Three spoonfuls of red microplastic on a green background.

We Consume a Spoonful of Plastic a Week

You've heard about all the microscopic plastic in our water supply. But did you know there are ways to limit how much you ingest?
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

Bulldozers Versus Biodiversity, Then and Now

Trump's border wall threatens habitats in Arizona's Sonoran Desert. What happened when the area was bulldozed in the 1950s?
Milk in glass jugs at a supermarket

Got Milk? You Probably Got Fire Retardants, Too

“Forever chemicals,” also known as PFAS, have been found in 43 states so far, turning up in milk, eggs, and fish.
agave

Plant of the Month: Agave

The international popularity of tequila threatens the quantity, health, and biodiversity of all species of agave.
Closeup shot of a group of unrecognizable people holding plants growing out of soil

Five Green Living Resolutions for 2020

We won't solve all of the pressing environmental problems, but we can help mitigate some.
A tree in a native forest planted by Afforestt

Editors’ Picks: Sustainability and the Environment 2019

The environmental cost of cruise ships, the history of climate science, human fertilizer as waste, and other top stories about sustainability and the environment.
John Tyndall's setup for measuring radiant heat absorption by gases

How 19th Century Scientists Predicted Global Warming

Today’s headlines make climate change seem like a recent discovery. But Eunice Newton Foote and others have been piecing it together for centuries.
Two people gathering seeds

Can Crops’ Wild Relatives Save Troubled Agriculture?

Cultivating a limited number of crops reduced the genetic diversity of plants, endangering harvests. Seed collectors hope to fix it by finding the plants’ wild cousins.
Tofurkey

Vegetarian Thanksgiving Dates Back to the 1900s

Tofu Turkey was created in 1990, but some Americans celebrated Thanksgiving with veggie dishes over a century ago.
A pile of manure for fertilizing crops

A History of Human Waste as Fertilizer

In eighteenth century Japan, human excrement played a vital role in agriculture. Can similar solutions help manage waste today?