Wastes


How Your City Can Tackle Food Waste, Too

How Your City Can Tackle Food Waste, Too

Food waste is a bigger conversation than that spinach-gone-bad in the back of your fridge. Food waste is a massive, systematic problem, and cities are finally doing something about it.

Turkey Grease: How Thanksgiving Grease Can Cause Environmental Havoc

Turkey Grease: How the Thanksgiving Feast Can Cause Environmental Havoc

This Thanksgiving, families across the country will be filling their bellies with good turkey—but they’ll also be clogging their drains with grease. Here are some ways to avoid “fatbergs” before they damage your drains and cause bigger environmental issues.

Food Waste Initiative: The What, When, and How of a New, American Food Waste Solution

Food Waste Initiative: The What, When, and How of a New, American Food Waste Solution

As of Oct. 30, the Winning on Reducing Food Waste Initiative launched by three federal agencies is making major strides in the food industry to address the widespread issue of wasted food products. Here’s what it’s all about.

Gerber and TerraCycle Launch Baby Food Recycling Program

Gerber and TerraCycle Launch Baby Food Recycling Program

Now, that hard-to-recycle baby food packaging from Gerber can be put to good use. Through TerraCycle’s mail-in system, consumers can give new life to baby food packaging.

Solving the Plastic Pollution Problem: Ocean Cleanup Interceptor Releases a Floating Solution

Solving the Plastic Pollution Problem: Ocean Cleanup Interceptor Releases a Floating Solution

Dutch non-profit called The Ocean Cleanup just launched the Interceptor—a kind of autonomous, water vacuum to collect trash and plastic before it reaches the ocean. This massive cleanup effort is part of its overall goal of lessening plastic waste worldwide.

OSHA Makes Alliance with NWRA and SWANA for a Better Solid Waste Industry

OSHA Makes Alliance with NWRA and SWANA for a Better Solid Waste Industry

As of September 27, OSHA signed an alliance with the National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA) and Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA). The goal? To better protect workers in the waste industry.

EPA Issues Violation against San Francisco, but Local Officials Deny the Claims

EPA Issues Violation against San Francisco, but Local Officials Deny the Claims

Trump’s EPA recently accused San Francisco of violating the Clean Water Act. Not only do local officials deny the claims, but they said it’s a fraudulent attack from Trump on the Democratic California state.

EPA Announces Funding for Waterway Trash Prevention Projects for the Gulf

EPA Announces Funding for Waterway Trash Prevention Projects for the Gulf

Applications for funding for waterway trash reduction projects for the Gulf of Mexico are due no later than November 22, 2019.



The Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act: Cleaning Up Narragansett Bay

The Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act Cleaning Up Narragansett Bay

Last week, the EPA announced a WIFIA loan to the Narragansett Bay Commission (NBC) to help reduce pollutant discharges into Narragansett Bay. The first of its kind in New England, the loan will help protect public health and ecosystems as a part of the Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Phase IIIA Facilities Project.

Tyson Poultry Company Facing Significant Fines for Killing 175,000 fish

Tyson Poultry Company Facing Significant Fines

After Tyson’s Alabama facility spilled treated wastewater into the Black Warrior River, thousands of fish died as a result. Now, the river is practically lifeless.

5 Million Gallons of Wastewater Overflow into Maryland Creek

5.22 million gallons of sewer water overflows into Maryland's Broad Creek.

EPA Releases Cleanup Plan For Former General Electric Plant Site in New York

The proposal would implement natural attenuation in a contaminated state superfund site that originates in Auburn, New York.

EPA Proposes Changes to Environmental Protection Requirements for Utility Coal Ash Sites

EPA Proposes Changes to Environmental Protection Requirements for Utility Coal Ash Sites

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing changes related to utility coal as sites such as eliminating the tonnage limit, merging onsite and offsite coal ash definitions and increasing transparency for utility groundwater filings.

NRC Board to Hold Hearings on Texas Storage Proposal

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will hear oral arguments on petitions for an adjudicatory hearing on Interim Storage Partners' license application for an interim facility to store spent nuclear fuel in Andrews County, Texas.

DOE Proposes to Redefine High-Level Radioactive Waste

According to DOE, the revised interpretation, "if implemented through subsequent actions," could provide a range of benefits to both DOE and the public.

Pennsylvania DEP Issues Draft Denial of Waste Permit

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection announced May 15 it has issued a Notice of Intent to Deny to Elcon Recycling Services, LLC for its Phase II Part B commercial hazardous waste treatment and storage facility application, based on a number of outstanding deficiencies that remain unaddressed to its satisfaction.

EPA Adds WV Site to Superfund List

The site has seen significant contamination issues going back to the 1980s, when elevated levels of polychlorinated biphenyls were first discovered by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection in the soil near the old Shaffer Equipment Company location.

ILO Says Urgent Action Needed to Better Manage E-Waste

Representatives of governments and workers' and employers' organizations agreed at an April 9-11 meeting at the ILO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, that governments should increase and promote investments in waste management infrastructure and systems at all levels to manage the rapidly growing flows of e-waste.

NYC Mayor Ending City's Purchase of Single-Use Plastics

The mayor's executive order will reduce the city's carbon emissions by approximately 500 tons per year, decrease plastic pollution, and reduce risks to wildlife, with the city estimating it will reduce the purchase of single-use plastics by city agencies by 95 percent.

Virginia Governor Signs Coal Ash Cleanup Bills

"The potential risks to public health and water quality posed by unlined coal ash ponds in the Commonwealth are far too great for us to continue with business as usual," said Gov. Ralph Northam. "This historic, bipartisan effort sets a standard for what we can achieve when we work together, across party lines, in the best interest of all Virginians."