Access to clean, safe drinking water is a necessity that’s worryingly not being met in many parts of the world. A new study has used a material called a metal-organic framework (MOF) to filter pollutants out of seawater, generating large amounts of fresh water per day while using much less energy than other methods. MOFs are extremely porous materials with high surface areas – theoretically, if one teaspoon of the stuff was unpacked it could cover a football field. That much surface area makes it great for grabbing hold of molecules and particles.

The humble house brick has been turned into a battery that can store electricity, raising the possibility that buildings could one day become literal powerhouses. The new technology exploits the porous nature of fired red bricks by filling the pores with tiny nanofibres of a conducting plastic that can store charge. The first bricks store enough electricity to power small lights. But if their capacity can be increased, they may become a low-cost alternative to the lithium-ion batteries currently used. Strictly speaking, the power bricks are supercapacitors rather than batteries. Supercapacitors store electricity as a static charge in solids.

In research published in Renewable Energy ("Performance of wedge-shaped luminescent solar concentrators employing phosph

Plastic from used personal protective equipment (PPE) can, and should, be transformed into renewable liquid fuels – according to a new study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Biofuel. . Scientists have suggested a strategy that could help to mitigate the problem of dumped PPE – currently being disposed of at unprecedented levels due to the current COVID-19 pandemic – becoming a significant threat to the environment. The research shows how billions of items of disposable PPE can be converted from its polypropylene (plastic) state into biofuels – which is known to be at par with standard fossil fuels.  

Backyard Buddies is a free environmental education initiative run by the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife (FNPW).

Researchers at the Institute of Industrial Science, a part of The University of Tokyo, have developed a new procedure for recycling concrete with the addition of discarded wood. They found that the correct proportion of inputs can yield a new building material with a bending strength superior to that of the original concrete.This research may help drastically reduce construction costs, as well as slash carbon emissions.Concrete consists of two parts, aggregate-- gravel and crushed stone--and cement. It's the production of cement that is blamed for a large amount of the carbon dioxide humans release into the atmosphere.