This week’s quote is from author Michael Pollan: “The garden suggests there might be a…

The post Earth911 Inspiration: Meet Nature Halfway appeared first on Earth911.

Up to 10 informants managed by the FBI were embedded in anti-pipeline resistance camps near the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation at the height of mass protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016. The new details about federal law enforcement surveillance of an Indigenous environmental movement were released as part of a legal fight between North Dakota and the federal government over who should pay for policing the pipeline fight. Until now, the existence of only one other federal informant in the camps had been confirmed. 

The FBI also regularly sent agents wearing civilian clothing into the camps, one former agent told Grist in an interview. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, operated undercover narcotics officers out of the reservation’s Prairie Knights Casino, where many pipeline opponents rented rooms, according to one of the depositions. 

The operations were part of a wider surveillance strategy that included drones, social media monitoring, and radio eavesdropping by an array of state, local, and federal agencies, according to attorneys’ interviews with law enforcement. The FBI infiltration fits into a longer history in the region. In the 1970s, the FBI infiltrated the highest levels of the American Indian Movement, or AIM. 

The Indigenous-led uprising against Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access oil pipeline drew thousands of people seeking to protect water, the climate, and Indigenous sovereignty. For seven months, participants protested to stop construction of the pipeline and were met by militarized law enforcement, at times facing tear gas, rubber bullets, and water hoses in below-freezing weather.

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After the pipeline was completed and demonstrators left, North Dakota sued the federal government for more than $38 million — the cost the state claims to have spent on police and other emergency responders, and for property and environmental damage. Central to North Dakota’s complaints are the existence of anti-pipeline camps on federal land managed by the Army Corps of Engineers. The state argues that by failing to enforce trespass laws on that land, the Army Corps allowed the camps to grow to up to 8,000 people and serve as a “safe haven” for those who participated in illegal activity during protests and caused property damage. 

In an effort to prove that the federal government failed to provide sufficient support, attorneys deposed officials leading several law enforcement agencies during the protests. The depositions provide unusually detailed information about the way that federal security agencies intervene in climate and Indigenous movements. 

Until the lawsuit, the existence of only one federal informant in the camps was known: Heath Harmon was working as an FBI informant when he entered into a romantic relationship with water protector Red Fawn Fallis. A judge eventually sentenced Fallis to nearly five years in prison after a gun went off when she was tackled by police during a protest. The gun belonged to Harmon. 

Manape LaMere, a member of the Bdewakantowan Isanti and Ihanktowan bands, who is also Winnebago Ho-chunk and spent months in the camps, said he and others anticipated the presence of FBI agents, because of the agency’s history. Camp security kicked out several suspected infiltrators. “We were already cynical, because we’ve had our heart broke before by our own relatives,” he explained.

“The culture of paranoia and fear created around informants and infiltration is so deleterious to social movements, because these movements for Indigenous people are typically based on kinship networks and forms of relationality,” said Nick Estes, a historian and member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe who spent time at the Standing Rock resistance camps and has extensively researched the infiltration of the AIM movement by the FBI. Beyond his relationship with Fallis, Harmon had close familial ties with community leaders and had participated in important ceremonies. Infiltration, Estes said, “turns relatives against relatives.”

Less widely known than the FBI’s undercover operations are those of the BIA, which serves as the primary police force on Standing Rock and other reservations. During the NoDAPL movement, the BIA had “a couple” of narcotics officers operating undercover at the Prairie Knights Casino, according to the deposition of Darren Cruzan, a member of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma who was the director of the BIA’s Office of Justice Services at the time.  

It’s not unusual for the BIA to use undercover officers in its drug busts. However, the intelligence collected by the Standing Rock undercovers went beyond narcotics. “It was part of our effort to gather intel on, you know, what was happening within the boundaries of the reservation and if there were any plans to move camps or add camps or those sorts of things,” Cruzan said.

A spokesperson for Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who oversees the BIA, also declined to comment. 

According to the deposition of Jacob O’Connell, the FBI’s supervisor for the western half of North Dakota during the Standing Rock protests, the FBI was infiltrating the NoDAPL movement weeks before the protests gained international media attention and attracted thousands. By August 16, 2016, the FBI had tasked at least one “confidential human source” with gathering information. The FBI eventually had five to 10 informants in the protest camps — “probably closer to 10,” said Bob Perry, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Minneapolis field office, which oversees operations in the Dakotas, in another deposition. The number of FBI informants at Standing Rock was first reported by the North Dakota Monitor.

According to Perry, FBI agents told recruits what to collect and what not to collect, saying, “We don’t want to know about constitutionally protected activity.” Perry added, “We would give them essentially a list: ‘Violence, potential violence, criminal activity.’ To some point it was health and safety as well, because, you know, we had an informant placed and in position where they could report on that.” 

The deposition of U.S. Marshal Paul Ward said that the FBI also sent agents into the camps undercover. O’Connell denied the claim. “There were no undercover agents used at all, ever.” He confirmed, however, that he and other agents did visit the camps routinely. For the first couple months of the protests, O’Connell himself arrived at the camps soon after dawn most days, wearing outdoorsy clothing from REI or Dick’s Sporting Goods. “Being plainclothes, we could kind of slink around and, you know, do what we had to do,” he said. O’Connell would chat with whomever he ran into. Although he sometimes handed out his card, he didn’t always identify himself as FBI. “If people didn’t ask, I didn’t tell them,” he said.  

He said two of the agents he worked with avoided confrontations with protesters, and Ward’s deposition indicates that the pair raised concerns with the U.S. marshal about the safety of entering the camps without local police knowing. Despite its efforts, the FBI uncovered no widespread criminal activity beyond personal drug use and “misdemeanor-type activity,” O’Connell said in his deposition. 

The U.S. Marshals Service, as well as Ward, declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation. A spokesperson for the FBI said the press office does not comment on litigation.

Infiltration wasn’t the only activity carried out by federal law enforcement. Customs and Border Protection responded to the protests with its MQ-9 Reaper drone, a model best known for remote airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, which was flying above the encampments by August 22, supplying video footage known as the “Bigpipe Feed.” The drone flew nearly 281 hours over six months, costing the agency $1.5 million. Customs and Border Protection declined a request for comment, citing the litigation.

The biggest beneficiary of federal law enforcement’s spending was Energy Transfer Partners. In fact, the company donated $15 million to North Dakota to help foot the bill for the state’s parallel efforts to quell the disruptions. During the protests, the company’s private security contractor, TigerSwan, coordinated with local law enforcement and passed along information collected by its own undercover and eavesdropping operations.

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Energy Transfer Partners also sought to influence the FBI. It was the FBI, however, that initiated its relationship with the company. In his deposition, O’Connell said he showed up at Energy Transfer Partners’ office within a day or two of beginning to investigate the movement and was soon meeting and communicating with executive vice president Joey Mahmoud.

At one point, Mahmoud pointed the FBI toward Indigenous activist and actor Dallas Goldtooth, saying that “he’s the ring leader making this violent,” according to an email an attorney described.

Throughout the protests, federal law enforcement officials pushed to obtain more resources to police the anti-pipeline movement. Perry wanted drones that could zoom in on faces and license plates, and O’Connell thought the FBI should investigate crowd-sourced funding, which could have ties to North Korea, he claimed in his deposition. Both requests were denied.

O’Connell clarified that he was more concerned about China or Russia than North Korea, and it was not just state actors that worried him. “If somebody like George Soros or some of these other well-heeled activists are trying to disrupt things in my turf, I want to know what’s going on,” he explained, referring to the billionaire philanthropist, who conspiracists theorize controls progressive causes.

To the federal law enforcement officials working on the ground at Standing Rock, there was no reason they shouldn’t be able to use all the resources at the federal government’s disposal to confront this latest Indigenous uprising.

“That shit should have been crushed like immediately,” O’Connell said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline FBI sent several informants to Standing Rock protests, court documents show on Mar 15, 2024.

A common “old world” tree, European beech can be found across Europe — from southern Scandinavia and Spain to Sicily and northwest Turkey.

A new study by an international team of researchers has found that the summer solstice triggers synchronized beech tree reproduction all over the continent, influencing ecosystem functions.

“We got inspired by a recent Science paper where researchers from Switzerland found that the effects of temperature on leaf senescence switch at the summer solstice. The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, and happens at the same time anywhere in the Hemisphere,” said Dr. Valentin Journé, lead author of the analysis and a postdoctoral researcher at Poland’s Adam Mickiewcz University, in a press release from University of Liverpool.

The researchers examined the relationships between the seed production of perennials like the European beech and weather patterns, as well as looked at how trees synchronize their reproduction across thousands of miles.

Earlier research by the team had revealed that an external factor like weather triggered the synchrony, but the mystery remained as to how the beech — which grows in highly diverse climates —  carried this out.

The team looked at small changes in the beech trees’ temperature responses and concluded that the summer solstice was the trigger.

“A celestial cue that occurs simultaneously across the entire hemisphere is the longest day (the summer solstice),” the authors wrote in the study. “European beech abruptly opens its temperature-sensing window on the solstice, and hence widely separated populations all start responding to weather signals in the same week. This celestial ‘starting gun’ generates ecological events with high spatial synchrony across the continent.”

The study, “Summer solstice orchestrates the subcontinental-scale synchrony of mast seeding,” was published in the journal Nature Plants.

“The sharp response of beech trees is just remarkable. Once the day starts to shorten after the summer solstice, the temperature sensing-window opens simultaneously, all across Europe,” said Jessie Foest, co-author of the study and a Ph.D. researcher in the Department of Geography at University of Liverpool, in the press release. “What’s truly jaw-dropping is that the change in day length that the trees are able to detect is really small – we are talking about a few minutes over a week. Apparently, trees are able to recognise the difference.”

Many perennials only reproduce every few years in order to build up resources and produce an abundance of seed. Ecosystems are greatly affected by the European beech’s wide-ranging, coordinated annual seed production.

“Such large-scale regional synchronisation of seed production by trees has important consequences for ecosystems. Large-seeding years result in a pulse of resources for wildlife, while reproductive failures result in famines for seed-eating animals. When this variation is synchronised at sub-continental scales the consequences include far-reaching disruptions in food webs, including rodent outbreaks, migration of ungulates and birds, and spikes in wildlife-borne human diseases,” the press release said.

The post Summer Solstice Triggers Mass, Synchronized European Beech Tree Reproduction, Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

People living near plants that use ethylene oxide to sterilize medical equipment have for years pressured regulators to crack down on their toxic emissions. Residents in communities from Laredo, Texas, to Willowbrook, Illinois have tried to shut these facilities down, challenged them in court, and fought for air sampling studies to measure their exposure to the carcinogen. 

The Environmental Protection Agency has finally taken notice.

Today the agency finalized new regulations that will require dozens of medical sterilization companies to adopt procedures and technologies that it claims will reduce emissions of the toxic chemical by 90 percent. The rule will take effect within two to three years, a longer timeline than advocates of the change hoped for. Still, regulators and community advocates alike hailed the change.

“We have followed the science and listened to communities to fulfill our responsibility to safeguard public health from this pollution – including the health of children, who are particularly vulnerable to carcinogens early in life,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a press release.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, more than 50 percent of the nation’s medical equipment is sterilized using ethylene oxide. The nondescript buildings where this fumigation occurs came under scrutiny in 2016, after the EPA revised its risk assessment of the chemical, finding it 30 percent more toxic to adults and 60 percent more toxic to children than previously known. Over the years, studies have linked exposure to the chemical to cancers of the lungs, breasts, and lymph nodes.

The medical sterilization industry has recently warned that too-stringent regulations risk disrupting the supply of medical equipment.

“The industry supports updated standards while ensuring the technology patients rely on around the clock is sterile and well-supplied,” wrote the Advanced Medical Technology Association, a trade group, in a February press release.

After the agency published a 2019 analysis indicating unusually high levels of cancer risk near sterilizers, people around the country rallied against the facilities in their communities, with a Chicago suburb even managing to shut one down. Federal data indicate that more than 96 of these businesses operate in 32 states and Puerto Rico and are concentrated near Latino communities. 

Marvin Brown, an attorney at Earthjustice who advocated for stronger oversight of toxic emissions from commercial sterilizers, applauded the new rule, noting that EPA regulations were last revised in 1994, long before the agency was aware of the true risk of ethylene oxide.

“Overall it’s definitely a victory for our clients in terms of getting EPA to finally revise and increase regulations on an industry that’s really been operating with a lack of controls for the past 30 years,” he told Grist in an interview.

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The rule will rely upon several measures to achieve an estimated 90 percent reduction in toxic emissions. It requires companies to install air monitors inside their facilities to continuously track the level of ethylene oxide, and report their results to the EPA on a quarterly basis. Brown considers these continuous monitoring systems important because they capture pollutants escaping through leaks and cracks in the sterilization chambers, providing a more comprehensive assessment of the facility’s emissions.

The rule also requires both large and small sterilizers to install “permanent total enclosures,” which creates negative pressure in a building, preventing air from escaping. Instead of being released into the atmosphere and putting nearby residents at risk, any emissions are routed to a device that burns them.

But for all its benefits, Brown said, the new regulation leaves out several important protections residents and advocates fought for. The EPA pushed back the rule’s implementation from 18 months for all sterilizers to 2 years for large facilities and 3 years for smaller ones, a change Brown attributed to industry pressure. The decision will come as a disappointment, he said, to residents who hoped for more immediate relief. 

Notably, the new regulations do not require companies to monitor the air near their facilities, making it difficult for communities to assess the concentrations of ethylene oxide near their homes. The agency has argued that such a provision is excessive given the new monitoring requirements inside of facilities, but advocates of the change note that internal monitors don’t capture leaks that happen outdoors, such as from trucks carrying newly sterilized equipment. 

Ethylene oxide emissions from the warehouses where medical equipment is stored after sterilization are a growing concern. After fumigation, these items can carry traces of the chemical that evaporate for days or weeks afterwards. Officials in Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division found that this “offgassing” can create substantial concentrations of the chemical in the air, and a recent Grist investigation revealed that dozens of workers at one warehouse in Lithia Springs experienced nausea, headaches, rashes, and seizures after being exposed to these fumes on the job. The EPA’s new regulations do not cover such emissions, an omission Brown called “unfortunate.” 

“There’s still a lot more work to be done,” he said of the new rule. “But this is a good step in terms of stricter emission controls, and new emission controls that did not exist before.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline EPA finally cracks down on the carcinogen used to sterilize medical equipment on Mar 14, 2024.

According to a new report by European scientists, plastics — from food packaging to furniture, clothing and medical equipment — contain thousands more chemicals than environmental agencies had previously estimated, raising concerns about consumer safety and pollution, reported Reuters.

More than 13,000 plastic chemicals had been identified by the United Nations Environment Programme, but the new report by PlastChem revealed more than 16,000 — more than 4,200 of which are “of concern” because they have been found to be hazardous to the environment and human health. According to the report, less than one percent may be categorized as “non-hazardous.”

“Chemicals are a central aspect of the plastics issue. Although there is a wealth of scientific information on plastic chemicals and polymers to inform policymakers, implementing this evidence is challenging because information is scattered and not easily accessible,” PlastChem said.

The report comes as governments work on the world’s first global plastics pollution treaty to tackle the 440.9 million tons of plastic waste produced annually, Reuters reported.

“To robustly solve plastic pollution, you actually have to look at the full life cycle of plastics and you have to address the chemicals issue,” said co-author of the report Jane Muncke, who is managing director of Switzerland’s Food Packaging Forum, as reported by Reuters.

One of the biggest concerns with the many toxic chemicals found in plastics is that they can leach into food and water, potentially causing health problems like heart disease and fertility issues.

“It is now well established that many phthalates are endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Some phthalates have been banned in Europe and other regions. Further, UV-328, due to its persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic properties has been added to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2023,” the report said. “At the dawn of the plastic age, scientists were unaware of the toxicological and environmental impacts of using additives in plastics. Their work to make plastic durable is essentially what made plastics highly useful, but also persistent and toxic.”

The report’s authors pointed out that attempting to tackle plastic waste through reuse and recycling isn’t enough — there needs to be more transparency when it comes to chemicals like processing aids, additives and impurities, Reuters reported.

Contributing to the issue is that the fundamental chemical identity of a quarter of plastics is unknown, the report said.

“At the core of the problem is the chemical complexity of plastics,” Wagner said, as reported by Reuters. “Often producers don’t really know which kind of chemicals they have in their products and that comes from very complex value chains.”

International regulations are in place for just six percent of plastics chemicals, something that could be addressed in a plastics treaty. Next month, negotiations will resume in Ottawa, Canada, with the goal of having a finalized treaty in December.

“Addressing plastic chemicals and polymers of concern comprehensively is expected to result in substantial benefits for the environment and human health, promote innovation into safer plastic chemicals, material, and products as well as support a transition to a non-toxic, circular economy,” the report said. “Since no country has the capacity to address the transboundary issue of plastic chemicals and polymers individually, the state of the science implies that a collective global response is most appropriate to mitigate environmental and health impacts. Adopting evidence-based policies that prioritize chemical safety and sustainability will provide a pathway towards a safe and sustainable future.”

The post Plastics Contain Thousands More Chemicals Than Previously Thought, Report Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

With demand for fossil fuels expected to decline as the world shifts toward electric vehicles and renewable energy, Big Oil is in the midst of an enormous pivot to plastic production. And taxpayers are helping them.

Petrochemical companies like Shell and Exxon Mobil have received nearly $9 billion in state and local tax breaks since 2012 to build or expand 50 plastics manufacturing facilities, according to a report the Environmental Integrity Project, or EIP, released today. Much of that activity occurred along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana, often alongside marginalized communities. What’s more, 84 percent of the operations released more air pollutants than allowed during the past three years, despite their promises to protect public health and the environment, the nonprofit found.  

“Taxpayer subsidies are helping to fund dangerous and often illegal air pollution in communities of color,” Alexandra Shaykevich, EIP’s research manager and a co-author of the report, told Grist. She said the manufacturers should be held accountable for their environmental impact and those public funds redirected to beneficial projects like improving public schools. “If a company is breaking the law” she added, “it shouldn’t get taxpayer money.”

EIP examined 50 of the country’s 108 plastics plants, focusing only on those that have been built or expanded their production capacity since 2012. These facilities make the basic building blocks of all plastic — fossil fuel-derived substances like ethylene and propylene — that can be combined with other chemicals to create common polymers: polyethylene, for example, used in shampoo bottles and milk jugs, or polyvinyl chloride, used in pipes and window frames.

Demand for these substances is expected to surge in the coming years. The world produced 460 million metric tons of plastic in 2023, and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development expects that number to reach more than 1.2 billion tons by midcentury if current growth trends continue. Recycling is unlikely to keep pace — to date, less than 10 percent of goods made with plastic has been turned into new products; the rest has been dumped into landfills, littered into the environment, or burned.

So why subsidize making more? In many cases, local and state officials offer tax breaks with the idea that new or expanded manufacturing will foster economic development. For example, a Louisiana program highlighted by EIP exempted manufacturers from 80 to 100 percent of all local taxes for 10 years and favored industrial applicants that promised to create or retain jobs. Since 2013, the program has subsidized a Dow petrochemical facility in Iberville Parish, Louisiana, with at least $230 million in tax breaks. A program in Texas discounted property taxes for petrochemical companies if they employed at least 10 people in rural areas or 25 in other areas.

It’s not clear whether the communities have seen any economic benefits — analyses from environmental groups suggest that new jobs have not materialized, or have come at a huge expense to local taxpayers by siphoning funds from schools, parks, roads, and other infrastructure. According to the nonprofit Together Louisiana, for example, every job the state’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program created cost the public more than half a million dollars. Another report, published last year by the nonprofit Ohio River Valley Institute, found that a Shell-owned plastics plant in Beaver County had virtually no impact on job growth and poverty reduction. 

“The truth of the matter is we don’t benefit from these industries. They don’t hire local people. And they don’t pay taxes,” Roishetta Ozane, a resident of southwest Louisiana, told EIP. 

What is clear, however, is that inviting new and bigger petrochemical facilities into an area brings significant health and environmental consequences. 

As part of their routine operations, the plastic plants EIP analyzed release tens of millions of pounds of ozone-producing nitrogen oxide, respiratory irritants called volatile organic compounds, and carcinogens like benzene and vinyl chloride every year. That’s only the start, because facilities often do not report emissions from equipment failures, chronic leaks, and accidents — all of which are disturbingly common.

Indeed, EIP found evidence of more than 1,200 breakdowns, fires, explosions, and other accidents over the past five years at 94 percent of the facilities it analyzed. These events frequently released more air pollution than allowed under the facilities’ permits — and lax reporting requirements often kept nearby communities from finding out until days or weeks later. 

Rather than heavily fining these facilities, EIP found that regulators often treated them gently — either by issuing warning letters or by granting higher pollution permits. State environmental agencies have since 2012 bumped up those limits for one-third of the 50 plants that EIP analyzed.

“It’s outrageous, and it’s been going on for the 25 years that I’ve been doing this work,” said Anne Rolfes, director of the nonprofit Louisiana Bucket Brigade. “There’s this well-worn path toward petrochemicals in our state, and we’re so deep in those tracks that our elected officials aren’t even trying to drive out of them.” 

As EIP notes, the plastics plants in question are often alongside schools, playgrounds, athletic fields, homes, and other public places. They tend to be sited near marginalized communities with underfunded schools and services. Of the nearly 600,000 people living within three miles of the plastic plants analyzed by EIP, more than two-thirds are people of color. Many of these people, like those in the industrialized corridor of southwest Louisiana known as Cancer Alley, face far greater risks of cancer and other diseases than the national average.

The EIP report includes several examples of plastic plants falling short of their promises to be ”a positive influence” and to “meet or exceed all environmental regulations,” as chemical company Indorama put it in a 2016 brochure. Between 2016 and 2022, state and local regulators approved at least $73 million in tax breaks for Indorama to restart a decommissioned plastics plant in southwest Louisiana. Once running, the plant violated its state pollution permit and failed to hire the workers it promised to. Several accidents released tens of thousands of pounds of hazardous emissions and injuries to two employees. The state environmental agency sent Indorama 13 warning letters.

Indorama declined to comment, as did 14 of the 17 other companies Grist contacted. The others — Exxon Mobil, Chevron Phillips Chemical, and Westlake Corporation — would not respond to EIP’s findings but said they strive to protect public health and the environment.

The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality also did not respond to a request for comment. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said it would not comment because it had not yet reviewed the report. A spokesperson for Louisiana’s economic development agency said that “double-counting of some financial data” from its industrial tax exemption program by EIP “suggests a lack of academic rigor and discredits the entire analysis.” The agency did not elaborate on what data it believed was double-counted.

To mitigate pollution from plastics facilities, EIP is calling for stricter air emissions standards and better enforcement of the federal Clean Air Act. Rather than telling communities about “emission events” after they’ve happened, Shaykevich said, pollution data should be shared publicly in real time. “It does folks very little good to be notified two weeks after” an incident, she told Grist.

Some of these reforms could be coming. The federal Environmental Protection Agency is considering rules that would reduce hazardous air pollution from chemical plants, including ethylene oxide, benzene, 1,3-butadiene, and vinyl chloride. Under the proposal, industrial facilities would have to monitor concentrations of these pollutants “at the fenceline,” meaning at their property lines, and the EPA would make the monitoring data available online. Pollution levels above a certain threshold would require facility operators to fix the problem.

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The EPA is expected to finalize the rules later this year. EIP estimates they would affect about half of the facilities studied in its report.

EIP is also calling for a dramatic reduction in public funding for plastics manufacturers. While some plastic items — like medical devices or contact lenses — are clearly useful, the organization says subsidies to produce them should be tied to environmental performance. “If companies can’t comply” with their permits, “they should be forced to reimburse taxpayers,” Shaykevich told reporters during a press conference on Thursday. 

Other types of plastic production, she added, aren’t worth the trouble they cause. Nonessential, single-use items including bags, bottles, utensils, and packaging make up some 40 percent  of plastic production and are virtually impossible to recycle. “We don’t think it’s OK to offer taxpayer support for single-use plastics,” Shaykevich told Grist. Such things, like the money that subsidizes them, are too often just thrown away.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Your tax dollars may be funding the expansion of the plastics industry on Mar 14, 2024.

In the past, except for people who lived in a few warm-climate coastal communities, hardly…

The post Hurricanes 101: Preparing For The Power Of Extreme Weather appeared first on Earth911.

This project is perfect for those who love gardening but are short on space. With…

The post Unlock Your Limited Garden Space With A DIY Reclaimed Wood Wall Garden appeared first on Earth911.