“Parisians and tourists flocked to take a dip in the Seine River this weekend after city authorities gave the green light for it to be used for public swimming for the first time in more than a century.

The opening followed a comprehensive clean-up programme sped up by its use as a venue in last year’s Paris Olympics after people who regularly swam in it illegally, lobbied for its transformation.

The outgoing mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, also helped to champion the plans, jumping in the river herself before the Olympics.

About 1,000 swimmers a day will be allowed access to three bathing sites on the banks of the Seine for free, until the end of August.”

From The Guardian.

“Human waste, empty oxygen cylinders, kitchen leftovers and discarded ladders.

Sherpas working on Mount Everest carry all that and more — 20 kilograms (44 pounds) per person — navigating a four-hour hike that traverses crumbling glacial ice and treacherous crevasses to bring trash back to base camp.

During the most recent climbing season, they had new assistance from two giant SZ DJI Technology Co. drones, which can complete the same journey in six minutes, sharing the task of clearing an expanding volume of refuse piling up on the world’s highest peak…

‘We’re very happy,’ said Lhakpa Nuru Sherpa, a 33-year-old Sherpa at local expeditions firm Asian Trekking who has reached the summit of Everest 15 times. He estimates that about 70% of the garbage usually carted off the mountain by his team was transported by drone this year.”

From Bloomberg.

“Twice a day at milking parlors all over New Zealand, the world’s biggest dairy exporter, sheds are hosed down to wash away cow dung into large manmade ponds.

In an attempt to recycle the water in the lagoons, two local scientists — Keith Cameron and Hong Di — began testing the addition of polyferric sulfate, a chemical that’s been widely used in wastewater treatment to separate liquids from solids. The process worked, but that didn’t prove to be their most interesting finding.

When the pair of soil and physical sciences professors at Lincoln University ran checks to monitor for any impact on greenhouse gas emissions, they made a startling observation: Methane emissions from the wastewater had decreased by more than 90%.”

From Bloomberg.

“An industrial park alongside the River Lea in the London suburb of Chingford might not be the most obvious place for a quiet revolution to be taking place. But there, a team of entrepreneurs is tinkering with a modest looking steel container that could hold a solution to one of the world’s dirtiest industries.

Inside it are thousands of cherry-sized pellets made from quicklime. At one end, a diesel generator pipes fumes through the lime, which soaks up the carbon, triggering a chemical reaction that transforms it into limestone.

With this invention, Seabound, the company behind it, hopes to capture large amounts of carbon directly from the decks of cargo ships..

a Seabound unit can capture 78% of all the carbon from the exhaust that is pumped through it, and 90% of the sulphur, a toxic air pollutant.

The latest prototype is being built to the dimensions of a standard 20ft (5.9 metre) shipping container, so that it can seamlessly slot in with cargoes on deck.”

From The Guardian.