Can our petroleum-based market economy make the switch to renewable resources? According to scientists, politicians and industrial leaders, a “biobased economy” is a sustainable alternative. What lies behind this optimism?

The biobased economy promises to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems, including climate change, species extinction, pesticide residues and depleted soil. It foresees plants, fungi and insects replacing environmentally unfriendly coal and petroleum as raw materials, and microorganisms being used to produce chemicals.

But even these renewable resources require a production process, and that harbors new potential dangers. These include land appropriation, the destruction of already dwindling natural ecosystems, and the exploitation of nature for profit to an ever-greater extent. This documentary examines the economic cycle as a whole, from the production of biomass to processing and finished products.

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For a longer version of the story, check out this video: https://youtu.be/nS_HgfanRjA

With support from the National Science Foundation, a multidisciplinary team is engineering solar panel technology that makes greywater reusable while creating thermal energy in the process. What is now wastewater would be used at least twice, cutting demand, and the free solar energy can be captured as well.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1038279, EFRI-SEED: Solar Optics-based Active Pasteurization (SOAP) for Greywater Reuse and Integrated Thermal (GRIT) Building Control. EFRI-SEED is short for Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation-Science and Energy in Environmental Design.

NSF Grant URL: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1038279&HistoricalAwards=false
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