Emma Bryce

6 days ago | anthropocenemagazine.org | Emma Bryce

Researchers have developed a cheese that looks, tastes, and feels like paneer—and yet is one-quarter peas. This new dairy-plant hybrid may be more appealing to consumers than completely plant-based cheese alternatives, and could still help reduce some of the impacts linked to conventional cheese. Most attempts at alternative cheeses have experimented with plant-based ingredients to coax them into something resembling the real thing.

1 week ago | anthropocenemagazine.org | Sarah DeWeerdt |Emma Bryce

Close to 2 million metric tons of plastic enters the oceans every year from beaches and waterways, according to The Ocean Cleanup Project. Much of that plastic is single-use beverage bottles, cups, and straws. Researchers in Japan have now made a new paper-based material that could be an ideal replacement for those single-use plastics. The millimeter-thick paperboard reported in the journal Science Advances behaves like plastic, but only when needed.

1 week ago | anthropocenemagazine.org | Warren Cornwall |Emma Bryce

The life of a juvenile salmon would be enough to have anyone reaching for an anti-anxiety pill. The tiny fish run a deadly gantlet as they swim from freshwater to the ocean, dodging ravenous predators and whirring hydropower turbines while pushing through sluggish reservoirs backed up behind dams. On one Swedish river, approximately one out of every 10 fish complete the journey.

1 week ago | anthropocenemagazine.org | Emma Bryce |Warren Cornwall |Sarah DeWeerdt

One-third of all food produced for humans annually is lost to waste. The decomposing matter produces half of all the emissions generated by the global agrifood system. What if, instead of focusing solely on how to curb and avoid food waste, we turned the challenge on its head—and looked at what we can make with all that discarded food?

2 weeks ago | anthropocenemagazine.org | Sarah DeWeerdt |Emma Bryce

Wrinkles on elephants make the gentle beasts look wise. But they also serve an important purpose: the crevices and the porous skin hold water and help keep the pachiderms cool by storing water and expelling heat via evaporation. Researchers have now turned to elephant skin as an unusual source of inspiration for tiles that provide energy-free cooling for buildings and homes. They have used mycelium, the root network of fungi, to make wall tiles that have a bumpy, elephant skin-like texture.