By Matt Wilkins 6 July 2018 (Scientific American) – The only thing worse than being lied to is not knowing you’re being lied to. It’s true that plastic pollution is a huge problem, of planetary proportions. And it’s true we could all do more to reduce our plastic footprint. The lie is that blame for […]
By Palko Karasz 23 July 2018 (The New York Times) – Come for the beaches, say tourism ads for the Dominican Republic.But it has some beaches you might want to skip right now.The Caribbean nation is known for sapphire seas and ivory beaches, but it is grappling with waves of garbage washing up on its […]
By Natalie Stickel 13 June 2018 (Blue Ridge Outdoors) – The biggest energy project you’ve never heard of commonly goes by the acronym ASTH—the Appalachian Storage and Trading Hub. This massive petrochemical hub in West Virginia and Pennsylvania would be the largest infrastructure in the region’s history, consisting of hundreds of miles of pipelines, fracked […]
By Sara Kiley Watson 28 June 2018 (NPR) – For more than 25 years, many developed countries, including the U.S., have been sending massive amounts of plastic waste to China instead of recycling it on their own. Some 106 million metric tons — about 45 percent — of the world’s plastics set for recycling have […]
BANGKOK, 3 June 2018 (Reuters) – Some 80 pieces of plastic rubbish weighing 17 pounds were found in the stomach of a whale that died in Thailand after a five-day effort to save it, a marine official said on Sunday.The pilot whale was discovered on Monday in a canal in the southern province of Songkhla […]
23 May 2018 (SFU) – British Columbia’s premier shellfish farming region is heavily contaminated with microplastics, according to a new SFU study.New research from SFU’s Ecotoxicology Research Group shows Lambert Channel and Baynes Sound off Denman Island are awash with microbeads and other microplastics including fragments and fibres.The area is also home to approximately 130 […]
By Tad Sooter 16 May 2018 BREMERTON (Kitsap Sun) – Walk any Puget Sound beach and you’re bound to find plastic garbage — a soda bottle, a chunk of foam, maybe a dog’s lost chew toy. But that’s just the plastic pollution you can see. The results of a recent volunteer-powered research project suggest there […]
By Bob Tita 13 May 2018 (The Wall Street Journal) – The U.S. recycling industry is breaking down. Prices for scrap paper and plastic have collapsed, leading local officials across the country to charge residents more to collect recyclables and send some to landfills. Used newspapers, cardboard boxes and plastic bottles are piling up at […]
18 April 2018 (UNEP) – A new article, Human footprint in the abyss: 30 year records of deep-sea plastic debris, reveals human activities are affecting the deepest part of the ocean, more than 1000km from the mainland.Plastic pollution is emerging as one of the most serious threats to ocean ecosystems. World leaders, scientists and communities […]
By Melia Robinson 22 April 2018 (Busniess Insider) – A small island smack in the middle of the South Pacific has never been inhabited by people — and yet, its white sand beaches are home to more than 37 million pieces of junk.Every day on Henderson Island — one of the most remote places on […]