Sweet Success

Simultaneously ubiquitous and ignored, plastic straws have been in the spotlight lately. In the summer of 2018, a video showing a plastic straw being removed from a sea turtle’s nose went viral. After that, the push to get rid of plastic straws turned into an avalanche. California has passed a law that, starting in 2019, you won’t get a straw in a restaurant unless you ask for one. Straws only make up about 2,000 tons of the nearly 9 million tons of plastic waste in the world’s oceans, but they are a powerful symbol of the problem.

But now, they might also become a symbol of a solution. Enter sustainable straws. Straws are being made from a variety of materials, including glass, metal, paper, and now even sugarcane.

A Taiwanese company, 100% Plants, has developed a way to use plant fibers to make drinking straws. The straws come in three diameters, from narrow (for fruit-free drinks), up to wide (for boba tea with large pearls).

Unlike plastic, these straws obviously don’t last forever. That’s good for the environment, but not so good for long term storage. They need to be kept away from humidity, and if they’re stored too long, will become brittle. Also, the straws aren’t really suited for hot items—they’re only for use on things under 50 degrees Celsius, so no lattes!

Given the proper conditions, the straws will biodegrade almost entirely within six months on land (by comparison, plastic straws can take up to 200 years to break down). If they get into the oceans, it would be even faster, since many species of fish would be able to eat them. If the straws do end up getting incinerated, the smoke is non-toxic—another difference from plastic straws.

Once again, the future is plants.

 

Sources:

 

 

Curriculum Reference Links

  •  Chemical World / Sustainability / 10:  Students should be able to evaluate how humans contribute to sustainability through the extraction, use, disposal, and recycling of materials

 



Young Scientist Spotlight:
HANNAH HERBST

10 Fun Facts: The Hab

1. Aquarius is the the world’s only permanent undersea research station.

2. Most missions last about two or three weeks.

3. Fabien Cousteau, grandson of Jacques Cousteau, beat his grandfather’s record month-long underwater expedition by spending 31 days on the Aquarius Reef Base in 2014.

4. The lab is used by NASA, the US Navy, and researchers and educators from around the globe for training and research.

5. The internet connection is better in the Hab than at many places above the water.

6. You have to swim underneath the facility in order to enter it.

7. Crew members are called aquanauts (NOT aquaNUTS!)

8. In 1994, a crew of scientists and divers had to evacuate Aquarius and climb up a rescue line to the surface in 15-foot seas after one of the habitat’s generators caught fire.

9. Aquarius was featured in the comic strip Sherman’s Lagoon in 2012.

10. The Hab was originally built in Texas.

10 Fun Facts: Coral

1. Reefs usually grow up on the east shore of land masses.

2. Parts of a coral reef can be harvested to make medications to treat cancers and other illnesses.

3. A coral reef isn’t a single organism; it’s actually a community of life that lives and thrives in one location.

4. Only about one percent of the world’s oceans contain coral reefs. That’s about the size of France.

5. Coral reefs are the largest biological structures on earth.

6. Corals are related to jellyfish and anemones.

7. There are over 2,500 species of corals. About 1,000 are the hard corals that build coral reefs.

8. Reefs grow where there are stronger wave patterns and currents to deliver food and nutrients.

9. The Great Barrier Reef is 500,000 years old.

10. Most coral reefs grow just about two centimeters per year.

10. Most coral reefs grow just about two centimeters per year.

10 Fun Facts: Invasive Species

1. To be considered invasive, a species must adapt to a new area easily. It must reproduce quickly. It must harm property, the economy, or the native plants and animals of the region.

2. Some invasive species are introduced accidentally, but others are brought deliberately.

3. Ship ballast water transports between 3,000 and 7,000 foreign species daily around the globe.

4. The total loss to the world economy as a result of invasive non-native species has been estimated at 5% of annual production

5. Invasive species have contributed to 40% of the animal extinctions that have occurred in the last 400 years.

6. Rodents are some of the worst invasive species.

7. There are an estimated 50,000 wild ring-necked parakeets in parks across London and southeast England.

8. Black and Norway rats annually consume stored grains and destroy other property valued over $19 billion.

9. Northern Pacific seastars reproduce very quickly. In one area where they were introduced, their population reached an estimated 12 million seastars in just two years.

10. Starlings were introduced to New York in the late 1800s, as part of an attempt to bring animals that were mentioned in Shakespeare‘s work to America.

Alert: Cuteness Overload!

Cutest animal in the ocean? Keep your Sea Otter. Forget the Dumbo Octopus. Axolotl? Close, but no cigar.

The winner of the Cutest Sea Animal prize is the Leaf Sheep Slug.

Yes, a slug. This tiny (5mm) animal, found near the Philippines, Indonesia, and Japan, looks like a cartoon sheep covered in bright green leaves with pinkish purple tips.

Bonus: it’s one of the only animals that can perform photosynthesis, thanks to all the algae it eats.

Beat that.

Back to Hablog