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The information: Lower than 1% of clothes is recycled. A lot of the relaxation finally ends up dumped in a landfill or burned. A crew of researchers hopes to vary that with a brand new course of that breaks down mixed-fiber clothes into reusable, recyclable elements with none sorting or separation prematurely.
How they did it: Many clothes are manufactured from a mixture of pure and artificial fibers. As soon as these fibers are mixed, they’re troublesome to separate. To deal with this downside, the crew used a solvent that breaks the chemical bonds in polyester material whereas leaving cotton and nylon intact. To hurry up the method, they energy it with microwave power and add a zinc oxide catalyst.
Why it issues: Whereas related strategies have been used to recycle pre-sorted plastic, that is the primary time they’ve been used to recycle mixed-fiber textiles with none sorting required. Learn the total story.
—Sarah Ward
What new hydropower tech says about local weather motion
Again at MIT Know-how Evaluate’s ClimateTech occasion in 2022, Gia Schneider, a cofounder of Natel Power, spoke about her firm’s mission to design hydropower generators which can be safer for fish.
As an instance her level, she shared grisly photographs of fish that had been hit by standard turbine blades. Alternatively, the fish swimming by way of Natel’s generators appeared comparatively unbothered, curving across the blades and occurring their merry means downstream.
Lately, our local weather reporter Casey Crownhart had a chat with Schneider about how Natel is working to vary hydropower know-how and juggle local weather motion with freshwater ecosystems to make hydropower a bit extra fish-friendly. Learn the total story.
This story is from The Spark, our weekly publication overlaying improvements in local weather and power tech. Enroll to obtain it in your inbox each Wednesday.
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