By John Marshall As the athletes take the podium and, with a slight bow, have their medals placed around their necks, they will be happy to have landed in the top three. For the people behind the Tokyo Medal Project, they’ll be happy that those Olympic medals are there in the first place. The project […]
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. According to The National Museum of American History, this popular slogan, with its iconic three arrows forming a triangle, embodied a national call to action to save the environment in the 1970s. In that same decade, the first Earth Day happened, the EPA was formed and Congress passed the Resource Conservation and […]
By Courtney Lindwall Coined in the 1970s, the classic Earth Day mantra “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” has encouraged consumers to take stock of the materials they buy, use, and often quickly pitch — all in the name of curbing pollution and saving the earth’s resources. Most of us listened, or lord knows we tried. We’ve carried […]
By Natalie Marchant Wood accounts for 10% of yearly waste material in the US. The Baltimore Wood Project salvages wood from buildings to repurpose and resell locally to create a circular economy. The initiative also has social benefits, by creating job opportunities in a post-industrial city that has an 8.5% unemployment rate. An initiative in […]
The state of Virginia is taking a stand against single-use plastics. Gov. Ralph Northam signed an executive order Tuesday designed to phase out the use of non-reusable plastics at state institutions, including colleges and universities. The order comes the same week that Northam signed a law banning polystyrene food containers in the state, as the […]
In his latest deep dive for Last Week Tonight, comedian John Oliver took on plastic pollution and, specifically, the myth that if we all just recycled enough, the problem would go away. Instead, Oliver argued, this is a narrative that has been intentionally pushed by the plastics industry for decades. He cited the ionic 1970 […]
Editor’s note: This article has been updated with correspondence from the Basel Action Network and the Center for International Environmental Law The majority of the world is working together to reverse the massive plastic pollution problem. But, the world’s leading producer of plastic waste, the U.S., isn’t on board and isn’t following the rules. In […]
“I AM DONE!!! I DID IT!!!” These were the words that climate activist Edgar McGregor tweeted after 589 consecutive days of picking up trash at a popular Los Angeles hiking spot. I AM DONE!!! I DID IT!!! After **589** days of picking up trash every single day, I can say with confidence that Eaton […]
In a CNN feature, Kan Chan Kin asks: “What happens to your trash when you put it in your bin? It doesn’t magically disappear, you know?” The news report calls Kan an “artivist” – part musician, part artist and full-time environmental champion. Kan’s mission is to spread awareness about our collective trash problem and to […]