Agricultural Pollution
Human Health & the Environment
Class Meetings
Dates: 2026-11-10T16:00:00
Optional Material (Dive Deeper)
Podcasts
Are Plant- and Fungus-Based Meats Really Better than the Real Thing?
Duration: 00:54:39
Released: 2021
Series: Gastropod
Move over, beef: there’s a new burger in town. Plant-based meats are sizzling hot right now; in 2020 alone, the alternative meat industry saw a record $3.1 billion in investment, with 112 new plant-based brands launching in supermarkets. These juicy, savory, chewy fake burgers are a far cry from the dry, weird-tasting veggie patties of the past. This episode, we visit the Impossible Foods labs to swig some of the animal-free molecule that makes their meatless meat bleed, try fungal food start-up Meati’s prototype “chicken” cutlet, and speak to the scientists and historians who can help us compare these new fake meats to their predecessors—and to real meat! Can a plant-based sausage roll be considered kosher or halal? Are plant-based meats actually better for you and for the environment? And how might a mysterious protein-powerhouse fungus named Rosita help feed the world? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chemical Contaminants and Fungal Fixes in Wastewater and Agriculture
Duration: 00:14:39
Released: 2026
Series: Public Health On Call
About this episode: Biosolids created by the wastewater treatment process are useful fertilizers in agriculture, but they often contain chemical compounds from the pharmaceutical and personal care products we send down our drains. In this episode: Researcher Carsten Prasse details new findings that suggest that fungi could reduce our risk of exposure to these compounds in our drinking water and food. Guest: Carsten Prasse, PhD, MSc, is an associate professor of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he studies organic contaminants in the urban water cycle and their impact on environmental and human health. Host: Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and the director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs. Show links and related content: White-Rot Fungi Show Promise for Reducing Pharmaceutical Residues in Biosolids—Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Magic Mushrooms? White-Rot Fungal Degradation of Psychoactive Pharmaceuticals in Biosolids—ACS Environmental Au Transcript information: Looking for episode transcripts? Open our podcast on the Apple Podcasts app (desktop or mobile) or the Spotify mobile app to access an auto-generated transcript of any episode. Closed captioning is also available for every episode on our YouTube channel. Contact us: Have a question about something you heard? Looking for a transcript? Want to suggest a topic or guest? Contact us via email or visit our website. Follow us: @PublicHealthPod on Bluesky @PublicHealthPod on Instagram @JohnsHopkinsSPH on Facebook @PublicHealthOnCall on YouTube Here’s our RSS feed Note: These podcasts are a conversation between the participants, and do not represent the position of Johns Hopkins University.
Environmental Toxicology (POISONS + TRAIN DERAILMENT) with Kimberly K Garrett
Environmental Toxicology (POISONS + TRAIN DERAILMENT) with Kimberly K. Garrett
Duration: 01:19:15
Released: 2023
Series: Ologies with Alie Ward
Chemical spills, historical disasters, water quality, airborne toxic events, clear gasses, White Noise, dead fish, dark clouds, chemistry tests, trench coats, PFAS, phthalates, and the Ohio train derailment that plumed vinyl chloride into the skies of a small Ohio town. The lovely and informative Environmental Toxicologist Dr. Kimberly K. Garrett works at the intersection of chemical safety, public health and environmental justice — and she has cool science tattoos. Also: should I burn incense all the time? Visit Dr. Kimberly K. Garrett’s website and follow her on TwitterA donation went to Group Against Smog & Pollution (GASP)Follow GASP on TwitterMore episode sources and linksOther episodes you may enjoy: Conservation Technology (EARTH SAVING), Forensic Ecology (NATURE DETECTIVE), Oceanology (OCEANS), Meteorology (WEATHER & CLIMATE), Melaninology (SKIN/HAIR PIGMENT), Environmental Microbiology (TESTING WASTEWATER), Secrets, Advice + AMA (LANTERNS, ETC.)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam MediaTranscripts by Emily White of The WordaryWebsite by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Exposing the Monsanto Conspiracy
Duration: 00:45:17
Released: 2025
Series: Veritasium
This is the history of Monsanto’s herbicides…▀▀▀You’ll find our full back catalogue of hundreds of videos on YouTube . For early access videos, bonus content, and to support the channel, join us on Patreon.▀▀▀0:00 An Unusual Enemy5:18 Monsanto’s Secret Poison Problem11:17 Vietnam and Agent Orange14:08 Roundup19:31 How Monsanto controls seeds26:06 The Crop Mafia31:10 The Monsanto Papers41:18 How dangerous is Roundup really?
Good Shit - How Humanure Could Save Agriculture—and the Planet
Duration: 00:51:07
Released: 2023
Series: Gastropod
For most of us, when we sit on the porcelain throne to drop the deuce, priority number one is flushing and never having to think about it again. But it might be time to rethink our stink: all around the world, people are talking about using human waste for good, applying it as fertilizer to grow our food instead of just washing it down the miles of pipes that undergird urban sewage systems. “Ew” is a common response, along with “yuck!” Is using poop to grow food a good idea—or even safe? We’re getting our shit together to find out! On this episode of Gastropod, how human waste went from being so valuable you could go to jail for stealing it, to causing such a stench it shut down Parliament in Victorian London and led to the invention of the modern sewage system—and why figuring out how to start saving our poop (and pee!) once again could give us cleaner energy, healthier waterways, and lots of delicious food. Listen in now: if you like to eat, it’s time to start giving a crap about your crap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Growing a Healthier Climate
Duration: 00:17:23
Released: 2026
Series: Humans in Public Health
In this episode, we sit down with Professor Meredith Niles to explore how climate-friendly agriculture—from methane-reducing rice irrigation to no-till farming—is actually a quiet powerhouse for public health. While traditional environmental messaging has hit a wall, shifting the narrative to human health benefits (like keeping heavy metals out of baby food and clearing our air) might be the key to finally getting farmers, consumers and policymakers on board. It’s time to take off the carbon goggles and look at the health potential of sustainable farming.
How Can Iowa’s Agriculture Adapt To Climate Threats?
Duration: 00:17:50
Released: 2024
Series: Science Friday
Climate change is having a profound effect on agriculture. Farmers over the past decade have faced intensifying drought and heat stress on crops, leading many to wonder, what will agriculture look like 50 years from now?In May, at SciFri Live at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, Ira Flatow discussed the future of agriculture, and potential solutions to these problems, from innovative farming techniques, to ensuring that Iowa’s farmers of color have the resources they need to succeed. He was joined by Todd Western III, a sixth-generation Iowan farmer with Western Family Farms and senior donor advisor at Greater Twin Cities United Way, and Dr. Patrick Schnable, a distinguished professor at Iowa State University and co-founder of Dryland Genetics.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Is alternative meat the recipe for a healthier planet?
Duration: 00:12:48
Released: 2024
Series: TED Health
A Chinese saying goes, “There’s no pleasure in eating without meat.” And the data backs that up: every year, China consumes 26 percent of the world’s meat and 45 percent of its seafood — numbers that could grow alongside rising incomes. Impact investor Tao Zhang shows why getting Chinese consumers to switch to plant-based alternatives is vital to tackling climate change and explores how it’s also a massive business opportunity to bring tasty, affordable new proteins to market. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Monsanto or MonSatan? How—and Why—a St. Louis Startup Became a Hated Herbicide Giant
Duration: 00:50:59
Released: 2022
Series: Gastropod
A chemical that kills the plants you don’t want—weeds—and keeps the plants you do—food!—seems kind of like magic. After all, weeds are the bane of farmers’ lives, causing tens of billions of dollars in lost yield every year. So why is the world’s largest herbicide company, Monsanto, so unpopular that it’s been referred to as MonSatan? How harmful are today’s herbicides for us humans, and for the environments they’re seeping into? And do we need weedkillers to feed the world? In part two of our three-part series on weeds, we take on the big questions around this “bad seed” of the farming world—and the fascinating story behind the scrappy St. Louis startup that hooked the world on herbicides. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Should I Give Up Beef?
Duration: 00:41:56
Released: 2022
Series: How to Save a Planet
A quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture and land use – and a big portion of those emissions come from producing meat. Adopting a plant-based diet is one of the biggest steps an individual can take to reduce their own carbon footprint. So, should we all stop eating meat? Or is it more complicated than that? This week, we take a tour through the bodily functions of cows, millions of acres of corn, and the hidden policy that shapes the American food system to answer that question once and for all.(This episode first aired March 25, 2021.)Calls to action: Sign up to track the latest U.S. Food & Agriculture bills here, and contact Agriculture Committee members (House and Senate) about supporting a climate-friendly Farm Bill. Contact the places you eat regularly about providing beef-less options – maybe it’s the cafeteria at work or school, or a community gathering space. Meatless Monday has resources for institutions that want to provide more climate-friendly meals. Get involved with a local organization fighting food insecurity, a mutual aid group, a community garden, or a co-op. For more information: Read the World Resources Institute’s report on Creating a Sustainable Food Future. Read this study about regenerative methods in beef production. Read this study about red seaweed reducing methane in beef production. Check out this data visualization on land use in the U.S. Listen to the Science Vs. episode on vegan diets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sugar’s Dark Shadow
Duration: 00:52:33
Released: 2024
Series: Gastropod
Your pantry’s sweetest ingredient has an extremely bitter history. The sap-producing grass known as sugarcane has been grown and enjoyed by humans for at least 10,000 years, but it was only relatively recently that it went from a luxury to an everyday ingredient—a change that also triggered genocide, slavery, and the invention of modern racism. In this episode, how the Crusades got Europeans addicted to the sweet stuff, and how that appetite deforested southern Europe and kicked off the trade in enslaved Africans, before decimating indigenous populations in the New World and codifying racism into law. It’s a dark story that involves Christopher Columbus’ mistress, the early human rights advocate whose campaign to save indigenous people encouraged the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, and a trip to southern Louisiana, where we met Black sugarcane farmers to explore sugar’s troubling legacy there. No sugar coating here: join us for the fascinating and horrifying history of this household staple. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The EPA’s Approval of Two New Pesticides
Duration: 00:14:38
Released: 2026
Series: Public Health On Call
About this episode: In late 2025, the EPA approved two pesticides for agricultural use that opponents argue contain PFAS—“forever chemicals” that pose hazards to human health. In this episode: the debate around what constitutes PFAS and the EPA’s role in regulating these harmful chemicals. Guest: Rachel Frazin covers energy and environmental policy for The Hill and is the co-author of the book “Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America”. Host: Lindsay Smith Rogers, MA, is the producer of the Public Health On Call podcast, an editor for Expert Insights, and the director of content strategy for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Show links and related content: E.P.A. Moves to Weaken Limits on a Cancer-Causing Gas—New York Times EPA just approved new ‘forever chemical’ pesticides for use on food—Washington Post Trump EPA will defend Biden rule forcing polluters to pay for ‘forever chemical’ cleanup—The Hill Uncovering America’s Decades-Long PFAS Contamination—Public Health On Call (June 2025) Transcript information: Looking for episode transcripts? Open our podcast on the Apple Podcasts app (desktop or mobile) or the Spotify mobile app to access an auto-generated transcript of any episode. Closed captioning is also available for every episode on our YouTube channel. Contact us: Have a question about something you heard? Looking for a transcript? Want to suggest a topic or guest? Contact us via email or visit our website. Follow us: @PublicHealthPod on Bluesky @PublicHealthPod on Instagram @JohnsHopkinsSPH on Facebook @PublicHealthOnCall on YouTube Here’s our RSS feed Note: These podcasts are a conversation between the participants, and do not represent the position of Johns Hopkins University.
The Ghost Town (Times Beach, Missouri)
Duration: 01:07:19
Released: 2026
Series: Swindled
A small Missouri town faces a compounded catastrophe as a devastating flood follows the discovery of toxic contamination.Prelude: A mysterious illness attacks the horses and humans at Shenandoah Stables.–––-–—BECOME A VALUEDLISTENER™ Spotify Patreon Apple Podcasts –––-–—CONSUME: Shop.Swindled.com–––-–—MUSIC: Deformr–––-–—FOLLOW: SwindledPodcast.com Instagram TikTok Thanks for listening. :-)
The Most Interesting Oil in the World
Duration: 00:50:54
Released: 2021
Series: Gastropod
Here’s a little riddle for you: What’s all around you, but can’t be seen, smelled, or tasted? Hint: It’s in your Oreos, Nutella, instant noodles, dish soap, shampoo, lipstick, potato chips, pizza dough, packaged bread, chocolate bars, ice-cream, and biodiesel. The answer is … palm oil, the hidden ingredient on just about every aisle of the grocery store. It’s the most ubiquitous, most important, most interesting oil that most of us don’t really know. But palm oil wasn’t always so big, or so anonymous—in its West African homeland, it’s a fragrant red oil traditionally used in cooking and ceremonies. So how did palm oil go global? What does it have to do with the European colonization of Africa, soap for grimy factory workers, Girl Scout cookies, and Alfred Nobel of Nobel Prize-fame? How has growing demand for all things palm oil driven deforestation and peat fires in Southeast Asia—and what can we do if we want to rethink our destructive palm oil addiction? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Weed Killer
Duration: 00:33:38
Released: 2025
Series: The Poison Detectives
For more than thirty years, scientists, regulators, and one of the world’s most powerful chemical companies have been locked in a battle over the active ingredient in Roundup – a chemical called glyphosate.A battle fought over the soil itself – and over what we believe keeps us safe.Episode eight tells that story. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What we’ll eat on a warmer planet
Duration: 00:50:28
Released: 2024
Series: TED Radio Hour
From the farm, to the lab, to our tables, what we eat and how it’s grown is changing. Agriculture contributes to global warming—and is being transformed by it. Today, a bite into the future of food. Guests include chef and policy advisor Sam Kass, farmers Jim Whitaker and Jessica Whitaker Allen, biotechnologist Isha Datar and artist Sam Van Aken. TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at: plus.npr.org/ted See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy
Where’s the Beef? Lab-Grown Meat is Finally on the Menu
Duration: 00:56:05
Released: 2023
Series: Gastropod
Can we really have our burger, eat it—and never need to kill a cow? Growing meat outside of animals—in a lab or, these days, in shiny steel bioreactors—promises to deliver a future in which we can enjoy sausages and sushi without guilt, and maybe even without sending our planet up in smoke. For years, it’s seemed like science fiction, but it’s finally a reality: this month, Americans will get their first chance to buy cultivated meat in a restaurant. But how exactly do you get chicken nuggets, BLTs, and bluefin sashimi from a bunch of cells growing in large metal vats? Does this new cultivated meat taste any good? Can enough be grown to replace industrial meat? And, if so, is this new technology actually an improvement on industrial animal agriculture and fishing? Gastropod is on the case! Join us this episode as we sink our teeth into a whole lot of lab-grown lunches, uncover the science behind the sci-fi, and investigate whether the companies making cultivated meat can actually fulfill the lofty promises they make. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Which is better for you: ‘Real’ meat or ‘fake’ meat?
Which is better for you: “Real” meat or “fake” meat? | Carolyn Beans
Duration: 00:07:23
Released: 2024
Series: TED Health
In 2021, a survey of over 1,000 Americans found that nearly two-thirds had eaten plant-based meat alternatives in the past year. Many cited potential health and environmental benefits as their motivation. But are these alternative meats actually better for us and the planet? Carolyn Beans investigates the differences between farmed meat, plant-based meat, and lab-grown meat. This TED-Ed lesson was directed by Laura Jayne Hodkin, and narrated by Alexandra Panzer and the music is by Carlos Magaña Bru, cAMP Studio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Video Clips
Drowning in seaweed How to stop invasive Sargassum
nature video, 01 25, 2023
Video (10:31)
Description
The story of Sargassum stretches from the Congo to the Amazon, from soybean farming to climate change and from toxic gases to robotic vehicles. In this documentary researchers from around the world explain the vast scope of the Sargassum problem and the solutions that may one day begin to address it.
Additional photographs and footage in this film were provided by Drake Lee-Patterson, Gary Marshall, Joseph Weekes, Driven Visual Media, Kerwin Noel, Nick Hurley, Akeisha Clark, Sargassum Information Hub, NASA, Chuanmin Hu, Jeff Davis’s team, Hazel Oxenford, Caroline Juang, Melvina Walsh, Morgan Lewis, Kerton Jobe, P McConney, Markel Gomez Letona and Nico Frohberg who were mistakenly missed off the film credits.
Transcript
0:03 · VOICE OVER: The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt is the largest seaweed bloom in the world, and it’s expanding.
0:11 · Visible from space, it’s a growing problem for coastal communities.
0:15 · HARSHINI VUMMADI: The beaches, genuinely, if they aren’t maintained, you just can’t go there.
0:21 · You’d be up to your knees in sargassum.
0:24 · VOICE OVER: But as a key sequester of carbon, this invasive species also presents an opportunity.
0:30 · AJIT SUBRAMANIAM: We want to gather sargassum using robotic vehicles.
0:34 · You sink it down 2,000 metres, our current model suggests that that particular water body does not come back in contact with the atmosphere for at least 100 years.
0:42 · VOICE OVER: Can scientists take a global challenge and turn it into an opportunity to buy time in the race against climate change?
1:00 · VOICE OVER: Sargassum has been in the Atlantic since the time of Christopher Columbus, floating mats of seaweed that gave its name to the Sargasso Sea – a nutrient-poor patch of the Atlantic penned in by ocean currents.
1:13 · AJIT: You can think of it as a floating rainforest or an upside-down coral reef because each raft of sargassum is a hotspot of biological activity.
1:22 · VOICE OVER: But in the last couple of decades, a new population has emerged, further south near the coast of Brazil and the Caribbean.
1:29 · SHELLY-ANN COX: In 2011, we were all taken back by this new phenomenon, where we saw tons of sargassum being brought and beached in the region.
1:42 · VOICE OVER: Based in Barbados, scientist and entrepreneur Shelly-Ann Cox specialises in fisheries management.
1:49 · She first noticed the impact of sargassum on the sea urchin divers she was working with.
1:54 · SHELLY-ANN: Fisher folk had reported sargassum mats as far as their eyes can see.
2:01 · Some of them can’t get to the boat or the boats can’t get through the sargassum to get out.
2:07 · Those near shore, the spear fishers as well, they reported some of their skin being irritated when they’re diving and the berries that keep the sargassum floating have gotten into their ears as well.
2:21 · VOICE OVER: The impact on tourism – the lifeblood of the Caribbean – has been huge.
2:25 · OFF-SCREEN VOICE: This weed is going right up to the sanitation plant by Barnacle Point.
2:33 · People, get ready for the smell tomorrow.
2:39 · VOICE OVER: Around the same time, other scientists working in the Atlantic had also noticed a change.
2:45 · Oceanographer Ajit Subramaniam has been working in the South Atlantic for more than 25 years.
2:50 · AJIT: In 2018, it was astounding how much sargassum we ran into, and it was really striking.
2:55 · It was something that we’d never seen before and then, bam.
2:58 · We were there, and the ship was often surrounded by sargassum that was hundreds of metres around the ship.
3:05 · VOICE OVER: Sargassum wasn’t thought to be found this far south.
3:08 · AJIT: We were seeing things that we had not seen before, and I was trying to get context for that.
3:12 · VOICE OVER: Ajit linked up with colleagues at the University of South Florida, who had been making their own observations.
3:17 · AJIT: They’d been actually watching this on their satellite data, and they had actually seen this explosion of this new population that is growing much closer to the equator.
3:26 · VOICE OVER: With the satellite data, scientists were able to hazard an estimate of its size.
3:31 · SHELLY-ANN: 24.2 million metric tons in June, from the satellite imagery.
3:38 · VOICE OVER: Dubbed the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, this is almost certainly the world’s largest macroalgal bloom.
3:44 · It’s thought that intensive agriculture, especially soya plantations, has increased nitrogen concentrations in the Atlantic, causing rapid sargassum growth.
3:54 · SHELLY-ANN: Sargassum is really known as a symptom of climate change because, due to increasing surface temperatures, nutrients from the Amazon and Congo, Saharan dust which brings in iron, upwelling as well, the change in currents, all of these factors have led to the proliferation of sargassum.
4:19 · HARSHINI: Outside of the Caribbean, I don’t think many people are talking about this.
4:23 · VOICE OVER: Harshini Vummadi is a biology major undergraduate, who’s recently returned from an exploratory trip to the Dominican Republic.
4:32 · HARSHINI: It affects the Caribbean and I believe West Africa, and a bit of East Asia as well.
4:40 · VOICE OVER: Harshini is part of an interdisciplinary team from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
4:44 · They’re working with the school of biological sciences to try and explore solutions to the sargassum problem.
4:49 · RESEARCHER: Yeah, so, I’m just collecting some sargassum samples and there are lots of different plants in here.
4:57 · HARSHINI: I am the biology major on their team. We have a chemical engineer, a civil engineer, a mechanical engineer.
5:03 · VOICE OVER: A solution of some sort is definitely needed, and urgently.
5:07 · HARSHINI: I just didn’t realise how much of it there would be, like we watched a clean-up crew work and work, and in 2 hours they like hardly made a dent. The growth just seems to be almost exponential.
5:18 · VOICE OVER: While there are many creative small-scale craft uses of sargassum, local communities have yet to find a viable solution to disposing of vast quantities of the stuff, or even better, making it useful.
5:30 · HARSHINI: It uptakes a lot of different heavy metals, particularly arsenic, which makes it like quite dangerous to use as, say, like a fertiliser because, again, now you’re introducing arsenic to these land systems where it could potentially leach into groundwater.
5:47 · So, we try to like branch out from fertiliser. One of our team members focused on an application involving bricks.
5:55 · Someone else focused on black soldier fly larvae, which could consume the sargassum and then in turn be used as a sort of biofuel in like an anaerobic digester.
6:08 · I personally have been working on using it as a bioaccumulate. Why not use it in waste water treatment?
6:16 · It can absorb those heavy metals that we were so concerned about in the first place.
6:21 · VOICE OVER: Harshini’s team are working on ways to make the sargassum financially viable.
6:26 · Meanwhile, Ajit is thinking more broadly, exploring the bigger checks and balances of the global carbon cycle.
6:32 · He’s come up with a radical plan.
6:34 · AJIT: So, the way we want to do this is essentially gather nets of sargassum using robotic vehicles, have them ballasted and then sink them down to 2,000 metres.
6:46 · VOICE OVER: Sargassum sequesters a lot of carbon, but it also releases it when it decays.
6:52 · This approach would theoretically remove the carbon from the atmosphere, effectively buying the planet time in the race against climate change.
6:59 · AJIT: Sinking down 2,000 metres, our current model suggests that that particular water body does not come back in contact with the atmosphere for at least 100 years.
7:08 · VOICE OVER: The idea of sinking the sargassum has been proposed before, but the suggestion is usually to sink it where it grows, in shallower water.
7:15 · AJIT: Merely capturing it at the surface and getting rid of it just off the beach at 100 metres or something like that will basically have the carbon coming right back up.
7:26 · It might even actually come back up in a more potent form if you are starting to have it rotting and forming methane.
7:32 · VOICE OVER: Ajit plans to sink the sargassum in deeper water, but there are a lot of questions still to be answered.
7:38 · AJIT: We want to make sure that the carbon that we are capturing is actually going down to the sea floor and will stay down there, and so we want to follow it down to the sea floor.
7:46 · VOICE OVER: In addition, as a biologist, he’s keen to understand the impact of this plan on the ecosystem.
7:51 · AJIT: So, we actually have a fisheries scientist on the team who will be looking at what kind of communities the sargassum rafts harbour, and therefore we’ll have a sense of what we might be impacting if we were to do the sinking.
8:02 · It’s not that we’re going to decimate the ocean of sargassum.
8:06 · VOICE OVER: The list of problems attributed to sargassum is growing. From the harmful gases released when it decays to its impact on wildlife.
8:13 · HARSHINI: Especially when it washes up on beaches where turtles go to lay their eggs, a lot of these baby turtles are actually unable to climb over these sargassum things, and so they’re unable to make it into the ocean due to these big patches of sargassum.
8:28 · SHELLY-ANN: So, every year we’re seeing more countries reporting the influx and the catastrophic impacts on tourism, fisheries sectors, maritime and transport and then the health impacts.
8:43 · So, some of our colleagues recently published a paper on the impacts on pregnant women who were exposed to hydrogen sulfide and ammonia when the sargassum decomposes.
8:57 · Those pregnant ladies who live near the coast and were exposed were at a higher risk of preeclampsia.
9:04 · VOICE OVER: Going into the future, it’s likely that the challenge presented by sargassum, like many of the challenges of climate change, might be bigger than one scientist or one idea.
9:14 · HARSHINI: There needs to be some sort of economically driven, or at least be governmentally subsidised, but there needs to be some sort of way to like tackle and solve the problem.
9:27 · AJIT: I feel that countries like Barbados are the populations that contribute the least to climate change and yet are facing the greatest impact of climate change.
9:36 · I would like to figure out a financing model where we can actually have credit going to communities in Barbados for the carbon that is sequestered.
9:46 · SHELLY-ANN: There are lots of bright, brilliant minds out there developing solutions that need this support.
9:53 · They need the financial support to upscale until governments realise that this problem is really here to stay, then they will be willing then to invest in building up sargassum industries.
10:07 · HARSHINI: Nothing has like had any concrete potential yet. There’s just several isolated research groups.
10:15 · But I just think that things would move a lot faster if everyone could like work together.
How FIVE BILLION Pounds of Las Vegas Garbage Powers a City
PBS Terra, 04 20, 2021
Video (9:14)
Description
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Most of the 600 billion pounds of waste that Americans produce every year ends up in landfills. All that trash can have huge impacts on the environment. But modern landfills have found a new use for all that trash — they’re turning it into energy. In spite of their reputation as “dumps,” these landfills are feats of engineering, more akin to construction sites.
One of North America’s biggest landfills lies on the outskirts of Las Vegas. The Apex Landfill is not only one of the country’s largest, it’s also one of the busiest. Because it serves a non-stop city, the landfill must operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. It receives upwards of 16 million pounds of trash per day or 5 billion pounds per year.
Landfills like Apex are required to deal with the toxic chemicals they produce, like methane, a greenhouse gas that’s 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide. At Apex, they capture that methane and turn it into energy that powers 11,000 homes in southern Nevada.
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Hosted by Joe Hanson from It’s Okay to be Smart, Overview uses incredible 4k drone footage to reveal the natural phenomena shaping our planet from a 10,000-foot view—literally.
Transcript
Intro
0:02 · [Host Joe Hanson] Americans produce 4.9 pounds of waste per person per day. That’s nearly 600 billion pounds per year.
0:11 · Where does it all go?
0:13 · It goes to places like this. The mountains of trash we throw away can have huge impacts on our environment and climate.
0:23 · But what if I told you that all of this waste could one day power a city?
0:29 · [synth music] ♪ [Joe] Welcome to Las Vegas, the place for glitz, glam, gambling and garbage. Three main categories of waste are solid waste, recyclables, and food waste. And here in the neon city, we’re going to explore the ways they’re turning each of these trash types into treasure. Las Vegas produces more than five billion pounds of waste per year, and all that trash ends up here. The Apex Landfill lies in the mountains beyond the city.
Apex Landfill
1:12 · At 1900 acres, it’s one of the largest landfills in North America, and also one of the busiest. Apex is one of the only landfills in North America that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. As many as 250 trucks enter the landfill each day and deliver up to 16 million pounds of waste. It used to be a place like this was called a dump, and that’s exactly what they were.
1:46 · trash dumped in piles with little regard for sanitation. As trash decays, it produces methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. The dumps of yesteryear all but ignored this, as well as other environmental problems. But today’s landfills are feats of engineering. They are long-term storehouses for society’s garbage and places where we manage its potential hazards.
2:14 · [David Vossmer]: It would be comparable to a construction site, where you’re building homes in a neighborhood. We would envision an entire city being built basically as a landfill.
2:26 · [Joe]: David Vossmer has been working in the solid waste industry for 42 years and oversees operations at Apex.
Working Phase
2:33 · [David]: The working face is the active area of the landfill, usually anywhere from two to three acres in size.
2:41 · [Joe]: Each truck that dumps its load carries about 30 tons of garbage. Compactors then take that trash, spread it across the working face, and mash it down.
2:57 · [David]: Each one of those machines is about 120 to 130,000 pounds. There’s a lot of weight that will smash all the cardboard boxes or trash or any other material that comes in. It’ll lay it down in a nice, even layer. That’s what the landfill business is trying to do, get as much compacted waste into that area or that acre that we can. That’s what extends the life of the landfill.
3:24 · [Joe]: As more and more trash comes in, the landfill grows in height.
3:29 · [David]: It’s just like building a pyramid. The wider the base, the higher we can go with the trash here in the landfill.
3:36 · [Joe]: In some areas, the local landfill is the highest point in the region. Here in Vegas, this mountain of trash is 500 feet high and rising taller by the day. In spite of the enormous volume of garbage coming in, the landfill will be able to take in trash for another 300 plus years.
3:57 · How is that possible?
4:01 · Not only is the site large, but it’s also growing. A mining company on site digs out the surrounding mountains. In the process, it expands the landfill’s footprint and the space it has to operate. But the best way to keep a landfill from filling up is to waste less. Las Vegas boasts the largest residential recycling center in North America. The state-of-the-art facility takes in up to 1.8 million pounds of recyclables per day.
Recycling
4:32 · Because Las Vegas uses single stream recycling, all the sorting happens here. These recyclables will get conveyed through a complex system of sorting machines.
4:45 · [Jeremy Walters]: We have some very unique pieces of equipment, things that do just simple mechanical separation through disks and screens, but we also have computerized machines that are physically reading the material based on its color and density. It’s very smart, and it’s very quick. After a machine initially separates material, people quality control what the machine did.
5:10 · They’re physically looking at the material to ensure that the machine sorted correctly and there are no contaminants within that final product.
5:19 · [Joe]: A new challenge confronting recycling centers like this is the Amazon effect. Facilities around the country are being inundated with cardboard from online retailers. Here at this facility, they’ve had to recalibrate their machines and processes just to handle the deluge. While 1.8 million pounds of daily recyclables might sound like a lot, it’s still just a fraction of the overall waste that gets created each day.
5:49 · Food is another thing that inundates the waste stream and doesn’t belong in a landfill. Las Vegas is renowned buffets produce a lot of it. But here in Sin City, they’ve found an innovative solution. It’s not just people who pig out on buffets. The residents of the Las Vegas Livestock Farm enjoy it too. The farm sits on Apex property, but is family-owned.
6:17 · [Hank Combs]: Hog farming in Nevada is not very popular, because of the access to feed. We’ve circumvented that by doing the food scrap route, which is a very sustainable way to raise our hogs.
6:28 · [Joe]: They take in up to 40,000 pounds per day of the casinos’ food waste. Everything from lobster to ice cream gets processed in giant cookers to make it safe for the hogs to eat. This fragrant stew won’t make the menu in any casino, but it’s irresistible to these hogs.
Food Waste
6:48 · I mean, yummy.
6:50 · [Hank]: They’re a lot like a human, so they love their sweets and their meat and the potatoes. They’re not too big on salads. They won’t eat anything. They’re picky.
7:00 · [Joe]: It’s not just food waste that’s finding a second life in Vegas. The garbage is too. In the U.S., landfills like this account for nearly 20% of the human-caused methane emissions. Some landfills capture and burn it. But here at Apex, and at a growing number of landfills around the country, they’re turning it into energy. 160 wells have been drilled into this mountain of trash, some as deep as 200 feet.
7:31 · The wells siphon off the gas coming from landfill. After it’s purified, it’s sent to an onsite power plant where it’s burned to spin turbines, which create energy. That energy is fed back into the electric grid and powers 11,000 homes here in Southern Nevada. The total amount of energy produced annually by U.S. landfills powers the equivalent of more than 1 million homes.
7:56 · [Jeremy]: We’re actually able to take something that is always going to exist in a landfill, and turn it into something that the community can benefit from. Most people go day to day without thinking about the trash or the recyclables that they make. It’s just a simple toss it in the bin and forget about it.
8:10 · And there’s so much involved behind the scenes to make sure that we are handling all those materials in the most environmentally responsible way.
8:20 · [David]: Not everything in our world is recyclable. And as long as society throws things away, we’re one of the things that take care of making sure it’s done the right way.
8:33 · [Joe]: Hey guys, our PBS friends across YouTube are celebrating Earth Day with us. Follow me over to Reactions to find out why catalytic converters are being stolen from cars worldwide, and what this weird mystery has to do with the health of our environment. Tell them Joe sent you.
8:51 · And one more thing, for those of you in the U.S., you should check out “Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World,” a new three-hour Earth Day broadcast event on your local PBS station. The special is going to premiere on Thursday, April 22nd at 8:00 pm, 7:00 pm Central, and will then repeat starting Wednesday, April 28th at 8:00 pm, 7:00 pm Central.
9:10 · See you then.
How is Taiwan beating everyone at plastics recycling
DW Planet A, 12 26, 2025
Video (10:20)
Description
Taiwan used to be flooded with trash – but the country is now one of the top plastics recyclers in the world. How did they do it?
Planet A reycling taiwan
Credits:
Reporter: Beina Xu
Camera: Kaley Emerson, Shaundie Hsu, Norman Pan
Video Editor: Frederik Willmann
Supervising Editor: Adam Baheej Adada
Fact Check: Kirsten Funck
Thumbnail: Em Chabridon
Read more:
Supporting a circular economy: Insights from Taiwan’s plastic waste sector and lessons for developing countries
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235255092031349X
Taiwan’s Transition – from Garbage Island to Recycling Leader
https://rapidtransition.org/stories/taiwans-transition-from-garbage-island-to-recycling-leader/
Analysis of plastic waste reduction and recycling in Taiwan
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0734242X21996821
Management strategy of plastic wastes in Taiwan
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s42834-022-00123-0
Time series analysis of the effects of refuse collection on recycling: Taiwan’s “Keep Trash Off the Ground” measure
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0956053X07000694
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:43 Trash in Taipei
02:09 On the recycling fleet
03:12 What about AI arms?
07:24 Pellet magic
08:32 The bigger picture
We’re destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn’t need to be this way. Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. We’ll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.
Follow Planet A on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dw_planeta
Transcript
Intro
0:00 · How did a country that used to look like this – now have one of the best recycling systems in the world?
0:06 · If you want a glimpse of what the future of plastic recycling looks like, this might be it.
0:12 · Each little robot is sifting through 55 pieces of garbage per minute – and it’s not humans running the machine here.
0:18 · It’s AI.
0:20 · But Taiwan is also a huge plastics consumer and manufacturer – just head to a night market, or walk around…
0:27 · anywhere.
0:28 · “We’re a poster child of that plastic pollution.”
0:32 · The country is no longer swamped with trash like it was in the 90s, so it’s obviously doing some things right.
0:38 · We went to Taipei to see for ourselves just how it’s done.
0:42 · And within hours of being there, I discovered that something pretty important was missing.
Trash in Taipei
0:47 · “So I just had my little snack, and look how much waste I already produced.”
0:51 · But I couldn’t find any public trash bins to put it in.”
0:54 · “There aren’t any trash bins on the street?”
0:57 · Turns out the city removed thousands of them about a decade ago.
1:00 · Why?
1:01 · Because in Taiwan, you have to pay for any waste that can’t be recycled.
1:05 · The whole point is to make people responsible for minimizing the amount of trash that goes into incinerators.
1:10 · Everyone holds on to their own garbage, and these iconic cars come around to pick it up five days a week.
1:15 · It’s a whole Taipei ritual.
1:17 · This way, people can’t cheat and throw their private waste in public bins to avoid the fees.
1:22 · And they’re not shy about getting shame involved.
1:37 · It’s a pretty intense recycling culture that places a lot of the burden on individuals.
1:42 · But it’s part of the policy structure that has gotten Taiwan in the top ranking in Asia for its waste recovery rate in last year’s Environmental Performance Index.
1:50 · Although…
1:51 · it also has its flaws.
2:01 · But I wondered what happens after this supposedly recyclable trash gets picked up…
2:06 · so what did I do?
2:07 · Got on one of these myself, of course.
On the recycling fleet
2:09 · “Ready, go!”
2:11 · These trucks belong to a private company, Da Fon, just one of the many businesses the government works with to collect, sort, and regenerate waste.
2:21 · “Not a lot of traffic, weather’s really nice.”
2:24 · These companies get subsidies from a centralized Recycling Management Fund.
2:28 · Their pay is guaranteed, so even if global plastic prices drop, recyclers are protected.
2:35 · “Smelling…
2:36 · It’s starting to smell a little bit.
2:38 · So this is the stuff we’re going to pick up, this is all residential plastic waste.”
2:43 · This centralized, national fund that directly subsidizes recycling is what sets Taiwan apart from other countries.
2:49 · Who pays into this recycling fund?
2:51 · Producers and importers, so the policy also keeps manufacturers responsible for their plastic footprint from the get-go.
2:57 · “Oh my god it stinks.
2:59 · So much milk!”
3:01 · And it makes it easy and profitable for businesses to get into the recycling game.
3:05 · “Recycling is great, but I am getting heat stroke!”
What about AI arms?
3:12 · To cool off, we went to another plant to hang out with some special robots, who have one of the most important jobs in the industry.
3:21 · “Hello!”
3:22 · “Hi!”
3:23 · “Welcome!”
3:23 · “Beina. Nice to meet you.”
3:25 · ” I’m Sandy!
3:26 · Welcome to our AI sorting robotic center!”
3:34 · “What are these toys here, what’s going on?”
3:36 · “This is kind of like a little trinket they do ’cause toys cannot be recycled, actually.”
3:40 · “Wait why can’t they be recycled?”
3:42 · “So for example this, there’s cushion inside, it’s cotton, you cannot recycle cotton.”
3:48 · “Okay, good to know.
3:49 · Toys.”
3:49 · “And it’s just cute, too!”
3:53 · “Save me!”
3:55 · The plant processes 40-50 tons of household recyclables every day.
4:00 · The AI sorting arms identify 17 types, from plastics and metals to paper.
4:26 · “Alright.”
4:31 · “Okay, wow, hello arm.”
5:11 · This facility handles recyclables from five cities around Taipei.
5:15 · And while AI improves sorting efficiency, one of its biggest flaws is that robot arms aren’t as agile as human hands.
5:23 · So, we still need real people, in the end.
5:45 · …which is exactly what happened next.
6:02 · “Don’t stuff your trash bags too tight, guys.
6:06 · Jams the machine.”
6:13 · “Okay I’ve been holding onto all of my trash.
6:16 · Can I just throw this out here?”
6:18 · “Let me see the trash first.”
6:20 · “I have onigiri, destroyed…
6:27 · doujiang (soy) bottle…”
6:29 · “PET, all good. This one is good, but all these flexible little ones, these are going to be treated as trash.
6:38 · “You can just throw it overboard.”
6:40 · “Bye.”
6:43 · Roughly 95% of what’s here is able to be recycled, so relatively little has to go to incinerators.
6:49 · “So basically this is the plastic that’s been sorted.
6:52 · And then this will go into another sorting facility that sorts out specifically milk bottle for HDPE, and PP will be lunch boxes.”
7:02 · “There’s a flyaway wok…”
7:04 · “Wait what, where?”
7:07 · “This wok is just like…”
7:09 · “It just fell, I think.”
7:11 · “Random casualties.”
7:14 · “These are all woks!
7:16 · “These are all woks!”
7:17 · “Oh my god.”
7:18 · You guys want a free wok?”
7:20 · “Yeah. Let’s take a free wok.
7:21 · I’m taking a free wok.”
Pellet magic
7:24 · The effort to AI upgrade everything isn’t just for the sorting facility – Da Fon also wants to bring it to its regeneration plant, which is where all the good plastic goes to get a chance at a second chance at life: this time as pellets.
7:37 · And it’s a family affair.
7:39 · This is Da Fon’s CEO, Matt Lin, who is…
7:41 · Sandy’s dad.
7:45 · This is where the bales of sorted plastic are cut, washed and dried.
7:52 · In recycling, purity of material is the most important factor, so this stage is crucial.
7:57 · Then, they’re molded into pellets.
8:00 · This plant employs only 50 or so people, but the AI takeover isn’t far in the future.
The bigger picture
8:32 · So how good is Taiwan at plastics recycling?
8:35 · A study showed that roughly 80% of imported and recycled plastic were used to make either finished products or pellets for export.
8:41 · Its recycling industry is larger than its domestic waste supply, so it actually imports plastic to be processed.
8:48 · But some say the metrics and good PR can be misleading.
8:53 · “Recycling means the material is being collected responsibly somehow, and then it’s responsibly…
9:00 · burned.”
9:02 · Arthur Huang is the CEO of Miniwiz, a Taiwanese company that converts waste materials into architectural fixtures.
9:08 · “Most people call that downcycling.
9:09 · And I call that actually just putting the particle into smaller particles into the air.”
9:15 · Taiwan actually has one of the highest densities of waste incinerators in the world.
9:20 · And that’s where most of the flimsier plastics like bags and straw wrappers have to be burned, since their quality is too low for recycling.
9:27 · Even if cities nail plastics recycling, there’s another big pile to deal with.
9:41 · Good news is industrial waste is also cleaner and there is a lot of it.
9:45 · Taiwan has a lot of big industry, in particular semiconductors and petrochemicals.
9:50 · So there is big potential for reuse there.
9:53 · That industry is exactly what makes its recycling infrastructure work – the country already has the industrial base to handle the manufacturing processes needed in recycling, at scale.
10:04 · “What’s the recycling system like where you live?
10:07 · Tell us in the comments below.
10:08 · And don’t forget to click like, and subscribe.
10:10 · See you next time.”
Mexico’s Caribbean beaches overwhelmed by record sargassum influx I Inside Latin America
Al Jazeera English, 09 05, 2026
Video (10:02)
Description
The Caribbean is facing a growing sargassum seaweed crisis, with huge quantities washing onto beaches across the region and threatening tourism, ecosystems and public health.
Mexico’s Riviera Maya has been particularly affected, with the influx reaching thousands of tonnes of seaweed each day.
As the algae decomposes on beaches, it can release toxic gases, raising health concerns for residents and tourists. Scientists also warn that the accumulation of sargassum can damage seagrass ecosystems and affect beach stability.
The crisis is putting pressure on Mexico’s tourism industry, while the Mexican Navy has stepped up efforts to collect the seaweed before it reaches the shore.
But some businesses are looking at sargassum differently.
Companies including Carbonwave and Sargablock are developing ways to transform the invasive algae into products such as bio-fertilizers, footwear and construction materials.
Could an environmental crisis become a new source of sustainable materials?
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Transcript
0:04 · [music] Welcome to Inside Latin America and to Mexico’s Riviera Maya. For the last decade, growing amounts of algae called sargassum have been washing up on beaches across the Caribbean, transforming once pristine coastlines and threatening the communities that depend on them.
0:25 · From the beaches of Puerto Rico to the fishing villages of the Dominican Republic, this phenomenon is taking a toll. And 2026 brought record quantities with more than 12 million tons detected across the region. But where is it all coming from and why now?
0:42 · This is the Sargasso Sea. Scientists say around 2010, changing currents began moving seaweed from here into warmer waters, forming the Great Atlantic Sargasso Belt, a vast band of floating algae stretching from West Africa across the Atlantic. Then, nutrient pollution, including fertilizer runoff carried by rivers, helped fuel its explosive growth.
1:06 · Experts agree the regional response still doesn’t match the scale of the problem. But with so much sargassum arriving, governments are being forced to act while private citizens are looking to upcycle this seaweed in an effort to turn this new reality into an opportunity.
1:25 · 9,000 tons a day. That’s how much sargassum washed up on Mexico’s Caribbean coast at the height of this year’s season.
1:34 · With its main tourist beaches under threat, the Mexican government has invested resources in tackling the problem.
1:41 · It enlisted the Navy in a process that starts with sea monitoring.
1:45 · Once blooms are located, especially designed vessels collect as much as they can.
1:51 · Barriers redirect what the ships miss, and divers work daily setting up additional nets and anchoring them beneath the surface.
2:00 · Every part of this process is extremely labor-intensive. If this ship has to be continuously repositioning itself so it can drag in all that sargassum. Once it’s full, it will go back to land and it will have to all be unloaded again before being taken to a processing plant.
2:17 · The goal is to keep the sargassum from reaching the beaches where growing evidence shows prolonged exposure to the decomposing seaweed can be toxic.
2:26 · And if you were to like hang around it for a long time, it would probably cause like respiratory distress and some other issues, but um in some places in the Caribbean, like it’s it’s very strong and it persists for weeks at a time and they are actually seeing adverse human health effects from the hydrogen sulfide.
2:41 · But removing sargassum is also expensive.
2:44 · Putting this option out of reach for many island nations in the Caribbean. The result is beaches that look like this. And when beaches become unusable, people whose livelihoods depend on tourism and fishing suffer, too.
2:59 · People come here, see this, and turn right around and leave.
3:05 · From Guadeloupe to Puerto Rico, more than 70% of people in the Caribbean live along the coast and depend on it to survive. And experts agree, without a joint international approach to sargassum and soon, the human and economic toll will only grow.
3:22 · This phenomenon can fundamentally change how people interact with the beach. For more on that, we spoke to Brigitta van Tussenbroek, a biologist with Mexico’s National Autonomous University, who’s been researching how sargassum is affecting communities along the coasts.
3:38 · Well, if you just think of the village community, of course, their connection with the sea is getting less because you don’t want to go to the beach on the Sunday afternoon with your family when you’ve got the what the amounts of sargassum there. If it’s a fishing community, um it’s more difficult for the boats to go out. Of course, for the tourist industry, it’s a disaster. And a lot of them, the tourist complex which have money, they can attend it to a certain degree. They can put up barriers.
4:08 · They can put small boats which collect the sargassum. They can try to replenish the beach which is eroded.
4:15 · You just mentioned erosion. Can you tell me a little bit about how sargassum is having an effect on what’s already a problem?
4:23 · Sargassum just being there causes erosion. Then sometimes bad practices. So, they remove the sargassum from the beach, but they take a lot of sand with it, which is another problem. And the other problem the major, I think, which I think was one of the major problem because it’s my area of research, it kills the sea grasses in the nearshore. And sea grasses are very important to maintain stable beaches.
4:49 · Do you think of sargassum as a plague?
4:51 · It’s a marvelous seaweed. I I’m still amazed by it. It’s a a seaweed which spends its whole life floating in the ocean. It forms these enormous rafts in the open sea. And the open sea is a desert, basically, for a lot of organisms. And then in the middle of the desert, you have this really biodiverse a raft with small critters, with a lot of bacteria, with epibionts which which grow on the sargassum. It’s beautiful.
5:23 · But having these huge masses of biomass decaying, getting on the beach, and then getting into the sea, it it causes a enormous disequilibrium of of whole life here in these systems.
5:36 · We’ve spent the last few days looking at all the efforts on various different scales of trying to get rid of the sargassum, take it out of the sea, uh clean it from the beaches. It feels like a titanic effort.
5:49 · I think at least the people who make the decisions I I think they still don’t understand the scale they have to work at. But we should do 100 times more or 1,000 times more. So, it should be so much more and I think this should be a really, uh, coherent strategy of managing the sargassum.
6:09 · Are you concerned?
6:10 · Well, I think it’s very difficult to be positive in the in the scenario, isn’t that?
6:16 · Because, as I say, most likely, um, this is not going to stop. This ecosystem is already damaged, uh, beyond the level I won’t ever see it recovering.
6:29 · So, I think we we have to be realistic in this this scenario and I think it it’s very difficult to be realistic, of course, because it it doesn’t look very nice. But, either really scale up a lot and invert a lot and and I really try to diminish the quantity of sargassum getting to the shore or adapt.
6:50 · But what does adapting look like? For a series of entrepreneurs in this region, the answer lies in turning this sargassum into products that can have life beyond the sea. Today’s sargassum harvest in Puerto Morelos, on Mexico’s Caribbean coast, ready to be processed and turned into bio-fertilizer. It’s a time-sensitive operation. Tons of seaweed must be weighed, cleaned, and pressed before it starts to decompose.
7:21 · Carbonwave is a company specializing in upcycling sargassum, filtering it in multiple steps to extract nutrients that boost crop yields and reduce the need for chemical fertilizer. After years of development, its creators say they have finally secured export agreements with the US, Colombia, and Ecuador.
7:40 · We already prove that sargassum can be turned into something that is reliable financially that can create incomes, right? That can create economy along the communities here.
7:54 · In fact, the process sargassum that Carbonwave doesn’t use for agricultural products ends up on people’s feet. Sargasso Sandals mixes sargassum powder with EVA foam, the same material Nike and Adidas use in sneakers to make its soles. Each pair is between 10 and 15% sargassum.
8:14 · This is the fiber that I need.
8:16 · And not far from Carbonwave’s plant, Omar Vasquez is using sargassum to make building blocks.
8:22 · Sargablock is an artisanal process. Each block contains 40% sargassum. The rest is other organic materials. They can make up to 6,500 blocks per day [music] using some 40 tons of sargassum. Sargablock says they’ve already donated 21 small homes made of this material to poor families in this community. And they say interest in this product is growing, certainly locally. This truck is going to a local business around here that’s just starting a construction project.
8:54 · But Omar dreams of taking this product far beyond Mexico’s coasts.
8:59 · And I went to Africa, I went to Ghana, and the problem that they have with sargassum it’s major. Nobody talks about those countries because they don’t have the money that we have in Mexico because tourism they don’t go there as here. So, where I see myself bringing Sargablock all over the world and donating houses to all over the people.
9:17 · In Mexico alone, at least 200 projects are now looking for ways to turn a growing environmental problem into an economic opportunity. And while none of these solutions can single-handedly absorb the millions of tons of sargassum washing ashore each year, they are showing that this unwanted seaweed may have value beyond the beach.
9:40 · Governments and citizens alike are rushing to adapt the best they can to a phenomenon that is no longer just a seasonal nuisance, but rather an increasingly permanent fixture of coastal communities along the Caribbean. Thanks for watching Inside Latin America. Now back to Doha with more news.
9:58 · Still ahead on Al Jazeera, from buried underpants. Yes, you heard that
WHO Preventing disease through healthy environments
World Health Organization (WHO), 04 20, 2016
Video (2:00)
Description
An estimated 12.6 million people died as a result of living or working in an unhealthy environment in 2012 – nearly 1 in 4 of total global deaths, according to the World Health Organization. Environmental risk factors, such as air, water and soil pollution, chemical exposures, climate change, and ultraviolet radiation, contribute to more than 100 diseases and injuries. However, we can take actions to reverse the upward trend of environment-related diseases and improve our environments where we live and work.
For more information visit: http://who.int/quantifying_ehimpacts/publications/preventing-disease/en/
Transcript
Environmental health impacts
0:03 · wherever you live your health is impacted by the environment around the world more than 50 million people die every year from disease and nearly one quarter of those deaths are directly caused by environmental factors can you imagine that’s 1,400 deaths every hour
0:23 · of every day from an unhealthy environment the hardest hit are those in low and middle income countries especially in Africa Southeast Asia and the western Pacific and the young and old are most severely affected more than half the world live in urban areas and can face heavy traffic air pollution who are housing and limited access to clean water and sanitation many work in the informal
0:51 · sector under dangerous dirty and demeaning conditions we all face the impact of chemicals and poisons radiation and poor farming practices and climate change means our very uncertain future so now we are at a crossroads
The critical crossroads
1:09 · things can continue getting worse or we can work together to improve our world simple measures can be taken immediately to protect our health and the environment we can reduce our consumption and clean our air by using sustainable fuels and walking or cycling more we can safely store toxic substances in
Call to action for health
1:32 · our homes and workplaces we can protect our water resources by disposing of waste appropriately and introduce clean energy technologies we can bring multiple government sectors together to ensure all policies actively support health let us all work together to improve our health and well-being
Why don’t we just burn our trash
DW Planet A, 08 13, 2021
Video (10:45)
Description
Waste to energy plants are seen as green innovations for countries where landfills dominate, as they reduce methane and generate renewable energy. But will these incinerators really make our trash problems go up in flames?
We’re destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn’t need to be this way. Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we’ll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.
Read More (Links):
Open burning: https://theconversation.com/health-crisis-up-to-a-billion-tonnes-of-waste-potentially-burned-in-the-open-every-year-152778
Waste around the world: https://datatopics.worldbank.org/what-a-waste/trends_in_solid_waste_management.html
Waste to energy as a solution (IEA): https://www.iea.org/articles/will-energy-from-waste-become-the-key-form-of-bioenergy-in-asia
Waste to energy as a solution (Project Drawdown): https://drawdown.org/solutions/waste-to-energy/technical-summary
Waste management in India (Pritpal Randhawa): https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsc.2020.00014/full
Environmental impacts of waste to energy: https://www.eunomia.co.uk/reports-tools/greenhouse-gas-and-air-quality-impacts-of-incineration-and-landfill/
Waste to energy in Europe: https://e360.yale.edu/features/in-europe-a-backlash-is-growing-over-incinerating-garbage
0:00 Intro
0:39 Why we need better waste management
2:00 Waste to energy
6:04 The Waste Hierarchy
6:51 A waste solution for the Global South?
6:47 Decentralization & Diversification
9:34 When incineration makes sense
Reporter: Amanda Coulson-Drasner
Video editor: Amanda Coulson-Drasner, Cem Springer
Supervising editor: Kiyo Dörrer
Transcript
Intro
0:01 · These skiers are all here because of trash.
0:05 · That’s because underneath this slope is a huge garbage incineration plant.
0:10 · It processes 400,000 metric tons of waste a year and turns it into energy and heat for Copenhagen.
0:18 · It also recycles 90% of the city’s metal waste.
0:22 · Some say such incineration plants could be key for solving our global trash problem.
0:28 · But is that true?
0:30 · Or are we going to end up just getting burned?
Why we need better waste management
0:39 · Globally, we produce over two billion tons of household waste annually, with high income countries generating an outsized amount compared to their populations.
0:50 · 37% of global waste ends up in landfills, polluting groundwater and producing methane.
0:57 · Less than 20% of the world’s trash is recycled or composted.
1:02 · In the Global South many people have no access to trash collection, and it often ends up in rivers — a primary source of ocean plastic.
1:12 · To get rid of as much trash as possible, as fast as possible, around one billion tons of waste are openly burned every year.
1:22 · “Open burning generates high levels of black carbon, which is soot, which has a really strong global warming effect.”
1:31 · Zoë Lenkiewicz is one of the founding members of Wasteaid, and has been a waste manager for over 20 years.
1:38 · “It also generates dioxins and furans, which are known to cause cancer.
1:41 · All of this is going into the local air, wherever people are burning waste.”
1:48 · Women are more directly impacted, as they are often responsible for disposing of household waste.
1:53 · Burning trash this way is a serious problem. But done differently, there are advantages to it.
Waste to energy
2:01 · Here’s where controlled burning, aka incineration, comes in.
2:04 · Incinerators first appeared where it was hard to landfill, in London in 1874, then in New York City, in 1885.
2:12 · “The incineration process itself, it reduces the volume of the waste [by] 90 percent.”
2:19 · Ella Stengler is the managing director of the umbrella organization for European waste to energy operators.
2:25 · “And it fulfills the kind of sanitary task because it destroys the pollutants which are embedded in the waste.”
2:32 · The generated heat can also be turned into energy. It’s called, unsurprisingly, waste to energy.
2:38 · In the US, where there’s a lot of space and cheap energy in the form of oil, waste to energy wasn’t so competitive, and many plants were closed.
2:46 · But more and more plants were built in the EU.
2:50 · Today they provide power to 18 million Europeans, and heat to 15 million.
2:56 · They’re a common waste management option for countries like Denmark and the Netherlands, which have almost completely eliminated landfilling.
3:05 · Environmental organizations see potential in waste to energy as a transition step toward a more circular economy, especially in countries without much space, that need more energy.
3:18 · Here’s how the plants work: The garbage is dumped into a big pit — from there it’s fed into the furnaces.
3:25 · They burn extremely hot, and the waste is reduced in a matter of minutes.
3:30 · The heat from the fires generates steam, which turns turbines to create electricity.
3:35 · The steam can also be used for heating.
3:38 · The 10% that doesn’t burn is called bottom ash, and metals can be recovered from it.
3:44 · The rest can then be used as construction material.
3:50 · So the process reduces the volume of waste, creates energy, and part of the residue can even be recycled.
3:58 · What’s not to love?
4:01 · Well, there are a few reasons why the world isn’t full of waste to energy plants with ski slopes on top.
4:07 · One of those reasons is fly ash, which is everything caught by the filters.
4:11 · It needs to be disposed of in a hazardous waste facility.
4:15 · Another reason is cost.
4:16 · “If there would be a waste to energy plant built, it should be equipped with a state-of-the-art technology, which is expensive.
4:27 · And you need to train the staff to properly operate it and also authorities to monitor it.”
4:33 · Even without ski slopes, waste to energy plants can cost over one billion US dollars to build.
4:39 · Without the latest technology and monitoring, pollution can reach unsafe levels, and impact people living nearby.
4:47 · And they also emit a lot of CO2: in the EU, around 52 million tonnes per year.
4:56 · That’s like 430,000 cars each driving a million kilometers.
5:02 · “Policymakers and industries put incineration in the same type of energy group as renewables, like wind or solar or even nuclear.”
5:15 · This is Tatiana Lujan.
5:16 · She leads the plastics team for ClientEarth, and is also working to implement the EU’s circular economy directive.
5:24 · “But when you look at the greenhouse gas emissions of incineration, they’re actually pretty close to coal and gas, and way far from wind, solar, nuclear.
5:36 · A study commissioned by ClientEarth found that controlled incineration generates between 59 and 73% of the emissions that coal would.
5:44 · Classifying this energy as renewable can divert funding from more sustainable waste management technologies like recycling.
5:51 · So, where it can be correctly built and managed, controlled incineration is better than a landfill – but it’s by far not the cleanest option to handle waste, no matter how much energy is won.
The Waste Hierarchy
6:04 · Have a look at this “waste hierarchy pyramid” – bear with me, it’s less complicated than it looks.
6:09 · At the very bottom of the pyramid is open burning or dumping, the worst possible way to get rid of trash.
6:15 · Disposal without energy recovery is next, so landfilling or incineration without energy generation.
6:22 · Then here’s where waste to energy, which is an umbrella term for a few different methods, comes in.
6:29 · Then comes recycling.
6:31 · Even better is to re-use things, often called upcycling, and at the top is prevention and reduction.
6:38 · Yeah, the whole world is pretty far from the top.
6:42 · That is why waste to energy is seen by some as a quick “solution” for countries struggling with their waste.
A waste solution for the Global South?
6:51 · Not surprisingly, plants are opening up around the world, like in China, Indonesia and India.
7:02 · Africa’s first waste to energy plant just opened, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
7:08 · But it has proven to be more complicated than just opening up plants and burning the problem away.
7:14 · One reason is that the composition of waste varies widely throughout the world.
7:22 · “You can’t take one model that works in a wealthy country like a cookie cutter and expect it to work in a low-income country because it’s a completely different market.”
7:34 · In India, household waste is around 50 percent organic matter, like food scraps, which are too wet to burn.
7:41 · And because of the lack of centralized waste collection, trash there is often mixed together.
7:48 · “I don’t think segregation is happening at all in majority of the Indian cities.
7:55 · So that’s a major, major problem.”
7:57 · Pritpal Randhawa has been conducting long-term studies on waste management in India for the past 10 years.
8:02 · “The waste has to be segregated and the undesirable material should be separated from that waste, and only the waste with high calorific value should be burned.
8:14 · But that is not something which is happening actually.”
8:18 · Calorific value is a measure of a substance’s heating power — in other words, how easily it burns.
8:24 · Crude oil and mixed plastics come in at around 40 megajoules per kilogram.
8:29 · Food is about 16.
8:31 · Without waste separation, lots of food scraps find their way to the furnaces, forcing the plants to add additional fuel.
8:39 · This makes the whole facility extremely inefficient.
8:42 · Countries also need to have a place to store the hazardous waste.
8:46 · So if incineration isn’t a silver bullet for the Global South, what are other options?
8:52 · “It’s not very complicated at all – the ideal situation would be management of waste at the decentralized level.”
9:01 · And not only decentral, but diversified: specifically suited to the environment and economy of an area.
9:10 · In many cities in India, for example, waste pickers collect recyclables, which are processed informally.
9:15 · Biogas generated from organic waste can be a source of fuel from Benin to Mumbai.
9:20 · And plastic can be made into building material.
9:25 · “With waste management, absolutely one size does not fit all.
9:28 · And you really need to look at what’s most appropriate for that local area.”
When incineration makes sense
9:34 · Waste to energy plants can work, but a trash collection system and a strong environmental regulator are both necessary.
9:41 · These can be really hard to come by.
9:44 · Even with them, countries need to do some careful reflection before building new plants.
9:48 · “When you create incineration, you’re making huge investments and locking yourself in a system that you’re going to have to continue feeding and feeding and feeding.
10:00 · And that creates a disincentive for transitioning to a real circular economy.”
10:08 · So before more trash burning facilities join the global system, policymakers should look at funding more sustainable methods of waste disposal – like recycling, reusing and most importantly, reducing our waste in the first place.
10:22 · So what do you think?
10:24 · To burn, or not to burn?
10:28 · If this video made you think at all…
10:30 · If this video make you think at all, come back every Friday for new ones.
10:33 · And don’t forget to subscribe.