By Travis Teo and Lee Ying Shan, World Economic Forum (Public License).
The organo-hydrogel bandages are also able to keep wound areas cooler and moist, which can help accelerate healing. Image: Reuters/Lee Ying Shan
Scientists at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore are transforming discarded durian husks into antibacterial gel bandages.
The process extracts cellulose powder from the fruit’s husks after they are sliced and freeze-dried.
The husks, which make up more than half of the composition of durians, are usually discarded and incinerated, contributing to environmental waste.
Scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore are tackling food waste by turning discarded durian husks into antibacterial gel bandages.
The process extracts cellulose powder from the fruit’s husks after they are sliced and freeze-dried, then mixes it with glycerol. This mixture becomes soft hydrogel, which is then cut into bandage strips.
“In Singapore, we consume about 12 million durians a year, so besides the flesh, we can’t do much about the husk and the seeds and this cause environmental pollution,” said Professor William Chen, director of the food science and technology programme at NTU. The fruit’s husks, which make up more than half of the composition of durians, are usually discarded and incinerated, contributing to environmental waste.
Other food waste, such as soy beans and spent grains can also be turned into hydrogel. Image: Reuters/Lee Ying Shan
Chen added that the technology can also turn other food waste, such as soy beans and spent grains, into hydrogel, helping limit the country’s food waste.
Compared to conventional bandages, the organo-hydrogel bandages are also able to keep wound areas cooler and moist, which can help accelerate healing.
The researchers say using waste materials and yeast for the antimicrobial bandages is more cost effective than the production of conventional bandages, whose antimicrobial properties come from more expensive metallic compounds like silver or copper ions.
A durian wholeseller, Tan Eng Chuan, said he goes through at least 30 crates of durians a day during durian season – as much as 1,800 kg. Being able to use the parts of the fruit that are ordinarily discarded, he said, was an innovation that would make enjoying it “more sustainable”.
Climate change is already here, but we know that its worst impacts are waiting in the wings for future generations. Unless we step up to the challenge, as individuals and as a species. Stylianos Syropoulos and Ezra Markowitz discuss how emphasizing personal and collective responsibility towards future generations can not only promote climate change concern, but also potentially increase support for the hard work ahead.
A recent analysis of US data suggests that people who feel a personal responsibility to future generations are significantly more likely to worry about climate change and support pro-environmental policies.
These feelings are generally indepedent of other socio-demographic variables, so increasing such perceptions could help overcome obstacles.
Researchers behind the work believe that it could be a powerful tool for shifting behaviour towards climate action.
As we progress through the 21st century, the true contours and effects of climate change are coming into sharper focus. Seemingly on a daily basis we are bearing witness to one climate-related disaster after another, compounding human suffering and misery now and for years to come.
But we know, too, that what we have witnessed thus far is only a prelude to what lies ahead in the face of continued inaction and foot-dragging. More frequent and more damaging impacts are highly likely in the decades to come. To put it a different way, future generations desperately need us to do something now in order to give them a chance when it’s their turn.
Luckily, there is something we can do now. In fact, there are many different things that we—people alive today—can do to avoid or at least deflect the worst impacts of climate change on future generations. And not only can we do something: we have a responsibility to do so, to take concrete steps to ensure that this bleak future is prevented. The question is, how do we encourage people to take this responsibility seriously, or to even recognize it in the first place?
A growing body of research in the behavioral and social sciences can provide actionable insights. Over the past two decades, researchers have explored a wide variety of approaches to increasing people’s recognition and acceptance of climate change as an issue of personal and collective responsibility and action. To name just a few, these include leveraging people’s motivation to leave a positive legacy, encouraging them to reflect on the sacrifices made by previous generations on their behalf, and emphasizing self-transcendent and altruistic values in environmental messaging campaigns.
But do perceptions of responsibility towards the future really matter? After all, we all know there are things we should do in our lives—eat better, exercise more, be more generous—but choose not to. In fact, our recent analysis of nationally-representative U.S. survey data, published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, found that people who feel a personal responsibility to protect future generations are significantly more likely to worry about climate change, support pro-environmental policies, and believe that climate change represents a critical threat to humanity.
In our analyses we found that this perception of responsibility was, for the most part, unrelated to news consumption, gender and racial identities, and income level. Perhaps more surprisingly, perceived responsibility was also not meaningfully related to political ideology, one of the strongest drivers of climate change public opinion in the US. As a result, our findings strongly suggest that perceptions of responsibility towards future generations are a robust mechanism that can be harnessed to promote pro-environmental action and policy support, regardless of individual and group differences previously shown to sow discord in the context of climate change.
Importantly, the effects of responsibility towards future generations could be linked to support for specific policy proposals and collective actions, including opposition to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, opposition to the use of fracking as a drilling method, and support for enforcing stricter limits on the amount of carbon dioxide produced by societies. Increased perceptions of responsibility also predicted increased support for funding renewable energy initiatives.
In addition, people who felt a strong responsibility to protect future generations also considered the protection of the environment as an important personal value. These people were also more likely to experience awe towards nature (a feeling of wonder over nature’s beauty), another previously identified predictor of pro-environmental engagement. Importantly, those who expressed increased perceived responsibility towards future others were also more likely to see climate change and global warming as a threat and an issue that demands more of our attention, and more likely to accept the science of climate change.
These findings are promising, as they suggest at least three key takeaways:
People who consider themselves responsible for protecting future generations also express endorsement of values and beliefs associated with wanting to protect the natural world. These people express more support for pro-environmental policies, they see climate change for the threat that it is, they are more likely to accept scientific findings on the subject, and they endorse values that aim to protect the environment overall. Perceived responsibility towards the future can translate into concrete action to protect the environment for future generations.
Perceptions of responsibility towards future generation are, for the most part, independent of many socio-demographic variables previously identified as barriers to public engagement on climate change. This suggests that future efforts focused on increasing such perceptions may be able to circumvent or overcome established obstacles to pro-environmental action.
Most respondents in the survey strongly endorsed a personal responsibility towards future generations. Nearly 50% considered such responsibility “extremely important” to themselves and another 38% said it was “very important.” Americans tend to disagree on many things, particularly across the political aisle, so finding such strong agreement suggests perceptions of responsibility towards the future may represent a powerful starting point for meaningful collective action on the major issues of our time.
Let’s face it—dealing with the environmental challenges we face will be tough, in no small part because to do so will require the present generation to take costly action to protect people who will be alive far in the future. We will need to leverage every resource available to encourage individuals, communities, organisations, businesses, and entire nations to do what is needed. This includes our psychological, social, and cultural resources in addition to the political, economic, and technological ones we tend to look towards first. Our work suggests that widely shared perceptions of responsibility towards future generations represent an important and powerful tool for shifting behaviour in a positive direction to confront the climate change challenge before us. Luckily, such perceptions of responsibility are already widely shared within American society. Now it’s time to put them to work.
By John Letzing, Digital Editor, Strategic Intelligence, World Economic Forum (Public License).
A number of troubling discoveries have been made related to Antarctica.
Reports point to record ice shelf melt contributing to sea level rise.
Curbing emissions could limit the impact of warming on the continent.
In the pitch-black depths beneath 900 metres of Antarctic ice shelf, scientists recently made a curious discovery: something’s living down there.
The detection of sponges and other “unidentifiable” animals that defy established science is just one in a steady stream of revelations about a forbidding region. Frequently, these insights help build a stronger case for doing more to combat climate change.
Antarctica may be remote and desolate, but it could affect us all relatively soon. Sea levels are now expected to rise more quickly than had been anticipated as recently as 2019, and melting Antarctic glaciers and ice sheets are a contributing factor. The continent has been losing an estimated 150 billion metric tons of ice every year since 2002.
According to results published last week of a study that strapped sensors to seals, rapidly melting Antarctic glaciers are changing nearby ocean water more than realized – with implications for the climate and future sea level rise. A study published not long before that suggested the second-biggest ice shelf on the Antarctic peninsula experienced record melting during the 2019-2020 summer season.
Last year, it was discovered that the ice shelves making up about three-quarters of Antarctica’s coastline, and helping to hold glaciers in place, are melting faster than they’re being replenished. Ultimately, the continent holds enough ice to raise sea levels by 60 metres. Since 1880, global mean sea level has risen by only about 24 centimetres.
As ice departs from Antarctica it can be lethal; a massive iceberg that broke off an ice shelf more than three years ago was bearing down on South Georgia Island and its population of penguins before recently breaking up. Experts say a changing climate is pushing more ice to Antarctica’s edges, where it can encounter warming water and snap off.
Cast Adrift: Tracked Antarctic icebergs at least 15 nautical miles (27.8 km) long as of 5 March, including a remnant of A68A – the iceberg that threatened South Georgia Island. Image: World Economic Forum
Earlier this month, an iceberg bigger than New York City broke off the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Scientists say this was part of a natural process and didn’t have direct ties to climate change – though such “calving” events have become increasingly frequent.
Antarctica recorded its hottest days on record slightly more than a year ago, but conditions remain far from ideal for human activity (they are, however, great for preserving a lost wallet for a half-century). Still, changes in the region can impact more populated parts of the world in ways that go beyond rising sea levels.
For example, the polar vortex over Antarctica, a wind pattern driven by the contrast between the frigid pole and the warmth at lower latitudes, can impact temperatures and rainfall patterns in Australia; a weakened polar vortex can induce hot and dry extremes there.
There are a number of things just about anyone can do to help blunt the effects of climate change on Antarctica and the rest of the world, ranging from flying less to eating less meat. If we manage to cut emissions and hold warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, sea level rise by the end of this century could be just half of what it would be otherwise.
Source: “Four decades of Antarctica Ice Sheet mass balance from 1979-2017” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jan. 2019. Image: World Economic Forum.
The notion of ice melt in Antarctica contributing to sea level rise isn’t merely theoretical. A study published in 2019 estimated that a six-fold increase in yearly ice mass loss in Antarctica caused global sea levels to rise by more than half an inch between roughly the time Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in the UK, and Emmanuel Macron became the president of France.
Scientists turned to seals for that Antarctic glacial meltwater study because harsh winter conditions limit the use of ships or planes to make observations, according to this report. Seven southern elephant seals and seven Weddell seals were deployed. (Science Daily)
The discovery of life 900 metres beneath Antarctic ice was an accident, according to this report – researchers had drilled a borehole in search of sediment samples, and instead found 13 sponges and 22 unidentifiable “stalked organisms.” (Big Think)
Australia’s plans to build an airport with a 2.7-kilometre paved runway in eastern Antarctica is deemed controversial, according to this report – due to its potential environmental impact, and “major” geopolitical concerns. (The Diplomat)
A recent study found that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has declined steadily, as expected, but the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is far more sensitive to spikes in the weather than thought – which could make modelling of sea level rise more accurate, according to this report. (Eos)
This piece argues that preventive measures have to be taken to limit the impacts of climate change, tourism, fishing, and research infrastructure on the western Antarctic Peninsula – before it’s too late. (Nature)
According to this report, the ability of waves to transport large microplastics faster than previously thought helps us understand why they’re now found throughout the ocean – including around Antarctica. (The Conversation)
Turns out we may have had it all wrong when it comes to melting icebergs. This study found that while current models assume they melt uniformly, they actually do so at different speeds based on shape – a discovery that could help better assess climate change. (Science Daily)
