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Bitcoin miners seem unwilling to take action to curb the cryptocurrency's energy and water use. Plus: the plastic particles in bottled water.

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VonWong/Skull Of Satoshi/Greenpeace blog.vonwong.com/skull/

Ban Bitcoin?

The amount of electricity used to mine and trade bitcoin climbed to 121 terawatt-hours in 2023, 27 per cent more than the previous year. While other cryptocurrencies in the same position have made bold changes to cut their impact, bitcoin’s decentralised community of developers, miners and investors are showing little interest in changing course. If bitcoin cannot clean up its own house, should governments step in to shut it down? "Bitcoin miners and investors continue to forge forward, growing their industry, showing a clear lack of concern for CO2 emissions, large water usage, support for fossil fuels and negative community impacts," says Erik Kojola at Greenpeace USA. Read more

Plastic in water

A single 1-litre bottle of water could contain hundreds of thousands of plastic particles. Researchers took six bottles of own-brand water from three unnamed US supermarkets and exposed them to lasers, which would vibrate when they encountered a plastic fragment. On average, each bottle contained around 240,000 plastic particles. Of these, around 90 per cent were nanoplastics, measuring less than one micrometre across. The health implications of ingesting plastic are unclear, but early research suggests such particles could travel into various organs within the body. Read more

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Alexandra Thompson

Assistant news editor, New Scientist
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