April 2023 - Page 2 of 2 - Zureli

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Kimberly-Clark firms up plans for three UK-based green hydrogen projects

Posted on April 11, 2023April 11, 2023 by dishanth

The firm, which owns brands such as Andrex and Huggies, is celebrating the fact that the project near Barrow-in-Furness was successful in securing a place on the UK Government’s Hydrogen Business Model Strategy Shortlist. The Shortlist was announced last week as part of a bumper day of green policy publications, detailing 20 projects set to share public funding support and benefit from streamlined planning processes.

Led by Carlton Power, the project is seeking to co-locate 35MW of electrolyser facilities and a 40MW energy storage system at the Cumberhead West Wind Farm. The 126MW wind farm is currently under construction and completion is expected later this year. Green hydrogen production should then be able to commence in 2025.

Kimberly-Clark is planning to offtake green hydrogen from the project to serve its paper mill in Cumbria, replacing natural gas. This plan was first announced to the general public in the summer of 2022, but the confirmation of Government support is a significant step forward.

Until the hydrogen production begins, Kimberly-Clark will offtake renewable electricity from the wind farm via a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA). It will use this electricity at three manufacturing sites and two distribution centres across the UK.

HYRO

Two additional green hydrogen projects involving Kimberly-Clark were also detailed on the UK Government’s Hydrogen Business Model Strategy Shortlist – one in Northfleet, Kent, and the other in Flint, North Wales.

Both of these projects are being led by HYRO, a joint venture between RES and Octopus Energy’s generation arm. HYRO’s long-term vision is to invest £3bn green hydrogen in the UK.

The two electrolyser projects will have a combined capacity of 22.5MW. As with the project in Cumbria, they will use renewable electricity to electrolyse water, thus producing green hydrogen. The hydrogen will be stored and fed into hydrogen-ready boilers within Kimberly Clark sites. A timeline has not yet been announced for the completion of the renewable arrays nor the electrolysers.

Kimberly-Clark’s managing director for the UK and Ireland, Dan Howells, said: “A lot of hard work has gone into developing the green hydrogen projects and it’s fantastic to see the UK government selecting them for the funding shortlist.

“These developments represent a significant stepping stone towards our big ambition to move solely to renewable energy to manufacture Andrex, Kleenex, Huggies, WypAll and Scott in the UK by 2030. We can only reach our decarbonization goals via innovative partnerships and cutting-edge technology.”

Other manufacturers exploring hydrogen as a natural gas replacement in the UK include Unilever, Pilkington Glass, Quorn Foods, Kelloggs, PepsiCo, Essity, Encirc and Jaguar Land Rover.

Source edie

Regrowing Vegetables with Sun and Water

Posted on April 6, 2023 by dishanth

Many root vegetables can be regrown in your kitchen with a glass of water and a sunny ledge.

While composting is a great way to make use of peels, skins, and ends of your old vegetables, there are many things you can do with your scraps before throwing them away. The outer skins of fruit and vegetables are filled with flavour and vitamins and can have many different uses. For instance, you can use them around the house to clean greasy messes or your tea kettle. You can use them to enhance food by creating zests or sugars. You can also throw your vegetable scraps into boiling water and make a broth.

You may have seen that some vegetables have their roots attached, particularly leeks, green onions, and fennel. Instead of scrapping the roots, you can actually regrow the entire vegetable. All you need is a jar of water and a ledge in the sun, and you’ve got yourself a kitchen garden. You can do it all before the official garden season starts.

Green Onions and Leeks

Place at least an inch of the root ends of your green onions in an inch of water. Make sure to change the water every day or two so you don’t end up with slime. You should have a medium-length green onion to trim and eat in about ten days. The roots will eventually get bigger and will need some nutrients to keep growing. At that point, you can transfer them to a small pot of potting soil to re-nourish or start over with a new bunch of green onions. You can do the same thing with leeks, although they might take a bit longer to regrow.

Fennel

Place the bulb in a container, with the base facing down and stem-end-up. Cover the bulb end in water. You can trim and eat the stalks and fronds (the leafy part) as needed. To continue the growth, you will eventually need to replant it in soil.

Garlic

It’s a little tricky to regrow garlic in water, but you can promote the growth of the green sprouts, which can be used in salads, dressings and stir-fries. Place a whole or partial bulb in a glass and add enough water to come partially up to the bulb. The sprouts will grow and regrow a few times in water before needing soil.

Lettuce

Cut off the bottom of the head of lettuce and place it in a small bowl of water. You will see new growth begin from the center of the in as little as three days, and you’ll have a new half-head of lettuce in about two weeks. You can do this with romaine and red and green leaf.

Any fruit or vegetable can be regrown at home with water or placed directly in the soil. It’s an easy and affordable way to grow fresh produce right in our homes. Grab a glass of water and start growing!

Source Happy Eco News

LABELL-D: Reframing retail for sustainable consumption

Posted on April 6, 2023 by dishanth

LABELL-D is introducing its Luxury Asset Exchange, which is set to disrupt the retail industry by revolutionising consumption patterns with innovative technology and promoting circularity and climate consciousness.

The Digital Label – a powerful software engine at the core of the platform – seamlessly links the first and second-hand markets, transforming products from ordinary commodities into valuable assets.

By connecting customers to brands and retailers, the platform crystallises purchases as wearable liquid assets, providing a unique and innovative shopping experience.

“Our platform benefits consumers, brands, retailers – and the environment. The next generation rightly demands a more sustainable way to consume,” says Julia Vendramin, CEO and Co-Founder of LABELL-D. “Brands lose touch with their products the moment they leave the store. LABELL-D closes the loop: authenticating a product’s ownership history, providing brands with loyalty and royalties on each trade.”

As the CEO, Julia Vendramin has significant industry expertise, having worked for Hugo Boss, Burberry, and Smythson. Angel investors have seed funded the company, which aims to scale its operations and technology in the future.

The platform already has over 75,000 active users, with 35 high-end brands, including Gucci and Burberry.

Targeting the next generations

Around 75% of the active users on LABELL-D belong to the Gen Z/Millennial age group, highlighting a shift in mindset and behavioral patterns across generations. Additionally, approximately 85% of fashion items are either abandoned in closets or disposed of in landfills.

The platform guarantees asset liquidity through validated pricing. This means that for the first time, consumers know the true value of their luxury items and brands are rewarded for their original creativity.

“The Luxury Asset Exchange is a scalable platform in the luxury market with fashion as the first step,” Vendramin adds. “The fashion sector is ripe for disruption – advances in technology such as blockchain allow us to create a truly circular economy. Our Digital Label is Web 3.0 generated – it tracks, traces, authenticates and allows customers and brands to trade. It is endlessly scalable.”

Source Sustainability

New Beer Made from Treated Wastewater Highlights Potential of Water Reuse

Posted on April 6, 2023 by dishanth

While it’s not the first time it’s been done, Epic OneWater Brew is the latest and perhaps the highest-profile attempt at using treated greywater to make something potable — in this case, beer.

The effort used an intensive filtering and disinfection process to purify 2,000 gallons of water from a San Francisco high-rise to create a “blank slate,” drinking-water-quality product. From there, Epic Cleantec — whose OneWater onsite water-recycling system made Time’s Best Inventions of 2022 list — physically moved that water via totes and trucks to Devil’s Canyon Brewing Co in nearby San Carlos, where brewery owner Chris Garrett and his team created a Kolsch from the liquid.

“It ended up being a really great product,” Garrett told Sustainable Brands.

What makes this version of a recycled-water beer different is the sourcing.

“What’s interesting about Epic is that this is the first example of using water that’s come out of an onsite recycling system,” says Travis Loop, producer and host of water-related media outlet Waterloop (Loop is also a lead organizer of the Pure Water Brewing Alliance, which advocates for responsible water use and reuse in the beer business.).

The process works like this: First, greywater from residential building Fifteen Fifty (which recycles up to 7,500 gallons of water per day, or up to 2.75 million gallons per year) is collected from laundry and showers. Then, it’s treated through Epic’s combination of ultra-filtration (filtering out impurities to the diameter of a human hair follicle), disinfection with ultraviolet light and chlorine, and a granulated activated-carbon (GAC) filter (for reduced mineral content), and typically reused for toilet and urinal flushing within the building. Scientifically speaking, the recycled water is treated to an extremely high level of purity that meets (or even exceeds) federal drinking-water quality standards.

But for this project, 2,000 gallons of that treated water was toted about 30 minutes south on the peninsula for the beer collaboration.

“Typically, a project like this has only been done through a utility,” says Epic Cleantec CEO and co-founder, Aaron Tartakovsky. “Brewers have so much knowledge about water chemistry; so, we wanted to find a contract brewer who would be interested.”

The final result was 7,000 16-oz cans of beer — not available for commercial sale but distributed to an array of water professionals and beer fans, along with a cameo at the recent UN 2023 Water Conference in New York City.

A rep from Epic says the beer “really made the rounds at the conference” and “several breweries reached out to learn more about collaborating.”

Drawing attention to a larger issue.
Of course, the goal of a collaboration like this is to highlight water conservation in a part of the water cycle many don’t really think about.

“We’re a ‘flush and forget’ society,” Tartakovsky says.

US wastewater-treatment facilities process approximately 34 million gallons of water daily; so, there’s seemingly unlimited potential to find new ways to reuse the water that simply goes down a drain.

These brewery/treated-water collaborations have been somewhat of a forefront for the conversation/reuse conversation, with Loop noting at least 100 brewers (both home and professional) who have produced a similar beer to OneWater Brew over the last decade.

“(These beers) are a great public-awareness tool,” he says.

The state of Colorado was a recent example of the movement gaining steam as the latest state to legalize the use of direct potable reuse (DPR) water with Florida, Arizona and California also looking into similar measures. The goal is to help water customers get over any preconceived notions of treated wastewater and redirect it for potable uses.

Everyone involved hopes that the more these collaborations occur, the more they can get people talking about water.

“We should judge water by its quality, not its history,” Loop says.

Source Sustainable Brands

Shark in the water: This robot can collect 21,000 plastic bottles in a day

Posted on April 4, 2023 by dishanth

Inspired by a whale shark’s wide mouth – which scoops up whatever is in front of it – Richard’s company Ran Marine created the WasteShark.

“I liken it to a Roomba for water. It’s an autonomous machine that scoops up pollution out of water on the surface level.”

“That pollution could be plastic or any debris or biomass like algae,” Richard adds.

Why is there a robot shark at Canary Wharf?

The Aqua Libra WasteShark was deployed in London’s Canary Wharf this week as part of a project to clean up the area and make it a healthier, more biodiverse environment.

Canary Wharf is a thriving financial district located on London’s River Thames. 120,000 people visit every day to work or shop there.

The Canary Wharf Group, which developed and manages the area, have done a lot to reduce single-use plastics. But the high footfall means it’s easy for coffee cups and lunch wrappers to end up in the water.

Currently, only 14 per cent of English rivers meet good ecological status. The country’s waterways are plagued by pollution from agriculture, sewage, roads and single-use plastics.

In fact, it is estimated that 8 million tonnes of plastic enter our oceans every year, much of it being swept from cities to the sea through rivers.

“The way we designed the WasteShark was that it was zero impact on the environment that it’s working in,” says Richard.

“You’ll see a lot of boats that go out and clean are normally diesel-powered or mechanically powered so there’s a bit of oil and pollution going back into the water while they’re cleaning,” he explains.

WasteShark is completely electric and is so quiet it doesn’t disturb wildlife, according to the Ran Marine CEO.

“Ducks and swans swim away from it. We’re not fast enough to catch fish. So it really is a low-impact solution to remove pollution out of the water.”

What can WasteShark do?

The WasteShark is battery-powered and travels up to 5km on one battery. That amounts to around 8-10 hours of cleaning time. A daily feed for the WasteShark is around 500kg of debris or the equivalent of guzzling roughly 21,000 plastic bottles.

Any rubbish collected in the robot’s belly is then brought back to shore, sorted and recycled or disposed of responsibly.

Whilst it’s filling up, the WasteShark also collects samples of the water.

“We’re collecting water quality data from all around the world and aggregating that [so we can see] what it looked like last week, last year. Is the water getting cleaner? Is it changing? Is there a potential algae bloom?” explains Richard.

“It’s kind of our dream to deploy these things around the world to clean up while we’re asleep, make a difference and hopefully make an impact on our environment.”

Source euronews.green

Could this colourful plant-based film replace the need for air conditioning?

Posted on April 4, 2023April 4, 2023 by dishanth

Scientists at Cambridge University in the UK are working on an eco-friendly alternative. Their invention consists of a plant-based film that stays cool when exposed to sunlight.

The material could someday be used to keep buildings and cars cool without the need for external power. Coming in a range of textures and bright iridescent colours, it’s aesthetically pleasing too.

How does the eco-friendly cooling film work?

For a material to stay cooler than the air around it during the daytime, there are two critical requirements. It must have high solar reflectance to reflect the warmth of the sun and not heat the air around it. It must also have a high emissivity in infrared bands to emit heat into outer space efficiently.

Only a few materials have these properties and scientists are already developing them into paints and films capable of what is known as ‘passive daytime radiative cooling’ (PDRC).

When applied to the surface of a car or building, it means that these materials create a cooling effect without consuming electricity or creating pollution.

How can PDRC materials be made more attractive?

Since they need to be solar reflective, PDRC materials are usually white or silver.

Adding colour would decrease their cooling performance. This is because coloured pigments selectively absorb specific wavelengths of light, only reflecting the colours we see. This extra light absorption creates a warming effect.

“These limited colours hinder the applications where visual appearance is a key consideration, such as for architecture, cars and clothes,” says project member, Dr Qingchen Shen.

To increase the desirability of these materials, colour is an important factor.

Along with the project’s lead investigator, Dr Silvia Vignolini, Dr Shen set out to research ways of achieving colour without the use of pigments.

They looked to structural colouration as a solution. This is where shapes and patterns reflect specific colours of light without the presence of pigmentation, as seen on soap bubbles and oil slicks.

Seeking a natural source of this phenomenon, the research team used cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) – derived from the cellulose found in plants – to create iridescent, colourful films without any added pigment.

“We specifically use cellulose-based materials for our films because cellulose is the most abundant polymer in nature,” says Dr Shen.

It is also one of the few natural materials capable of promoting PDRC.

After experimenting with basic colours, the researchers are now working on glittery CNC-ethyl cellulose films. They are also developing different textures that could blend in with various wood finishes.

How effective is the colourful cooling film?

The researchers created layered cellulose films in vibrant blue, green and red colours and put them to the test.

When placed under sunlight, they were an average of nearly 4°C cooler than the surrounding air.

One square metre of the film generated over 120 watts of cooling power, rivalling many types of residential air conditioners.

As a general guideline, bedrooms require around 80 watts per square metre and living spaces 125 watts of air conditioning capacity.

The researchers hope to find new ways to leverage CNC-ethyl cellulose films. These include adding sensors to detect environmental pollutants or weather changes.

Ultimately, they hope the film coating could serve several purposes at once. It could be used to both cool buildings and to alert to changing levels of pollutants in congested areas, for example.

Source Euronews Green