Floating Flowers Clean Pollution in Waterways

Industrial farming, golf courses, and some industries all contribute an incredible amount of nutrient runoff that enters our waterways. This influx of unexpected nutrients can cause algae blooms and otherwise damage the local ecosystem. To combat this damage from runoff a team from the Florida International University created a floating platform that allows flowers to grow while not flooding out their root systems. The flowers they have chosen to grow are ones that are in demand so they can be sold commercially to fund more floating flowers. This is a novel idea that looks promising and they are already looking to expand the project.

We floated 4-by-6-foot (1.2-by-1.8-meter) mats of inexpensive polyethylene foam called Beemats in 620-gallon (2,300-liter) outdoor test tanks that mirrored water conditions of nearby polluted waterways. Into the mats, we transplanted flower seedlings, including zinnias, sunflowers, and giant marigolds. The polluted tank water was rich in nutrients, eliminating the need for any fertilizer. As the seedlings matured into plants over 12 weeks, we tracked the tanks’ improving water quality.

Encouraged by the success of the marigolds in our tanks, we moved our trials to the nearby canals of Coral Gables and Little River. We anchored the floating platforms with 50-pound (22.7-kilogram) weights and also tied them to shore for extra stability. No alterations to the landscape were needed, making the process simple and doable.

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Paris Triples Parking Fees for SUVs

Paris is undergoing a transportation revolution that champions the movement of people over the movement of vehicles and the most recent change was put to the people of the city. Citizens of Paris have voted to triple parking fees for heavy, road destroying, SUVs that take up more space than comparable vehicles. The increase in fees makes sense due to the harm caused by the large machines in urban settings. Hopefully other cities will copy Paris and make road users pay for the share of the road they consume.

City hall has further pointed to safety concerns about taller, heavier SUVs, which it says are “twice as deadly for pedestrians as a standard car” in an accident. The vehicles are also singled out for taking up more public space – whether on the road or while parked – than others. Paris officials say the average car has put on 250 kilograms (550 pounds) since 1990. Hidalgo, whose city will host the 2024 Olympics this summer, rarely misses a chance to boast of the environmental credentials of the town hall and its drive to drastically reduce car use in the center.

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How Rotterdam Uses Water to Protect Itself from Flooding

As global warming melts the polar ice caps we are witnessing a human caused increase in sea level. The city of Rotterdam is on the front lines of holding back this tidal increase and they have designed some nifty ways to protect the people that live in the city from the encroaching waves. They are using a rive that flow through the city to act as a giant sponge to absorb any influx of water from storms, this will contain and slow the water from entering parts of the city with lots of people or commerce. It’s a nature-friendly way to deal with a human caused problem.

A €2.3bn “Room for the River” project – making floodplains at more than 30 locations on four rivers – is credited with saving the country from the worst flooding this year. The national delta programme is investing in action to guard until 2050, and a multi-billion euro flood protection programme (HWPB) involves 100 projects to strengthen kilometres of dykes, without which, says Rijkswaterstaat infrastructure organisation, 60% of the country would regularly be under water.

But in cities, too, water protection must meet urban design to create an attractive, adaptive city, says Arnoud Molenaar, Rotterdam’s chief resilience officer. A vast amount of work has been going on, and the city has built water squares, green and blue roofs and a 2km-long railway viaduct rooftop park. The water squares, also designed by De Urbanisten, are, very simply, built in overflow areas – when there is too much rainwater they fill up, and then slowly drain away so that the storm drains are not overwhelmed. And when the water has gone, they become public spaces again.

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How Heat Pumps Work

Despite the climate crisis some places (like Canada) are still building houses with fossil fuel based heating systems, and this needs to change. Gas companies and their planet-killing kin have used regulatory capture to ensure their desire to change the climate continues. However, their best efforts to force customers to use dead dino juice people are turning away from old style furnace for new high tech heat pumps.

Heat pumps sound like magic since they somehow extract heat from cold winter air. Thankfully, the Guardian has put together a nice visualization of how heat pumps work. The gif above is not from their english language site.

Whereas gas boilers burn gas to produce heat, heat pumps do something more complicated. Sometimes described as working like a “fridge in reverse”, they use a mixture of evaporation and condensation to transfer heat from outside to inside a building. In a cold winter, it can be hard to understand how these devices work.

See how heat pumps work.

USA to Clamp Down on Methane

When it comes to emissions from fuels methane is amongst the worst. The so-called natural gas is incredibly bad for the planet because it’s so effective at accelerating the greenhouse effect that is warming the Earth. Methane is an easy target as nations around the world are looking to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions because it’s so potent. Following that rationale, the USA has opted to better monitor methane emissions and police companies that are violating emission restrictions. America is one of the worst per capita emitters on the planet so this is a big step in the right direction.

“These are rules of the road,” said Ali Zaidi, the Biden administration’s national climate adviser. “There is no longer an excuse to let these emissions continue to proliferate. Industry has the tools. It has the workforce that’s excited to do this work. And it has every incentive to get after this challenge.”


The EPA also said the plan would prevent an estimated 58 million tons of methane emissions from 2024 to 2038, the equivalent of 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, and will yield total net benefits of $97 billion to $98 billion from 2024 to 2038, after taking into account the costs of compliance and savings from recovered natural gas.

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