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There’s BPA in cash register receipts?

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Feb. 12   Leave a Comment  

Laboratory tests found high levels of BPA on 40 percent of thermal paper receipts sampled from major U.S. businesses and services, including McDonald’s, Chevron, CVS, KFC, Whole Foods, WalMart, Safeway and the U.S. Postal Service, among others. BPA in paper receipts also contaminates paper recycling and is showing up in napkins, toilet paper and other common papers with recycled content. (Thinkstock)

Bad news bears

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How green is the state of our union?

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Feb. 12   Leave a Comment  

Obama's State of the Union address was, in the words of one prominent green leader, "a strong defense of the importance of clean energy to America’s long-term economic prosperity." (White House photo)

All-in-all, not a bad year

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Water usage in the bathroom

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Jan. 24   1 Comment  

Some 60 percent of our household indoor water usage happens in the bathroom. Toilets are the biggest water hogs, with older models using as much as eight gallons per flush. A shower, even with a low-flow shower head, can use up to 40 gallons of water, and a bath can use up to 50-60 gallons. (Thinkstock)

It’s more than you thought!

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Analysis: Cutting down forests for biomass fuel

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Jan. 24   Leave a Comment  

In theory, burning any kind of plant material for energy is a carbon-neutral endeavor, but chopping down forests for ethanol is unwise because they cannot be regrown quickly. And tree plantations don't provide the clean water, storm buffers, wildlife habitat and other ecosystem services that natural forests do. Pictured: A wood biomass plant. (Thinkstock)

This will trouble you…

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EPA targets local company for polluting San Francisco Bay

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Jan. 11   Leave a Comment  

SAN FRANCISCO — On Monday, January 9, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that Sims Metal Management, a metals recycling company, had been issued a notice of violation for polluting the San Francisco Bay and violating the Clean Water Act. “All of the things we found are toxic” said the EPA’s Regional Administrator for the Pacific [...]

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Why should I recycle?

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Dec. 17, 2011   Leave a Comment  

Recycling and re-use have many environmental benefits, including reducing the amount of waste we bury in already overcrowded landfills and burn in polluting incinerators, like the one pictured here. (Thinkstock)

Do you really need an explanation?

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Chemicals, pollution … and cancer.

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Nov. 12, 2011   Leave a Comment  

Most researchers now agree that environmental factors -­ including exposure to chemicals and pollution -­ play a significant role today in determining who gets cancer and who doesn't. (Thinkstock)

President urged to take action

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The environmental impact of gold mining with cyanide

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Oct. 30, 2011   Leave a Comment  

Some 90 percent of gold mines around the world employ "cyanidation," the use of a sodium cyanide compound to separate the gold from finely ground rock. At a gold mine in Romania in 2000, the accidental release of 100,000 cubic meters of cyanide-rich waste into the local watershed killed all aquatic life in nearby waters and cut off water supplies for 2.5 million people. (Media credit/Kacos2000 via Flickr)

Thankfully it’s becoming less common

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Will the U.S. ever put limits on greenhouse gas emissions?

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Oct. 15, 2011   Leave a Comment  

Politics still stand in the way of efforts to limit U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Two efforts, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) of 2009 and the American Power Act of 2010, got tabled or failed to make it to the Senate floor for a vote. ACES was, however, passed by a narrow margin in the House of Representatives, the first time the legislative branch has called for sweeping climate legislation. (Media credit/Rachel Johnson via Flickr)

Outlook gloomy

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Will “Plan B” save the environment?

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Sept. 17, 2011   1 Comment  

Lester R. Brown's "Plan B" is an integrated program with four interdependent goals: drastically cutting carbon dioxide emissions, stabilizing population, eradicating poverty, and restoring the Earth’s natural systems. Pictured: Mr. Brown and the first Plan B book, published in 2003. There have been three subsequent editions.

Book spawns environmental movement

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What is nonpoint source pollution?

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Aug. 26, 2011   Leave a Comment  

Nonpoint source pollution comes from many diffuse sources, but in the aggregate creates a formidable challenge for municipal, state and federal environmental and water control authorities -- and is likely the largest threat to our water quality. Pictured: Runoff of fertilizer-laced soil from a farm. (USDA)

Whose fault is it?

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Does medical waste still wash up on American beaches?

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Aug. 26, 2011   Leave a Comment  

Medical waste washing up on New Jersey beaches was a big problem in the late 1980s, closing beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the New Jersey shore. Although that problem was addressed for the most part, bacterial contamination from sewage treatment outflows, contaminated storm water and other sources caused more than 24,000 beach closures or advisories across the U.S. last year. Pictured: a washed-up syringe. (iStock)

An analysis of potential problems

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Ocean dead zones

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Aug. 13, 2011   Leave a Comment  

Perhaps the most infamous U.S. dead zone is an 8,500 square mile swath of the Gulf of Mexico, not far from where the nutrient-laden Mississippi River, which drains farms up and down the Midwest, lets out.

Hypoxic oceans

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KFC, Taco Bell, and the destruction of the rain forests

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July 9, 2011   3 Comments  

YUM! Brands, which operates 38,000 fast food restaurants in 110 countries (including KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, WingStreet, A&W and Long John Silver’s), continues to ignore calls to stop sourcing palm oil, paper and other goods from suppliers notorious for destroying tropical rainforests in Indonesia and elsewhere. Indonesia’s tropical rainforests are home to orangutans, tigers, elephants, clouded leopards and dozens of other endangered plants and animals. (Media credit/Marufish via Flickr)

Even McDonald’s takes better care of the environment

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Re-processing nuclear waste

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July 9, 2011   1 Comment  

Reprocessing nuclear waste -- practiced in France and several other countries but not in the U.S. where it was invented -- involves breaking down spent nuclear fuel to recover material for use in new fuels. Proponents say it reduces the amount of nuclear waste, resulting in less highly radioactive material that needs to be stored safely. Pictured: France's Cattenom nuclear power station. (Media credit/Toucanradio via Flickr)

Pros and cons

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Would legalizing pot be good for the environment?

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May 14, 2011   Leave a Comment  

Legalizing pot (left-hand image), some say, would eliminate many negative environmental impacts associated with clandestine growing and illegal smuggling. It would also likely open the door for the legalization of hemp (right-hand image), a relative of the cannabis plant that can't get you high but could help us sustainably meet a good amount of our fiber and fuel needs. (Wikipedia)

Could pay environmental dividends

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How do we reduce energy use — globally

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May 14, 2011   Leave a Comment  

Earth Hour 2011 saw the participation of millions of individuals in 135 countries who turned their lights off for one hour to make a statement about the need to conserve energy to fight climate change. Organizers expect the 2012 event (March 31 at 8:30 p.m., wherever you live) to be even bigger. (Media credit/Reway2007 via Flickr)

Scaling back would go a long way

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American air quality is on the mend

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April 18, 2011   Leave a Comment  

Air quality across the United States has improved dramatically since 1970 when Congress passed the Clean Air Act. Nonetheless, some 175 million Americans -­ 58 percent of the population ­- still live in places where pollution levels can cause breathing difficulties or worse (Thinkstock)

Relatively

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Staving off global warming with land conservation?

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March 5, 2011   1 Comment  

According to The Wilderness Society, American forests capture about one-tenth of the greenhouse gases put out by U.S. cars, factories and other sources. Pictured: Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. (Thinkstock)

Is law the solution?

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Are natural gas’s eco-benefits overstated?

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Feb. 27, 2011   1 Comment  

EarthTalkNaturalGas

Extraction and distribution make gas almost as bad as coal

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