In a new study, researchers have made a promising discovery: a compostable material that can serve as an alternative to plastic. The material is made from a combination of used coffee grounds and spores from Reishi mushrooms that are made into a paste, then 3D printed.

The idea started when Danli Luo, corresponding author of the study and doctoral student of human-centered design and engineering at University of Washington, noticed the amount of coffee grounds that accumulated from making espresso at home.

Luo, along with co-author Junchao Yang and senior author Nadya Peek, explored how coffee grounds could serve as an ideal growing base for the strong mycelial network that precedes mushroom growth. The team set out to explore a way to use up the spent coffee grounds and make them into a strong, lightweight material that would be a more sustainable alternative to plastic.

First, they turned the coffee grounds into a Mycofluid paste by combining them with the spores of Reishi mushrooms, brown rice flower, water and xanthan gum to act as a binder. This created a promising material that would work with a 3D printer. 

From there, Luo developed a bespoke printer head to print the paste into more intricate and complex designs that could mimic the versatility of plastic without a need for molds. The researchers made multiple objects using the design, including shipping packing materials that could be a substitute for plastic foam (or Styrofoam), a vase, a small statue and a miniature coffin.

“We’re especially interested in creating systems for people like small businesses owners producing small-batch products — for example, small, delicate glassware that needs resilient packaging to ship,” Luo said. “So we’ve been working on new material recipes that can replace things like Styrofoam with something more sustainable and that can be easily customized for small-scale production.”

After printing, the team kept the objects moist and in a sealed plastic tub for 10 days to allow the mushroom spores to develop into a mycelial skin. Then, they removed the objects and dried them to prevent mushroom development. The team published their method in the journal 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing.

From the upper left to bottom right: the 3D printer creates a design; three printed pieces of a vase; the partially set vase pieces are put together; the mycelium grows on the coffee paste; the vase grows together; the finished vase holds flowers and water. Luo et al./3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing

According to the authors, their method costs $1,700 for hardware for the experiment, and the 3D printer could hold up one liter of paste at a time. By comparison, they noted that other similar solutions cost more than $7,000. However, they did note that the Mycofluid paste was dependent on uniform coffee grounds, which would limit scaling ability.

Moving forward, the researchers behind the coffee-and-mushroom material also hope to explore other food waste materials that could be developed into paste for 3D printing that may have better scaling opportunity.

“We’re interested in expanding this to other bio-derived materials, such as other forms of food waste,” Luo said. “We want to broadly support this kind of flexible development, not just to provide one solution to this major problem of plastic waste.”

More and more scientists are looking into ways to make use of the estimated 60 million tons of spent coffee grounds that are wasted globally each year. For instance, New Atlas reported that RMIT University researchers found a way to incorporate spent coffee grounds into concrete to make the concrete up to 30% stronger. 

Other coffee waste, such as the husks, have also been valuable to a Colombian company called Woodpecker, which has used coffee husks combined with recycled plastic to build low-cost, prefabricated buildings.

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The United Kingdom’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) plans to invest 81 million pounds in the development of an ambitious early warning system designed to detect climate tipping points.

The new system will use drones, plankton bloom patterns and cosmic ray detection combined with artificial intelligence and detailed, cutting-edge computer models, reported The Guardian.

“Major parts of the Earth system are at risk of crossing climate tipping points within the next century, with severe consequences for biodiversity, food security, agriculture, and humanity. Despite the potential impact, we’re poorly equipped to characterise the long-term trends of our climate systems, or predict the future risk of runaway, self-perpetuating change,” ARIA said in a press release. “Combining expertise in observation and modelling with innovative sensing systems, we’ll look to develop a proof-of-concept for an early warning system for climate tipping points that is affordable, sustainable and justified.”

Early warning system for climate tipping points given £81m kickstart: Ambitious UK project aims to forecast climate catastrophes using fleets of drones, cosmic ray detection, patterns of plankton blooms and more An ambitious attempt to develop an early warning system for climate tipping p…

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— The Guardian Climate News (unofficial) (@guardian-climate.bsky.social) February 18, 2025 at 9:07 AM

ARIA has awarded roughly $102 million to 27 project teams with a goal of finding signals that warn of the biggest climate disasters that could be triggered by the climate crisis.

ARIA’s early warning system program will be focused on two major tipping points: the collapse of the subpolar gyre (SPG) ocean current — a part of the crucial Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) — and the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet.

The collapse of ocean currents like AMOC would lead to global weather pattern changes, triggering extreme weather and wreaking havoc on the world’s food supplies, while the collapse of Greenland’s ice sheet would cause significant and potentially damaging sea level rise.

“In a similar way to how we use monitoring stations to detect and warn for tsunamis, we’re aiming to establish networks of climate monitoring systems to detect early signs of critical shifts in our climate,” said Sarah Bohndiek and Gemma Bale, who co-lead the ARIA program, as The Guardian reported. “Through these systems, we can equip decision-makers with the data they need to confront the threat of abrupt climate change head on.”

Sarah Bohndiek, 1 of 2 scientists leading the #ClimateChange program at ARIA, warned the world was less prepared for climate #TippingPoints than it was for #COVID19. “What would happen if we cross one of the climate tipping points?"

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— Carbon Tracker Initiative (@carbontracker.bsky.social) January 2, 2025 at 5:30 AM

At least 16 tipping points have been identified by scientists, some of which may have already been passed, from the thawing of permafrost in the north to a shift in west Africa’s monsoon.

ARIA hopes to come up with an early warning system capable of forecasting tipping points a decade ahead of time, where possible.

Professor Tim Lenton, an ARIA team leader and director of the Global Systems Institute at University of Exeter, said a warning like ARIA is proposing would incentivize the world to speed up climate action, since even if it wasn’t possible to stop a particular tipping point, having advance notice would give society time to prepare.

One of the program’s teams is developing small, high-speed drones to be used to gather better data in Greenland.

“Greenland is the fastest melting place on Earth, but this ice loss has knock-on effects for both North Atlantic ocean currents and fisheries. This crucial research will help us to understand how much freshwater the ice sheet is releasing, and what the subsequent effects will be on the ocean currents that bring warm waters and weather to the UK,” said Kelly Hogan of the British Antarctic Survey in the press release.

Another ARIA team is working on making devices that can move vertically through the ocean to collect data on the SPG.

“The UK and northern Europe could experience much harsher winters, similar to parts of Canada [if the SPG collapses], while the east coast of the U.S. could see dramatic sea level rises,” said Dr. Bieito Fernández Castro, a lecturer at University of Southampton who leads the SPG project, as reported by The Guardian.

One of the projects will develop detailed computer simulations of real-world data to evaluate the reliability of prospective early warning signals.

“We will make use of real-world examples of past tipping points to better understand these events,” said David Thornalley, a professor of ocean and climate science at University College London.

Another team will develop models to pinpoint where and when climate tipping points might happen.

“Forecasting tipping points is a formidable challenge,” said Dr. Reinhard Schiemann, associate professor of climate science at University of Reading. “But the fantastic range of teams tackling this challenge from different angles, yet working together in a coordinated fashion, makes this programme a unique opportunity.”

The post UK Agency Developing Early Warning System for Major Climate Tipping Points appeared first on EcoWatch.

Scientists have found that preservation and restoration for peat swamp forests and mangroves could help lower land-use emissions in Southeast Asia by about 54%. Because the region contributes to about one-third of global land-use carbon emissions, the reduction could also have a big impact globally, with a potential 16% reduction in land-use emissions worldwide.

Peatlands and mangroves account for around 5.4% of land area in Southeast Asia, but they have huge carbon sequestration properties, according to the scientists, who published their findings in the journal Nature Communications. As National University of Singapore (NUS) reported, peatlands and mangroves can sequester around 90% of carbon in the soil. The natural peatland and mangrove ecosystems also promote biodiversity.

Further, the scientists noted that Southeast Asia is home to a significant portion of the world’s tropical peatlands and mangroves, with Brunei, Cambodia, Timor Leste, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam accounting for 33% of global mangroves and 39% of global tropical peatlands.

Half of land use carbon emissions in Southeast Asia can be mitigated through peat swamp forest and mangrove conservation and restoration www.nature.com/articles/s41…

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— Ian Hall (@ianhall.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 6:40 AM

But with land-use changes, these ecosystems are under threat and risk emitting carbon rather than storing it. According to the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide, some of the biggest threats to mangroves include coastal development and pollution. As the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reported, peatland threats include drainage, burning, agriculture and mining.

“If we conserved and restored the carbon-dense peatlands and mangroves in Southeast Asia, we could mitigate approximately 770 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) annually, or nearly double Malaysia’s national greenhouse gas emissions in 2023,” Massimo Lupascu, senior author of the study and associate professor of geography at NUS, said in a statement.

As Mongabay News reported, restoring the peatlands and mangroves that are currently degraded — which includes around 5.34 million hectares (13.4 million acres) drained peatlands and 2.64 million hectares (6.52 million acres) otherwise degraded peatlands — could reduce emissions by around 94 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year alone.

Conservation of remaining peatlands should be a major focus. As NUS reported, it is difficult to recover sequestered carbon once the natural peatlands or mangroves have been disturbed by human activities. While restoration will still be important, conserving the remaining ecosystems is critical to reducing land-use emissions.

“These ecosystems pack a climate mitigation punch far beyond their size, offering one of the most scalable and impactful natural solutions to combat the planet’s climate crisis,” said Sigit Sasmito, first author of the study and a researcher at TropWATER at James Cook University.

In addition to prioritizing peatland and mangrove restoration and conservation, the study authors pointed out that these carbon-sequestering ecosystems could also provide economic value, such as through carbon credits, to outweigh the potential economic benefits of land-use changes.

“Wetland soils may have little agronomic value, as it is generally not well-suited for traditional farming or crop cultivation, but they are unmatched in their ability to store and preserve carbon,” Pierre Taillardat, co-author of the study and a principal investigator at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore’s Wetland Carbon Lab, said in a statement. “If carbon were valued like other critical commodities, such as being traded on the carbon credits market, it could unlock vast opportunities for conservation and restoration projects. This will enable local communities to lead carbon management efforts with a win-win scenario where livelihoods and sustainable ecosystems thrive together.”

It will be important for countries to act quickly on peatland and mangrove preservation and restoration efforts. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) recently reported that around 500,000 hectares of peatlands are destroyed each year, with East and Southeast Asia particularly affected. Degraded peatlands contribute to around 4% of all global anthropogenic carbon emissions.

The post Peatland and Mangrove Preservation Could Reduce Land-Use Emissions in Southeast Asia by Half, Study Says appeared first on EcoWatch.

The reintroduction of wolves to the Scottish Highlands could help expand native woodlands, which could in turn absorb and sequester one million additional tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to a new study.

The research, led by scientists at the University of Leeds, modeled wolves’ potential impact in four areas of Scottish Wild Land, where increasing populations of red deer feeding on tree saplings is suppressing the natural regeneration of woodland trees, a press release from the University of Leeds said.

“There is an increasing acknowledgement that the climate and biodiversity crises cannot be managed in isolation,” said Dominick Spracklen, a professor of biosphere-atmosphere interactions in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, in the press release. “We need to look at the potential role of natural processes such as the reintroduction of species to recover our degraded ecosystems and these in turn can deliver co-benefits for climate and nature recovery.”

To estimate that the reintroduction effort to areas in the Southwest, Northwest and Central Highlands, as well as in the Cairngorms, would result in a total wolf population of approximately 167 wolves, the team used a predator-prey model. That number of wolves would be sufficient to reduce populations of red deer enough to allow trees to grow back naturally.

Reintroducing wolves to Scottish Highlands could help expand native woodlands, says study – Researchers say the animals could keep red deer numbers under control, leading to storage of 1m tonnes of CO2 www.theguardian.com/environment/…

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— Damian Carrington (@dpcarrington.bsky.social) February 17, 2025 at 4:19 AM

With wolves keeping the red deer population in check, native woodland could expand to take up 1.1 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, or roughly five percent of the United Kingdom’s carbon removal target for woodlands. The UK Climate Change Committee has said that is the amount needed to achieve net-zero by 2050.

The researchers estimate the presence of each wolf would result in an uptake of 6,702 tons of carbon each year, giving each of the predators a carbon valuation “worth” of roughly $194,554.

The findings of the study, “Wolf reintroduction to Scotland could support substantial native woodland expansion and associated carbon sequestration,” were published in the journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence.

The research is the first time wolf reintroduction’s potential impacts on woodland expansion and the resulting carbon storage have been assessed in the UK. According to the research team, the results are further evidence that large carnivores play an important role in providing essential nature-based solutions to address the climate crisis.

Scotland eradicated its wolves roughly 250 years ago, which left red deer without natural predators. Red deer numbers in the country have exploded in the past century, despite ongoing management, with the most recent estimates as high as 400,000.

A lack of natural regeneration of trees has led to the decline and loss of Scotland’s native woodlands. Today, the country’s levels are some of the lowest in Europe, with just four percent of it covered in native woodland.

Natural tree regeneration has been largely restricted to fenced areas where deer are excluded. More intensive deer management has been proven to help trees regenerate, with seedling numbers rising when deer numbers are lower than four per square kilometer.

Western Europe’s wolf population is now more than 12,000, with wolves occupying 67 percent of their historical range in Europe, including in Central Europe’s human-dominated landscapes.

The researchers said the financial benefits of carbon uptake and storage that would come from reintroducing wolves to the Scottish Highlands would be added to other proven ecological and economic impacts of wolf reintroduction, such as ecotourism, a reduced number of deer-vehicle accidents, fewer cases of deer-associated Lyme disease and fewer deer culls.

“Our aim is to provide new information to inform ongoing and future discussions about the possibility of wolf reintroductions both in the UK and elsewhere,” said farmer and author Lee Schofield, who co-authored the study. “We recognise that substantial and wide-ranging stakeholder and public engagement would be essential before any wolf reintroduction could be considered. Human-wildlife conflicts involving carnivores are common and must be addressed through public policies that account for people’s attitudes for reintroduction to be successful.”

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With each new federal administration, energy priorities shift. With the election of Donald Trump in 2024, one of his administration’s key promises, enforced by an executive order on January 20 this year and as promised in Project 2025, was to try to ramp up oil and gas drilling in the continental U.S. A key location for increased extraction? Alaska, the remote northern state that always seems to be at the tip of the tongue when the expression “drill, baby, drill” is uttered. 

But despite the fervor from the administration, recent lease auctions for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge failed to find a buyer. Other locations off the shore of Alaska are more likely to see increasing oil production, and some, like the massive Pikka Project on the north slope of Alaska, are already underway. 

One person who knows Alaska as deeply as anyone can who doesn’t live there is writer and explorer Jon Waterman.

“I suppose I’ve taken 50 or 60 different trips and expeditions to Alaska,” he says. 

His new book, Into the Thaw: Witnessing Wonder Amid the Arctic Climate Crisis, reminds us, in beautifully rendered prose and photos, of the beauty of Alaska, and what’s at stake as the land, wildlife and peoples feel the pressures of climate breakdown and increased oil and gas production. 

Waterman writes: 

The sea ice has melted away as storms erode shorelines and flood villages. Forests are slowly on the move north along with animals new to the Arctic. The permafrost has begun to thaw, and lakes have disappeared as riverbanks and mountainsides droop like frozen spinach left out on the counter. 

The book tracks his most recent visit into Noatak River in Gates of the Arctic National Park, and what he saw that was so drastically different from his first visit 39 years ago. 

How would you describe the climate crisis in Alaska? 

The sea ice is what makes travel safe for the people in the summertime. Sea ice is what allows the polar bears to hunt their seals. And it controls the temperature of the Arctic.

The tree lines have begun to move north. The permafrost is thawing. It’s a whole cascade, like dominoes knocking one another over as the Arctic continues to warm. In fact, Alaska has warmed four times faster than the rest of the Earth.

And in your view, what’s different about this climate change compared with others from the long history of our planet, which you write about in the book?

The difference with the last 150 years is that it’s happened so quickly. And it’s the Anthropocene. Humans have caused this change, and that’s never happened before.

Can you tell me more about the melting permafrost? What are the impacts of that on the far north? 

As that permafrost thaws, the microbes begin to eat all this plant matter and that releases carbon dioxide gases. But it also releases methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas. And this could equal one of the largest triggers of greenhouse gases, because there’s so much methane and carbon stored in the ground that is abruptly thawing in many places.

On hillsides and mountainsides throughout the Arctic, it’s now very common to see what looks like landslides. These are recent thermalkarsts thawing. Downstream of these thermalkarsts, they’re just pumping tons of mud and silt into the river. And that affects the local villagers because they can’t fish. And then even more importantly, it affects all the aquatic life from the fish on down to the microbial life.

And what about the wildlife? 

The lengthening seasons and the lengthening summer have changed the migration patterns of many animals, birds and most notably, caribou. The caribou herds equal food security for many of the people in the far north.

Most of the herds are in a drastic decline. And this is broadly attributed to habitat loss and to climate change, because the warming of the Arctic causes another phenomenon called greening of the Arctic. The last time I went to the Arctic, I was amid the western Arctic caribou herd. And that herd used to be half a million strong. The latest census puts them at 152,000. 

Beavers have come to the Arctic. Beavers were never found in the Arctic prior to 1980. And in just this one portion of northwestern Alaska that I traveled through, through aerial photography, they counted over 11,000 new beaver dams in Arctic Alaska. Red foxes have begun to move north of tree line. There are more moose, and salmon are beginning to spawn in places they’d never spawn before as the waters have warmed.

You visited several Indigenous villages throughout Alaska and in other parts of the far north. What are some of your observations from them? 

The first time I was alerted to the changing north was in 1997. I was in a hunting camp in the Beaufort Sea in Canada, and an elder told me that they were starting to see robins and bluebirds, which they’ve never seen in their village before. And they’d just started to see salmon, and they were having mosquitoes come to their village. And I guess it was a breezy place, and it it stopped being breezy.

They used to have sled dog races on the 4th of July. They could no longer hold sled dog races in the summertime, because there was no longer any snow in the summer. It had gotten so warm. 

As a writer who has written books on the national parks, on Denali Mountain and others, what drew you to nature writing? 

I’ve always been an environmentalist at heart. I read the works of Rachel Carson and Edward Abbey and Peter Matheson and realized that nature is defenseless in that it doesn’t have a voice to speak for itself.

This issue of climate change is just the one grave environmental issue, perhaps the greatest of them all, right up there with overpopulation, that we need to be alert to and that we need to make the public aware of.

Your most recent trip was with your son. Looking to the future, what might people see a hundred years from now in Alaska? What are your hopes? 

Alaska has always been perceived as the last frontier, and I think that’s still true today. And I would hope it’s true a century from now. Thanks to Jimmy Carter and the Alaska National Interest Lands Claims Act that he signed in 1980, we have an enormous amount of protected wilderness and public lands in Alaska.

But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t continue to speak up for it and defend it. But I think that I’m optimistic and hopeful about the future of Alaska, because of all its protected wildlands.

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