Environmental technology

Twenty years ago, the Great Pacific Trash island turned the world's attention to the problems caused by plastic waste. In particular, if, over time, the waste decomposes to microplastics, it endangers life in the seas.

Globalization has many advantages for humans and technology. But for flora and fauna the mixing of native with foreign organisms can be dangerous. Because non-indigenous animal and plant species often have no natural enemies. Therefore, they spread unhindered and decimate the resources for native species. 

Be it hay fever, strawberry or cat hair allergy: more and more people are suffering from allergies. According to a study by the Robert Koch Institute, around 30% of adults and 20% of children and adolescents in Germany are allergic. Frequently, those affected even suffer from several allergies. While chronic colds can be treated quite well with medication, people who react sensitively to food can only protect themselves by doing without. About three to four percent of adults and five percent of children are affected.

Soil is much more than dirt. It contains a slew of microorganisms, fungi and roots of a plethora of plants. All of which interact with each other and together, they make up the soil microbiome. Headed by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and the University of Tartu in Estonia, an international research team for the first time conducted a study of bacteria and fungi in soil.

Environmental pollution caused by plastic waste is a hot-button issue right now - whether it's waste islands in the oceans or microplastics in the fields which eventually end up in the intestines of humans. However, plastic packaging cannot be dispensed off everywhere. Thus, more and more biodegradable plastics are being produced, which are supposed to have less impact on the environment.

Plastics, plastic packaging and the resulting waste threatening the environment as well as our health are on everyone's mind at the moment.

Cod is one of the most important and popular food fish in the North Atlantic. However, it has been swimming on the brink of overfishing for years due to its popularity as well as climate change. To protect against this, catch quotas have been established based on stock estimates by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES).

Even the IPCC has taken note: Chemists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a process that uses algae to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it in to carbon fiber. What's more, it can do so in a cost-effective way.

Time and again, oil spills happen on the world's oceans and even rivers. Oil spills are an extreme environmental pollution that can destroy entire ecosystems and the living organisms within them, from microorganisms to sea birds. Previous approaches to contain or absorb oil spills have not been very efficient. Until now, the most promising ones are chemical agents that bind the oil and then sink it to the ground. However, in that case, the pollution has only disappeared from our view, not from the ecosystem.