Waste

"Companies have spent decades obstructing efforts to take on the plastics crisis and may have breached a host of US laws, a new report argues."

"The putrid smell of burning garbage wafts for miles from the landfill on the outskirts of Jammu in a potentially toxic miasma fed by the plastics, industrial, medical and other waste generated by a city of some 740,000 people. But a handful of waste pickers ignore both the fumes and suffocating heat to sort through the rubbish, seeking anything they can sell to earn at best the equivalent of $4 a day."

"City officials are taking their first public step toward cleaning up hazardous waste in a popular park after a local graduate student last year called out a 45-year comedy of errors by federal, state and local agencies that allowed the dumped drums and chemicals to escape remediation."

"Mayor Eric Adams scrapped New York City’s compost project. Here’s what will be lost."

"Landfills are responsible for nearly a fifth of the country’s methane emissions, but almost half of U.S. landfills have not installed gas-capture systems, nor are they required to. In fact, emissions from many smaller landfills are not regulated by the EPA at all."

"Maryland’s largest health systems are under pressure to cut their dealings with an incinerator that has a history of environmental violations."

"The Environmental Protection Agency has formally denied Alabama’s plan to allow Alabama Power and other utilities to continue storing toxic coal ash in unlined pits at sites across the state."

"Gov. Jared Polis vetoed legislation on Friday that would have banned state incentives for projects to process waste through pyrolysis and gasification — techniques to break down plastics using heat applied in low-oxygen environments."

"On the worst days, when the backyard would flood and the toilet would gurgle and the smell of sewage hung thick in the air, Monica Arenas would flee to her mother-in-law’s home to use the bathroom or wash laundry."

"An unusual surge in flu viruses detected at wastewater treatment plants in California and other parts of the country is raising concerns among some experts that H5N1 bird flu may be spreading farther and faster than health officers initially thought."