Environmental Chemistry

What’s your biodegradable coffee cup made of – and how biodegradable is it?

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Has your local coffee shop recently switched to biodegradable cups? Or maybe your workplace canteen has made the switch to biodegradable cutlery? Perhaps the plastic packaging of your favourite magazine is now a biodegradable wrapper? You might wonder what materials are behind these biodegradable products, and exactly how much better they are for the environment than the materials they’ve replaced. Here, we explore these biodegradable plastics, and how they stack up against conventional ones.

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C&EN Wildfires Preview

Wildfires: causes, combustion products, and health risks – in C&EN

C&EN Wildfires Preview
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Even in the depths of winter, wildfires have been raging in some U.S. states. There were over 66,000 wildfires across the U.S. last year, and this month’s edition of Periodic Graphics in C&EN magazine takes a look at the products of these large-scale combustion reactions, as well as the effects that these products can have on our health. Click through to the C&EN site to view the full graphic!

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Carbon Dioxide and Ocean Acidification

Ocean Acidification: “The Other Carbon Dioxide Problem”

Infographic on carbon dioxide and ocean acidification. Ocean acidification occurs when atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater. The average pre-industrial pH of the oceans was 8.2, and it’s projected to fall to 7.7 by 2100. A drop of 1 pH unit represents a tenfold increase in acidity. When atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater it reacts to form carbonic acid. Carbonic acid dissociates, and hydrogen ions produced by this increase acidity. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide ultimately results in more hydrogen ions and lower pH. As ocean pH drops, hydrogen ions react with carbonate ions, which can affect shelled organisms and coral skeletons. Negative effects on these organisms could have impacts higher up the food chain. Ocean acidification can also affect the molecules that marine organisms use to communicate with each other, with potentially detrimental effects.
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Ocean acidification is often referred to as ‘the other carbon dioxide problem’. We’re all quite rightly concerned about the effects that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels may have on climate, and the potential consequences of climate change are well documented: more frequent instances of extreme weather, and higher global average temperatures to name but two. Ocean acidification gets comparatively less press, and as such is sometimes misunderstood – but its effects could be equally serious.

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The 12 Principles of Green Chemistry

The Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry: What it is, & Why it Matters

The 12 Principles of Green Chemistry
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Green chemistry is a concept that crops up with increasing frequency; we’ve already discussed it here previously with reference to the Periodic Table’s ‘endangered’ elements, and the recycling rates of metal elements used in mobile phones. But what do we mean by ‘green chemistry’, and what’s required for chemistry to be considered ‘green’? That’s what this post, a collaboration with the University of Toronto’s Green Chemistry Initiative, aims to look at.

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Recycling Rates of Smartphone Elements

The Recycling Rates of Smartphone Metals

Infographic showing the recycling rate of metals found in our phones. Of the metals shown, only eight have a recycling rate greater than 50%, and all but one of the remainder have a recycling rate of less than 10%.
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Regular readers will spot that today’s post is a bit of a twist on an old post from the site’s archives, which looked at the elements present in a smartphone and the roles that they play. In this updated version, I wanted to highlight which elements in your smartphone will actually get recycled at the end of its lifetime – and which we could be doing a better job at salvaging and re-using!

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