Trash collected in a 2019 cleanup that removed 24,000 pounds (10,000 kilograms) of garbage from Mount Everest.
Narayan Maharjan/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Mountain tourism brings revenues to Nepal but leaves a mess behind. Local and international groups are offering new cleanup strategies.
Plastic litters a beach in Manila, Philippines.
Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
A central question remains unresolved in the draft treaty: Is plastic pollution basically a waste management problem, or can it be solved only with a cap on production?
Improper municipal solid waste management is one of the biggest environmental issues First Nations communities in Canada face.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito
The overarching goal of Indigenous cultural practices is to prevent the overconsumption of resources that underpins society’s throwaway culture.
Children and elderly people are vulnerable to air pollution. Photo by Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP.
from www,gettyimages.com
Air pollution accounts for many deaths in Africa yearly. However, this may change if people learn to protect themselves and hold their leaders accountable.
Children are among waste pickers exposed to hazards while working at the Olusosun landfill. Photo by: Lionel Healing/AFP.
from www,gettyimages.com
Employing children as waste pickers lowers costs but exposes them to hazards.
Floods have hit 27 of Nigeria’s 36 states this year.
Sodiq Adelakun/AFP via Getty Images
Nigeria must adopt a multi-pronged approach to address its flooding menace and minimise the effects.
Final year students of Geography, 2014 cohort, University of Nigeria Nsukka who participated in the research.
Nigerian students can support positive environmental behaviour if they learn about the impact of solid waste management on society.
Waste pickers at the Olusosan landfill work in a hazardous environment.
Lionel Healing/AFP
Lagos waste pickers were dissatisfied with their unhealthy working conditions, poverty and stigmatisation.
An Indian woman sorts reusable items from a landfill on the outskirts of New Delhi in March 2021. Trash pickers sometimes toil alongside paid municipal sanitation workers and provide a vital service to cities. Their subsistence work is put at risk by smart city technologies.
(AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
‘Smart’ solutions to urban solid waste are creating serious challenges for low-income women waste workers in India.
A garbage dump fire is seen smouldering across the bay from the city of Iqaluit on July 9, 2014.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Priority should be given to improving municipal solid waste management in First Nation communities because they currently lack financial resources, infrastructure and solid waste diversion programs.
Plastic debris on a beach on Lanai, a sparsely populated Hawaiian island.
Matthew Koller
An estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic waste enters the ocean each year – equivalent to dumping in a garbage truckload of it every minute. A new report calls on the US to help stem the deluge.
Debris near Lebanon, Tennessee, after tornadoes struck on the night of March 3, 2020, killing more than 20 people across the state.
AP Photo/Mark Humphrey
With the onset of spring come thunderstorms, and sometimes tornadoes. Learn how these systems form and why night tornadoes are especially deadly.
A biologist examines microplastics found in sea species at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research in Greece, Nov. 26, 2019.
Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP via Getty Images
As more and more plastic trash permeates the oceans, fragments are making their way into fish and shellfish – and potentially into humans.
Shutterstock
This automated approach can be used in any other city around the world, helping to reduce how much waste enters local waterways and reaches the ocean.
The informal sector plays a big role in waste management in Nigeria.
GettyImages
Waste management should be treated as an essential service, and in Nigeria that means recognising informal workers.
Plastic waste that started as packaging clogs tropical landfills.
apomares/Getty Images
To manage plastic wastes, nations first need to know what they have and where it’s coming from. A case study from Trinidad and Tobago shows how this approach can help identify solutions.
Solid waste in Mulago, Kampala, 2010. The city’s residents have found ways to recycle waste into energy.
SuSanA Secretariat/Flickr
Residents have come up with solutions to make usable products out of organic waste materials.
The Wheelabrator Waste to Energy Plant in Saugus, Massachusetts, has been burning trash to generate electricity since 1975.
Fletcher6/Wikimedia
Every year the US burns more than 34 million tons of garbage in incinerators. These plants are major pollution sources, and most are clustered in disadvantaged communities.
One use and done? Not always.
Peteruetz/Wikimedia
Many communities are banning single-use plastic shopping bags to reduce pollution, but a study in California shows that some consumers responded by purchasing more heavy plastic trash bags.
Where does it go from here?
spwidoff/Shutterstock.com
China, which once processed much of the world’s scrap, has slashed imports of “foreign garbage.” What can the US do to step up recycling at home?