Dec 21 What to do with all of your holiday trash By Jamie Leventhal Many Americans will toss their mountainous pile of holiday waste into the recycling bin, which can do more harm than good. Here's how to properly dispose of holiday wrappings, decorations and Christmas lights. Continue reading
Nov 23 Watch 3:34 How plogging turns an ordinary workout into a ‘treasure hunt’ By Julia Griffin After moving from a Swedish ski resort to Stockholm, Erik Ahlstrom noticed a lot of litter during his daily bicycle commute. So he decided to do something about it. In 2016, Ahlstrom began organizing groups to pick up trash while… Continue watching
Oct 11 Watch 8:07 Loss of Chinese export market drives new ideas for repurposing recyclables China’s decision to buy less recyclable material from the U.S. has prompted major questions about how we handle waste in America. What will we do with our abundance of plastic bottles and pizza boxes, if exporting them is no longer… Continue watching
Oct 05 Watch 7:03 Tiny Easter Island deals with giant trash problem By Jeffrey Brown, Mike Fritz Easter Island off the coast of Chile has a major trash problem. It’s near what’s known as a “trash vortex” in the middle of the South Pacific and floating waste is constantly washing ashore. Local officials estimate the growing population… Continue watching
Oct 04 Watch 8:05 Why your recyclables might have no place to go By Paul Solman, Sarah Clune Hartman Until this year, China had been America's -- and the world's -- number one recycling market. But China has shut its doors to plastic waste, which could result by 2030 in more than 100 million tons of trash with nowhere… Continue watching
Sep 26 Watch 9:36 Why it will take more than basic recycling to cut back on plastic By Amna Nawaz, Lorna Baldwin In the 70 years that plastic has been around, humans have created 9 billion tons of it -- most of which still exists. Are the existing strategies for tackling plastic pollution -- namely reusing and recycling -- really making any… Continue watching
Sep 25 Watch 6:02 Plastic lasts more than a lifetime, and that’s the problem By Amna Nawaz, Lorna Baldwin Around the world, waves of plastic are washing ashore and clogging landfills. Even though plastic pollution is now one of the largest environmental threats facing humans and animals, our appetite for the virtually indestructible material keeps growing. Amna Nawaz and… Continue watching
Apr 22 Watch 25:00 PBS NewsHour Weekend full episode April 22, 2018 By PBS News Hour On this edition for Sunday, April 22, Earth Day raises awareness about plastic pollution, and EPA chief Scott Pruitt comes under scrutiny for past conflicts of interest. Also, why African-American families are increasingly choosing homeschooling. Hari Sreenivasan anchors from New… Continue watching
Apr 22 Watch 3:40 How can individuals combat plastic pollution? By PBS News Hour The equivalent of one dump truck of plastic enters the ocean every minute, according to a study published by the World Economic Forum in 2016. On Earth Day, the Earth Day Network is asking people to reduce their consumption of… Continue watching
Mar 22 Great Pacific Garbage Patch weighs more than 43,000 cars and is much larger than we thought By Nsikan Akpan The Great Pacific Garbage Patch weighs 87,000 tons -- 16 times more than previous estimates -- and contains more than 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, according to a new analysis. Continue reading