earthen ditches so less water is lost to evaporation or seepage as it travels from the river to their fields. Mitch recounts that before the piping project, it took 45 minutes for water to reach one of their hay fields. Now it takes 45 seconds. “All that savings from point A to point B now stays in the lake,” Mitch says. “And every inch helps, right?”
Irrigation pipes and a hay field at the Hancocks’ farm. Courtesy of Holly Hancock
Farmers and ranchers are key to helping solve Utah’s water crisis. In the face of a shrinking Great Salt Lake, irrigators like the Hancocks are stepping up to voluntarily conserve water in creative ways. And the benefits go both ways: Not only do such efforts keep the lake and its ecosystem alive, they also help agricultural producers grow food more efficiently.
Water is a particularly hot topic in Utah. The Great Salt Lake hit a record low in November 2022, shriveling its surface area to less than half of the historic average. This was a call to action for people throughout the region since the lake’s decline threatens to upend ecosystems and disrupt the local economy.
The lake pumps $2.5 billion into the state each year from industries like recreation, mineral extraction and harvesting brine shrimp. It supports 80 percent of Utah’s wetlands and 10 million migrating birds. And it even helps generate the powdery snow that draws up to seven million people per year to Salt Lake City to ski.
The 22-year-long megadrought in the American Southwest certainly played a role in shrinking the lake. But the main reason for its decline is that people are diverting water from the rivers that refill the lake. Three-quarters of the diverted water is used to irrigate crops — mainly grasses grown to feed cattle that produce beef or dairy, the state’s chief agricultural commodities. If people continue to use water at the current rate, the Great Salt Lake will likely disappear within five years, according to a report published by Brigham Young University in January.
Brine shrimp have been commercially harvested from the Great Salt Lake since 1950. Credit: Brianna Randall
Now for the good news: if agricultural and other outdoor water use is cut by one-third to one-half, the lake will likely refill to a level that can support local communities and the ecosystem. Voluntary conservation actions like the Hancocks’ irrigation upgrades are the most important — and most attainable — measures for keeping the Western Hemisphere’s largest saline lake alive.
Mitch believes that agriculture is sometimes framed as “the bad guy” because there’s a lack of understanding that farmers “want to be proactive” to help care for the water that sustains their business. He estimates that about half of the farmers in his area are participating in conservation projects.
That includes Joel Ferry, a fifth-generation cattle rancher. Like his neighbors, Ferry is setting an example of what he calls “water optimization”: growing as much or more using less water. On his family’s ranch, Ferry has installed 100,000 feet of irrigation pipe to replace leaking canals, and used a laser and GPS units to precisely level thousands of acres so the ground can be irrigated more efficiently. He also switched to no-till practices and cover crops and composting practices that all save water by not disturbing soil.
Credit: Chad Yamane / Ducks Unlimited
The Great Salt Lake hit a record low in November 2022: 4,188.2 feet.
These practices mean more water now flows into the wetlands at the north end of the Great Salt Lake, which are an oasis for wildlife. “In a normal drought cycle, these wetlands would have been dry and desolate,” Ferry says. But even during Utah’s driest years on record they stayed wet, thanks in part to his family’s voluntary conservation actions.
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Ferry’s good intentions attracted attention. In 2022, he was appointed director of Utah’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Along with the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, the DNR has overseen the investment of $276 million in the state’s Agricultural Water Optimization Program since 2019. This program funds 50 percent of a farmer’s irrigation efficiency upgrades — like the Hancocks’ piping project — and also quantifies how much water will be conserved for the environment. Landowners must contribute at least 10 percent of the total project cost, but the other 40 percent often comes from federal cost-share, like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program funded by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.
In addition to saving water, Ferry says the optimization program helps agricultural producers “become more resilient and viable and hopefully more profitable on these landscapes.” On the shores of the Bear River where Ferry farms, he gets better crop yields from the bevy of water and soil conservation practices he’s put in place. Plus, he says, “I don’t have to drought-stress my crops because I’m able to get water to them when they need it.”
Joel Ferry speaks to a group at Antelope Island about water conservation. Credit: Brianna Randall
Overall, Utah has invested over $1 billion in all types of water conservation programs over the past two years. “This is a monumental, generational investment from the state in water conservation that’s just never been seen before,” Ferry notes.
The funding includes $250 million for installing tens of thousands of meters to track people’s outdoor water use. Research shows that just seeing how much water they consume results in people using about 25 percent less. Another conservation success has been offering incentives for residential homeowners to remove water-guzzling lawns, and banning a local practice of fining people who choose not to keep their grass green during the driest months. While the benefits of not watering a patch of lawn here and there might not be noticeable on the macro-level, “when you do it on tens of thousands of acres, it adds up” to a measurable difference in water savings, Ferry says.
Utah’s investment from the policy side is equally monumental, particularly if the state hopes to protect conserved water in streams, rivers, wetlands or the Great Salt Lake. “In the West, we have these ‘use it or lose it’ water laws. It’s a disincentive, in particular to agriculture, to save water and to leave it in the stream,” Ferry says.
Millions of migrating birds visit the Great Salt Lake every year. Credit: Chad Yamane / Ducks Unlimited
He’s referring to the Prior Appropriation Doctrine, the set of laws that govern how water is administered in the western U.S. It was created to accommodate settlers moving west in the 1800s who hoped to “make the desert bloom,” says Emily Lewis, a professor at University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney School of Law.
The doctrine is based on seniority: the first person to divert water from a stream, river or lake for a beneficial use, like agriculture or mining, gets first dibs. If a senior right holder doesn’t use it, the water goes to the junior right holder next in line. This doctrine spawned the old adage: “Whisky is for drinkin’ and water is for fightin’.”
Historically, leaving water in a river wasn’t considered a beneficial use. This left the environment severely shortchanged. Most waterways in the West have no legal requirements to keep them flowing, so many streams are sucked dry during the summer. Fish, birds and plants all suffer as a result.
Credit: Chad Yamane / Ducks Unlimited
Thanks to the Prior Appropriation Doctrine — which spawned the old adage “Whisky is for drinkin’ and water is for fightin’” — leaving water in a river has not historically been considered a beneficial use.
But many western states, including Utah, are adapting the Prior Appropriate Doctrine to better reflect changing values. “We’re doing some serious spring cleaning here on the water rights system,” Ferry says.
Over the last five years, Lewis says the Utah Legislature has passed 64 water bills and “totally modernized its water law”. The state has been able “to go directly from step one to step ten”, Lewis says, because they were able to learn what’s worked for neighboring states like Colorado and Nevada, which have grappled for decades with water shortages.
This includes recognizing in-stream flow as a beneficial use and setting up systems that allow for water marketing – in other words, giving people the ability to lease, sell or donate some or all of their water to another use without forfeiting their property rights. In 2022, the Utah Legislature also allocated $40 million to create a water trust that will compensate willing sellers for moving water from out-of-stream uses to environmental flows to enhance the Great Salt Lake watershed.
Getting water from a farmer’s diversion all the way down a river and into the Great Salt Lake faces a gauntlet of administrative, legal, hydrological and engineering hurdles. Credit: Brianna Randall
The new water trust will build on lessons learned during pilot water marketing projects run by the Utah Water Banking Program. One of the first lessons was that people were excited about the chance to manage their water rights more flexibly. The program set out to start three pilot projects, but “ended up with four because we had such big interest,” says Lewis, who manages the program.
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Over the past three years, Lewis has also learned that getting water from a farmer’s diversion all the way down a river and into the Great Salt Lake faces a gauntlet of administrative, legal, hydrological and engineering hurdles. She thinks one of the main challenges is “how to organize people’s thinking about water marketing because it’s just such a big topic.” The state just released a new website to help people get clearer answers about how to buy or sell water rights.
Perhaps the biggest hurdle to restoring the Great Salt Lake is the lack of tools to track water as it moves through the system. Utah, like many places in the water-starved West, desperately needs better ways to measure how much water is actually flowing in its streams, canals, pipes or faucets on any given day. “It’s the linchpin,” says Lewis. “No one is going to lease or pay for water for the lake unless they know a wet water molecule is going to get from point A to point B.”
Despite all of these challenges, Lewis still firmly believes that water marketing “has to be one of the solutions” for refilling the Great Salt Lake. She points out that water right holders like Ferry participated in drafting recent policies so they reflect what will work on the ground for farmers and ranchers. “We’re talking silver buckshot solutions,” says Lewis. “We’re not talking about doing one hard thing, we’re doing 100 hard things all at the same time.”
Others in the state are still searching for a silver bullet. A lawsuit filed in September argues that the State of Utah should enact the public trust doctrine to protect the lake by summarily cutting off water to agricultural and other users to benefit the environment. This litigation will likely take decades to resolve. Meanwhile, the Great Salt Lake faces continued pressure from rapid population growth, climate change and competing demands for dwindling water supplies.
Credit: Chad Yamane / Ducks Unlimited
“We’re talking silver buckshot solutions. We’re not talking about doing one hard thing, we’re doing 100 hard things all at the same time.”
Ferry asks himself all the time what else Utah can do to ensure there’s enough water in the future for agriculture, communities and the environment. “It’s a three-legged stool,” he says. “We cannot neglect one of those legs or it’s game over.”
He keeps coming back to one tried-and-true approach: the best way to keep the stool from toppling — and the Great Salt Lake from disappearing — is to help people do more with less water.
Back at the north end of Great Salt Lake, Mitch and Holly Hancock are taking another step to do just that. This spring they will automate their irrigation system to make sure they’re not over-watering their drought-resistant crops, and to keep nutrients and topsoil from washing away.
Both Holly and Mitch say their long-term goal for Noosun Dairy is that it will be set up for their kids to farm in the future, if they want to. “Everything we do including water conservation is geared toward leaving it better than we found it,” Mitch says.
The post Can Farmers Save the Great Salt Lake? appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
The EU Just Banned Microplastics. How Are Companies Replacing Them?
A blue whale can ingest about 10 million pieces of microplastics per day. This alarming fact, drawn from a recent study, underlines what has become increasingly clear: Microplastics — solid plastic particles up to five millimeters in size that are not biodegradable — are pretty much everywhere.
They have been detected in over 1,500 different marine animal species. They also find their way into our bodies via the water cycle and the food chain. In fact, the average person consumes up to five grams of microplastics per week. That’s as much as a credit card. The consequences for our health and the environment remain to be seen.
In a move to stave off further damage, the European Union has now banned intentionally added microplastics. This applies to plastic glitter or polyethylene particles used as abrasives in scrubs, shower gel and toothpaste (these have been banned in the US since the 2015 Microbead-Free Waters Act). Under the terms of the ban, some products, such as plastic glitter found in creams or eye shadow, have been granted a transitional period to give manufacturers a chance to develop new designs.
In some of its products, LUSH uses salt in place of microplastics. Courtesy of LUSH
But some manufacturers are years ahead of the game when it comes to pioneering the move away from microbeads. LUSH and The Body Shop are among the companies that have long been offering natural alternatives, using ground nuts, bamboo, sea salt and sugar. The really big players, such as Beiersdorf AG, have also been working on solutions for several years.
The Hamburg-based consumer goods group has not used microbeads for exfoliation purposes since 2015. Instead, it has used, for example, cellulose particles or shredded apricot kernels. Since the end of 2019, all Beiersdorf wash-off products have been free of microplastics. In addition, the company uses almost no microplastics in creams and other leave-on cosmetics for its two major body care brands, Nivea and Eucerin. “Our ambition is to use only biodegradable polymers in our European cosmetic product formulas by the end of 2025,” explains a company spokesperson. However, these polymers can take many months to degrade. And they may prevent the development of more sustainable solutions.
LUSH’s Bjork sugar cleanser uses sugar in place of microplastics. Courtesy of LUSH
There have also been alternatives for artificial turf pitches — which use tons of microplastics as loose fill — for some years now. There are more than 9,500 such sports pitches in Germany alone. “These particles can quickly be carried into the environment by wind and weather or sports shoes,” says Jürgen Bertling from the German Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology (Umsicht). According to the European Chemicals Agency, artificial turfs release up to 16,000 tons of microplastics into the environment in the EU every year.
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But a few years before the EU ban, Germany stopped providing public funding for artificial turf pitches with granules containing a high proportion of microplastic. As a result, the country already has hundreds of pitches that are filled with cork and sand instead of microplastics, according to the International Association for Sports and Leisure Facilities. Ground olive stones or corn-based fillings have also been used on some pitches.
One of the most sustainable facilities in Germany was completed a year ago by the Lower Saxony club VfL Sittensen. Their artificial grass is made from plant-based polyethylene. The granules are produced mostly from hemp and chalk. Compared to other artificial turf pitches, this pitch only needs a fifth of the amount of granulate. In addition, a filter system for the rainwater run-off prevents the remaining microplastic and fiber residues from entering the environment. “We receive many inquiries from other clubs and local authorities who want to follow this example,” says Egbert Haneke, the association’s chairman.
Hundreds of artificial turf pitches in Germany are filled with cork and sand instead of microplastics. Courtesy of VfL Sittensen
But there are other, much bigger sources of microplastics in Germany. According to a study by the Fraunhofer Institute Umsicht, artificial turf pitches are only the fifth-largest source. And though cosmetics are the one that the public tends to hear the most about, they are a relatively insignificant source compared to the heavy-hitters, like waste disposal, building materials, road wear and fibers released through textile washing.
Germans produce an estimated four kilograms of microplastics per capita in the environment every year. At around 1.2 kilograms per capita, tire abrasion is the most important contributor. Tiny particles are released through the wear and tear of tires, and counterintuitively, the move toward electric vehicles will actually exacerbate this problem. Electric cars are significantly heavier than combustion engines due to their batteries. A toxic compound released by tire abrasion has even been linked to the deaths of coho salmon on the US West Coast.
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A startup in the UK has found a possible solution: The Tyre Collective has developed a suction device that can be fitted directly behind the tires on the underbody of a car.
The patent-pending technology uses electrostatics and airflow to attract tire particles. Together with the London logistics company Zhero, The Tyre Collective tested prototypes on London’s streets for three months. According to the startup, over half of the particles that the device captured were below 0.01 millimeters in size. Particles of this size are considered “the most harmful to human health and the environment,” according to The Tyre Collective. Working with designers, the start-up has also developed various products made from tire particles and recycled plastic using 3D printers. A vase, speaker, lamp and acoustic panel were exhibited at the London Design Festival at Material Matters in September 2023.
A prototype of The Tyre Collective’s suction device. Courtesy of The Tyre Collective
But by far, the greatest potential for reducing microplastics lies in not producing them in the first place: for example, by driving less or slower so fewer particles are released via tire wear, or by changing the composition of the material of tires or the design of the tread. And microplastic emissions from textile washing could be reduced by using different materials and designs.
That’s why, though the ban is an important step, experts like Jürgen Bertling are hanging their hopes on the EU’s ecodesign guidelines, which will be developed for the various product groups over the coming years. Something to look forward to, for humans and blue whales alike.
The post The EU Just Banned Microplastics. How Are Companies Replacing Them? appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.