Saving Florida’s Oranges Starts With Soil

Ted Geltz has learned a hard lesson about land in Florida. It’s only good for two things: citrus and real estate.
“If you can’t make it in citrus, then you sell it for houses,” Geltz, the business development director for Locus Agricultural Solutions, told NationSwell.
Geltz, who has been in the citrus industry for more than four decades, has watched as acres of orange trees become apartment complexes, storefronts and suburban mansions. Florida’s citrus production has declined 70% since 2005 due largely to an incurable citrus disease, but Florida’s land value has remained strong. It’s a circumstance that’s pushed thousands of citrus growers to sell their land. 
For the few growers that remain, Geltz knows that their value isn’t just the land itself— it’s the soil. 

soil, citrus, carbon
Ted Geltz stands in a citrus grove in Central Florida.

Without the right soil, a citrus tree won’t have the nutrients it needs to stay healthy and produce juicy fruit. But healthy trees do more than just grow delicious food. They absorb carbon from the atmosphere and that carbon eventually cycles back into the soil, creating a carbon sink.
The planet’s soil has already stored an estimated 2,500 gigatons of carbon — four times more than the amount stored in all plants and animals and three times the amount currently in the atmosphere. By cultivating healthy soil, researchers believe there’s potential to store much more. 
It isn’t just dirt that stores carbon — it’s the millions of microbes living in the soil. “In a handful of soil, you’ll find tens of thousands of different types of bacteria, fungi, archaea, viruses and a whole soil food web,” Matthew Wallenstein, a professor of soil microbial ecology at Colorado State University, told NationSwell. 
When plants photosynthesize, they take in carbon. That carbon is used to help grow every part of a plant, from its roots to its stems and leaves. Excess carbon is released as carbon-rich compounds through the root system, and when a plant dies, the microbes take in additional carbon from the dead plant material. 
However, a long history of poor land management has created microbe-lacking soils and erosion. Many farm practices disrupt topsoil, where wind and water can sweep it away and release stored carbon. Since humans first began farming, there has been an estimated 133 gigatons of carbon released from the soil. 
“The fact that we’ve lost a lot of carbon suggests that there’s a really big capacity to restore those soils,” Wallenstein said. 
One way to mitigate climate change is to stop soil erosion and focus on restoration. Around the world, people are approaching ways to sequester carbon in soil from all angles. 
A common strategy being used to restore soil and stop its erosion is regenerative agriculture. Practices like rotating which crops are grown, using compost or cover crops help rebuild the soil’s biodiversity and allow it to store larger amounts of carbon. 
“There’s no silver bullet. It’s going to take a lot of different approaches, but soils offer one of the most scalable, practical, economical solutions today,” Wallenstein said. 
The startup Locus Agricultural Solutions believes it has one solution to help mitigate climate change and increase farmers’ yields. Locus Agricultural Solutions developed a combination of bacteria and fungi called Rhizolizer. When added to crops, it targets roots and root growth. This allows the plant to take in more nutrients, grow stronger and produce higher yields. 
“If the roots are healthy, the plant is healthy,” Karthik Karathur, the president of Locus Agricultural Solutions, told NationSwell. “It’s just like our gut, if we have a healthy gut, you predominantly are going to be healthy.”
The bacteria and fungi in Rhizolizer are traditionally found in soil. “It’s just that with industrial farming and the fact that we have done so much to the soil, the soils are not that healthy anymore,” Karathur said. While regenerative farming practices can help restore the soil, Rhizolizer accelerates this process, he said. 
Locus Agricultural Solutions isn’t the first company to develop microbial additives, but it is the first to ferment the product in highly concentrated small batches and ship it in a refrigerated system.
That approach has led to hopeful results. An acre with Rhizolizer sequesters 8.6 more tons of carbon each year than an acre without. With 40,000 acres across the U.S. using the technology, it’s the equivalent of taking 47,000 cars off the road. 
But the startup’s initial goal wasn’t to combat climate change. It was to help citrus growers in Florida. 
soil, florida, carbon, orange, citrus
Citrus growers across the entire state of Florida are battling citrus greening, a citrus disease that’s devastated the industry.

In Florida, the citrus belt has long been known as the country’s provider of the tangy fruits. The Valencia oranges used for juice, the navels found in school lunches and the grapefruits for breakfast all likely originated in Central Florida. 
In the 1970s, often referred to as the heyday of citrus, 941,000 acres of Florida were dedicated to producing 200 million boxes of fruit. Florida had well earned its title as a worldwide leader in citrus.
Then disaster hit. There were the freezes in 1983, 1985 and 1989, which damage the cold-intolerant trees. Citrus canker, a bacterial disease, infected the groves, and citrus blight followed soon after. Hurricanes struck.
But perhaps the worst challenge has been citrus greening.
In 2005, Florida saw its first symptoms of citrus greening, also known as huanglongbing or HLB. The disease attacks the tree’s vascular tissue, impairing its ability to take in nutrients. The trees weaken, growth slows and the fruits that develop never ripen. Today, citrus greening is present across the entire state — leading to a 21% decrease in the fresh fruit market and a 72% decrease in the production of fruits used for juicing. 
“In a period of about five years, it just devastated the industry,” said Geltz. “And a lot of people just threw their hands up and said I’m done.”
The growers that didn’t leave have tried everything to cure greening. 
Chris Troesch, a grower at Simpson Fruit Company, first tried targeting the psyllids, the insects infecting the citrus trees. But that didn’t work. 
Then helicopters sprayed insecticide at night. No luck.
Troesch applied other microbial additives to the trees, which ended up being “snake oil.” Microbial products have a historically bad reputation because they’re often transported thousands of miles. By the time they reach the farmer, they’re no longer fresh and no longer have the positive results. 
At one point, he was spending $2,500 to $3,000 per acre to keep the trees alive and productive, while the industry standard was closer to $850. It wasn’t a sustainable business model. 
“Our standard as Florida, we’re supposed to be number one on taste, and we lost it all,” he told NationSwell. 
Geltz convinced Troesch to give Rhizolizer a shot. He added it to his irrigation system and it helped. Troesch has used the product for two years and production is up 25%. 
Rhizolizer isn’t curing the trees of citrus greening, but it does have a positive effect. “It’s not that we’re eliminating the disease,” Teresa DeJohn, the director of marketing for Locus Agricultural Solutions, told NationSwell. “It’s that we’re able to keep the roots healthy and improve root growth, which is very rare with that disease.”
The result? Higher yields and hope that citrus still has a future in Florida.
Kris Sutton, a farmer at Faryna Grove Care and Harvesting, faced a similar reality two years ago. 
Born and raised in Florida, he started working at Faryna in 2005. Between 2008 and 2009, citrus greening hit his 850 acres. 
The trees shrunk in size, and the little fruit that the tree produced wasn’t edible.
He, too, tried countless solutions with no success. Geltz persuaded him to try Rhizolizer instead, and it worked. 
“The last two years have been the first time I’ve seen the production go up,” the 41-year-old said. 
Sitting behind the once unproductive grove in Umatilla, Florida, is a trailer park. Sutton thinks about what the grove could’ve been if Rhizolizer hadn’t helped. “It’d be motor homes.”
With healthier and more productive trees, Sutton said he doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. He hopes the land stays in the family, and with a tractor-loving 6-year-old, there’s a good chance it will. 
Fifteen percent of Florida’s remaining citrus acreage is using Rhizolizer. The citrus community is tight-knit and word travels fast, which has helped focus Agricultural Solutions. 
Tim Whitaker, a grower at May Brothers Citrus, watched neighboring groves grow and strengthen. “Well, what are they doing? What’s making the difference?” he asked.
It was Rhizolizer. Over lunch, Whitaker pulls out his phone to show pictures of a healthy, productive tree completely covered with healthy Hamlin oranges. 
“The tree can’t hold much more fruit than that,” he said. “But just a few years ago, you could count the number of fruit on a tree with two hands.” 
Outside of Florida, Locus Agricultural Solutions is working with farmers who grow everything from cantaloupes, to potatoes, to apples and strawberries. 
Depending on the location and crop, farmers have seen a yield increase between 5% and 45%, said Karathur. 
Since Rhizolizer is fermented in small batches, the goal is to have a microbrewery in every farming community. 
Those breweries, Karathur believes, will support rural communities, restore land and build a future for the planet. 
“Human beings, plants, everything is dependent upon the soil, healthy soil,” he said. “The soil needs to go back to being the carbon sink that it always was, and that it’s made to be.”
More: The Key to Healthy Cities and Hearts Might Come From the Ground

Government Alone Won’t Save the Redwoods — It’s Taking a Village to Raise This Forest

The redwood trees on the Northern California coast are the tallest trees in the world and some of the oldest to still be standing — aged anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand years old. But not that long ago, the redwoods were nearly decimated. Before 1850, there were 2.2 million acres of redwood old-growth forests. Today, only 5% of the original old-growth remains, due mainly to heavy logging in the area. And redwoods are essential in combating climate change in America — an acre of redwood trees absorbs enough carbon dioxide as the equivalent of driving a car 8 million miles. 
Enter Save The Redwoods League, a nonprofit that has been working since 1915 to protect and restore redwood forests and connect people with the trees’ peace and beauty. By teaming with the National Park Service and California State Parks, Redwoods Rising was born to help restore the scars left by years of logging and accelerate the pace of redwood forest recovery within the parks. The end goal: to protect the area’s remaining old-growth groves and usher in a healthy, new generation of redwoods.
Still, as more threats persist, like wildfires raging longer and wider throughout California, there has never been a more pressing time to act. With Redwoods Rising, the future of the redwoods seems bright, and the trees’ lasting impact on visitors will continue to inspire future generations to preserve the redwoods.
More: Adobe Houses Are Made of Mud and Straw — and Some Now Cost $1 Million Because of Rising Taxes

These Purple Creatures Are Eating All Our Kelp. It’s Time to Eat Them

There are underwater forests spanning millions of acres — but they’re rapidly dying due to climate change and an unlikely predator.
Kelp forests, which are often referred to as the rainforests of the sea, play an important role in fighting climate change. Kelp, which is a type of macroalgae, is estimated to sequester 634 metric tons of CO2 each year — slightly lower than the amount of emissions released from the country’s largest carbon emitter, Texas.
Instead, the kelp forests are being replaced with the “ecological equivalent of a parking lot,” said Tom Ford, the executive director of The Bay Foundation, a nonprofit environmental group in the Santa Monica Bay area.
These “parking lots,” called urchin barrens, occur when thousands of purple urchins enter a kelp forest and mow it down. Urchins, about the size of a golf ball, with purple spikes shooting out from every direction, devour kelp at an astonishing rate. 
Around the world, variables like predator die-off, overfishing, strong storms and warming oceans have caused purple urchin populations to grow and relocate to warmer waters, putting new pressure on kelp forests. 
Once the kelp in an area is gone, instead of dying off, the urchins go into a dormant state where they’ll survive for years, waiting for new food to arrive. 

urchins, urchin, urchinomics, kelp dieoff
An urchin barren, which was formerly a kelp forest home to hundreds of marine animals.

While this is happening off the coasts off of Japan, Tasmania, Norway and Australia, California’s coasts are experiencing traumatic changes. 
In the last decade, more than 90% of bull kelp forests have died off in the north coast of California. Tristin McHugh, the Northern California Regional Manager for Reef Check California, a nonprofit working to save reefs and oceans, is researching what led to this. 
It’s hard to pinpoint one cause that has led to this current state, she said. But since the California Department of Fish and Wildlife started collecting data in 2008, California’s coast has experienced major losses.
In 2013, researchers watched urchin-eating sea stars die off for unknown reasons. “Losing sea stars in the north coast was kind of that last line of defense in terms of ecological structure,” McHugh told NationSwell. That’s because the purple urchin’s only other predator in the north was the sea otter, which was hunted to near extinction in the mid-1800s fur trade. 
Between El Niño storms and the warm blob hitting the coast, “by the end of 2016, the north coast was kind of torched,” she said. 
Purple urchins began to move inshore, feasting on the kelp forests that span 200 miles across Northern California’s coastline. Once the kelp forests, which are home to millions of underwater creatures, are gone, all that’s left is a desert-like urchin barren.
A few hundred miles south, areas on California’s coast have similar barrens. 
In 1998, Ford, having completed thousands of diving trips, jumped into the water and swam through a kelp forest for the first time. “I was blown away by how gorgeous they were,” he told NationSwell. “That is the simple and honest truth.”
Ford began studying the forests and quickly learned the forests were declining and falling apart. That research led to looking towards solutions with how to restore the forests.
Since the urchins can remain in a dormant state for years, the only way to bring back kelp is if the urchins are removed or destroyed.
“To move it from an urchin barren back to a kelp forest, you can either wait a long time or you can go out there and get to work,” Ford said. 
The startup company, Urchinomics, is also looking to get to work. Its solution: ranch them.
The company model is simple, collect these purple urchins, feed them until they’re at a marketable size and ship them off to consumers. The profits will then be invested back into restoring the kelp forests and collecting more urchins, deemed a restorative seafood model. 
“We try to turn this environmental challenge into an economical, ecological and social opportunity,” Denise MacDonald, the director of global brand marketing at Urchinomics, told NationSwell.
Crack open a healthy urchin, and in its center will be spilling out with orange gonads, called uni. It’s found in a variety of Japanese, French, Chilean, Spanish and Italian dishes. In those regions it’s an expensive delicacy — “sort of like the foie gras of the sea,” MacDonald said. In the rest of the world, it’s a potential new market. 
urchins, opened urchin, kelp
The inside of a farmed urchin.

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda, the CEO and founder of Urchinomics, worked with a Norwegian company that had successfully developed a feed for sea urchins. During that same period, Takeda watched the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami leave the coast of Japan, his home country, barren.
Those two things opened an opportunity to farm urchins and meet the market demand for the delicacy. 
“There’s a lot of opportunities for us to do good by bringing these kelp forests back and being part of the solution,” MacDonald said. 
Urchinomics is working with nonprofits to collect urchins. Urchinomics is in the final stages of launching its ranching facility in Newfoundland, Canada, which will transport urchins to the New York City market. It also has markets in Japan, Norway and other parts of Canada. In California, it’s working with divers to collect urchins for ranching.
Sam Briggs, a scientific diver, has collected urchins for over a decade. “I’ve witnessed firsthand what’s going on with the urchin problem,” he told NationSwell. So when Urchinomics hired his lab to collect purple urchins to farm, it was refreshing to be part of the solution, he said. 
“I like the idea of using these animals for a purpose,” he said. 
The Bay Foundation hires commercial sea urchin fishermen to go out and smash the animals. 
Smashing is the quickest approach. Previously, divers at the foundation would capture urchins and relocate them to other, non-populated areas, but due to expanding numbers, it’s no longer viable to move urchins to other areas. Ford’s team also looked at collecting urchins and composting them, but that proved to be greenhouse gas-intensive work. 
So for now, carefully trained divers enter the water and smash. Scientists research which areas to focus removal and monitor over the years. Since 2013, divers have spent 7,000 hours removing 3.6 million urchins across 46 acres. “There’s a tremendous amount of science before and after this all goes down,” Ford said. “They don’t just jump off the back of the boat and start swinging away like Paul Bunyan.”
So far their work has been successful. The kelp species in Southern California is a perennial, which means it is constantly reproducing and growing. Once nearly all the urchins have been removed, kelp rebounds in just a few months. 
urchins
Collected urchins from an urchin barren.

But in the north, where bull kelp is an annual species, that means there’s only one shot each year to reproduce. With all the changes to Northern California’s coast, conservationists are unsure if the kelp will grow back. 
“We’re just not equipped to deal with such rapid changes to our environment like this,” McHugh said. So Reef Check is launching a study to see if the kelp will regrow when urchins are removed and how many need to be removed for regrowth. 
Across the northern coast, groups like the Watermen’s Alliance are conducting large-scale removals of urchins, and NOYO Center is expanding public outreach.
Everyone from divers to scientists, fishermen to startup founders remain positive.
“There’s a wider audience that’s paying more attention to this kelp forest loss and not seeing it as the biologist’s problem but all of our problem,” McHugh said. “If the ocean agrees, I’m optimistic that the kelp will come.”
More: These Gorgeous Fish Are Invading Florida’s Coasts. One Solution? Eat Them

Scientists Found a 4-Propeller Solution to a 200-Ton Question

An animal’s weight is more than just a random characteristic: It’s a window into understanding fundamental truths about how animals survive. By weighing animals, experts glean insights into how much those animals eat, how quickly they and their population are growing and — perhaps most crucially — how outside stressors like the byproducts of human life can impact their health. 
That information is a crucial launching pad for conservationists to determine how best to protect these species.
But weighing especially large mammals isn’t easy. When it comes to whales, which can grow over 100 feet long and weigh upward of 200 tons, scientists have had to rely on the limited information provided by dead specimens that were caught in fishing nets, washed up on shore or were intentionally killed for the purpose of research. Though obviously better than no specimens at all, this narrow scope pales in comparison to what scientists could learn from live specimens, especially as whales come under increased threat.
That’s where drones come in.
Scientists have figured out a way to pair drone photographs with historical data, using the combined information to develop a model used that accurately calculates a whale’s body volume and mass. The new model can be used to track both individual whales and various species over time.
This breakthrough, which was published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution in October, is an important step in both researching and protecting whales. 
“Knowing the body mass of free-living whales opens up new avenues of research,” Fredrick Christiansen, the lead researcher of the study from Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, told Cosmos.
Standing on the deck of sailboats, researchers controlled drones and took photos of 86 southern right whales. Though these photos helped create a model endemic to this species of whale, scientists believe the approach can be adjusted for use with other large marine animals.
“Weighing live whales with a drone at sea, we can get growth rates and changes in body conditions,” Michael Moore, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a co-author of the study told Cape Cod Times. “We learn a lot more about stressors like food, what lack of food does to animals.”
Moore also noted that the model can help when trying to detangle whales from fishing gear. The model will allow veterinarians and conservationists to give an accurate dose of sedatives when freeing the whale. 
Two co-authors of the study are already using the model to look at the links between survival rates of southern right whale calves and kelp gull harassment, which is when birds land on the backs of the calves and attack, which can negatively impact the calves’ health and survival rates.
Co-authors Mariano Sironi and Marcela Uhart, from the Southern Right Whale Health Monitoring Program, told Cosmos that “the use of drones to estimate whale weight and condition, as well as to individually track calves while they grow beside their mothers, has been a real breakthrough in our investigation.” 
More: These Brilliant Nets Don’t Just Glow in the Dark — They’re Saving Sea Turtles’ Lives

This Brewery Found a Way to Go Beyond Making Good Beer — They’re Saving Ocean Wildlife

Sea life draws the shortest straw when it comes to plastic. Whether it’s a straw stuck in a sea turtle’s nose or six-pack ring wrapped around a bird’s neck, millions of marine animals consume plastic each year inflicting upon them everything from suffocation to starvation. By 2050, nearly every seabird will have consumed plastic. 
While straws and plastic bags have been at the center of this wave of discourse, six-pack rings are another common enemy. Their circular design makes it easy for wildlife to get entangled. One brewery in Delray Beach, Florida, found an innovative way to play a leading role in solving this problem: a biodegradable, edible six-pack ring.
Saltwater Brewery was founded by surfers, fishermen and ocean-lovers. So the environment has always been at the core of their work, said Dustin Jeffers, the co-founder and head of operations.
Though the brewery’s core mission is to make good beer, they’re also concerned about humankind’s impact on the environment. Because they made public their commitment to protecting the ocean, the marketing firm We Believers approached the brewery to create an eco-friendly six-pack ring in 2016.
Seaweed was initially considered for the rings, but it had its limitations. Then a brewery founder considered wheat and barley, which are the waste byproducts of the brewing process. 
“This is a full circle,” Jeffers told NationSwell. “It’s a byproduct that we always have, so instead of using another resource to make [the rings], we have all of this at our disposal.”
It worked. The six-pack ring quickly breaks down in water and can be consumed by wildlife. The rings were brought to the market in January 2018, and by the middle of the year, the rings, along with their beer, could be found across both the East to West Coasts.

The biodegradable six-pack rings use waste created from the brewing process. “It’s a full circle,” Jeffers, a co-founder, said.

In a compost pile, the rings quickly biodegrade. But if they make their way into the water stream, the rings wills break down in just a few months (compared to plastic rings, which can turn into microplastics that never degrade).
While the rings are edible, Jeffers noted that they don’t replace food for marine life. The rings hold no nutritional value, so the company advises customers to not intentionally throw the product in the ocean. 
“The best way I can describe it is having your child eat a Sour Patch Kid rather than a Lego,” Gove said. “It’s not a part of their diet, but it is something that is better than alternative, so that’s something to keep in mind,” Saltwater Brewery President Chris Gove told Mashable.
“This innovative product is a better alternative, and safer to the environment than the currently used plastic rings,” Marta Gomez-Chiarri, a professor at the University of Rhode Island, told Kitchn. “Anything that is done to decrease the amount of plastics that we use is very important and well worth it.
Though Gomez-Chiarri praised the biodegradable rings, she cautioned that they contain the chemical PFAA, which, while not nearly as harmful to ocean life as plastics, can still be toxic to animals who ingest it.
Since the idea of the six-pack rings sparked in 2016, other companies have followed. Craft breweries in over 12 countries have adopted the rings. And now major beer companies are looking for similar solutions. This summer, MillerCoors announced its working with the tech firm Footprint to create a similar biodegradable six-pack ring.
“What we are trying to do is get away from the plastic and get more into the biodegradable, recyclable and bio-friendly solution,” MillerCoors brewmaster Jeff Nickel told Denver7.
In early 2019, competitor Corona tested biodegradable six-pack rings in Tulum, Mexico. And it recently announced a waste-free, interlocking can that stacks together.
“Are six-pack rings the worst thing in the ocean and causing the most problems? Of course not,” said Jeffers. “But it kind of gets people thinking about what else they can change.”
The next time you crack open a cold one, consider what you can do to make a change.
More: The World Has a Plastic Problem, and a Parachute Might Help Solve It

The World Has a Plastic Problem, and a Parachute Might Help Solve It

Hundreds of miles between the coasts California and Hawaii is what’s known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — an accumulation of plastic expanding nearly a million square miles or roughly twice the size of Texas. 
The plastic, which ranges from massive fishing nets weighing more than a ton to tiny fragments often just millimeters in size, collected for decades due to a gyre, or whirlpool of currents, that focused ocean pollution from disparate areas into one localized spot (it’s not like a floating landfill, instead the plastic is suspended throughout the water column). The patch, which was discovered in 1997, has since grown to be the largest aggregation of plastic across the world’s oceans. 
In 2013, Boyan Slat, an 18-year-old entrepreneur, set out to eliminate that patch. He founded The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit with the goal of eliminating ocean plastic, and crowdfunded nearly $2.2 million

Slat’s team built an enormous curved device with the purpose of passively gathering trash inside the garbage patch. The 2,000-foot C-shape plastic pipe is connected to a screen that spans 10 feet below the water’s surface. 
On Wednesday, following multiple setbacks, the Ocean Cleanup announced a major breakthrough: The most recent iteration of the device successfully collected and stored plastic. 
This version incorporates a parachute, which serves as an anchor. The parachute slows down the vessel so that it moves just slightly slower than the ocean’s current. That allows for faster-moving plastic to accumulate in the screen. A floatline keeps the system buoyant, and due to its slow speed, sea life are able to swim below the barrier. Large fishing nets, plastic objects, like car tires and plastic bins, along with microplastics all accumulated in the device, which is called the System 001/B.

A bird’s-eye view of The Ocean Cleanup’s device.

But creating a successful device wasn’t easy, and early versions had critical flaws. At one point, a 60-foot section broke off, and the entire device had to be brought back to shore. In another version, the collected trash would spill back into the ocean.  
“After beginning this journey seven years ago, this first year of testing in the unforgivable environment of the high seas strongly indicates that our vision is attainable and that the beginning of our mission to rid the ocean of plastic garbage, which has accumulated for decades, is within our sights,” Boyan Slat said in a press release
As the device catches plastic, The Ocean Cleanup’s team uses handheld nets to gather the trash, which takes a significant amount of effort. The long-term goal is for a ship to visit the patch regularly to capture the collected plastic, which will be brought to shore to be recycled.
As The Ocean Cleanup plans to create a System 002 of the device, a few key challenges remain: How will the current device hold up during a harsh winter? Can the device hold plastic for months between pickups? 
“Our team has remained steadfast in its determination to solve immense technical challenges to arrive at this point. Though we still have much more work to do, I am eternally grateful for the team’s commitment and dedication to the mission and look forward to continuing to the next phase of development,” Slate said. 
But Slat said he remains positive. Once the challenges are assessed and fixed, The Ocean Cleanup plans to design a fleet of devices designed to rid oceans of their plastic. With the success of a fleet, the nonprofit predicts to remove 90% of the ocean’s plastic by 2040.
More: 37 Ways to Shrink Your Use of Plastic 

Farm to Hospital Bed: This Hospital Uses Its Roof to Feed Thousands

When people step into a hospital, they’re often looking for an answer to a problem. What’s wrong with my stomach? Can the pain in my hand go away? How do I feel better?
While nurses and doctors are there to solve those problems, they’re also working to prevent future ones. Simplified, a hospital’s job is twofold: react and prevent.
On the roof of the Boston Medical Center, they’re preventing by growing.
The hospital’s 2,658-square-foot rooftop farm grows fresh produce for its food-insecure patients. These patients are referred to the Boston Medical Center’s Preventative Food Pantry. There, they gain access to over 25 crops and can take home fresh food for their entire household every two weeks. 
“The Preventive Food Pantry helps fill the gap for those who would otherwise be unable to access affordable, nutritious food, and this expansion further demonstrates BMC’s commitment to addressing the underlying social factors that affect a patient’s health,” Thea James, MD, vice president of mission and associate chief medical officer at BMC, said in a news release.
Kale, carrots, onions, cauliflower, eggplants and radishes are all grown in the rooftop plant beds, creating over 6,000 pounds of food each year.  A little under half goes directly home with patients, and the remainder is used for the hospital’s cafeteria, teaching kitchen and in-house farmers market, which is held in the lobby every week during the summer months.
The food pantry opened in 2001, and the garden opened in 2016 to provide the pantry with more fresh produce.
“BMC for a long time has had a mission that food is medicine,” farm manager Lindsay Allen told WHDH.
 
https://www.instagram.com/p/BhzXKwEhkcC/
 
The foods we eat can be a direct indicator of how healthy we are. Studies show that eating more processed and fried foods can increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes and death. But the reverse is true, too: People who consume more fresh fruits and vegetables are likely to live longer and healthier lives. 
With that in mind, BMC got to growing. Patients are given a prescription to the pantry, where a registered dietician helps them customize a plan and pick out food based on their health needs. The patient can also pick up food for their entire household. In 2017, the pantry worked with over 83,000 individuals.
“When they provide a patient with a prescription, it becomes part of your medical care. It’s more like going to the pharmacy. They do not hesitate to come,” Latchman Hiralall, manager of the Food Pantry, told Boston Magazine.
But the benefits extend past healthy eating for patients and in the cafeteria. It cuts down on the hospital’s carbon footprint, collects stormwater, creates green space and reduces the energy required by absorbing heat that would otherwise warm a building. 
If farm visitors listen closely, they’ll hear a faint buzz. The farm is home to two honeybee hives, which pollinate the crops and produce honey. 
 
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqaqzCZF8qj/
The Boston Medical Center isn’t the only hospital that’s thought of this green idea. Across the country, green roofs are gaining popularity as a way to help eradicate food deserts. 
At the John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, patients visit the hospital’s terrace garden and pick vegetables and herbs to incorporate into their meals. Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City transformed its black slate roof into an urban garden five years ago. The space grows herbs and small crops, like strawberries and tomatillos, for the kitchen team to use and for the staff to take home. 
As of 2017, 54% of the country’s hospitals are in urban centers. Those hospitals’ patients and staff are more likely to have a hard time finding green space and affordable, healthy food. Rooftop gardens can solve both of those problems, offering a place where people can experience the therapeutic benefits of nature and gain access to fresh food.
So the next time you’re walking past a hospital, look up and you might find something green.
More: Why Green Classrooms Could Be the Schools of the Future

New Season, Old Threads — This Group Aims to Make September the Month to Buy Less

Innovations in online shopping have made it easier than ever to buy a new dress for your best friend’s wedding or grab a crisp white t-shirt the second your current one starts to fade. With the click of a button, people with means can have new clothes immediately — all without ever stepping foot inside of a brick-and-mortar store. The result makes sense: Because shopping has never been easier, people are shopping more — even if their needs remain the same.  
But Oxfam, an international group working to end poverty, wants you and your fellow consumers to (deep breath!) curb your shopping habit for the month of September. The group launched Second-Hand September, an initiative that encourages people to not buy any brand new products for 30 days. 
Your bank account won’t be the only thing thanking you — the planet will, too. Especially if you tend to partake in fast fashion. 
Believe it or not, the fashion industry is one of the leading contributors to the growing climate crisis. As a polluter, it’s the second most egregious next to oil, Forbes reported. The industry emits 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gas annually, creates nearly 20% of the world’s wastewater and America alone sends over 10 million tons of textiles to landfills each year. That’s in large part due to fast fashion, the trend of making clothes cheaply and readily available as the market changes. The trend isn’t only bad for the environment — it is bad for labor, too. Perhaps because of fast fashion’s emphasis on speed at a bargain, labor conditions for workers often aren’t safe. On top of that, many factory workers are working long hours and at unlivable wages
And it’s a trend that’s growing. According to The University of Queensland, the world consumes 80 billion new clothing pieces ever year, which has skyrocketed 400% in the last 20 years. 
“The damage of fast fashion is far-reaching – from extensive use of water in production to poor pay and conditions for workers,” Fee Gilfeather, head of audience and strategic planning at Oxfam, told Retail Gazette.
So skip the brand-new, low-quality clothing and opt-in for thrift store looks. Vintage and thrift stores are home to affordable, quality clothing. Plus, it’s a great way to support local businesses.
If you don’t have access to thrift stores, try shopping resale online at stores like Etsy, eBay or Poshmark. There are also organizations out there ready to change the industry. If you have a toddler or baby, UpChoose is a place to start. Since children grow so fast, a lot of their clothing is only used for a short amount of time. UpChoose allows you to buy clothing and exchange them later for bigger sizes as your child grows.
And if you’re itching for something new, look at sustainable retailers like Everlane, ADAY or AmourVert, which sell quality, ethical and sustainable clothing that will last.
It’s not easy to shift your mindset and actions, but as we look for ways to combat our climate crisis, a simple change, like where you buy your clothing, adds up. 
Second-Hand September has a nice alliterative ring to it, but that doesn’t mean the challenge has to last just this month. Since we’re nearly halfway through September, challenge yourself for the rest of the year. What if you could do it for all of 2020? 
More: The Sneaker Saint

Straws That Don’t Suck: The Alternatives to Plastic Don’t Stop at Paper

Our world has a plastic problem, and America’s relationship with single-use plastics is one part of it. Walk down any city or suburban street in the summer and you’re likely to see someone drinking an iced coffee through a straw. Go to any movie theater and you’ll see folks headed to their seats with giant sodas and slushies — and odds are they won’t be drinking them straight from the cup. 
Straws have become shorthand for the deleterious impact single-use plastics have on our planet’s ecosystems, and for good reason. In the United States alone, between 170 million and 390 million straws are used each and discarded each day, adding to the 8 million tons of plastic that end up in our oceans every year. These straws are then consumed by marine life and can end up in the bellies of fish, nostrils of sea turtles and jammed in the throats of birds, causing them extreme pain and in many cases killing them. 
Rising to the call to make our planet a better place for everything living in it, communities and countries are banning straws along with other single-use plastic, like plastic bags and utensils. Conservationists hope that straws will be a “gateway plastic” that leads to important conversations about our country’s reliance on single-use plastic. So while you’re ditching the straw, try to ditch the single-use coffee cups and plastic water bottles while you’re at it. 
But as we have a conversation about straws, It’s important to note that they’re not only a preferred way of enjoying a beverage — for some, they can be essential to participation in public life. Many people with disabilities rely on straws to drink and eat outside of their homes, and banning straws without providing alternatives that actually work would push them further into the margins of society.  

A boy drinks from a glass with a paper straw, one of the most popular eco-friendly alternatives to plastic straws.

As we continue to innovate for the perfect solution that both minimizes our impact on the planet and meets the needs of people with disabilities who rely on them, here are some sustainable options for the sustainability-minded to consider:

1. Glass

Glass might be your best option when it comes to eco-friendly sipping devices. A glass straw is reusable and recyclable. A majority of glass straws are made of shatter-resistant borosilicate, so if you’re clumsy, you can drop away. Unlike paper and metal straws, glass straws don’t change the taste of your drink. So try one out from here or here.

2. Agave 

Agave, a plant typically harvested for its sweet nectar, is becoming a staple in bioplastics, which are plastic-like materials made from organic compounds. The result? A straw that closely resembles our society’s beloved plastic straw, but is, thankfully, both biodegradable and affordable. And since many of these bioplastic companies are using waste to create the bioplastics, it’s a win-win for the eco-conscious consumer on a budget. Stores looking to buy in bulk can get straws from Bio Agave or individuals can find agave straws on Etsy here.

pasta straw
Noodle straws have become a fun, affordable option to sip coffee or slurp boba from.

3. Dry Noodles

This might seem silly, but noodles are no longer just a vessel for marinara or soy sauce. Instead, companies are using dry noodles to transport liquids from your glass to your mouth. And there are a few reasons to be excited about it. First, noodles are biodegradable. They’re also affordable and surprisingly sturdy if you can get past how … uncanny it might be. Check it out here

4. Paper

Paper straws are the most common replacement for single-use plastic straws. You’ll find them at coffee shops and restaurants touting a more environmentally-friendly option. Paper staws are a cheap, biodegradable solution. However, they quickly break down in a liquid, which can be frustrating for a slow drinker. You can also find paper straws at a variety of places, and even stores like Target and Walmart carry paper straws.

Seaweed straws
People are now growing seaweed for straws. Seaweed straws have a plastic-y texture and biodegrade quickly.

5. Seaweed

Seaweed is an easy, carbon-sucking plant when grown, so it makes sense to grow it for straws. The seaweed straws have a similar texture to plastic, but due to its compostable nature, it won’t survive in the ocean for centuries. Instead, they quickly biodegrade into food for marine animals. You can find seaweed straws here.

6. Bamboo

Bamboo straws are another popular replacement. It serves as the middleman between a single-use and a forever-use item. Bamboo straws are durable, but they probably won’t last you a lifetime, unlike a metal or glass straw. When it’s run its lifetime, the straws will decompose. Find a single bamboo straw here for only $2 or a set of six for $10.50 here.
Embed: Two children drink smoothies from a reusable metal straw, one of the most popular replacements for plastic straws. Photo by Viara Mileva/Getty Images

metal straws
Two children drink smoothies from reusable metal straws, which is one of the most popular replacements for plastic straws.

7. Metal

Metal might be the most common reusable straw you see. That’s because it’s easy to clean and compact enough to carry in a purse or backpack. However, keep in mind metal straws transfer heat easily, so beware of drinking your hot coffee out of one. Give them a shot and purchase four straws for $4.50 here.

8. Straw

Pun intended. Some companies have turned back to the straw’s origins. In the 1800s people used grain stalks, like straw or hay, to function as straws. So why not go back? Straw straws are cheap and biodegradable. You can find a pack of 100 straws for $7 here

silicone straw
A family drinks smoothies from their reusable silicone straws.

9. Silicone

If you don’t want to give up the plastic-y feel, a silicone straw is your best bet. They’re perfect for your favorite boba or smoothie drink, and most are dishwasher safe. They’ll last you years, preventing hundreds of single-use straws ending up in the ocean or landfill. Silicone straws can be bought from many chain stores or online here.

10. Skip the Straw

The cheapest and most sustainable option on this list is to skip the straw altogether. Although some folks rely on straws due to disabilities, a majority of us don’t need a straw. So the next time you’re out at happy hour or sitting down for dinner, simply ask for no straw.
More: 37 Ways to Shrink Your Use of Plastic

These Brilliant Nets Don’t Just Glow in the Dark — They’re Saving Sea Turtles’ Lives

Adult sea turtles may have few natural predators — unless you factor in human beings. 
One of the many threats to sea turtles, as well as dolphins, whales and sea lions, are gillnets. A gillnet is a wall of netting suspended in the water (imagine a tennis net strung along the bottom of the ocean). Fishers aim to trap fish, not other marine animals, but gillnets don’t discriminate, and those unintentionally caught animals are called bycatch.
With nearly all sea turtle species endangered, it’s become a priority for scientists and conservationists to find solutions to reduce sea turtle bycatch.
The sheer number of fishers underscores the problem: Off the coast of Indonesia, there’s an estimated 300,000 small-scale vessels that fish in those waters. In Peru, it is estimated that 100,000 kilometers of gillnet is set each year along the coast. Even in the United States, along the coast of North Carolina, fishermen are casting gillnets into the ocean and hauling back entrapped animals. 
“A mind-boggling amount of fishing effort goes on in that very small interface between humanity and our oceans,” said John Wang, who leads gillnet bycatch research at the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center.
Scientists are turning to lights to help solve the problem.
By attaching an LED light every 10 meters on the net’s float line, turtles are able to see the gillnets more easily. 
“[We’re] not scaring turtles. The lights aren’t making the turtles annoyed or anything,” Wang said. “What we’re doing is we’re increasing their awareness that something odd is going on.”

One promising bycatch reduction technology: LED lights to illuminate gillnets.

By increasing the turtles’ awareness of their immediate surroundings, they tend to avoid the nets.
Research indicates the lights are working. Illuminated gillnets have decreased sea turtle bycatch without decreasing target catches. 
Studies in Mexico found green sea turtle bycatch reductions between 40 and 60%. Researchers in Indonesia showed that green, olive ridley and hawksbill sea turtle bycatch was reduced by 60% and the target catch increased. And in Peru, illuminated nets have reduced green sea turtle bycatch between 65 and 80%. Collaborators have also expanded research out to areas in Pakistan, Ecuador, Italy, Slovenia and Ghana. 
“Even though mom and pop fisherman in Mexico might be fishing a kilometer to two kilometers of net, boy, there’s a lot of [people] fishing one or two kilometers,” Wang said. “And it quickly adds up to a scale that’s comparable, if not more, than some of the industrial fisheries.”
Illuminated gillnets can help these “mom and pop fishermen.” When a turtle or other animal gets tangled in the nets, fishers spend time, money and effort untangling and repairing the nets. By adding lights, an illuminated gillnet, in theory, reduces these efforts. 
“That’s not to say that there isn’t a cost associated with these lights,” Wang said. Researchers are working in both developed and developing countries, so funding for these lights isn’t always easy to come by. Scientists are working with conservation groups, like WWF, along with government entities to support subsidies for lights.
For example, in Indonesia, WWF collaborated with the Ministry of Fisheries to adopt lights into its management plan. And the government is now looking at developing its own LED light industry.
John Wang, who leads gillnet bycatch research at the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, deploys an illuminated gillnet off the coast of Indonesia.

“LED lights for fishing, they’re already there,” Wang said. “It’s a matter of getting the pricing down, making them more sustainable through some of the solar technology we’re working on, and creating the supply chains so that fishermen in these remote places actually have access.”
At Arizona State University, biologist Jesse Senko is working with NOAA to power lights with solar technology. And other scientists are looking at how colored lights might maximize bycatch reductions.
Beyond just sea turtles, illuminated gillnets can potentially reduce bycatch in other species like cetaceans, which include species like dolphins; and elasmobranchs, which include species like sharks and rays.
“And now you have a single tool that can be fairly influential across multiple taxa of animal,” Wang said. “That helps these small-scale fisheries become that much more sustainable for the long run, and that’s ultimately what’s important.”
More: Shark Week Has a Gender Problem. These Women Scientists Are Trying to Fix That
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the whales are elasmobranchs. Additionally, Peru has an estimated that 100,000 km of gillnet is set each year, not Northern Peru. NationSwell apologizes for the errors.