skip to main content

Natural Resources Defense Council

Switchboard

Kate Wing's Blog

There's so much more to dump!

There's so much more to dump!
It's not just iron anymore, oh no, now it's urea. You may know urea from it's role in helping sharks avoid dehydration, or possibly because it's in industrial fertilizers. Yes, we know urea can make plants grow and this is exactly the kind of fertilizer that we've seen problems with in the ocean already, as I've mentioned before. Harmful algal blooms, or HABs, have been on the rise over the last few decades (you can keep up by subscribing to Harmful Algae News). One would think you could study whether or not these blooms are sequestering carbon, rather than having to manufacture new ones. I guess I'll have to discard my notion of Australia as a country of wobbegongs, innovative community fisheries management programmes, and Tim Tams and picture it as the land of urea factories.
Tags:
Australia, nitrogen, urea, wobbegong

(bookmark or email this entry)

Clean Energy Common Sense

OnEarth: NRDC's award-winning magazine

Citizen journalism from the OnEarth magazine website

Day Five of No Impact Week: Lights Out
by Solvie Karlstrom
The Not-So-Badness of Guides to Green Living
by Emily Gertz
No Impact Week Day Four: Foreign Foods
by Solvie Karlstrom

Read more

Fresh Conversation

Feeds: Stay Plugged In