"S.C. legislators are being asked to loosen state rules so a New Jersey company can build a $450 million garbage incinerator in jobs-hungry Chester County."

"The senators seek a moratorium on the facility's growth until investigations into birth defects in Kettleman City are completed."

"The Natural Resources Defense Council Tuesday announced its endorsement of the first certification program for electronics recycling."

"Mine operators are spreading serious amounts of coal combustion waste in W.Va. before the EPA declares it to be a hazardous material."

"A county board in central California approved the expansion of the largest toxic-waste dump in the West, despite concerns about an increase in birth defects in a nearby farming town."

"The owner of the highly polluted Kin-Buc Landfill in Edison has agreed to make the largest environmental clean-up contribution in the United States, $1.79 billion, as part of a bankruptcy settlement."

"DALLAS -- A southeast Texas industrial plant is scrapping plans to import and incinerate 20,000 tons of hazardous materials from Mexico, the facility's general manager said Wednesday."

"An expanded LG&E ash pond next to the Ohio River in Trimble County would have 100 foot tall walls and store more ash than burst across hundreds of acres in Tennessee last year."

"Tossing food scraps in your garbage can is a crime — at least in San Francisco. A brand-new city law requires residents to discard food waste in a separate bin."

"Leftover sludge from water treatment plants contains human waste, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals and whatever else washes into the sewer system. It's also used as fertilizer - which concerns some experts."

"In the woods on the northern edge of Scofieldtown Park are remnants of its days as a landfill. Containers lay strewn among the trees -- milk and 7UP bottles that haven't been used since the 1950s. More sinister are rusty paint cans and empty, decaying 55-gallon chemical drums."

"Developers of a controversial coal-fired power plant in Sevier County [Utah] now intend to transport and dispose of the proposed facility's fly ash in Carbon County and Tooele County landfills rather than close to home."

"An incinerator that burns hazardous material from Utah and around the West is facing more than $500,000 in penalties for environmental violations."

"Trafigura, an independent trading company, said Sunday that it had settled a long-running toxic dumping case, agreeing to pay £950 to each of as many as 30,000 residents of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, who said they were injured by a dump in 2006."

Furniture stores and architectural firms get a lot of samples – of fabric, tiles, and carpet. Those samples can pile up. Usually, they get thrown in the trash. But, in some cities, they are starting to make unused design samples available to artists and art teachers. The Environment Report's Julie Grant has more.