Why recycle? A comparison of recycling motivations in four communities

Four Illinois communities with different sociode-mographic compositions and at various stages of planning for solid waste management were surveyed to determine the influence of sociodemographic variables and planning stages on the factors that motivate recycling behavior. A factor analysis of importance ratings of reasons for recycling and for not recycling yielded five factors interpreted as altruism, personal inconvenience, social influences, economic incentives, and household storage. The four communities were shown to be significantly different in multivariate analyses of the five motivational factors. However, attempts to explain these community differences with regression analyses, which predicted the motivational factors with dummy codes for planning stages, a measure of self-reported recycling behavior, and sociodemographic measures were unsatisfactory. Contrary to expectation, the solid waste management planning stages of the cities (curbside pickup, recycling dropoff center, and planning in progress) contributed only very slightly to the prediction of motivational factors for recycling. Community differences were better explained by different underlying motivational structures among the four communities. Altruistic reasons for recycling (e.g., conserving resources) composed the only factor which was similar across the four communities. This factor was also perceived to be the most important reason for recycling by respondents from all four communities. The results of the study supported the notion that convenient, voluntary recycling programs that rely on environmental concern and conscience for motivation are useful approaches to reducing waste.     

Critical Review on the Public Health Impact of Norovirus Contamination in Shellfish and the Environment: A UK Perspective

We review the risk of norovirus (NoV) infection to the human population from consumption of contaminated shellfish. From a UK perspective, risk is apportioned for different vectors of NoV infection within the population. NoV spreads mainly by person-to-person contact or via unsanitary food handling. NoV also enters the coastal zone via wastewater discharges resulting in contamination of shellfish waters. Typically, NoV persists in the marine environment for several days, with its presence strongly linked to human population density, wastewater discharge rate, and efficacy of wastewater treatment. Shellfish bioaccumulate NoV and current post-harvest depuration is inefficient in its removal. While NoV can be inactivated by cooking (e.g. mussels), consumption of contaminated raw shellfish (e.g. oysters) represents a risk to human health. Consumption of contaminated food accounts for 3–11% of NoV cases in the UK (~74,000 cases/year), of which 16% are attributable to oyster consumption (11,800 cases/year). However, environmental and human factors influencing NoV infectivity remain poorly understood. Lack of standard methods for accurate quantification of infective and non-infective (damaged) NoV particles represent a major barrier, hampering identification of an appropriate lower NoV contamination limit for shellfish. Future management strategies may include shellfish quality assessment (at point of harvest or at point of supply) or harvesting controls. However, poor understanding of NoV inactivation in shellfish and the environment currently limits accurate apportionment and risk assessment for NoV and hence the identification of appropriate shellfish or environmental quality standards.     

Polymorphic ROS scavenging revealed by CCCP in a lizard

Ingestion of antioxidants has been argued to scavenge circulating reactive molecules (e.g., free radicals), play a part in mate choice (by mediating access to this important resource), and perhaps increase life span. However, recent work has come to question these relationships. We have shown elsewhere in the polychromatic lizard, Ctenophorus pictus, that diet supplementation of carotenoids as antioxidants does not depress circulating natural reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and leads to no corresponding improvement of color traits. However, a much stronger test would be to experimentally manipulate the ROS levels themselves and assess carotenoid-induced ROS depression. Here, we achieve this by using carbonyl cyanide 3-chlorophenylhydrazone, which elevates superoxide (SO) formation approximately threefold at 10 μM in this model system. We then look for depressing effects on ROS of the carotenoids in order to assess whether ‘super-production’ of SO makes carotenoid effects on elevated ROS levels detectable. The rationale for this treatment was that if not even such elevated levels of SO are reduced by carotenoid supplementation, the putative link carotenoids, ROS depression, and mate quality (in terms of antioxidant capacity) is highly questionable. We conclude that there is no significant effect of carotenoids on mean SO levels even at the induced ROS levels. However, our results showed a significant interaction effect between carotenoid treatment and male color, with red males having higher ROS levels than yellow males. We suggest that this may be because different pigments are differently involved in the generation of the integumental colors in the two morphs with concomitant effects on ROS depletion depending on carotenoid uptake or allocation to coloration and antioxidation.     

The relative importance of COVID-19 pandemic impacts on biodiversity conservation globally

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an enormous impact on almost all aspects of human society and endeavor; the natural world and its conservation have not been spared. Through a process of expert consultation, we identified and categorized, into 19 themes and 70 subthemes, the ways in which biodiversity and its conservation have been or could be affected by the pandemic globally. Nearly 60% of the effects have been broadly negative. Subsequently, we created a compendium of all themes and subthemes, each with explanatory text, and in August 2020 a diverse group of experienced conservationists with expertise from across sectors and geographies assessed each subtheme for its likely impact on biodiversity conservation globally. The 9 subthemes ranked highest all have a negative impact. These were, in rank order, governments sidelining the environment during their economic recovery, reduced wildlife-based tourism income, increased habitat destruction, reduced government funding, increased plastic and other solid waste pollution, weakening of nature-friendly regulations and their enforcement, increased illegal harvest of wild animals, reduced philanthropy, and threats to survival of conservation organizations. In combination, these impacts present a worrying future of increased threats to biodiversity conservation but reduced capacity to counter them. The highest ranking positive impact, at 10, was the beneficial impact of wildlife-trade restrictions. More optimistically, among impacts ranked 11-20, 6 were positive and 4 were negative. We hope our assessment will draw attention to the impacts of the pandemic and, thus, improve the conservation community's ability to respond to such threats in the future.     

An evaluation of the role of risk-based decision-making in a former manufactured gas plant site remediation

Environmental remediation decisions are driven by the need to minimize human health and ecological risks posed by environmental releases. The Risk Assessment Guidance for Superfund Sites enunciates the principles of exposure and risk assessment that are to be used for reaching remediation decisions for sites under Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). Experience with remediation management under CERCLA has led to recognition of some crucial infirmities in the processes for managing remediation: cleanup management policies are ad hoc in character, mandates and practices are strongly conservative, and contaminant risk management occurs in an artificially narrow context. The purpose of this case study is to show how a policy of risk-based decision-making was used to avoid customary pitfalls in site remediation. This case study describes the risk-based decision-making process in a remedial action program at a former manufactured gas plant site that successfully achieved timely and effective cleanup. The remediation process operated outside the confines of the CERCLA process under an administrative consent order between the utility and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. A residential use end state was negotiated as part of this agreement. The attendant uncertainties, complications, and unexpected contingencies were overcome by using the likely exposures associated with the desired end state to structure all of the remediation management decisions and by collecting site-specific information from the very outset to obtain a detailed and realistic characterization of human health risks that needed to be mitigated. The lessons from this case study are generalizable to more complicated remediation cases, when supported by correspondingly sophisticated technical approaches.     

Starch-Based Materials Encapsulating Anthocyanins: A Review

Journal of Polymers and the Environment - Anthocyanins (ACNs) are natural pigments broadly used in the food industry due to their color, antioxidant, and antimicrobial properties, however, these...     

Assessing conservation status with extensive but low-resolution data: Application of frequentist and Bayesian models to endangered Athabasca River rainbow trout

Use of extensive but low-resolution abundance data is common in the assessment of species at-risk status based on quantitative decline criteria under International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and national endangered species legislation. Such data can be problematic for 3 reasons. First, statistical power to reject the null hypothesis of no change is often low because of small sample size and high sampling uncertainty leading to a high frequency of type II errors. Second, range-wide assessments composed of multiple site-specific observations do not effectively weight site-specific trends into global trends. Third, uncertainty in site-specific temporal trends and relative abundance are not propagated at the appropriate spatial scale. A common result is the propensity to underestimate the magnitude of declines and therefore fail to identify the appropriate at-risk status for a species. We used 3 statistical approaches, from simple to more complex, to estimate temporal decline rates for a designatable unit (DU) of rainbow trout in the Athabasca River watershed in western Canada. This DU is considered a native species for purposes of listing because of its genetic composition characterized as >0.95 indigenous origin in the face of continuing introgressive hybridization with introduced populations in the watershed. Analysis of abundance trends from 57 time series with a fixed-effects model identified 33 sites with negative trends, but only 2 were statistically significant. By contrast, a hierarchical linear mixed model weighted by site-specific abundance provided a DU-wide decline estimate of 16.4% per year and a 3-generation decline of 93.2%. A hierarchical Bayesian mixed model yielded a similar 3-generation decline trend of 91.3% and the posterior distribution showed that the estimate had a >99% probability of exceeding thresholds for an endangered listing. We conclude that the Bayesian approach was the most useful because it provided a probabilistic statement of threshold exceedance in support of an at-risk status recommendation.     

Methods for selenium removal from contaminated waters: a review

Environmental Chemistry Letters - Worldwide contamination of waters by metals, metalloids, and organometallic pollutants is a major health issue. In particular, the occurrence of the selenium...