We need to incentivize plastic recycling
Category: waste
agriculture, biogeochemistry, carbon sequestration, faculty, fossil fuels, plastics, recycling, waste
Rethinking Biodegradable
the storage of plant-derived carbon in everyday products that are landfilled may help sequester carbon from the atmosphere.
environmental health, faculty, lakes and streams, waste, water, water pollution
Drugs in your drinking water
Not all pharmaceutical compounds can be removed by traditional methods of treating wastewater.
Closing the Nutrient Loop
Human excrement is a resource too valuable to waste.
Plastics Everywhere
We have much to do to improve our understanding of the amount and fate of plastics at the Earth’s surface.
Diapers: to change or not to change
Reducing the use of disposal diapers would have a rather small effect on our national inventory of greenhouse gas emissions
Food Waste
Cutting food waste in half would save 8% of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere—even more if we were to consume less beef in our diet.
Airborne Plastics
The microparticles in soil and sediments may persist indefinitely, casting a sedimentary record of human activity on the planet.
The Planetary Toll of Your Morning Coffee
When you decide to have a cup of coffee, you have already made your largest contribution to the energy used to deliver coffee to your cup.
When you flush
It is a lot to ask the microbial population in a septic system to break down chemicals that they have never experienced in nature, let alone those designed to inhibit their activities.