Environment

Of all the things that merit a high-tech makeover, you would think that the humble bird-nesting box didn't need one. A new 3D-printed version, however, could go a long way towards restoring threatened species in the Australian wilderness.

As part of its mission to tackle plastic pollution in the marine environment, The Ocean Cleanup project plans to sell goods made from the waste it recovers to fund its ongoing operations, and has just unveiled its very first product.

A new research project at the University of Twente could be of great use to anti-poaching efforts, by mixing motion sensors with machine learning to recognize when wildlife is responding to a nearby threat.

Examination of noise pollution data before and then during the stay-at-home and social distancing orders implemented in response to the coronavirus pandemic has shown that people’s average exposure to environmental noise dropped by nearly half.

The frequency of natural disasters over the past two decades is almost double that of the 1980-1999 period, a new report from the UN has revealed, with extreme weather events driven by climate change accounting for a large portion of the uptick.

Alphabet’s X moonshot factory is a research group working to solve big-picture ideas through technological innovation, and for its latest venture the team is turning its attention to sustainable farming.

Disposable diapers are not eco-friendly, not only because of their plastic outer shell, but also due to their petroleum-based absorbent inner layer. There could soon be a sustainable alternative to the latter, though, and it's made from wheat gluten.

Two of the problems with traditional plastics are the facts that they're made from non-renewable petroleum, and they stick around for centuries once discarded. A new alternative, however, is made from existing waste, and should biodegrade in a year.

The Tasmanian devil is so called because for thousands of years it has only been found in the wild on the island of Tasmania. Conservationists have now reintroduced the endangered marsupials to mainland Australia to help sustain their population.

Wildlife smugglers do their best to conceal the path of their stolen goods. But what if those goods weren’t actually wildlife, but a disguised GPS tracker that revealed exactly where it had been taken instead?

By understanding the upper limits of the wobbling that precariously balanced rocks have endured in the past, researchers can gain a picture of future earthquake risk, and a cutting-edge new technique could improve the accuracy of this modeling.

In order to keep water from evaporating from the soil, farmers often cover the ground around their crop plants with sheets of polyethylene plastic. There could soon be a more eco-friendly alternative, though, in the form of soybean oil-coated sand.