Quick Key Facts

1. When you compost your food scraps instead of sending them off to a landfill, you reduce methane emissions and create organic material in which to grow plants.
2. Composting also improves soil health; reduces erosion and the need for pesticides or fertilizers; and promotes carbon sequestration and climate resiliency.
3. Two common types of aerobic composting processes are vermicomposting, which involves worms, and hot backyard compost piles.
4. While many organic materials can be composted, not all should be composted in a residential setting because they will decay too slowly and potentially attract pests. Commercial settings will allow for more types of items to be composted.
5. Finished compost can be mixed in soil or used as mulch.
6. San Francisco was the first American city to create a food scrap composting program in 1996, but many more have since kicked off their own programs or are currently considering it.
7. If your municipality doesn’t offer composting or food scrap collection services, you can look to private haulers or community gardens.
8. Not all food scrap collection services are using the collected organic materials for compost. Instead, they may be using it to create other products, like biogas.
9. A handful of states are allowing residents to choose to have their bodies composted once they die, but some groups find the practice controversial.

What Is Composting and Why Does It Matter?

Composting is the practice of intentionally breaking down organic substances — like food scraps — and turning it into compost, essentially a nutrient-rich organic matter that is excellent for feeding plants. It also helps reduce methane emissions associated with food waste (more on that later). And according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, “compost is an essential tool for improving large-scale agricultural systems” by improving soil health, reducing erosion and conserving water.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also notes that using compost “attracts beneficial organisms to the soil and reduces the need for pesticides and fertilizers,” as well as promotes carbon sequestration and, subsequently, climate resiliency.

How Does Composting Help Mitigate Climate Change?

Climate change is occurring because of human activities that create greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, that prevent heat from the sun from escaping from our atmosphere and entering into space (the “greenhouse effect”).

When organic waste is thrown into the trash or into a landfill, it decomposes anaerobically, or without oxygen, in a process that then creates methane. While you’ve probably heard about the climate impact of carbon dioxide emissions, methane emissions last less time in the atmosphere but have a stronger impact while there.

“Methane has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere,” according to the Environmental Defense Fund. “Even though [carbon dioxide] has a longer-lasting effect, methane sets the pace for warming in the near term. At least 25% of today’s global warming is driven by methane from human actions.”

But when that organic waste is instead composted, it decays aerobically (that is, in an oxygen-rich environment), and methane isn’t emitted.

What Can I Do With Finished Compost?

Finished compost can be used throughout the garden in lieu of artificial or chemical products to help feed plants. It can be mixed into soil or used as a potting mix, or otherwise spread on top of the soil in the garden bed to use as mulch, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. 

What Are the Different Types of Composting?

There are three overall composting categories: hot methods, cold methods and vermicomposting. Within those categories are numerous different types of compost setups, but the most common types you’ll likely come across in the residential context are aerated, thermophilic compost piles (or backyard compost piles) and vermicomposting boxes. Several cold methods also create compost and they are slower, anaerobic processes.

As the name implies, backyard compost piles are simple enough to set up and maintain that you can do it at home. By incorporating an appropriate mix of carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich materials, as well as oxygen and water, you can build and maintain a compost pile that will produce finished compost in a matter of months. Temperatures within a backyard compost pile can reach between 130° to 160° Fahrenheit, according to the EPA which explains the backyard compost pile creation and maintenance process in full on its website.

Vermicomposting, meanwhile, involves using worms and microorganisms to break down organic matter to turn it into compost, according to the NC Cooperative Extension. The extension notes that only seven types of worms can work for composting, but California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery recommends using one of two species: Eisenia foetida and Lumbricus rubellis. The process can be done inside or outside.

After consuming the organic matter, the worms will essentially poop out fertilizer in the form of worm castings. Cornell University’s Waste Management Institute recommends using old dresser drawers or fish tanks to set up at-home vermicomposting — the center also details the full process here.

How Long Until I Have Compost at Home?

Hot composting methods can produce finished compost with several weeks of maintenance, although that doesn’t account for curing time. It’s important to cure your compost, or leave it undisturbed to allow it to continue breaking down, after the first weeks of active maintenance in a backyard compost pile.

Vermicomposted organic matter, however, doesn’t require curing, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, meaning you can use the finished compost right away.

Where Else Can I Compost if Not at Home?

Even if you don’t have space at home to have your own compost setup (or perhaps hosting a family of worms is unappealing to you), that doesn’t mean you can’t put your food scraps to good use.

Some community gardens may have a compost pile you can contribute to, but check with whomever is in charge of it to make sure you’re not adding too much of certain items (or the wrong things entirely). And depending on where you live, your local farmers market might offer a food scrap composting drop-off option.

Increasingly, municipalities like Arlington County, Virginia are offering their own food scrap pick-up programs to compost locally. That county began offering curbside food scrap collection in 2021, after five years of collecting only yard waste from residences. And some cities are creating pilot projects to test out such programs before committing to them long-term. Washington, DC, for example, is kicking off a curbside composting pilot this summer for 12,000 households whose waste is handled by the city’s public works department.

But such programs aren’t exactly brand-new ideas, as San Francisco became the first American city to establish a large food scrap composting program nearly 30 years ago, in 1996. (The city met several smaller waste reduction goals but failed to meet an ambitious zero-waste by 2020 goal, revising it to cutting total waste by 15% by 2030 and reducing landfill-bound waste by 50%).

If your city doesn’t offer its own food scrap collection program, research whether private food scrap haulers exist in your area. Essentially, you sign up and pay these haulers to independently collect your organic waste on a set schedule and take it to an off-site compost pile. Some may allow you to skip weeks when you haven’t collected enough scraps to make pick-up worthwhile.

Another bonus of composting away from the house? Often you can opt to receive some of the finished compost if you’re a regular subscriber or contributor, meaning you can gain the garden benefits of composting without having to do the dirty work yourself.

What Can I Compost?

Some resources say that anything that can be eaten can be composted. That may be true in general, but some things should only be composted in certain settings. Not every substance decomposes at the same rate, meaning items that are slower to break down could attract pests, according to Food Print, a GRACE Communications Foundation project that focuses on environmental concerns around the industrial food system.

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance offers a list of what should and shouldn’t be composted on their website. Yard waste, such as untreated wood chips and fall leaves, as well as cut flowers, tea bags without staples, crushed egg shells and fresh fruit and vegetable scraps can all get tossed in a backyard compost pile. But the institute doesn’t recommend trying to compost pet waste, meat, bones, dairy products, or cooked foods.

However, if you drop off your food scraps or have them picked up by a municipal compost service, that service provider can likely compost a more expansive array of items that you’re able to do at home. Arlington County, Virginia details on its food scraps collection webpage a lengthier list than most backyard composters could rely on, including meats, bones… basically anything we consume, plus things like greasy pizza boxes, soiled napkins, natural corks and even hair and fingernail clippings.”

A growing number of products claim to be compostable, but often they are only compostable in industrial or commercial settings. If you have a specific question (like whether you can compost an old slice of apple pie since it’s mostly apples, or whether take-out utensils labeled compostable actually can be), don’t overthink it. Just reach out to the agency or company running the program and ask.

Can Humans Be Composted?

The short, scientific answer to that question is yes, humans are compostable. But the question of whether you’re allowed to compost humans depends on where you live.

Currently, six states in the U.S. allow for human composting as an after-death alternative to traditional burials or cremation, according to CNBC Make It. California, Colorado, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington (which first set the trend in 2019) have all made it a legal option for residents. According to Legiscan, Nevada’s governor signed a law that made human composting legal in the state on May 30, 2023, making it the seventh state to do so.

A human composting legislation tracker maintained by Earth Funeral Group notes that Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Virginia have all had bills filed to legalize natural organic reduction, another term for human composting. The same tracker notes that legalization legislation has been considered but failed to pass in Hawaii and Pennsylvania.

Composting humans has several environmental benefits over more common types of end-of-life corpse care. Cremation creates roughly 400 kg of carbon dioxide per body, according to an article published by The Guardian. The newspaper further explains how traditional burials aren’t much better, with “embalming fluid seeping into the soil as the body and coffin decompose, as well as other toxins such as radiotherapy or chemotherapy drugs,” in addition to limited burial space.

Nonetheless, reporting by Illinois television station WTVO notes that some religious groups and traditional burial groups are actively against the practice, citing concerns for the dignity of the deceased.

Are Food Scrap Collection Programs Always Making Compost?

Not necessarily. Depending on where you live, your scraps might be sent off to an anaerobic digester to be processed. As noted before, an anaerobic processing of food scraps creates methane, but operators of anaerobic digesters tout that the machines contain those emissions and turn them into biogas or digestate, according to the EPA. That biogas can be used for manufacturing feedstocks, electricity, heating, vehicle fuel or renewable natural gas (which is basically processed biogas). Depending on whether it’s in liquid or solid form, digestates can be turned into “animal bedding, nutrient-rich fertilizer, a foundation material for bio-based products (e.g., bioplastics), organic-rich compost, and/or simply as soil amendment, the latter of which may include the farm spreading the digestate on the field as fertilizer.”

Food scraps aren’t the only thing that can be processed in an anaerobic digester. The agency also lists animal manure, wastewater biosolids, crop residues, fats, oils and brewery or winery waste as products that can go in such a system.

The post Composting 101: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on EcoWatch.

Forgot about that container of yogurt in the back of the fridge? A bag of granola lost in the pantry? A glance at the expiration date might tell you that it’s time to toss it, but in fact, “expired” food might still be perfectly safe and enjoyable to eat. 

Heeding expiration dates often causes us to throw away food that’s still completely edible, contributing to our massive food waste problem in the U.S. With grocery prices soaring — rising nearly 8% between April 2022 and April 2023 — these wasted products are just money down the drain. Stamps of “sell by,” “enjoy by,” “best by,” “best if used by,” “use by,” and “best before” don’t all necessarily mean the same thing, and don’t communicate anything about the actual safety of the food after the printed date. In the absence of a national standard for food dating, these phrases have long confused and misguided our sense of when a product is edible. 

How Did Expiration Dates Come to Be? 

Sell-by dates on food products were first introduced by the store Marks & Spencer’s in the 1950s, but they didn’t really gain much public attention until the 1970s. By then, most Americans were shopping at grocery stores for the majority of their food — rather than growing it themselves or purchasing it directly from farms — as well as consuming more processed and packaged products, ultimately leading to greater concern about the freshness of ingredients. 

At that time, sell-by information was printed on products as a code that retailers could then decipher using a key, but it wasn’t made readily available to consumers. When customers began demanding more transparency about their purchases (some activists even began decoding the labels and passing out booklets explaining how to read the codes), manufacturers responded by dating their products more clearly with sell-by dates. While the vast majority of surveyed shoppers reported their approval of such dating, the then-Congressional Office of Technology Assessment stated that there was “little or no benefit derived from open dating in terms of improved microbiological safety.” Yet, a very similar system of dating food products is still widespread in the United States today. 

What Does an Expiration Date Actually Mean?

There is no universal, federal standard for what these dates mean, leaving it up to states to make their own rules and regulations based on a hodge-podge of information, recommendations, and industry discretion. Some states don’t require labeling at all, and standards vary widely. In Montana, for example, milk can be sold for only 12 days after it’s pasteurized, but cross the border into Idaho, and it can be sold for more than 20 days. While companies aren’t required to put dates on products (except for baby formula), they cannot print false or misleading information — but they also don’t need FDA approval for any dates they do print. 

Ultimately, expiration dates have much more to do with quality than safety. However, a 2019 study found that 84% Americans throw out food at least occasionally because it’s nearing/past the date on the package. Andy Harig of FMI (a food industry association) told CNN in an interview that the printed date is mostly about protecting the brand, an estimate of when the food will taste best so that customers will enjoy it and continue to purchase it. The date is not an exact science, but a prediction of when an item will be of highest quality in terms of taste, appearance, and texture. While it might provide consumers comfort as a point of reference, it isn’t really telling us what we need to know. Not only could the food still be safe, but if not stored properly it might be bad far before the date. “Use by” dates will often be a conservative estimate, too, since producers anticipate that consumers likely won’t store the product perfectly. 

The Problem of Food Waste 

According to the USDA, 30-40% of the United States’ food supply is wasted every year, and the average household spends a whopping $1,866 a year on food that ends up being thrown away. Food waste is not only an issue of wasted money, but of growing greenhouse gas emissions, landfill space, and widespread food insecurity. 

Of all food that’s wasted in the home, The FDA estimates that about 20% stems from uncertainty about the meanings of labels on packaged foods. In other words,one-fifth of a household’s food is usually thrown out due to expiration dates, even when some of that food might still be perfectly safe to eat. 

Luckily, there has been some legislative momentum to create better standards for these expiration dates. The Food Date Labeling Act of 2021 aims to require food manufacturers to label products with “use by” and “best by” alongside dates to specifically communicate safety and quality, respectively. But even if this act is signed into law, the government would also need to make a more concerted effort to communicate what these labels mean to consumers.

How Can You Tell Whether Something That’s Past Its Expiration Date Is Safe to Eat?

On the FoodKeeper app developed by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, users can look up how long certain foods last by different storage methods. Our bodies are also pretty good at detecting decay. If you’re not sure whether a food item is safe to eat, rely on your senses. Most products will have a clear change in smell, appearance, and taste if they’ve turned. Pay special attention to any changes in color, texture, or consistency. 

There are a few general rules of thumb for how long certain items last, regardless of what the package says: 

• Some things basically never go bad, including sugary products like corn syrup, molasses, honey, and plain sugar; vanilla and other extracts; salt; and vinegar. 

• Grains vary in terms of their shelf life. Generally, white grains last longer than unrefined brown ones, which have a higher fat content. White flour lasts basically forever, but whole grain will go bad after a few months. White and brown rice act similarly.
• Dried beans last for several years, but will become harder and thus more difficult to soften through cooking over time (although they’re still perfectly safe to eat).  
• Oils last a long time too if they are kept in sealed containers, but do a sniff test first. If it’s turned, it’ll smell metallic or fishy, and will feel more glue-like. Similarly, dressings made of vinegar or oil (unless they include dairy or other additives) last for up to a year when refrigerated.
• Canned and jarred foods last for years — even decades, in some cases. Plastic, however, is often gas-permeable and won’t last as long. When opened up, there should be no rotten smell, cloudiness, or mold. On jars, the little button on the top should be rigid when pressed. If it’s popped, bacteria has likely grown inside the jar. 
• Milk is one of the most wasted foods in the world, but because so many germs are killed during the pasteurization process, it’s often completely safe to drink after the expiration date — just do a quick inspection of its odor and appearance before tasting. 
• Eggs typically last three to five weeks or longer. A typical egg test (other than smelling something rotten when you crack it open) can be performed by carefully placing it in a bowl of water. If the egg floats to the surface rather than falling to the bottom, it’s likely gone bad. 

Infant formula products are the exception to this haphazard expiration-dating, and are regulated by the FDA. To determine the “use-by” date, manufacturers determine when the product will no longer have the minimum amount of each indicated nutrient. Labels on products that are considered “foods that pregnant women should avoid” should also be heeded. These include things like raw fish, deli meats, unpasteurized dairy products, and sprouted vegetables because of their ability to carry listeria, an invisible and dangerous bacteria. These products are often served cold, so they don’t go through the heating process (the “kill step”) that kills bacteria before being consumed. 

It’s important to remember that food will already have been contaminated with germs like E. coli or salmonella before it’s brought home, but proper storage can inhibit the growth of these pathogens and generally keep food fresher for longer. Keeping the refrigerator at 40 degrees Fahrenheit or cooler can inhibit the growth of E. coli, or heating the food to 140 degrees Fahrenheit or hotter.

The post Is It Really Expired? The Truth About Food ‘Expiration’ Dates appeared first on EcoWatch.

Scientists first spotted the Blob in late 2013. The sprawling patch of unusually tepid water in the Gulf of Alaska grew, and grew some more, until it covered an area about the size of the continental United States. Over the course of two years, 1 million seabirds died, kelp forests withered, and sea lion pups got stranded.

But you could have easily missed it. A heat wave in the ocean is not like one on land. What happens on the 70 percent of the planet covered by saltwater is mostly out of sight. There’s no melting asphalt, no straining electrical grids, no sweating through shirts. Just a deep-red splotch on a scientist’s map telling everyone it’s hot out there, and perhaps a photo of birds washed up on a faraway beach to prove it. 

Yet marine heat waves can “inject a lot of chaos,” said Chris Free, a fisheries scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It’s not just gulls and sea snails that suffer. Some 100 million Pacific cod, commonly used in fish and chips, vanished in the Gulf of Alaska during the Blob. In British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, salmon runs – and the fishing industry that depends on them – floundered. The acute warming also triggered a toxic algal bloom that disrupted the West Coast’s lucrative Dungeness crab business. 

“It occurred in this place where we have some of the best-managed fisheries in the world, and it still created all these impacts,” Free said.

The Blob was the largest and longest-lasting marine heat wave on record. It might also have been an early glimpse of what’s to come. Fish farms in Chile, scallop operations in Australia, and snow crab pots in Alaska have already fallen victim to oceanic overheating. The economic toll from a single occurrence on fisheries and coastal economies can be as hefty as $3.1 billion. The northeastern Pacific Ocean has experienced several hot spells over the past decade — including the Blob 2.0 — and it’s still experiencing one. As a result, six of the last seven Dungeness crab seasons in California have been delayed. Scientists predict more fisheries will collapse in coming years as climate change — and the ongoing El Niño weather pattern warming the Pacific — spurs more marine heat waves 

“I’m really worried,” said William Cheung, director of the Institute of Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia. “This year we already know the temperature is crazy high.” 

As the planet warms, marine heat waves have grown more frequent and more severe. The world’s oceans have absorbed 90 percent of the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gasses, and are as hot as humans have ever measured them. During a hotspot in late July, water off the southern tip of Florida reached 101 degrees Fahrenheit — toasty enough to fill a hot tub. 

“That’s the highest water temperature I’ve ever heard of in the ocean,” said Steve Murawski, a fisheries biologist at the University of South Florida who has studied oceans for 50 years. “Fish species in particular are great canaries in our collective coal mine.”

Marine heat waves can form in a number of ways, but in general they’re caused by changes in how the air and ocean currents move. When the wind weakens, the sea temperature tends to rise because warm surface water doesn’t evaporate as easily, and colder water doesn’t get churned up from the deep. 

Shifts beneath the surface can trigger heat waves, too. One appeared off the west coast of Australia in 2011 when a streak of warm water, some 100 miles wide and 3,000 miles long, surged south. It brought so much warmth from the tropics that ocean temperatures in the region rose almost 11 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. The extreme conditions stuck around for about three months, killing shellfish and forcing scallop and crab fisheries to close. To this day, the kelp forests, which provide crucial habitat for marine creatures like lobsters, haven’t recovered, said Alex Sen Gupta, an ocean and climate scientist at the University of New South Wales.

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As the sea grows warmer, marine heat waves are more likely to tip temperatures past the threshold at which coral, kelp, and other marine life can survive. In western Australia, heat waves as intense as the one in 2011 occur roughly once every 80 years. They could arrive as often as once a year by 2100 if countries continue pumping carbon dioxide and methane into the air at high levels. Researchers pegged the chances of the Blob having re-emerged as strongly as it did in the Pacific Ocean in 2019 at less than 1 percent if it weren’t for human-caused warming. 

How global warming alters the wind and ocean patterns that spawn marine heat waves remains an “open question,” said Mike Alexander, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. Yet he and Sen Gupta don’t doubt that planetary warming and rising ocean temperatures are making marine heat waves worse. 

Fish that prefer cold water, like cod and salmon, are particularly vulnerable to heat waves. Warm water forces them to work harder, which means they need more food to sustain themselves. At the same time, it can make prey less accessible — say, by keeping the zooplankton salmon feast upon from rising to the surface for an easy supper. 

The heat also can restrict Pacific cod spawning habitat. Amid extreme heat in the Gulf of Alaska, their numbers tanked between 2013 and 2017. The population struggled to recover, so in 2020 the federal government closed the commercial season for the first time. The fish hauled out of the Gulf of Alaska have accounted for as much as 18 percent of the Pacific cod caught around the world. “It’s kind of devastating,” longtime cod fisherman Frank Miles, based in Kodiak, Alaska, told NPR at the time. 

The cod harvest has since reopened, but other fisheries haven’t been as resilient. In 2021, Canada closed 60 percent of its commercial Pacific salmon harvests, which support an industry that employs more than 6,000 people in British Columbia. 

As many as 30 million sockeye salmon migrated up British Columbia’s Fraser River in 2010. A decade later, only 291,000 salmon returned. The fish are declining for a number of reasons, but scientists say extreme ocean heat is a major culprit. 

“We’re really seeing substantial declines in salmon productivity,” said Catherine Michielsens, chief of fisheries management science at the Pacific Salmon Commission. She said there’s a “real concern” that British Columbia is witnessing the end of its commercial salmon fisheries.

It’s easy to focus on the heat during a heat wave, but high temperatures aren’t the only threat to fisheries. These weather patterns can cause a cascade of ecosystem changes, from algal blooms to shifting whale feeding grounds, that can wreak havoc on the fishing industry. That’s what happened in late 2015, at the tail end of the Blob. California, Oregon, and Washington delayed their Dungeness crab seasons — one of the West Coast’s most valuable seafood harvests — because the warm water spurred the growth of toxic algae, which catapulted a neurotoxin called domoic acid up the food chain. The crabs were more or less fine, but anyone who ate one might have wound up in the emergency room vomiting, lost some short-term memories, or even died. 

When California finally opened its crab season after a four-month closure, West Coast fisherfolk had lost an estimated $97.5 million compared to the previous year. But the Blob added more trouble to the mix. The warm water pushed krill, humpback whales’ main grub, toward the coast and into crabbers’ territory. “There was this intense overlap between the Dungeness crab fishery and humpback whales that led to an enormous spike in humpback whale entanglements in crab-fishing gear,” Free said. 

California’s Dungeness harvest rebounded with a strong catch in late 2016 and 2017, but it continues to face closures and delays due to concerns about toxic algae and trapped whales — a stark contrast from the pre-Blob era, when there were very few closures, Free said. “It’s putting the fishery on sort of a precipice right now.”

The northeastern Pacific is not the only place where fisheries are feeling the heat. One place of particular concern is the Gulf of Maine — in the northwest Atlantic Ocean — which has experienced a marine heat wave every year since 2012, according to Kathy Mills, a fisheries ecologist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. 

The Gulf of Maine is like a sink with two faucets: one has cold water moving south from the Labrador Sea, the other has warm water from the tropics moving north along the Gulf Stream. But in recent years the Gulf Stream, a strong current that travels from the Caribbean up the East Coast and across the North Atlantic to Europe, has shifted northward, and the Labrador Current has gotten warmer, Mills said. “Instead of turning them on in the balance they used to be on, now we’re turning on the hot water more, and the cold water is not as cold as it used to be.” 

The result is that Maine lobsters, a bounty worth $725 million last year, have been growing faster and shedding their shells earlier. In the short term, the heat has been a boon for those who pluck them from the water, as it spurs growth and boosts lobster numbers. Business has been “booming,” Mills said. But if the trend continues, the critters might be forced to expend so much energy that they won’t be able consume enough food to reproduce or survive. 

“Now we’re getting to a point where the temperatures have been so warm for so long, and they are continuing to increase,” Mills said. “We might already be seeing signs that the population is turning off its growth trajectory because of temperature.” One of those signs is that lobster babies are becoming less prevalent. The heat appears to be a reason, among others, that lobster fisheries have already collapsed farther south, where the ocean is warmer, in southern New England.

There’s a silver lining, though: Lobsters that forage on cooler seabeds farther north, off the coast of Canada, might benefit from the heat; in fact, those populations have already been turning up in larger numbers. At the same time, “a whole suite” of species from warmer waters in the mid-Atlantic, such as longfin squid and black sea bass, both of which support multi-million-dollar commercial fisheries, have appeared a lot more frequently in the Gulf of Maine, where they used to be quite rare, said Mills. 

On the West Coast, a similar range shift is happening with California market squid — footlong, white-and-purple mollusks. (You may have tasted the mild meat of a market squid if you enjoy calamari.) Ever since the Blob, the squid have been seen as far north as Alaska, well beyond their usual habitat in the seas off Mexico and California. The heat wave has ended, but the squid are still hanging out up north. There is talk of opening a new fishery. 

“There are always going to be winners and losers,” Murawski said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The ocean is shattering heat records. Here’s what that means for fisheries. on Aug 11, 2023.

Pittsburgh, in its founding, was blessed and cursed with two abundant natural resources: free-flowing rivers and a nearby coal seam. Their presence made the city’s 20th-century status as a coal-fired, steel-making powerhouse possible. It also threw so much toxic smoke in the air that the town was once described as “hell with the lid off.”

Though air quality laws strengthened over the decades, pollution in Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County has remained high, ranking among the 25 worst metro areas in the United States for fine, easy-to-inhale particles known as PM2.5. Carbon pollution can often feel so big — borne on the air, causing ice caps to go black and melt. But it also causes problems much closer to home. Allegheny County’s inhabitants are among the top 1 percent in the nation for cancer risk, and the area is notorious for its high rates of asthma and heart issues, both of which, like the biggest emitters, are concentrated in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. These kinds of health problems can often seem both mysterious in origin and inescapable for the people who live with them. However, the January 2016 closure of the Shenango Coke Works coal-processing plant provided an astonishing example of how quickly those same communities can recover from the most dire impacts of pollution.

Shenango was a coke oven — a facility that heats coal to around 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit to produce coke, which is in turn used to make steel. Such operations are famously nasty particle polluters, emitting not only carbon dioxide but also contaminants like benzene, arsenic, lead, and mercury. 

The research, led by the New York University-Langone School of Medicine, used medical records from area hospitals to determine emergency room visits and hospitalizations for heart ailments in the three years preceding and following the closure of the plant. They found an astonishing 42 percent drop in  weekly emergency cardiovascular admissions after 2016. That immediate drop was followed by a downward trend that continued for three years. The study also found corresponding steep drops in sulfur dioxide — as high as 90 percent near the facility and 50 percent at a monitoring station six miles away. Arsenic levels plummeted by two-thirds.

Study co-author George Thurston compared the sudden improvement to the benefits of quitting smoking. “Over time the body recovers,” he said. “Instead of at an individual level, you’re really looking at a community healing after the removal of that exposure.”

To Thurston, and study lead author Wuyue Yu, this research shows that cutting carbon emissions offers more than an abstract, long-term, far-ranging result. It can actually save lives, almost immediately.

The study was prompted by years of local agitation about the plant. Shenango closed under intense community scrutiny and had paid the county millions of dollars in fines for multiple air quality violations. 

For years, an organization called Allegheny County Clean Air Now, or ACCAN, fought to rein in ongoing emissions at the plant, bringing in the Environmental Protection Agency, the Allegheny County health department, and Carnegie Mellon University to monitor the plant’s pattern of violations and the health consequences for its neighbors. ACCAN members served as community scientists, collecting data and taking the results to local officials, company shareholder meetings, and U.S. Steel. Even steelworkers from the plant occasionally attended meetings, expressing concern about the situation. Now, says ACCAN member Thaddeus Popovich (who was told that there’s a 40 to 50 percent likelihood that his own triple-bypass heart surgery was prompted by living half a mile from Shenango), he and his peers feel “vindicated.”

After plant’s closure, members of ACCAN gathered and set to paper their memories of life before Shenango shut down. In the resulting collection, called Living Downwind, people describe living with fiery and sulfurous smells and mysterious ailments. Angelo Taranto, an active ACCAN member, lost his wife to a host of respiratory problems he’s sure were caused by Shenango’s billowing smoke. “These personal situations really energize people to want to do something,” he said. 

After the closure, Taranto said, ACCAN encouraged the Allegheny County health department to pull together some retrospective health studies. In 2018, Dr. Deborah Gentile documented a 41.6 percent drop in uncontrolled pediatric asthma two years following Shenango’s shuttering.

“What we were hearing from county officials was that they didn’t think the closure would be a boon to county health,” Taranto said. “We heard similar things from the company itself and we knew that wasn’t true, and we knew that we couldn’t let those types of statements remain unchallenged.”

There’s still a long way to go for the greater Pittsburgh area, though. Matt Mehalik, the director of the Breathe Project — which used its resources to support ACCAN and connect them to researchers —  points to similar facilities, such as the Clairton coke oven and the Mon Valley steel works, as contributors to major public health problems. Clairton, 10 times as large as Shenango ever was, sits near a low-income, majority-Black neighborhood, and community organizations have worked for years to hold the facility accountable to the harm it has caused. Environmental advocates are currently urging the EPA to revoke Clairton’s permit. The EPA has also proposed a stricter standard for toxic coke oven emissions, which could increase pressure on plants like Clairton.

Mehalik is excited about a potential transition to less coal-reliant forms of steelmaking as a long-term solution for Allegheny County. “We know that an investment in the right type of green steelmaking is needed if there is a future of steelmaking in the Mon Valley,” he said. “Perpetuation of a polluting facility that comes at the expense of our county is highly problematic.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline After a Pittsburgh coal processing plant closed, ER visits plummeted on Aug 11, 2023.

Over thousands of years, the Mississippi River wended its way through the lush and dense wetlands of the Barataria Basin in what’s now south-central Louisiana. As it flowed south on its way to the sea, the river continually poured sediment into the basin, gifting it with fresh, nutrient-rich river mud that replenished the land and prevented coastal erosion. But 20th-century innovations like dams and levees stopped the river’s natural systems. This, in combination with recent sea-level rise and the constant battering of supercharged hurricane seasons, means the sea now gnaws steadily at the bottom of the state, causing gradual but catastrophic land loss. Since 1932, the Barataria has lost 17 percent of its land. It’s predicted to lose another 200-plus square miles in the next 20 years. 

To combat this, Louisiana officials broke ground Thursday on an ambitious, $2.92 billion project to divert sediment from the Mississippi River into the basin, mimicking the natural processes of the river’s flow in an attempt to save the state’s disappearing coast. The initiative is the first step in Louisiana’s $50 billion Coastal Master Plan, funded in part by a lawsuit settlement from the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. Though many laud the project, some worry it will harm existing wildlife in the basin, while taking a very long time to do its work.

The main event for the mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project will be “punching a hole in the levee” that prevents the Mississippi River from regularly overflowing its banks and changing course, said Bren Haase, the chair of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. The project involves installing a complex gate structure through the Mississippi River’s levee, allowing some water to flow into a channel, which will then empty out over the basin and wash into the sea, carrying mud, silt, and clay with it to create new land. It’ll take five years to build. Over 50 years, the diversion project should add 21 square miles of land to the basin, according to Haase. 

Supporters note the project will help restore a degraded ecosystem to some of its former glory. “There are large areas of open water where the marsh has just eroded and sunk away,” said Natalie Snider, associate vice president for the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Resilient Coasts and Watersheds program.

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Engineers factored sea-level rise projections of up to two and a half feet into the project’s design. But some scientists warn that sea-level rise is ultimately a wild card. There’s no knowing exactly how much, how or quickly, oceans will go up in the coming decades — and at some point, funding will likely run out for updates. For all the acres gained, they said, many will still be lost over time to the ravages of climate change. 

“It’s mitigation, not restoration,” said Rex Caffey, an associate professor of wetlands and coastal resources at Louisiana State University. “Slowing down the bleed.” 

The project has also been met with outcry from some of the people who make their living from the region’s fisheries. Louisiana has the most biorich fisheries  of any state, and some say the influx of freshwater from the project will decimate saltwater-loving stock in the basin, like oysters and shrimp.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Louisiana breaks ground on experimental project to rebuild lost wetlands on Aug 10, 2023.