As temperatures fall this winter, families across the United States can expect to pay significantly more to heat their homes. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), homes that use natural gas for heat can expect to average an additional $306 per typical-sized household, 41 percent more this winter compared with last year.

A single rifle shot last Tuesday morning signaled the end of a 15-year-old moratorium on bison hunting in Montana. The state legislature this year opened a three-month season on the animals, limiting the take to 50 lucky permit holders. More than six thousand applicants vied for the coveted permits, which were awarded via a lottery earlier in the year.

As part of the settlement of a class-action lawsuit, chemical maker DuPont is paying for a medical survey checking the health of as many as 60,000 residents of the Ohio River Valley near its Washington, West Virginia Teflon plant. Environmentalists are worried that workers and others nearby may have been exposed to unhealthy amounts of the chemical ammonium perfluorooctanoate, also known as C8, which the company uses in the production of its non-stick Teflon coating.

ARGONNE, ILLINOIS—The spinning drum didn’t look like much, but by sorting one form of scrap from another it was pointing the way to an important new frontier for recycling. Here on the grounds of the Argonne National Laboratories near Chicago, a pilot recycling plant is trying to convince cars to go the extra mile in donating their rusting carcasses to new products. The goal? The fully recycled automobile.

As originally hinted two months ago, Chinese government officials announced last week that the world’s most populous country will double its reliance on renewable energy sources by 2020. Currently China derives about 7 percent of its energy from renewable sources like hydro-electric, solar and wind power, but plans to derive 15 percent of its energy from these so-called alternatives within a decade and a half.