SLEMAN, Indonesia — A decade ago, Suyono’s neighbors found his antics collecting the goat and quail droppings outside his home verging on the strange. Today, it’s become the norm in…
CHITWAN, Nepal — One of Nepal’s biggest cities on the northwestern fringes of Chitwan National Park has been dumping its municipal waste in a forest that serves as an international…
NAIROBI ― Introduced to East Africa in 1891, in Zanzibar, to deal with domestic food waste, Indian house crows are now wreaking havoc in Kenya: killing native small birds, likely…
ALIAĞA, Türkiye — Every day, as dusk settles over the Aegean Sea, small vans ferrying workers homeward bustle in and out of Aliağa, a town nestled against lush, forested hills…
When eight-year-old Samin developed a fever a few days ago, his parents thought it was the seasonal flu. However, in two days, his condition worsened as he began to complain…
‘Out of sight, out of mind’ is a typical approach to waste and is one of the main reasons why the waste trade persists. The world discovered that toxic waste…
Mycologists believe the solution to some of our biggest pollution issues is under our feet. Humble fungi are now being used as meat alternatives, eco-friendly leather and to help break…
The newly formed government in Bangladesh is about to implement the existing law regarding plastic usage by strictly banning — initially — single-use plastic and, gradually, all possible plastic uses.…
Nguyen Thi Thanh Thuy, a waste worker from Binh Dinh, Vietnam, has worked in the waste collection industry for four decades. She has spent every day at the landfill –…
Plastic waste is a global problem, and the food sector is one of its main drivers. It only takes a quick visit to a supermarket to realize this: With the…
With a final round of negotiations on a global plastics treaty set to take place later this year in Busan, South Korea, an autopsy is premature, especially with the dynamics…
In Bangladesh, regular cycles of heat and rain have long cultivated dense populations of insects, and, by extension, the diseases they carry. Dengue fever was first confirmed in Bangladesh 60…
Driven to protect the planet one child, one tree and one recycled piece of plastic at a time, environmental advocate Doyinsola Ogunye is helping children, youth and women in Nigeria…
A disagreement between the Bangladesh government and the contractor China Machinery and Engineering Corp. (CMEC) has apparently stalled the implementation of the first-ever waste-to-power project in Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. This…
The Caribbean Basin is drowning in waste, especially plastic trash that’s contaminating rivers and the surrounding sea.
Biological solutions offer hope for tackling human-caused pollution — but only if government and industry significantly support getting those solutions out of the lab and into the real world.
PULAU SERIBU, Indonesia — Mustaghfirin unmoors his boat every day in the Thousand Islands archipelago, two hours’ sailing from the Jakarta coast, and sets off into a sea filled with…
As negotiators meet this week for the fourth round of global plastics treaty talks, scientists warn that both plant-based and petroleum-based plastics are toxic, with both needing tough regulation to protect public health.
Imagine a mother in a rural village drawing water from a well with her pitcher. This seemingly ordinary water holds her family's future — for drinking, cooking and bathing. But…
Nitrogen pollution from agriculture and human waste, along with other pollutants including plastics, could make clean water scarce in many watersheds worldwide, potentially contributing to declines in public health.
Historically, the leather industry has created large amounts of pollution and waste, while using huge amounts of water. But some companies are cleaning up their act, even as synthetic and biobased alternatives multiply.
BOGOR, Indonesia — At the age of 60, Siti Salamah started making changes at her family home in the city of Bogor, just south of Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital. “We always…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s freedom-of-information clearinghouse has ordered state-owned electricity utility PLN to disclose emissions data for some of the country’s biggest coal-fired power plants. The decision by the…
In 2016, Finland became the first country in the world to adopt a national circular economy road map, with the ambition to become a world leader in moving away from…
How do you identify microplastics in wastewater? When Wayne Parker started out researching the issue, the existing techniques were time-consuming and cumbersome. For a long time, optical or infrared microscopes…
In today’s industrialized world, avoiding plastic is virtually impossible. Every trip to the grocery store likely means coming home with food and household items packaged in plastic bottles, tubs and…
The early optimism that launched plastic treaty negotiations in 2022 was stymied at talks this month in Nairobi at which large petrostates stonewalled against creating a binding international treaty that would regulate cradle-to-grave plastics production.
The construction industry, with its intensive use of cement, is a climate killer. But an innovator in Mexico has found one solution: combining traditional adobe construction in a state-of-the art solar-powered public building.
In a remarkable fusion of tradition and innovation, a couple of Marma women and Manipuri men have taken the Bangladeshi fashion scene by storm with their unique creation: a sari…
With plastic pollution littering the planet, certification organizations are popping up to sell “plastic credits” to companies, allowing them to offset the plastic they make and use with equivalent plastic waste collected and reused. Critics are skeptical.
Research finds impacts by tiny plastic particles on marine plankton and microbes could disrupt carbon and nitrogen cycling in the world’s oceans, possibly putting Earth’s operating system and the planet’s habitability at risk.
The more we learn about plastic, the more we find it everywhere. Research has shown that tiny microplastic particles litter the world’s oceans and rivers, from the Arctic and Antarctic.…
