Perhaps it’s not surprising that those who care for God’s creation take environmental issues seriously. But only in recent years have Sunday sermons and other religious services put green topics front and center.
When Survivor first aired in the summer of 2000, environmental groups cheered producers for choosing nature as the setting for such a high profile series. And by the time the series was only a year old, it was garnering green praise from all over, including from Australian environmental officials
Controversy over the benefits of recycling bubbled up in 1996 when columnist John Tierney posited in a New York Times Magazine article that “recycling is garbage.” “Mandatory recycling programs,” he wrote. ”
New cars are great, aren’t they? On top of looking all shiny and perfect, they also just smell new. It’s a unique odor, isn’t it? And it goes away after a few weeks, never to appear again. But it’s great while it lasts. Or is it?
Municipal leaders in Texas’ capital city, Austin, announced the formation of a new coalition of city governments and electric utilities united to lobby automakers to step up production of a new breed of plug-in hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles. These new vehicles would allow drivers to charge up their batteries via wall sockets overnight and make their entire round trip commutes to work the next day using only electricity–and no gas whatsoever.
A new law went into effect last week making Maine the first U.S. state to force manufacturers of televisions and computer monitors to pay for and handle the recycling of their own outdated equipment. Beyond saving money for the local taxpayers who usually bear the brunt of municipal recycling costs, the long-term aim of the law is to give manufacturers an economic incentive to design less-toxic and easier-to-recycle products.
Disposable dishware is ubiquitous in our modern “on-the-go” culture. That’s why nearly 100 billion plastic, paper and Styrofoam cups end up in American landfills and incinerators every year. Human health is the real loser when it comes to our consumption of such products, which are typically made from petroleum-based plastics, hazardous foam or chlorine-bleached virgin paper.
While it is true that real sea sponges have been in use since the Roman Empire, synthetic alternatives made primarily from wood pulp became commonplace by the middle of the 20th century when DuPont perfected the process of manufacturing them. Today most of the sponges we use are made from a combination of wood pulp (cellulose), sodium sulphate crystals, hemp fibers and chemical softeners.
The Onondaga Nation’s Lawsuit Seeks to Revive a Polluted River…
At a symposium marking the 35th anniversary of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week, six former agency heads–five Republicans and one Democrat–united in accusing the Bush administration of ignoring serious environmental threats, including global warming.
