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You’re probably drinking little bits of plastic in your tap water
Extremely small pieces of plastic, too tiny to be removed by water filtration systems, are turning up in the vast majority of tap-water systems globally. The US-based non-profit journalism outfit Orb...
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To break our fast-fashion addiction, Greenpeace says we have to embrace “true...
Clothes are cheaper and more disposable to shoppers than ever, and the environment is suffering for it. Between 2000 and 2014, global clothing production doubled, according to McKinsey, while the...
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There’s an e-waste crisis lurking behind India’s cheap-phone boom
India is among the top generators of electronic waste (e-waste) in the world. In 2016 alone, the country churned out 1.975 million tonnes (Mt) of e-waste, according to the Global E-Waste Monitor 2017,...
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Where to place all those adorable photo holiday cards? The trash
Dear sender: Your kids and pets are adorable, no doubt. You have a very handsome family. But with respect—with love—unless you’re the president or a royal, no one really wants your family portrait...
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The behavioral economics that explain why we need a tax on disposable coffee...
Since the start of the century, the number of coffee shops has risen four-fold in the UK, takeaway coffees have become more and more readily available in supermarkets and gas stations, and now an...
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Think plastic is pure evil? The surprising benefits of the world’s most...
Plastic is polluting our oceans, killing wildlife, and damaging our health, and there are widespread calls to get rid of it. But it isn’t as simple as wishing the pervasive material away. If we were to...
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Why it’s innovative—not wasteful—to destroy the Pyeongchang Olympic stadium
In the past, Olympic host cities spent billions of dollars on grandiose structures that soon become “white elephants.” Montreal’s “Big O” Olympic stadium, used for the 1976 games, currently costs the...
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In 2018, it’s a pretty badass look to recycle your Oscar dress from 1962
There aren’t many “This old thing?” moments on the red carpet at the Academy Awards, where most actresses wear custom-made gowns loaned by designers and chosen by professional stylists. This Oscars...
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A Kenyan mother, two disappearing Indian businessmen, and the battery factory...
There is the kind of lead poisoning that creeps into water supplies, builds up in children’s blood streams, and, if sustained, will impair their brains. And then there is the kind, much rarer, that...
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Westin’s ambitious plan to turn old hotel sheets into kiddie pajamas
Westin’s planet-saving plan sounded simple enough: make kids pajamas from old bed sheets. In an effort to reduce the tons of textile waste that go into landfills each year, the 88-year old...
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We underestimated the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—by 16 times
Less than a year ago, the scientific community thought the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was about the size of France. As tends to be the case with bad news about plastic pollution, the reality is worse...
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Scientists have developed a new plastic that can be recycled infinitely
The world is drowning in plastic. It packs landfills, chokes our waterways and swirls in oceans harming marine life. While extremely useful, plastic’s curse is that it sits around for thousands of...
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McDonald’s shareholders will vote today on whether to ban plastic straws
McDonald’s shareholders are casting ballots today on a small change that could have big implications for the environment and investor activism: Whether to ban plastic straws at its restaurants....
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The world will finally have to confront its massive plastic problem now that...
Since the 1950s, when the world was first introduced to the flexible, durable wonder of plastic, 8.3 billion metric tons of it has been produced. Plastic doesn’t biodegrade, so technically, all of...
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Even if the US never used a plastic straw again, it would barely make a dent
Americans supposedly use 500 million plastic straws every day—or not. It turns out that the math behind that figure was done by a nine-year-old in 2011. But, let’s say—for the sake of argument—that as...
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Marie Kondo’s key to happiness: boxes
Perhaps it’s not entirely surprising that Marie Kondo has a rather geeky obsession with boxes. The winsome 33-year-old organization guru who preaches a mindful method for purging clutter called...
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A major US city will start drinking its own sewage. Others need to follow.
It’s possible, a few decades from now, humans living in water-scarce places will find it ridiculous that we spent centuries just flushing away our watery sewage. Didn’t we know we could have been...
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Could NYC solve its trash problem with underground trash cans?
When the Hague decided to fix its curb-trash problem, it found a solution underground. In 2009, the Netherlands city began installing trash bins under the sidewalk, and as of 2017 had 6,100 such units...
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It would take 100 pees to make the world’s first human-urine brick
Bricks play a crucial role in the construction industry, add a distinct aesthetic to homes, and now can also be made of human urine. On Oct. 24, the world’s first “bio-brick” grown from human urine was...
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This clever Halloween tradition makes your clutter disappear
My brother-in-law and his family invented a simple, genius Halloween tradition: Every year, they collect “used but perfectly good” toys to add to the bowl they present to trick-or-treaters. New Yorkers...
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Do not be fooled: There is nothing eco-friendly about a silver straw
You can’t use a plastic straw anymore without looking like an environmental libertine who doesn’t care about sea turtles. Everyone knows that. But please do not buy a silver straw. I hesitate to even...
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After China, Southeast Asia is also detoxing from imported plastic trash
After serving as the world’s scrap collector for decades, China’s decision to ban imports of almost all plastic waste last year upended the world’s recycling habits, and left developed countries...
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India’s two-million-tonne e-waste problem has deadly consequences
The world produces 50 million tonnes of electronic and electrical waste (e-waste) per year, according to a recent UN report, but only 20% is formally recycled. Much of the rest ends up in landfill, or...
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Scientists put an iPhone in a blender to find out what mobile phones are...
In a recently-published video, geology lecturer Arjan Dijkstra dons a white lab coat and a protective face shield, drops an iPhone 4S into a blender, and pulverizes it. Dijkstra wasn’t taking out his...
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Your cotton tote is pretty much the worst replacement for a plastic bag
If you’re trying to contribute as little as possible to the two global calamities of climate change and the swirling gyres of forever-materials slowly filling our oceans, there’s a useful formula to...
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Can something good come out of India’s worsening e-waste problem? Apparently...
India’s mounting pile of old smartphones, laptops, and refrigerators could create over half-a-million jobs. By 2020, the country’s electronic waste management sector is set to create 450,000 direct...
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China is forcing the world to rethink recycling
This story is part of an ongoing series on how China is reshaping our world. The global recycling system is broken. Just don’t blame China.…
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Your “biodegradable” plastic bag might not actually biodegrade
At this point, images of plastic waste-filled landscapes have managed to reach and horrify much of the general public. Plastic bag bans are proliferating in response. Now, bags made from alternative,...
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You have the power to save endangered species
Today is Endangered Species Day, which is hardly cause for celebration, as ideally no such occasion would exist. This is not an ideal world, however. That was clear earlier this month when the UN’s...
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The Lagos entrepreneurs championing recycling as a way of life
The idea to convert trash to saleable products struck Olamide Ayeni-Babajide while on a trip to Dubai where she bought home décor made out of corn husk. Recognizing the dollar value of Lagos’s trash,...
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Taiwan, the home of bubble tea, prepares for its plastic straw ban
Bubble tea is ubiquitous in Taiwan, but so are the thick, colorful straws used to slurp the drink. That’s not stopping the country from joining a growing number of places across the world implementing...
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“What kind of rubbish are you?”: China’s first serious trash-sorting rule is...
Shanghai’s residents are reeling from the mandatory trash-sorting rules their city just adopted as China works toward beefing up its recycling rates. Starting Monday (July 1), individuals and...
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How plastic turns into rocks and ends up on our beaches
A detour to avoid the film set for Hobbs & Shaw was the only reason I happened across this special beach. In December 2018, on vacation on Kauai in Hawaii I was following a tip from a co-worker to...
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A new Swedish bicycle is made from 300 recycled Nespresso pods
After two years in development, RE:CYCLE, a stylish urban bicycle made from discarded Nespresso pods, is ready to roll. And it only takes 300 espressos to make one. Developed by Swedish start-up...
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There’s never been a better time—or more need—to buy your clothes used
When I first started buying used clothes, it had nothing to do with sustainability. I was learning about fashion through online forums, and browsing the buy-and-sell marketplaces they had for members....
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An ingenious Filipino artist creates mosaics with dead leaves and garlic peels
Look closely at the image below. What looks like a monochromatic oil painting is in fact an intricate collage made by carefully piecing together bits of dried leaves, corn husks, and garlic peels. No...
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India’s online shoppers are all for recycling—if there’s a cashback involved
Indian middle-class families often love hoarding plastic bags and packaging material to make the most of every rupee they spend. Online shopping, though, has brought an abundance of such items, so much...
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California could become the first state to ban single-use plastics
In 2018, on New Year’s Day, the world of trash changed forever. Before that fateful morning, the US was sending 4,000 shipping containers full of its recyclable waste to China every day—almost...
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The problem big manufacturers have with recycling—and how to fix it
For the normal consumer, recycling is pretty easy—when you finish something that comes in a jar, bottle, or any type of recyclable packaging, you rinse out the container and throw it in a bin. Maybe...
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Behold, London’s most thrilling public bench
London has many great spots to sit but one of the more impressive new ones may be a communal bench in the fintech enclave of Broadgate. Featured as the marquee installation of this year’s London Design...
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One simple tweak that would get more people to recycle
Have you ever thought about what happens to the empty Coke cans and food takeout containers you toss in your recycling bins? Our research suggests that if you’re like most Americans, you’ve probably...
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California is banning the tiny bottles of shampoo you get in hotels
It’s one of the smallest perks of staying in even budget hotels: teeny bottles of shampoo, body lotion, and shower gel, standing two or three inches high. You use them, secret them away, and take them...
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The world is stuck with decades of new plastic it can’t recycle
Ants are useful creatures. As the most numerous insects on Earth, they have colonized nearly every habitat on land. So when a researcher wants to…
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Can design help break our addiction to single-use plastic?
What would a world without single-use plastic look like? One only has to look back about 60 years, when the vast majority of the single-use…
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An environmental expert’s strategy for unwrapping our plastic recycling crisis
Judith Enck has been working behind the scenes on plastic for decades. In 2009, US president Barack Obama appointed Enck the administrator of EPA’s Region…
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Jeff Bezos’ rocket-maker aims for its third launch in 2019
Blue Origin, the space company founded by Jeff Bezos, plans to launch its third suborbital rocket mission from its Texas spaceport on Dec. 11. This reusable New Shepard rocket is expected to fly just...
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A documentary that will never let you see plastic the same way again
It’s hard to choose which scene in The Story of Plastic most sent a chill down my spine, so startling is the hour and a half-long documentary. But if forced, I’d say it’s the drone footage from...
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India’s steel sector is getting in the way of its climate action goals
India’s heavy industry, particularly steel manufacturing, is the sore spot of its climate action plans. The booming sector could bring about the demise of the country’s sustainable development plans if...
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The pandemic is reviving our reliance on single-use plastics
As people work to stave off infection during the coronavirus pandemic, single-use plastics have seen a surprising boost worldwide.Polystyrene plastic especially has risen in popularity. According to...
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