Just for a minute, think about how much of the plastic you use today will end up as trash. Drink bottles? Grocery bags? Food wrappers? If you live in the United States, it’ll probably add up to about ...

Imagine a world where the air is clean, the water is pure, and wildlife thrives in natural habitats untouched by human waste. Now, imagine the reality, especially as we approach World Conservation Day ...

Although the need for effective waste management has been recognized for decades, human and environmental health challenges associated with plastic waste are not only growing but also accelerating.

Recycling is not a myth — it’s a movement that’s keeping materials in use, creating jobs and protecting Wisconsin’s ...

In the 2008 Disney film Wall-E, a tiny robot finds himself alone on planet Earth, working to clean up a world decimated by trash and abandoned by humans who left it that way. Heartwarming as the film ...

Recycling polyolefin plastics is inefficient and costly because their strong bonds make them hard to break down and require tedious pre-sorting. The future of plastic recycling may soon get much less ...

Single-use plastic might just be the most insane act of collective self-harm humanity commits every single day. Each year, the United Nations Environment Programme estimates that we discard a ...

A large pile of plastic bottles and cans collected on a street corner in downtown Manhattan, New York. A large pile of plastic bottles and cans collected on a street corner in downtown Manhattan, New ...

Jan Dell is a former chemical engineer who has spent years telling an inconvenient truth about plastics. "So many people, they see the recyclable label, and they put it in the recycle bin," she said. ...

Less than 10% of plastic waste is recycled worldwide, data shows. For more than a decade, Courtney Williams and her family have lived in the shadow of the Wheelabrator waste-to-energy incinerator, ...

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Every week, millions of Americans toss their recyclables into a single bin, ...