It may be the end of the world, but it’s sure going to smell nice. As larger amounts of carbon dioxide are emitted into our atmosphere, plants will release higher levels of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) — the chemicals that create flowery fragrance.

Scientists say the warming world has already caused plants to emit more BVOCs. According to Professor Josep Penuelas of the Global Ecology Unit at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain:

“It may have increased already by 10% in the past 30 years and may increase 30 to 40% with the two to three degrees (Celsius) warming projected for the next decades.”

Penuelas went on to add that greater BVOC emissions could cause some complex consequences. Communication between plants could be altered, considering certain BVOCs are usually only released as a response to attacks from herbivores. More fragrant plants would also cause considerable confusion among bees and other pollinators, which could affect plant reproduction.

[Via: BBC]

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When a country makes an initiative to switch over to biofuel, it’s usually something environmentalists can get excited about. But sometimes, the new source of energy can be just as detrimental to our fragile ecosystem. Following along this unfortunate path is the European Commission’s new plan to put palm oil into British vehicles.

Under the Renewable Energy Directive, millions of tons of palm oil is to be pumped into cars in Britain in order to reduce greenhouse gases from crude oil. Increasing the demand for palm oil, however, may cause larger problems, considering it can only be grown in tropical rainforests in Malaysia, Indonesia, West Africa and the Amazon in Brazil, where heavy deforestation is already prevalent.

While straying from fossil fuels and finding answers in plant-based options is a definite step in the right direction, many environmental groups are criticizing the European Commission for their carelessness. According to the Independent:

Friends of the Earth’s agri-fuels campaign coordinator Adrian Bebb said: “I know the Commission officials and they’re trying to get palm oil in.” Robert Palgrave of Biofuelswatch said: “If you expand the palm oil business for food, fuel or cosmetics, more forest will be destroyed.”

[Via: the Independent]

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DSC_0009-327x490 From the deck of Sea Dragon

Wend magazine Editor-in-Chief and Surfrider Foundation Ambassador Stiv Wilson is on a sailboat with Dr. Marcus Eriksen of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation on an environmental research mission to explore plastic in the Sargasso Sea.

Here is his latest update, sent to Wend HQ via satellite:

By now most environmentally conscious people are aware of the giant swirling garbage gyre in the North Pacific, originally discovered in 1997 by Captain Charles Moore, founder of The Algalita Marine Research Foundation. But from the deck of Moore’s research vessel in the Atlantic, we can see that there is a North Atlantic garbage gyre as well.

Moore first published on his travels to the North Pacific Gyre in 1999, though the media was slow to react to his tales of plastic islands, and miles upon miles of marine garbage.  By 2005 major news organizations began reporting on Moore’s North Pacific Gyre, and the issue gained attention worldwide.  Currently, a team of researchers from Algalita and Livable Legacy—led by Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins—have brought a crew of artists, ocean activists, journalists, and scientists to the North Atlantic on an expedition to look for plastic debris as part of a new research initiative, The 5 Gyres project (5gyres.org).

There are five major oceanic gyres worldwide, and it is hypothesized by Eriksen and Cummins that all of these gyres collect marine debris, much in the same way that the North Pacific does.  Due to the manner by which ocean currents and tradewinds work, they form what is essentially a massive spinning vortex.  As a journalist and representative of the Surfrider Foundation aboard the Pangaea Explorations research vessel Sea Dragon, reporting directly from The North Atlantic Gyre via satellite communication, I can confirm that another garbage patch exists, here, in a disperse synthetic soup we’re currently floating upon.

As of the time of this writing, 19:31 GMT, our position is roughly 500 miles SE of Bermuda and 1000 miles SW of The Azores.  Since our departure last Thursday from Bermuda the science team has been collecting data on plastic density every 50-100 miles (weather permitting) as we sail easterly across the Atlantic towards Europe.  Using a device called a MantaTrawl, which was specifically engineered to skim the top few inches of the water, we have already collected over 12 samples during the unfinished second leg of our two-part journey.

The MantaTrawl takes a 60 by 25 centimeter sample of the ocean over a three-hour period, covering about 7 miles.  On the first leg, from the US Virgin Islands to Bermuda, we collected 20 samples. During both legs of the journey, samples have shown evidence of plastic fragments in every trawl. Varying in density, the samples from the first leg have already been shipped backed to Algalita labs in California.

Beyond fragmented and photodegraded plastic, we’ve come across what are called Windrows, areas in the ocean where currents and wind patterns conspire to make ‘patches’ where debris collects in dense clumps. These areas, often marked by large swatches of Sargassum (a plant that grows on the surface of this area of the Atlantic known as the Sargasso Sea) are where we’re finding large collections of plastic, in big chunks, floating on the surface.

Thus far we’ve found plastic milk crates, lighters, touthbrushes, bottle caps, shotgun shells, dental floss holders, buckets and bucket lids, bleach bottles, antifreeze bottles, plastic bags, plastic tubs, nail polish remover bottles, and every manner of plastic goods one would find in any grocery store across the world. As a crew, we collect this debris with large fishing nets and examine the contents.

It’s difficult to determine the actual size of the Atlantic garbage patch because our vantage—from the deck of a 72-foot research sailboat amidst the vast wilderness of an enormous ocean—is that of a needle in a haystack.  But what’s certain, given the data and debris already collected along a transect, is that the problem of plastic in oceanic gyres worldwide is at least twice as bad as researchers had previously thought and is ubiquitous in the Atlantic as well as the Pacific.

For more information and updates on the voyage, check the useful links below.

5gyres.org

Wendmag.com/Greenery

Riseaboveplastics.org

Surfrider.org

Tacky wallpaper is, finally and forever… out. But glowing wallpaper, on the other hand, may be the decor of the future –  providing people with wall art and greener lighting for their living spaces.

This may sound like a bit out of a bad science fiction novel, but it could be the reality of the near future. Swedish researchers along with an American coalition have designed a “flat-screen” wallpaper that can be produced from liquid solutions and rolled out as large, flexible “paper” from a printing press, and transferred to the walls of your living room.

The wallpaper was designed using the idea behind flat-screen technology, which uses organic light diodes called OLEDs, and comprises the screens of most modern TVs, computers and cell phones. However, OLED technology production is pretty expensive, and OLEDS are made of the rare and hard-to-recycle metal alloy indium tin oxide. The relative inefficiency of OLED technology led researchers to develop an alternative transparent electrode out of graphene, a carbon material. This technology is known as organic light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs), and could pave the way for a glowing wallpaper future.

“Once made commercially viable, glowing wallpaper could provide better widespread lumination across a room than traditional lightbulbs, be more energy efficient, easier to recycle, and create a super-cool, Tron-like atmosphere. Furthermore, the raw material for the fully organic and metal-free LEC is inexhaustible and can even be recycled as fuel.” Now that’s something to glow about.

[Via: mnn]

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Green collar jobs may soon follow blue to China. For better or worse, white collar doesn’t seem to be going anywhere…
China Is World Leader in Clean Energy
US Must Transition to Clean Power by 2012 or Miss the Chance

Follow Joe Mohr’s cartoonery at JoeMohrToons.com and on Twitter at @GreenCartoons…

It’s easy to put your curbside recycling out week after week, but many oddities and electronics tend to end up in trash for lack of knowledge about how and where to recycle them. The good news is, according to the recycling website Earth911’s annual recycling report, more people than ever are looking into how they can properly recycle “random” items, from computers to used motor oil, to paint. This shows that consumers are recycling more of the items they have around the house, rather than trashing them altogether.

In 2009, the top ten searched items on Earth911 were the following:

1. Computers
2. Batteries
3. Televisions
4. Paint
5. Aluminum Cans
6. Used Motor Oil
7. CFLs
8. Glass
9. Fluorescent Lamps
10. Christmas Trees

[Via: Earth911]

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The Obama Administration announced today that it is forming a new agency dedicated to studying global warming. With a rapidly warming planet, polar melting, rising sea levels and all of that other nasty stuff that climate change promises to offer, Obama has expressed concern for America to become a leader in cleaner technologies.

The new Climate Service — as Commerce Secretary Gary Locke  referred to it — will work with the National Weather Service and National Ocean Service branches of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Together, they will provide easy access to climate information.

[Via: MSNBC]

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Try as we might to conserve energy in our homes, sometimes it can be difficult to know exactly how much is too much. This is where the “Monitoring Our Energy” (M.O.E.) device by industrial designer Liz McKibbon comes in. The object, which looks like a small radio of sorts, actually monitors one’s water and energy use, and shows us how we’re doing. One antenna, equipped with a small LED lighting system, monitors water, the other, electricity. Green LED lights on the the antennae correspond with conservative energy/water usage, and a happy smiley face cartoon on the monitor pops up. On the other hand, when electricity or water use gets too high, the red lights go on, and a crying face replaces the happy one. The smiley and sad faces may seem a bit much to some, but the M.O.E. is targeted specifically to kids and families, and could help youngsters learn how to conserve energy in a fun, easy way.

[Via: Eco Friend]

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If you’ve ever wondered what makes the Lysol under your bathroom sink appear strikingly neon in color, and if it’s ever seemed strange to you that detergents and bath soaps don’t have ingredient lists, you’re not alone.  In fact, environmental advocates, including groups such as the American Lung Association and the Sierra Club, want to know more,  and they want you, the public, to know more about what common cleaners, detergents and soaps contain in the way of potentially hazardous chemicals.

This Thursday, environmental advocates in New York made began a court battle, demanding that big-time companies such as Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive reveal the make-up of common household products (Ajax, Ivory and Tide, to name a few). Currently, Federal Environmental laws do not require most household cleaning products to reveal any of their ingredients. But if environmental advocacy groups win the case, companies will have to at least reveal their ingredients to the state. The hope is that this will spark nationwide chemical regulation (full ingredient disclosure) and reform.

Although the cleanser industry claims that the case is unwarranted, and that concerns about health risks are “misinformed,” a Senate subcommittee in Washington recently examined current science on people’s exposure to toxic chemicals and found that some studies “link cleaning product components to asthma, antibiotic resistance, hormone changes and other health problems.” The Soap and Detergent Association says “the research is flawed.”

Regardless of such claims, until full disclosure of chemicals is legally required, we can’t really know what kinds of chemicals we’re spraying around. And if we can’t even know that, how are we supposed to know if they’re safe or healthy? As a Buffalo Sierra Club member stated, until we know the chemical make-up of common household items, “We must be careful about exposures for all household chemicals.”

[Via:msnbc]

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Here at Wend, we believe travel is paramount to everyone’s happiness. But travel often means hopping on a big plane, which, unfortunately, means contributing immensely to air pollution and global climate change. What’s more, according to the Environmental Health Issues‘ monthly journal, “Air traffic is expected to double nationally by the year 2017.” That’s a scary thought when you consider just how many planes are already spanning the skies every single day. The above is a visual depiction of just that — air traffic during a 24-hour period.

So, what’s a wanderlust soul to do? We’d like to think there’s an easy answer, but we’re not so sure. Help us out by heading to the comments section below — Tell us what you think eco-travelers can do to maintain a small-ish carbon footprint while pursuing their travel desires. Is it possible?

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