Environment

E-waste is a major environmental hazard, full of valuable metals. Engineers at Rice University have now shown that precious metals and rare earth minerals can be recovered by flash-heating ground-up electronics with a zap of electricity.

A team of engineers has given microchips a new ability – the power of flight. Inspired by wind-dispersed seeds, these “microfliers” are shaped like tiny propellers to catch the wind, and may be the smallest flying structures ever made by humans.

A new company called Colossal plans to revive the woolly mammoth and reintroduce the species to the Arctic. And it isn’t meant to be just a tourist-trap Jurassic Park either – the aim is to restore a long-lost ecosystem to help fight climate change.

Agriculture is a huge environmental issue in many ways, but one that’s often overlooked is livestock urination. Researchers from Germany and New Zealand have now demonstrated a potential way to reduce that problem – by toilet-training cows.

New research has found a correlation between air quality in office environments and workers’ cognitive function. The study found low ventilation rates and increased levels of particulate matter were linked with reduced performance on cognitive tests.

The James Dyson Award is an international competition to encourage students to get creative to solve the world's pressing problems. The national finalists have been announced for 2021, showcasing ideas that help people and the environment.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere attracts most of the attention in environmental concerns, but much of that ends up in oceans, making them more acidic. Now scientists have created nanojars that can easily capture this and other pollutants from water.

Climate change can feel inevitable, but we’ve stepped up to the challenge before. New modeling shows how bad things would be if CFCs hadn’t been banned decades ago – depleted ozone would've increased UV exposure and stopped plants capturing carbon.

Nuclear and fossil fuel power plants consume huge amounts of water for cooling, which then goes to waste as water vapor. MIT engineers have now developed a system that can capture and recycle that lost water.

The Greenland Ice Sheet is associated with a range of environmental issues, but now researchers have discovered a surprising new problem. Glacial meltwater was found to be unexpectedly high in mercury, which could end up in ecosystems and seafood.

An ambitious Israeli startup claims it can pull carbon dioxide out of the air vastly cheaper than anyone else, using massive high-altitude balloons to take advantage of stratospheric temperatures and freeze CO2 out of the air with minimal energy.

A new study has revealed that Earth’s glaciers have lost a staggering amount of ice over the last two decades, and the rate of loss is accelerating. The global effort used satellite data to track the deteriorating condition of some 220,000 glaciers.