Watershed Info No 1035
Daniel Salzler No. 1035 EnviroInsight.org February 7, 2020
Seven Items
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1. February Is Here Already, Can You Believe It? Better yet, did you know that February is from the Latin word, “februum”. Do you Know what the Latin Word means? Choose one.
Frigid Purification Agile Fragrant
See the answer at the end of this newsletter.
2. People Think China Ruined US Recycling, But It’s A US-Rooted Problem. Here’s how recycling has changed in all 50 states since changes in China’s waste import laws—and what we should do about it.
There’s a lot of confusion about the state of the United States’ recycling systems, and with good reason. Do things actually get recycled? What does China have to do with our recycling systems? Well, here are some answers.
In order to understand how the U.S. recycling system works, it’s important to understand the role other countries—namely China—play, too. The whole thing is more complicated than people think.
One article from The Hill gives a comprehensive look at the background. In early 2018, China banned many scrap materials and decided not to accept others unless they meet an extremely low contamination rate of 0.5 percent.
This was a problem for the United States. Not only has the United States relied on foreign markets to process most of its recyclables, but most of the time, US recyclables reach a 25 percent contamination rate or higher in many parts of the country.
After China changed its laws in 2018, materials from the US, UK, and Australia began flooding ports in countries like Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia, which then began to enact their own restrictions on waste imports.
The crisis is one that, when it comes down to it, is about US dependence on other markets to handle recyclable materials. When many countries that once handled US materials changed their policies, the US went into crisis mode and did not know what to do with its materials. For many cities, that mean actually throwing recycling materials away, or burning them.
Hundreds of US cities began scaling back or cancelling their recycling programs altogether. The fallout revealed the need for a larger domestic market for recyclables, and it also revealed the extent to which most Americans weren’t educated on how recycling works and what happens after a water bottle goes into the bin.
The problem is not just a lack of a domestic recycling market, however. The US has also failed to actually decrease its use of sustainable and eco-friendly materials. The domestic demand for plastic products has only increased.
Most cities in the US did not develop domestic systems for recyclable products. However, Montgomery County, Maryland did generate revenues from recycled materials and sold the majority of it domestically. This, say many, is truly the answer.
“China said no, and that’s really the right answer,” says Keefe Harrison, CEO of a national nonprofit called The Recycling Partnership. “The shift from China really shined the light on our bad practices for waste [in the U.S.] What is the cost of pivoting from a linear economy to a circular one? It’s tough love but it’s needed.”
How are US consumers expected to recycle now, then?
While the US attempts to adjust to this recycling crisis and dependence on foreign markets, there are ways the average consumer can recycle with purpose.
For one, in addition to providing monetary grants to towns and municipalities, you can do your research. The Recycling Partnership has been working with companies to ensure their sustainability pledges are upheld. The organization recognizes that companies are more likely to reach sustainability commitments when they receive sufficient expertise from partners and are held accountable. For example, the Coca-Cola Company, Keurig Dr. Pepper and PepsiCo announced a partnership with the World Wildlife Fund, the Recycling Partnership and Closed Loop Partners for will make sure plastic bottles are “recovered after use and remade into new bottles.”
HP Printing has long been committed to developing products using recycled and repurposed materials, and it is a leader in the printing and technology industry in how to have an eco-friendly business model. And these are just two examples of businesses making effective change.
Second, you can understand how recycling works in your local area—by state or city. Each region of the country differs in how it treats recycling, and your area might not be as environmentally conscious as you think. Source: Environmental Protection magazine
p.s. EnviroInsight.org, Arizona’s local Non-Profit Environmental Education organization has been advocating the correct methods of recycling and would love to come to your community to demonstrate the correct method of recycling your waste.
3. Administration Moves to Weaken Migratory Bird Safeguards. Proposed rule would end decades of protections for migratory birds.
On January 30, 2020, the Trump administration proposed to roll back key protections against the unintentional killing of migratory birds under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
The proposed rule would codify a controversial legal opinion issued by the Department of the Interior in 2017 declaring the act does not prohibit unintentional killing of birds.
“For more than a century, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act has been the shield against the extinction of over 1,000 species of birds in North America.
“This rule would break that shield, replacing it with an ill-conceived approach that throws out decades of bipartisan commitment to balancing economic activity with safeguards for bird populations.”
Passed by Congress in 1918, the act is one of the United States’ oldest
wildlife conservation laws and has a long and successful track record of protecting species such as the snowy egret, wood duck, sandhill crane and red-tailed hawk. For more than 50 years, both Republican and Democratic administrations have applied the act to prohibit, without a permit, both intentional and unintentional killing of covered species.
The latter has driven common-sense standards such as requiring oil producers to put nets over crude oil waste pits to prevent birds from landing in them, as well as better siting and operation of wind turbines. If these proposed changes are finalized, companies will no longer face legal consequences or have incentive to use best management practices to avoid activities that are deadly to migratory birds.
“With bird populations already facing increasing threats like climate change and habitat loss, there is simply no reason to now weaken their protections,” said Scarlett. “This contrived rule change does not make sense and will only lead to more bird killings. We strongly urge the administration to learn from the lessons that more than a century of success has taught—that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act works – and withdraw its proposal.” Source: The Nature Conservancy
4. Scottsdale Green Building and Living
Green Building Lecture Series
Living an Edible Landscape Life
Date: Thursday, Feb. 6
Time: 7 – 8:30 p.m.
Location: Scottsdale Granite Reef Senior Center, 1700 N. Granite Reef Road (northwest corner of McDowell and Granite Reef, behind the convenience store)
5. Know About Your Water – Green Valley – Sahuarita
February 25, 2020 Time/Location: 10:30 a.m. – noon, Desert Hills Center, 2980 S. Camino del Sol, Green Valley, AZ
This encore presentation, sponsored by the Green Valley Council Environment Committee, will touch on everything you want to know about water resources in the Green Valley-Sahuarita area. The culmination of a project funded by the Freeport McMoRan Community
Investment Program, this interactive presentation offers neutral, independent information on water supplies, uses, and quality, as well as community and individual actions. Source WRRC
6.The Upper Agua Fria Watershed Partnership will meet at Arcosanti Red Room Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at at 10 am. For more information, contact Mary H. at earthhouse@aol.com. Congrats Gramma Mary!
7. More rain and less snow means increased flood risk, Stanford study reveals.
By analyzing more than two decades of data in the western U.S., scientists have show that flood sizes increase exponentially as a higher fraction of precipitation falls as rain, offering insight into how flood risks may change in a warming world with less snow.
As the world warms and precipitation that would have generated snowpack instead creates rain, the western U.S. could see larger floods, according to new Stanford research.
Rainfall can be more than 2.5 times as large as those driven by snowmelt. The researchers also found that flood sizes increase exponentially as a higher fraction of precipitation falls as rain, meaning the size of floods increased at a faster rate than the increase in rain.
The study, which appears in the January issue of Water Resources Research, is particularly salient for people planning infrastructure while taking global warming into account. As Northern Californians saw during the Oroville Dam crisis in 2017 when a spillway failure forced more than 180,000 residents to evacuate, warm storms can pose big problems.
“The Oroville Dam crisis is a good example of how existing infrastructure is already vulnerable to flooding,” said lead author Frances Davenport, a PhD student in Earth system science at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth). “These results show that warming alone – even without changes in precipitation amounts – could lead to changes in the size of floods.”
While it might seem obvious that a greater fraction of precipitation falling as rain would cause bigger floods, the new research reveals that rainfall and flood size have a non-linear relationship. For example, a storm with 100 percent rain has 25 percent more liquid precipitation than a storm with 80 percent rain, but the researchers found that the average flood is 33 percent larger, meaning that the floods grow at a faster rate than the increase in liquid precipitation.
The researchers evaluated 410 watersheds using daily streamflow measurements from the U.S. Geological Survey to identify the largest precipitation events and the time periods with the highest streamflow. They then analyzed these events by comparing the amount of rain, snow and snowmelt leading up to and following each event.
The results are useful to water managers thinking about long-term flood risks, especially in areas expected to experience warming and continued variability in the total amount of precipitation, according to the researchers. They were motivated to focus their analyses on the western U.S. because the same dams and reservoirs used to store water for the dry season also provide flood control during the wet season, with snow playing an important role in each. Source: Standford Science Digest.
Answer to Question No. 1 above. February’s name stems from the Latin word “februum,” which means “purification.” For quite some time, the month of February was considered a time of purification. Romans even celebrated Februa, a ritual of purification on February 15, the date of a full moon. Before the Roman month of “Februarius,” which is where we pulled “February” from, there were other names for this time of year. There were the Old English terms “Solomonath,” meaning “mud month,” and “Kale-monath,” meaning “cabbage month.” Since it’s a leap year, don’t forget that this February has one extra day. Source: Trivia Genius
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