The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced $300 million in grants from the Biden administration’s Investing in America agenda to assist Tribal Nations, States, nonprofit organizations and local governments with assessing and cleaning up the country’s former industrial sites, known as brownfields, a press release from the EPA said. There are an estimated […]
It’s no secret that humans produce and use far too much plastic. The more than 400 million tons generated each year is polluting our planet and choking our oceans. The plastic crisis is so great that 80 percent of marine debris — from microplastics to fishing gear — is made from plastics, according to the […]
A new study has uncovered that flight-related emissions from 2019 are far higher than reported. Scientists reviewed data for more than 40 million flights in 2019 and calculated the total global aviation emissions to be about 911 million metric tons, well above the 604 million metric tons reported to the United Nations in 2019. While […]
Plastic — once seen as a marvel of modern science with uses from packaging to textiles — is now a scourge polluting our waterways, exposing us to PFAS “forever chemicals” and making its way into our bloodstreams in the form of microplastics. Plastic production doubled worldwide in the 20 years prior to 2019, according to […]
A team led by researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that can begin digesting itself when it makes contact with soil or compost. The soft plastic material is a type of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), commonly found in memory foam products and soft products like cushions, floormats […]
A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has found that Tyson Foods dumped hundreds of millions of pounds of pollutants into U.S. waterways from 2018 to 2022. The pollutants came from company facilities including slaughterhouses and processing plants. UCS analyzed publicly available data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and found […]
A new study on plastic pollution in 84 countries has linked half of branded plastic pollution to only 56 firms, with about 24% of the branded plastic waste analyzed connected to only five companies, including The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Danone and Altria. A team of researchers analyzed plastic pollution data from the Break Free […]
From April 23 to 29, the United Nations Environment Programme’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee is holding its fourth session to develop a legally binding international treaty on plastic pollution in Ottawa, Canada. However, countries are divided over what the contents of the landmark agreement should be. “This process is without doubt an accelerated and ambitious one, […]
A new study has found high concentrations of perfluoroalkyl acids, or PFAA, in sea spray. In fact, researchers noted that the levels of PFAAs in sea spray aerosols were even higher than in seawater itself, and the researchers estimated that emissions of PFAAs from sea spray could be even greater than those in the atmosphere […]