The biggest per-capita tallies were in countries known for environmental consciousness, such as Norway and Denmark, with Britain fifth and US ninth on the UN list.

Pollution has turned the sacred waters into a lethal cocktail of industrial and human waste. Can the river be saved? Nearly 13,000ft up in the foothills of the Himalayas, Amod Panwar, an Indian hotel owner and devout Hindu, reverently places offerings of almonds, sultanas and a coconut into the water cascading from an icy cavern known as Gaumukh, the “cow’s mouth”.

After watching this video, no one should doubt Bill Gates’ commitment to raising awareness of the issues around sanitation and its importance to economic and social development in emerging markets. In the video, Gates drinks water made from human waste to prove that the technology developed by Janicki Bioenergy, a small engineering firm based outside of Seattle, works. Sanitation in developing countries is a huge problem. Poor waste disposal causes the deaths of hundreds...

A small mountain of Vancouver garbage rotting on the Manila waterfront has morphed into a diplomatic row as Philippine authorities demand Canada repatriate its “junk.”

It would serve Americans greatly to take a page out of Sweden’s book about recycling their waste.

Almost 40% of the world’s waste ends up in huge rubbish tips, mostly found near urban populations in poor countries, posing a serious threat to human health and the environment

Americans love their dogs, but they don’t always love to pick up after them. And that’s a problem. Dog feces left on the ground wash into waterways, sometimes carrying bacteria — including antibiotic-resistant strains — that can make people sick. Now scientists have developed a new genetic test to figure out how much dogs are contributing to this health concern, according to a report in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.

After U.S. and allied warplanes destroyed a key bridge carrying 15 oil and gas pipelines in northern Iraq during the 2003 conflict there, officials in Washington and Baghdad made its postwar reconstruction a top priority. But instead of spending two months to rebuild the span over the Tigris River at an estimated cost of $5 million, they decided for security reasons to bury the pipelines beneath it, at an estimated cost more than five times greater.

For a long time, Toronto has enjoyed a reputation as a safe, clean city — you know, that whole "New York run by the Swiss" idea. And frankly, we prided ourselves on being better than those who simply drop their garbage on the street.

The five major oceanic gyres make up about a quarter of the Earth’s surface. Underneath the apparent chaos of the world’s weather, the gyres turn like clockworks, driven by the sun and the Earth’s rotation. A bit of flotsam entering the current off the coast of Brazil might make it all the way to West Africa and then bob on back to where it started in about three years.

So much of the food we eat these days is encased in plastic. And behind it is a whole lot of research and innovation. We dive into some of the materials that keep food fresh and portable.

Since 2007, one of America's top exports to China has been... trash. Yes, trash. That includes everything from scrap metal and paper to cardboard and crumpled soda cans. The United States sold $10.8 billion worth of metal and paper scrap to China in 2011.

Will.i.Am introduces the EKOCYCLE Cube 3D printer. The EKOCYCLE Cube is not just another tool for making, it is a revolutionary tool for RE-making, and encourages and helps us to change the way we think about recycling by transforming post-consumer waste into new and beautiful objects.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.