By Adrian Mcdermott  Landfills are more than just dumping grounds. A fair bit of thought and effort goes into the designing of a landfill. The process begins with the selection of an appropriate site for the landfill. You cannot have a site where the water table is high, because this increases the risk of the groundwater […]

By Alex Mardikian It is important to recycle small items. Metal caps, lids, tops, and plastic caps are ubiquitous small items. They are recyclable.  Ensure that the caps of peanut butter bottles, sauce bottles, dry rub containers, etc. are attached to the plastic bottles.  Tetra-Pak boxes too have plastic caps. And the caps can be […]

As we continue to learn more about the potentially damaging ingredients in chemical sunscreens (namely oxybenzone, which has been shown to mimic hormones in the body, and retinyl palmitate, a skin irritant), it can be tempting to throw in the proverbial beach towel and make your own sunscreen with ingredients you know to be safe. […]

Summer 2018 will go down as the summer we said goodbye to unnecessary plastic waste. Starbucks committed to eliminating plastic straws in all locations by 2020, IKEA banned all single-use plastics from its stores, and entire cities (like Seattle) banned the use of plastic bags and straws. And now we have one more thing to […]

By Adrian Mcdermott  By reducing food waste in restaurants, not only do you save money you also reduce your business’s carbon footprint. In America, 70 million tons of food is wasted each year. Surveys show that nearly 5 out of 10 customers will pay a little more and patronize establishments that are making a conscious […]

By Alex Mardikian Recycling books and magazines is a good idea. Reusing these is an even better one. Do you know that each ton of recycled paper can save up to 3 cubic yards of space in landfill, 380 gallons of oil and save 17 trees from being cut down? It also saves 4000kilowatt of […]

Single-use plastic straws are quickly falling out of style as people recognize them for what they are: wasteful, unnecessary, and environmentally damaging. Since momentum built around the fact that single-use plastic straws play a major part in polluting our land and waterways because they aren’t recyclable, Seattle, Malibu, and the United Kingdom have banned them […]

Even those jaded by hurricanes have never seen anything like this. For the first time, a Category 4 hurricane slammed into the Florida Panhandle. And it’s bringing an onslaught of deadly hazards. “Unfortunately, this is a hurricane of the worst kind,” said Brock Long, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Here’s what makes Hurricane […]

By Adrian Mcdermott  In 2014, scientists from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in Boston succeeded in producing plastic using crab shells and cellulose obtained from wood flour. Now, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a biodegradable plastic, derived from crab shells and tree fibers. Plastic produced from fossil fuels does […]

If biodegradable, paper-based batteries created at Binghamton University, State University of New York, become a reality and gain mass acceptance, it will be a huge step towards the efforts for a clean and pollution free environment. Such batteries will greatly reduce pollution, particularly in places like Hawaii where land is at a premium, and landfills […]