Anthropocene

anthropocenemagazine.org · American English

The world's top writers, designers, scientists, and entrepreneurs explore how we can create a sustainable Human Age we actually want to live in.

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Last post: Oct 2, 2026
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From sundae to solvents: Chemists find a way to recycle mountains of industrial ice cream waste
Oct 2, 2026 · original
It’s unnatural to toss a fully loaded ice cream cone in the trash, but every year more than 500,000 tons of ice cream waste are thrown away by factories around the world. That’s enough to make a frozen pile larger than the U.S. Capitol building—complete with sled and toboggan runs. Scientists have now proposed that this waste could be recycled into a renewable supply of bio-diesel, aviation fuel, lubricants, or industrial solvents. A new study published in Cleaner Engineering and Technology demonstrates how dairy fats can be separated from factory ice cream waste and sold as raw material for making these other products that might otherwise come from petroleum. This seemingly simple problem is surprisingly hard to solve. Your typical pint of vanilla contains a mishmash of water, ice, sugar, proteins, and fat. The fats are dispersed in microscopic droplets that are coated in milk and egg p
Clothes that cool you, warm you—and make power as you move
Oct 1, 2026 · original
In a world of rising temperatures and growing energy needs, a new material made by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign could be just the answer. The printable textile cools while also generating electricity by harvesting energy from human motion. The advance paves the way toward smart fabrics that can keep people cool while also reducing the need for external power sources. Others have previously created materials that provide cooling and energy-harvesting capabilities. Those attempts rely on assembling multiple layers with different functions. What’s novel about the new work is that the researchers combined cooling and power-generating into a single printable material. The demand for cooling is expected to grow tenfold by 2050 as heatwaves due to climate change get more intense, and more people can afford air-conditioning and refrigeration. But conventional air
Inside the $100M AI bet to track wildlife across the Amazon in real time
Sep 30, 2026 · original
In 2025, the Amazon rainforest shrank by exactly 1.63 million hectares . But nobody can say how much wildlife vanished with it. This illustrates one of the biggest challenges confronting scientists and others working to stem the loss of biodiversity. While satellites offer a sweeping birds-eye view of the planet, it can seem like ecologists tracking the ebb and flow of species in a place like the Amazon are studying a distant galaxy through a pinhole. “If a tree has fallen almost anywhere in the world we know it almost in a matter of days. But I can tell you almost nothing about how biodiversity is faring below the canopy,” said Amy Rosenthal , who heads conservation initiatives at Planet Labs , a U.S. company that specializes in producing satellite imagery for various purposes. But technology has reached the point where scientists and more than two dozen organizations including Planet a
How earlier toilet training could help stem the tide of plastic waste
Sep 29, 2026 · original
The average child born in the UK in the 1950s was toilet trained by the age of two years and four months. Five decades later, the average child wouldn’t reach that milestone until after their third birthday. Those statistics are more than just a curious reflection of changing parenting practices. They also shed light on the growing plastic waste crisis. Later toilet training means more used diapers, and since the diaper market also shifted from mostly cloth to mostly disposable over the same decades, that all adds up to a lot more diapers being tossed in the trash. Today, more than 300,000 diapers are thrown away every minute around the globe. In wealthy countries, the vast majority of disposable diapers and other absorbent hygiene products such as incontinence products and menstrual supplies wind up in a landfill or incinerator. In parts of the world that lack good waste collection syst
A 100-year-old freezer rule has a hidden climate cost
Sep 25, 2026 · original
Sit down to a plate of freezer-burned broccoli and beef, and the experience of chewing this mummified cardboard will remind you of a basic truth: unless you store your food in liquid nitrogen, it slowly deteriorates—even in the freezer. But a new study suggests that warming up our freezers by several degrees could cut millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions—without compromising the safety or quality of our food. The idea of dialing down our freezers has been percolating for yeas now. A 2024 report estimated that if the worldwide standard food-freezing temperature was dialed back just three degrees, from -18°C to -15°C, the reduced energy consumption would avoid 17 million tons of CO 2 equivalent emissions per year . The new study, published in NPJ Science of Food , addresses the next logical question : whether freezing at warmer temperatures would negatively impact the quality or sh
Engineers just mapped a narrow path to greener flying
Sep 24, 2026 · original
Flying is one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the European Commission . And while road transport emits more carbon over, flying is energy-intensive per person. Flying from Lisbon to New York and back produces roughly the same emissions as an average European Union citizen heating their home for a year. The aviation industry has adopted several measures to cut its emissions. But data on the impact of these measures has been limited. Researchers from the German Aerospace Center provide some new insights in a study in the journal Science Advances . The researchers estimated the effects of sustainable aviation fuels and modern efficient engines on aircraft pollution. “Our findings demonstrate that a substantial reduction of particle emissions requires a synergistic approach, combining the use of alternative fuels with modern engine technologies,” the
What’s the better bargain, protecting a rainforest or regrowing it?
Sep 23, 2026 · original
Planting a tree in the Amazon does a lot less for the rainforest than simply leaving one alone. That’s the uncomfortable arithmetic in new research on Brazil’s jungles. Faced with a dollar to spend on the rainforest, scientists found, you’re almost always better off protecting what’s already standing than paying to regrow what’s gone. The gap isn’t small: preventing deforestation or stopping logging and fires delivered far more carbon storage and biodiversity than restoration did, for a fraction of the cost, according to new research in Science . And while efforts to save rainforests often focus on halting the conversion to open land, it turns out squelching logging and fires could bring even more benefits for biodiversity. “Protection must go beyond avoiding deforestation,” said Leonardo Miranda , the study’s lead author and a biodiversity researcher at the United Kingdom’s Lancaster Un
Researchers had a hunch about how to solve the climate problem caused by wastewater treatment
Sep 22, 2026 · original
Wetland plants grown on the surface of wastewater treatment lagoons can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from these water bodies by more than one-quarter, according to a new study. These so-called “floating wetlands” may be an elegant solution that works with existing infrastructure to address a growing emissions hotspot. Wastewater treatment is responsible for 1.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As economic development brings better sanitation to more of the world’s population, this climate impact is also increasing. “Wastewater treatment solves one environmental problem by cleaning dirty water, but creates another by emitting greenhouse gases ,” says study team member Lukas Schuster , who studies nature-based climate solutions at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Floating wetlands, in which native reeds and other marsh plants are planted on buoyant artificial structures with
What happens to the world’s farms if everyone eats less meat?
Sep 18, 2026 · original
Picture a world where half the planet’s cattle ranches simply aren’t there anymore. Where does all that land go? What do farmers grow instead? And who wins or loses in the process? A major new analysis in Nature finally puts real numbers behind those questions. The team modeled what would happen if the world actually switched to sustainable diets, rather than sticking with business as usual. The results are dramatic: cattle production could fall by half by 2050. The amount of land devoted to farming fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes could rise by 1.5 million square kilometers—more than twice the area of France—while the land area used to farm wheat, corn, rice, and other grains might fall by a similar amount. The goal was “to recognize, a little more honestly, what would be the magnitude of these changes,” says Daniel Mason-D’Croz, an economist at Cornell University and one of three
Scientists made an ultra-black wool. And it turns saltwater into drinking water
Sep 17, 2026 · original
A new ultra-black wool could make it desirable to be a black sheep. The specially dyed wool could be a low-cost, biodegradable material for producing potable water from saltwater using only sunlight. The material reflects less than 0.5% of visible light falling on it and helps to purify saltwater by evaporating it. It produces water that exceeds both World Health Organization and Environment Protection Agency drinking-water standards, says Larissa Shepherd, a professor of human centered design at Cornell University. Shepherd and her colleagues reported their new ultrablack solar water evaporator in the journal Advanced Science . Nearly half the world’s urban population is projected to face water scarcity by 2050. Conventional desalination technologies can convert seawater into potable water. But they are “too infrastructure-heavy and energy-intensive to reach the communities that need it
The humble tree hole turns out to be a remarkable climate refuge
Sep 16, 2026 · original
Just as humans head indoors for warmth in the winter and shade in the summer, tree-dwelling animals use the arboreal equivalent of caves for refuge from temperature extremes. At a time when climate change is supercharging heatwaves, holes and crevices in trees offer potentially life-saving cool spots for bats, birds and other creatures around the world, according to new research. When peak temperatures cross into heatwave territory, these holes are often more than 4°C cooler than the outside, according to a review of dozens of studies recently published in Forest Ecology and Management . “Everywhere we looked, trees were great for buffering outside air temperature extremes,” said Joy O’Keefe the paper’s senior author and a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). There are growing reasons for animals to try to escape the heat. In recent years, scientists have docu
Why less steel and concrete isn’t the same as more sustainable
Sep 15, 2026 · original
What humans have wrought is heavy . In a new study, researchers calculated the weight of more than 600 million buildings in cities across the world and came up with a total of 835 billion metric tons, or gigatonnes (Gt) [1]. That’s almost as much as the weight of all the world’s plants. All of that weight—in steel, wood, glass, cement, stone, and other materials—means carbon emissions. “If rapidly urbanizing regions follow historical development pathways, this stock could grow by another 419 Gt by 2050,” says study team member Jinchao Song , a research fellow at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems. Conventional life-cycle analyses and green building certification programs like LEED are built on the principle of material efficiency and less is more. But reducing the environmental impacts of buildings isn’t just about making them lighter, according to a second paper
Scientists develop a plastic that can be turned into fertilizer
Sep 11, 2026 · original
Microplastics are a scourge on the environment, accumulating in farm soils and wriggling their way into the food supply—reducing harvests and harming human health. But what if discarded plastics could be used instead, to improve crop yields and make farming more sustainable? Researchers are trying to do just that. They’re working to develop a new generation of polymers that can be converted into farm fertilizers at the end of their life—rather than shoved into landfills. A new study, published August 18 in Scientific Reports , documents an important new step in this effort: engineers have found a way to make plant-based polymers whose stiffness can be tuned for different uses such as shopping bags or fidget toys. These new plastics aren’t themselves biodegradable—so no one has to worry about sandwich bags rotting in the kitchen drawer. But when they’re discarded they can chemically conve
Building codes are holding back low-carbon concrete. A new study shows why.
Sep 10, 2026 · original
There are many ways to cut the carbon emissions of concrete. One is to mix conventional Portland cement with limestone or other similar materials. Another route is to blend cements with cementitious binding materials such as fly ash from coal-fired power plants and granulated blast furnace slag from iron and steel production. Yet other ways include using microorganisms orenzymes in concrete that soak up carbon dioxide. The problem is what these formulas do to durability. Low-carbon concrete absorbs more carbon dioxide from the air than conventional concrete, a process that lowers its internal alkalinity and leaves the steel reinforcement inside more vulnerable to rust. Because today’s building codes are written to prevent exactly that kind of corrosion, they effectively discourage engineers from using greener concrete in the first place—even though it’s better for the climate. A new stud
In a first, probiotics helped real coral survive a real heatwave
Sep 9, 2026 · original
Probiotics are a popular dietary supplement, promising to boost people’s health by populating their guts with healthy microbes. People trying to help coral endure heatwaves might soon be reaching for something similar. Infusions of a special probiotic cocktail helped coral stay healthier as they stewed in overheated water in the Red Sea near Saudi Arabia, scientists reported last week in Cell Reports . Even a mix of dead microbes, a so-called postbiotic, proved beneficial. While scientists have seen promising lab results that such microbial tweaks might help ailing corals, this is the first report from real world conditions: wild coral in the open ocean during a real underwater heatwave. “When an innovative idea like this actually works—particularly under field conditions—we are positively surprised,” said Erika Santoro, a postdoctoral researcher at King Abdullah University of Science an
The fix for EV battery waste isn’t recycling. It’s geography.
Sep 8, 2026 · original
An integrated, nationwide system for recycling and reusing old EV batteries could save 6.1 billion tons of carbon emissions and 3.9 trillion Chinese Yuan over 30 years, according to a new study. The savings depend on resolving a conceptually simple but logistically profound problem: a geographic mismatch between where old batteries get switched out of EVs and where they could be reused. China has the world’s largest EV market that is also growing faster than anywhere else, leading to a flood of old EV batteries, which are typically retired from use once they can hold only 80% of their original charge. The most common method for recycling these batteries recovers only a limited set of metals and sends the rest of the battery material to the landfill. Recently reuse of old EV batteries as part of stationary storage for solar or wind power has emerged as an alternative solution. New recycli
Intensive farming may yield a bumper crop of drug-resistant pathogens
Sep 4, 2026 · original
When people imagine the front line of antibiotic resistance, they may see a hospital where antibiotics are overprescribed, or a feed lot where cattle are pumped full of these drugs. They probably won’t picture a cornfield. But a new study suggests that crop fields may be an important battleground for fighting antibiotic resistance. And the way we farm will decide who wins. The new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , found that high-intensity farming, typical of the U.S. Corn Belt, produced soil microbiomes that were more likely to transmit antibiotic-resistant pathogens to humans, compared to lower-intensity farming methods. In other words, modern farming may contribute to drug-resistant infections, which kill up to 4.7 million people per year, worldwide. To find out how farming methods affect this risk, researchers compared the soil microbiomes from fou
Mushroom leather may finally be ready for mass production
Sep 3, 2026 · original
Researchers in Finland have developed a way to make leather-like fabrics from fungi at large scale using industrial equipment. This is a key advance towards vegan plastic-free leather alternatives for the mass market. “Our process uses renewable feedstocks and mild conditions and does not involve livestock or chemically intensive processes,” says Géza Szilvay, and industrial biotechnologist and food scientist at VTT Finland, who published the research in the journal ACS Applied Bio Materials . “In this respect the process differentiates clearly from production of animal or synthetic leathers.” Humans have for eons used animal hides to make clothing, utensils, and tools. Scientific advances have led to ethical synthetic leather. But those materials are made from fossil fuel-based plastics, so they create carbon emissions and linger in the environment for decades. In the hunt for sustainab
Even the sound equivalent of a library can detract from the health benefits of listening to nature.
Sep 2, 2026 · original
The power of birdsong to lift the human spirit has long been appreciated. In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 , a suffering person is revived when “Haply I think on thee, and then my state,/Like to the lark at break of day arising/From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate ….” Today, the effect is evident in apps designed to soothe people with birdsong, and in a growing body of research showing that when people hear recordings of birds singing they cope better with stress and feel more restored . But what happens when we hear those birds amid the clamor of urban life? After all, most of us can’t easily get away to a peaceful forest far from the nearest road. Even relatively quiet traffic sounds well below thresholds recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) take a toll, leaching away the bird-born calm, according to a new paper in the journal People and Nature . Although we are creat
Politicians vastly overestimate opposition to climate action
Sep 1, 2026 · original
Politicians overestimate opposition to climate action, as well as how polarized the public is on the issue, according to a new study. The findings suggest that a “spiral of silence” may dampen politicians’ willingness to go to bat for climate policies that are actually quite popular. Previous research has shown that members of the public tend to underestimate support for climate action among their fellow citizens. But less evidence is available about the perceptions of politicians, whom one might expect to be dialed in to the nuances of public opinion. In the new study, researchers surveyed 100 members of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom, first asking about the politicians’ own support for four different climate policies: providing grants and loans to improve home energy efficiency; taxing consumer products according to their environmental impact; imposing a “frequent flyer tax

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