The crackle and glow of a wood stove may be comforting, but the pollution it produces is pretty frightening. Burning wood releases high levels of toxins into the environment, creating localized pollution hot spots. Even in newer wood stoves that are certified, many of the harmful chemicals found in tobacco smoke are emitted by wood […]
Zero-waste refers to principles of minimizing waste production as much as possible. Béa Johnson of Zero Waste Home calls the framework for zero-waste the 5 Rs: refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot.
Germany is in the midst of a debate about when it will stop using coal. While the current coalition government under Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz wants to phase out the highly polluting fossil fuel by 2030, states in the country’s east want to maintain an earlier, less ambitious target of 2038. Now, a report […]
Supermarkets Woolworths and Coles have been ordered by the New South Wales (NSW) Environment Protection Authority (EPA) to dispose of more than 5,732 tons of recycled soft plastics currently sitting in more than a dozen warehouses across NSW. The concern is that they’re being dangerously stored since the collapse of recycling organization REDcycle — a […]
Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have revealed a new battery material, which they call the Quick-Release Binder, to make battery recycling easier and more affordable. While lithium-ion battery use is expected to grow elevenfold from 2020 to 2030, materials in these batteries, like lithium, cobalt and nickel, are in increasingly limited supply, […]
This past month, reports flooded in of the deluge of rain hitting California. Californians were faced with dire situations, and at least 22 lives were lost. In all, over 30 trillion gallons of water fell in the state, according to a student scientist. But in a state with an unyielding drought, the majority of that […]
It can be tempting to think that the recent wildfire disasters in communities across the West were unlucky, one-off events, but evidence is accumulating that points to a trend.
In a new study, we found a 246% increase in the number of homes and structures destroyed by wildfires in the contiguous Western U.S. between the past two decades, 1999-2009 and 2010-2020.
A satellite detected a 4.6-mile-long cloud of methane over Wyoming containing far more gas than the operator of the gas plant from which it likely originated told regulators it released. Bloomberg reports Tallgrass Energy’s Douglas Gas Plant told regulators it accidentally vented 2.1 metric tons of methane over five separate releases on December 6 and […]
An international quartet of Greenpeace-affiliated climate activists have boarded a Shell-contracted vessel bound for the oil fields of the North Sea with a simple message for the fossil fuel company: “Stop Drilling. Start Paying.”