Group items tagged

Our team of scientists documented that more than 300 camels in the region around Dubai had died from eating humans' trash, accounting for 1 percent of dead camels evaluated in the region since 2008. Unlike other research that might examine animals in a laboratory, this was a field study with concentrations of plastic trash that currently exist in the environment. It is a real-world tragedy with ecologically relevant concentrations of trash.

Lauren is an Environmental Studies graduate from NYU and former Sustainability Manager at the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, and the amount of trash that she has produced over the past three years can fit inside of a 16 oz. mason jar. Lauren Singer is author of the Zero Waste blog, Trash is for Tossers and founder of organic cleaning product company, The Simply Co. Through her blog, she has empowered millions of readers to produce less waste by shopping package-free, making their own products and refusing plastic and single-use items.

In the past, sailors on whaling ships would carve whale teeth into works of art in a process called scrimshaw. These pieces would be brought home to loved ones as mementos of the voyage. Design incubator Studio Swine is attempting to recycle found materials and turn this aged art form into a more sustainable practice. In this short film, travel to remote parts of the ocean, where "the closest people are in a space station," and watch as the process of collecting ocean trash and transforming it into beautiful treasure unfolds.

Sweden is able to recycle 99% of their trash, some of which they burn. Why isn't this practiced in the United States?

Researchers led by Terra D. Barnes of Washington University discovered that their genetically-engineered mice stutter due to DNA defects in a humdrum "housekeeping" gene. This gene codes for a protein that simply places a "routing tag" on certain enzymes that shred cellular trash. The tag ensures that the shredding enzymes end up in chambers called lysosomes, basically the cell's garbage disposal. It's a mundane cellular activity, yet mutations in the same process in humans have also been linked to stuttering-a bizarrely specific condition for such a general gene. And, so far, scientists have no idea why the two are linked.

President Obama approved a bill on Monday banning soaps, toothpastes, and bodywashes that contain a harmful ingredient. That ingredient is microbeads - tiny, nearly impossible-to-dissolve plastic particles that enter water streams by the billions. The beads are typically found in cleansing products because they can be used as tiny scrubbers, helping to wipe away oil and dirt from the skin or teeth. A recent study found as many as 1.7 million of the tiny particles per square kilometer in the Great Lakes region's Lake Erie, where much of our trash ends up.

When plastic trash degrades in the ocean, it doesn't just go away: It becomes countless tiny particles, and little creatures called larvaceans sweep it up--and into the food chain.

In this project, students will be asked to actually measure the amount of waste that they generate in a week's time (identifying single-use plastic or not) and devise creative ways in which the can reduce, reuse and/or recycle to take an active role in their environment.