03/01/2017

The Five Innovations That Shaped Sustainability In 2016

The Guardian - 

From edible cutlery to drone vaccines, we celebrate the technologies and innovations that promise to advance sustainability efforts in the years ahead
Drones could soon be employed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to help endangered ferret species. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
It’s been a rollercoaster of a year. In the world of sustainability alone, we saw the landmark Paris climate change agreement come into force; learned how rising temperatures in the Arctic are negatively impacting local residents; and watched as the world’s top conservationists mourned the declining state of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
And then, a bombshell: a certain “short-fingered vulgarian” won the US presidential race and called into question everything from America’s basic environmental protection to Nasa’s ongoing climate change research. Corporate America took evasive action, signing a letter telling Donald Trump it is serious about sustainability, while others began unpacking Trump’s emphasis on “clean coal” and what it really means for the future of energy in the US.
But it hasn’t all been doom and gloom. While the rest of the world struggled to come to terms with the aforementioned craziness, innovators, scientists and tech heads worked quietly from the sidelines to come up with solutions. And some succeeded: from a trashcan that sucks up ocean garbage to a drone that delivers vaccines to endangered ferrets, here are our top picks for this year’s best sustainable tech.

A trashcan for the ocean
Peter Ceglinski, left, and Andrew Turton invented the Seabin device, which traps garbage floating around marinas and docks. Photograph: Seabin
It’s no secret that our oceans are turning into swirling garbage dumps. There are some 5.25tn pieces of floating plastic debris in the oceans right now, and it’s estimated that some 8m metric tons of plastic waste enter global waters every year.
Earlier this year, Peter Ceglinski and Andrew Turton, two surfers from Australia, came up with a device they’re calling the Seabin – a kind of submersible garbage can that captures floating trash. Picture a cylinder, with the upper opening just below the surface of the water. An electric pump draws water through the bottom of the cylinder, creating a vortex around the upper edge that pulls in water and floating trash. A bag filter, made of natural material, collects the trash and allows water to pass through.
After raising more than $267,000 in an Indiegogo campaign to help build the device, Ceglinski and Turton are keen to start selling the Seabin to marinas around the world. First stop: Miami, Florida, where Miami Beach’s marinas manager wants to start using the Seabin in 2017 to counter the bags, bottles, paper plates and forks found daily in the water.

A handheld cancer-detecting device
A startup has invented a DNA analyzer that could potentially revolutionize healthcare in the developing world. Photograph: QuantuMDx
Earlier this year, British-based tech firm QuantuMDx developed a new, low-cost diagnostic DNA analyzer the size of a smartphone which is being billed as a “handheld lab”. The device – called Q-Poc – can accurately diagnose everything from cancers to infectious diseases in minutes. Although it is currently in alpha testing stage, the company hopes to get the product in the hands of doctors by early 2018.
Q-Poc runs on a solar-powered battery and it’s designed to read biological samples submitted via a credit card-size cartridge. It can work with a range of sample types: swabs can be used to detect sexually-transmitted infections, while saliva is used to detect tuberculosis. (Tests for other diseases will be added at a later date.) The device uses mobile technology, enabling the test results to be geo-stamped and shared in real time.
The prospect of a speedy diagnosis at a patient’s side is exciting, particularly in countries where access to medical care is a challenge. Subject to regulatory approval by the World Health Organization (WHO), QuantuMDx hopes to initially roll out the Q-Poc unit in South Africa, before expanding to other markets.

Stuff you can eat (instead of throwing it away)
Even if the spoons aren’t eaten, once used, they can decompose in a few days. Photograph: Bakeys
It was a big year for edible everyday items, like cutlery and beer cans. First up, an Indian cutlery company, Bakeys, invented cutlery that you can eat as a way to tackle plastic waste in oceans and landfill. (Welcome to a new geological epoch of trash – scientists are calling it the manmade Anthropocene.)
Plastic cutlery significantly contributes to this problem – estimates suggest the US alone uses 40bn plastic utensils a year. Hence the need for edible versions. Bakeys makes vegan-friendly cutlery from rice, wheat and an ancient grain called sorghum, which was picked because it doesn’t go soggy when immersed in liquid.
The cutlery comes in three flavors: savory (salt and cumin); sweet (sugar); and plain. And, if you’re wondering – it kind of tastes like a dry cracker.
Why not wash down the cutlery with an edible beer holder? Americans are consuming more beer it seems – 67bn beer cans each year, apparently. According to the Brewers Association, this number is expected to grow significantly as craft breweries get more popular.
The problem is that plastic beer can holders pose a threat to fish and marine wildlife when they end up in the ocean. Saltwater Brewery, based in Florida, has come up with a solution: biodegradable, edible beer pack rings made from wheat and barley waste. The rings disintegrate within two hours of being in the ocean, which prevents fish or other sea animals getting stuck. They’re also harmless if ingested by curious fish.
More than 50 craft breweries have already contacted Saltwater expressing an interest in using the edible rings. The brewery is now developing metal molds capable of making 400,000 rings per month and hopes to build a centralized production facility by 2017.

A drone that helps endangered species
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) hope to bombard a ferret habitat in Montana with a vaccine administered via specially designed drones. Photograph: Will Singleton/AP
One of 2016’s most heartwarming stories revolved around a cunning plan by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to bombard a ferret habitat in Montana with a vaccine administered via specially designed drones that can “shoot” pellets in three directions at the same time.
All this in a bid to save the endangered black-footed ferret. The vaccine pellets are actually intended for the prairie dog population inside the habitat at the UL Bend National Wildlife Refuge. The ferrets are dependent upon prairie dogs for food and shelter, but a flea-borne disease called sylvatic plague has slowly been killing the prairie dogs off.
The FWS came up with a “glorified gumball machine” to spit out the vaccine pellets. The machine which can be attached to a drone which uses GPS to drop the pellets throughout the habitat. Oh, and if you’re wondering: the FWS said lab tests show that prairie dogs find the bait in the vaccines “delicious”.

Using 3D printers to eliminate plastic waste
A report by a leading markets analyst predicted the 3D printing materials market would grow by nearly 266% over the next five years. Photograph: Alamy 
As we’ve established, humans produce a lot of trash – apparently of the more than 300m tons of plastic produced globally every year, one refuse truck’s worth ends up in our waters, landfills and streets every minute.
One of our favorite stories this year came from India, where a local entrepreneur has set up a production facility at a local rubbish dump, where waste pickers convert high-density polyethylene (HPDE) – mostly used for plastic bottles – into 3D printing filament to eventually be sold to 3D printing companies.
The market for 3D printing filament – the majority of which is made from virgin plastic – is growing rapidly. A recent report predicted the 3D printing materials market will grow by nearly 266% in the next five years.
And, while the market for ethical filament is still relatively small, the greatest potential 3D printing seems to be offering the developing world is employment – there are an estimated 15 million people globally who currently make their living from waste picking, for example.

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Cabinet Papers 1992-93: Reluctant States Held Back Policy Greening

The Australian - Graham Lloyd

Deep divisions between the state and federal governments over ­climate change policy can be traced back to the earliest negoti­ations on the issue more than a quarter of a century ago.
Keating government cabinet records show Canberra's biggest challenge on greenhouse gas actions came from reluctant state and territory leaders.
In contrast to today, when states are outbidding the federal government on renewable energy targets and demanding tougher action, the call in 1992 was for limited action of "no regrets" with a focus on the economy.
In May 1992, state leaders ­argued the federal government was "seeking to settle policy ­positions within too tight a time frame".
By that October, state and territory officials had supported the "general no-regrets framework and phased approach".
But some were "cautious about the question of incorporating ­externalities in energy pricing ­because of the current policies aimed at reducing energy prices for consumers".
The international negotiations on climate change action that eventually led to Australia signing the Kyoto Protocol coincided with a struggle inside the Keating cabinet on environment policy as the government sought to reposition itself from the Hawke years.
Keating wanted a more muscular, business focus but was compelled to lead Australia's response to building international negotiations on climate change.

 Keating archives 1992-93
The 1992 cabinet records document a year-long process to bring reluctant state governments on side. State and territory leaders made it clear they were "not strongly committed" to either ecologically sustainable development or greenhouse reduction strategies, and resented the pace at which the federal government sought to settle policy positions.
Finally, cabinet endorsed support for the UN Framework Convention on ­Climate Change, in particular by assisting developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region to develop capacities for adaptation — with the caveat of no commitment to binding targets before other developed nations.
Ministers agreed in December 1992 that "our capacity to continue to protect Australia's economic and trade interests" remained the priority.
Analysis of the cabinet papers shows deep divisions about the balance between environment and economic development.
As treasurer, Keating was central to the group of finance and ­resource ministers, whose dissatisfaction with the "green" compromises tolerated or favoured by Hawke fed into leadership ­ructions.
Keating's decision not to join 108 heads of state or government at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in June 1992 is often taken as indicative of disengagement, but his cabinet ultimately approved arrange­ments for ­ecologically sus­t­ainable development, including a greenhouse gas ­response.

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Bleached: Laura Jones's Hope For The Reef

The Guardian - 

The artist says her undeniably sad portraits of bleached coral on the Great Barrier Reef are about resilience: 'It's not a fragile delicate flower … it's so important to be optimistic and do what we can to protect it'
Laura Jones is pained by the delicate balance she wants to strike. Her paintings of coral bleaching are going to be engulfing, immersive and undeniably sad. But she wants them to express hope and resilience, too.
It's something she keeps coming back to before, during and after I visit her studio, where she is preparing a major exhibition.
"It's not a fragile, delicate flower," Jones says of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. "It's quite resilient. Somehow I need to show that in the paintings. But still show that we're really hammering it."
Partly inspired by the Guardian's in-depth coverage of coral bleaching in 2016, including around Lizard Island in the northern reef, Jones packed her bags and became an artist-in-residence on the island for 10 days in August.
Diary note from 19 August
I set out for Lizard Island after being in Melbourne for three days for a series of art fairs. After a quick stop at my home in Sydney to pick up my camera, art supplies and a wetsuit, I headed for far north Queensland. From Cairns I made the trip to the research station on a tiny six-seater plane. The journey included spectacular views of the reef and the bright blue sky looked like it was melting into the ocean.
When she got there, she landed in the epicentre of what was the worst bleaching event the Great Barrier Reef had ever seen. Just a few months earlier, about a quarter of the coral on the entire 2,300km length had been killed, with 85% of that mortality in the northern third – right where Jones landed.
She would go snorkelling or diving for four hours a day, and then go back to her workspace – a desk in a lab shared with scientists – where she would sketch what she saw and write in her diary.
21 August
I am preparing to work by stretching my paper to make watercolour drawings and wetting and taping my paper to the table so that it won't buckle. I'm really enjoying painting and drawing with scientists in the room while they do their research. It's my own private and highly entertaining scientific podcast! They are great fun and I'm starting to see that there are a lot of quirky similarities between artists and scientists.
In the months since, she has been developing an exhibition of what she learned from her time there. She plans for it to be immersive, and already the canvases that wrap around her studio in Sydney's Marrickville make you feel submerged in an alien, underwater world.
One of Laura Jones' coral artworks. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
"I thought it was important to kind of make it feel like the reef was in the room," she says.
To do that, she's producing a series of huge oil paintings, with thick layers of paint that emerge from the canvas, creating sense of depth and translucence. "Hopefully I will build the reef inside. And I'm choosing to do large-scale paintings too, because I want it to be an immersive show."
In her studio she keeps a stack of watercolour and ink sketches she made each day while she was on Lizard Island. Some of them are playful and some of them are very literal drawings of what she saw there.
"The drawings for me were a process of discovery," Jones says. "The drawings were me getting a feel for what I was looking at – documenting the experience of being at Lizard. I was memorising the colour of what I saw under the water – not in a literal way but in an emotional way. Those impressions are then what feed into the paintings.
"A drawing is a tiny window of an idea … It's easy to be playful with drawings … And then there's always something in your studio that grounds you and you can go back to. They remind me to open up or be playful or do something that is a bit unexpected.
"More than a photograph, they provoke a stronger memory of the time."
These watercolour and ink sketches were made by Laura Jones during her visit to Lizard Island. 'The drawings were me getting a feel for what I was looking at – documenting the experience of being at Lizard,' she says, adding: 'Those impressions are then what feed into the paintings.'

She's also creating a series of what she describes as "unreal and unscientific" sculptures of the bleached coral. "They're sort of growing organically," Jones says. "They start – I don't know how they're going to end up. I just build them – it's like the way coral grows, I suppose."
But her 10 days on Lizard Island, tagging along with scientists, has made her painfully aware of the intricacies in communicating about environmental disasters. "The message I got from the scientists was that it's so important to be optimistic and do what we can to protect the reef," she says. "It's not over for it."
A bleached coral sculpture by Laura Jones. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
22 August
I'm thinking back to the branching coral everywhere, still standing, but covered in algae. The soft corals disintegrating and rotting … It's frightening that it happens over such a short time frame … I am overwhelmed by the scientists here because they are optimistic despite all the damage, and threat of future bleaching events. In June 2016, the coral started creeping back and that is what I am seeing here now in August. In November there will be the spawning, where new corals (polyps?) will appear and settle onto the reef and start to grow. Parrotfish bite bits of coral off, like snapping a carrot in two, creating a good spot for the coral to settle on. Anne tells me there is still a good enough population of coral that regeneration is possible. But the overwhelming message is that we can't keep hammering our reef. It knows how to regenerate. We're lucky it can do that, but we need to manage for resilience.
She has researched the issue, reading scientific papers about how unmotivating it can be to hear about environmental catastrophes. After our meeting, she emails me the paper, telling me: "I liked the quote 'catastrophism is intimately connected to despair, an emotion that can counteract the very passion and sense of agency to which such discourses seek to appeal'.
"I liked it because I want to make an exhibition that simply inspires people to talk about the reef," she wrote. "I don't want the paintings to feel so dark that people just see a blur of mud and algae and no hope. I want them to see that the bleaching is like an alarm telling people to make noise about it."
'I'm choosing to do large-scale paintings too, because I want it to be an immersive show,' says Jones. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
23 August
It is particularly obvious today that the staghorn corals are nearly completely wiped out. I see some struggling and looking almost dead, which just highlights how … common the algae-covered skeletons are and how beautiful it would have been before. I find a little bright purple stag horn coral and make sure I get a good photo of it so that I can draw it later. As I swim I think about how I'm going to paint and draw things the whole time. I don't want to only paint dead or dying coral, I want to paint the survivors, too.
As a result of all that contemplation, her paintings and sculptures, many of which are still being completed – and others yet to be started – walk a poignant line between beauty and tragedy. They don't capture the way the coral looks exactly – but the way they made her feel.
"These paintings are not at all literal," she says. "They're sort of an amalgamation of images I was given, and the feeling of being there.
"I think paintings have a lot of emotion and I'm hoping to bring that to this conversation. I want to inspire people not with scientific depictions of the reef but with an emotional depiction."
All that contemplation about the message she communicates has changed the direction of the work and will now take her on a second adventure.

Scenes from the studio. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian





















In February she'll pack her bags again and head to Heron Island. "I think it's really important to have a narrative in the work and I'm slowly building that up. But I don't want it to be a catastrophic ending."
24 August
Decided to go snorkelling just out the front of the research station, not far from the shore. It's the first time I've just swum out rather than gone on a boat. So much of the coral is dead. It's like a graveyard … Mauve and mustard are the most dominant colours under the water. I find myself craving more of a spectrum, and imagine what it would have looked like as a full and healthy underwater garden.
She says she wants to see what it might have looked like around Lizard Island before the bleaching, and what it is that is worth saving.
Jones' previous works have mostly been still life exhibitions of flowers – something she found herself doing after growing up in the Blue Mountains, surrounded by wildflowers, and then working as a florist during her studies.
"I've always been someone who paints about the beauty of nature and life so I think it's really important that I have healthy coral paintings too," she says.
"I want to draw people in and go, 'Look how beautiful this is. We have to protect it,' rather than just have a room full of dead stuff." 

Laura Jones' solo exhibition, tentatively called Bleached, will be shown at the Olsen Irwin Gallery in Sydney between 17 May and 14 June 2017

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