Eddy's Good News: Water Fleas protect our environment and scientists repurpose mine waste

Virgin Radio

6 Oct 2023, 12:10

Every day during his show on Virgin Radio, Eddy Temple-Morris brings you Good News stories from around the world, to help inject a bit of positivity into your day!

Be sure to listen each day between 10am and 1pm (Monday - Friday) to hear Eddy's Good News stories (amongst the finest music of course), but if you miss any of them you can catch up on the transcripts of Eddy's most recent stories below:

Friday 6th October 2023

You’ll often find me extolling the virtues of invertebrates, creepy crawlies. I met a fascinating expert in this at Shepreth Wildlife Park and he told me how we would all be dead without invertebrates.

This inspired me to go on an insect safari a few weekends ago and that was mind blowing. The newest crawly I’d like to pay respects and introduce you to is actually more of a ‘swimmie’ as we say hello to the water flea. This humble animal is actually a crustacean and a talented one at that because it naturally filters out pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and industrial chemicals from wastewater. You might have seen recent documentaries about how water companies are knowingly polluting our rivers in a scandalous way so this little fella could be a game changer. In a study published by Birmingham University they conclude that using these little guys in water treatment facilities to prevent these chemicals from being discharged, and to protect our environment and biodiversity is “potentially revolutionary”. So having fleas now is a good thing!

Via: positive.news

Scientists constantly amaze me with what they do and there are so many trying to “science” our way out of the unsustainable vortex we’re in, and in that regard hats off to the very clever teams in Canada and Australia who’ve been looking at how to turn mining waste into arable soil.

It’s harder than it sounds. Mine waste is called ‘tailings’ and it’s an ecological nightmare. It’s the mineral waste leftover after they’ve extracted everything useful, full of heavy metals and so toxic it needs to be stored in specialised places to stop it from contaminating farmland or getting into the water supply. Now imagine every mine that’s been dug in the last fifty years and your knees will buckle at the billions of quid cost of storing all this useless stuff. So what if it could be useful? It’s a tall order but these amazing researchers have cracked it with an incredibly clever particle accelerator and soil microbes. They repopulated the toxic slurry with soil microbes and incredibly, within a year, the microbes ate the horrid minerals and metals and turned the tailings into arable soil and they’ve grown corn and millet in it! Unfortunately more mines are needed for every copper wire and every smartphone and will be dug so this is a big win.

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org