Hey team, and welcome back to one5c! We love spring (even the promise of it) around here for lots of reasons. Fresh produce, warm walks, sunshine after 6 p.m. But there’s something else that always tops our list: The beginning of spring is prime time to start the process of transforming a patch of grass into a thriving, resilient, pollinator-pleasing wildflower meadow. After today’s digest, check out step one of our five-step guide to rewilding. —Corinne |
WHAT WE’RE INTO THIS WEEK |
By Audrey Chan and Sara Kiley Watson |
Thousands of crops enter the Svalbard Seed Vault
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The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a storage facility located on a remote Norwegian archipelago, just added 14,022 new samples to their archive of staple and climate-hardy crops. The goal of the project is to keep the genetic diversity of crops alive, even in the most troubling climate events, and safeguard the cultivars farmers will need in order to adapt. This newest batch—which adds to the million-plus already on hold—includes fertilizing “velvet beans” from Malawi, and historically overlooked crops such as millet and drought-tolerant legumes. “For me, seeds are about hope,” Éliane Ubalijoro, the chief executive of the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry, told The Guardian. “They’re about moving beyond survival, particularly when you come from places that have gone through really difficult times.”
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The EPA wants to axe the ‘endangerment finding’ |
The Trump administration’s EPA is taking aim at what Michael Greenstone, founding director of the University of Chicago's Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth, calls “the Jenga piece of climate policy.” Known as the “endangerment finding,” the little-known 2009 piece of verbiage in the Clean Air Act draws a clear connection between greenhouse gases and endangering the health and welfare of Americans; it’s what gave the Obama and Biden administrations the ability to take action to limit emissions from things like cars and power plants. But, in order to scrub it, the EPA would need to prove that the wild weather we’re experiencing isn’t related to climate change and offer a viable alternate explanation. “This would be a fool’s errand,’' David Doniger, a climate expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, tells The Associated Press. “In the face of overwhelming science, it’s impossible to think that the EPA could develop a contradictory finding that would stand up in court.” |
Southwest hops off the sustainable aviation fuel plane |
Jetting from place to place is one of the most carbon intensive things that anyone can do. Despite only 10% of the population ever setting foot on a plane, aviation accounts for 2.5% of the world’s carbon emissions. Sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, is a long-promised means to keep jet-setting without cutting up your miles card. Despite several aviation companies promising to rack their use up to 10% by the end of the decade, SAF accounted for just 0.17% of United’s and 0.09% of Delta’s jet fuel in 2023—and about 1% of aviation fuel use overall. Southwest Airlines, which used a similarly low quantity, also just took a step in the wrong direction: The airline laid off seven out of 10 employees working to increase use of SAF, and scrapped an entire team working on investments in renewable fuel startups, according to Bloomberg. All this comes after a year when air travel jumped to 4% above pre-pandemic levels. The most sustainable way to fly? Try to do it less, and when it’s unavoidable, prioritize direct flights. |
Extreme heat could make you age faster
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Some U.S. adults are aging up to 14 months faster than their peers. The reason? Living where it’s hot. A new study in Science Advances found that long-term exposure to extreme heat correlated with faster biological aging in people aged 56 and up. A person’s biological age reflects how their body functions at the molecular and cellular levels, and doesn’t always line up with what a birth certificate says. Beyond immediate risks like heatstroke, the paper reveals the long-term tolls of prolonged heat exposure on the body, such as increased stress and trouble focusing—effects its authors liken to smoking. This adds to what we already know about the multitude of impacts living in intense heat can have on our bodies, from declining mental health to worsening chronic conditions like respiratory illness or diabetes. |
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5%
The portion of household energy consumption sucked up by vampire power—the slow slip of energy devices use even when they’re off. A smart power strip, which gives you control over individual plugs, is one easy way to pinch off that bleed. Check out our favorite one here. |
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Save big on electric bikes with Upway! |
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By: Leslie Horn Peterson and Audrey Chan |
It’s well established that your lawn of non-native grass is the enemy of local ecosystems and total crap as a carbon sink. But now that spring is upon us, you can go toe-to-toe with the adversary in your own backyard and create a self-sustaining habitat for urban and suburban wildlife. Welcome to one5c’s Lawns Gone Wild, your step-by-step guide to rewilding a piece of your turf. Between now and May, we’ll be doling out our five-step plan for kicking your grass. |
Rewilding isn’t just some new trend. Conservation biologists Michael Soulé and Reed Noss defined the term back in the '80s. The duo called for the restoration of human-altered landscapes and the protection of wild areas where once-native animals could once again thrive.
A rewilded plot full of native plants will certainly look different from your typical monoculture yard, but those diverse local flora evolved to be perfectly in sync with their specific environments and provide a vital lifeline to animals that call the area home. Consider, for instance, that 90% of insects can only reproduce when they feed on plants they share an evolutionary history with.
More native plants also attract more insects, meaning dinner is served for even more critters and birds, sending positive ripples through the food chain. Many of these species also double as pollinators, which means that rewilding a little patch on your turf can go a long way.
But rewilding takes more than simply retiring your mower during No-Mow May and sprinkling on some native seeds. That will likely leave you with a bunch of tall grass, warns Doug Tallamy, the University of Delaware ecologist behind Homegrown National Park, an organization that promotes restoring yards to natural landscapes. “That’s a guaranteed total failure, because the lawn will outcompete every one of those tiny little seeds,” he says. But getting started is as easy as not throwing away the remnants of your next online shopping purchase.
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Step 1: Hoard your cardboard |
Step one is easy and commits you to nothing: Start collecting cardboard. At the end of March, you’ll cover the area you’re rewilding with those pieces to help choke out unwanted grass and weeds. For now, start eyeing a patch to slaughter—we suggest starting small with a 10-by-10 block—and save any boxes that come in the mail, or hit up places like liquor stores or Costco that usually give them out freely.
This practice is known as sheet mulching. This seed-smothering technique helps suppress existing weeds in soil so your new plants aren’t fighting over precious room to grow. Paperboard also breaks down into nutritional compost that the soil underneath will readily enjoy.
There’s some back-and-forth online about if cardboard is a wise choice for sheet-mulching. Some cardboard does contain PFAS—or forever chemicals—that can leach into the soil. PFAS are commonly found in coatings and other treatments that make paper and cardboard shiny and/or create a nonstick barrier for food. To help avoid this type of contamination concern, use the most-unvarnished, dull, brown boxes you can find. Tallamy particularly recommends simple builder’s paper as an easy and accessible alternative.
Some research has also found that laying paperboard may harm the soil, because the layers prevent oxygen and carbon dioxide from passing through more than traditional wood-chip mulch. It’s important to remember, though, that for our grass-murdering purposes cardboard is not a “forever” or recurring thing—and that we’re playing a long game in terms of improving the overall ecology of our lawns. You’ll pick up those boxes in about two months once the grass is dead, and there is no data to indicate that any impacts on the soil are long-term.
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