Waste

"When he was just 18 years old, Emmanuel Akatire traveled about 500 miles from his home in Zorko, Ghana, to Accra, the nation’s capital, to find the only work he could — sifting through vast piles of discarded electronics to find valuable scrap metal. A week’s worth of painstaking, often dangerous work, earns him the equivalent of about 60 U.S. dollars."

"The justices will consider whether a lower court improperly tossed approvals for a temporary storage facility in Texas."

"Russ Lewis has picked up some strange things along the coast of Long Beach Peninsula in Washington state over the years: Hot Wheels bicycle helmets with feather tufts, life-size plastic turkey decoys made for hunters, colorful squirt guns." ... "These items aren’t like the used fishing gear and beer cans that Lewis also finds tossed overboard by fishers or partygoers. They’re the detritus of commercial shipping containers lost in the open ocean."

"Residents of two south Florida counties are feuding over the proposed construction of a huge trash incineration plant that environmentalists say will subject thousands of people to toxic fumes and a risk of polluted drinking water."

"Using EPA funds, Colorado will deploy cutting edge technology for detecting methane emissions from its 80 landfills, making it a leader among states."

"An analysis of court records shows more than 180 citizens have faced criminal charges due to Chickasaw’s garbage policy. Experts fear the practice may not be isolated."

"Factory farms in Iowa produce 109 billion pounds of waste each year, according to a new report from Food and Water Watch about concentrated livestock operations in the U.S."

"Pope Francis on Sunday condemned the slaying of an environmental activist in Honduras, adding to a growing number of international voices that have raised concern over the killing."

“Paper or plastic” will no longer be a choice at grocery store checkout lines in California under a new law signed Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom that bans all plastic shopping bags."

"Damage to the natural world isn’t factored into the price of food. But some governments are experimenting with a new way of exposing the larger costs of what we eat."