Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

PepsiCo's Frito-Lay snacks facility in Casa Grande, Arizona, treats and recycles about 648,000 gallons per day of process water from the potato chip and snack manufacturing process for rinse and wash water and for landscape irrigation.

Arizona State University Professor Peter Lammers and researchers at New Mexico State University are developing an energy-positive wastewater treatment method using a special kind of algae. The researchers believe that the algal systems ultimately could eliminate sewage farms' electricity bills, which can account for anything up to 60 percent of operating costs today, or even generate a surplus. 

Apple will invest $2 billion in a 1.3 million square foot "command center" in Arizona that will be 100% powered by a 70 MW solar power plant.

Wastewater treatment and renewable energy production can be costly endeavors. However, if valuable chemicals could be extracted from wastewater, or if algae could more easily be used to turn carbon dioxide from the air into biofuel, companies could profitably pursue such projects. Researchers from Arizona State University (ASU) and the Chinese Academy of Science & Technology are working to make this possible.

Trader Joe's announced last week that it will transition its entire egg supply to cage-free sources. First up are Western states: Eggs sold in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado will be 100 percent cage-free by 2020. All eggs across Trader Joe's stores will be sourced from cage-free suppliers by 2025. But the company might meet its goals sooner.

After years of unrelenting drought, federal forecasters reported there are better-than-even odds that the nation's largest reservoir will decline into shortage conditions by 2020, forcing Arizona, Nevada and Mexico to reduce their Colorado River water use.

By the end of the century, scientists say, megafires-conflagrations that chew up at least 100,000 acres of land-will become the norm. Which makes them of critical interest to researchers. These infernos, once rare, are growing to sizes that U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell describes as "unimaginable" two decades ago. Five alone have consumed more than five million acres in central Alaska since June. Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado also experienced their worst wildfires in the past seven years.

Rising temperatures are increasing the number of "megafires" in the forests of the western U.S., experts say. Tackling and preventing such fires could require a significant shift in firefighting and forest conservation strategies. "These stresses are going to become more widespread," warned Craig Allen, a U.S. Geological Service forest ecologist. National Geographic News (free registration) (8/9)