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First Wooden Satellite Will Test ‘Green’ Space Exploration

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Wednesday, June 12, 2024

First Wooden Satellite Will Test ‘Green’ Space ExplorationJapan’s LignoSat will test wood’s resilience in space and could lead to a new era of more sustainable, less polluting satellitesBy Tim Hornyak & Nature magazineThe world's first satellite made from wood and named LignoSat, developed by scientists at Kyoto University and logging company Sumitomo Forestry, is shown during a press conference at Kyoto University in Kyoto on May 28, 2024. JiJi Press/AFP via Getty ImagesResearchers unveiled the world’s first wooden satellite last month, billing it as clearing a path for more uses of wood in outer space. The material will be more sustainable and less polluting than the metals used in conventional satellites, they say.Researchers at Kyoto University in Japan and the Tokyo-based logging company Sumitomo Forestry showed off the satellite, called LignoSat, in late May. The roughly 10-centimetre-long cube is made of magnolia-wood panels and has an aluminium frame, solar panels, circuit boards and sensors. The panels incorporate Japanese wood-joinery methods that do not rely on glue or metal fittings.Wood might seem counterintuitive for use in space because it is combustible — but that feature can be desirable. To curb the growing problem of space junk threatening spacecraft and space stations, rocket stages and satellites are deliberately plunged into the Earth’s atmosphere to burn up. But during combustion, they release particles of aluminium and other metals. Many more spacecraft launches are planned, and scientists have warned that the environmental effects of this pollution are unknown.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.When LignoSat plunges back to Earth, after six months to a year of service, the magnolia will incinerate completely and release only water vapour and carbon dioxide, says Takao Doi, an astronaut and engineer at Kyoto University, who is part of the research team. He points to other benefits of wood: it’s resilient in the harsh environment of space and does not block radio waves, making it suitable for enclosing an antenna.And there is a precedent for spacecraft with wooden parts. Launched in 1962, NASA’s Ranger 3 lunar probe had a balsa-wood casing intended to protect its capsule as it landed on the lunar surface (the probe malfunctioned, missed the Moon and began orbiting the Sun).Timber pioneersLignoSat will cost about US$191,000 to design, manufacture, launch and operate. Sensors onboard will evaluate strain on the wood, temperature, geomagnetic forces and cosmic radiation, as well as receive and transmit radio signals. The satellite has been handed over to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and will be transferred to the International Space Station in September, before being launched into orbit in November.Takao Doi, an astronaut and special professor at Kyoto University, holds the world's first satellite made from wood and named LignoSat.JiJi Press/AFP via Getty ImagesGrowth has been slow for the project, which began in 2020 with speculation about the wider potential for wood in space for better sustainability.“In our first conversations, Dr Doi proposed we build wooden housing on the Moon,” says team member Koji Murata at the biomaterials-design laboratory at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Agriculture. “We have also discussed the possibility of building domes on Mars out of wood in order to grow timber forests.”Martian and lunar colonists, like all pioneers, would have to make use of local materials — regolith (rocky material on the surface), silicon dioxide and other minerals, in the case of Mars. But wood could play a part in crafting temporary or permanent shelters. Murata points to plans by JAXA and industrial partners to develop shelters made partly of wood that could be used in Antarctica or on the Moon.“The natural radiation-shielding properties of wood could be used effectively to design walls or outer shells of space habitats to provide protection,” says Nisa Salim, who specializes in engineered materials at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, and is not part of the project. “Wood is an effective insulator, capable of regulating temperature and minimizing heat transfer to maintain a comfortable indoor environment. Wood is easy to work with, renewable and biodegradable, aligning with sustainability goals for space exploration.”Salim noted that the structural integrity, safety and longevity of wood need to be confirmed in space.Wood consists of cellulose held together by lignin, a kind of organic polymer. That makes it a naturally occurring member of the class of materials known as composites, says Scott J McCormack, a materials engineer at the University of California, Davis, who is not involved in the project. Composites are often used in the aerospace industry, so he does not find it surprising that their use in satellites might be explored.“Composites are ideal for the aerospace industry — and also satellites — due to their high strength-to-weight ratio,” says McCormack. But he has doubts about how wood will fare as a structural material on the Moon or Mars. “The first concern that comes to mind is galactic cosmic radiation [GCR] and how it might degrade the mechanical properties of wood over time. GCR isn’t that big of problem for us here on Earth, thanks to our atmosphere.”But Murata says that the team has studied measurements of GCR and solar energetic particles — high-energy particles that are released from the Sun — taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars, as well as the effects of gamma rays on wood on Earth. He thinks that wood on Mars could potentially last for thousands of years. “Radiation on Mars is a big problem for living organisms, including humans,” he says. “I don't think this is going to be much of an issue for wood.”This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on June 7, 2024.

Japan’s LignoSat will test wood’s resilience in space and could lead to a new era of more sustainable, less polluting satellites

First Wooden Satellite Will Test ‘Green’ Space Exploration

Japan’s LignoSat will test wood’s resilience in space and could lead to a new era of more sustainable, less polluting satellites

By Tim Hornyak & Nature magazine

Wooden satellite box on a green tabletop with a white gloved hand presenting.

The world's first satellite made from wood and named LignoSat, developed by scientists at Kyoto University and logging company Sumitomo Forestry, is shown during a press conference at Kyoto University in Kyoto on May 28, 2024.

JiJi Press/AFP via Getty Images

Researchers unveiled the world’s first wooden satellite last month, billing it as clearing a path for more uses of wood in outer space. The material will be more sustainable and less polluting than the metals used in conventional satellites, they say.

Researchers at Kyoto University in Japan and the Tokyo-based logging company Sumitomo Forestry showed off the satellite, called LignoSat, in late May. The roughly 10-centimetre-long cube is made of magnolia-wood panels and has an aluminium frame, solar panels, circuit boards and sensors. The panels incorporate Japanese wood-joinery methods that do not rely on glue or metal fittings.

Wood might seem counterintuitive for use in space because it is combustible — but that feature can be desirable. To curb the growing problem of space junk threatening spacecraft and space stations, rocket stages and satellites are deliberately plunged into the Earth’s atmosphere to burn up. But during combustion, they release particles of aluminium and other metals. Many more spacecraft launches are planned, and scientists have warned that the environmental effects of this pollution are unknown.

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

When LignoSat plunges back to Earth, after six months to a year of service, the magnolia will incinerate completely and release only water vapour and carbon dioxide, says Takao Doi, an astronaut and engineer at Kyoto University, who is part of the research team. He points to other benefits of wood: it’s resilient in the harsh environment of space and does not block radio waves, making it suitable for enclosing an antenna.

And there is a precedent for spacecraft with wooden parts. Launched in 1962, NASA’s Ranger 3 lunar probe had a balsa-wood casing intended to protect its capsule as it landed on the lunar surface (the probe malfunctioned, missed the Moon and began orbiting the Sun).

Timber pioneers

LignoSat will cost about US$191,000 to design, manufacture, launch and operate. Sensors onboard will evaluate strain on the wood, temperature, geomagnetic forces and cosmic radiation, as well as receive and transmit radio signals. The satellite has been handed over to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and will be transferred to the International Space Station in September, before being launched into orbit in November.

Asian astronaut with beige shirt and red tie in front of wood panel wall holding a small box wooden satellite.

Takao Doi, an astronaut and special professor at Kyoto University, holds the world's first satellite made from wood and named LignoSat.

JiJi Press/AFP via Getty Images

Growth has been slow for the project, which began in 2020 with speculation about the wider potential for wood in space for better sustainability.

“In our first conversations, Dr Doi proposed we build wooden housing on the Moon,” says team member Koji Murata at the biomaterials-design laboratory at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Agriculture. “We have also discussed the possibility of building domes on Mars out of wood in order to grow timber forests.”

Martian and lunar colonists, like all pioneers, would have to make use of local materials — regolith (rocky material on the surface), silicon dioxide and other minerals, in the case of Mars. But wood could play a part in crafting temporary or permanent shelters. Murata points to plans by JAXA and industrial partners to develop shelters made partly of wood that could be used in Antarctica or on the Moon.

“The natural radiation-shielding properties of wood could be used effectively to design walls or outer shells of space habitats to provide protection,” says Nisa Salim, who specializes in engineered materials at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, and is not part of the project. “Wood is an effective insulator, capable of regulating temperature and minimizing heat transfer to maintain a comfortable indoor environment. Wood is easy to work with, renewable and biodegradable, aligning with sustainability goals for space exploration.”

Salim noted that the structural integrity, safety and longevity of wood need to be confirmed in space.

Wood consists of cellulose held together by lignin, a kind of organic polymer. That makes it a naturally occurring member of the class of materials known as composites, says Scott J McCormack, a materials engineer at the University of California, Davis, who is not involved in the project. Composites are often used in the aerospace industry, so he does not find it surprising that their use in satellites might be explored.

“Composites are ideal for the aerospace industry — and also satellites — due to their high strength-to-weight ratio,” says McCormack. But he has doubts about how wood will fare as a structural material on the Moon or Mars. “The first concern that comes to mind is galactic cosmic radiation [GCR] and how it might degrade the mechanical properties of wood over time. GCR isn’t that big of problem for us here on Earth, thanks to our atmosphere.”

But Murata says that the team has studied measurements of GCR and solar energetic particles — high-energy particles that are released from the Sun — taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars, as well as the effects of gamma rays on wood on Earth. He thinks that wood on Mars could potentially last for thousands of years. “Radiation on Mars is a big problem for living organisms, including humans,” he says. “I don't think this is going to be much of an issue for wood.”

This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on June 7, 2024.

Read the full story here.
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Eat Less Beef. Eat More Ostrich?

Ostrich is touted as a more sustainable red meat that tastes just like beef.

A few months ago, I found myself in an unexpected conversation with a woman whose husband raises cattle in Missouri. She, however, had recently raised and butchered an ostrich for meat. It’s more sustainable, she told me. Sure, I nodded along, beef is singularly terrible for the planet. And ostrich is a red meat, she added. “I don’t taste any difference between it and beef.” Really? Now I was intrigued, if skeptical—which is, long story short, how my family ended up eating ostrich at this year’s Christmas dinner.I eat meat, including beef, and I enjoy indulging in a holiday prime rib, but I also feel somewhat conflicted about it. Beef is far worse for the environment than virtually any other protein; pound for pound, it is responsible for more than twice the greenhouse-gas emissions of pork, nearly four times those of chicken, and more than 13 times those of beans. This discrepancy is largely biological: Cows require a lot of land, and they are ruminants, whose digestive systems rely on microbes that produce huge quantities of the potent greenhouse gas methane. A single cow can belch out 220 pounds of methane a year.The unique awfulness of beef’s climate impact has inspired a cottage industry of takes imploring Americans to consider other proteins in its stead: chicken, fish, pork, beans. These alternatives all have their own drawbacks. When it comes to animal welfare, for example, hundreds of chickens or fish would have to be slaughtered to feed as many people as one cow. Meanwhile, pigs are especially intelligent, and conventional means of farming them are especially cruel. And beans, I’m sorry, simply are not as delicious.So, ostrich? At first glance, ostrich didn’t seem the most climate-friendly option (beans), the most ethical (beans again), or the tastiest (pork, in my personal opinion). But could ostrich be good enough in all of these categories, an acceptable if surprising solution to Americans’ love of too much red meat? At the very least, I wondered if ostrich might be deserving of more attention than we give to it right now, which is approximately zero.You probably won’t be shocked to hear that the literature on ostrich meat’s climate impact is rather thin. Still, in South Africa, “the world leader in the production of ostriches,” government economists in 2020 released a report suggesting that greenhouse-gas emissions from ostrich meat were just slightly higher than chicken’s—so, much, much less than beef’s. And in Switzerland, biologists who put ostriches in respiratory chambers confirmed their methane emissions to be on par with those of nonruminant mammals such as pigs—so, again, much, much less than cows’.But Marcus Clauss, an author of the latter study, who specializes in the digestive physiology of animals at the University of Zurich, cautioned me against focusing exclusively on methane. Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas, but it is just one of several. Carbon dioxide is the other big contributor to global warming, and a complete assessment of ostrich meat’s greenhouse-gas footprint needs to include the carbon dioxide released by every input, including the fertilizer, pesticides, and soil additives that went into growing ostrich feed.This is where the comparisons get more complicated. Cattle—even corn-fed ones—tend to spend much of their life on pasture eating grass, which leads to a lot of methane burps, but growing that grass is not carbon intensive. In contrast, chicken feed is made up of corn and soybeans, whose fertilizer, pesticides, and soil additives all rack up carbon-dioxide emissions. Ostrich feed appears similar, containing alfalfa, wheat, and soybeans. The climate impact of an animal’s feed are important contributions in its total greenhouse-gas emissions, says Ermias Kebreab, an animal scientist at  UC Davis who has extensively studied livestock emissions. He hasn’t calculated ostrich emissions specifically—few researchers have—but the more I looked into the emissions associated with ostrich feed, the murkier the story became.Two other ostrich studies, from northwest Spain and from a province in western Iran, indeed found feed to be a major factor in the meat’s climate impact. But these reports also contradicted others: In Spain, for instance, the global-warming potential from ostrich meat was found to be higher than that of beef or pork—but beef was also essentially no worse than pork.“Really, none of the [studies] on ostrich look credible to me. They all give odd numbers,” says Joseph Poore, the director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Food Sustainability, which runs the HESTIA platform aimed at standardizing environmental-impact data from food. “Maybe this is something we will do with HESTIA soon,” Poore continued in his email, “but we are not there yet …” (His ellipses suggested to me that ostrich might not be a top priority.)The truth is, greenhouse-gas emissions from food are sensitive to the exact mode of production, which vary country to country, region to region, and even farm to farm. And any analysis is only as good as the quality of the data that go into it. I couldn’t find any peer-reviewed studies of American farms raising the ostrich meat I could actually buy. Ultimately, my journey down the rabbit hole of ostrich emissions convinced me that parsing the relative virtues of different types of meat might be beside the point. “Just eat whatever meat you want but cut back to 20 percent,” suggests Brian Kateman, a co-founder of the Reducetarian Foundation, which advocates eating, well, less meat. (Other activists, of course, are more absolutist.) Still, “eat less meat” is an adage easier to say than to implement. The challenge, Clauss said, is, “any measure that you would instigate to make meat rarer will make it more of a status symbol than it already is.”I thought about his words over Christmas dinner, the kind of celebration that many Americans feel is incomplete without a fancy roast. By then, I had, out of curiosity, ordered an ostrich filet (billed as tasting like a lean steak) and an ostrich wing (like a beef rib), which I persuaded my in-laws to put on the table. At more than $25 a pound for the filet, the bird cost as much as a prime cut of beef.Ostrich has none of the strong or gamey flavors that people can find off-putting, but it is quite lean. I pan-seared the filet with a generous pat of butter, garlic, and thyme. The rosy interior and caramelized crust did perfectly resemble steak. But perhaps because I did not taste the ostrich blind—apologies to the scientific method—I found the flavor still redolent of poultry, if richer and meatier. Not bad, but not exactly beefy. “I wouldn’t think it’s beef,” concluded my brother-in-law, who had been persuaded to smoke the ostrich wing alongside his usual Christmas prime rib. The wing reminded me most of a Renaissance Fair turkey leg; a leftover sandwich I fixed up the next day, though, would have passed as a perfectly acceptable brisket sandwich.I wouldn’t mind having ostrich again, but the price puts it out of reach for weeknight meals, when I can easily be eating beans anyways. At Christmas, I expect my in-laws will stick with the prime rib, streaked through as it is with warm fat and nostalgia.

Sustainable
Activism
Climate

Electric fields could mine rare earth metals with less harm

Smartphones, electric vehicles and wind turbines rely on environmentally destructive rare earth mining operations. Harnessing electric fields could make this mining more sustainable

Mining for rare earth metals comes with environmental consequencesJoe Buglewicz/Bloomberg via Getty Images Rare earth elements used in smartphones and electric vehicles could be extracted from the ground more sustainably using electric fields. Today, most rare earth metals used in electronics are mined by using toxic chemicals to extract the elements from mineral ore. During the mining process, thousands of tonnes of chemical waste are released, which can pollute nearby groundwater and soil. But concentrating those elements together using electric charges could drastically cut the amount of environmentally damaging chemicals needed. “Imagine a crowd being guided through a maze by directional lights – similarly, rare earth elements are driven from the ore by the electric field toward specific collection points,” says Jianxi Zhu at the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry in China. “This controlled movement ensures efficient mining with minimal environmental disruption.” Zhu and his colleagues created flexible, sheet-like plastic electrodes – each 10 centimetres wide with customisable lengths – made from non-metallic materials that can conduct electricity. At a rare earth deposit in southern China, they inserted 176 electrodes into individual holes drilled 22 metres into the rock. Next, they injected ammonium sulphate, a type of inorganic salt, into the ore to dissolve and separate out the rare earth elements as charged ions. They then activated the electrodes to create an electric field between positively and negatively charged electrodes. That electric field moved the rare earth elements toward the positively charged electrodes, concentrating them together. The elements could then be transferred to treatment ponds for additional purification and separation processes. The approach enabled the researchers to greatly reduce the amount of harmful chemicals used in extracting the rare earth elements, slashing the related ammonia emissions by 95 per cent. That could help prevent much of the water and soil contamination that today’s rare earth mining operations produce. This electric field process also proved 95 per cent efficient in extracting rare earth elements from 5000 tonnes of ore, whereas chemical processes alone usually achieve just 40 to 60 per cent efficiency, says Zhu. But the new mining method would also raise electricity costs for rare earth mining operations – and increased electricity consumption could mean more carbon emissions. The researchers have already shown how to reduce electricity costs by powering just one-third of the electrodes at any given time. Access to renewable power and improvements in electrode technology could also help bring down the energy demands and emissions of the mining process, says Zhu. This technology has potential to be a sustainable solution in the near future, says Amin Mirkouei at the University of Idaho. But he warned that it faces practical challenges, including the energy costs of the method and the long time – 60 days – it requires to ramp up to 95 per cent efficiency.

Sustainable
Chemicals
Technology

Environmentally harmful Christmas gifts to avoid

Our obsession with consumption and plastic is not sustainable.

It’s fun to indulge in the nostalgia of snowy Norman Rockwell Christmas scenes filled with wholesome candle-lit family joy. The happy faces in the famous paintings appear thankful and content with whatever gift they received—be it a wooden spinning top, a pair of shoes, or a bicycle. You can almost imagine a local carpenter or factory making the gifts a town or two over rather than a far-away plastic toy factory in China. Those days of sustainable, locally hand-carved furniture, wooden toys, quality clothing, homemade blankets, and quilts that could be passed down through generations seem mostly long gone. Instead, what lies beneath the warm and merry veil of today’s Christmases is an obsession with consumption that drives human and environmental tragedy. “Many people in the global north tend to think that it is their right and that it is normal to consume the amount that we consume today,” Vivian Frick, a sustainability researcher at the Institute for Ecological Economy Research in Germany, told Popular Science. “They often completely forget that the consumption level that we have depends on exploiting other countries, having cheap resources from other countries, and having cheap labor.”While burning fossil fuels for energy and transport contributes to 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions, reducing it requires systemic change at the international level to make a real, lasting difference. Although it doesn’t seem like it, given the lack of climate action at the COP29 climate conference in November, it’s far easier for 195 countries to agree on climate-friendly policy than to ask 8 billion people to carpool or stop eating cheeseburgers. That said, our personal choices can still make a difference. While some may be unable to stop driving or air-conditioning their homes–since we live in an industrialized society where fossil fuel consumption is a mostly fixed part of the current system — we can help by consuming less in our day-to-day lives. That can be as simple as being more mindful about what you gift friends and family for Christmas. Dirty SantaAlmost every Christmas gift affects the environment and humans in some way. Whether it’s a cheap single-use plastic product or metals mined using child or slave labor, it has likely caused a lot of suffering and pollution on its long manufacturing journey from the ground to your hands. For example, over 90% of children’s toys sold in the U.S. are made from plastics derived from crude oil—the same stuff that fossil fuel companies pump from the ground to keep your car running and economies ticking over. More than 80% of those toys are manufactured in China. After fossil fuel companies extract the crude oil from the ground, it travels thousands of miles via pipelines or oil tankers to a refinery. Once there, the oil is processed into materials called feedstocks and moved to petrochemical plants, where they are converted into plastic resins or pellets. Then they go to the factories to create almost everything in your home, wardrobe, and, honestly, life. Anything made in China has to be transported at least 7,200 miles across the Pacific Ocean. The effort is staggering. For example, parents report that children lose interest in new toys within hours. Most toys are forgotten within a month, and over 80% of plastic toys end up in landfills, according to a May 2022 study in the Journal of Sustainable Production and Consumption.The problem doesn’t stop there. About 70% of all clothing is made from crude oil-derived synthetics like polyester, nylon, and acrylic and manufactured in China, Vietnam, India, and other developing countries. This system is known as fast fashion. The clothing is made quickly and cheaply to keep up with the latest trends. It’s known to fall apart quickly.Around 11 million tons of clothing end up in U.S. landfills every year. The same applies to furniture and electronics. But this culture of unsustainable consumption didn’t start recently. Society’s transition from wanting very little to wanting everything began decades ago. Scientific advances during World War II led to our love-hate relationship with mass-produced plastic and our current throwaway culture. It began to take hold in the late 1940s, just as Americans entered an era free from war and economic depression. Families had more disposable income and time to watch the latest, humanity-altering invention: the television. Oh, and the baby boom. All combined, it created a new consumer market and an easy way to reach them. The U.S. toy industry’s sales skyrocketed from $84 million in 1940 to $900 million by 1953. Last year, toy sales hit $40 billion. Today, refined crude oil is used in many products: clothes, soaps, toothpaste, toilet seats, bedsheets, water pipes, food preservatives, and even aspirin. If you’re not sleeping in, wearing, sitting on, drinking, or eating a type of refined crude oil, you’re probably not reading this. Maybe you’re living in a cave. But it’s not just toys or fast fashion that make Christmas gifts unsustainable. Here are some of the most common and surprising gifts you should avoid.ElectronicsModern electronics, like smartphones and tablets, often require frequent upgrades, leading to significant e-waste. Producing these devices relies on mining rare earth minerals, which damages ecosystems, consumes massive amounts of energy, and harms local communities. Even when recycling programs exist, only a fraction of electronic components are recovered, increasing waste.Single-use beauty gift setsPre-packaged beauty sets are a popular holiday gift but often include non-recyclable plastic containers and unnecessary wrapping. Excessive packaging adds to landfill waste, and the single-use nature of products—like small lotions or disposable accessories—means they are quickly used and discarded. Opt for sustainable alternatives with minimal packaging.Subscription boxes with excess packagingWhile convenient, monthly subscription boxes generate significant waste. Each shipment typically includes single-use plastics, bubble wrap, or foam fillers, much of which cannot be recycled. The repetitive deliveries contribute to carbon emissions from shipping, and the short lifespan of box contents often adds to household clutter and waste.Candles with paraffin waxParaffin wax candles are made from petroleum byproducts, meaning they are unsustainable and release harmful toxins like benzene and toluene when burned. These emissions contribute to indoor air pollution. More sustainable alternatives, like soy or beeswax candles, burn cleaner, last longer, and have a lower environmental impact.Synthetic perfumes or fragrancesSynthetic perfumes rely heavily on petrochemicals derived from non-renewable resources like crude oil. The production process consumes high energy and generates chemical waste. Additionally, synthetic fragrance chemicals are often not biodegradable, contributing to long-term pollution when washed away or released into the environment.Mass-produced jewelryMass-produced jewelry frequently relies on unsustainable mining practices to source metals and stones. This process causes deforestation, soil erosion, and water contamination. Ethical concerns, such as poor working conditions and conflict materials, further complicate its impact. Choosing recycled metals or sustainably sourced alternatives reduces environmental harm.Chocolate from unsustainable sourcesUnsustainably sourced chocolate contributes to deforestation, as forests are cleared for cocoa plantations. Producing chocolate often involves unethical labor practices. Chocolate also uses unsustainable palm oil, harming habitats and wildlife. Opt for fair-trade or sustainably certified chocolate to minimize environmental and ethical harm.Bonus: these ain’t great either.Glitter-covered items – Microplastics that pollute waterways.Plastic-based beauty products – Microbeads also pollute our waters.Gadgets with non-recyclable batteries – Leads to e-waste.Pod coffee machines – Pods are hard to recycle effectively.Gas-powered tools – Emit greenhouse gases and harmful particulates.Gift cards to unsustainable chains – Supports factory farming and deforestation.Exotic pets – Harms wild ecosystems through poaching.Frequent flyer miles – Encourages carbon-intensive air travel.

Sustainable
Chemicals
Culture

Book Review: This Relationship Shaped Rachel Carson’s Environmental Ethos

The connection between queer love and the power to imagine a more sustainable future

December 17, 20244 min readBook Review: This Relationship Shaped Rachel Carson’s Environmental EthosThe connection between queer love and the power to imagine a more sustainable futureBy Brooke BorelNONFICTIONRachel Carson and the Power of Queer Loveby Lida Maxwell.Stanford University Press, 2025 ($25)On a summer night in the mid-1950s, two women lay side by side on Dogfish Head, a spit of land on Maine’s jagged coast where a river meets the ocean. They took in the dazzling stars, the smudged filaments of the Milky Way, the occasional flash of a meteor. One woman was Rachel Carson, who would become well known for her book Silent Spring and its galvanization of the modern environmental movement; the other, Dorothy Freeman, was Carson’s mar­­ried neighbor. The two had been drawn together from the moment they met in 1953 on Southport Island, Maine, and remained close until 1964, when Carson died of cancer. It was Freeman who scattered Carson’s ashes.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The scene on Dogfish Head may sound romantic, and Lida Maxwell’s new book, Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love, argues that it indeed was. Maxwell, a professor of political science and of women, gender and sexuality studies at Boston University, explores the intimate bond between Carson and Freeman by drawing, in part, from a trove of personal letters. The book’s message is that the relationship holds a lesson for our modern climate crisis, especially for those of us willing to find meaning outside our culture’s dominant narratives.The correspondence is telling. Carson professes strong feelings after just a few letters (“Because I love you! Now I could go on and tell you some of the reasons why I do, but that would take quite a while, and I think the simple fact covers everything …”). The two call each other “darling” and “sweetheart.” During the stretches they spend physically apart, they express what can easily be read as queer yearning, as when Freeman writes: “How I would love to curl up beside you on a sofa in the study with a fire to gaze into and just talk on and on.”There is also reference to the hundreds of letters we’ll never read because the two women burned them, perhaps in that same fireplace. As Martha Freeman, Dorothy’s granddaughter, told Maxwell, “Rachel and Dorothy were initially cautious about the romantic tone and terminology of their correspondence.”Was Carson a lesbian? The answer has long been the source of speculation. It’s impossible to know; she’s not known to have publicly identified as such. To Maxwell, though, this question is beside the point: “Whether or not their love was ‘homosexual,’ to use the language of the time, it was certainly queer. It drew them out of conventional forms of marriage and family and allowed them to find happiness where their society told them they weren’t supposed to: in loving each other and the world of non­­human nature.”Queer love is a rejection of what Maxwell calls “the ideology of straight love,” or the pursuit of “the good life” through marriage, buying and decorating a house, having and raising children, and participating in the treadmill of consumer culture to keep it all running. Because Carson and Freeman’s love was queer, Maxwell argues, they had no template with which to explore it. Instead they created a new language, expressed through a shared love of nature: the song of the veery, the Maine tide pools, the woods between their houses. This avenue for connection and meaning making, Maxwell argues, is what made Carson’s Silent Spring possible—it changed her from a writer who captured the wonder of nature to one advocating to save it.How does this apply to the climate crisis? “As perhaps is obvious,” Maxwell writes, “the tight connection of the ideology of straight love with consumption is also bad for our climate because it ties our intimate happiness to unsustainable ways of living.” To truly achieve meaningful climate policy, she continues, we’ll need to expand our “visceral imaginary of what a good life could be.” The queer version embraces a “vibrant multispecies world” where we seek “desire and pleasure outside of the ideologies of capitalism and straight love.” These specific points, made through­out the book, are at times repetitive and can feel didactic.Some readers, particularly straight readers, may bristle at all this. After all, plenty of people who don’t identify as queer opt out of consumerism and fight climate change. Straight people can reject the hetero­normative story; queer people are not immune to it. But the point of the book isn’t that we should take individual action—it’s about broader structures and narratives. As a queer woman who spent a decade in a hetero­normative marriage, I know how seductive the call of that particular “good life” can be; I also know the liberation of building something new. Max well’s book holds lessons for all readers about ac­­knowledging, and then escaping, the structures that ensnare us.Carson and Freeman found the way through their decidedly queer, deeply romantic, long-­lasting love. Even when they were apart, they imagined themselves together. As Freeman writes during one of these spells: “You and I have been walking on the Head in the moonlight. Do you remember the night we lay there in that lovely light? I told you you looked like alabaster. You did. How happy we were then.”

Sustainable
Climate
Crisis

New Zealand Inks 'Sustainable' Trade Deal With Switzerland, Costa Rica and Iceland

SYDNEY (Reuters) - New Zealand signed a trade deal on Saturday with Switzerland, Costa Rica and Iceland to remove tariffs on hundreds of...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - New Zealand signed a trade deal on Saturday with Switzerland, Costa Rica and Iceland to remove tariffs on hundreds of sustainable goods and services, in a move Wellington says will boost the country's export sector.The Agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability (ACCTS) was signed at a ceremony during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Peru on Saturday after being struck in July, Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay said in a statement."This agreement removes tariffs on key exports including 45 wood and wool products — two sectors that are vital to achieving our goal of doubling New Zealand's exports by value in 10 years," McClay said."It will also reduce costs for consumers, removing tariffs on hundreds of other products, including insulation materials, recycled paper, and energy-saving products such as LED lamps and rechargeable batteries."The deal prioritised New Zealand's "sustainable exports", he said, amid a roll back by the country's centre-right government of environmental reforms in a bid to boost a flailing economy. Exports make up nearly a quarter of New Zealand's economy.(Reporting by Sam McKeith in Sydney; Editing by Sandra Maler)Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

Sustainable
Agriculture
Energy

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