EarthTalk Q&A: Sustainable Living & Recycling Answers

It’s the age-old question, what’s better for the environment, cloth or disposable diapers…?

Sea turtles have long endured the pressures of hunting, intensive fishing practices and habitat degradation, including loss of nesting beaches due to human encroachment. In the last 20 years, marine turtles have also been the victims of a deadly tumor called Fibropapilloma

According to the San Francisco, California-based Bluewater Network, which wants to ban snowmobile use in national parks, 250,000 snowmobiles are operated in America’s park system each year, with some 60,000 snowmobiles zooming through Yellowstone National Park

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified many modern skin care, hair care and cosmetics ingredients as hazardous. Such ingredients can be absorbed into the body through the skin, and may be loaded with potential irritants, carcinogens

The National Pediculosis Association (NPA) advises consumers to be cautious with conventional lice treatments, including shampoos and lotions, since they contain toxic, and in some cases carcinogenic, pesticides. The NPA says that people with epilepsy, asthma, brain tumors

Determining how much rainforest land is protected worldwide depends on how you define “rainforest.” Researchers at the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, DC have identified three different types of rainforests. There are about 4.2 million square miles of tropical moist forest, of which just eight percent is protected

Having moles in your yard is not necessarily detrimental. According to Bill Adler, author of Outwitting Critters: A Humane Guide for Confronting Devious Animals and Winning, moles eat destructive creatures like Japanese beetles and grubs

The National Pediculosis Association (NPA) advises consumers to be cautious with conventional lice treatments, including shampoos and lotions, since they contain toxic, and in some cases carcinogenic, pesticides.

Unfortunately, most of the more than 750 million alkaline batteries sold each year to power our cameras, flashlights and Discmans are landfilled and incinerated, not recycled. The chemicals in these batteries