plastic

California’s first plastic bag ban made things worse. Now it’s trying again

1:24pm September 25, 2024

California and other states — and some cities — have learned a lesson: Bans on plastic bags don’t always go as planned. In fact, California's original ban made things worse.

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Gloria Majiga-Kamoto, an activist from Malawi, was one of six recipients of the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize. Majiga-Kamoto has been campaigning to convince Malawi to implement a ban on thin plastics.

Whatever happened to the Malawian anti-plastic activist inspired by goats?

5:00pm August 29, 2022

by Julia Simon

Gloria Majiga-Kamoto, after seeing goats dying from eating plastic bags, took on the plastic industry and won the Goldman Environmental Prize. But Malawi's plastic industry still poses challenges.

Nuts and dried fruit items at a grocery store.

She tried to avoid plastic while grocery shopping for a week. Here's how it went

5:00am July 02, 2022

by Martha Bebinger

Worried about the proliferation of plastic trash in the environment and her own body, a journalist tried to shop plastic-free for 7 days. She found plastic in a lot of sneaky and surprising places.

A mother bison leads her calf through deep snow toward a road in Yellowstone National Park, Wyo., Feb. 20, 2021.

Environment

The federal government is planning to phase out single-use plastics at national parks

4:46am June 09, 2022

by Ayana Archie

More than 300 million tons of plastic are produced in the U.S. each year, with 14 million of them ending up in the ocean, according to the Department of Interior.

Photo of a variety of single-use, disposable plastic from food products arranged on a colorful backdrop and photographed from above.

22 tips for 2022: To cut back on plastic, you need to audit how much you use

3:46pm January 10, 2022

by Rebecca Davis

The first step in cutting back on plastic is understanding what you're using and how much of it. Do an audit of the plastics in your home to get a sense of how much plastic you use.

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Landfill workers bury all plastic except soda bottles and milk jugs at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon.

How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

8:17pm September 11, 2020

by Laura Sullivan

An NPR and PBS Frontline investigation reveals how the oil and gas industry used the promise of recycling to sell more plastic, even when they knew it would never work on a large scale.

Unilever products on display at a grocery in Beijing.

Environment

Unilever Vows To Reduce Plastic Packaging Use By 2025

4:03pm October 07, 2019

by Paolo Zialcita

Environmentalists praised the company, but also asked that it commit to more robust reforms to its plastic usage.

Kevin Carducci is part owner and plant manager of Omni Recycling. He says it costs the business $1 million a year to get rid of the plastics that can't be recycled.

More U.S. Towns Are Feeling The Pinch As Recycling Becomes Costlier

5:06pm August 21, 2019

by Rebecca Davis

The U.S. recycling industry is facing a quandary: Too much of the plastic we use can't be recycled, and taxpayers increasingly are on the hook for paying for all that trash to hit the landfills.

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Trash sent for recycling moves along a conveyor belt to be sorted at Waste Management's material recovery facility in Elkridge, Md. In 2018, China announced it would no longer buy most plastic waste from places like the United States.

U.S. Recycling Industry Is Struggling To Figure Out A Future Without China

8:10pm August 20, 2019

by Christopher Joyce

China is no longer taking the world's waste. The U.S. recycling industry is overwhelmed — it can't keep up with the plastic being churned out. This doesn't bode well for our plastic waste problem.

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A discarded plastic bottle lies on the beach at Sandy Hook, N.J. Packaging is the largest source of the plastic waste that now blankets our planet.

Plastics Or People? At Least 1 Of Them Has To Change To Clean Up Our Mess

9:27pm July 30, 2019

by Christopher Joyce

As consumers rebel against plastic waste, there's a growing question: Do we invent something people can toss without harming the environment or do we change people by giving them a chance to reuse?

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