A new study published Monday finds most of Greenland’s ice sheet melted away in the recent geological past.

Co-authored by University of Vermont researchers Halley Mastro and Paul Bierman, the paper shows the presence of fossils in an ice segment taken from the center of Greenland’s ice sheet. The scientists say this shows life existed in an iceless environment less than 1.1 million years ago.

“I think the picture that’s coming into my mind now is that Greenland is fragile, and that during prior warm periods, it did melt,” said Bierman, a geoscientist with UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment.

That could have implications for today’s warming world, where melting ice sheets are raising global sea levels.

The study also included researchers from NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the University of Washington, Williams College, Purdue University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, and the University of New Hampshire.

It builds on Bierman’s previous research. In 2019, his team published a paper showing fragments of soil containing fossils and biomolecules were found in an ice core taken close to Greenland’s coast, at a location called Camp Century, where the ice is thinner. This revealed that the ice had melted within the last 400,000 years — more recently than previously believed.

Bierman said that made them wonder what might be at the bottom of GISP2, a core taken from a deeper area, closer to the center of Greenland’s ice sheet. UVM requested a sample held at the National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility in Colorado, and were given a 3 inch specimen from 2 miles beneath the top of the ice sheet.

“I thought, you know, maybe we’d get a chunk,” Bierman said. “But in fact, we got a little baggy that you could hold in the palm of your hand with 30 grams, about an ounce of brown, dry sand and silt, a little bit of gravel in there.”

They were able to identify organic material in the sediment.

“If you imagine like on Lake Champlain … when you see all the debris like washing up onto the shore, you can sort of imagine how it floats sort of differently than like, the dirt and stuff,” said Halley Mastro, a research assistant at UVM. “So that’s sort of what it looks like on a very tiny scale.”

The sample from the core contained material Mastro had never seen before. There were bits of rock spike moss, the preserved eye of an unknown insect and the seed of an Arctic poppy flower.

“So what the new findings mean right now is that not only do we have this isotopic evidence with mathematical models of the disappearance of the center of the ice sheet, but we actually have this tangible, tractable [thing],” Bierman said. “I mean, when you find a fossil, you can explain that to anybody, right? ‘I’ve got a poppy seed under two miles of ice, how’d it get there?’”

For each of these remnants of life to have existed, it meant that in the last million years, the ice had to have melted by at least 90% to allow nature to thrive.

The researchers say the sample, taken from where the ice is thickest, at the center of the sheet, expands on the “coastal” findings of Camp Century and gives scientists a better understanding of what has happened with Greenland’s ice sheet in the past.

Rising sea levels

According to a 2015 study, when Greenland’s ice sheet melted 400,000 years ago, sea levels rose between 6 and 13 meters above what they are now.

Today, Greenland holds the equivalent of between 6 and 7 meters of global sea rise in its ice. If it were all to melt, it would pose a catastrophic threat to coastal communities around the world.

But Bierman said data also shows at some point after 400,000 years ago, the ice sheet did return to the landscape.

“So this is not all doom and gloom, but it came back when atmospheric carbon dioxide was 280 or 290 parts per million, not when it was 420 [parts per million and] headed up fast,” Bierman said, referencing the current measure of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. “So I think there’s a big warning in here that, yes, Greenland’s ice sheet is fragile, but we are pushing that ice sheet to melt right now, and we’re pushing it really hard by warming the climate.”

He said that should be a wake up call.

“It takes time to melt the ice sheet, but we are headed right now — unless we get the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, we’re headed for that tens of thousands of years of warmth,” Bierman said.

Sea levels are currently rising over 1 inch each decade. Bierman says right now, reducing carbon emissions and working to remove existing carbon from the atmosphere is the number one priority in keeping sea levels from rising.

As for the fossil findings, Bierman and Mastro said they came as a complete surprise and can serve as a tool to paint a picture of Greenland in a different geological time, a stark portrait of a scene they’re hoping to prevent.

“I think the poppy seed is sort of a good thing to sort of highlight, just because people understand what a poppy flower looks like, and can sort of get the vision much easier of the landscape,” Mastro said. “People know what flowers are, but rocks, moss, doesn’t really bring anything to the eye. But I think they all gave us different bits of information … and so does Arctic poppy, but knowing that together, we can sort of build this picture of this ecosystem at that time.”

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Big Lots, one of America’s largest home discount retailers, announced the closure of almost 300 stores over the weekend.

The announcement comes just weeks after the company declared the expected closing of 35 to 40 stores this year due to a decrease in sales.

Of the 293 Big Lots locations that will close, 18 are in New England, and two are in Vermont.

Which VT Big Lots are closing?

The two Big Lots locations closing shop in Vermont are:

The company has not announced the dates when these stores will close. However, it has advertised for a closing sale up to 20% off.

Why are Big Lots going out of business?

In the post-pandemic inflated economy, Big Lots reports struggles with declining sales. According to the original filing made by the company earlier this summer, sales dropped 10.2% between the first quarters of 2023 and 2024, leading to a loss of about $114.5 million.

Big Lots has not declared bankruptcy, and it still has over 1,000 open locations.

More: Babies R Us shops are rolling out in 200 Kohl’s stores: See full list

Where are Big Lots stores in Vt.?

Vermont still has two Big Lots locations you can visit:

Food scrap waste has decreased slightly since a law banning it from landfills went into effect four years ago, according to a recently-released report from the state.

In terms of tonnage, food scrap waste in the landfill has decreased 13% since 2018. Food scraps make up about the same share of landfill waste as before because the amount of garbage overall has also decreased.

“It’s hard to say that there’s a significant difference, but it is demonstrating some progress,” said Josh Kelly, solid waste program manager at the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. “I would say, in short, there’s promising data and we have more work to do.”

Additionally, for the first time, the state has an estimate for the percentage of food waste kept out of the garbage: between 50.7% and 56.8%. That number is sum of the combined effort of residents, businesses, waste haulers, and manufacturers.

For households, the most common way to divert food waste, by far, is by composting, with 43% of households reporting they composted food waste, either at home or with municipal waste services.

Last year, a University of Vermont study showed a high level of support for the food scrap ban, not only from residents but businesses too, even though many businesses also said compliance was difficult and made them incur additional costs.

“I was really surprised and delighted with the incredibly high level of support and compliance I saw among those who worked in food service and food retail, even when we saw service providers often saying compliance wasn’t easy.” said Emily Belarmino, lead author of the study. “It was hard for them and they were still doing it.”

While composting is the most common method of disposing of food waste outside of regular garbage, it’s only one part of a broader system of food recycling in Vermont.

The food waste hierarchy

As with regular garbage, recycling food is not the preferred way to reduce waste. The state prioritizes getting food in people’s bellies before it goes bad over recycling it.

The first priority in the hierarchy is reducing the amount of food waste created by encouraging responsible buying and proper storage.

The next priority is feeding people with food before it goes bad. That could include sharing with friends and family, or with community fridges, Kelly said, but on a larger scale, it’s a role filled by organizations such as the Vermont Foodbank.

Millions of pounds of food are rescued

The Vermont Foodbank, which provides food to over 300 food shelves, senior centers, schools, hospitals and more, is an important piece of Vermont’s food waste puzzle. Jason Maring, chief operations officer at the food bank, said the organization receives two-and-a-half to three million pounds of food a year alone from retailers via its Fresh Rescue program.

“Oftentimes, it’ll have a packaging change, or it’s going to be discontinued, or it’s getting a little close to the [sell-by] date, and they’re just worried about it being able to be sold. So often, they’ll set it aside and donate it,” Maring said.

Currently, 158 stores across Vermont contribute to Fresh Rescue, Maring said, making up around 20% of the food bank’s overall distribution. That food is then distributed to the food bank’s community partners to provide for their customers. The program is expansive – at large retailers like Hannaford’s, pick-ups happen five to seven days a week. That’s in addition to other programs, like food donation, that also keep food out of the trash.

In total, the state reported 3,430 tons, or 6,860,000 pounds, of food waste was diverted from the landfill through Vermont Foodbank. That’s 2.2% of estimated food waste in the state and 4.2% of diverted food waste. And, Kelly said, it’s an underestimate: the state’s data only covers the food bank; local initiatives aren’t covered.

Food for animals is the next step of the hierarchy. In the state’s data, 12% of respondents said they disposed of food by feeding it to pets and 12% by feeding it to livestock.

How composting and anaerobic digestion work

When food is no longer edible, the best option when possible is to recycle it, and the two most common forms of food recycling are composting and anaerobic digestion.

Composting is the act of combining nitrogen rich “greens” like food waste, grass and other plants with carbon-rich “browns,” like wood chips, fall leaves, and shredded paper, in a container where organisms like earthworms, fungi, and aerobic bacteria gradually process the waste into a usable fertilizer.

Food in a landfill decays as well but uses anaerobic bacteria, due to a lack of oxygen. This process emits biogas, a mixture of mostly carbon dioxide and methane, a potent greenhouse gas. But methane can be trapped and burned for heat or used for electricity, which is where anaerobic digestion comes into play.

Anaerobic digestion uses the same process that would occur in a landfill, producing rich fertilizer just like with composting, but instead of emitting methane, it captures it. It can then be burned for heat or used to generate electricity with an internal combustion engine.

Goodrich Family Farm in Salisbury purifies and upgrades the gas before feeding it into the natural gas network. Methane generated from organic sources is a form of renewable energy – meaning it comes from a renewable source, not that it’s clean.

Both composting and anaerobic digestion release carbon dioxide, but unlike the burning of fossil fuels, it isn’t putting additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; the carbon dioxide released from the decomposition of organic matter is part of the carbon cycle, and would happen regardless.

Using biogas to generate electricity in an internal combustion engine does, however, emit other pollutants like hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, and formaldehyde, if the proper pollution controls are not in place.

The food that gets composted and sent to anaerobic digestion not only comes from businesses and households, but also includes waste that is left over from the food manufacturing process, referred to as food processing residuals.

“It could be powdered whey from a mixing process where they make baby formula. It could be coffee grounds that Keurig Green Mountain had left over from a manufacturing process or just the blueberry coffee flavor didn’t take the way they wanted,” Kelly said. “It’s kind of a catch-all term.”

Depackaging meets a need but raises questions

Food waste held in packages needs to be removed, or depackaged.

Part of this is manufactured food that doesn’t meet specification, either due to quality or safety concerns. If the food is already packaged, like in ice cream tubs or yogurt containers, it would be absurdly labor-intensive to individually take apart each container, scoop out the food waste, and dispose of the two separately. Depackaging is the answer to this problem.

Depackaging machines separate food waste from packaging through a variety of means. The machines output packaging material and a food waste slurry separately, which can then be composted or anaerobically digested.

There’s currently one depackaging facility in Vermont, at the All Cycle Transfer Station in Williston, operated by Casella.

But it’s controversial. A bill passed in 2022 placed a moratorium on expanding depackaging facilities in the state until standards are adopted to limit microplastics and other pollutants which can fall through the screens along with food waste.

Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message. Or contact the reporter directly at corey.dockser@vermontpublic.org.