Vice gets into the nitty-gritty of pollution with Toxic

Vice, which is probably most famous for the homonymous magazine, also produces its own series these days, including Toxic, a look into the worst consequences of industrial pollution. The company draws a lot of fire for being too "awesome" for its own good and the show tends toward detached doomsaying, but both still bring much warranted attention to these issues.

So far the show has shown me how corruption is hampering waste disposal in southern Italy, how the oil sand industry is transforming Alberta and given me a closer glimpse into what's playing out in the Pacific Garbage Patch, but it covers several other themes, such as the gulf oil spill. The few episodes I have watched have elucidated some lessons for me as regards the sustainability movement.

Biting the hand that feeds you

It's no secret that people go where the money is. At the same time, they may not necessarily agree with the work they're performing. In fact, many of those who work in the most environmentally destructive industries are poignantly aware of the repercussions of their actions. It's a situation where individual interests - the need to make a living - diverge from the common interest of preserving our resource base. That doesn't always have to be the case - I don't know that society could exist if it were - but for many individuals there are few other choices.

When promoting sustainability and many other initiatives it's important to take into account the consideration that conscientiously objecting is often a luxury. However, while portions of the population have no choice but to participate in activities they regard as destructive, there are opportunities to make up for them in other realms. The need for employment has significant implications for personal responsibility in one's capacity as a consumer and elsewhere in society.

That certain industries rely on the desperation of hires or inflated salaries to staff operations also makes a strong case for gradualism. The motive behind my interest in sustainability is to improve the quality of people's lives. That would hardly be attained by snuffing out petroleum and other industries overnight. There is currently a trade-off between material security and environmental health in the short-term for considerable sections of society. It doesn't have to stay that way, but it will as long as sufficient incentives are not in place to get the ball rolling toward an alternative equilibrium.

Instead of milking unsustainable industries for every last drop, whether that behavior's spurred by renumeration or mere inertia, professionals should be given the incentive to shift their skills and other investments to different areas. As those incentives come from the market, that will not happen until we exercise more responsibility as consumers and citizens. That process starts with the simplest of choices: what will I eat today?

What will I consume?

As things currently stand you won't be able to find a green version of every product you need or would like, but some are clearly better than others. The obvious choice is the one that uses less packaging, or the one that was produced in a closer location. While the World Wildlife Fund continues to make headway in its project to work with major companies and thus establish sustainability standards for industries from the top down, making informed choice from the other end is one of the greatest outlets for progress on this issue that we can exercise.

I spoke with my sister the other day about gas prices and told her that she shouldn't expect them to get lower. It's supply and demand, I explained. There's less of a resource to go around as more and more people desire it. Since the likelihood of discovering new oil deposits substantially large enough to offset that demand is extremely low, it's only a matter of time before prices rise enough so as to make production financially impossible. Before that day comes though, but for the wealthiest people, that trend will make many of today's lifestyles financially impossible.

I predictably suggested that, in light of its other undesirable side effects, people should start limiting their use of gasoline. For her that would mean not going to work or relocating, neither of which are very feasible. People typically can't move on a whim and centralized cities don't sprout up in any short amount of time either.

Yet these practical constraints as they are inherent to any grassroots movement give industry time to restructure without disenfranchising too many people. But that change will only come about with the right encouragement and at the end of the day it necessitates conscious effort. Perhaps you can't move or giving up driving would be professional suicide for now, but you can send the message in other ways. Don't buy the styrofoam or plastic container produced from petroleum. Tell the business world oil's no longer as profitable as it once was.

In addressing individual incentives to purchase more responsibly there's a great role for the informal sector to play. It's often family and friends or considerations regarding them that keep us in line. These communities play a critical role in keeping us on track and the consequences of living without them are all too evident. It is a sense of connection and the resulting trust that keeps some societies more free of crime and other social ills than others.

Fashion forward

Unfortunately for citizens of the USA in this respect, it has become very easy to selectively pick out who to associate with, isolate yourself and generally avoid pressure from others to change. This typically manifests itself in individuals surrounded by people with the same views. I guess this might be one manifestation of freedom, but it's self-defeating when it divides society and threatens to shut down government.

To make up for a lack of social cohesion in our society, status symbols have grown in importance. In a world where you know no one, superficial identification has become critical. In some ways it helps to reinforce the divisive phenomena already in play, but on other occasions it can and has lent itself to ameliorating issues.

Despite the best efforts of tobacco companies, for instance, smoking in the most public of places has become so stigmatized as to be shameful. There are certain settings where cigarettes remain a symbol of membership in an inner circle (see Vice), but in general they're on the decline thanks to conscious efforts to make them unfashionable. The easiest way to accomplish that is to forge an association between the product or behavior you're targeting and low class or inferiority.

It would be foolish to think that uprooting our society in the name of sustainability would achieve the desired effect, as the attempt to privatize Russia overnight all too clearly illustrates. Society is a "smart" organization and the only organization we've got, but it still has a learning curve. Momentum toward a more sustainable industrial ecology will have to be graduated for that reason and garnered through existing avenues of influence.

At the same time, gradualism has been invoked to keep things from changing at all. In keeping with the theme, this is the rationale by which dictators have propped themselves up in Uzbekistan and other formerly Soviet nations. However, if people don't start implementing changes in their daily lives, shocks might come - not from top-down - but from outside. And nature has no regard for how long it takes us to adapt.

Bioplastics catch on with major companies

I've come across a few notable developments recently that show how much the push for plastic alternatives has penetrated the decision-making level of major companies.

First, there's the case of SunChips. This company had introduced a 100% completely compostable bag for its chips only to backpedal following consumer complaints that it was too loud. At first I was concerned that SunChips was using this as a convenient excuse to renege on its commitment to more sustainable packaging, but they've come back with a quieter version which they achieved by re-engineering its adhesive.

Perhaps the most exciting prospect for bioplastics is unfolding as a result of competition between two of the world's largest beverage companies, PepsiCo and Coca Cola. For two years Coke has had a bottle on the market that incorporates plant materials into 30% of its content. Just this week, however, Pepsi announced that by next year it will release a bottle composed entirely of plant-based and renewable materials, including switchgrass, pine bark and corn husk.

That companies as large as these are undertaking such measures stands to set a standard for the whole industry. Already, as TechCrunch's GreenTech reports, the plastic for Coke's PlantBottle is being shared with Heinz. The vice president of the World Wildlife Fund, Jason Clay, theorizes that by implementing sustainable business practices, the world's top 100 companies can save society and environment from the worst effects of overconsumption, a contention he explains in this TED talk.



Way to go, PepsiCo.

The Math Problem & The Chemistry Problem in Sustainability

So far my posts have mainly focused on reducing your ecological footprint by minimizing persistent waste, particularly plastic. This is an example of what I will call the chemistry or chemical problem in sustainability. Screening plastic from your consumer basket constitutes part of "closing the loop," that is, only participating in the proliferation of materials that can currently be broken down and reused indefinitely. Another component of our efforts will have to address what I'm referring to as the math or numbers problem.

Even if all nondegradable and nonrecyclable materials ceased to be produced and dispersed in our economy and ecology, this would be no guarantee of sustainability. It would allow for the wholesale redistribution of resources for different purposes, but it would not mean they would be enough for ours. Our longevity as a society could easily remain jeopardized by the sheer quantity of our demand for these remaining renewable resources and an inability to satisfy it.

I can take the most basic of these resources as an example: fresh water. It is likely the most essential ingredient to survival that we risk losing access to. Although fresh water is continually produced by natural cycles and treatment, the scale of this process might be outstripped by perceived needs. In order to secure fresh water and similar resources that society will require to go on existing as we know it, we will have to manage our use, perhaps by checking demand, to ensure our needs won't exceed rates of production.

The same holds true for all other renewable resources. Though they can be renewed, lest we destabilize our society, we must not entirely consume them before such turnover can be had. Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that prices as they are determined under our current economic arrangements do not provide the proper incentive to behave this responsibly. Indeed, water, air and favorable weather are consumed publicly and as such easily fall victim to the tragedy of the commons, a phenomenon that has most notably played out in global climate change and our shortcomings in addressing it.

I am not suggesting that all resources should come into private ownership, even if such a thing were possible. I certainly don't think that anybody should have to pay for the right to breathe and I luckily have yet to meet someone whose morality is informed by economics in this way. At the same time, we do need to establish better feedback mechanisms that will inhibit those behaviors that stand to lead to our self-destruction. Attempts to establish markets through cap-and-trade programs were a good place to start and would be the economical thing to do.

Grey Areas

I have proposed defining environmental issues in these two ways, but they are by no means mutually exclusive and there is a region of blurriness between them. In fact, many of our current environmental challenges suffer from both of these conditions. Above I discussed how overconsumption can deplete resources, and that’s how what was originally a problem of numbers can lead to one of chemistry. Take deforestation for example. It has already compounded the chemical problem of greenhouse gases by reducing the planet's ability to absorb them. In addition, though I doubt this day will ever come, if left unchecked this process could lead to the extinction of trees along with all the services they offer. This would mean little for the composition of the atmosphere if other plants could pick up the slack, but what if they too were gone? Or what if trees - or even just particular species - provided services nothing else could?

To make my point clearer, imagine there exists an organism A that is the exclusive producer of product A. If product A is essential to the healthy functioning of our economy, the loss of organism A would translate into serious damages, not to mention the effects on other systems involved. Product A could be anything - a nutrient, a drug, carbon sequestration.

Similarly, if an organism B is the sole decomposer of waste B, with its destruction we lose the digestive pathway for that waste and continued production of it will inevitably clog our biosphere in much the same way that cholesterol clogs arteries. Now, humans are innovative and nature is adaptable. We might be able to invent an industrial process in time to make up for the extinction of this vital form of life. If we fail, however, nature might eventually fill the gap, but we won't last long enough to witness it.

Overconsumption taken to this extreme is a threat to all things that rely on self-replication. Fresh water can be extracted from salt water or produced as a result of the water cycle; its creation does not necessitate preexisting fresh water. On the other hand, a bacterium, despite all our advances in biotechnology, still only comes from other bacteria, unless you think you can recreate the random processes responsible for its evolution. Thus, self-replicating resources always require a starter amount, the decimation of which converts what was once an issue of scale into a potential chemical complication.

The other area where these two types of problems overlap is in addressing one with a solution that causes the other. The case of the math problem causing the chemistry problem is immediately more obvious to me than its opposite. This stems from the fact that so much of our progress has been based on getting more from less. As a consequence, although we haven't always been aware of it, we have been willing to expedite production and related duties using harmful methods. Instead of actually getting more for less, this strategy often results in getting something now and paying later - or more commonly having someone else pay later.

The shortcomings of this approach are manifest in the current condition of the world's oceans. Among other things, they suffer from toxification, a result of our aim to more efficiently deliver food stuffs. In order to get products into the hands of people cheaply and quickly we have resorted to the use of plastic packaging. However, because plastic is so cheap it is easy for people to nonchalantly throw away. This would not necessarily be a problem except that, due to its chemical nature, plastic now comprises the ocean's toxic garbage patches.

It is in this way that we again exchange a numbers problem for a chemical one. The latter in turn can exacerbate the situation and make it worse than it originally was, leaving us with both problems. To that effect, the application of plastic in overcoming barriers to better distributing food has compromised the productivity of ocean fisheries. For reasons such as these I find it hard to justify inducing chemical issues to address numerical problems.

Unified Solutions

Nevertheless, getting more from less is the only way to solve the numbers problem. With world population approaching 7 billion we must achieve gains in productivity to meet its basic needs, not to mention capitalize on the prospect of higher living standards. What doesn’t make sense is exchanging the quality of our public health for these gains, since that defeats the purpose of obtaining them. In spite of this, that phenomenon persists because it leads to islands of greater material wealth and better health amid regions that are forced to bear the costs. As a consequence the latter unnecessarily suffer deterioration in those same areas.

One need only look at attempted solutions to numbers problems to see how easily they can pan out in these ways. The histories of DDT, CFCs and PCBs all too clearly illustrate how inadequately we account for the effects new compounds will have on environment and society. When not stemming from individual self-interest, toxic pollution and its accompanying health effects have resulted from a lack of foresight. I doubt that the initial producers of plastic, for instance, could have known that the versatile substance they were making a living from would today be leaching toxins into our lives. For this reason, it is worth taking a more conservative approach to our choice of materials in problem solving. Many of them will have to come in time-tested forms to ensure that they are biologically innocuous.

In achieving sustainability we face the dual challenge of increasing productivity and preventing the worst effects of toxic pollution. During the industrial revolution, gains in efficiency could not be achieved without environmental degradation. That dynamic by its very nature could never be more than a temporary one and we now have the resources at our disposal to transform it. To start with, as many companies and individuals are already doing, more can be done to replace conventional plastics with bioplastics or otherwise supplant toxic chemicals with biotics, but we can also downsize the scale of our material consumption. Only by thus addressing both the math and chemical problem can we sustainably resolve productivity issues. Until this dual consideration is incorporated into practice on a grand scale, significant increases in quality of life will not be achieved. Instead we will witness to a greater degree than we do today localized increases in affluence attained by pushing costs onto others. Fortunately, the realm of human activity is not a zero-sum game. It’s thanks to this that the average quality of human lives has improved over time and we can go on believing in progress.

Clean Energy Prospects: Bloom Boxes and Artificial Photosynthesis

In keeping with the themes of my last post, I'm providing some more sources (or entertainment, if you like) on these topics.

In the first video 60 Minutes gives us a rundown on the Bloom Box, which might come to replace the conventional grid and alternative energy sources as our main source of power. Venture capitalists still have their doubts but one of them also asserts that the emerging clean energy market is likely the greatest economic opportunity of our century.

At the same time, fuel cells have historically been an expensive and high-maintenance technology. They require expensive inputs, such as titanium, and have durability issues. Bloom Energy has responded by reducing the costs of its units, to make them more competitive than alternatives. They have replaced titanium with a cheaper alloy and the plate of their cells is a sand-based ceramic. The aim of their creator, K. R. Sridhar, is to make household units available for less than $3000.

So far production of the Bloom Box has been cost-effective enough to convince big companies to purchase them. The list already includes Google, FedEx, Walmart, Staples and eBay. It helps that the technology is more effective than solar cells and that California provides incentives that make the effective cost even lower.

Bloom Boxes require half as much gas as conventional power plants do to produce the same amount of electricity. If that gas is biogas from landfill waste the process is carbon-neutral. The cells can also apparently use solar energy to create electricity, though the mechanics behind it are not made clear.

My assessment is that Bloom Boxes will start off primarily powered by natural gas and little incentive will exist to foster greater use of biogas. If this comes to be the case, though this technology stands to cut greenhouse gas emissions, it will not be sufficient.



In this second video, Professor Nate Lewis expounds on what he believes is necessary for a clean energy breakthrough. He suggests the revolution will come in being able to store energy in chemical bonds, much like plants do, instead of in batteries.

Finally it is worth noting that Lewis' technology could be used in combination with Sridhar's. In this arrangement artificial leaves could convert solar energy directly into hydrogen fuel to power Bloom Boxes, which would render them carbon-neutral.

Emerging Green Technologies: Alternative energy, biofuel and bioplastic

The "Cleaner" episode of PBS's Making Stuff investigates essentially all the same issues this blog does. I would feel redundant if that concern weren't outweighed by a much greater sense of direction and inspiration furnished by the initiatives showcased here.

Watch the full episode. See more NOVA.

The central theme of this episode is that using petroleum-derived electricity and materials to meet energy demands and structural needs too often results in persistent and undesirable side effects. The good news is that sustainable alternatives are quickly emerging to replace them. Here are the highlights:

Alternative Energy Technologies

1. Batteries & Electric Cars
Gasoline is one of the most conspicuous misuses of fossil fuels. We can phase it out of the market by designing better electric cars, but that inextricably necessitates the invention of more efficient batteries.

Conventional car batteries produce current in a lead-acid mix, but by using arrays of lithium-based batteries and an internal nanostructure that facilitates the flow of electrons, electrical output can be increased. This is an opportunity currently being explored by A123 Systems.

Unfortunately, battery-powered electric cars still require an external energy source to charge batteries. This wouldn't be a problem if our energy came from renewable sources like the sun or wind, but since we still predominately rely on fossil fuels to produce our electricity, making the switch to electric cars by itself would do little to address pollution and climate change.

2. Hydrogen fuel & fuel cells
General Motors is currently testing its model of hydrogen vehicle. The advantage of this technology is that the only byproduct resulting from its operation is water. As is the case with electric vehicles, hydrogen-powered ones require an external energy source. In this instance, it is required for the production of hydrogen gas.

An additional barrier to the widespread adoption of hydrogen vehicles is that hydrogen fuel must be stored under high pressure in order to fit within a car and even then cannot propel it as far as an equivalent volume of gasoline. The show zoomed in on this design challenge for an interesting segment on the natural materials readily available to overcome it.

The answer is feathers. University of Delaware professor Richard Wool has come up with the solution of heating them to form intricate carbon structures that expedite the concentration of hydrogen. He has in mind taking advantage of the copious amounts of chicken feathers tossed aside as a waste product in meat production. They come extremely cheap and are probably the cheapest possible solution to engineering obstacles in making hydrogen cars more competitive. Using feathers in this way serves the dual purpose of utilizing an otherwise expendable renewable resource and providing an alternative to functionally similar but cripplingly expensive man-made carbon nanotubes.

3. Biofuel
Instead of satisfying our fuel needs with substances derived from oil, we could use clean-burning alternatives made directly from plant matter. Ethanol is probably the most visible fuel in this arena and is commonly derived from corn and sugar. What's more, large scale production of biofuels could also be based on non-food crops, such as switchgrass, which may differ in nutritional requirements and restrict crowding out of food supplies.

Whatever the input, the production process of biofuels is benefiting from advances in biotechnology. Professor Jay Keasling of UC Berkley is behind the creation of genetically-modified bacteria that can produce clean-burning fuels that need no refining. This prospect stands to become a practical reality with more research in areas of genetic engineering and synthetic life. It would also translate into relatively few transition costs as fuel produced in this way would already be compatible with our combustion engine economy and associated infrastructure.



Alternative Material Technologies

Bioplastics
Ford is in the process of replacing 10% of the petroleum-derived plastics used in its automobiles with bioplastics. These include foam made from soy for seat cushioning and wheat-based details.

The host of the show, possibly in jest, says that it takes 400 steps to go from wheat to bioplastic, but I still wonder whether the technology to do so wasn't available before the advent of conventional plastics.

Mushroom mycelium is another key substance in the production of bioplastics. More information on it is available from this TED lecture by Eben Bayer, a designer who helped develop and commercialize the technology.

It's reported in the show that "only a third [of our plastics] can be replaced with bioplastics" and that the remaining two-thirds consists largely of cheap, disposable thermoplastics. The featured technologies for dealing with them involve incinerating them in closed systems by which the release of toxic and greenhouse gases is reduced to negligible levels and carbon nanotubes or electricity can be produced.

Although it offers a way of processing extant plastic pollution and added benefits, the problem with this type of waste treatment is that it requires that no plastic escape waste management channels. Moreover, it uses a lot of energy itself and while it doesn't produce emissions it does leave solid remains, the contents of which I can only imagine but guess likely contain heavy metals and other disruptors. I am hesitant to offer these approaches as solutions to our waste issues as they could easily be used to justify rampant waste, impulse buying and other detrimental behaviors symptomatic of a disposable lifestyle.

The remainder of the program discusses how giant batteries based on aluminum smelters can make the electrical grid more efficient and Bloom Energy, which offers localized electricity production at a fraction of the price and footprint, but I am most intrigued by artificial photosynthesis, which ties back into alternative energy.

Professor Nate Lewis of Caltech is spearheading practical applications of artificial photosynthesis. The technology is similar to that used in solar cells, but tweaked to allow for greater robustness and lower costs. When submerged in water Lewis' cells split it up into its constituent components of hydrogen and oxygen, allowing for the storage of energy in hydrogen fuel which could be used to power the electric cars mentioned earlier or anything else. Lewis is in the process of scaling his innovation for commercial use, but it can't happen quickly enough.

Seeing these exciting projects gives me hope and makes me wish that I could take a greater part in their development. Part of me wishes I had studied materials science. That might come later down the line.