There’s a low-energy alternative to cremation

The choices you make in life affect the environment. And so do the choices you make about death. For example, a traditional burial involves embalming chemicals that can seep into the ground. And cremation requires a lot of energy. So some people are now turning to a process that’s been called “flameless cremation.”

The alternative to traditional burial and cremation.

Cattoni: “The process is very similar to what the body intended us to do originally when we pass away, and that’s just to break itself down.”

Ryan Cattoni of Aquagreen Dispositions in Illinois says a warm alkaline solution is used to break down the remains.

Read the story by Eileen Mignoni from Yale Climate Connections - “There’s a low-energy alternative to cremation.”

In 2020 Bitcoin will consume more power than the world does today

Can the world afford Bitcoin? The cryptocurrency is enjoying something of a resurgence as investment and central banks weighed its benefits and caused its value to balloon.

A single Bitcoin transaction could power a house for a month.

But generating Bitcoin requires a truly staggering amount of energy. The electricity used in a single Bitcoin transaction, for instance, could power a house for a month.

And bitcoin mining (the process of generating a bitcoin) now consumes the same amount of electricity every year as Denmark - 33TWh, according to one recent report.

Read the World Economic Forum story by Adam Jezard - “In 2020 Bitcoin will consume more power than the world does today.”

If we all stopped eating beef, what would happen to the land?

When the land down the road from Lorraine Lewandrowski’s home in New York State’s Herkimer county was sold, it was bought by developers who turned the land into a subdivision.

“The people who bought the lots from us were nice enough, and they all told me that they wanted to be out in the country,” says Lewandrowski a lawyer and a dairy farmer in Central New York. “But they couldn’t grasp what they were doing. The meadows that were alive with little bird fledglings the developers were plowing under to make these 10 acre lawns.”

It’s hard to argue that that was an ecological improvement over the land’s previous incarnation as a farm.

For the past month, many Popular Science staff members have engaged in No Red October in which they eschewed eating beef. The reason was not masochism but environmentalism: livestock accounts for 12-percent of global climate change emissions. And beef — which requires 28 times more land and 11 times more water to produce chicken or pork while emitting five times more climate-changing emissions — seems like a natural place to cut back. 

Especially since Americans annually eat 54 pounds of beef, or a little more than a pound a week.

Read the Popular Science story by Kendra Pierre Louis - "If we all stopped eating beef, what would happen to the land?”