Recycling & Waste

CORVALLIS, Ore., Aug. 26 (UPI) — Much of the world’s electronic waste ends up in China for recycling, an activity creating significant health and environmental hazards, researchers say.
Scientists from China and Oregon State University have identified toxic elements in the emissions from cottage-industry recycling workshops in southern China that use low-tech methods to [...]

PFINZTAL, Germany, Aug. 18 (UPI) — German researchers say they’ve developed a way to mass-produce a safer class of materials for use in automobile crash components.
Materials known as thermoplastic fiber composites could replace less-suitable materials in stressed load-bearing structures and crash components in automobiles, the Fraunhofer-Institute for Chemical Technology said in a release [...]

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 (UPI) — Geologists say rocks collected from Baffin Island in the Canadian arctic suggest the area can offer clues to the early chemical evolution of Earth.
Researchers from the Carnegie Institution say beneath the island lies a region of Earth’s mantle that has escaped the billions of years of melting and reforming [...]

WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 (UPI) — The U.S. Justice Department has announced fines and penalties in a case concluded under the National Enforcement Initiative for Mining and Mineral Processing.
The department and the Environmental Protection Agency say CF Industries Inc. has agreed to spend about $12 million to reduce and properly manage hazardous wastes generated at [...]

TEL AVIV, Israel, Aug. 3 (UPI) — Israeli researchers say a naturally occurring ocean bacteria could be used to help clean beaches polluted by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Scientists at Tel Aviv University say the oil-munching bacteria, being grown in the university labs, can clean hard-to-reach oil pockets that occur when oil [...]