Plastic waste flowing into the oceans is expected to nearly triple in volume in the next 20 years, while efforts to stem the tide have so far made barely a dent in the tsunami of waste, research shows.

By switching to plastic-free Apeel English cucumbers—which feature a plant-based, life-extending “peel”—the major retailer is eliminating the equivalent of 85 million plastic straws. 

Plastic pollution has become one the most pressing environmental problems, as rapidly increasing production of disposable plastic products is devouring the planet – leaving traces all over nature and natural habitats. For way too long, the debate around plastic pollution has been dominated by the conversation about how consumers can change their habits and improve waste sorting.

Stockholm and Bergen are among dozens of cities ditching trash cans in favor of vacuum chutes that woosh waste away through a series of underground pipes.

Plastic can be useful. Disposable plastic is almost always wasteful. Canadians, it’s your turn to make a difference and put an end to disposable, single-use plastics in Canada.The government of

Scientists show how re-engineering enzymes from a plastic eating bacteria, can provide us new avenues in plastic degradation.

What happens after you flush it?

Recycling is primarily an environmental issue, right? Wrong. In this modern age of disposability and rapid turn-over, recycling is no longer just about saving the planet, it's about feeding ever-growing economic demand. As Antony Funnell reports, the sheer enormity of the global recycling industry is challenging our understanding of terms like 'waste' and 'rubbish'.

Did Kim Jong-Un recycle your old laptop? That's the question hovering over last week’s news that Chinese authorities had recently broken up an e-waste smuggling ring responsible for delivering 72,000 metric tons of prohibited junk via North Korea to China’s shores in 2013.

Russell Leon works under the cover of darkness as part of a small crew sworn to secrecy. He is a bayakou, a manual laborer who empties the cesspools that collect deep bogs of human waste under Haiti’s back-yard latrines. In a country with no working sewers and roads that are often too ramshackle for tanker trucks, he is the sanitation infrastructure, charged with climbing down into concrete or earthen holes and scooping out the ordure with a plastic bucket.

The region—which makes up a large chunk of central Romania—is rich in gold, and a bunch of mining companies are keen to lock down their share of the action.

Coffee pods are really popular right now. Sales of single-serve coffee—the kind first popularized in the US by Keurig, and widely known as K-cups—have more than tripled since 2011, MarketWatch reported in November. As of a year ago, 13% of Americans drank a coffee made in a single-cup brewer each day, according to a survey by the National Coffee Association. K-Cups alone now account for more than a quarter of the US market for ground coffee.

We, as a nation, are amassing huge collections of dildos, pocket pussies, and butt plugs. But as sex toys are becoming more common, there is still no easy way to recycle them. Our increasing comfort with item-assisted sexual pleasure isn’t keeping up with our increasing desire to live sustainably. Sex toys are often made with a variety of specialized materials to make them soft and/or non-porous (which means they won’t trap bodily fluids).

Plastic trash has always been a huge environmental problem, especially when the ocean is involved. But few states have seen the impact of maritime pollution quite like Hawaii. Now, Hawaii has become the first state to officially implement a ban on plastic bags at checkout counters. "Being a marine state, perhaps, we are exposed more directly to the impacts of plastic pollution and the damage it does to our environment," Sierra Club of Hawaii director Robert Harris, said in 2012.

James Dyson invented the best vacuum cleaners. Now, with the M.V. Recyclone barge, he's applying the same ideas to sucking up plastic pollution from the world's rivers. We talked to him about his plans.

ts wares splayed in dazzlingly pink neat rows, this is the remote forest depot where thousands of phone booths go to die. Some 3,000 pink and yellow boxes are stored at the secluded site near Berlin - and they are being sold to the public for as little as £250 each.

Something could be missing from your next electric bill: a fee that electric customers have been paying for 31 years to fund a federal nuclear waste site that doesn't exist. The Energy Department will stop charging the fee by court order Friday. It's only a small percentage of most customers' bills, but adds up to $750 million a year. The fund now holds $37 billion.

A highly radioactive substance, emitting in some places radiation 100 times the permitted amount, has been discovered in the canton of Bern, Swiss media reporte

The Industrial Revolution changed modern life in an untold number of ways. Unfortunately, not all of them were positive, including the large-scale production of pollution. While it may not be instantly noticeable in some areas, that doesn’t change the fact that our world has been irreparably altered by all of the toxic substances that have now made it into our air, soil, and groundwater.

What refuse in India's streets reveals about America’s hidden trash problem