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)
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
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
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.
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
Research shows that when Americans are aware of the scale of food waste, and how much energy and water are used to produce food, they support measures to reduce the problem.
Prototype vehicle built with 3D printing – but is it green?
Tim Gutowski
Bio-based plastics made from natural sources break down more easily than conventional plastic, without producing toxic byproducts. But for this to happen they have to be composted, not buried in landfills.
A trash truck discharges solid waste at the South East Reserve Recovery Facility’s refuse storage pit in Long Beach, California, August 24, 2010.
AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes
Most Americans don’t want incinerators in their neighborhoods, so waste management companies are burning trash in other facilities such as cement kilns. Is this a sustainable way to deal with garbage?
Nairobi’s Dandora waste dumpsite – still in use after being declared a health hazard in 2001.
Reuters/Thomas Mukoya
Dr Dickson Amugsi, African Population and Health Research Center and Blessing Mberu, African Population and Health Research Center
Only a quarter of Nairobi’s solid waste reaches the main dumpsite east of the city. Piles of uncollected garbage are a common sight across the capital.
Research Scientist and Lecturer, Institute for Science, Technology, and Public Policy. Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University