Electric vehicle buyers have a new reason to feel conflicted about their forward-thinking purchases, thanks to a recent study which suggests EVs are potentially more polluting than their gas-powered counterparts.
According to The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the environmental ramifications of EVs from well to wheel are significant. The study took into account all factors along the lifecycle of an electric vehicle, from the toxic battery ingredients like nickel and copper to the energy sources which power the grids that ultimately charge the cars' batteries. "The global warming potential from electric vehicle production is about twice that of conventional vehicles," one part of the study concludes, indicating that energy developed from lignite, coal, or heavy oil combustion makes it "counterproductive to promote electric vehicles."
One part of the finding suggests that EVs driven in Europe have an environmental advantage over other global communities. "Electric vehicles powered by the present European electricity mix offer a 10 percent to 24 percent decrease in their global warming potential relative to conventional diesel or petrol vehicles," the study says. Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche echoed that sentiment. "According to our results, a battery electric vehicle, with electricity produced by the power generation mix we currently have in Europe, compares favorably in the magnitude of 10 percent or so with diesel," he told the BBC.
And now for a return to the Middle Ages when human urine was saved as part of a sort of dry cleaning process using natural ammonia (it killed the fleas in winter clothes during the summer):
A small group of environmentalists in Vermont … Instead of flushing their pee down the drain, they’re collecting it with special toilets that separate No. 1 and No. 2.
Then they’re pooling the urine of the 170 volunteers in the pilot project (a quart or so, per person, daily) and eventually giving it to a farmer, who’s putting it on her hay fields in place of synthetic fertilizer. The goal is to collect 6,000 gallons this year.
The logic driving this avant-garde project of the Rich Earth Institute, based in Brattleboro, Vt., is that it’s foolish and wasteful to part with the precious nitrogen and phosphorus that moves from the food we eat right through us — especially when farmers have to buy fertilizer at great expense to put those very same nutrients back into the soil.
What’s more, founders Abraham Noe-Hays and Kim Nace tell The Salt, once our urine enters the wastewater system, drinking water carries it to a treatment facility, where the nutrients become pollutants that can contaminate waterways and cause algal blooms, among other issues.
What would the Romans, inventors of indoor plumbing that sent water flow under public latrines to take all the waste away, have to say about this?
“One goal is preventing the pollution caused by peeing in water — keeping pee out of the waterways and protecting water quality,” says Noe-Hays. “And we can also make agriculture more sustainable and resilient by returning these nutrients to the soil. Urine is an inherently local and renewable source of fertilizer.”
Sugar coating does not make this sound like a hot idea. There’s any number of non synthetic fertilizers that will put more nitrogen in the soil. Farmers had figured them out before the 20th century when it was determined that better living happens through chemistry. Besides, isn’t too much nitrogen from fertilizers causing the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico?
The average human generates 8 pounds of nitrogen and almost 1 pound of phosphorous in a year’s worth of urine. And those nutrients come in a form that plants can use. Though Rich Earth is the only legally authorized and publicly documented urine reuse project in the U.S., many other countries — rich and poor alike — have recognized its potential, and are conducting their own research.
Urine from a healthy person is sterile, so using it on farmland is considered safe: Even the World Health Organization has guidelines for reusing urine in agriculture.
If the World Health Organization has guidelines, somebody else out there is doing this. Doubt they are first world countries. Really, where are the people in Harlem going to store fresh pee?
The problem, though, is that with the urine-diverting toilets, which some of the REI volunteers are using (others have waterless urinals with removable containers), the pee may get contaminated. So to kill off germs, Nace and Noe-Hays are testing two sanitization methods: pasteurization and storing it for a month or more, which allows the alkalinity to develop over time and kill microbes.
Pasteurize pee…they want to boil it. YUCK!
They are also trying to determine if there are medicines in the waste that might wind up in plants grown for food. So they’re sending samples to researchers at the University of Michigan and University of Buffalo to find out, for a study funded by the EPA.
We’re PAYING for this? (More proof that the EPA has outlived it’s usefulness.)
Haven’t studies already been done about the dangers of excess meds ending up in the waterways and wreaking havoc with local eco-systems? Didn’t any of those studies include plants?
We know environmentalists are a little off their rockers, but Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Civilization began with sewers and indoor plumbing. Now, they want to undo it and turn us into a third world toilet.
Literally.
In the developing world … she thinks these systems could be especially helpful for those who don’t currently have access to any sanitation. But so far, there isn’t much demand for it. Still, “ecological sanitation” is becoming a bit of a buzzword — the wonky version of “pee-cycling.”
