Happy New Year’s Eve! Over the past two years, we’ve written periodically on the Paris Climate Accord — namely, what it is and the United States’ withdrawal from it. But what are states doing to uphold America’s commitments under the Paris Climate Accord? One course of...
Waste Management, Inc., announced it will no longer export plastic waste to poor countries outside the United States. Casella Waste Systems and several smaller companies have made similar announcements. In the wake of China’s 2017 ban on the import of mixed paper and mixed plastic, Waste...
The Global Climate Strikes that took place this month are the largest mass protests for action on climate change in history. Sparked by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, they included 2,500 events in 163 countries on all seven continents. An estimated 4 million people participated...
The Amazon rainforest is still burning. Hurricane Dorian looms toward Florida. The president skipped a G7 session on climate change because the issue is too niche. In the midst of all this, Newark, New Jersey, faces a water crisis: there’s lead in the drinking water. In...
3M, Chemours, DuPont, and Solvay have refused to pay for the statewide investigation and cleanup of PFAS chemicals in New Jersey. This development comes in defiance of an order from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), which requests five chemical manufacturing companies to...
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection ordered five chemical companies to provide detailed accounts of the production and discharge of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and to pay the cleanup costs of any associated contamination. The five companies — 3M, Chemours, Dow DuPont, DuPont,...
China is the world’s largest importer of recycled materials. In March 2018, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection enforced a new standard for the quality of recycled materials that China will purchase, which reduces contamination from 3 percent to 0.5 percent. As a result, the...
The Green New Deal. What is it? The Green New Deal is the name of House Resolution 109, which calls the federal government to take broad action against climate change. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY-14) and Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) introduced the resolution to the House of Representatives on...
How does the partial government shutdown impact the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)? The EPA inspects industrial sites for pollution violations and compliance with environmental law. The inspection of industrial sites, which include factories, plants, and refineries that deal with chemicals, oil, power, and water treatment, is...
Which do you think is the more eco-friendly Christmas tree — real or artificial? It’s a curious question, and the answer might surprise you. Last month Karen Zraick of the New York Times published an article that examines this very question. Here are the takeaways: It is...