Watch 1PM Weekly News - February 12, 2024
This week we welcome a new host, Nicki Ruiz-Bueno. She covers 5 stories from vegan pet food - a booming business to AI technology cleaning up recycling plants.
TikTok: @1pmweeklynews
Instagram: @oneplanetmedia
YouTube: @oneplanetmedia1PM
Sponsored By NXTGEN Clean Energy Solutions - Your sustainability easy button from concept to completion:
To learn more, check out our sources below.
Vegan Pet Food - A Booming Business
First up, Wild Earth is a company that produces plant-based foods for pet animals. After learning that 30% of the meat consumed in the U.S. goes to feeding pets, the founder of Wild Earth, Ryan Bethencourt realized that more than a quarter of factory-farmed animals could be replaced with plant-based protein. Bethencourt learned that dogs and cats could not just survive, but thrive on a plant-based diet. In 2019, Bethencourt appeared on national television to raise capital for his company, and became a contestant on the hit show Shark Tank. One of the sharks, Mark Cuban, invested $550,000 for 10% of the company. Since then, Wild Earth has raised nearly $50 million dollars in funding. In 2022, the company announced that it was also moving into cultivated meat, or meat created from the cells of animals, which is a slaughter-free process. Now Wild Earth is offering both a plant-based pet food line, and a separate line of cultivated pet foods for people who want real meat, but don’t want to support the cruel practice of factory farmed animals. Bethencourt said, “Our mission at Wild Earth is to make killer food without the killing.”
AI Technology Cleaning Up Recycling Plants
Next, According to a 2021 report from Greenpeace, 95% of plastic waste in the US goes into landfills and incinerators. But that’s about to change with Artificial Intelligence or AI. Bollegraaf, the world’s largest builder of recycling plants is teaming up with AI start-up Greyparrot to retrofit thousands of recycling facilities around the world with computers that can identify every item that passes through the waste plant. Lokendra Pal, a professor of sustainable materials engineering at North Carolina State University said, “Today’s technology cannot really detect all the contamination that’s coming in with those plastics, but if you know what contaminants are coming, there’s a better chance you’ll be able to process it and get a cleaner product.” Now with outcomes measured from over a 100 AI trash spotters multiple facilities, approximately 30% more plastic can be recycled instead of going into a landfill.
Toxic Controversy Around Dicamba Weedkillers
A US court banned three dicamba-based weedkillers last week that have been blamed for millions of acres of crop damage and harm to endangered species and natural lands in the US. Introduced to American agriculture in 1967, dicamba-based weedkiller particles can turn from a liquid into a gas just days after the herbicide is applied, effectively causing damage to the broader landscape and becoming windblown into areas beyond its application. The companies who manufacture the weedkilling products are Bayer, Syngenta and BASF. George Kimbrell, legal director of the Center for Food Safety said quote “Time and time again, the evidence has shown that dicamba cannot be used without causing massive and unprecedented harm to farms as well as endangering plants and pollinators.” In 2020, these same weedkilling products were banned by a federal court, but months later the Trump Administration reapproved the products. Now a federal judge in Arizona is saying that the EPA made a critical mistake in reapproving the weedkillers, because the agency did not post for public comment by farmers and conservation groups. Documents filed in the lawsuit show that the EPA was in a rush to approve dicamba in 2020, with scientist complaining that they did not have enough time to do a proper analysis.
New Air Pollution Rule Could Save Lives
The Environmental Protection Agency has introduced a new air pollution rule that could prevent thousands of premature deaths. Prompting backlash from business groups, but praise from public health experts, the EPA is adding stricter limits on how many micrograms per cubic meter of soot is allowed from industrial facilities. Scientific studies show that reducing soot pollution is most beneficial to poor communities, who are disproportionately located near such facilities. Once fully implemented by 2032, the stricter limit is expected to prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths per year. The challenge for the Biden administration is trying to reduce pollution in overburdened communities while reviving U.S. manufacturing. In the current presidential election, Donald Trump is pledging to dismantle many of President Biden’s environmental policies. The soot standard was last updated during the Obama administration, but in 2020, the Trump administration rejected stronger limits, and sided with business groups who argued that cutting pollution would crush manufacturing. Now industry groups say it will be harder to manufacture electric vehicle batteries, wind turbines and other initiatives that are central to President Biden’s climate agenda. More on this story as it unfolds, stay tuned.
- https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/07/climate/epa-air-pollution-soot.html,
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/02/07/epa-soot-limit-rule/,
The story of the week is brought to you by Batricity - Your Energy Storage Partner.
Solar Energy Plan to Power Most of Western US
EcoWatch reports that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, has announced a solar energy plan that would include 22 million acres of public lands in the western US to expand solar energy development. This would be an expansion of the original 2012 solar plan that included Colorado, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico to now include the states of Oregan, Washington, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning said quote “Our public lands are playing a crucial role in the clean energy transition. Investing in clean renewable energy represents BLM’s commitment to building a clean energy economy, tackling the climate crisis, promoting American energy security and creating jobs in communities across the country.” BLM is also processing 67 proposed utility-scale clean energy projects on public lands that would include wind, solar and geothermal. The projects are expected to add upwards of 37 Gigawatts of clean energy. To put that in perspective, 1 gigawatt is enough energy to power about 750,000 homes, so 37 gigawatts would be able to power as many as 27,750,000 homes.