B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

Women in Circularity: Dr. Jess Watson

In this series, we spotlight women moving us toward a circular economy. Today, we meet Dr. Jess Watson of earthday365.

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Visia X-ray tech helps prevent MRF battery fires

Visia’s effort to curb battery-related fires in recycling facilities is beginning to show measurable results, according to new data from the company’s first wave of commercial installations.

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Denali reports recycling 7 million tons of organics in 2024

Commercial food waste handler Denali said it recycled nearly 7 million tons of organic material in 2024, including more than 1 million tons of food waste.

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News from Closed Loop Partners, Solid Waste Disposal Authority of Baldwin County, Alabama and more

The Biodegradable Products Institute opened registration for the 2025 BPI Summit, Sept. 16-18 in Atlanta. Closed Loop Partners’ private equity group has acquired the organics waste management platform Agri-Cycle. International Paper is closing several facilities in Georgia and laying off …

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US paper recycling rate slips while mills expand use

Collection, Organics

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Rigids drop again; paper, film, cans edge lower

Prices for PET, HDPE and PP bales saw significant drops again this month, with paper grades, plastic film and UBCs also marginally lower.

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Plastics treaty talks collapse, exposing divides

After nearly two weeks of tense negotiations, the world’s attempt to forge the first legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution collapsed in Geneva, leaving delegates exhausted, civil groups dismayed and the path forward uncertain.

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News from CalRecycle, Novelis and more

CalRecycle, California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, has begun formal rulemaking activities for the SB 1013 Addition of New Beverage Containers Permanent Regulations, and will accept public comment through Sept. 30, including a hybrid public hearing.  California organic waste …

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For the last dozen years, scientists have been on the hunt for a killer that has claimed billions of lives. They’ve finally found it.

In 2013, researchers from Olympic National Park reported what looked like a sea star massacre: ochre sea stars with limbs that had split off from their decaying bodies. It was the first of what soon became a coast-wide underwater epidemic stretching from Mexico to Alaska.

Within years, the mysterious condition, dubbed sea star wasting disease, had wiped out billions of sea stars. It was declared the largest known disease outbreak in the open ocean. The effects were both devastating and gruesome for more than 20 species. Sea stars broke apart, their arms crawling away seemingly in a failed attempt to escape before dissolving into goo.

Many-armed sunflower sea stars as big as bicycle wheels were some of the hardest hit, declining by 99% in U.S. coastal waters and earning the designation of “critically endangered” from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Scientists struggled to figure out what was behind this devastation. Initial suspicions of a kind of virus proved wrong. Warming waters appeared to play a role, but that in itself couldn’t explain it.

Starting in 2021, Canadian and U.S. scientists mounted a massive, 4-year hunt to find the culprit. Last week, they announced the results in Nature Ecology & Evolution: a bacteria called Vibrio pectenicida, part of a family of particularly nasty pathogens known to cause everything from cholera to scallop-killing outbreaks.

The discovery is a critical first step in figuring out how to protect or restore sea stars, which are linchpins of many coastal ecosystems such as kelp forests. Those forests are in decline partly because they are being devoured by sea urchins, once prey to sea stars. “Now that we’ve identified the disease-causing agent, we can start looking at how to mitigate the impacts of this epidemic,” said Melanie Prentice, a scientist at the University of British Columbia involved in the research.

The sleuthing involved years spent painstakingly narrowing down the possible causes of the disease, much of it at a U.S. Geological Survey laboratory in Washington state equipped to handle waterborne diseases.

 

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First, scientists tried different ways of exposing healthy sea stars: they put them in tanks with infected ones; added water from tanks with sick sea stars; and injected the sea stars with tissue from infected ones. All approaches proved deadly. Of 50 healthy sea stars, 46 succumbed.

The researchers zeroed in on a substance called coelomic fluid, likened to sea star blood. When sea stars were injected with the fluid from an infected individual, they grew sick. But when they received a version that had been heat-treated to kill live organisms, they remained healthy.

When the DNA of the contents of coelemic fluid from healthy and sick sea stars was scrutinized, the sick ones contained a lot of DNA from the Vibrio bacteria.

“When we looked at the coelomic fluid between exposed and healthy sea stars, there was basically one thing different: Vibrio,” said Alyssa Gehman, a marine disease ecologist at the Hakai Institute and the University of British Columbia. “We all had chills. We thought, ‘That’s it. We have it. That’s what causes wasting.’”

As a final test, they refined a pure sample of the bacteria, then injected it into 6 sunflower sea stars, while another 6 received doses inactivated by high heat. The ones with the live bacteria all died, while the others all survived.

“This is the discovery of the decade for me,” said Drew Harvell, an ecologist with the University of Washington and author of several books about ocean life “What’s crazy is that the answer was just sitting right there in front of us. This Vibrio is a sneaky critter because it doesn’t show up on histology like other bacteria do.”

Other factors, such as heat, might still play a role. It’s not known how the disease first reached sea stars on this coast. But Vibrio bacteria generally thrive in warmer conditions. In fact, scientists have called them a “barometer of climate change.”

The new discovery doesn’t mean scientists will be able to find a “cure.” But it can help guide their work to find sea stars that are resistant to the disease. And researchers can now monitor for outbreaks in the wild by taking water or tissue samples. That might help them decide where to release lab-raised sea stars to give them the best chance of surviving.

“This finding opens up exciting avenues to expand the network of researchers able to develop solutions for recovery of the species,” said Jono Wilson, head of ocean science for The Nature Conservancy’s California chapter, which helped fund the research. “We are actively pursuing studies looking at genetic associations with disease resistance, captive breeding and experimental introduction of captively-raised stars back into the wild.”

Prentice, et. al. “Vibrio pectenicida Vibrio pectenicida strain FHCF-3 is a causative agent of sea star wasting disease strain FHCF-3 is a causative agent of sea star wasting disease.” Nature Ecology & Evolution. Aug. 4, 2025.

Image: Wasting cookie sea star near Calvert Island. courtesy of Grant Callegari/Hakai Institute

Recycling facility fires expected to reach new high

Across North America, recycling and waste management facilities are experiencing an increase in reported fires, with 2025 predicted to reach a new annual high. A recent special report by Fire Rover highlights this trend, attributing the record-high reported numbers and escalating financial risks to factors such as lithium-ion batteries, escalating demands from insurers and inadequate control measures.

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Canadian waste services must report plastic quantity

Speakers from Coastal Waste Management Association discussed the new reporting responsibilities for Canadian waste service providers, including recyclers, for the Federal Plastics Registry during a recent webinar.

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There is little connection between price and quality of clothing items, according to a first-of-its-kind study that put 47 different t-shirts through a series of durability tests.

Consumers tend to use price as an indicator of clothing quality, but spending more money doesn’t guarantee a t-shirt will last longer. “If you spend £/$5 on a t-shirt, you may find that it performs better than that of a £/$50 t-shirt,” says Kate Baker, a graduate student at the University of Leeds in the UK, who presented the research at the Product Lifetimes and the Environment (PLATE) Conference in Aalborg, Denmark in July.

While a spendier garment can in some cases be more durable, “We are trying to encourage consumers that cheap does not equal disposable,” Baker says.

Physical durability is key to a more sustainable and circular fashion industry. People need to be able to keep wearing their clothing items for longer and pass them on in good condition.

But until now, there has been no objective, reproducible way to measure durability of clothing. “There is very little a consumer can identify at the point of purchase to understand whether a garment will last,” Baker says. “The aim of our research is creating a method to measure the durability of garments which can be used by brands going forward and in turn be communicated to consumers.”

Baker and her colleagues gathered 24 men’s and 23 women’s t-shirts offered by various UK clothing brands, from discount to luxury labels. They washed and tumble-dried the shirts 50 times.

Previous studies have only looked at single indicators of durability, but they used a suite of factors weighted by the most common reasons consumers get rid of a t-shirt: pilling, overall appearance, and changes to shape and shrinkage. The researchers also assessed fading and color change, as well as the strength of the garment’s seams and fabric.

 

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They added all these factors together for an overall score ranging from 0 (extremely poor) to 30 (excellent).

The researchers found no correlation between price and durability. Six of the 10 best shirts cost less than £15 and outperformed the most expensive shirt, which sold for £395. The most expensive shirt placed 28th out of 47; the least expensive shirt, sold for £4, came in 15th.

The most durable t-shirt cost £28, but the second-worst cost £29. The findings are in line with other research from the University of Leeds group indicating little correlation between price and durability, Baker says.

More durable t-shirts tend to contain a percentage of synthetic fibers such as polyester, polyamide, and elastane, the researchers found. All-cotton t-shirts shrink more than synthetic ones. But 100% cotton can be durable too: four of the top 10 shirts were made of this material.

Some of the durability factors are correlated. T-shirts that don’t pill also tend to look pretty good overall after 50 washes. T-shirts that don’t shrink also tend to maintain their shape.

For consumers on the lookout for a t-shirt that lasts, the researchers recommend choosing heavier rather than lighter weight cotton tees; considering a blend that includes synthetics; and resisting the assumption that higher price means better quality.

The researchers have also tested other clothing items, including casual and formal trousers, shorts, jeans, underwear, and pajamas, and aim to investigate whether the patterns of durability they identified in the t-shirt study also apply to other garments, says Baker.

Putting the findings into practice will require government action. “There are currently no laws around the performance of clothing going onto the market,” Baker says. But if clothing makers were required to conduct durability testing and report the results, consumers could have a lot more confidence in their purchases.

Source: Morris K. et al. “Measuring physical garment durability: An assessment of 47 T-shirts.” Proceedings of the 6th Product Lifetimes and the Environment Conference (PLATE2025), 2025.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine.

Reclaiming Power: The Path Towards Radical Democracy and Collective Liberation Introduction The Global Confluence on Radical Democracy, Autonomy, and Self-Determination held in Port Edward, South Africa from February 2 to 6, 2025, was organised by Global of (), in collaboration with WoMin Alliance, Amadiba Crisis Committee (ACC), Academy of Democratic Modernity (ADM), and Jineoloji Academy. Together, these organisations provided both the theoretical and practical frameworks for the meeting, …

08-21 * 13:00 - Toolkit meeting (franco)

Publications Reports collection Periodically, produces collections of reports that compile stories, accounts, experiences and “case studies” that emerge from the communities and processes of radical alternatives. You can access all our reports collections or specific issues below: 01 02 01 GTATapestryAlternativesalternativesTapestryAlternativesAlternativesTapestryAlternativesGTAAlternativesMASSAalternatives

Adding biochar to the soil not only creates better growing conditions for cotton, but also reduces nitrogen run-off by up to 87%. These findings from a new research paper add to a growing body of work that shows the triple benefits biochar can have on crops, soil health, and the wider environment.

Using biochar made from sugarcane bagasse, the researchers tested out the carbon-rich, pyrolized material in a field experiment in the Lower Mississippi Delta, where fields of cotton are a common sight. Cotton is an extremely resource-intensive crop, inhaling over 200 liters of water per kilo on average in this region. It also consumes a lot of fertilizer, with large amounts showered over the soil where it grows.

Accentuating the problem, cotton is often cultivated on sandy loam soil that has a weaker, more porous structure through which water—and fertilizer nutrients—easily flow.

These twin environmental challenges were the focus of the researchers’ experiment. Between 2020 and 2022, they applied three different treatments of biochar in varying quantities to rows of cotton, and compared them against an experimental plot where no biochar was applied. Over the course of the growing period, the researchers took random samples of the soil for analysis.

These samples held some interesting telltale clues. The soil where 20 Mg of biochar had been applied per hectare showed a significant 63% reduced concentration of nitrate, compared to the control site. The research team also measured samples for the volume of water they contained, and used soil probes on the research plots to determine the volume of run-off from the soil.

Their efforts revealed two intriguing things. Firstly, that the soil on biochar-treated plots retained more water than those without the soil amendment. This is because biochar creates a more stable, varied structure that inhibits the freeflow of water, and also provides more matter to absorb water, compared to sandy loam soils.

 

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Below about 15cm, the biochar’s stabilizing effect was reduced. But nevertheless its effect on topsoil seemed to provide a powerful knock-on benefit, because the run-off on biochar-treated plots contained strikingly lower concentrations of nitrates, the researchers found.

In fact, at soil depths of between 46cm and 81cm, biochar applications reduced nitrate losses through run-off by between 49 and 87%, and 42 and 102% during the fallow period of the cotton harvest, compared to the control.

The researchers also think that nitrate run-off was better-controlled under the treated cotton, because biochar increases the amount of soil organic carbon in the earth, which is a food source for millions of soil microorganisms. These microbes consume and fix nitrogen, too—so, as biochar increases, microorganisms fix more nitrogen, leaving less to slip into water and seep into the surroundings.

Now that the researchers have identified an effective, simple solution to some of cotton’s biggest challenges, what are the future plans for this work? The researchers say that they intend to scale up their experiments to the field level, and partner with farmers to evaluate the benefit of biochar on their lands.

They also hope to see whether biochar can deliver the same, or similar, benefits on fields of corn and soy.

Sharma et. al. “Biochar impact on soil properties and soil solution nutrient concentrations under cotton production.” Journal of Environmental Management. 2025.

Image: © Rytis Bernotas| Dreamstime.com

Sewage is not something most people want to give a second thought to, but it contains a trove of valuable nutrients. One of those is ammonia, a key ingredient of fertilizer.

Now, researchers report a way to use sunlight to recover ammonia from wastewater. The cheap, efficient process is a practical way to reuse the nutrient on farms and keep it from reaching the environment, where it can cause harm. The work appears in the journal Nature Sustainability.

Ammonia is a source of nitrogen in fertilizers. Around 240 million tons of ammonia are produced every year globally using the Haber-Bosch process. The method, while critical for feeding the world, takes huge amounts of energy and has a large carbon footprint.

Meanwhile, two-thirds of the fertilizer farmers apply to their fields escapes into the ground as run-off. The excessive nitrogen reaches water bodies where it can harm aquatic life and lead to toxic algae blooms.

 

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Removing ammonia from wastewater is doable but the process is expensive so treatment plants mostly decompose ammonia into less harmful compounds. So researchers have been devising various techniques and developing novel materials to capture ammonia and other nutrients from wastewater.

Ning Xu and colleagues at Nanjing University came up with an efficient solar-driven method. They made a solar still—a container with a clear plastic or glass top—that uses the sun to purify water. The sun’s heat evaporates water in the sill, and the clean vapors are condensed and collected.

Because fertilizer runoff and industrial wastewater mostly contain ammonia in the form of ammonium, the team devised a way to convert the ammonium into ammonia. They coated a plastic sponge with a thin layer of a black, heat-absorbing substance called titanium carbide. Then they attached chemical groups called amino groups to the surface of the sponge.

Floating on the wastewater enclosed in the solar still, the black sponge absorbed heat while its amino groups converted the ammonium in wastewater into ammonia. The heat evaporated both the ammonia and water, which were condensed and captured for use.

Focusing sunlight on the sponge cleans it for reuse while producing another useful commodity: hydrochloric acid. The researchers analyzed the economics of the method in 24 different regions of China. Taking into account the cost of the specialty sponge materials, they found that it had “excellent economics benefit and revenue” generating a profit of $90 per square meter of the sponge, and a payback period of about 3.5 years.

Source: Qi Zhang et al. Solar-driven efficient and selective ammonia recovery from ammonium-containing wastewater. Nature Sustainability, 2025.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

 

Maps suggest the ocean has been getting a lot more protection lately. But satellites offer a much less encouraging view.

On paper, the size of so-called marine protected areas (MPAs), designed to shield ecosystems from harm by humans, has grown from less than 5 million square kilometers at the start of the century to over 25 million today. That’s more than 9% of the world’s oceans.

However, scientists with access to the unblinking eyes of satellites have found that many of these supposed protected areas are still being targeted by industrial fishing fleets. The new research shows the pitfalls of relying on simply declaring new reserves as a way to meet numerical targets, like the widely-touted goal of protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030.

But it’s not all bad news. There are hints that strict, enforced protections might help ensure these places live up to their promises. And some of the same high-tech tools used by these scientists could help.

“Fisheries monitoring must be strengthened and made more transparent,” wrote Raphael Seguin, an ecologist at the University of Montpelier in France, and lead author of one of two studies on the issue that appeared last week in Science.

Seguin and colleagues scrutinized more than 6,000 protected areas along the world’s coastlines. These spots represented just 17% of the area covered by such reserves, because many of the largest ones are far from shore. But the spots closer to land often encounter the heaviest fishing pressure. And they also fall under the gaze of the European Union’s Sentinel-1 satellites, equipped with radar that can detect larger boats.

When the scientists checked these satellite images, supplemented with tracking information from beacons required on most large vessels, they found industrial fishing vessels inside nearly half of these reserves between 2022 and 2024. Around two-thirds of those visits were “invisible” to people monitoring the beacons, either because a boat didn’t have one, it’s transmission wasn’t being picked up, or someone had turned it off to avoid detection. But they couldn’t dodge the satellites.

While there is debate about whether all kinds of fishing need to be banned for a healthy reserve, there is widespread agreement among conservation researchers that industrial-scale fishing isn’t compatible with robust protected areas. For instance, guidelines set by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) excludes such fishing from any of six types of marine reserves.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:Eyes on the High Seas

 

In the new study, scientists estimated that vessels spent an eye-popping 24 million hours fishing in these coastal reserves, based on observations paired with a computer model. And that doesn’t account for smaller boats that wouldn’t use beacons or be seen by the satellites. The biggest hotspots tended to occur in wealthier countries which have both active fishing fleets and more of the ocean inside protected reserves, including Japan, the United Kingdom and Spain. Likewise, the places where fishing boats were most crowded together inside protected areas was offshore of Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as China.

At first glance, it might appear that the reserves with the most restrictions did a better job of keeping out fishing. Places that fell in the IUCN’s toughest categories, I and II, tended to have fewer fishing boats. But those places also tended to be harder to reach. When the scientists took into account the size and remoteness of each of the reserves—factors that affect how attractive they are to fishers—the places with tougher rules performed no better. For Seguin, this suggests that policymakers are imposing strict regulations where it’s easy to score “points” for conservation, rather than where fishing pressures are highest.

“This reveals an opportunistic strategy for locating MPAs, often placed in little-fished areas in order to more easily achieve international objectives,” he wrote in a commentary for The Conversation (translated from French).

The findings suggest the results from a companion study published in the same issue of Science might not be as encouraging as they appear. A different group of scientists used similar methods to scrutinize how much fishing was happening inside the most tightly regulated marine reserves.

They found these patches of ocean were largely devoid of fishing boats. In 455 protected areas spanning 3.2 million square kilometers, satellite images revealed just one fishing boat for every 20,000 square kilometers—9 times fewer boats per square kilometer than in unprotected coastal waters.

The overall message, is “that proper investment in protected areas will pay off and that satellite technology can be one of the key tools to help ensure that such investments are kept safe,” wrote Boris Worm, a biologist at Canada’s Dalhousie University who was not involved in either study.

The scientists behind this more upbeat paper wrote that the seemingly contradictory findings compared with the other study might be the result of their use of a more comprehensive rating system, created by the organization ProtectedSeas, to find the most highly regulated reserves.

But part of their analysis suggests the results could also be shaped by the same factors Seguin’s group identified—that these spots weren’t popular fishing spots to begin with. When the group looked at 72 places where there were satellite or beacon observations before and after strict reserves were created, 61 of them had little to no fishing activity before. The results “suggest that many MPAs may have been placed in areas with little prior fishing,” the scientists wrote.

The main exception was the Palau National Marine Sanctuary, where fishing activity fell from 51,000 hours per year to just 215 once the sanctuary was created, the researchers found.

While the work by the two groups takes different views of the current state of marine reserves, they both agree on one thing: tools such as satellites could be powerful ways to watch for illegal fishing inside reserves in the future, and to make sure these aren’t just “paper parks” created for show.

Seguin, et. al. “Global patterns and drivers of untracked industrial fishing incoastal marine protected areas.” Science. July 24, 2025.

Raynor, et. al. “Little-to-no industrial fishing occurs in fully and highly protected marine areas.” Science. July 24, 2025.

Worm, B. “A catch in ocean conservation.” Science. July 24, 2025.

Photo:© Athanassios Lazarides | Dreamstime.com

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