Toxic Waste – No Fricking Fracking

Studies: Plastics and oceans – 4 articles

Futurity: DISCARDED COVID MASKS AND GLOVES ARE REALLY BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. When it comes to COVID-19 masks, gloves, and disinfectants, the transformation from protection to pollution happens quickly, but the damage can last for centuries.

Vox: Why 99% of ocean plastic pollution is “missing”. A lot of it is probably hiding in plain sight. All of this plastic consumption — and the world’s inadequacy at containing it — means an estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic end up in the ocean every year. It is remarkably difficult to track all of this plastic, but in 2019, a group of researchers affiliated with the Ocean Cleanup published a study about plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. They excavated plastic from it and, using what they found, made a model showing what is likely floating in each of the five (at least) ocean garbage patches around the world. They also estimated that what’s floating on the surface of the water accounts for only 1 percent of what we put into the ocean.

National Geographic: Plastic gets to the oceans through over 1,000 rivers. Scientists used to think 20 rivers at most carried most plastic into the oceans, but now they know it’s far more, complicating potential solutions. New research published today in Science Advances has turned that thinking on its head. Scientists found that 80 percent of plastic waste is distributed by more than 1,000 rivers, not simply 10 or 20. They also found that most of that waste is carried by small rivers that flow through densely populated urban areas, not the largest rivers.

CNN: ‘The ocean is our life-support system’: Kerstin Forsberg on why we must protect our seas. After finishing her degree, the Peruvian biologist began working on a sea turtle protection project in the north of the country. Two years later, in 2009, Forsberg founded “Planeta Océano,” an organization that aims to empower local communities to look after the ocean. Its work with giant manta rays led to Peru’s government granting the species legal protection.

Are Compostable Bags Really Compostable? What You Need to Know This Int’l Compost Awareness Week

Green Matters: Are Compostable Bags Really Compostable? What You Need to Know This Int’l Compost Awareness Week. May 2 through May 8, 2021 marks International Compost Awareness Week — an annual week-long educational initiative to get more people composting their food scraps. Composting is a fantastic way to reduce your environmental impact and become closer to zero waste, but there can be a lot of confusion when beginning your composting journey.

We have endless guides to composting on Green Matters, including exactly what composting is, how to build an indoor compost bin, how to build an outdoor backyard compost bin, how to prepare compost for gardening, and more. But when first starting out, many wonder if compostable bags are actually compostable, or if that’s just a marketing term.

So in honor of International Compost Awareness Week’s goal of educating people on composting, read on for everything you need to know about the difference between compostable and biodegradable bags, plus a few of the best truly compostable bags on the market.

End fracking exemptions, a threat to maternal and public health

StatNews: End fracking exemptions, a threat to maternal and public health.

The adoption of safe, clean, renewable energy is an essential element for sustaining the U.S. economy and maintaining the health of its citizens. There are many paths to these goals. Hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, is not one of them.

To protect communities across the country today — from the Santa Maria Basin in California to the Appalachian Mountains in northern New York — as well as future generations, the country must rapidly phase out harmful fracking.

Fracking involves injecting pressurized water mixed with chemicals and sand into shale formations to break up bedrock and release the oil they hold. Environmental pollutants caused by fracking are known risk factors for congenital heart defects, hormonal disruption, maternal stress, and preterm birth. Fracking rigs have become so abundant in the U.S. that their flares can now be seen from NASA satellites. An estimated 17 million Americans live within 1 mile of a fracking site.

Blowing up mountains to mine coal

Salon.com: We still blow up mountains to mine coal: Time to end the war on Appalachia. The dying coal industry’s last gasp is “mountaintop removal” mining — and it’s even worse than it sounds.

On Earth Day this year, as President Biden assembled world leaders to a climate summit to focus on a “clean energy future,” retired coal miner Chuck Nelson hunkered down in the green hills of West Virginia, recovering from a recent stroke and with one remaining kidney, as thousands of tons of explosives from mountaintop removal strip mining operations detonated nearby with a toxic haze of coal dust.

Yes, Greta (Thunberg), we still blow up mountains in the United States to mine deadly coal.

While coal mining has decreased dramatically in recent years, state permits for reckless mountaintop removal operations by absentee corporations, which involve only small numbers of non-union heavy equipment operators and explosives, in contrast to labor-intensive underground mines, continue to be doled out in central Appalachia in a desperate attempt to shake down the region for a final coal tattoo.

COMMENTARY: Cartons pave the way to fix struggling recycling system

Free Lance-Star: COMMENTARY: Cartons pave the way to fix struggling recycling system. SOME municipalities across the U.S. are struggling to sustain recycling programs that maximize the materials that can be placed in curbside bins. From New York to Washington State, Alabama to Utah, Arkansas to Arizona, and numerous points in between, localities have weighed trimming back their recycling efforts, underscoring broad-based dysfunction.

The Daily Climate, April 28, 2021

Articles include: lumber shortage; disabilities and natural disasters; California wildfire season; Study: cut methane emissions quickly; flooding in Michigan; climate vote in Senate; Study: poor communities affected by climate change; low carbon fuel standard; money to modernize grid; Fukushima; Ford making electric vehicles; Study: sea level rise and budgets.

The Daily Climate, April 26, 2021

Articles include: wood pellet loophole in Paris Accord; bike licensing and justice; hydrogen and the grid; California oil spillers and the law; jobs; US and China and Clean technology; electric trucks; Canada’s melting permafrost; Report: halting methane emissions.

DeSmogBlog, April 24, 2021

Articles include: Where Does All The Radioactive Fracking Waste Go?; The GOP Climate Push That Mostly Leaves Out Climate; Struggling to Make a Profit, Fracking Investors are Searching for the Exit; Oxford University Has Pledged to Divest from Fossil Fuels; The Greenwashing Files: Fossil Fuel Giants Accused of ‘Deceptive’ Advertising; Climate Disinformation Database: American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

Above the Fold – Children’s News, April 22, 2021

Articles include: Report: Lead in Pennsylvania water; tougher air pollution limits needed; Report: climate’s impact on children’s health and justice; Report: dogs and human fertility; Study: father’s drinking and children’s health; North Pole pollution; lead pipes in Buffalo, NY; climate change guide for kids; Study: forever chemicals and the immune system; school in Portland, OR, and munitions facility; PCBs in Vermont school; Study: tap water research; Study here and here: toxic nanotech graphene face masks.

There Are Massive Chemical Dumps In The Gulf We Know Almost Nothing About

Huffington Post: There Are Massive Chemical Dumps In The Gulf We Know Almost Nothing About. In the 1970s, the EPA allowed chemical companies to dump toxic waste into the deep sea. Now, oil giants are drilling right on top of it.

Seventy miles off the coast of Louisiana, among a maze of drilling platforms and seafloor pipelines, thousands of 55-gallon drums containing hazardous industrial chemicals litter a vast, dark swath of the ocean floor. They’ve been sitting there for nearly 50 years.

Charles McCreery was a few months into a new job as an oceanographer and water quality expert at the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management when he first learned of the dumping ground. It was 2014, and he was tasked with reviewing oil giant Shell’s exploration plans in an offshore leasing area known as Mississippi Canyon, in the north-central Gulf of Mexico. Deep in the document, he came across the company’s internal policy for steering clear of toxic waste barrels, and what to do should their operations puncture or disturb one.

“The content, and its toxicity, of each individual barrel is not known,” the Shell document reads. “Within the area there are/could be many hundreds of waste barrels. Many of the barrels may have released their contents over time.”