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Research shows that so-called biodegradable products are actually doing more harm than good in landfills, because they are releasing a powerful greenhouse gas as they break down. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines call for products marked as “biodegradable” to decompose within "a reasonably short period of time" after disposal. But such rapid degradation may actually be environmentally harmful, because federal regulations do not require landfills that collect methane to install gas collection systems for at least two years after the waste is buried.
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There’s so much trash out there in space that it’s getting in the way of astronaut operations. The solution? ZAP it! The US military currently tracks about 20,000 items of space junk in low-Earth orbit, most of which are discarded pieces of spacecraft or debris from collisions of satellites. The Earth could even end up with a permanent junk belt that could make space too dangerous to fly in. In Wired.com, Lisa Grossman quotes NASA engineer Creon Levit as saying, "There’s not a lot of argument that this is going to screw us if we don’t do something. Right now it’s at the tipping point, and it just keeps getting worse." read more

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There are millions of tons of trash floating in our oceans, much of it plastic (meaning it won’t disappear anytime soon). Scientists are now trying to figure out how to clean it up. The largest "floating island" of plastic trash is in the North Pacific and covers an area twice the size of France. Other trash islands have been discovered in the North and South Atlantic, and scientists suspect that the same thing is taking place in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans. When this plastic floats towards a coastline, it affects tourism. It also kills fish that mistake it for food. Worst of all, contaminants in the water cling to the plastic and are then transported across the world’s oceans.read more

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In the same old places: the ocean and SPACE! – If there was a huge dump down the block in your neighborhood, wouldn’t you ask your friends (or the local government) to help clean it up? Well, there’s one spot in the Atlantic Ocean where plastic trash that’s tossed into the sea accumulates. Will anyone do something about it? At least they’ve discovered a new way to clean up space trash!
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