Biofuels are not ecologically or climate-wise friendly

Keskiviikko 24.1.2024 klo 13.39 - Mikko Nikinmaa

Burning causes carbon dioxide emissions. In the case of biofuels, the amount of carbon dioxide produced is actually higher than for fossil fuels. The claim that biofuels are climate-friendly is based on thinking that the produced carbon dioxide is taken up relatively rapidly by the plants used for further production of biofuels, i.e. the net emission of carbon dioxide can be zero, if the plants grown for  biofuels consume use up the carbon dioxide for oxygen production at the same rate as it is produced. However, this misses the point that burning causes carbon dioxide emissions, and any such emissions contribute to climate change. One could, and in my opinion should, decouple the plant growth, which is a carbon sink, and burning of plant products such as biofuels, which is a carbon dioxide emitter. One can grow plants without burning them.

Biofuels are produced especially using oil plants such as oil palm. Also other plants, such as maize and sugar cane are important sources of biofuels. Typically biofuels are produced by rich countries, often from plants grown in poor areas instead of food crops needed for the local population. This is true, e.g., for oil palm, which has got a really bad reputation. However, the bad reputation should not be warranted, if the palm oil were not used for biofuels but only for food oil. This would markedly reduce the need of agricultural land for oil plants, since oil palms produce at least 5-10 the amount of oil per unit area as other oil plants. Thus, if food oil production worldwide changed towards palm oil, decreased area of agricultural land were needed and more (tropical) forests could be saved (as soybean is one of the most important oil plants in use). So, ecologically, the important thing would not be to stop growing oil palms but stop producing biofuels made using them.

In addition to plants, food waste is a major source of biofuels. In my opinion, food and other wastes are good materials for thermal power plants, as then all the produced small particles and even carbon dioxide can be taken up by collectors inserted in chimneys. However, the carbon dioxide in car, truck, ship and plane exhausts will inevitably contribute to world’s carbon dioxide load. Further, in the case of food waste-based biofuel the link between carbon sink and source is more difficult to establish than for plant-based biofuel. In this case only the carbon dioxide produced in the burning process can reliably be established.

In conclusion, I do not think that biofuels are either ecologically or climatewise a sustainable solution. Instead, we should use cars and planes less, use e-meetings when we find them useful. Doing this we could easily diminish our need for biofuels for the short transition period from petrol- or diesel oil-using engines to more sustainable ones.

Recycling Plastic Waste

Perjantai 14.10.2022 klo 15.16 - Nikk Nikinmaa

One of the biggest problems with recycling plastic waste has been that a mixture of different plastics cannot be used as a feedstock for generating new plastic products. This means that either the consumers have to be quite careful and knowledgeable in sorting plastics or recycling stations need to carry out expensive sorting of plastics for further use. In a recent article in Science (October 13, 2022; DOI: 10.1126/science.abo4626) Sullivan et al. present a method that can be used for a mixture of plastics to generate starting material for commercial use. The method is comprised of two steps: first oxidizing the plastic mixture with metal-based catalysis (Co and Mn) to intermediates that can be digested by engineered bacteria to produce a feedstock for new commercial products. By varying the way that the bacteria are engineered, different starting products can be generated.

To my eyes, this method is quite safe and practical. It avoids the inherent problem with plastic-eating bacteria. I remember the book Mutant 59 by Kid Pedler and Gerry Davis (from 1971) where the plastic waste was planned to be eaten by bacterial mutation, which was very effective in consuming plastics, favoring them over any other foodstuff. The mutant naturally got accidentally free and started devouring everything made of plastics. Planes started crashing down, because all the plastics covering electric leads were eaten up and motors short-circuited. Most things in our houses became non-functional or half-disappeared etc., naturally, if you look around: most things are at least partly made of plastics. Since in the method described by Sullivan et al. the engineered bacteria eat only the oxidized end product of catalysis, they can only live in the recycling plant. By combining this method with effective collection of plastic waste, much of the plastics problem can be removed.

However, even if we get smokers to put their cigarette butts to waste bins, there will be one significant source of small plastic particles. Almost half of the microplastics in the environment is tire wear particles. They are impossible to collect. Thus, even if the recycling of all other plastics were more than 90% successful, this source would remain. It can only be reduced by drastically reducing road traffic. In this regard, electric cars are not a solution, the only solution could be using rail traffic and public transport more generally.  

Environmental Effects of Shipping

Keskiviikko 15.1.2020 klo 15.44 - Mikko Nikinmaa

Close to 70 % of all trade is transported waterborne. In terms of carbon footprint this way of transport is much better than air or road traffic, but there are still several environmental consequences. In addition to carrying cargo, cruises are becoming more and more popular form of tourism. Currently, cruise ships (including ferries) constitute close to 15 % of the world’s total fleet. The environmental consequences of shipping have been reviewed by Jägerbrand et al. (Science of the Total Environment 695, 133647, 2019).

The first environmental problem is the use of marine heavy fuel oil as a source of energy in ships (and petrol in small boats). While the total fuel consumption is only a very small percentage (less than 0.5 %) of total oil use, the fuel has until recently contained very high sulphur oxide concentrations, so that at the time that European and American land-based industries and power plants have been required to remove sulphur oxides from their smoke because of the acid rain problem of 1970’s and 1980’s the ship fuel use has contributed 10-20 % of the world’s sulphur dioxide emissions. Now that European Union has put an upper limit to the allowed sulphur concentration first in the Baltic and North Sea, because of their heavy shipping, the Finnish shipping companies and industries were screaming that such an increase in the transport costs (low-sulphur fuel oil is more expensive than high-sulphur one or alternatively removing sulphur dioxide from fumes cost). However, the EU directive has been in effect a couple of years now, and has not resulted in serious economic disturbances (this incidence, to me, shows the hypocrisy of environmental thinking of many policy makers, as soon as any imagined expenses are increased because of environmental actions, they cannot be tolerated). The World Maritime Organisation is now putting an upper sulphur limit to all maritime heavy fuel oil. But in the long run, one should be able to go to oil-free shipping. Effective wind turbines are developed, and some ships using them may soon sail in the world’s seas. With the use of oil, there are several types of oil spills. Although the shipwrecks with pronounced oil leakage have decreased, most harmful spills are ones in small scale: washing empty oil tanks, using lubricating oils etc. It doesn’t help the seabird losing its insulation and dying of hypothermia knowing that the spill was small.

Another traditional big problem has been the use of antifouling paints on ships. They are used to prevent the growth of organisms on ships, both barnacles and algae. The growth of organisms on ship hulls can increase fuel consumption more than 10 %. Because very different types of organisms are tergeted, the toxic agents must kill all forms of life. Tributyltin (TBT) chloride was initially the common toxic agent, because it was very toxic, but considered to break down in weeks. However, it was noticed in 1980’s that TBT caused imposex (females developed male penis and became infertile) in molluscs near boat harbours. This led to a complete ban of the compound, but it persist in anoxic sediments for tens of years, and there are consequently still toxic TBT concentrations in narrow and shallow shipping routes. The next generation of antifouling paints has used copper ion as the toxic compound. To increase the paint’s toxicity to photosynthetic organisms, herbicides such as diuron are added. Presently, it appears that leaching from the ship paints is the major source of copper in aquatic environment. Further, the problem that cannot be avoided is that antifouling paints must kill everything.

Another problem with ships is that their waste has been disposed to sea with “out of sight out of mind” mentality. This has included both toilet wastewater and solid waste. While in most cases the waste load is very small in comparison to the waste coming from land, the increased cruising activity in Arctic and Antarctic has made the waste from ships a major cause of pollution in these vulnerable areas. The problem could be solved simply by storing all the wastes onboard until visiting the next harbour. Shipping is also a major reason for the introduction of invasive alien species, largely when the tanks with ballast water are emptied. Filtration of water entering or leaving the tanks could suffice to prevent the introduction.

Ships also affect the coasts: the waves generated will erode coastal areas, and the sediments of shallow shipping routes will be affected. Little can be done to avoid this except to site-planning of the harbour. Since most of the harbours have established sites, their location cannot really be affected. Finally, shipping generates noise. In the aquatic environment noise travels much longer than in air, and may disturb the communication of fish and marine mammals. Again, little can be done to reduce noise as long as present type motors are the norm – sailing ships would be much quieter.

In conclusion, many of the environmental effects of shipping could be solved with modest expenses. In this, as in many other cases, applying environment-friendly solutions is more a question of will than of not being able to. One point about goods transport is that we should reduce it by changing to production nearby instead of production thousands of kilometers away to be environmentally friendly.

Plastics in the Environment

Sunnuntai 14.4.2019 klo 14.51 - Mikko Nikinmaa

When one thinks about durable, light, easy-to-use and mouldable material, plastics certainly come to mind. It is hard to image that the plastic age is only 50-60 years old. One can hardly image life without plastic containers, plastic-insulated wires, plastic parts in household appliances and cars, and artificial fibres in clothing. This plastics era has produced and is producing so much of the useful materials that the world is choking to them. A very useful, detailed review about plastics, their use and environmental problems generated is written by CJ Rhodes in Scientific Progress 101: 207-260 (https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/scia/101/3).

In a way, lumping many different materials under one common name, plastics is wrong, because the foam used in insulation, fibres of clothing, and plastic packaging of food are very different. However, two things are common: First, most of the plastics are oil-based – more than 90 % of plastics are made of oil. In addition to oil-based products, plastic-like materials can be tree- or other plant material-based. However, these materials are exactly as problematic as oil-based ones except for not being fossil fuel-based. Second, the materials degrade slowly. The average life length of plastics is tens to hundreds of years. This means that virtually all plastics ever produced can still be present. The persistence is the major reason for the environmental problems generated by plastics.

Of the different plastics only less than ten percent are recycled, a little more than ten percent are burned and 80 % are currently ending up in the environment or in garbage dumps. This distribution of the fate of used plastics is the second major reason for the environmental problems. The most visible plastic pollution is that of the oceans, especially the Pacific Garbage Gyre in North Pacific, but virtually all major seas and beaches have significant amounts of trash. The waste problem is most pronounced in Asia, as all of the countries with most environmental plastic waste are there: China, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and Sri Lanka. These countries contribute more than 55 % of world’s total waste. Because recycling is so limited, factories, which would use recycled plastics in their production, have an eternal material supply problem.

About 40 % of all the plastics is used in packaging. This has also the shortest half-life of use, less than a year. Thus, packaging is by far the most extreme case of single-use attitude. The second most important plastics user is building and construction industry with about 20 % proportion. However, the material is turned over in 35 years, decreasing the yearly amount of waste. A much bigger problem is textile industry, as the proportion is 20 %, and the turnover time is less than 5 years. Much of the rest is used in machines and electronics, and the material is turned over in 5-20 years.

The plastic waste can be macro-, micro- or nanosized. The macro-sized, visible material slowly degrades, but can disturb animal life up to hundreds of years. The materials are especially problematic, when they cause strangulation of animals or block their intestine thus inhibiting normal digestion. In addition, animals may feed on plastic materials, which naturally cannot be digested. Also, plastic trash affects the visibility of water. Micro-sized plastic is characterized as material of less than 5 mm but more than 100 nm in any dimension. Next to nothing is known about its appearance in soils, but an increasing number of studies has demonstrated its presence in water. It is notable that much more than 95 % of micro-sized plastic is removed in wastewater treatment plants. Much of the microplastics is ingested by animals. The lack of digestibility is a problem, and can cause starvation, when the alimentary canal is filled with material that cannot be digested. However, very little is actually known about if and how microplastic particles affect organisms. One of the possibilities is that it is not the particles themselves, but dissolved toxic chemicals initially adsorbed on microplastic particles that cause problems. The role of microplastics would in this case be increasing the surface area whereby all the toxic chemicals adsorbed to plastics can diffuse or otherwise be absorbed into the cells. However, the actual mechanisms by which microplastics affect animal functions are poorly known. In fact, one reviewer recently pointed out that the ingestion and egestion of microplastics have been extensively studied, but next to nothing is known about their toxic effects if any. The same is true for nanoplastics, materials with at the most one dimension 100 nm. Their cellular uptake and effects at environmental level are virtually unknown. This is a general problem in nanotoxicology: one has repeatedly shown that nanomaterials can be toxic at high concentrations, but their effects at environmental or predicted environmental level are unknown. One possibility is that they cause inflammation in any tissue they come in contact with.

Since the most important proportion of plastic waste is packaging, and single-use products largely associated with food and drink, it is were nice to know that the amount of trash can easily be decreased immensely by reducing overpackaging and by recycling. Effective plastic collection would be cheap and could be implemented anywhere in the world. Virtually all plastic material used in packaging needs to be recyclable and most of the plastics can minimally be burned. This would be equivalent to burning the same amount of oil. One can say that the major way of combatting plastic waste is to increase the effectiveness of plastic collection. At the moment, out of all trash found in the environment, more than 3/4 is plastics. Finally, replacing plastics by less “eternal” material where possible is needed. This, as reducing packaging, would be something that the production side needs to do. However, the consumers can affect, what is produced, by choosing the products so that overpackaging does not sell any more. The consumers can, on the other hand, do much on the recycling side.

The plastics problem - are there any solutions?

Sunnuntai 10.6.2018 klo 11.59 - Mikko Nikinmaa

The news about plastic pollution has more or less completely dwelled on the problem, and not much on solutions apart from one: banning the use of plastics. And, unfortunately, most of the news has reached North Americans and Europeans. I say that this is unfortunate, since even if the plastics in North America and Europe were recycled 100 %, this would have hardly any effect on the total amount of plastic waste entering the oceans. There are ten rivers in the world, which deliver most waste to the oceans: three in China, one in Philippines, one in Indonesia, two in Indian subcontinent, one in Brazil and two in Nigeria. Out of the 40 most plastic-polluting rivers 27 are in Asia,  8 in Latin America, 4 in Africa and 1 in Europe (Rhine).

Thus, the most urgent problem is to get waste treatment in the most polluting areas to function. A solution for this would be, if money could be made out of it. A possible way of doing this would be portable systems, Trashpressos (as named by the inventor, Arthur Huang), which press plastic waste to strong tiles, which could then be used in, for example, building houses. In this way, what is now thrown away would markedly reduce the costs of building material - which would be highly beneficial for developing nations.

A way to decrease plastic pollution everywhere is to use materials other than plastics whenever possible and convenient, diminish unnecessary wrappings (nowadays it is possible that, e.g. candies are in plastic bag, and thereafter individually wrapped in plastic) and stop using single-use plastic materials (instead of plastic single-use knives and forks one could have them made of wood as earlier; plastic cups could easily be replaced by paper cups or glasses) - the European Union ban on single-use plastics will certainly drive production and use also elsewhere.

With regards to microplastics, which is a problem also in Europe, the ways of diminishing plastic waste will help in part. However, much of the microplastics is released in washing clothes. In Europe and North America this waste comes into wastewater treatment plants. If the final effluent were filtered through a tight-mesh filter, all of the microplastic waste would be retained. Since the effluent goes through a narrow pipe in any case, this would not even cause a big expense. Such a simple solution would decrease the problem of microplastics release from clothwashing. Another problem is cigarrette buts, which people throw on the ground all the time. Instead, people should put them in waste boxes. This is already now possible, so it is only a matter of educating people. The only source of microplastics that I have not been able to think a reasonable way of getting rid of is the tyre dust. Presently, much of the tyre material is plastics, and is released in the environment. Such dust cannot easily be collected.

However, most of the plastics problem could easily be handled without needing to stop the use of plastic materials in appliances, where they are needed or much better than alternative materials. 

Waste management - the key to reduce plastic pollution

Maanantai 12.3.2018 klo 13.46 - Mikko Nikinmaa

Everyone has seen pictures about garbage gyres, composed mostly of plastics but also all the other kinds of our waste. As a result of these pictures and different videos about encountering plastics all the time when diving, it has become very fashionable to demand that we get rid of plastics. In Finland "Muoviton Maaliskuu" (March without Plastics) is getting attention. However, is it really so that the lightweight, durable and easily molded material is the evil of all evils?

It is funny that I have now in several instances sounded like an advocate of plastic industry, although I really think that the slogan should be "environment first". It is clearly so that the plastics problem cannot be resolved by removing the material from the oceans after it is there. The migitation must take place before. There are two ways of doing this: 1. Stop producing and using plastics. Although there are many instances, where the use of plastics is not necessary, why should one stop using very useful material? 2. Stop the plastic waste from entering aquatic environment. I think this is the real possibility, as hopefully becomes clear from the following text.

In their article in Science in 2015 Jambeck et al. (Science 347, 768-771), estimated, where the plastics to the oceans come from. Interestingly, among the 20 most plastic-polluting countries, there was not a single European country, although the use of plastics per capita is among highest in the world (If considered as one entity, European Union, with twice the population of USA, would have been no. 18, slightly ahead of Morocco, North Korea and USA). Out of the 20 countries producing most mismanaged plastic waste 8 were from  Pacific Asia (China, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, North Korea), 4 from Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangla Desh, Sri Lanka), 5 from Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, South Africa, Nigeria), The remaining three countries were Turkey, Brasil and USA. It is notable that there appeared to be more mismanaged plastic waste coming to the oceans from North Korea than from USA. It is also notable that Japan and South Korea were not among the most plastic-polluting countries.

So what is the reason of the plastic waste in the oceans. It is not plastic use per person, which is highest in USA, Canada and European countries. It is poor waste management. In USA only a couple of % of the plastic waste enters the ocean, most of the waste is burned and some recycled. In Europe the situation is similar. In the Pacific Asian countries in the list 80 % of the waste is not treated properly. The mismanaged plastic waste of Indian subcontinent countries exceeds 85 %, and that of the African countries is slightly over 65 %. Consequently, if waste management in the primary polluters could be improved to European/American level, the amount of plastic waste reaching the oceans would decrease to 1/30-1/40 of what it is today. If we, in addition, decreased the unnecessary use of plastics, the good material could be used without generating the unfounded guilty feelings.

Together with climate change actions, i feel that waste management issues should assume major emphasis in environmental negotiations. Further, effective waste management (in the simplest case burning) is not the question of money but attitudes, so it could be done as easily in poor as in rich countries.

Getting rid of garbage gyres - its not plastics but people's attitude

Sunnuntai 11.3.2018 klo 11.52 - Mikko Nikinmaa

The waste in the seas and also in the terrestrial environment is without doubt a big problem. In this one has taken plastics as something that is the evil. Plastics are undoubtedly a problem, because they are highly stable and, being light, float and are thus easily seen. However, plastics are not the only stable pieces of trash. Similarly, all the metal-made products last almost to eternity. For plasticts to be an environmental problem, they need to reach the environment. If they did not, they would not be a part of the environmental problem.

Plastics are usually made of oil. We are still currently warming up a lot of houses with oil. If all the plastics were collected as part of the waste and burned to produce energy, no plastic waste would be generated and the need for oil would decrease. Is this done in most parts of the world? No, in the best case the plastic waste is a part of the waste ending up in waste dumps, where it is virtually eternal, and in the worst case barges filled with waste are tugged out to the open sea, where the waste is just dumped to the water. Out of sight out of mind. However, this being the case, it is actually wrong to blame a set of good products for generating a problem, when the problem is in our way of waste handling. Further, if the plastics were effectively collected, most of them could be recycled, obliviaing the need of producing new plastics to be thrown away.

Undoubtedly, there is much unnecessary use of plastic materials, and thus, plastic production can be radically diminished. However, there will always be a need for a light-weight, durable material for various appliances. And different plastics are just that, and they can be either recycled or disposed by burning so that no waste is generated. So the real problem is not the plastics, but our way of treating waste. The environment should not receive any permanent waste. People should stop throwing waste, but instead collect it all and either recycle or burn. In addition to plastics, another big permanent source of waste is metals. If they were not thrown in the environment bt recycled, the need for mining with all its environmental problems would markedly decrease.

Plastics removal by micro-organisms

Sunnuntai 24.9.2017 klo 17.50 - Mikko Nikinma

Plastic garbage is a huge problem everywhere in the world. The most visible collections of mainly plastic trash are the Pacific Garbage Gyre and similar smaller ones in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, but all the aquatic environments have plastic waste and non-visible microplastics. Plastic trash is a highly visible problem also in terrestrial environments.

In the light of the huge plastic pollution problem, two major solutions to alleviate it have been envisioned. The first involves diminishing the use of plastics markedly, collecting plastic trash for reuse, and if the material cannot be reused, burning it. Burning plastic is virtually the same as burning oil, since currently virtually all plastics are made of oil. Thus, burning the plastic trash diminishes the need for oil and thus diminishes its consumption. This way of addressing the plastics problem is tedious, demands a lot of work and time, and requires a change in our daily behaviour. 

The other solution is much simpler. Let's just find a micro-organism, which uses the plastics as an energy source. The evolution of micro-organisms is rapid as a result of their short generation interval. There are both some bacteria which use oil as food and some fungi which decompose plastics. An example of the latter has recently been described in the journal Environmental Pollution (Khan et al. 2017 Environmental Pollution 225, 469-480). Notably, oil-eating bacteria have successfully been used to clean up oil-contaminated soil, so what is simply needed is to have plastic-eating micro-organism placed within plastic trash, and the microbe does the rest. Simple and effective, right?

However, the solution is not so clearcut beneficial. Our world today uses plastics in virtually everything. Already in the beginning of 1972 a book with the name Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters was written by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis. In the book, a mutant bacterium was generated (to remove plastic contamination), but it got loose and started eating up, e.g., the plastic covers of electrical wires with the consequence that electrical appliances short-circuited, planes crashed etc. No one can guarantee that the plastic eating micro-organism cannot spread outside of where it is wanted, unless the evolution of organism is directed so that it cannot live anywhere but its wanted target. For example, one could generate the plastic-eating micro-organism so that it is strictly anaerobic, whereby it would die immediately upon contact with air.

However, for developing the plastic-eating anaerobic organism time is needed. Thus, we must primarily use the tedious first alternative.

Recycle

Maanantai 21.8.2017 klo 14.00 - Mikko Nikinmaa

When I was a child all the cloth, paper and glass were recycled. From then on one changed from reuse culture to culture wasting materials. As a result, we are using in half a year what the earth can tolerate for one year. Environmentally thinking, our wasteful ways should be over.

Wasting materials has been the cheap alternative largely because the long-term damage to and costs incurred by the environment have not been part of any economic calculations. For example, the gross national product does not take into account, e.g., the water pollution caused by industrial production. For this reason, paper and pulp mill directors said in 1970s that: "One cannot build effective wastewater treatment plants, since our products will then become so expensive that they cannot be sold". If environmental damage had been part of economic calculations, that would not have been the case.

But from wasting to recycling. There are already examples, which show that recycling can function. In Finland we have returnable bottles and aluminum cans. As the result, at least 95 % of drinking bottles are returned. Glass bottles can then be washed and refilled. Aluminum cans are pressed, and new cans can be produced. Plastic bottles can also be washed and refilled. Most paper is reused. One is paying recycling fee when buying tyres - the old tyres are then used, e.g. on road surfaces.

For some reason the recycling of cloth has been all but forgotten. This is surprising, as the treatment of cloth so that fibres could be reused is not more expensive than making cloth from native cotton plants, and would be more environmentally friendly. It would just require a change of attitude. Also, reusing all the metals would markedly diminish the need for mining and associated activities. Again, it would not be more expensive, but would need new way of thinking.

All in all, in much of advocating recycling, we are not talking about things becoming more expensive, but about a change in attitude. Recycling needs to be done not because we are poor but because it helps to give our children a habitable planet.

Drinkwater in plastic bottles - why?

Sunnuntai 25.12.2016 klo 11.21 - Mikko Nikinmaa

One cannot but notice that a large number of people are buying water in plastic bottles. Quite often the bottles are not recycled, but end up in the huge pile of plastic waste, which is currently contaminating especially our seas. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of fish and marine birds die currently as a result of ingesting plastic waste.

But back to water in plastic bottles. Did you know that approximately three liters of water are used to produce a litre of bottled water? Did you know that occasionally the source of the water in bought bottles is tap water in the production place of bottled water? Further, I cannot see the reason why small water bottles are transported, e.g., from France to USA.

It is probably true that fresh water will be an inadequate environmental resource in the world in future. Consequently, we should save it where we can. One of the easiest ways of doing this is to drink tap water whenever possible, and when it is not, use local bottled water in recyclable bottles - and actually recycle the bottles, not throw them away.