"When we think of #greenhousegas emissions, we tend to think of tailpipes and factories," said Scott Tiegs, co-author of the study and a professor of biological sciences at Oakland.
"But a lot of carbon dioxide and methane comes from aquatic #ecosystems. This process is natural. But when humans add nutrient #pollution like #fertilizer to fresh waters and elevate water temperatures, we increase the decomposition rates and direct more #CO2 into the atmosphere."
An old fashioned idea with multiple uses - flower petals and leaves for crafts or drying, as the structure itself can be used as a 360d trellis; a source of fertilizer for your compost to help grow ingredients for your beauty products; and of course eggs, if you like eggs. I understand some people also eat doves, but I can't say as I find gutting a bird appealing, so I'll skip that one.
Uganda to build a fertilizer plant using #greenhydrogen:
-In Karuma, Western Uganda, near 600 MW Karuma hydropower plant
-Minimum of 100 MW set aside for fertilizer production
-In Partnership with Kenyan Industrial Promotion Services
-Eyes export market
They are a biofertiliser, looking like they could walk, and they cooperate with plants, fungi, and bacteria. Often they help moss to survive. I held their small laboratory in my hand, "invented" by Earth about 2,5 billion years ago! https://www.cronenburg.net/nostoc/
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is leading a 60-day public consultation to seek comments on proposed #fertilizer standards imported or sold in Canada. The policy focuses on the proposed implementation of a per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (#PFAS) standard for municipal #biosolids imported or sold as commercial fertilizers. #wastewater#sewage#Canada
I urge you to re-list the West Indian manatee subpopulations, including the #Florida manatee, as endangered. One-fifth of Florida manatees died in the last two years alone. Their #population can’t sustain such heavy losses.
#Pollution in the water has created massive algal blooms which block the sun from reaching the sea floor, killing the #seagrass
'The team will look at how cyanobacteria can convert nitrogen from the atmosphere into... guanidine, ammonia and urea. All three of these compounds can be used in place of chemically synthesized fertilizers, which require massive amounts of heat and energy to produce. The cyanobacteria also capture carbon dioxide (CO2), all while being powered by the sun..."
"Designs at the Venice Architecture Biennale are rethinking the modern flush for a water-strained world.
"Visitors to the Finnish pavilion at 2023’s Venice Architecture Biennale are greeted with an unlikely sight at a festival typically devoted to the avant-garde and newfangled: a no-flush #outhouse toilet.
"While the structure, known as a #Huussi, may seem a bit primitive to some, it’s long been a popular toilet design in rural parts of #Finland because it requires no connection to water supplies: It processes waste not by flushing it away, but by converting it to compost in a hay-filled container. It’s a design that’s making a comeback because it saves water and recirculates waste back into the #ecosystem — both essential goals in a world where many areas are drying out thanks to #ClimateChange, and where as much as 30% of urban #water supplies are used to flush human waste. Our modern toilet practices are likely to become unsustainable within the next few decades; by 2050 it’s estimated that up to five billion people could be facing #watershortages.
"Toilet composting could also fuel an alternative to the carbon-heavy manufactured #nitrogen#fertilizer and mined #phosphorus widely used in farming today. Chemical fertilizers also deplete carbon from one of the few places we want to retain it — in the soil itself, where it fosters vital microbial activity.
"Some designers in Finland are looking to the recent past for more sustainable, hygienic solutions for sewage, while others are using more modern technologies to reduce or eliminate the need for water. Part of what the exhibit at the Venice Biennale, open until Nov. 26, highlights is that these toilet designs are far less offensive to our modern olfactory sensibilities than many might assume. Here are some of the ways that architects and planners are rethinking toilet systems to help them fit into a circular economy, reducing the excess water and pollutants that billions of us literally flush down the toilet."
"Maine last month became the first state to ban the practice of spreading PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge as fertilizer.
"But it’s largely on its own in the US, despite a recent report estimating about 20m acres of cropland across the country may be contaminated.
"Most states are only beginning to look at the problem and some are increasing the amount of sludge they spread on farm fields despite the substance being universally contaminated with PFAS and destroying livelihoods in Maine.
"'Maine is at the forefront of this because we’ve seen first-hand the damage that sludge causes to farms,' said Patrick MacRoy, deputy director of the non-profit Defend Our Health Maine. The new law also prohibits sludge from being composted with other organic material.
"PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of chemicals used across dozens of industries to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. Though the compounds are highly effective, they are also linked to #cancer, #KidneyDisease, #BirthDefects, decreased #immunity, #liver problems and a range of other serious diseases.
"Sewage sludge is a semi-solid mix of human excrement and industrial #waste that water treatment plants pull from the nation’s sewer system. It’s expensive to dispose of, and about 60% of it is now lightly treated and sold or given away as 'biosolid' fertilizer because it is high in plant nutrients.
"Maine and #Michigan are the only two states that are routinely checking sludge and farms for PFAS, and both are finding contamination on farms to be widespread.
"Maine’s legislature banned the practice of spreading sludge as fertilizer in April [2022] after environmental officials discovered astronomical levels of PFAS in water, crops, cattle and soil on farms where sludge had been spread, and high PFAS levels have been detected in farmers’ blood.
"#Contamination from PFAS-tainted sludge has already poisoned well water on around a dozen farms, and has forced several Maine farms to shutter. The state is investigating about 700 more fields where PFAS-contaminated sludge was spread in recent years. Farmers have told the Guardian that many of their peers with contaminated land won’t alert the state because they fear financial ruin.
"Maine also approved the creation of a $60m fund that will be used to help farmers cover medical monitoring, for buyouts and for other forms of financial assistance.
"'Folks have been left out to dry without any real help so we’re grateful to see that,' MacRoy said. The sludge legislation comes after Maine last year enacted the nation’s first ban on non-essential uses of PFAS in products. It goes into effect in 2030.
"In Michigan, environmental officials have downplayed the detection of PFAS in sludge and on farms, and although the state prohibits highly contaminated sludge from being spread, it allows higher levels of the chemicals in sludge than Maine. State regulators have also identified PFAS polluters and required them to stop discharging the chemicals into the sewers.
"Questions remain about whether that’s enough to keep PFAS out of Michigan’s food supply. Instead of implementing a wide-scale program to test livestock, crops and dairy, the state identified 13 farms it considered most at risk and has claimed contamination on other farms isn’t a risk.
"Michigan is ahead of most other states. In #Virginia, environmental regulators are considering permitting an additional 6,000 acres worth of sludge to be spread and have so far resisted public health advocates’ calls to test for PFAS and reject new sludge permits.
"In #Alabama, the state’s department of environmental management said in 2019 that 'the best use of biosolids is as a [fertilizer].'
"Even as the crisis unfolds in Maine, officials in Alabama are increasing the amount of out-of-state sludge that’s imported and spread on fields or landfilled, and the state in 2020 updated its biosolids rule to 'encourage' the use of #biosolids as fertilizer. Alabama does not test sludge for PFAS."
"On March 27th [2010] Citizens for Sludge-Free Land sent a letter to the #Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and US #EPA Region 3 that information provided to Virginia landowners about using sewage sludges as #fertilizer is deceptive. Land application permits are being granted in several Virginia counties without informing farmers of the serious risks associated with this practice. The VA code specifies, that to be valid, these permits can only be granted with the #InformedConsent of the landowner.
"The Federal #CleanWater Act defines sewage sludge as a #pollutant. Most of the pollutants that sewage treatment plants remove from wastewater concentrate in the resulting sludge. Exempt from #hazardous and solid waste laws, sludge is being spread on #agricultural land, despite mounting scientific evidence and field reports that using this contaminated waste as a cheap fertilizer is neither safe, beneficial, nor sustainable.
"The Virginia Cooperative Extension Service as well as Nutri-Blend Inc., the company that needs permits to spread sludge, are failing to provide landowners with the necessary facts, so they can make an informed decision whether or not to treat their land with sludge. The widely distributed Extension Service biosolids fact sheets-- although deceptively dated May 9, 2009-- provide out-dated, inaccurate, incomplete, and in some cases, misleading information. They overstate the alleged benefits and totally ignore the known risks and recent documented evidence of adverse health and #environmental impacts linked to sludge use. The fact sheets and brochures give the illusion that land applying sewage sludge, a complex and variable mixture of #HumanWaste and thousands of industrial #chemicals, many of which are #toxic and persistent, is a safe and normal agricultural practice.
"The information provided to landowners deceptively downplays the health risks of exposure to odors, odorant compounds, endotoxins, bacteria-laden dusts, and toxic gases at land application sites that can cause severe and permanent #lung damage. Nor are farmers told that typical sludges generated in industrialized urban areas contain not only pathogens, but also #PCBs, #dioxins, #carcinogens, #pharmaceuticals, flame retardants [#PFAS], and hormone disrupting chemicals that can damage developing organisms in parts per trillion. Many of these pollutants do not break down once they are applied to land. Worse, partial breakdown products are often more toxic than the parent material. Yet federal regulations require testing and standards for only nine toxic metals. Perhaps most important, the information provided to farmers fails to disclose that the National Academies of Science has indicated that while there are serious health concerns associated with many of the constituents of sewage sludge, there is too much uncertainty to scientifically predict the true health and environmental risks, when this complex waste mixture is applied to land.
"Finally, farmers are not told that sludge-exposure has been linked to illnesses, human deaths, livestock mortalities, groundwater pollution, and permanently degraded land. Unless there is a true and accurate disclosure of all the risks associated with this practice, there can be no true consent.
"Without informed consent, the state should not be issuing permits."
A process for delivering nutrients for crop growth that its developers say is more sustainable than most fertilizer methods today received a U.S. patent.
My #pumpkin leaves look kinda pale and yellow. I worry that I over water them, or maybe the soil in my tubs isn't very nutritious? I put slow release #fertilizer pellets in there when I planted, but maybe I should use some liquid miracle-gro too? Maybe thats just what #pumpkins do when their vines start running; the old leaves next to the roots die off? #gardening#flowers#florespondence#bloomscrolling
A massive underground deposit of high-grade phosphate rock recently discovered in Norway is big enough to satisfy world demand for fertilisers, solar panels and electric car batteries over the next 100 years, according to the company exploiting the resource.
The solution to our current #drought problems in many areas might have been with us for 2,300 years at least, probably first developed by the #Tiahuanaco culture of the #Andean...
‘Great news’: EU hails discovery of massive phosphate rock deposit in Norway (www.euractiv.com)
A massive underground deposit of high-grade phosphate rock recently discovered in Norway is big enough to satisfy world demand for fertilisers, solar panels and electric car batteries over the next 100 years, according to the company exploiting the resource.