Oceans

Chile Bans Plastic Bags in 100+ Coastal Areas

Chile Bans Plastic Bags in 100+ Coastal Areas

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet signed a bill Wednesday that prohibits the sale of single-use plastic bags in 102 coastal villages and towns in a bid to stop the build-up of ocean plastic and to “[take] care of our marine ecosystems.” An estimated eight million tons of plastic trash gets dumped into our oceans each year, […]

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    Trader Joe’s Stops Buying Mexican Shrimp After Pressure to Protect Vaquita

    Trader Joe’s Stops Buying Mexican Shrimp After Pressure to Protect Vaquita

    Conservation organizations announced Wednesday that Trader Joe’s has declared it will stop buying shrimp from Mexico. The popular grocery store chain’s decision follows pressure from organizations behind the Boycott Mexican Shrimp campaign, launched earlier this year to save the vaquita, the world’s smallest porpoise, from decades of decline due to entanglement in shrimp fishing gear. […]

    Scientist Warns of Mass Marine Extinction

    Scientist Warns of Mass Marine Extinction

    By Tim Radford Mass marine extinction may be inevitable. If humans go on burning fossil fuels under the notorious “business as usual” scenario, then by 2100 they will have added so much carbon to the world’s oceans that a sixth mass extinction of marine species will follow, inexorably. And even if the 197 nations that […]

    Coca-Cola Produced More Than 110 Billion Plastic Bottles Last Year

    Coca-Cola Produced More Than 110 Billion Plastic Bottles Last Year

    By Andrew McMaster Every second, more than 20,000 drinks in plastic bottles are purchased around the globe. That adds up to more than 1 million bottles a minute and nearly 500 billion bottles per year. It may come as no surprise then that the largest beverage manufacturer, Coca-Cola, reportedly manufactured more than 110 billion plastic […]

    Global Warming ‘Hiatus’ Is Over

    Global Warming ‘Hiatus’ Is Over

    By Tim Radford It is official. The world is warming according to expectations. The so-called and much debated “pause” in global warming is over. And the culprit that tried to cool the planet in spite of ever-rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Blame it on the Pacific Ocean. It went into a not-so-hot […]

    Plastic Debris Found on One of World’s Most Inaccessible Sites

    Plastic Debris Found on One of World’s Most Inaccessible Sites

    It’s becoming clear that plastic pollution is everywhere, even at the northernmost tip of the planet. Scientists have recently found chunks of polystyrene on ice floes in the Central Arctic Ocean, about 1,000 miles from the north pole—an area that could not be accessed before due to sea ice, the Guardian reports. But the international […]

    Nature Offers Solutions to Water Woes and Flood Risks

    Nature Offers Solutions to Water Woes and Flood Risks

    When the Aztecs founded Tenochtitlán in 1325, they built it on a large island on Lake Texcoco. Its eventual 200,000-plus inhabitants relied on canals, levees, dikes, floating gardens, aqueducts and bridges for defense, transportation, flood control, drinking water and food. After the Spaniards conquered the city in 1521, they drained the lake and built Mexico […]