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This article looks at the different pros and cons of solar energy. By reading this article, you will discover what makes the sun one of the most popular renewable energy sources in use today. You will also gain an insight into the various drawbacks that going solar can have.

Solar Energy Pros

There are many benefits associated with the use of solar energy technologies. Let's now take a look at the numerous advantages that going solar can have.

1. The Sun is a Renewable Energy Source

The sun will support life on earth for as long as it shines. We can, therefore, consider it a renewable and sustainable energy source. We are able to rely on solar energy, unlike non-renewable sources of energy such as coal, oil, and gas.

2. Solar Power is Environmentally Friendly

We can use solar energy as an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels. Unlike fossil fuels, solar panels do not produce carbon dioxide or methane. These are greenhouse gases that pollute the earth and contribute to global warming.

Whilst the manufacturing of solar cells does cause pollution, this will be offset once they are up and running. By using more solar energy to meet global energy demands, we can help to improve the environment.

3. The Sun is Widely Available

The sun shines everywhere on earth. This makes it an abundant source of energy. As a result of this, solar panels are a viable option for generating electricity around the world. You can find solar energy in use everywhere from Alaska to Australia. Even the Amundsen-Scott Research Station at the South Pole has gone solar.

4. Solar Energy is Versatile

You can use solar energy in different ways. Most of you will know that you are able to use it in order to generate electricity, but did you know you can also use it to heat water? Because of this, solar energy is more versatile when compared with most other clean energy sources.

5. Going Solar Reduces Fossil Fuel Consumption

Fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas will one day run out. As we use more solar energy, we reduce the need to burn fossil fuels. This not only has environmental benefits, but it also helps to conserve resources for future generations to come.

6. Solar Panels Are Quiet

Solar panels are a low noise power technology. You might hear a slight hum if you stand next to one, but that's about it. This makes solar a key contender for use in a domestic setting.

Other renewable energy technologies can be noisy. For example, wind turbines can create significant levels of noise pollution. This can lead to disputes, legal action, and protests against the development of wind farms and some smaller installations.

7. The Sun is Free to Use

We can use the sun's energy resources completely free of charge. After the initial cost of solar panels, there is no charge for the solar energy your system consumes.

With fossil fuels, there is a charge for the raw materials at some point in the energy production cycle. As a result of this, domestic solar panels can reduce or sometimes even eliminate your monthly electric bills.

8. You Can Install Solar Panels On Your Roof

Solar panels require a large footprint to be able to generate enough electricity to power a building. Whilst this can be a disadvantage of solar energy, we can install solar panels onto rooftops to mitigate the issue.

9. Solar Panels Are Low Maintenance

The lack of moving parts in a solar cell reduces maintenance significantly. Because of this, they can often be left running for years without experiencing any problems.

You should clean your solar panels at regular intervals to ensure peak efficiency. Apart from this, they are generally low in maintenance. This factor helps to provide a return on investment over the lifetime of the system.

Solar panels are low maintenance but should be kept clean to improve their efficiency.

10. Solar Has Low Running Costs

Solar energy is completely free to use. As a result, solar panels have low running costs. After installation, the only cost you are likely to encounter is for any maintenance you might need.

11. Solar Energy Can Provide Power in Remote Locations

Solar energy has the potential to generate electricity in remote locations. It can be very expensive or even unfeasible to run power cables over long distances. In such cases, solar panels can be a wise investment.

We can also use solar energy as a portable power solution. For example, devices exist that can charge a smartphone directly from the sun. Portable solar lights are another example of this. You can use them in your garden or take them on camping trips.

Even the aviation industry is tapping into the benefits of solar energy. This can be seen in the Solar Impulse project that flew a solar-powered plane 40,000km around the world. The project is helping to pave the way for a new generation of portable solar technologies.

12. Going Solar Can Provide a Return on Investment

A well-designed solar energy system should provide a return on investment (ROI) over its lifetime. Government tax credits and state grants are sometimes available to help speed up ROI and help turn a profit.

Some countries offer a 'feed-in tariff'. This process allows any excess electricity a solar panel might produce to be sold back to the grid. This can help to accelerate ROI and bring in a steady income.

13. Solar Can Increase Energy Security

We can use solar energy to reduce our dependence on foreign energy supplies. As a result of this, we can increase our 'energy security'. This is a term we use to describe the association between national security and the availability of natural resources for energy consumption.

War, sanctions and other political issues can all have an effect on a country's energy supply. Therefore, when we produce our own energy, we are less vulnerable to these external influences.

14. Solar Panels Are Efficient

Technological advancements in the solar power industry are helping to drive the efficiency of solar panels. Modern solar cells are far more efficient than those made only five or ten years ago. Whatsmore, they are on track to see a further increase in efficiency over the coming years.

15. The Solar Energy Industry Creates Jobs

The emergence of solar power and hot water technologies has led to a big increase in demand for such systems. As a result, this has helped to create a global industry of manufacturers, suppliers, and installers. This industry has created jobs for millions of people right across the globe.

In 2018, the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry employed over 3.6 million people worldwide. This is a massive amount of jobs and shows how important the industry is to the global economy. Data for this statement was taken from IRENA's annual review of renewable energy and jobs. We used the 2019 annual review which you can find here.

Solar Energy Cons

Whilst going solar may seem like the right decision, there are many drawbacks to doing so. Let's now take a look at the main disadvantages of solar energy.

1. Solar Panels Are Expensive

The upfront costs of installing home solar panels can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. This upfront capital is hard to find for many homeowners. Some people might even choose to take out loans to fund their project - a process that would add even more cost over time due to the interest paid on the loan.

2. The Sun Doesn't Shine All Day Long

Solar panels need to absorb solar radiation in order to generate electricity. Whilst this is fine during daylight hours when there is enough sunlight, solar technologies are useless when it's dark.

Whilst we can use batteries to store electricity for use at night, they tend to be expensive and consume lots of space. Most importantly, they might not provide enough energy storage for the needs of a busy household. This can lead to electricity shortages during the night.

Seasonal changes in daylight hours further influence this drawback. Solar panels will generate less electricity when the nights are long, making them less efficient during the winter months.

Solar panels cannot generate electricity in the dark.

3. Solar Panels Are Vulnerable to Atmospheric Conditions

Various atmospheric conditions can have a negative impact on solar panels. Long-lasting periods of heat and humidity can reduce the performance of a solar cell. Delamination of solar panels can sometimes occur in these conditions.

Pollution can also reduce the efficiency of solar panels. Because of this, they can be a less viable option for those living in highly polluted towns and cities. Cloud cover and fog can also reduce the efficiency of a solar cell.

4. Solar Panels Have a Large Footprint

Solar panels often require a large footprint to provide enough electricity to power a building. Compared with other renewable energy technologies, solar panels have the largest footprint for the power they generated.

Because of this issue, some homeowners worry about not have enough space for the installation. You can, however, mitigate the problem by installing solar panels on your roof.

5. Manufacturing Solar Cells Causes Pollution

Although solar cells don't produce pollution themselves, the manufacturing of them does. Solar cells contain silicon which is extracted from raw materials in a blast furnace. This process releases large quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

As a result of this, how solar cells are made can be bad for the environment. On the other hand, once they are up and running, they will help to offset their carbon footprint. This is based on the assumption that they are now generating energy that would have previously been generated from the burning of fossil fuels.

Summary

There are many advantages and disadvantages associated with the use of solar energy technologies.

The main benefits of solar energy are that it's renewable, sustainable, environmentally friendly, and widely available. We can use it to generate power and heat water in many parts of the world.

The main drawbacks of solar energy is that solar panels are expensive and can only generate power during the day. They are also vulnerable to atmospheric and seasonal conditions that affect efficiency.

It is safe to say that the benefits clearly outweigh the drawbacks. Solar energy can play a vital role in helping to meet future energy demands in a clean and environmentally responsible way. Having said this, going solar might not be the right decision for everyone. Therefore, it is important to weigh up the pros and cons based on your own personal circumstances.

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Pros and Cons of Solar Energy - Clean Energy Ideas

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This article looks at the different pros and cons of solar energy. By reading this article, you will discover what makes the sun one of the most popular renewable energy sources in use today. You will also gain an insight into the various drawbacks that going solar can have.

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A new wave of technologies is on the verge of producing energy that's clean, renewable, and most importantly, affordable.

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Footprints. We make them everywhere we go. But unlike the impressions we leave in mud or sand, which we can clearly see, our Ecological Footprints outline the space we each need to survive. Learn how the choices you make affect the size of your Ecological Footprint.

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To reduce our ecological footprint our actions must address the sources of the biggest impacts we humans have on our planet: energy use and eating.

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Thousands of houses stand empty in the Great Lakes States; in Buffalo they are demolishing 5,000 of them. It is bad enough that they are in sight of fresh water and have access to canals, railroads and highway infrastructure galore; a new British study, 'New Tricks With Old Bricks' (PDF) , says reusing and refurbishing existing and empty properties could actually save more carbon dioxide than constructing new ones.

According to the Guardian, the study found that the construction of a new house generated 50 tonnes of CO2, but the renovation of an existing house emitted only 15 tonnes. In actual use, there was little difference in the performance of the older house than in the new one, and that it could take decades for the operational savings to offset the carbon load of the initial construction. The renovated house will probably last longer too, because so much of what we build today is crap.

Bill Dunster, designer of the RuralZED, told the Guardian:

"If you are buying a flat made from chip-foam panelled walls as a low-cost housing solution, then yes, it might not last forever. We do have to stop this "dash for trash" and stop people building homes which look good but will become unlivable. We have to go back to quality." ::Guardian

Key findings of the report:

This study compared the CO2 given off in building new homes and creating new homes through refurbishing old properties. The key findings are:

Reusing empty homes could make an initial saving of 35 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per property by removing the need for the energy locked into new build materials and construction.

Over a 50-year period, this means there almost no difference in the average emissions of new compared with refurbished housing.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from new homes fall into two distinct sources: "embodied" CO2 given off during the housebuilding process, and "operational" CO2 given off from normal energy use in the house once it is occupied. The new homes each gave off 50 tonnes of embodied CO2. The refurbished homes each gave off 15 tonnes.

Well-insulated new homes eventually make up for their high embodied energy costs through lower operational CO2 but it takes several decades - in most cases more than 50 years.

Embodied CO2 is not widely understood but this study shows that it accounts for 28% of CO2 emissions over the first 50 years' lifetime of a new house.

Embodied CO2 is an investment in the environmental sustainability of a house. Refurbished old homes have lower embodied CO2 and therefore a distinct head start over new homes.

Empty homes in England provide an opportunity to create 150,000 new sustainable homes.

If the rate of VAT on repairs and renovation had been 5% instead of 17.5%, it would have cut the average cost of refurbishment by approximately £10,000 for each house.

Many house builders claim that new homes are four times more efficient than older houses. This study shows that refurbished houses can be as just efficient as new homes.

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The Carbon Footprint of a Renovation vs New Construction

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Thousands of houses stand empty in the Great Lakes States; in Buffalo they are demolishing 5,000 of them. It is bad enough that they are in sight of fresh water and have access to canals, railroads and highway infrastructure galore; a new British

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Climate Change & the Carbon Footprint - Global Footprint Network

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By Mathis Wackernagel, Ph.D., Co-founder and president, Global Footprint Network Greta Thunberg stunned the COP Climate Conference in Poland in December 2018 with her clarity and honesty. Just 15 years... More › On September 11, Global Footprint Network Senior Scientist Alessandro Galli and Slovenian sustainable development expert Jernej Stritih presented their preliminary report on Slovenia's Ecological Footprint at a public event hosted...

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A carbon footprint is defined as the total amount of greenhouse gases produced to directly and indirectly support human activities, usually expressed in equivalent tons of carbon dioxide (CO2).

In other words: When you drive a car, the engine burns fuel which creates a certain amount of CO2, depending on its fuel consumption and the driving distance. (CO2 is the chemical symbol for carbon dioxide). When you heat your house with oil, gas or coal, then you also generate CO2. Even if you heat your house with electricity, the generation of the electrical power may also have emitted a certain amount of CO2. When you buy food and goods, the production of the food and goods also emitted some quantities of CO2.

Your carbon footprint is the sum of all emissions of CO2 (carbon dioxide), which were induced by your activities in a given time frame. Usually a carbon footprint is calculated for the time period of a year.

The best way is to calculate the carbon dioxide emissions based on the fuel consumption. In the next step you can add the CO2 emission to your carbon footprint. Below is a table for the most common used fuels:

A carbon footprint is the sum of all emissions of greenhouse gases (usually mainly CO2)

Each of the following activities add 1 kg of CO2 to your personal carbon footprint:

Travel by public transportation (train or bus) a distance of 10 to 12 km (6.5 to 7 miles)

Drive with your car a distance of 6 km or 3.75 miles (assuming 7.3 litres petrol per 100 km or 39 mpg)

Fly with a plane a distance of 2.2 km or 1.375 miles.

Operate your computer for 32 hours (60 Watt consumption assumed)

Production of 5 plastic bags (see article about carbon footprint of plastic bags)

Production of 2 plastic bottles

Production of 1/3 of an American cheeseburger (yes, the production of each cheeseburger emits 3.1 kg of CO2! It has a very large carbon footprint)

To calculate the above contributions to the carbon footprint, the current UK mix for electricity and trains was taken into account.

Carbon dioxide is a so called greenhouse gas causing global warming . Other greenhouse gases which might be emitted as a result of your activities are e.g. methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide [N2O]. These greenhouse gases are normally also taken into account for the carbon footprint. They are converted into the amount of CO2 that would cause the same effects on global warming within a certain time frame, usually 100 years (this is called equivalent CO2 amount).

Few people express their carbon footprint in kg carbon rather than kg carbon dioxide. You can always convert kg carbon dioxide in kg carbon by multiplying with a factor 0.27 (1'000 kg CO2 equals 270 kg carbon). See my comment to the article about personal responsibility for global warming .

The carbon footprint is a very powerful tool to understand the impact of personal behaviour on global warming. Most people are shocked when they see the amount of CO2 their activities create! If you personally want to contribute to stop global warming, the calculation and constant monitoring of your personal carbon footprint is essential.

In the web, you can find many carbon footprint calculators, which allow to store individual activities like, e.g. travelling by car, train, bus or air plane, fuel consumptions, electricity bills and so on. You can then see the amount of CO2 created for each individual activity. You can do this either in advance and use it as a help for decisions or afterwards to continually sum up your carbon dioxide emissions. Or you can estimate your carbon footprint of all your activities, see for example the carbon footprint calculator of WWF in the UK. An easy to use off-line carbon footprint and primary energy consumption calculator (Excel sheet) is available for free in the download section.

There are graphs available on this site for the CO2 emissions per capita by country (average carbon footprint by country). In the medium- and long term, the carbon footprint must be reduced to less than 600 kg CO2 per year and per person. This is the maximum allowance for a sustainable living .

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What is a carbon footprint - definition of carbon footprint

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Your carbon footprint is the sum of all emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2 (carbon dioxide), which were induced by your activities in a given time frame. Usually a carbon footprint is calculated for the time period of a year.

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Carbon management is moving to the forefront of business. With rising energy prices and increasing resource scarcity, the efficient management of energy is now critical. Cost and risk factors are not alone in pushing this issue up the boardroom agenda. Companies must also consider other issues such as brand reputation, employee expectations and competitive positioning.

Another strategic driver for the efficient management of carbon in the corporate world is when a company's shareholders request it. Improved management of energy and lower carbon emissions help investors to mitigate financial risk in their portfolios. It also has the potential to reduce costs for business, so companies do not need to choose between reducing emissions or higher financial returns.

This is the purpose of a new investor-led initiative that the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) launched today. A vanguard group of 34 institutional investors with US$7.6 trillion in assets including Aviva Investors, CCLA Investment Management and Scottish Widows Investment Partnership are this week calling on the world's largest companies to implement cost effective greenhouse gas emissions reduction initiatives.

Investors request action from companies in the reduction of their greenhouse gas emissions in order to protect their investments. According to Steve Waygood, head of sustainability, research and engagement at Aviva Investors, a founding signatory investor to Carbon Action, "We believe that the external costs of greenhouse gas emissions will become internalised into company cash flows and profitability. We encourage companies to consider what action that they can take now to reduce emissions."

But there are benefits to companies in taking action, beyond complying with their shareholders request. Some companies must protect themselves from material financial risk from carbon prices or from issues in their supply chains; but all companies gain by managing their operations more efficiently and reducing energy costs.

There is a growing recognition of a large range of carbon reducing activities that companies can undertake with a very clear business case. Research by McKinsey & Co finds that most companies have options to reduce carbon emissions at negative cost - across the overall economy there is the potential to save as much as 12Gt C02e, 25% of the global total annual emissions in this way by 2030.

Some companies are already seeing tangible commercial benefits from implementing quantifiable, sustainable processes and practices to manage carbon. A crucial part of this new Carbon Action initiative will involve highlighting effective approaches to emissions reducing activities that have been successfully implemented. In that way we will help to advance peer to peer learning.

An economic revolution is needed to decouple financial growth from growth in emissions. By taking action, businesses are making a large contribution in reducing the long-term threat to the global economy which climate change represents. This is surely the greatest strategic driver of all.
Paul Dickinson is executive chairman at the Carbon Disclosure Project This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox

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Investors put pressure on companies to reduce carbon

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Carbon management is moving to the forefront of business. With rising energy prices and increasing resource scarcity, the efficient management of energy is now critical. Cost and risk factors are not alone in pushing this issue up the boardroom agenda. Companies must also consider other issues such as brand reputation, employee expectations and competitive positioning.

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Drinking water - tap, filtered, or bottled - is important for healthy hydration and plays a vital role in people's lives. Consumers choose bottled water for several reasons, including taste, quality, and convenience.

Bottled water is also an alternative to less-healthy sugary packaged beverages when consumers want to eliminate or moderate calories, caffeine, sugar, artificial flavors or colors, alcohol, and other ingredients from their diets.

Support for public water systems

The bottled water industry supports a strong U.S. public water system (although critics of bottled water would have you believe otherwise). Public water systems are important because they provide citizens with clean and safe drinking water. In fact, many bottled water companies use public water sources for their products - but those products are not just "tap water in a bottle." Once the source water enters the bottled water plant, several processes are employed to ensure that it meets the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) purified water standard. These treatments can include utilizing a multi-barrier approach. Measures in a multi-barrier approach may include one or more of the following: reverse osmosis, distillation, micro-filtration, carbon filtration, ozonation, and ultraviolet (UV) light. The finished water product is then placed in a sealed bottle under sanitary conditions and sold to the consumer.

Sometimes, water from public water systems can be compromised after emergency situations or natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes, floods, tornados, fires, or boil alerts). During those times, bottled water is a necessary and reliable alternative to deliver clean, safe drinking water. However, tap water does provide, in most cases, a safe source of drinking water, even if occasional system failures make it necessary for consumers to search for alternatives during these times.

Differences in the regulation of tap water and bottled water, though minimal, highlight the differences between drinking water delivered by a public water system and drinking water delivered to the consumer in a sealed container.

Public water systems (tap water) provide quality water for human consumption and other uses (e.g., washing clothes, bathing, and industrial and commercial uses) through a piped distribution system to specific communities. Public water systems are granted exclusive rights to provide water to consumers in a particular geographic or municipal area. Consumers do not, therefore, have a choice of which public water system will provide water to their homes or businesses. The U.S. public water systems are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Bottled water is a packaged food product, regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), that is sold in individual, sanitary, sealed containers. It is intended solely for human consumption. Consumers have a variety of bottled water choices available to satisfy their particular tastes and price preferences. It is sold in many different package sizes, including 3- and 5-gallon containers used with bottled water coolers, 2.5-gallon refrigerator-size containers, and "on-the go" half-liter, 1 liter, and 1.5 liter convenience-size packages. Consumers choose bottled water for several reasons: taste, quality, and convenience.

Want some fact-based information about how public water systems and bottled water are regulated? The Drinking Water Research Foundation (DWRF) report "Bottled Water and Tap Water: Just the Facts" provides a detailed side-by-side comparison of quality and monitoring regulations for tap water and bottled water.

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Bottled Water vs Tap Water - Bottled Water | IBWA | Bottled Water

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Drinking water - tap, filtered, or bottled - is important for healthy hydration and plays a vital role in people's lives. Consumers choose bottled water for several reasons, including taste, quality, and convenience. Bottled water is also an alternative to less-healthy sugary packaged beverages when consumers want to eliminate or moderate calories, caffeine, sugar, artificial flavors or colors, alcohol, and other ingredients from their diets.

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Bottled water - already a more than $10 billion industry - is the fastest-growing beverage category in the U.S. But is it good for you? Here's the pure truth.

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May 6, 2005 &#151; -- It started with Perrier. Somehow, a French company convinced people it's cool to buy bottled water. Today, Evian has surpassed Perrier in sales and now it's the chic French water of choice. Why? It costs about 5 bucks a gallon! Why do people pay so much for something they can get virtually free?

If they're not buying Evian, they buy Aquafina and Dasani and the dozens of new brands that are jumping into this billion-dollar business, including bizarre ones like Venus, the Water for Women, and Trump Ice, with "The Donald" scowling on the label. I'd have to be very thirsty to buy that.

Many people say they buy bottled waters because they taste better. We spoke with people in New York City, asking them why they liked bottled better than tap water.

"I drink Dasani. It tastes good, it tastes crisp, like -- natural," one girl said.

"I think tap water kind of tastes like sewer," said another.

People also say they drink bottled water because they believe it's safer than tap water.

One man told me he's the only one "who's brave enough" to drink tap water at home. His family's afraid to drink tap water because of germs, he said.

At recent Earth Day celebrations, a lot of people told us they believe tap water is unhealthy. "As a parent I feel more comfortable giving her bottled water," one father told us.

Bottled water, we were told, is cleaner, safer, healthier.

Watching bottled water ads, you'd think that tap water might not be healthy. But it's not true.

"20/20" took five bottles of national brands of bottled water and a sample of tap water from a drinking fountain in the middle of New York City and sent them to microbiologist Aaron Margolin of the University of New Hampshire to test for bacteria that can make you sick, like e. coli.

"There was actually no difference between the New York City tap water and the bottled waters that we evaluated," he said.

Many scientists have run tests like that and have consistently found that tap water is as good for you as bottled waters that cost 500 times more.

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May 6, 2005 — -- It started with Perrier. Somehow, a French company convinced people it's cool to buy bottled water. Today, Evian has surpassed Perrier in sales and now it's the chic French water of choice. Why? It costs about 5 bucks a gallon!

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Ideas and Insight From National Geographic

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Due to a one-two punch of a booming population and severe droughts across the globe, the Earth is in what the United Nations is calling a "water crisis" [source: U.N.]. It's possible to make do with just a few gallons a day, as people do in many parts of the world, but households in the United States use an average of 400 gallons of water per day [source: EPA]. With a growing awareness of this disparity, some Americans are beginning to think about ways to cut down on their water usage. In some states -- especially in the southeastern and western United States -- residents don't have a choice: Many state governments have issued bans on outdoor watering and are asking residents to take steps to cut their water by as much as 20 percent [source: WRAL].
Green Living Image Gallery
Conserving water is a great place to start. Running your dishwasher and washing machine only for full loads, for example, can cut a household's water consumption by an average of 1,000 gallons a month [source: Water -- Use It Wisely]. For some, though, simple water conservation doesn't go far enough. One thing they may consider is recycling their home's gray water.

Gray water is all of the wastewater that drains out of your washing machine, sinks and bathtub or shower. It can be easily treated and recycled in your home. In developing countries, the concept of reusing water is old and established, but in other nations where people consider water plentiful, it's used once and thrown away.

The problem has been getting steadily worse. In the United States, for example, the national population increased by 52 percent from 1960 to 1990, while water consumption increased 300 percent in the same period [source: University of Georgia]. The increase in demand on water -- and the effects of reusing water on the environment and public health -- are making gray water a viable alternative to simply going back to the faucet for more.

Areas where water is scarce -- like Texas and parts of Australia -- have large water recycling plants that treat gray water and send it back for use, but since gray water is easy to treat, it's becoming increasingly popular for people to collect and reuse in their own homes. An entire cottage industry -- born out of the green movement -- has sprung up around gray water. People interested in reusing the water in their homes can have commercially produced gray water recycling systems professionally installed. This sudden surge in interest in gray water is a bit ahead of state governments, many of which are still studying water reuse. In some states it's not legal to collect and use gray water, and in others it's necessary to obtain permits and observe restrictions first.

So, what exactly can you use gray water for? Read the next page to find out.

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What is gray water, and can it solve the global water crisis?

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Due to a one-two punch of a booming population and severe droughts across the globe, the Earth is in what the United Nations is calling a "water crisis" [source: U.N.]. It's possible to make do with just a few gallons a day, as people do in many parts of the world, but households in the United States use an average­ of 400 gallons of water per day [source: EPA].

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Nature's great - it's good for you. We can all benefit from a nice walk in the woods or a round of badminton in the backyard. But hanging out outdoors can be hazardous, and one growing risk seems to be getting sick from a bug bite.

A report, published May 4, 2018 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), finds that cases of vector-borne diseases - those carried from host to host (like humans and other animals) by biting insects, mainly ticks and mosquitoes - tripled in the U.S. between 2004 and 2016, ballooning from 27,300 cases to 96,000 cases in a little over a decade. During this time, nine previously unknown vector-borne pathogens were discovered, including tick-borne babesiosis and mosquito-borne Zika and chikungunya viruses.

More than 60 percent of these vector-borne diseases were caused by ticks - for instance, cases of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses doubled over the study period, from about 22,500 cases in 2004 to 48,600 in 2016. Although not as many mosquito-borne diseases like the Zika and West Nile viruses were reported during the 13-year period, what interested the CDC researchers was the viruses sudden spike in the year 2012. In one year, almost 14,000 cases of mosquito-borne diseases, mostly West Nile, were reported, up from only 4,400 the year before. By 2016, more than 47,000 mosquito-borne diseases were reported in the U.S., but this time it was mostly Zika virus. The CDC also reports that since vector-borne diseases commonly go unreported, the rise in cases of these illnesses could be much greater than estimated by this study.

Several factors most likely play into the rise in vector-borne illness in the U.S., but you can probably guess the main culprit. Rising global temperatures have both expanded tick season and made it possible for these blood-sucking arachnids to live farther north than their former natural range would allow. In addition, people in the U.S. are doing more international travel and living in closer proximity to wild animals, which are often, in addition to humans, hosts to these diseases.

So, vector-borne diseases are out there, but what do we do to protect ourselves? The CDC suggests wearing insect repellent and long sleeves and pants when you go outside for those healthful walks and badminton tourneys. And go to the doctor if you feel bad! Early detection not only helps us understand the scope of our new vector-borne disease problem, it also helps you get better much faster.

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Tick- and Mosquito-borne Diseases on the Rise

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Nature's great - it's good for you. We can all benefit from a nice walk in the woods or a round of badminton in the backyard. But hanging out outdoors can be hazardous, and one growing risk seems to be getting sick from a bug bite.

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For a natural resource that most of us have access to for minimal cost, water is doing pretty well as a revenue generator. The bottled version of the stuff is currently an $8 billion industry in the United States alone, with Americans drinking about 7 billion gallons of it in 2005. That's compared to hundreds of billions of gallons of tap water, but for a product that can cost up to 10,000 times more than its municipal counterpart, it's still an impressive marketshare.

So what's the appeal? The three most common reasons given by bottled-water drinkers are healthiness, purity and taste. As we'll get into later on, the first two reasons are somewhat misguided, and the third is open for debate. For a seemingly basic food product, bottled water has generated its share of controversy. Some of it focuses on the federal and state regulations governing the industry, some of it goes deeper into the ecological implications of bottling and transporting billions on billions of gallons of something that flows freely from the tap, and some of it calls into question the labeling practices of bottled-water companies.

The pretty pictures and superlative language on the labels of bottled waters can sometimes be misleading. One famous example is the now defunct Alaska Water, which stated on the label, "Alaska Premium Glacier Drinking Water: Pure Glacier Water From the Last Unpolluted Frontier," and came from one of the municipal water supplies in Juneau. The currently available Glacier Clear Water comes from a source in Greeneville, Tennessee. But if you look past the names and descriptions and go straight to the water type, the label will more or less tell you what's in the bottle. "Spring water" and "artesian water" are examples of bottled-water types.

Aquafina and Dasani, the two top-selling brands in the United States, are "purified drinking water." Other popular brands, including Poland Spring and Arrowhead, are "spring water." Evian is "mineral water," and Perrier is "sparkling mineral water." Eldorado Springs is "artesian spring water." These labels primarily indicate two things about the water in the bottle: its source and any treatment it has undergone. In the next section, we'll examine the sources and treatments associated with each type of bottled water and take a look at the process Aquafina uses to produce its "purified drinking water," which starts out as plain old tap water purchased from public water supplies.

You can usually figure out what's in a bottle of water by the stated water type -- the FDA regulates the use of terms like "spring water" and "purified water." There are six primary bottled-water types, and several more variations that combine a couple of the basics:

Artesian water: Artesian water comes from an artesian well, which draws water from a confined aquifer (an underground, porous rock or sand formation that bears water and is under pressure from a layer of rock or clay above it). The pressure from the confining layer forces the water from the aquifer upward. The level of the water supply the artesian well is drawing from must sit above the uppermost layer of the aquifer.

Mineral water: Mineral water is spring water that has at least 250 parts per million (ppm) of total dissolved solids (TDS) in it. These "dissolved solids" are minerals like calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium, and they must be present in the water at the source, not added later. By contrast, regular spring water typically has about 50 ppm of TDS.

Naturally sparkling water: Naturally sparkling water comes from a spring or artesian well and has natural carbonation in it. The carbonation may be removed during processing and then replaced, but the carbonation levels after replacement must be the same as the level of carbonation at the source.

Purified water: Purified water comes from either a protected underground source or from a municipal drinking-water supply (public tap water). It has been "demineralized" -- treated by one or more of several processes to remove dissolved solids. If the water comes from a municipal water source that uses chlorine as a disinfectant, the manufacturer may further treat the water to remove the chlorine.

Spring water: Spring water comes from a protected, underground water source from which the water flows to the surface on its own. It may be collected either at the surface spring or through a sanitary, protected hole drilled directly into the source feeding the spring. If the water is collected through a hole drilled into the source, it has to have exactly the same composition as the water in the surface spring.

Well water: Well water is drawn from a protected well that taps directly into an unconfined aquifer.

Of the basic types of bottled water, the only one required by definition to undergo further treatment once it's drawn from the source (or purchased from the municipal water supply) is purified water. The most common treatment processes for purified water include:

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Filtration: The water is sent through filters or membranes whose holes will only let through extremely small particles, typically those smaller than 1 micron. Contaminants larger than 1 micron, including many germs and inorganic solids, can't make it through.

Distillation: The water is vaporized. Since minerals don't vaporize, all that's left after the vapor recondenses is demineralized water.

Reverse osmosis: The water is forced through semipermeable membranes not porous enough to let minerals or other contaminants through. For more in-depth information, see How does reverse osmosis work?

Ozonation: Ozone gas (the same type found in the atmosphere), typically created by subjecting oxygen to electrical current, is an antimicrobial agent -- it kills microorganisms. The water is infused with ozone (03) molecules as a disinfecting process, and the molecules naturally break down and leave the water fairly quickly. As an additional benefit, when the ozone molecules degrade to 02 and molecules, this leaves free oxygen ions to bond with other contaminants like iron and sulfur. When the oxygen bonds to these molecules, it turns them into oxides, which are insoluble. These now-insoluble contaminants are then filtered out.

UV-light treatment: Ultraviolet (UV) light is a disinfecting agent -- it kills microorganisms, including bacteria and viruses, although some microorganisms are less affected by it than others. The process uses no chemicals. Instead, the water is subjected to intense UV light inside a chamber. The UV light damages microorganisms at the cellular level, either killing them or causing them to lose the ability to replicate. A virus that can't replicate is harmless.

Aquafina is an example of purified drinking water. It begins as municipal tap water and then undergoes a treatment process that Aquafina calls the "HydRO-7(tm) purification system." Here is the HowStuffWorks interpretation of Aquafina's marketing-friendly description of the HydRO-7(tm) process:

This animation shows the ideal -- nothing's left at the end of the purification process except H20. But according to Aquafina, what's left is actually 4 parts per million (ppm) of total dissolved solids -- still significantly less than the FDA regulation stating that purified water should have no more than 10 ppm of TDS.

In the next section, we'll examine some of the regulations affecting bottled water and find out how they compare to EPA standards for tap water.

The FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) regulates bottled water as a packaged food item. FDA regulations for bottled water are more lax than the EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) regulations for municipal drinking water.

FDA regulations for bottled-water safety start with the most basic regulation for all food products -- bottled water must be packaged in a sanitary container and in a sanitary environment. Beyond the basic rules for packaged food, the FDA has specific rules for bottled water. First, it must come from an approved source, which doesn't mean the FDA goes and checks the source to make sure it's safe. It simply means the water must come from one of two places: a protected natural source, such as a spring or artesian well in which measures have been taken to assure against contamination by surface water; or a municipal source of drinking water (i.e. tap water). The FDA also has rules about how companies can label their bottled water. For instance, they are not allowed to flat-out lie about the water's source, and if the water originally came from an untreated municipal water source (water that wasn't potable when they bought it), they have to disclose that on the label. They also have to disclose if they have added anything to the water, such as fluoride or other minerals.

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Other FDA bottled-water regulations determine the maximum levels of certain contaminants allowed, including organic (bacteria, viruses, parasites) and inorganic (radon, lead, arsenic). These regulations are based on the EPA's requirements for tap water, but there are differences. The FDA does not consider bottled water to be a risky food product for at least a couple of reasons: First, since the water's source must be protected in the first place, the water shouldn't be susceptible to many of the harmful contaminants found in surface and ground water, which municipal systems sometimes have to deal with; and second, there have been no instances to date of significantly contaminated bottles of water. There are contaminants in bottled water just like there are in tap water, but no testing has uncovered levels that would pose a health risk. So the FDA does not regulate bottled water as tightly as it regulates, say, prescription drugs.

In some areas, FDA regulations are actually stricter than the EPA's rules for tap water, as in the case of lead. Tap water, which travels through lead pipes to get to your faucet, is allowed to have up to 15 parts per billion (ppb) of lead by necessity, whereas bottled water can't have more than 5 ppb. But in most cases, the EPA standards for tap water are harder to meet. For example, whereas tap water is not allowed to contain any E.coli or fecal coliform bacteria at all (E.coli can cause illness, and fecal coliform can indicate the presence of disease-causing agents), bottled water is allowed to have trace amounts of these contaminants. Still, there have been no confirmed instances of finding either bacteria in any brand of bottled water, lending credence to the FDA's assertion that the risk is low. Also, cities must disinfect all potable water supplies and test for asbestos and parasites, while there are no matching FDA requirements for bottled-water companies.

At one level down from federal regulation, which only affects water that travels between states, there is state regulation of the industry. Many states have bottled-water regulations that are stricter than the FDA's, requiring bottled-water companies to obtain a yearly license and submit to regular inspection of water sources and treatment facilities. Some states don't regulate bottled water at all.

By far the tightest regulating body overseeing the bottled-water industry is the industry itself, most notably in the form of the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA). The IBWA enforces voluntary self-regulation of its members, who produce about 80 percent of the bottled water purchased in the United States. IBWA members must meet the requirements set forth in the IBWA Model Code, which includes disinfection in the form of reverse osmosis, filtration or distillation for any water drawn from a municipal drinking water source. (Companies using protected, natural sources are not required to disinfect the water.) IBWA members must also submit to an unannounced facility inspection once a year by a third-party organization. One independent group that tests bottled water for quality and compliance is the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF), which runs a voluntary Bottled Water Certification Program that includes water-source and plant inspection and the testing of both water (for contaminants) and container-sealing processes. See the NSF Product and Service Listing for a list of NSF-certified bottled waters.

You probably noticed a few things in the above discussion of regulations. For one thing, the FDA's and the states' regulations are the only ones that are not voluntary, and some states don't have regulations. So that leaves the FDA. And the FDA's regulations are based on the premise that bottled water is not a potential risk to public health. These are a couple of the points that contribute to the controversy surrounding bottled water. In the next section, we'll take a closer look at the issues.

If we re-examine the top reasons people give for drinking bottled water instead of tap water -- taste, purity and healthiness -- the controversies start to become obvious. While the FDA prohibits bottled-water manufacturers from implying that their water is "safer" or "purer" than any other kind of water, implications are a difficult thing to quantify. In any event, many bottled-water drinkers believe they are drinking something that is healthier than tap water.

In reality, all water is "healthy" as long as it doesn't possess high levels of harmful contaminants, which tap water does not. In May 2005, the ABC news program "20/20" sent five different national brands of bottled water and one sample of tap water taken from a New York City drinking fountain to a microbiologist for testing. The lab tested for contaminants that can cause illness, like E.coli. The results showed no difference whatsoever, in terms of unhealthy contaminants, between the bottled waters and the tap water. So perhaps it's a matter of semantics, but the issue seems to be more one of purity than of healthiness: Some bottled waters do contain fewer total dissolved solids than tap water, but most scientists agree that the levels of dissolved solids in tap water are not harmful to human health. And when it comes to dissolved solids, in certain cases and in some opinions, more is actually more. People who drink mineral water presumably are drinking it because they believe the higher mineral count in the water is beneficial to their health. In the case of mineral water, it may just be that the water is healthier than tap water.

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On the other hand, an interesting point to note is that many cities add fluoride to their water if it doesn't naturally contain the American Dental Association recommended amount (0.7 to 1.2 ppm) to help keep people's teeth healthy. So people who don't drink tap water may be getting less fluoride than people who do. Dentists warn that this may lead to more dental problems in the long run for people who only drink bottled water that doesn't contain any or enough fluoride (some bottled waters leave the fluoride in or add it as a beneficial mineral after processing). Of course, the healthiness of fluoride-enriched water is forever under debate, so "healthiness" ends up being a somewhat subjective quality. Purity, on the other hand, can be quantified.

If someone is looking for purity, choosing purified water may deliver the goods. With an industry standard of fewer than 10 ppm of total dissolved solids, purified water is pretty close to plain H20. On the other hand, if someone defines "pure" as "safe," we're right back to the healthiness issue discussed above. Bottled water sources are typically tested for harmful contaminants once a week at most. Municipal water supplies are tested hundreds of times every month. Tap water may not be perfectly clear, or it may have a slight chlorine aftertaste, but according to the Minnesota Department of Health, those are merely aesthetic qualities that do not indicate the water is unsafe. And bottled water -- even purified water -- does not have to be completely free of contaminants. It simply has to have below the FDA-allowed and/or state-allowed level of certain contaminants.

So what we're left with is taste. Many bottled water drinkers report taste as the primary reason for their bias -- they just think bottled water tastes better than tap water, end of story. In some cases, this is entirely likely. Since many cities treat their tap water with chlorine to disinfect it, an aftertaste in tap water is pretty common. And some cities' tap water just tastes bad, even though it's perfectly safe, due to higher levels of certain minerals.

But a couple of very non-scientific, blind taste tests have found that most people -- or most people in New York City, to be more accurate -- can't actually tell the difference between tap water and bottled water once they're all placed in identical containers. In one of these tests, "20/20," continuing its tap versus bottled testing, asked randomly chosen people to taste six different waters, five popular bottled waters and New York City tap water, and rate them as either "bad," "average" or "great." The New York City tap water tied for third place, winning over two of the bottled waters. ABC's "Good Morning America" performed a similar test on its studio audience and received comparable results. Probably the most scientific conclusion that can be drawn from these tests is that New York City apparently does a really good job with its tap water. A nationwide taste test might provide different results.

One of the most serious arguments leveled against bottled water relates to federal regulations, or the lack thereof. Some people believe that water bottled for the specific purpose of human consumption should face exactly the same regulations as municipal water intended for human consumption, whether the FDA regards it as a risky product or not. The other main regulatory concern is the fact that FDA regulations only apply to bottled water shipped between states. If a company produces and sells its bottled water with the borders of one state, and that state is one of the 10 or so that does not regulate bottled water, that company's product is subject to no oversight at all. Unless it voluntarily adheres to the rules of a trade organization. Which is, well, voluntary.

Beyond safety regulations and general consumer misconceptions that may or may not be fueled by the marketing efforts of bottled-water manufacturers, the other primary accusation against the industry can be summed up in two words: environmental nightmare.

In 2004, worldwide sales of bottled water totaled 41 billion gallons. There's a lot of plastic left over once 41 billion gallons of water, much of it in 8- or 12-ounce containers, is consumed.

In a single year, manufacturers around the world use about 2.7 million tons of plastic to bottle water. Most of those bottles are a type of plastic called polyethylene terepthalate, or PET, which is produced from crude oil. To produce bottles to meet yearly bottled-water demand in the United States alone requires 1.5 million barrels of oil. That much oil could power about 100,000 cars for a year, according to the Earth Policy Institute.

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And almost 90 percent of bottled-water bottles end up in the trash or on the ground, not in recycling bins. They can take up to 1,000 years to degrade, and when they do, they can leak harmful chemicals into the ground, contaminating ground water -- ironically inducing a new cycle of pollution that means bottled water may actually be a necessity in the United States some day. Some companies, like the Colorado-based BIOTA bottled-water company, are making a concerted effort to reduce their effect on the environment. BIOTA uses a corn-based, biodegradable plastic bottle that can take fewer than three months to degrade in a compost pile.

But lack of recycling isn't the only issue. Of the roughly 10 percent of bottles that do get recycled, most aren't much help in offsetting the energy consumed and pollution produced by the original manufacturing and transportation process. There are so many types of plastics that the containers are extremely hard to sort, so recycling them is very expensive. As a result, a lot of recycling companies in the United States won't do it. Most recycling of plastic bottles ends up happening overseas, particularly in China. Those billions of bottles have to be shipped there, meaning even more energy is consumed to get the bottles to the point of recycling. And once they are broken down for re-use, manufacturers are typically not able to build a bottle out of recycled plastic alone. A "recycled" plastic bottle has far more virgin plastic in it than recycled plastic.

Of course, in parts of the world where potable water is not readily available, bottled water is an excellent option despite any environmental concerns. People need to drink. But when drinking water is drawn from good sources, bottled and branded, shipped to places where potable water is readily available from the tap and consumed by people who have easy access to that tap, it can be argued that a natural resource is being depleted in the name of business. Some towns and villages have reported that within months of a bottled-water company setting up shop in their neighborhood and tapping into underground water supplies, their own wells have run dry. However, because aquifer geology is not an exact science, it's always hard to prove that the bottled-water company is in fact tapping the same source as the community well, so the claims typically go unaddressed outside the environmentalist community.

Whether we'll eventually run out of public water supplies remains to be seen. In the meantime, go to the trendiest restaurant you know and ask the water sommelier which type of water to drink with your salad course. If she says "Evian," ask if she has New York City tap water instead. Evian came in last in that taste test.

For more information on bottled water and related topics, check out the links on the next page.

Related HowStuffWorks Articles

More Great Links

Sources

American Water Works Association. http://www.awwa.org/

Aquafina. http://www.aquafina.com/

"Bottled Water, a natural resource taxing the world's ecosystem." BreitBart.com. http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/02/10/060210151009.9nrba2js.html

"Bottled Water, Home Water Treatment Systems, and Fluoride Exposure." American Dental Association. http://www.ada.org/public/topics/bottled_water.asp

"Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?" National Resources Defense Council. http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/bwinx.asp

Bullers, Anne Christiansen. "Bottled Water: Better Than the Tap?" FDA Consumer magazine. July-August 2002. http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2002/402_h2o.html

Fisk, Umbra. "Bottle Racket." Grist Magazine. August 2, 2004. http://www.grist.org/advice/ask/2004/08/02/umbra-bottles/

Howard, Brian. "Is America's $8 Billion Bottled Water Industry a Fraud?" E/The Environmental Magazine. December 9, 2003. http://www.organicconsumers.org/foodsafety/water121003.cfm

International Bottled Water Association. http://www.bottledwater.org/

"International Bottled Water Association Offers Tips for Proper Bottled Water Storage." IBWA. http://www.bottledwater.org/public/2003_Releases/Feb_2003_tips_proper_bottled_water_storage.html

"NSF Bottled Water Certification Program." NSF International. http://www.nsf.org/consumer/bottled_water/index.asp?program=BottledWat

Owen, James. "Bottled Water Isn't Healthier Than Tap, Report Reveals." National Geographic News. February 24, 2006. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/02/0224_060224_bottled_water.html

"Ozonation in Water Treatment." Wilkes University Center for Environmental Quality. http://www.water-research.net/ozone.htm

"Plastic Bottles and Water." Ask a Scientist. January 20, 2003. http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem00/chem00959.htm

"Researcher Dispels Myth of Dioxins and Plastic Water Bottles." Bloomberg School of Public Health. http://www.jhsph.edu/PublicHealthNews/articles/Halden_dioxins.html

Stossel, John. "Is Bottled Water Better Than Tap?" ABC News. May 6, 2005. http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Health/story?id=728070&page=1

"Types and Treatment of Bottled Water." NSF International. http://www.nsf.org/consumer/bottled_water/bw_types.asp?program=BottledWat

"Water Storage Before Disaster Strikes." American Red Cross. http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/beprepared/water.html

"What's in that bottle?" ConsumerReports.org. January 2003. http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/food/drinkingwater-safety-103/whats-in-bottled-water/index.htm

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For a natural resource that most of us have access to for minimal cost, water is doing pretty well as a revenue generator. The bottled version of the stuff is currently an $8 billion industry in the United States alone, with Americans drinking about 7 billion gallons of it in 2005.

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Over the last decade, some extremely "green" individuals have started giving up artificial refrigeration to save the Earth. Or at least to save a few hundred kilowatt-hours a year.

Most people think such a backward step in the evolution of modern civilization is a bit uncalled for, but it does draw attention to the drawbacks of modern refrigeration techniques. But there are other options besides resigning yourself to warm beer. Solar-powered refrigerators are pretty easy to come by these days, and they get around the energy-consumption issues associated with traditional fridges. They also get around the fact that 2 billion people around the globe have no access to electricity in the first place [source: NASA].

Solar energy, often known as photovoltaics, is ubiquitous these days. Some of us use it to power our homes; others buy carbon offsets that put money into solar and wind power to offset traditional energy use (see How Carbon Offsets Work). Solar panels sit atop buildings, homes and tents and power cell-phone chargers, radios and the International Space Station (ISS). These technologies use photovoltaic (PV) cells to convert sunlight into electricity. When sunlight strikes a PV cell, it heats the cell up. Heating the cell causes electrons to knock loose, and these electrons are converted into a stream of electricity, or current (see How Solar Cells Work).

One of the most common solar-powered refrigerators on the market, the NASA-licensed SunDanzer, uses this PV technology to power an otherwise mostly traditional refrigeration setup. But one of the most recent developments uses "solar power" in a much more basic way.

In this article, we'll take a look at both of these solar-powered refrigerators and find out what makes them tick. We'll start with the SunDanzer, which is based on technology developed to provide air conditioning and refrigeration on the ISS.

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­Over the last decade, some extremely "green" individuals have started giving up artificial refrigeration to save the Earth. Or at least to save a few hundred kilowatt-hours a year. Most people think such a backward step in the evolution of modern civilization is a bit uncalled for, but it does draw attention to the drawbacks of modern refrigeration techniques.

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You've probably come across solar panels before, but what about solar shingles? It's the same idea as the solar panel, but in a much smaller scale. And they'll probably save you more money in the long run.

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Solar Roadways is a company with an ambitious vision for a new energy future: to replace all concrete and asphalt surfaces. How will solar roadways work?

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If you've ever bought carbon offsets, you may have noticed that the most or all of the purchase price goes toward wind energy, not solar. In the world of large-scale alternative energy, wind reigns supreme, mostly because it's cheaper. But a recent development in solar-energy production could make solar power a far more viable option.

In most cases, the sun's energy is converted into electricity in one of two ways: using photovoltaic cells, which turn the sun's light into electricity using a semiconductor material that absorbs photons and releases electrons; or using solar-thermal turbines, which use the sun's heat to generate steam, which then spins a turbine to produce electricity. It's the solar-thermal power plant that is poised for a big change.

The big problem with solar power is the most obvious one: The sun doesn't shine all the time. At nighttime or on cloudy days, power plants simply can't access the sun's energy. This makes solar power expensive, since the power plants can't run 24/7. A cloud floats overhead and the plant is suddenly at an energy standstill, producing nothing. It also makes solar-generated power unavailable at times -- like at night, when power demand is greatest.

The solution is a simple one: Store the sun's energy so you can use it when the sun's not available. Unfortunately, implementing that solution has been extremely problematic -- until a recent breakthrough made solar-energy storage a realistic option for the energy industry.

In this article, we'll find out how it's possible to efficiently store the power in sunshine so we can access it when the sun sets. We'll also look at the first commercial power plant built to use the technology to find out how the system works.

The storage material that makes the breakthrough possible is probably sitting in your kitchen right now.

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Is there a way to get solar energy at night?

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If you've ever bought carbon offsets, you may have noticed that the most or all of the purchase price goes toward wind energy, not solar. In the world of large-scale alternative energy, wind reigns supreme, mostly because it's cheaper. But a recent development in solar-energy production could make solar power a far more viable option.

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Are you sick of hearing about solar energy? I know I am. Now that's definitely not the same as saying that I'm opposed to solar energy-quite the contrary. I say, by all means, fill New Mexico up with fields of mirrors and those weird black dominoes. Pretty much anything that safely cuts into our fossil fuel appetite is righteous news. That said, we've reached a dangerous point of near-total saturation when it comes to messages about renewable energy. Even when we recognize the value of wind, solar, biodiesel, etc., you can only hear the story so many times. And solar energy, as the most well-known of all the renewables, has absorbed the majority of this topic fatigue.

But there's an interesting fact we hint at in this week's video that you might not have considered: When you think about it, pretty much all of the energy we use is solar. How is that possible?

What we're usually talking about when we say "solar energy" is one of two things: solar thermal energy, or photovoltaic harvesting. The HowStuffWorks article on solar cells gives a really solid rundown of what's involved with photovoltaics, but the simplified version is that you make a flat sheet of semiconductor material like silicon-the same stuff the microprocessor in your computer is made of-and spread it out under the sun. When streams of photons from the sun crash into the solar cell, they rattle electrons loose from the atoms in the semiconductor sheet. And where there's a free electron and a circuit for it to follow, there's electricity. In addition to photovoltaics, there's solar thermal tech, which uses focused mirrors to gather sun rays into beams of intense heat. And once you've got vicious heat and a little bit of water, you can create steam to push the blade of a turbine, and again you've got electricity.

So the sun's role in this type of energy is obvious. But there are hundreds of other ways to get hold of useful heat or electricity. What about the oldest method known to our species-wood burning?

I guess we've got to start with a question: Why does wood burn? You know you can't make a campfire out of scrap metal or tubes of glass. So there has to be something materially special about wood that makes it catch on fire. This special material property is called chemical energy, which just means that you can create energy by causing a chemical reaction in the wood-in this case, burning. But obviously if we go one step further back, we realize the chemical energy in the wood had to come from somewhere. Where do trees and other plants get their energy? That's right: They're just like Superman, gaining strength from our yellow sun. Plants build their bodies by harvesting photons from the sun and using that energy to generate sugars and other organic compounds. The most common compound found in any given piece of wood is cellulose, and cellulose is really flammable. For example, cotton is about 90 percent cellulose; you can see what happens when loose cotton meets pyro-curiosity in this random YouTube video I found:

You can think of plant matter as something like a natural battery that stores up solar energy from the past in a solid form. So, when you make heat or even electricity by burning wood, you're using solar power - just once removed. Even your own body is solar powered: All of the cells in it were put together with energy you got from eating plants, and perhaps from eating animals that previously ate plants that got their energy from the sun. And of course when we pass on, bacteria and other organisms will get their turn at the chemical energy trough. So in a weird way, our bodies are batteries too.

But let's get back to fuel and electricity: Even if you combine wood burning and artificial solar harvesting, you're still probably accounting for less than 1 percent of energy production in most countries. How about the big dogs, like coal and oil?

Coal supplies about 40% of the world's electricity - it's second only to oil. But where did the energy in coal come from? We're back to the campfire. In a basic sense, coal is to wood what those weightlifter protein bars are to normal food. It's uber-wood. Coal is plant fiber from millions of years ago that has decomposed and been covered over by many layers of heavy rocks and sediments. Over time, it gets compressed by the weight of those rocks and sediments into dense sheets and heated by that pressure. Coal is a more tightly wound presentation of that same solar energy you find stored up in wood.

How about oil? Same thing again - oil formed millions of years ago on ocean floors, probably from the bodies of ancient, ocean-dwelling plankton. Plankton is the generic name we give to many different types of tiny organisms that float throughout the seas-little specks of life in the water-and many of these organisms were photosynthesizers, just like the plants that make wood and cotton and coal. They either got their energy directly from the sun, or they ate other organisms that did. When these tiny specks of life died, they settled along the ocean floors, mixed with mud and hungry bacteria, got covered up by layers of Earth, and again formed dense accumulations of chemical energy that was once harvested from the sun.

How about wind? Wind is created by pressure differentials on the Earth's surface. If atmospheric gases are at a state of higher pressure in Canada and lower pressure in the United States, the gases travel across the border into the lower-pressure regions, and U.S. residents are treated to a gust of wind from the north. Huge turbine blades mounted on a hillside can take advantage of this wind. The moving gases turn the blades, and the moving blades generate electricity. Now, the pressure systems in our atmosphere are always trying to reach equilibrium. How come they never do? In part, we can thank the sun. The sun continually heats the Earth's surface, but it doesn't heat every part of the Earth's surface equally. In regions where there is more heat, gas expands, causing higher pressure. Gas moves from high-pressure regions to low-pressure regions. The rotation of the Earth then throws a wrench into the gears, with the Coriolis effect causing the complex weather patterns we actually see. But again, we can thank energy from the sun for indirectly powering our wind turbines.

By now you're thinking of exceptions: Surely not hydroelectric power, right? Your standard hydroelectric plant is based alongside a dam that blocks the path of a naturally flowing river. It involves no photosynthesis, so we ought to say it's independent from the sun, right? Wrong. Hydroelectric power comes from potential energy. Water naturally runs downhill, drawn by the force of gravity, from lakes and rivers at higher elevations toward the deltas and oceans at lower elevations. But if water always runs downhill, you have to wonder why the reservoir at the top of the hill doesn't run dry. Somehow, these higher-elevation sources of water are being replenished. Yet again, we've got a star looking out for us. Water sources at high elevations are continually refilled by the water cycle. Water in the ocean is heated by the sun, turned into vapor, carried by solar-powered winds toward higher elevations, and then rained down into lakes and rivers that turn the blades underneath the dam as they drain back toward the ocean.

So solar is solar. Wood burning is solar. Oil and coal are solar. Wind is solar. Hydroelectric is solar. Is literally every source of energy solar?

Not quite. There are a few exceptions we can name:

Standard nuclear power comes from nuclear fission. We take heavy elements like uranium and split them, which creates heat, turns water into steam and powers turbines that juice the grid. Since uranium is just a natural element that we dig up from the ground, you might say that fission is purely Earth-based. But if we want to go way back, we could say that elements abundant on the Earth are only available to us because the mass of the sun once caused gravitational action to collect gases and particles floating in space into a planetary accretion disk, which formed the mass of the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. U-238-the isotope of uranium we find most often on this planet-has an extremely long half-life, measured in the billions of years, which is why there is still plenty left available to us today.

You might also point to geothermal power, which uses the heat generated by pressure underneath the ground to flash water into steam and create electricity. It's fair enough to say that this energy comes from the Earth itself, but of course it's left open to the same qualification as uranium: If we go back 4.5 billion years, no sun means no Earth.

So yes, I'm as tired as anybody of hearing the same facts over and over about why we need clean, renewable energy, but I want to give the sun its due. Solar power isn't just black dominoes in the desert; it's an ancient, immense, deeply awesome force to reckon, and it's responsible for almost everything we've got. I want to keep that in mind. I want to remind people to be amazed by solar energy, not bored by it. Consider that an estimated 173,000 terawatts of solar energy are falling on the surface of the Earth at any given moment. That's 173 quadrillion, or 173 million billion watts, which is more energy than we could possibly generate by turning cranks and setting things on fire. The power is delivered straight to our planet every day, and I think we'd be crazy not to do everything possible to catch it and keep it in every way we know how.

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Are you sick of hearing about solar energy? I know I am. Now that's definitely not the same as saying that I'm opposed to solar energy-quite the contrary. I say, by all means, fill New Mexico up with fields of mirrors and those weird black dominoes.

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How will hydro energy look in the future?

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From devastating tsunamis to being pulled by the current while swimming at the beach, we are innately familiar with the force and power of moving water. However, is hydro power the future of energy?

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Welcome to the wind rodeo, my friends. We're going to lasso a few pockets of air in motion. Then we're going to tame that wind and make it do our bidding.

This is hardly a new idea. We've been harnessing the power of wind ever since we figured out a sail attached to a vessel could cause it to putter across water. According to the US Department of Energy, by "200 B.C., simple windmills in China were pumping water, while vertical-axis windmills with woven reed sails were grinding grain in Persia and the Middle East."

Now think of windmills in a field of tulips. These massive structures once used the power of the wind to act upon machinery that drained lakes and marshes in order to do battle with frequent flooding from below-sea-level areas in the Netherlands. It's just one of the many agriculture and industrial uses of the humble windmill throughout the ages.

Today wind turbines use the same premise - capturing the kinetic energy of fast-moving particles in air and converting that energy into electricity. Wind farms, collections of wind turbines, are spread across the globe, and wind energy is the world's fastest-growing energy source.

So let's put a saddle on the wind and ride it, shall we?

When wind meets the blades of a wind turbine, it causes the blades to capture the wind (like the sail of ship) and convert it into energy (like a ship moving forward as the wind pools and pushes the sails, acting on the ship. Though in this case we're talking about rotational energy since the blades of the wind turbine are rotating in a circle.)

At the same time that the blades are moving a shaft in the wind turbine also moves, transferring the rotational energy into the nacelle, an area of the turbine that acts as the guts of turbine. You could also think of it as the "man behind the curtain" as you stare at the great Oz of the wind turbine.

The nacelle holds the components of the structure that help capture and convert energy. These components include the gearbox, generator, electrical control box, yaw controller (it aligns rotor with direction of wind) and brakes.

Within the generator electromagnetism creates electricity from the wind's particles, resulting in medium voltage, or thousands of volts. From here it travels down electric cables housed within the tower of the wind turbine, where it meets with a transformer located at the base of the structure. The transformer increases the voltage of the electric power to distribution voltage, thousands of volts.

This power is then shuttled through underground lines where it could be combined with energy from other wind turbines. Or it could be sent on to farms, factories and homes. Or it could take yet another journey, this time to a substation where it would get an upgrade in its energy level and earn itself a ticket on above-ground transmission lines into the big city.

Just another day for a few air molecules floating through the terrarium we call Earth.

More Reading:
How Wind Power Works Do wind turbines kill birds? Wind Energy Quiz

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Welcome to the wind rodeo, my friends. We're going to lasso a few pockets of air in motion. Then we're going to tame that wind and make it do our bidding. This is hardly a new idea. We've been harnessing the power of wind ever since we figured out a sail attached to a vessel could cause it to putter across water.

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Since 70 percent of the global demand for energy is met by burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas, it's not surprising that we're pumping enormous amounts of climate-warning carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - an astonishing 35.8 billion tons (32.5 billion metric tons) in 2017, according to the International Energy Agency.

But even with clean energy sources such as wind and solar power increasing rapidly across the planet, we're probably still going to be using fossil fuels as well for the foreseeable future. That's why many are looking to carbon capture technology for power plants as a way to reduce emissions. The Petra Nova power plant near Houston, currently the world's biggest post-combustion carbon capture facility, kept more than 1 million tons (907,000 metric tons) of carbon from going into the atmosphere in the first nine months after it went online in January 2017.

Using the Carbon We Capture

But that leads to another question. What do we do with all that carbon dioxide? Storing it underground is one option. But in an article published on March 29, 2018 in the scientific journal Joule, a group of Canadian and U.S. scientists describe an even more intriguing solution. Captured CO2 could be converted into other molecules to create fuels to store energy generated by wind turbines or solar panels, as well as to supply raw materials to make plastic and other products.

"Consider this as a form of artificial photosynthesis," Phil De Luna, a doctoral candidate in Materials Science Engineering at the University of Toronto and one of the article's authors, explains. "Plants take CO2 and sunlight and water and make sugars and other things they need to live. We're taking energy and CO2 and converting it into things we can use."

According to De Luna, converting excess CO2 to fuel as a storage medium would solve one of renewable energy's intermittency problems - that is, the dip in output that occurs when the sun goes behind the clouds or the wind stops blowing. And as a liquid, it also would be easier to transport than energy stored in heavy, bulky batteries.

When it comes to renewable energy, "There's a huge gap in storage right now, and this CO2 provides a solution," De Luna says.

Captured CO2 also could be used to make feedstocks such as ethylene, a chemical feedstock derived from oil and natural gas that's the starting point for plastics (as this primer from Pennsylvania State University details). That would not only store the carbon, but also help reduce the demand for oil and gas. The process could even provide a solution for the growing environmental problem of plastic pollution, much of which makes its way into the world's oceans. Plastic could be recycled more effectively by burning it, capturing the CO2 and using it to make new plastic. "Now, you've got a closed loop that could reduce plastic waste," De Luna explains.

Direct Extraction from the Atmosphere

Even as power generation gradually shifts to renewable sources, there still will be plenty of CO2 emissions to capture from other industrial sources, such as steel mills and cement manufacturing plants, De Luna says. Ultimately, we might see large-scale CO2 factories that extract carbon directly from the atmosphere. ( Climeworks, a Swiss company, already is pioneering such technology).

"In the grand vision, we'd never need to extract fossil fuels from the ground at all," De Luna said. "You could make products out of CO2 taken from the atmosphere."

Though current technologies for CO2 conversion are still in their relative infancy, De Luna and his colleagues expect to see major breakthroughs in the decades to come. Electrochemical conversion of CO2 is the closest to commercialization, they note in the article. Fifty years or more down the line, CO2 may be converted using molecular machines or nanotechnology.

"This is still technology for the future," Oleksandr Bushuyev, another co-author and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, noted in a press release. "But it's theoretically possible and feasible, and we're excited about its scale up and implementation. If we continue to work at this, it's a matter of time before we have power plants where CO2 is emitted, captured, and converted."

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Captured CO2 Could Store Energy From Solar Panels and Wind Turbines

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Since 70 percent of the global demand for energy is met by burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas, it's not surprising that we're pumping enormous amounts of climate-warning carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - an astonishing 35.8 billion tons (32.5 billion metric tons) in 2017, according to the International Energy Agency.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Since 70 percent of the global demand for energy is met by burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas, it's not surprising that we're pumping enormous amounts of climate-warning carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - an astonishing 35.8 billion tons (32.5 billion metric tons) in 2017, according to the International Energy Agency.

But even with clean energy sources such as wind and solar power increasing rapidly across the planet, we're probably still going to be using fossil fuels as well for the foreseeable future. That's why many are looking to carbon capture technology for power plants as a way to reduce emissions. The Petra Nova power plant near Houston, currently the world's biggest post-combustion carbon capture facility, kept more than 1 million tons (907,000 metric tons) of carbon from going into the atmosphere in the first nine months after it went online in January 2017.

Using the Carbon We Capture

But that leads to another question. What do we do with all that carbon dioxide? Storing it underground is one option. But in an article published on March 29, 2018 in the scientific journal Joule, a group of Canadian and U.S. scientists describe an even more intriguing solution. Captured CO2 could be converted into other molecules to create fuels to store energy generated by wind turbines or solar panels, as well as to supply raw materials to make plastic and other products.

"Consider this as a form of artificial photosynthesis," Phil De Luna, a doctoral candidate in Materials Science Engineering at the University of Toronto and one of the article's authors, explains. "Plants take CO2 and sunlight and water and make sugars and other things they need to live. We're taking energy and CO2 and converting it into things we can use."

According to De Luna, converting excess CO2 to fuel as a storage medium would solve one of renewable energy's intermittency problems - that is, the dip in output that occurs when the sun goes behind the clouds or the wind stops blowing. And as a liquid, it also would be easier to transport than energy stored in heavy, bulky batteries.

When it comes to renewable energy, "There's a huge gap in storage right now, and this CO2 provides a solution," De Luna says.

Captured CO2 also could be used to make feedstocks such as ethylene, a chemical feedstock derived from oil and natural gas that's the starting point for plastics (as this primer from Pennsylvania State University details). That would not only store the carbon, but also help reduce the demand for oil and gas. The process could even provide a solution for the growing environmental problem of plastic pollution, much of which makes its way into the world's oceans. Plastic could be recycled more effectively by burning it, capturing the CO2 and using it to make new plastic. "Now, you've got a closed loop that could reduce plastic waste," De Luna explains.

Direct Extraction from the Atmosphere

Even as power generation gradually shifts to renewable sources, there still will be plenty of CO2 emissions to capture from other industrial sources, such as steel mills and cement manufacturing plants, De Luna says. Ultimately, we might see large-scale CO2 factories that extract carbon directly from the atmosphere. ( Climeworks, a Swiss company, already is pioneering such technology).

"In the grand vision, we'd never need to extract fossil fuels from the ground at all," De Luna said. "You could make products out of CO2 taken from the atmosphere."

Though current technologies for CO2 conversion are still in their relative infancy, De Luna and his colleagues expect to see major breakthroughs in the decades to come. Electrochemical conversion of CO2 is the closest to commercialization, they note in the article. Fifty years or more down the line, CO2 may be converted using molecular machines or nanotechnology.

"This is still technology for the future," Oleksandr Bushuyev, another co-author and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, noted in a press release. "But it's theoretically possible and feasible, and we're excited about its scale up and implementation. If we continue to work at this, it's a matter of time before we have power plants where CO2 is emitted, captured, and converted."

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Captured CO2 Could Store Energy From Solar Panels and Wind Turbines

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Since 70 percent of the global demand for energy is met by burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas, it's not surprising that we're pumping enormous amounts of climate-warning carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - an astonishing 35.8 billion tons (32.5 billion metric tons) in 2017, according to the International Energy Agency.

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Every year, U.S. landfills handle tens of billions of tons of plastic [source: ACF]. And in this case "handle" means "do nothing with" -- plastic just sits there unfazed for hundreds of years. The microbes that degrade other trash don't want anything to do with plastic.

The eco-nightmare that is plastic-laden landfills has sparked the move from plastic to paper grocery bags, cardboard instead of plastic for prepared foods and products like the exclusive-to-Japan Toyota Raum -- a car whose interior boasts some "eco-plastic" components. [source: SLM].

Eco-plastic seems like an oxymoron, and it very well may be. But it also seems to be the next step in greening our lives.

Eco-plastics come in all different forms. Some are simply plastics made all or partially from recycled traditional plastics. Traditional petroleum-based plastics are the kind that sit in landfills for centuries. These "eco-plastics" aren't any more biodegradable than the nonrecycled kind, but they have the environmental benefit of keeping a lot of that nonbiodegradable stuff out of landfills in the first place.

But when people talk about environmentally friendly plastic, they're more often talking about "bioplastics," a very different animal. Bioplastics are made from biological material instead of from fossil fuels, and they're supposed to have very different properties from traditional plastics. There's also a pretty new subgroup of plastics made with synthetic materials that might react differently in landfills from the regular stuff.

In this article, we'll find out what these eco-plastics really are, what they're used in and how they may (or may not) help the environment.

To begin to understand what eco-plastics are all about, it's helpful to understand the goals of the product. With the exception of the recycled traditional-plastic kind, eco-plastics should, first and foremost, degrade under normal landfill conditions. But the big question is -- is that even possible?

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Every year, U.S. landfills handle tens of billions of tons of plastic [source: ACF]. And in this case "handle" means "do nothing with" -- plastic just sits there unfazed for hundreds of years. The microbes that degrade other trash don't want anything to do with plastic.

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Once upon a time, food was used for one thing: eating. Today, it has a much more complicated role; scientists, manufacturers and policy makers are exploring whether food could one day eliminate our dependence on oil. Food-based fuels like ethanol and biodiesel are increasingly replacing gasoline and diesel in our fuel tanks. Now, some think food can do the same thing to the plastics industry, helping to replace more than 900,000 barrels of oil and natural gas used to manufacture plastic in the United States daily [source: U.S. EIA].

Food-based plastics, made out of everything from corn to sugarcane, have rapidly grown in popularity over the past several years. Packaging materials, gift cards, cell phone casings -- all can be made from these eco-friendly materials. As the quality of food-based plastics improves, they will have broader and broader applications.

Proponents cite two main advantages of food-based plastics over their petroleum-based counterparts. First, they're made from a renewable resource. As long as farmers grow the crops these plastics are made out of, production can continue indefinitely. Second, food-based plastics are widely considered to be easier on the environment. For instance, they require much less energy to produce than traditional plastics and release fewer greenhouse gases in the process. Better yet, they break down into harmless organic compounds -- in the right conditions.

Now for the drawbacks. One of the most glaring is their relatively low melting point. While popular plastics like polyethylene terephthalate ( PET) may have melting points well beyond 400 degrees Fahrenheit (204 degrees Celsius), some plant-based plastics turn into puddles just from being left in a car on a sunny day [source: Machinist Materials]. For instance, polylactic acid ( PLA), a corn-based plastic used by retail giant Wal-Mart among other companies, can have a melting point of just 114 degrees Fahrenheit (46 degrees Celsius) [source: Royte]. As a result, food-based plastics are simply unsuitable for a wide range of applications.

What's more, food-based plastics may not be as environmentally friendly as they appear. While they are biodegradable, most only break down under very specific conditions found in industrial composting plants. That means you can't simply throw them on the compost pile in your backyard and expect them to turn into soil, and if they do end up in a landfill, they break down just as slowly as conventional plastics. While food-based plastics can be recycled, they can't simply be mixed in with other recyclable plastics. In fact, the recycling industry considers food-based plastics a "contaminant" that takes time and money to process.

A final argument against food-based plastics is that generating them requires land and resources that could be going to producing actual food. Already, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that, by 2014, nearly a quarter of all grain production will go toward making ethanol and other biofuels; if food-based plastics take off, that number could climb even higher [source: Baker and Zahniser]. Environmentalists also worry about the harmful effects of the pesticides and genetically modified crop strains used to create some of these plastics.

But don't give up on food-based plastics yet. While they still represent less than 1 percent of the plastics market, some very large companies have committed to both improving and using the plastics moving forward [source: Environmental Leader]. For instance, electronics manufacturers Panasonic and NEC have both announced the development of food-based plastics with significantly improved durability, heat resistance and ease of production compared to products currently on the market. Metabolix, another bioplastics manufacturer, has developed a plastic called Mirel that biodegrades in normal compost piles. Production costs for food-based plastics are rapidly dropping as well, which, coupled with their widening range of applications, will make them a much stronger alternative to conventional plastics moving forward. Perhaps the strongest argument for food-based plastics, however, is that after we've finally exhausted our supply of oil, they'll still be waiting for us.

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Once upon a time, food was used for one thing: eating. Today, it has a much more complicated role; scientists, manufacturers and policy makers are exploring whether food could one day eliminate our dependence on oil. Food-based fuels like ethanol and biodiesel are increasingly replacing gasoline and diesel in our fuel tanks.

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For years, the corncob pipe was a fashion accessory best left to hillbillies, Frosty the Snowman and Gen. Douglas MacArthur. While the look is no less bumpkinish today than it ever was, corn is showing up in the production of more everyday items -- and without resembling a prop from "Hee Haw." What looks like normal oil-based plastic at first glance is actually polylactic acid ( PLA) plastic made from specially processed crops.

That's right: corn plastic. You can drink coffee out of it, put groceries in it, wear it and even hang ten on it on a corn plastic surfboard. Most important, you can turn corn into plastic and avoid dependency on petroleum. Much like corn ethanol, corn plastic allows us to make a comparable product out of a renewable resource, as opposed to oil reserves that will one day run dry. In addition, since corn can be cultivated throughout the world, market value doesn't hinge on relationships with oil-rich nations or on peace in the Middle East. After all, have you ever seen "No blood for corn" printed on a T-shirt?

The United States uses 20.8 million barrels of oil per day, 10 percent of which goes solely to the production of conventional plastic such as polyethylene terephthalate ( PET) [sources: CIA World Factbook, Jewell]. Bioplastics like corn plastic, however, don't require oil and, as a bonus, their manufacture releases fewer toxins and greenhouse gases.

Plus, while normal plastic has a nasty habit of sticking around for centuries after disposal, corn plastic boasts the ability to biodegrade in mere months. Moreover, should you choose to burn it, you don't have to worry about creating toxic fumes.

In this article, we'll look at how a corn stalk turns into a plastic garbage can and why some critics aren't convinced that bioplastics are necessarily a godsend.

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For years, the corncob pipe was a fashion accessory best left to hillbillies, Frosty the Snowman and Gen. Douglas MacArthur. While the look is no less bumpkinish today than it ever was, corn is showing up in the production of more everyday items -- and without resembling a prop from "Hee Haw."

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As you wrap up your weekly grocery shopping and get in line at the supermarket, it's time for yet another difficult choice. The cashier mechanically spouts at you, "Paper or plastic?" referring to what kind of bag you'd prefer. For some people, it's a stressful decision. Convenience is pulling you toward plastic, but a nagging green conscience might automatically pull you toward paper. However, it's raining, and if your paper bags break, it could ruin your purchases. On the other hand, is it selfish to put immediate convenience over the thousands of years it might take for a plastic bag to degrade in a landfill? But, what a minute -- aren't we encouraged to save the trees and avoid overusing paper?

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Consumer consciences aren't the only ones plagued by the "paper or plastic" question. Grocery stores pay less for plastic bags but get pressure from environmental groups to stop offering them. So, retailers and even entire cities are deciding to stop asking the familiar question. Instead, they're making the decision for us. Touting environmental concerns, the grocery store chain Whole Foods stopped giving out plastic bags in 2008. Entire cities like San Francisco and Oakland, have passed measures restricting -- or even banning -- the use of plastic bags in grocery stores.

In response to Oakland's ban, an organization backed by plastic manufacturers is suing the city. The Coalition to Support Plastic Bag Recycling claims that the city failed to do enough research into the repercussions of such a ban. The suit isn't on the grounds that a ban will wreak havoc on plastic profits, but rather on the environment. The coalition claims that plastic is just as green as paper or, perhaps more accurately, paper is just as harmful to the environment as plastic [source: Heredia]. It contends that replacing plastic bags with paper will cause more harm than good to the planet.

So, what's it gonna be: paper or plastic? Both come with distinct disadvantages to the environment, which we lay out next.

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Which is more environmentally friendly: paper or plastic?

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As you wrap­ up your weekly grocery shopping and get in line at the supermarket, it's time for yet another difficult choice. The cashier mechanically spouts at you, "Paper or plastic?" referring to what kind of bag you'd prefer. For some people, it's a stressful decision.

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In 2007, the environmental movement began to question the sustainability of the polyethylene plastic bag. This is the ubiquitous bag found in grocery stores around the world; small, crinkly and actually recyclable. The big problem with polyethylene bags is that very few people go to the trouble of recycling them. In the U.S., about 1 percent of the 100 billion polyethylene bags used each year get recycled [source: CSM]. Across the globe, they land on beaches, get trapped on shrubs and provide a general hazard for wildlife. What's more, when left to degrade in the sunlight, polyethylene bags take around 1,000 years to fully break down [source: American Green Bag]. When they wind up in landfills, they may not ever break down because sunlight is usually absent in the middle of a pile filled with several tons of trash.

To curb the growing problem of polyethylene bag accumulation, some cities and countries have made it expensive to use them. In 2008, San Francisco passed a law banning plastic shopping bags at its grocery stores and pharmacies. The city followed nations like India, South Africa and Rwanda in its ban. It's not just grocery bags that pose a problem, however. Plastic bags of all stripes are environmentally unsound.

In addition to taking a millennium to degrade, plastic uses petroleum as a key ingredient. The same crude oil that eventually fuels cars as gasoline is also used to produce plastic. Since oil is a non-renewable substance, plastic bags aren't a sustainable product. As we get closer (or have already passed) peak oil -- the tipping point at which our supplies begin to decline -- petroleum is poised to become more valuable as an energy source to help get humanity past its oil addiction. In other words, we're going to need that oil to power the globe in the next few years a lot more than we'll need it to make plastic bags.

Because of the environmentally unfriendly and unsustainable nature of plastic, some manufacturers are looking to better sources of raw materials for plastic production. At least one company has figured out a way to make a plastic that's not only sustainable, it can even be tossed in a compost bin. The secret, it turns out, lies in corn. It's quite appropriate, since one of the company's biggest new clients is a corn chip maker.

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In 2007, the environmental movement began to question the sustainability of the polyethylene plastic bag. This is the ubiquitous bag found in grocery stores around the world; small, crinkly and actually recyclable. The big problem with polyethylene bags is that very few people go to the trouble of recycling them.

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So what's the deal with plastic recycling?

I know, it's easy to just throw it all in the bin and let God sort it out. But there's a bit more to it than that.

As explained in " How Plastics Work," oil-based plastics don't degrade, but many types can be recycled. We're talking the likes of PP, LDPE, HDPE, PET, and PVC. But just because a plastic can be recycled doesn't mean it's always economically feasible to do so. In other words, check the instructions from your local recycling service to see what's accepted.

But when it comes time to breathe new life into dead polymers, here's how it goes down:

1. First up, inspectors weed out contaminants and bad plastics.

2. Then recyclable plastics are shredded and washed.

3. The resulting plastic shreds are separated based on density.

4. Next, the shreds are dried and melted.

5. Now it's time to drain that molten plastic through a series of screens.

6. Then the molten plastic is cooled and shredded into pellets.

7. Finally, recyclers sell these plastic pellets right back to the plastic companies.

Bioplastics such as corn plastic offer a biodegradable alternative, but be careful chucking it in with the oil-based plastics. Even a relatively small amount of bioplastic can contaminate conventional plastic recycling, preventing the salvaged plastic from being reused. Sadly, bioplastics don't necessarily break down in your backyard compost heap either. Corn plastic, for instance, only composts in the hot, moist settings of a commercial composting facility.

Plastics certainly introduce a number of complications, but they've proven rather irreplaceable. At least for now.

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So what's the deal with plastic recycling? I know, it's easy to just throw it all in the bin and let God sort it out. But there's a bit more to it than that. As explained in " How Plastics Work," oil-based plastics don't degrade, but many types can be recycled.

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Newsela | Refugee camps housing Rohingya rely on solar power for relief

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Rohingya refugee crisis includes limited access to electricity.

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On the eve of solar technology replacing fossil fuels.

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Newsela | Detroit's ex-homeless are working to bring power back to Puerto Rico

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Since Hurricane Maria, access to gas, electricity and cellphone service in Puerto Rico has been very limited. A group in Michigan is working to change that by building and sending solar panels to the island.

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On the eve of solar technology replacing fossil fuels.

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Lego trees, bushes and leaves will now be made from an eco-friendly, sugar-based plastic.

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Newsela | Museum of Ice Cream's sprinkle pool serves up an "environmental hazard"

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Environmental activists in Miami are worried that the Museum of Ice Cream's candy-colored plastic sprinkles will harm marine life.

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Edible spoons are better than recycling.

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Newsela | Big Questions: Paper or plastic?

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Newsela | Ten "stealth microplastics" to avoid if you want to save the oceans

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Reducing the amount of plastic in our everyday lives can have a positive impact on the environment

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Newsela | Twizzlers: Restaurants consider alternatives to the plastic straw

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More restaurants are seeking environmentally friendly alternatives to plastic straws

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Newsela | Climate change in the U.S. Northeast

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Climate change poses threat to Northeastern United States

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Newsela | Worsening climate change poses health risks for poor and elderly, group says

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Newsela | It's mosquito, flea and tick season, and people are getting sick

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Insect-carrying diseases more than tripled in the United States from 2004 to 2016.

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Newsela | A meaty undertaking: McDonald's tackles greenhouse gas emissions

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Newsela | Hockey league is being proactive to fight the threat of climate change

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National Hockey League taking steps to be proactive in the fight against climate change

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The little invention that could - the wheel has evolved and changed history.

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Newsela | PRO/CON: Will eating fewer pork chops help cool our climate?

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Newsela | Burger King's animal feed grown on deforested land in Brazil, Bolivia

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A new report says hamburger chain Burger King buys animal feed from soy bean plantations in Brazil and Bolivia that used to be lush tropical forests and savanna

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Newsela | Is it possible to create zero waste?

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Big Questions: What do expiration dates mean?

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Newsela | Policy experts hope new food safety labels will ease excess food waste

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Interpretations of "sell-by" food packaging labels and environmental activism have prompted forthcoming changes to the perishables labeling system in major grocery stores.

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Newsela | Would you eat food made with "trash?"

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Companies are making new things to eat using food that is usually thrown away even though it is still good.

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Newsela | New plastic-eating bacteria has potential to ease world's trash glut

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Scientists have discovered a species of bacteria capable of breaking down commonly used PET plastic, but remain unsure of its potential applications.

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Newsela | PRO/CON: Should the U.S. scrap the recycling program?

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Spring is here. Unfortunately for hikers and picnickers enjoying the warmer weather, the new season is prime time for ticks, which can transmit bacteria that cause Lyme disease.

How they latch on - and stay on - is a feat of engineering that scientists have been piecing together. Once you know how a tick's mouth works, you understand why it's impossible to simply flick a tick.

The key to their success is a menacing mouth covered in hooks that they use to get under the surface of our skin and attach themselves for several days while they fatten up on our blood.

"Ticks have a lovely, evolved mouth part for doing exactly what they need to do, which is extended feeding," said Kerry Padgett, supervising public health biologist at the California Department of Public Health in Richmond. "They're not like a mosquito that can just put their mouth parts in and out nicely, like a hypodermic needle."

Instead, a tick digs in using two sets of hooks. Each set looks like a hand with three hooked fingers. The hooks dig in and wriggle into the skin. Then these "hands" bend in unison to perform approximately half-a-dozen breaststrokes that pull skin out of the way so the tick can push in a long stubby mouth part called the hypostome.

"It's almost like swimming into the skin," says Dania Richter, a biologist at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, who has studied the mechanism closely. "By bending the hooks it's engaging the skin. It's pulling the skin when it retracts."

The bottom of the hypostome is also covered in rows of hooks that give it the look of a chainsaw. Those hooks act like mini-harpoons, anchoring the tick to us for the long haul.

"They're teeth that are backward facing, similar to one of those gates you would drive over but you're not allowed to back up or else you'd puncture your tires," says Padgett.

Compounds in ticks' saliva help blood pool under the surface of our skin. Ticks sip it, like drinking from a straw.

Ticks need to stay firmly attached because they're going in for a meal that can last three to 10 days, depending on whether they're young ticks or adult females. Compare that to a speedy mosquito, which digs into human skin, sucks blood and leaves, all within seconds.

For ticks, the stakes are high because instead of taking small meals they need to gorge themselves each time. A western blacklegged tick, the species that transmits Lyme bacteria to humans along the Pacific coast, lives three years. But in that time it only eats three huge meals, each one necessary for it to grow to its next life stage. It needs enough blood to grow from larva to nymph, nymph to adult and then for females to lay their eggs.

An adult female tick drinks so much blood during its one meal that its weight increases 200 times, said Richter.

So what's the best way to get rid of a tick?

The hooks that make these infrequent but long, banquets possible are what make it hard to pull a tick out. But it's not as hard as you might think. Padgett recommends grabbing the tick close to the skin using a pair of fine tweezers and simply pulling straight up.

"No twisting or jerking," she says. "Use a smooth motion pulling up."

Padgett warned against other strategies.

"Don't use Vaseline or try to burn the tick or use a cotton swab soaked in soft soap or any of these other techniques that might take a little longer or might not work," she says. "You really want to remove the tick as soon as possible."

Time is of the essence. If an infected tick bites humans, it takes at least 24 hours before Lyme bacteria start swimming out in the saliva the tick drips into its host.

So don't worry if the tick's mouth parts - the ones covered in those tenacious hooks - stay behind when you pull.

"The mouth parts are not going to transmit disease to people," says Padgett.

Once the tick's body is no longer attached, it can't transmit bacteria. And if the mouth stayed behind in your skin, it will eventually work its way out, sort of like a splinter does, she says.

In California, adult ticks carry Lyme bacteria less often than nymphs because of a biological quirk in the region. Ticks that carry Lyme bacteria and feed on the western fence lizard lose their infection in the process. The lizard's blood actually clears the infection, said Andrea Swei, who studies ticks and disease transmission at San Francisco State University.

Ticks most commonly feed on the lizards when they're larvae and nymphs. If a nymph was infected before it fed on a lizard, it will no longer be infected after it grows into an adult.

Experts say a key way to avoid tick bites is to be prepared. Wear long pants and put on repellent next time you're planning a hike or picnic in an area where ticks and their impressive hooks may be lurking.
This post and video were produced by our friends at Deep Look<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-3SbfTPJsL8fJAPKiVqBLg?sub_confirmation=1>, a wildlife video series from KQED<http://www.kqed.org/> and PBS Digital Studios<http://www.pbs.org/show/pbs-digital-studios/> that explores "the unseen at the very edge of our visible world." KQED's Gabriela Quirós<http://ww2.kqed.org/science/author/gabriela-quiros/> is the coordinating producer of the series. You can read a longer version of her post (https://www.kqed.org/science/1920972/how-ticks-dig-in-with-a-mouth-full-of-hooks) on the Deep Look website.

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WATCH: How A Tick Digs Its Hooks Into You

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Spring is here. Unfortunately for hikers and picnickers enjoying the warmer weather, the new season is prime time for ticks, which can transmit bacteria that cause Lyme disease. How they latch on - and stay on - is a feat of engineering that scientists have been piecing together.

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The CDC is warning of a spike in tick-borne diseases nationwide. Here in Vermont, Lyme disease is a huge and growing problem, and increasingly, other tick-borne illnesses like anaplasmosis and Powassan virus are a threat as well.

We're talking with experts about some of the science behind the growing risk and what we might see in the future.

Joining us for the discussion are Bradley Tompkins, tick-borne disease program chief for the Vermont health department, and Bill Landesman, a professor of biology at Green Mountain College who studies ticks and the microbial ecology of tick-borne diseases.
Broadcast live on Wednesday, May 9, 2018 at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.

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Understanding The Growing Risk Of Lyme And Other Tick-Borne Diseases

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The CDC is warning of a spike in tick-borne diseases nationwide. Here in Vermont, Lyme disease is a huge and growing problem, and increasingly, other tick-borne illnesses like anaplasmosis and Powassan virus are a threat as well. We're talking with experts about some of the science behind the growing risk and what we might see in the future.

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Black-legged ticks have become an unwelcome and feared part of outdoor recreation in Vermont because they carry bacteria that can lead to Lyme Disease and other infections. To help prevent these illnesses from spreading, researchers in Vermont are trying to understand, what is going on in the guts and the habitat of ticks?

On the next Vermont Edition, we go deep into the science of ticks, bacterial DNA and the prevalence of tick-borne illnesses in our region. Our guests are epidemiologist Bradley Tompkins of the Vermont Health Department, and biology professors Bill Landesman of Green Mountain College and Alan Giese of Lyndon State College.

Previous coverage of Lyme Disease treatment and debate is here

CDC information on tick-borne illness is here

Tick bite prevention tips are here

Vermont Health Department's tick tracker is here

Also on the program, we get a glimpse inside a federal program designed to help high-risk offenders coming out of prison. This voluntary program is for people coming out of prison with lengthy terms of probation or parole, and who also have a significant history of drug addiction. They get a year off probation if they can complete a rigorous program that includes frequent court sessions, drug testing, and mental health and addiction counseling. We listen in on one session of re-entry court and hear more about how the program works.
Broadcast live on Thursday, June 2, 2016, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.

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Ticks Suck: Examining The Factors That Lead To Tick-Borne Illness

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Black-legged ticks have become an unwelcome and feared part of outdoor recreation in Vermont because they carry bacteria that can lead to Lyme Disease and other infections. To help prevent these illnesses from spreading, researchers in Vermont are trying to understand, what is going on in the guts and the habitat of ticks?

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Vermont Public Radio is Vermont's NPR Station and source for VPR News, NPR News, VPR Classical, Vermont Edition, Eye On The Night Sky, and Public Post.

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The state is proposing to drastically reduce the number of permits to hunt moose as the population continues to suffer from a parasite that has grown more abundant with climate change.

The Fish and Wildlife Department wants to cut the hunting permits to 14 this fall - down from 80 last year and 141 in 2016.

Under the proposal, hunting would be allowed only in the far northeastern part of the state. Mark Scott, director of wildlife for the department, says moose are suffering from winter ticks.

But reducing the moose population in certain areas can actually keep the ticks in check.

"Recent research among our counterparts in New Hampshire and Maine and other parts in the northern United States [shows] that if you maintain a moose density at one or even a little bit lower per square mile," he says, "[it] seems to avoid these big effects the ticks have on the moose."

The increasing problem with winter ticks is attributed to climate change, as the snow recedes earlier in the spring and the ticks survive. In some cases, tens of thousands will prey on a moose, draining its blood.

Scott says it does seem counter-intuitive that hunting should still be allowed. But he says the tick population seems to boom in areas where the moose are found at relatively higher numbers.

"So the whole idea is to try reduce herd numbers - numbers of moose - in certain areas where they're concentrated, so we'll have less available food for the ticks, less hosts," he says. "And through time, hopefully, the moose will be able to fight through this battle of having a parasite like a tick that is affecting them."

The 14 hunting permits the state is suggesting would be for bull moose only.

The reduction continues the dramatic trend over the last decade. From 2005 to 2009, about 1,000 permits - many for cows - were issued annually to reduce the moose population.

The Fish and Wildlife Board is holding a series of hearings on the proposed rule change.

One is scheduled for Wednesday evening in Windsor at the welcome center, and Thursday evening at Lake Region High School in Orleans.

The board is scheduled to vote on the rule change April 25.

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With Moose Ravaged By Winter Ticks, State Proposes Drastic Cut In Hunting Permits

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The state is proposing to drastically reduce the number of permits to hunt moose as the population continues to suffer from a parasite that has grown more abundant with climate change. The Fish and Wildlife Department wants to cut the hunting permits to 14 this fall - down from 80 last year and 141 in 2016.

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A changing climate may be responsible for Vermont's dwindling moose population, according to scientists with the state's Department of Fish and Wildlife.

During the first year of an ongoing multi-year study, biologists in Vermont report that nearly half of the moose being tracked via radio collars have already died. That's despite a significant reduction of moose-hunting permits issued by the state, according to Vermont Public Radio, and seems linked to warmer, wetter weather that boosts parasites like ticks and brainworms.

According to Vermont Fish and Wildlife, "The ticks are becoming more prolific as spring and fall weather has warmed in recent years, causing some moose to collapse from blood loss or die from hypothermia after rubbing their insulating hair off in an attempt to rid themselves of the parasite."

The state plans to track all surviving radio-collared moose for the remainder of the study, Vermont Public Radio reports, and will collar an additional 30 calves in each of the second and third years.

These radio-collared moose, as well as others observed directly by biologists over the next two years, will help reveal causes of mortality - including death from parasites - and potential threats from warming temperatures and habitat fragmentation. Similar studies are occurring in New Hampshire, Maine and New York.

"It is important that we understand how much these factors are affecting our moose population in Vermont," said Cedric Alexander, Vermont Fish and Wildlife's lead moose biologist, in a statement earlier this year. "Our moose conservation efforts must be based on a strong foundation of science if we are to understand and address these threats in the long term."

Editor's note: This story has been updated since it was originally published in January 2017.

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Winter ticks are bugging Vermont's moose to death

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A changing climate may be responsible for Vermont's dwindling moose population, according to scientists with the state's Department of Fish and Wildlife. During the first year of an ongoing multi-year study, biologists in Vermont report that nearly half of the moose being tracked via radio collars have already died.

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Moose Population Study - Vermont Fish and Wildlife

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Lawmakers have decided to put off a requirement to have solid waste haulers pick up food scraps from in front of residential homes in 2018.

Vermont passed a universal recycling law in 2012, and as the law is rolled out in phases haulers, solid waste districts and consumers have had to meet deadlines to divert different kinds of solid waste from landfills.

Trash haulers were supposed to offer curbside pickup of food scraps in 2018, but S.285, which passed at the end of the legislative session, put that requirement off for at least two years.

The law instead directs the Department of Environmental Conservation to put together a study to see if changes are needed in the universal recycling law.

Essex-Orleans Senator John Rodgers sponsored the original bill and he wanted to drop the requirement entirely because he says business owners should not be forced to take on new responsibilities, especially if they don't bring in enough money to cover expenses.

"It only ended up giving the haulers a two-year extension on the food waste, organics pick-up, so I was disappointed in that," Rodgers said. "But it's better than not having anything in place."

Solid Waste Management Program Manager Cathy Jamieson says the department will do a population study to see if it makes more sense to only require haulers in densely populated areas to pick up food scraps from residential homes.

Jamieson says the new bill will give the state a chance to look at the universal recycling law to see it does make sense to ask haulers to pick up food waste.

"The Agency understood the hauler's position as far as residential collection of food scraps could be challenging especially in the less densely populated areas," said Jamieson. "And what the bill did do is direct the Agency to have discussions regarding whether, and how, haulers should be providing the collection service for food scraps."

Jamieson says a lot of people in rural areas compost their own food scraps, and most of the solid waste districts have compost drop off areas for people who can cart off their own waste.

She says food waste will be entirely banned from landfills in 2020, and if haulers in rural areas don't pick up food scraps the state will have to come up with a plan.

The Agency's report to the Legislature is due before Jan. 15, 2019.

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Legislature Delays Curbside Food Scraps Pick-Up Until 2020

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Lawmakers have decided to put off a requirement to have solid waste haulers pick up food scraps from in front of residential homes in 2018. Vermont passed a universal recycling law in 2012, and as the law is rolled out in phases haulers, solid waste districts and consumers have had to meet deadlines to divert different kinds of solid waste from landfills.

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In 2013, UVM banned single-use plastic water bottles from campus. The student-driven initiative was supposed to reduce the amount of plastic going to waste. But, as a new report shows, that's not what happened.

Rachel Johnson, a professor of nutrition at UVM, says the ban was well intentioned, but, at least in the short run, a failure.

Johnson says she wasn't surprised at the outcome of the ban. "Because I'm a nutrition professor, I live in a world with nutrition students and students who care about diet and health. So when the bottled water ban came in place, one of the first things we said to ourselves was, 'Well, we're now taking away one of the healthiest choices. So what's going to happen if we don't change peoples behavior, in the sense that they are bringing a refillable water bottle to campus?" she says.

The ban targeted only single-use water bottles, so soft drinks, juices and other beverages in plastic bottles are still being sold on campus.

Johnson says the campaign, which was driven mainly by students, had good intentions to reduce waste. "The idea is that tap water is free, it should be easily accessible and that we could, through an education campaign, get people to start bringing refillable bottles," says Johnson.

But that wasn't the outcome. In a recently published study, Johnson found the number of plastic bottles being shipped to campus went up the first semester the ban was in place. Her study looked at usage in a per-capita basis. In the fall semester of 2012, before the ban was enacted, there were about 22 bottles per person shipped to the campus. But in the spring of 2013, the first semester the ban was in place, Johnson's research team found that the number of plastic bottles shipped to campus rose to about 26 bottles per person. "So that is a statistically significant difference," she says.

Now, Johnson is urging the university to make water more available. "We need to make the healthy choice the easy choice," says Johnson. "I think we made a lot of assumptions about how to go about changing people's behavior. And also, I think that a very well intentioned change in terms of making an impact on the environment really clashed with some of our goals with nutrition and health. So we took away the healthiest beverage."

But really, UVM took away only the single-use option for water, still leaving opportunity for students to bring their reusable containers to fill. "I think it wasn't as easy as it might have sounded to fill that water bottle," says Johnson.

Since her paper came out, Johnson says the university has added a water option to fountain drink machines on campus, including offering water in all of their fountain drink machines at food venues on campus, where people can ask for a free cup. "You don't have to leave the dining area, go outside, go down the hall, find a water fountain where you can fill either a cup or reusable water bottle," says Johnson.

UVM has also promised to change their percentage of healthy beverages available from 30 to 50 percent since Johnson's paper came out. But what is considered healthy? Johnson says they use the definition that is put together by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. "Some of the zero calorie diet beverages would be included [in the healthy category]," says Johnson. When asked if diet soda is really nutritious, Johnson says, "Calories do matter, and we know that the population that we're dealing with, college age students, particularly young men, on average have very high intakes of sugary drinks ... So to me, diet beverages, they can be a good transition beverage for someone who is used to drinking three sodas a day and can transition to a zero calorie drink, in terms of reducing those calories."

Johnson admits there are some shortfalls to their study. "For one, we relied on shipment data. It really wasn't realistic to measure actual consumption of beverages," says Johnson. She explains that they made the assumption that the shipment data accurately reflected the purchasing habits of the students, and that the students drank the beverages they purchased. "The other [shortfall] is that ideally this study would continue longer," says Johnson. "We measured what happened in the first semester that bottled water was banned, so what really has happened since then?"

The nutritionist says that because many of the students who pushed for the ban could have graduated and left by now, new students may not understand the history behind the ban. "I'd like to see a real education campaign at UVM to help people understand why bottled water is banned," she says.

Does Johnson think the bottled water ban at UVM was a good idea? "I think bottom line, in the short run, it wasn't necessarily a good thing," says Johnson. "Because we didn't reduce the number of plastic bottles going into the waste stream and the healthfulness of the beverages being consumed were less healthy, more sugary drinks." She hopes that her study will help to show that the school needs to work on changing people's behaviors and put policies in place to help the transition.

Correction 4:45pm June 19, 2015 This article has been updated to correct a misstatement made by Rachel Johnson about the data reported in her study, specifically which semesters showed statistical differences in per capita bottle shipments to campus.

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More Plastic Bottles Entering Waste Stream Since UVM's Bottled Water Ban, Study Finds

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In 2013, UVM banned single-use plastic water bottles from campus. The student-driven initiative was supposed to reduce the amount of plastic going to waste. But, as a new report shows, that's not what happened. Rachel Johnson, a professor of nutrition at UVM, says the ban was well intentioned, but, at least in the short run, a failure.

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Methane released by cows as a result of their digestive processes is a problem. It accounts for 25% of all methane emissions, and methane happens to be one of the worst greenhouse gases. Pound for pound, the comparative impact of methane on climate change is over 20 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period.

If the problem (and cows' role in it) wasn't that serious, the Obama administration wouldn't have proposed a plan to cut the methane emissions from the dairy industry by 25 percent by 2020. But while the American government might not have thought of this funny a solution for such a serious problem, Argentina's National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) has come up with quite an innovative (and amusing) one.

Meet the cow-fart-backpack that wants to fight climate change.

The reasoning behind the device is the following - what if we could found a way to capture the nearly 300 litres (or 80 gallons) methane a day, an average cow emits, and turn that gas into useful biofuel? Developing the backpack, the institute's goal was to show that such a process is possible. And so it did.

The backpack manages to capture and collect the gases emitted through the cow's mouth or intestinal tract via a tube inserted through the cow's skin (which the researchers claim is painless). The gas is then condensed and ready to use to provide power for the farm on which the cow lives, for example, for activities such as cooking, lighting a home or even driving a car. According to Ricardo Bualo, one of the technicians working on the project, the 300 liters of methane per day a cow emits, can be used to operate a fridge capacity of 100 liters at a temperature of between two and six degrees for a full day.

As of now, there are no plans to produce and use the backpack on a large scale, but the device surely shows an interesting way to approach a problem. Ingenious, funny or disturbing? You decide.

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This Is How You Turn Cow Fart Gas Into Energy

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Methane released by cows as a result of their digestive processes is a problem. It accounts for 25% of all methane emissions, and methane happens to be one of the worst greenhouse gases. Pound for pound, the comparative impact of methane on climate change is over 20 times greater than carbon ...

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Propane tanks present a real danger in the waste stream, so it is essential to properly dispose of old tanks so they do not injure you or sanitation workers.

Summer is fast approaching, and that means it is time to scrub down the barbecue and pull the camping gear out of the garage. As you do that, you are probably eying at least one propane tank and wondering if it still holds any gas. Hopefully, if the answer is no, you are wondering how to recycle it. Propane tanks present a real danger in the waste stream because they can cause fires or even explosions. It is essential to properly dispose of old propane tanks so they do not injure you or sanitation workers.

What is a propane tank?

Propane tanks come in several different forms. The most common are 16.4-ounce green containers intended for camp stoves and other small equipment, and the 5-pound steel tanks for items like barbecues and outdoor fireplaces. Commercial outfits can purchase larger tanks to power their operations or store propane for sale. Propane itself is a form of liquefied petroleum gas, meaning it turns into a liquid when put under pressure. It is considered a clean-burning fuel that does not produce carbon dioxide or other emissions that contribute to climate change. It is also nontoxic and will not have a long-term effect on plants and animals if it is spilled on the ground. Like natural gas, manufacturers add a "rotten egg" or sulfur-like smell to the product so it is easily detectable when a container is leaking. Propane tanks are never filled to the brim because the gas expands as it heats up. At most, a 5-gallon tank will contain about 4 gallons of propane. As of 2002, propane tanks must be equipped with an overfilling prevention device to prevent them from being filled more than 80%. Establishments that refill tanks will not touch equipment without this device. It is possible to have an OPD installed on an old tank, but in most cases it makes more sense to purchase a new one that has an OPD already in place.

Why should I recycle a propane tank?

A 5-gallon propane tank is easy to recycle. The body is steel and the valve is copper. Both of these are valuable products with ready markets. The hard thing is ensuring all the propane is out of the tank. Most consumers will not use every last wisp of propane, and the leftover gas can cause a fire or explosion. Due to this risk, it is extremely important not to place propane tanks in the trash unless you are absolutely certain they are empty. They can cause serious injury or even death if put in compactor trucks, incinerators and other waste management equipment. In addition, you should not open a tank and let the propane leak into the air. If someone nearby is smoking a cigarette or has another incendiary device, and you do not notice, any leaking propane could cause a fire.

How to recycle a propane tank

It is important to leave an unwanted propane tank in its original form. Put caps back on small bottles and do not attempt to remove the valve from large tanks. Store the containers upright, outdoors and in a place where they are unlikely to be tampered with. The 16.4-ounce propane tanks cannot be reused, so takeback programs are hard to find. Coleman used to sell a product called a Green Key with their bottles, which individuals could use to ensure the propane tank was completely empty. However, the program was discontinued because many recycling centers still refused to accept the tanks. Coleman now provides instructions for burning off all the fuel in propane tanks, which makes them safer to throw in the trash (check out page 2 of this PDF document for more information). If buying and throwing away all those small propane tanks bothers you, it might be worth looking into camp stoves that use alternative fuels, such as high-efficiency wood-burning stoves. They do not always burn as hot, but depending on how you plan to use the stove that might not matter. Many retailers, including AmeriGas and Blue Rhino, will take back 5-pound steel propane tanks, usually at no charge. You should be able to return your tank to the point of purchase or to another local dealer. Whenever possible, propane tank manufacturers like Blue Rhino will put tanks back to use by painting them and swapping out nonworking or outdated parts. Any tanks that cannot be reused are taken apart by professionals and recycled. Blue Rhino is also able to siphon any remaining gas from the propane tanks and put it back to use. Your other option for recycling is to find out how your local solid waste district deals with propane tanks. On the Hawaiian island of Kauai, residents can take propane tanks to any recycling center. Residents of Vancouver, WA, and Tucson, AZ, must take their old propane tanks to facilities that include household hazardous waste centers.

One brave soul makes art from an old propane tank

Colin Selig, an artist based in Walnut Creek, CA, makes chairs and benches by cutting up old propane tanks and welding them together. "I was intrigued by the design challenge and ecological statement involved in taking this ubiquitous, utilitarian container out of the waste stream and transforming it into an object more sensuous in form and sophisticated in function," Selig says on his website. Some of his flowing, futuristic pieces retain the red symbol denoting that the metal used to hold a flammable material. Disclaimer: Of course, leave the cutting and welding of old propane tanks to the professionals. Instead, find a nearby recycling location for your spent tanks here.

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Propane tanks present a real danger in the waste stream, so it is essential to properly dispose of old tanks so they do not injure you or sanitation workers. Summer is fast approaching, and that means it is time to scrub down the barbecue and pull the camping gear out of the garage.

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Newsela | 10 interesting things about air

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Air is a mixture of different gases like nitrogen and oxygen. Carbon dioxide is the most important contributor to human-caused global warming. Air in the atmosphere can protect us from meteorites. Forest fires and cities with lots of car traffic cause air pollution.

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Newsela | Unexpected spikes of pollution show up in Chicago neighborhoods

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Earth's atmosphere deals with pollution from many sources, most of them man-made.

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Newsela | Life in a greenhouse? How ghastly!

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A greenhouse is great for plants, but it can be bad for Earth as a whole. Greenhouses trap heat to keep plants warm when it's not so warm outside. Earth can behave the same way. But if Earth gets too hot, the rise in temperature can cause rising sea levels, major storms and changing climates.

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Newsela | Scientists explore more productive uses for carbon dioxide

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Newsela | The Great Pacific Garbage Patch counts 1.8 trillion pieces of trash

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, located between California and Hawaii, is carrying almost 80,000 metric tons of plastic - 16 times what scientists thought.

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Newsela | If you drop plastic in the ocean, where does it end up?

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Edible spoons are better than recycling.

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Newsela | Evidence shows that microplastics are harmful to ocean zooplankton

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This story is part of Planet or Plastic?-our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do toreduce your own single-use plastics, andtake your pledge.

Yet again, plastic is proving to be everywhere in the sea. During a dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench that purportedly reached 35,849 feet, Dallas businessman Victor Vescovo claims to have found a plastic bag. And it's not even the first time: It's the third time plastic has been documented in the deepest explored part of the ocean.

Vescovo made his dive in a submersible on April 28 as part of his "Five Deeps" Expedition, which involve journeys to the deepest points in each of Earth's oceans. During the four hours Vescovo spent at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, he observed several marine creatures-one of which is a potentially new species-a plastic bag, and candy wrappers.

Few people have reached such extreme depths. Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh were the first in 1960. National Geographic explorer and movie director James Cameron then made a dive to the depths in 2012. Cameron logged 35,787 feet on his dive, just shy of the 62 feet that Vescovo claims to have reached.

Unlike humans, plastic seems to descend with ease. Earlier this year, a study sampled amphipods in six deep-sea trenches, including the Mariana, and found all were ingesting microplastics.

Deep plastic

A study released in October 2018 documented what is still the deepest known piece of plastic-a flimsy shopping bag-found at a depth of 36,000 feet inside the Mariana Trench. Scientists found it by looking through the Deep-Sea Debris Database, a collection of photos and videos taken from 5,010 dives over the previous 30 years.

Of the classifiable debris logged in the database, plastic was the most prevalent, and plastic bags in particular made up the greatest source of plastic trash. Other debris came from material like rubber, metal, wood, and cloth.

A whopping 89 percent of the plastic in the study was single use, the type that's used once and then thrown away, like a plastic water bottle or disposable utensil.

The Mariana Trench is no dark, lifeless pit; it has plenty of residents. NOAA's Okeanos Explorer vessel searched the region's depths in 2016 and found diverse life-forms, including species like coral, jellyfish, and octopus. The 2018 study also found that 17 percent of the images of plastic logged in the database showed interactions of some kind with marine life, like animals becoming entangled in debris.

Where did the plastic come from?

Single-use plastics are virtually everywhere, and they may take hundreds of years or more to break down once in the wild. The Mariana Trench has higher levels of overall pollution in certain regions than some of the most polluted rivers in China, according to a study in February 2017. The study's authors theorized that the chemical pollutants in the trench may have come in part from the breakdown of plastic in the water column.

While plastic can enter the ocean directly, such as trash blown from a beach or discarded from ships, a study published in 2017 found that most of it flows into the sea from 10 rivers that run through heavily populated regions.

Discarded fishing gear is also a major source of plastic pollution, and a study published in March 2018 found that the material comprised the bulk of the Texas-size Great Pacific Garbage Patch floating between Hawaii and California.

While the ocean clearly contains much more plastic than a single plastic bag, the item has now gone from a wind-flung metaphor for listlessness to an example of how deep an impact humans can have on the planet.

This article was originally published in May 2018. It has been updated to reflect the discovery of another plastic bag in the depths of the Mariana Trench.

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how big is the garbage patch in the pacific ocean

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Another plastic bag found at the bottom of world's deepest ocean trench

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This story is part of Planet or Plastic?-our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do toreduce your own single-use plastics, andtake your pledge. Yet again, plastic is proving to be everywhere in the sea.