This March, McDonald's announced that it would phase out plastic straws in its UK restaurants, The Telegraph reported. But now its board of directors is dragging its feet about doing the same on this side of the pond.
On May 24, McDonald's shareholders will vote on a proposal to launch a study that would consider the "business risks" of continuing to use plastic straws in U.S. restaurants and look into alternatives, The Mercury News reported Monday.
President Trump has launched the most sweeping industrial assault in history on our oceans, marine life, coasts and all they support, proposing to expose nearly all U.S. waters to the risk of another BP oil spill–style disaster.
In a move that would put every American coastal community at risk, Trump proposed Thursday to hand over vast reaches of waters currently protected from drilling—in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans—to the oil and gas industry.
The Republican-controlled 115th Congress has introduced at least 63 separate pieces of legislation that would strip federal protections for specific threatened species or undermine the
U.S. Endangered Species Act, according to a new analysis from the Center for Biological Diversity. That's one such bill every six days in 2017 alone.
The majority of these bills were introduced by Republicans, the Center for Biological Diversity noted.
Gray wolves, greater sage grouse and elephants were targeted the most.
In September the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a Clean Water Act permit for new and existing offshore oil and gas platforms operating in federal waters off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The permit allows oil companies to dump unlimited amounts of waste fluid, including chemicals involved in fracking, into the Gulf of Mexico.
Mexico has created North America's largest marine park—the size of Illinois—in the Pacific Ocean to protect hundreds of species including rays, whales and sea turtles, an area referred as the Galápagos Islands of North America.
The Trump administration is considering cutting protections for two national monuments lying south of Hawaii in the central Pacific. The decision, scientists warn, will threaten reefs across the Pacific.
The move, according to a memo from Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke obtained by the Washington Post in September, would "allow commercial fishing" in the Pacific Remote Islands National Marine Monument and the Rose Atoll National Marine Monument.
