Study | Environment.org

A new study has found that parrots can benefit from making video calls to one another. In the three-month study, the birds were able to initiate calls and select which of their friends they could chat to.

The research may solve problems of pet parrots showing signs of loneliness and boredom.

Lonely Parrots

They’re among the world’s most popular pets, but there is concern that parrots, which are among the most intelligent of all animals, suffer boredom as a result of being kept alone.

Lonely or otherwise unstimulated parrots are prone to exhibiting stereotypical behaviors such as making excessive noise, furniture damage, possessiveness to one human, self-mutilation and feather picking.

Macaws Parrots — Parrots are highly social animals and can suffer if left alone.

Help may be on hand for these naturally social animals, as a recent study has found that parrots appear …

Study: Biology textbooks aren’t keeping up with climate science

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| Pollution

With every year that greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, the climate crisis deepens — as does the threat it poses to life on Earth. But that increasing urgency isn’t reflected in many of the U.S.’s undergraduate biology textbooks.

According to a new paper published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, climate change coverage in college biology textbooks has failed to keep pace with our scientific understanding of the issue or its mounting importance for every living organism on the planet, from single-celled algae to blue whales. Although today’s textbooks contain more sentences on climate change than those from the 1970s, these sentences offer fewer solutions and have been pushed toward the back of the book — where they are likely to be skipped over.

“Why are we still ignoring this issue?” asked Jennifer Landin, a teaching associate professor at …

CompostAble Chicago Study Evaluates Compostable Programs

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| Recycling

Identifies Success Factors to Increase Capture of Food Scraps and Packaging in Front of House composting programs

The Foodservice Packaging Institute (FPI), and several partners, have released the CompostAble Chicago Study report, which evaluated how the operating conditions within venues that are utilizing compostable foodservice items are expected to contribute to success for consumer-facing, front of house (FOH) composting programs.

The study evaluated four foodservice venues in the Chicago area — a full-service restaurant, a museum quick-serve café, a school cafeteria and a university quick-serve café — collecting data on both venue operating conditions and waste streams.

Chicago-based Bright Beat researched and secured involvement of the four venues that would participate in the study. RRS designed the venue evaluation framework and the waste characterization methodology, and also led the waste sorts that quantified components of all waste streams including the …

New Feasibility Study on Films & Flexible Plastic Packaging

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| Recycling

To grow the circular economy for hard-to-recycle plastics in Penang, Malaysia, the Penang State Government has partnered with RRS, Fonterra, Thong Guan Industries Berhad, The Circulate Initiative, and FFM Berhad to conduct a feasibility study for the collection of films and flexible plastic packaging. The study will be led by RRS and Penang Green Council (PGC), with PGC leading local coordination and outreach and RRS leading the recycling system evaluation and pilot plan.

The goal of the study is to establish an economic and environmentally preferred pathway for consumers to recycle film and flexibles in Penang in order to develop an effective collection and recovery model that may be replicated in other communities and further grow the circular economy for plastics in Malaysia.

The target material for this study is film and flexible packaging, also known as “soft plastics,” which …

Study: Every single country is failing the WHO’s new air quality standards

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| Pollution

No country in the world met the new air quality standards established in September by the World Health Organization, or WHO, according to a new survey that analyzed 117 countries’ air last year.

Even within those countries, almost every city failed to meet the standards. The study, which looked at the real-time air quality of 6,475 cities, found that just 222 of them — less than 3.5 percent — had an average air quality reading that met the WHO’s standard. Nearly 100 cities experienced pollution levels that were ten times higher than the recommended level, according to IQAir, the Swiss pollution technology company that conducted the survey.

It’s the first global air quality report based on the WHO’s new pollution guidelines, which suggest that average annual readings of hazardous fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5, not exceed 5 micrograms per …

Mistreatment in childbirth, a human rights and healthcare problem, new study warns

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| Sustainability

Women across the world face unacceptable mistreatment during childbirth, according to a new study from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Human Reproduction Programme (HRP) launched on Wednesday. Read Full Story on UN News

The post Mistreatment in childbirth, a human rights and healthcare problem, new study warns appeared first on United Nations Sustainable Development.

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