global briefs

Inconvenient Convenience

Plastic On its Way Out at National Parks

A poll by Ipsos conducted for the ocean conservation group Oceana last November found that 82 percent of registered U.S. voters responding would like the National Park Service to stop selling and distributing single-use plastic items. The survey revealed broad appreciation for national parks, with around four in five respondents saying they had been to a park and 83 percent of previous park visitors looking forward to a return visit. Oceana Plastics Campaign Director Christy Leavitt says, “These polling results indicate that Americans, whether Republican or Democrat, want our parks to be unmarred by the pollution caused by single-use plastic.”

The results show broad support for a campaign led by Oceana and more than 300 other environmental organizations which sent a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland asking the parks to end the sale and distribution of plastic beverage bottles, bags, foodware and cutlery, and plastic foam products. The proposed Reducing Waste in National Parks Act would see such a policy enacted if passed. “The National Park Service was created to preserve these natural and historic spaces, and in order to truly uphold that purpose, it needs to ban the sale and distribution of single-use plastic items, many of which will end up polluting our environment for centuries to come, despite being used for only a moment,” says Leavitt.

Flat-Free

Airless Tires Increase Safety, Limit Waste

Michelin’s new airless tires don’t puncture, so they should last longer, which means fewer tires will need to be produced, thus limiting waste. Their Unique Puncture Proof Tire System (UPTIS) is an important step on the road to sustainability. The company notes that millions of tires end up in landfills early because of puncture damage, along with all the tires that are old and worn out. Disposed tires can become fire hazards, releasing gases, heavy metals and oil into the environment. The U.S. alone produced more than 260 million scrapped tires in 2019. The new tires can also be made from recycled plastic waste, according to industry publication Interesting Engineering. UPTIS, in development for more than a decade, combines an aluminum wheel with a special “tire” around it comprised of a plastic matrix laced with and reinforced by glass fibers. This outer tire is designed to be flexible, yet strong enough to support the car. Michelin Technical and Scientific Communications Director Cyrille Roget says, “It was an exceptional experience for us, and our greatest satisfaction came at the end of the demonstration when our passengers ... said they felt no difference compared with conventional tires.” Goodyear has announced that the Jacksonville, Florida, Transportation Authority will be piloting the company’s own version of an airless tire on its fleet of autonomous vehicles.

Bitter Twitter

Industrial Farming is Bad for Birds

Researchers at the University of British Columbia found that increased farm sizes resulted in a 15 percent decline in bird diversity. Frederik Noack, assistant professor in the Food and Resource Economics Group, part of their faculty of land and food systems, says, “Wildlife is a good indicator of a healthy agroecosystem, and one thing we wanted to understand was the link between farm size and biodiversity in surrounding areas.” A diverse bird population provides natural pest control and maintenance of an overall healthy ecosystem.

They studied how various farming indicators impacted the diversity of local birds in the farmland bordering the former “Iron Curtain” in Germany. On the Western side of the former political border, farms are five times larger than on the Eastern side, a legacy of Communist farm collectivization. Sharp differences in farm size remain along the former border, providing an opportunity to study the impact on biodiversity in an ecologically similar environment. Noack says, “Our results show that the negative impact of increased farm size can be mitigated by conserving land cover diversity within the agricultural landscape. In practice, this could mean incentivizing riparian buffer strips, forest patches, hedgerows or agroforestry.”