In a recent study, researchers demonstrated that conditional small RNA molecules can effectively kill lab-grown human brain, prostate and bone cancer cells in a mutation-specific manner. The treatment separates the “diagnosis” and “treatment” aspects of chemotherapy, so a cell is killed if — and only if — it is diagnosed with a mutation.
The first study to demonstrate that obesity can directly accelerate the progression of acute lymphoblastic leukemia has been conducted.
New research carried out using ESO telescopes has, for the first time, allowed astronomers to reconstruct a detailed picture of the inner disc of matter around a young star — HD 163296. Young stars are surrounded by discs of dust and gas and scientists believe that it is in these discs that planets are born. Dusty grains in the disc stick to each other to make larger lumps that in turn also aggregate together. This growth is expected to continue until rocky bodies about the size of the Earth are formed.
What goes up must come down. Similarly, everything that comes to our mailbox comes from somewhere else. For most of our history, we haven’t thought too much about where this package or that letter came from. Unless it arrived from family, friends or some exotic location, we hardly spent a minute thinking about the distance our package had traveled.
But times have changed.
Every letter that arrives in our mailboxes comes with a portfolio of carbon footprints: paper used, adhesive used, distance traveled (fuel emissions), product life-cycle, emissions from manufacturing and processing, and more.
Then there’s overseas cargo shipping—by far the dirtiest mode of transport, accounting for 14% of nitrogen emissions from fossil fuels and 16% of sulfur emissions from petroleum. Two-thirds of products purchased by U.S. consumers come to our shores via these cargo ships (Grist). And without some immediate action, it’ll soon be Climate Change rather than the postman ringing at our doors.
But there are goals to work toward. Greener buildings, greener cars and trucks, greener transport and a greener energy grid will all help to reduce the environmental impact of products shipped and received. Not to mention the ways you or I—the average consumer or business—can work to green our shipping, and in the process push the international shipping community into more large-scale sustainable action.
For business owners, signing up for UPS Smart Pickup (and similar services offered by other delivery companies) is a good way to ensure that fuel emissions embedded in daily or weekly deliveries are minimized. Businesses with frequent UPS service often do not have packages arriving or departing every single day, despite being registered on a daily route for delivery drivers. Smart Pickup automates the service, notifying a specific route’s driver whether or not there is any need to stop by on a given day. If not, your stop is skipped, saving time, miles traveled and subsequent emissions. An excellent idea for the frequent postal customer.
Recycling requires a great deal of energy, and often shipping to a recycling plant some significant distance from your curbside. Simply tossing the box your new iPhone came in to the recycling bin is not as green as it could be (though much better than the garbage). Sometimes packages are not reusable, but many times they are. Depending on what happens in transport, a cardboard box can often be reused again.
But even that buys only single, maybe double reuse. For this reason, reusable boxes are making their way into the shipping community. eBay, for example, is providing 100,000 reusable shipping boxes to select sellers. These boxes are intended to be shipped, emptied, refilled and shipped again—several times. eBay says that if each box was reused just five times, it would save 4,000 trees, 2.4 million gallons of water and conserve enough energy to power 49 homes for a year. Other reusable boxes are available online, including tutorials about how to make a used shipping container look brand-new (turn it inside out, essentially).
Every major carrier—UPS, FedEx, DHL and USPS—offers paperless shipping. In more modern terms, this entails e-labeling, e-receipts and e-notifications. Instead of a paper trail following your shipment, everything is done electronically. You’ll get a receipt and package status update via e-mail. The same can go for the recipient of a package you’re sending. Businesses use a whole lot of paper, so paperless shipping can save a lot of trees and a lot of energy.
Perhaps the best way to reduce the environmental impact of your shipping, most of which is wrapped up in transportation, is to buy as locally and regionally as possible. When you’re ordering online, opt for the vendor shipping from a location nearest to yours. If you live in California, choose the product coming from in-state or in the Southwest as opposed to the same product coming from the East Coast or overseas. This may not always be an option, but it is an avenue to look out for and a good start to greening your shipment.
An easy, if not entirely verifiable way to green your shipping is to make it carbon-neutral. This typically involves giving a sum of money (equivalent to the calculated carbon footprint of a shipment) to the development and/or deployment of renewable energy. Offsetting carbon footprints is all too easy these days—a prime example being GreenShipping.com. Here they track your package from departure at its source to arrival at your home or business, including any stops and transfers. The carbon dioxide emitted and the price of the offset necessary to counterbalance those emissions is calculated and paid. Green Shipping can track any package sent through UPS, FedEx or the United States Postal Service. UPS also offers a similar offset service for its customers.
UPS proudly boasts a fleet of alternative fuel vehicles in the thousands, led by hundreds of delivery vans powered by “clean natural gas” (CNG). While CNG does burn cleaner than conventional gasoline, there are unfortunate hidden costs involved with natural gas, primarily in its extraction from the earth.
Investigate hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” or start with the documentary Gasland to learn more.
However, UPS also has a fleet of diesel electric hybrid trucks that offer at least a partial alternative to conventional fuels. These trucks, according to the company, improve on-road fuel economy by nearly 29 percent. By choosing to do business with them, you’re encouraging UPS and other carriers to begin or expand alternative fuel delivery fleets. It’s a good way to green your shipping and help green the shipping and receiving industry as a whole.
You may notice a lot of references to UPS in this article, but don’t think that they are necessarily the greenest shipping company out there. In fact, in 2008 Climate Counts ranked the top four carriers on green shipping criteria.
All showed improvement from the year before, but DHL and FedEx led the way, followed by the USPS and UPS in fourth place. UPS has since upgraded their sustainability mission and report, with plans to increase fuel economy for its entire fleet by 20 percent before 2020. In turn, FedEx installed the largest rooftop solar array in the United States.
Much is being done to green the shipping industry. While the motive here is cutting down on costs (which renewable energy and alternative fuels are very good at for these companies, given their monumentally high fuel consumption), but we the consumers can ensure that this trend continues by spending our green on the greenest shipping possible—and buying local wherever we can.
Photo Credits: MDH Cards, eBay Green, & TreeHugger
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