Please invest in Our Daily Planet today, by making a one time or monthly contribution.
We do not charge our readers a subscription fee for our content. We want to continue to grow our readership, particularly among millennials and public servants. Voluntary contributions from readers will help us employ interns and freelance journalists, expand our content, and reach a larger audience.
If you make a contribution of $150 or more, you will become an official “Friend of the Planet” and receive a Friend of the Planet T-shirt or water bottle. You can also submit opinion essays to us for our consideration for posting on our new “Bright Ideas” op-ed page.
As the New York Times wrote, a new study has given more insight into just how pervasive microplastics are in the environment. In addition to being one of the ocean’s greatest pollution threats, They’re in the air we breathe, traveling on the wind and drifting down from the skies. More than 1,000 tons of tiny […]
Continue Reading 386 words
Erin Simon is the Head of Plastic Waste and Business at the World Wildlife Fund and helped WWF’s latest report, Transparent 2020. The report examines the plastic footprints of its ReSource member companies and provides a detailed look at the challenges and potential solutions for tackling the plastic pollution problem. Plastics are a complicated issue, […]
Continue Reading 1186 words
We sat down with the World Wildlife Fund’s Director of Policy, Roberta Elias, to ask her about the outlook for recycling in the United States and how the federal government can help us move to more circular systems for our waste. ODP: Increased recycling seems like a no-brainer yet in the United States, our […]
Continue Reading 454 wordsStay in the know, empower yourself to be a #FriendOfThePlanet, sign up to receive ODP in your inbox each morning!
A little over a year ago the World Wildlife Fund launched ReSource: Plastic an activation hub to help an initial group of major corporations meet their plastics commitments through better data and measurable action. Today, WWF released a report called Transparent 2020 which examines the plastic footprints of these companies and provides a detailed look […]
Continue Reading 563 words
By Sheila Bonini, Senior Vice President, Private Sector Engagement, World Wildlife Fund U.S. In recent years, a growing chorus of voices—among consumers, in business and across government—has urged immediate action to reduce plastic pollution. It’s a shift driven by countless images of natural habitats befouled by plastic waste and animals harmed or killed, as well […]
Continue Reading 783 words
A recently released policy analysis from Duke University revealed that over the past decade, governments at every level have taken actions to prevent plastic waste from making it into the ocean. As Phys explained, the analysis finds, however, that the vast majority of new policies have focused specifically on plastic shopping bags and more data […]
Continue Reading 349 words
In 1960, Americans generated 2.68 pounds of garbage per day and by 2017, it had grown to an average of 4.51 pounds. While many people dutifully put items into their recycling bins, much of it does not actually end up being recycled. There are several reasons why our recycling system isn’t working well: 40% of […]
Continue Reading 506 words
As the Ocean Conservancy explained, every year, 8 million metric tons of plastics enter our ocean on top of the estimated 150 million metric tons that currently circulate our marine environments. Many of these plastics are microscopic (smaller than 5 millimeters long) and are readily consumed by marine life as well as humans. Unfortunately, we […]
Continue Reading 480 wordsResearchers at Carbios, a French company, report in the Journal Nature that they’ve “engineered an enzyme that can convert 90% of that same plastic back to its pristine starting materials” and they are working to open a demonstration plant next year. The enzyme breaks down plastic all the way into a recyclable form — the company, in collaboration with Pepsi and L’Oréal, hopes to have market scale production within 5 years.
Why This Matters: 70 million tons of Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is produced annually.
Continue Reading 432 wordsby Zoey Shipley and Miro Korenha NPR and PBS Frontline recently announced a new joint investigation which has revealed that since the 1980s, “the plastics industry spent tens of millions of dollars promoting recycling through ads, recycling projects, and public relations, telling people plastic could be and should be recycled” all in an effort to […]
Continue Reading 560 words
Plastic pollution can seem like an insurmountable problem and in large part it’s because we can’t agree on who the culprits of the problem are and who’s responsible for the solution. Yes, manufacturers produce plastic, retailers sell it and consumers buy it as plastic has a lot of useful qualities. Plastic makes our lives convenient […]
Continue Reading 610 words
The Fish and Wildlife Service last week proposed another major rollback of an environmental rule and put millions of birds in danger — this one protecting migratory birds under an international treaty that has been in effect for a century.
Why This Matters: Prosecutions of this treaty are hardly a huge threat, but the decision to waive all prosecutions will have broad implications and impact behavior of those who should be taking care that their actions do not cause more harm to birds than the myriad of threats such as plastic pollution and climate change.
Continue Reading 516 words
