The news: Considerably less than 1% of apparel is recycled. Most of the rest ends up dumped in a landfill or burned. A workforce of scientists hopes to alter that with a new approach that breaks down blended-fiber clothing into reusable, recyclable sections without having any sorting or separation in advance.
How they did it: Quite a few clothes are created of a blend of organic and artificial fibers. At the time these fibers are merged, they are tricky to independent. To tackle this trouble, the team applied a solvent that breaks the chemical bonds in polyester material even though leaving cotton and nylon intact. To speed up the system, they electrical power it with microwave power and incorporate a zinc oxide catalyst.
Why it matters: Whilst comparable techniques have been utilized to recycle pre-sorted plastic, this is the initial time they’ve been used to recycle combined-fiber textiles without any sorting essential. Browse the full tale.
—Sarah Ward
What new hydropower tech suggests about climate action
Back again at MIT Technological know-how Review’s ClimateTech party in 2022, Gia Schneider, a cofounder of Natel Strength, spoke about her company’s mission to design and style hydropower turbines that are safer for fish.
To illustrate her point, she shared grisly images of fish that had been strike by traditional turbine blades. On the other hand, the fish swimming through Natel’s turbines appeared fairly unbothered, curving around the blades and going on their merry way downstream.
Recently, our local climate reporter Casey Crownhart had a chat with Schneider about how Natel is doing work to modify hydropower engineering and juggle climate action with freshwater ecosystems to make hydropower a little bit a lot more fish-pleasant. Read the whole tale.
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