• picture
  • picture
  • picture
  • picture
Public Radio's Environmental News Magazine (follow us on Google News)

Tech Note

Air Date: Week of

Living on Earth's Cynthia Graber reports on a new use for beer in environmental clean-ups.



Transcript

CURWOOD: Just ahead, a way of life gone by on the Great Plains of America, but first, this environmental technology note from Cynthia Graber.

GRABER: A scientist at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, has come up with a novel way to treat pollution using beer. Tom Harris was experimenting with using wetlands to clean up waste from old mining sites. It's known that a certain mix of bacteria that live in wetlands can cause heavy metals to separate out of the water and become trapped in soil where they can be easily removed. The problem is, these hardworking bacteria eventually lose energy. Mr. Harris thought he could reenergize the bacteria if he fed them a diet high in complex carbohydrates. As luck would have it, Tom Harris was at a cocktail party and heard about a local distributor who each month threw away hundreds of gallons of beer that had passed their expiration date. So he and colleagues started lab experiments with beer, to see if it would boost a wetlands clean-up capacity. So far it's worked, and, if field tests show similar success, the expired beer will go into wetlands instead of down the drain, and the bacteria will get some additional calories to help them conduct their clean-up jobs. That's this week's Technology Note. I'm Cynthia Graber.

[MUSIC]

CURWOOD: And you're listening to Living on Earth.

[MUSIC]

 

 

Living on Earth wants to hear from you!

Living on Earth
62 Calef Highway, Suite 212
Lee, NH 03861
Telephone: 617-287-4121
E-mail: comments@loe.org

Newsletter [Click here]

Donate to Living on Earth!
Living on Earth is an independent media program and relies entirely on contributions from listeners and institutions supporting public service. Please donate now to preserve an independent environmental voice.

Newsletter
Living on Earth offers a weekly delivery of the show's rundown to your mailbox. Sign up for our newsletter today!

Sailors For The Sea: Be the change you want to sea.

The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment: Committed to protecting and improving the health of the global environment.

Contribute to Living on Earth and receive, as our gift to you, an archival print of one of Mark Seth Lender's extraordinary wildlife photographs. Follow the link to see Mark's current collection of photographs.

Buy a signed copy of Mark Seth Lender's book Smeagull the Seagull & support Living on Earth