Americans Throw Out Over 33 Million Tons of Plastic a Year — Let’s Fix That

First, ditch the plastic bags. A single-use plastic bag is used on average for a mere 12 minutes. It’ll take that bag more than 500 years to decompose. 
So make an effort to bring reusable totes with you when you shop. If you don’t already have reusable bags, buy some. Just look for bags made from recycled plastic, which have a smaller environmental impact than cotton totes. 
While you’re grabbing your reusable bags, grab a thermos or tumbler for coffee and tea.
Bonus: Many local and national coffee shops give you a discount for bringing your own cup. That’s money in your pocket.
On a similar note, avoid buying bottled water. Every single minute the world uses one million plastic water bottles. Ninety-one percent of those never end up the recycling bin. Use a reusable water bottle, and it’ll save you about $200 a year.
It’s all about creating a habit of thinking before using. But once you do, you’ll feel better about the planet and save some money too. Check out the video for more ways to reduce your plastic consumption.
More: Five Things That Should Never, Ever Be Flushed Down the Toilet

These Gorgeous Fish Are Invading Florida’s Coasts. One Solution? Eat Them

When Alli Candelmo went diving in Little Cayman in 2015, she carried with her a spear for hunting lionfish. As the invasive species program manager at Reef Environmental Education Fund, Candelmo has been stung by the venomous fish dozens of times.
Yet she keeps on working with the lionfish, as part of a larger effort by scientists, conservationists, wildlife managers, fishers and divers to eradicate the population. 
At first glance, it seems cruel to target such an unusual animal. The lionfish’s otherworldly, spiky beauty has made it a mainstay in aquariums around the world. But the fish, which likely traveled from the Indo-Pacific to Florida’s coast through the aquarium trade in the 1980s, has no natural predators in American waters and has thus colonized them at a terrifying rate. Lionfish are still found predominantly in Florida, but also along the coast in Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, the Carolinas and the Bahamas. They’ve also been spotted as far north as Rhode Island and as far south as Brazil
A female lionfish lays around two million eggs every year, so it’s easy to understand how the fish have spread up the coast. And they have seemingly bottomless appetites: lionfish are known to eat smaller, native species — 70 reef species have been found in lionfish stomachs. Without cleaner fish and small invertebrates to eat algae that grows on coral, the coral dies off. Similar, smaller fish are food for larger fish, like snapper and grouper. The lionfish can potentially dismantle entire underwater food webs — in some areas, lionfish have reduced native fish populations by nearly 65% — and in turn, put Florida’s and other states’ commercial fishing and tourism industries at risk.  
“There is direct predation and indirect competition with native species,” Alex Fogg, the marine resource coordinator for Okaloosa County, Florida, told NationSwell.
Most experts agree that we’ve reached a point where complete eradication isn’t likely. Instead, the task at hand is keeping lionfish populations in check so they don’t irreversibly impact the ecosystem. The way to do this involves not just one solution, but a wide variety of them, including consumption, lionfish “derbies,” traps and ecotourism.

Generally, in the fishing industry, the goal is to harvest as many fish as possible while maintaining a sustainable population. “In this case, we want to capture every single one of these bastards,” Fogg said.

“Granted, we are never going to be rid of lionfish, but they’ll certainly find their place in the ecosystem and the food web and hopefully not at the expense of a lot of our commercially and recreationally important species,” Fogg said.

A lionfish being measured, en route to a dinner plate near you.

Fried or Blackened?

The first solution: Eat them.
Lionfish are popping up on menus next to your fried grouper sandwiches and glazed salmon entrees. It’s a white fish similar to hog snapper or grouper. The spines are venomous, but once they are removed, the meat of the fish is delicious, fans say.
Over the last decade, public awareness around the invasive species has grown, and that’s created a market for lionfish. Whole Foods Market and Publix now purchase and sell the fish. Local restaurants across Florida serve it up in ceviche, blackened on a hoagie and rolled up in sushi. 
But the key is creating a higher demand outside of Florida, where consumers are often willing to pay a premium price for fish, said Rick O’Connor, the Escambia County extension agent at Florida Sea Grant. O’Connor suggests, no matter where you are, to ask your favorite seafood restaurant if they serve lionfish. If they keep hearing that demand, they might meet it. 
However, in many places, the demand is already there. Fishing lionfish hasn’t created full-time jobs, but it has created a supplemental income for plenty of divers and fishers. 
Generally, in the fishing industry, the goal is to harvest as many fish as possible while maintaining a sustainable population. “In this case, we want to capture every single one of these bastards,” Fogg said. 
If fishers reach a point where there are too few lionfish to hunt, then they will adapt. “I think a lot of them, and myself included, are [thinking] take advantage of it while it’s there,” he said. 
And people are. Currently, diving is the only method of capturing lionfish, which requires a lot of work. So researchers and fishers are looking at new ways to catch the fish.
“There’s a very high demand, and there’s certainly plenty of fish to meet that demand,” Fogg said. “But there’s not enough efficiency to remove enough fish to satisfy that demand.”

To Catch a Lionfish

Enter the lionfish trap. To meet the demand from the market, and to curb populations, researchers have created a lionfish-specific trap.“Traps are something that could potentially bring a whole lot more fish to the market,” Fogg said.
The goal of the trap is to minimize bycatch, a term referring to species caught unintentionally in traps, while maximizing lionfish entrapment. Another factor is making sure that if a fisher loses the buoy attached to the trap, the trap doesn’t continue to ghostfish, which is when an abandoned trap or net continues to catch and kill.
And so far, the trap’s been successful, said Fogg.
Bycatch is extremely low, and the way the trap is designed, the fish aren’t trapped until it’s pulled up from the water, eliminating the possibility of ghostfishing, said Fogg, who previously worked on trap research with Harris Holden, a graduate research fellow at the University of Florida. (Currently, this research is lead by Steve Gittings, a science coordinator for NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Program.)
Researchers are also working on undersea robots: one that finds, stuns and captures lionfish and another that vacuums them up.
Either way, the goal is to get them out of the water and onto our dinner plates.

Divers showcase their haul after a lionfish derby.

Lionfish Festivities

Lionfish derbies are one of the most successful lionfish removal strategies. Scuba divers compete to catch and remove as many lionfish they can in a single weekend in a specific location.
Two to four divers gather at a lionfish-infested location and spear lionfish from sunrise to sunset. At the end of the weekend, the fish are hauled to shore, counted and measured. Teams win prizes amounting in thousands of dollars for bringing back the most, the biggest and the smallest lionfish.
The first derby started in 2009 in the Bahamas and has since expanded across Florida’s coast. Candelmo has helped host the derbies for the past year. Throughout the last decade, REEF has supported the removal of close to 40,000 lionfish. 
The derbies serve a dual purpose. “The hope is to get a decent number of lionfish off the reefs but also educate anyone who still doesn’t know much about them,” Candelmo told NationSwell.  
Over time, derbies have transformed into full-fledged lionfish festivals, where organizations provide educational materials, restaurants prepare lionfish tastings and musicians entertain attendees. “It’s always good to see the energy there and feed off of it,” Candelmo said. “You can see a very tangible impact.”
Studies have shown that lionfish derbies have been very successful at lowering populations and increasing native populations. One study, led by Stephanie Green, a marine biologist at the University of Alberta, showed that between 2012 and 2014, lionfish derbies reduced lionfish densities by 52%. It also stated that these annual events suppressed lionfish populations enough to prevent a decline in native species.
“We’ve definitely seen declines throughout the region, not just in Florida,” Candelmo said. “Everywhere that has had some sort of culling pressure has seen noticeable declines.”
Candelmo pointed out that the only downside to derbies is that they target shallower populations and not deeper populations (but traps are a solution to balance that out, she said).
“The good thing about the derbies as well is it leads to a really nice interaction between fishers and community members and managers and scientists,” Candelmo said.

Lionfish hunting is an increasingly popular ecotourism activity along Florida’s coast.

Vacationing With Lionfish

The appeal of hunting lionfish paired with helping the environment has created small sectors of ecotourism. People are traveling across the country to sail on dive boats and spear the fish. Dive shops have seen such an increased interest, that many devote boats and tours to specifically hunt lionfish. 
“Word has gotten out, so people across the country are calling our local diver charters and they want to go shoot their own lionfish,” O’Connor said. 
So if you’re off to your next vacation, think about heading to a place where you can also have a positive impact on the ecosystem.
There isn’t a single solution that will eradicate lionfish in our waters. Instead, it will take a group effort of eating, hunting and trapping to preserve our native fish and ecosystems.
“Everyone kind of has the same goal, all the fisherman, all the managers, all the scientists are aiming to reduce the population,” Candelmo said. “And that’s rare.”
More: This Sustainable ‘Farm of the Future’ Is Changing How Food Is Grown

This Company Wants You to Bring Bats to Your Home. It’s Actually a Great Idea.

Growing up near a lake in hot, humid Florida, mosquitoes were as familiar a sight as fresh orange juice at the farmers’ market. I’d spend entire summers desperately scratching the little red bumps that would pop up everywhere from the tips of my ears to the tops of my toes. In college, I learned about the harmful chemicals in the average bug spray, which usually contains DEET, a compound that’s been shown to affect our nervous system and can be toxic to plants and wildlife. So I opted for natural repellents, lathering on lemon and eucalyptus oil for camping trips and cookouts. Still, the mosquitoes prevailed. 
But there’s another way to keep the pesky biters at bay that’s both better for us and the environment — one that can be found soaring among the streetlights and treetops at night, and tucked away in nooks and crannies during the day.
The solution? Bats.
The startup BatBnB is on a mission to put bat houses in backyards across the country  — and to change people’s preconceptions of the winged critters in the process. Coined as a “natural solution to backyard pest control” and designed with a bat’s unique biology in mind, the sleek wooden boxes attach to the side of a house, garage or barn. The largest model can host up to 200 of the flying mammals. 
When it comes to pest control, bats are master feeders — a single one can devour up to 1,000 mosquitoes in an hour. And that’s good news not just for the sake of our skin, but also for the farmers across the country who rely on bats to eat crop-destroying bugs, including beetles, moths and grasshoppers. A 2011 study estimated farmers save at least $3 billion — and potentially a lot more — in pesticide use when bats are allowed to do their thing. 
But today’s bats face numerous challenges that have seen their populations fall worldwide. In the United States, it’s estimated that half of bat species are in severe decline; several are on the endangered species list. Most of the threat comes from the destruction of their roosting habitats. But bats are also increasingly falling victim to wind turbines, and a fungal disease known as white-nose syndrome kills millions more. 
“Bats are largely roost-limited, and we’ve cut down the ancient forests that included lots of trees with hollows,” Merlin Tuttle, an ecologist and bat expert who consulted on the design of the BatBnB houses, told Mother Nature Network. “A lot of those bats now are pretty desperate for homes, and bat houses do provide a pretty good alternative.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWa7tWLF1s5/
 
Made from sustainable wood, the long, flat bat houses are elegantly carved and designed to mimic the mammals’ natural habitats. As they researched, co-founders Harrison Broadhurst and Christopher Rännefors learned that bats are picky sleepers, preferring toasty temps and tall, narrow roosting chambers. So they outfitted the houses with interior grooves for the bats to hang onto and vents to control temperature. 
The appreciation for bats runs deep for BatBnB’s founders. Rännefors grew up building bat houses with his dad, and Broadhurst’s mom, a biology teacher, incorporated bats into her lessons. Despite a positive ecological impact — bats pollinate flowers and disperse seeds in addition to ridding us of disease-carrying mosquitoes — Rännefors and Broadhurst know that the stigma of bats as human bloodsuckers persists. So as part of their mission, they work to educate consumers on the benefits bats bring. Call it a bat rebranding. 
“Bats are radically misunderstood, threatened and undervalued for their insect-eating skills,” Rännefors told Fast Company. “[We hope] more people will respect them.”
Thanks to BatBnB’s efforts — which count proud bat-house owners in 47 states and seven countries — it seems they’re on the right track.
More: People Are Helping Animals Cross Highways — and That’s Great for Humans, Too

To Build a Healthier City, Atlanta Is Opening Its Schoolyards to Everyone

It’s known as the “City in a Forest,” thanks to 100-year-old oaks, maples and magnolias that create a tree canopy covering nearly half the city. 
But what may come as a surprise is that many of Atlanta’s residents don’t have easy access to a public park. One-third of Atlanta’s population lives more than a 10-minute walk from a green space, and the city ranks 42nd for park access based on an evaluation of America’s 100 largest cities by the Trust For Public Land. 
Meanwhile, the city’s largest landowner keeps its doors closed after hours, on weekends and during the summer. Why? Because it’s Atlanta’s public school system. 
Atlanta’s embarking on a journey to open up its schoolyard gates. It’s the latest city in the United States to participate in this growing movement to renovate schoolyards and create public parks.
In support of the initiative, the city of Atlanta, Atlanta Public Schools and organizations like Park Pride, Trust for Public Land and the Urban Land Institute are working together to open up schoolyards and increase green space for the city. 
“We like to think that parks are the heart of communities, but those neighborhood schools are similarly that center of the community,” Michael Halicki, the executive director of Park Pride, an Atlanta nonprofit that works with communities to improve parks, told NationSwell. “It really has been an example of how bringing different partners together we can do things that, in isolation, would never be possible.”
The partnership is launching a pilot program where three schools will renovate their schoolyards and open them up to the public. Over the next three years, a total of 10 schools will open up a community green space.
The schools were chosen based on a variety of factors. But the main consideration was to assess which schools were within a 10-minute walk of residents who were farther than a 10-minute walk from a park. Based on that, about 20 schools were identified that fit this criterion, and 10 immediately responded with interest. From those, three were picked for the pilot, the names of which will be announced later this month.
“Our main responsibility is making sure all of the schools are high quality, but we see ourselves as a key player in the city ecosystem,” Rachel Sprecher, executive director of partnerships and development at Atlanta Public Schools, told NationSwell.

If every schoolyard was opened, 80% of Atlantans would be within walking distance of a park.

Research has shown that access to parks improves both physical and mental health. Researchers at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health found that spending two hours each week outdoors is tied to better health outcomes. Another study led by William Sullivan found that exposure to green space is associated with reducing aggressive behavior.  
“Parks are places to build community and these schoolyards could also be places where people come together,” Halicki said.
Park Pride and the Trust for Public Land calculated that if every schoolyard was opened, 80% of Atlantans would be within walking distance of a park. With the first three pilot schools, 2,000 more Atlantans would have access to green space. 
Each school will receive between $100,000 and $150,000 in schoolyard upgrades. The Trust for Public Land and Park Pride will bring in landscape architects to help design the space. Upgrades may entail everything from a new playground to accessibility paths to a hammock grove or pavilions. 
Conversations are being held with the schools and community to pinpoint the needs and desires for each space. They will also work together to figure out details like maintenance and security, Sprecher said.
This fall, those three schools and neighborhoods will engage in conversation. Final plans will be decided, and construction will take place throughout summer 2020. The following fall, the new schoolyards will open — and stay open.
“We can serve both purposes of helping kids learn while they’re in school but then helping strengthen communities when kids are no longer in school. And that’s really the synergy of this space,” George Dusenbury, the Georgia state director at the Trust for Public Land, told NationSwell.
Renovating schoolyards will save money, Halicki said. The program allows the city to avoid purchasing new land for parks. Instead, Atlanta can put those funds toward renovations or other projects independent of the schoolyard initiative.
“In this day and age, where there’s not enough money to do all the things we want to do in our cities,” Halicki said, “this is a way that we’re getting more out of the resources we’ve got.”
All agreed that the goal of the pilot is to understand how to make this adaptable for other schools inside and outside of metro Atlanta. 
“As with other initiatives that have started off as a pilot, we definitely look to scale and even provide support with our resources,” Sprecher said. 
Atlanta Public Schools was built to serve between 100,000 and 150,000 students. But the district currently has about 50,000 students enrolled. That means out of its 150 properties, 39 facilities are closed and 19 are vacant land sites. So while the school embarks on an 18-month master planning facilities project, Sprecher said the school system might consider transitioning and opening some of those lots for green space.
“We understand the assets we have,” she said. “And we want to be really thoughtful about what we do with the vacant property.” 
So as the city grows and changes, schoolyards serving as public parks may become a common sight. With it, more Atlantans will have access to that beautiful canopy the city is so well known for. 
“We have complex, intractable problems in cities all across the U.S.,” said Halicki. “The way that we come up with innovative solutions is not by working in our silo but by really working across our silos.”
More: A Small Nonprofit Has a Genius Idea for How to Turn Parking Lots Into Paradise

There’s a Way to Plant Trees Every Time You Search the Internet — and It’s Free

What if the next question you asked a search engine could help save the planet?
That’s the idea behind Ecosia, a free browser extension that uses advertising revenue from basic search queries to reforest our planet. Once the extension is installed on their browser, users are free to search the internet as they usually do — all while Ecosia collects a few cents from every click on a sponsored search result. 
For every 45 searches, Ecosia earns enough money to plant a tree. Through their efforts, they’ve been able to plant over 62 million trees since first launching in 2009.
Though the act of planting trees may sound simple on its surface, at scale, it might be one of the most effective means of stemming the catastrophic effects of carbon emissions on our planet. According to a July 2019 study in the journal Science, a sustained worldwide effort to plant 1 trillion trees is the most powerful lever we can pull to limit further global temperature rises and protect human life on our planet. 
Planting a forest roughly the size of the United States is an undoubtedly daunting task, but Ecosia makes it free and easy for anyone who uses the internet to play her part — and it’s catching on. According to Forbes, in 2018 Ecosia more than doubled the number of trees it had planted since its founding. 
It’s on track to beat that record again in 2019.
The company currently has tree-planting projects in 15 countries with strong forest ecosystems, including Brazil, Nicaragua, Haiti, Uganda and Indonesia. They partner with local organizations that have the expertise to plant and foster healthy new trees in their respective environments, helping to ensure the trees’ survival, improve biodiversity, and create employment opportunities in impoverished agricultural regions.
Ecosia also built its own solar plant to run all their servers on clean power, making the company carbon negative. “This means that if Ecosia were as big as Google, it could absorb 15% of all global CO2 emissions!” says its blog. “That’s enough to offset vehicle emissions worldwide.”
Of course, reforestation cannot solve climate change in a vacuum (and certainly one company cannot solve it alone). Global leaders will still need to focus on ending emissions from coal and gas while curbing deforestation so the influx of new trees won’t be negated by the rapid depletion of the world’s forests. 
But in the toolkit of environmental solutions, reforestation has the potential to be the most powerful, cost-efficient and scalable option we have. 
“The beautiful thing is that it is a universal issue,” Jean-Francois Bastin, the Science study’s lead author, said in an interview. “It can unify us against a common threat, where anyone can have a role to play, by acting on supporting the restoration of ecosystems, but also by changing the way we are living on the planet.” 
More: Sucking Carbon Out of the Air Is One Way to Help Save Our Planet

8 Million Tons of Plastic Is Thrown Away Every Year — This July, a Hashtag Is Trying to Change That

If you’re congratulating yourself for finally becoming the type of environmentalist who carries reusable tote bags and straws, it’s time for a wake-up call: The plastic items we toss daily without a second thought — such as coffee cups, plastic water bottles and bags and the packaging of processed foods — are killing our oceans. And if current trends continue, there will be more plastic than fish (by weight) in the ocean by the year 2050
While the convenience factor of plastic is difficult to resist, most of the single-serve beverage packaging, plastic shopping bags and to-go containers from your favorite restaurants can’t be (or isn’t) recycled. Instead of biodegrading, these items end up in our water supply, and eventually, the ocean, where sunlight and tides break them down into microplastics. Fish eat these particles, which means we do, too. Scientific American recently reported that ingested microplastic particles can physically damage organs and leach hazardous chemicals that can “compromise immune function and stymie growth and reproduction.” In other words: Ingesting microplastics can make us sick. 
Enter #BreakFreeFromPlastic and the nearly 1,500 organizations worldwide that currently participate in the movement. Their collective mission is to fight plastic pollution on a global level. And not just in our oceans and water supply. “A lot of our groups are working on corporate campaigns and on mobilizing grassroots communities against the same companies which climate activists have been going after for decades,” said Shilpi Chhotray, senior communications officer at #BreakFreeFromPlastic. 
Where did plastic come from, anyway? Over 50 years ago, plastics entered our world and literally changed the way Americans live. In 1869, a New York firm offered to award $10,000 to the first person who could create a synthetic polymer as a substitute for ivory, a material that was in short supply and threatening the billiard ball business — not to mention decimating elephant populations, who were being slaughtered for their tusks. Today, 300 million tons of plastic are produced annually, and 12 million tons of plastic waste is dumped into the sea every year
Thanks to the power of advertising, we’ve been purchasing single-use plastic products with reckless abandon since the 1950s. Since then, a staggering nine billion tons of plastic have been produced, but only around 9% gets recycled. “A lot of it is attributed to our culture of convenience,” said Chhotray. “Plastic packaging is not easily recycled: Most of it has been landfilled, incinerated or shipped overseas, and we have been creating a disproportionate amount of waste that’s ending up in developing areas of the world.” 
And our appetite for plastic isn’t going away: According to a report from the Center for International Environmental Law, low natural gas prices in the United States have made the material cheap and abundant. By 2025, production for materials required to make plastic, such as ethylene and propylene, is expected to increase 33-36%. 
While most of our plastic ends up in southeast Asia — traditionally a dumping ground for much of our waste — a goal of the #BreakFreeFromPlastic movement is to tackle our pollution crisis with a holistic approach. “#BreakFreeFromPlastic is not just about the environment: We’re very much about social justice and equity, and that’s where our movement is so unique,” Chhotray said. “It’s about the grassroots communities and the faces on the front lines of that crisis, and giving them a voice.”
#BreakFreeFromPlastic’s U.S.-based movement mobilizes small NGOs and disenfranchised populations to spur grassroots action, and works to hold big oil companies — such as Exxon, Dow and DuPont — accountable for the environmental and health issues caused by their manufacturing practices. “We’re connecting the dots between environmental justice, climate change, human health, and plastic pollution,” Chhotray said. 
And it seems that #BreakFreeFromPlastic is gaining traction: While some cities have already banned plastic bags, and several others require a fee for using them, at least 95 bills were introduced this year alone related to reducing the use of plastic bags.
The good news: It’s easy to get involved on an individual level. To that end, the movement is encouraging 31 days of action this month, ranging from ways you can kick your tote-bag schlepping up a notch to smaller (but ultimately more impactful) actions that have the potential to create real change. Finding out about plastic bag laws in your local community and encouraging schools to go plastic-free are two ways to start; participating in Lonely Whale’s #HydrateLike campaign is another
Encouraging average consumers to #BreakFreeFromPlastic can inspire individual momentum, but Chhotray hopes it can also lead to lasting and collective change by the organizations that manufacture it in the first place. “We’re so inundated with plastic right now, no amount of beach cleanups will help,” said Chhotray.
Last year, #BreakFreeFromPlastic mobilized organizations and committed individuals to hold the largest producers of plastics in the U.S. — namely, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestle — accountable for the environmental impact created by the items they produce and sell. A 2018 global brand audit found that 75% percent of all beach, street and park cleanups contained products made by Coca-Cola; those three companies are responsible for 14% of branded plastic pollution produced worldwide. And petrochemical companies might be the most guilty of all, since Exxon Mobil introduced plastic bags to the U.S. in the first place, in a weird premonition of their eventual ubiquity. “These oil industries were banking on this happening,” said Chhotray. “They knew exactly what they were doing back in the ’70s.”
Inspired, angry … or both? Volunteer for a brand audit in your local community, advocate for plastic-free July on social media using the hashtag #BreakFreeFromPlastic or sign up for action alerts via email.
More: 37 Ways To Shrink Your Use Of Plastic

This Group Is Documenting Ancient Murals in Texas Before They’re Wiped Out by Climate Change

In Texas’ Lower Pecos Canyonlands, Shumla Archaeological Research & Education Center has been documenting some of the oldest narrative mural paintings in North America. Shumla is racing against time to document these murals, as local rivers that surround them are rising at an alarming rate, due to the changing climate, and are slowly degrading the original artwork.
Because of their location and condition, Shumla hopes that these murals, some of them 4,000 years old, might one day be displayed as 3D models or with the help of VR, in museums around the country, to raise awareness about their degradation.

To learn about the four-year program, called the Alexandria Project, watch the video above.
More: Why Facts Dont Work With Climate Change Deniers

Five Things That Should Never, Ever Be Flushed Down The Toilet

When it comes to polluting our oceans, single-use plastics might take the most heat from environmentalists. But there are plenty of other things we should keep out of our toilets — and oceans.
Condoms, tampons and dental floss easily clog up toilets and pipes. Instead, toss those items in the trash. Or consider purchasing a brand of floss that’s biodegradable. For an eco-friendly alternative to tampons, try a menstrual cup. The average woman uses around 11,000 tampons over the course of her lifetime, but a single reusable cup can last up to 10 years.
When you’re cooking, avoid pouring used grease and oil down your pipes. These congeal and can cause fatbergs, which are a nightmare to remove (and cost taxpayers millions). The best solution? The garbage bin.
Your medicine should never be disposed of in the toilet. Wastewater treatment plants aren’t equipped to filter out medicine, so they end up contaminating lakes and other sources of water. Stockpile unused medicine and turn it all in on Oct. 27 for National Prescription Drug Takeback Day.
Finally, those tiny contact lenses quickly add up. Especially when you consider that 45 million Americans wear them every day, which amounts to 14 billion lenses annually. So give extended wear lenses or glasses a shot. You can also participate in a recycling program for lenses and their packaging. 
Watch the video above for more information on how to reduce your environmental footprint and help save the planet.
 
More: Can’t Flush This

The Engine in These School Buses Could Improve Kids’ Test Scores

Each weekday for most of the year, hundreds of thousands of school buses criss-cross their way through America. Every school day, the hulking monoliths transport nearly 26 million children, or about 55% of the student population, and travel over 4 billion miles annually. This makes the national school bus fleet the largest form of mass transportation in the U.S. — bigger than that of commercial buses, trains and airplanes combined. 
The yellow school bus might be one of the most iconic and ubiquitous symbols of childhood, but intertwined with that nostalgia is an ugly reality. For almost as long as school buses have been around, the children inside of them have been breathing in toxic fumes that can have dire consequences not just for their respiratory health, but for their brain development as well. 
In a new study, researchers from Georgia State University compared the standardized test scores of kids who rode old, dirtier diesel buses to those who commuted in buses with engines that had been modified, or retrofitted, to filter out up to 95% of harmful pollutants. Looking at test results from 2007 to 2015, they found a significant increase in English scores and smaller, but notable, gains in math scores  among bus-riding kids whose districts retrofitted their bus engines. 
For cash-strapped school districts, buying newer buses that adhere to the government’s stricter diesel regulations, enacted in 2007, can be out of reach, even with the medley of rebates and grants awarded each year under the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act and through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus program
But there is another solution that is often overlooked, say the researchers — a fix that not only protects young brains but is also a cost-effective way of decreasing absentee rates and improving test scores, which in turn increases lifetime earnings.
Diesel retrofits are engine modifications that can filter out up to 95% of harmful pollutants. At an average cost of $8,000 per engine, it’s a much cheaper option than buying newer buses that burn cleaner, ultra-low sulfur diesel, which can run a school upward of $130,000 apiece (the price jumps to about $360,000 for a propane-fueled or electric-powered bus). Currently, only an estimated 40% of all fleets run on the lower-emission diesel technology; the majority are still spewing known carcinogens. 

‘LIKE A BRAIN FOG’

Though the respiratory dangers from emissions of diesel fuel have long been known, researchers are just beginning to understand the impact on the brain, which can have both short- and long-term effects. Particularly worrisome are the microscopic soot particles, known as particulate matter, that when inhaled can burrow deep inside a person’s lungs and enter the bloodstream. For kids, whose internal systems are much smaller and still developing, the effects are even more pronounced.
The evidence that soot and other toxins in high-sulfur diesel lead to lasting brain effects is building, said Jimmy O’Dea, a senior vehicles analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit research organization. 
“The scientific literature is really showing, with study after study, nearly every organ system in the body is at risk from higher exposure to particulate matter,” O’Dea told NationSwell. “Everything from the lung diseases that you might typically associate with bad air quality to heart and neurological diseases are being found to increase health risks from more exposure to these pollutants.”

school buses
Until 2007, school buses ran on older diesel technology laden with pollutants that have been shown to trigger asthma in children and affect their cognitive functioning.

Initially the Georgia State researchers set out to only look at students’ aerobic health using data from Georgia’s statewide fitness assessments. But at the time, Wes Austin, one of the study’s co-authors, had been sifting through other research on the effects of air pollution when a study linking it to dementia caught his eye. “I just happened to have a lot of state education data sitting around, so it didn’t seem like too much of a stretch to look at test scores too,” he said, adding, “but I didn’t think the study would go where it did.”
Austin described how the cocktail of toxins in diesel exhaust can cripple a young mind. “There’s a same-day effect, where carbon monoxide and other things that decrease your blood’s oxygen level can make you feel a little bit out of it, like a brain fog,” said Austin. “But in the long term, particulate matter PM2.5 is small enough that when you breathe it in, it passes through your nasal cavity and into your brain, and leads to white-matter lesions and inflammation.” 
The result, he said, “interferes with your neurons’ ability to communicate properly.”

DIESEL DINOSAURS

Unlike other behemoth diesel-burners on the roads, such as commercial trucks and mass-transit buses, school buses have been slow to embrace new technology. Between 2012 and 2018, for example, the EPA awarded $39 million in rebates to replace nearly 2,000 buses across the country; this year, it’s on track to replace an additional 473 buses. Considering that there are more than 470,000 school buses on the road, that’s little more than a drop in the proverbial bucket.
“It’s a question of funding and school districts making it a priority,” said Allen Schaeffer, executive director of the Diesel Technology Forum, a nonprofit advocacy group. He noted that even as alternative-powered buses are getting more attention from the media and from the government — a new bill to replace old diesel buses with new electric ones was recently introduced in the Senate — 95% of school buses continue to burn diesel fuel. “It’s still the overwhelming dominant technology,” he said.
Though Americans by and large prefer cars that run on gasoline, the historical choice of diesel for school bus fleets made sense for two reasons. “First and foremost was safety,” Schaeffer said. “If a school bus gets rammed by a car, the risk of fire would be greater with gasoline than diesel because diesel is less likely to ignite under those kind of circumstances.”
Second is simple economics. When deciding where to put their dollars, school districts often don’t prioritize transportation, even as the proliferation of school choice and charter schools have caused bus routes to get longer and more children outside of districts are accommodated. And, as Schaeffer pointed out, applying for state and federal rebates to upgrade diesel buses is a competitive process.
With limited funds, schools often deprioritize transportation, he said. “They’re asking themselves, ‘Should I spend the dollars to get them to school in a fancier bus? Or should I spend the dollars in the classroom or to reduce the ratio of teachers to students?’ Those are the kind of questions that these districts are looking at.” 

SMALL INVESTMENT, BIG IMPACT

Austin and his fellow Georgia State researchers looked at that question too. They found that paying for diesel-engine retrofits — in lieu of shelling out for brand-new buses — is a highly cost-effective way to preserve brain and lung health and improve academic achievement.
The research team carried out back-of-envelope calculations regarding the costs and benefits of bus retrofits. They looked at data from an earlier study that linked smaller class sizes to improvements in test scores and higher lifetime earnings. Reducing a classroom by seven students was found to cost about $870 per student. In contrast, the Georgia State researchers estimated that retrofitting a bus costs roughly $122 per student rider.
“Reducing class size by hiring more teachers is expensive,” said Austin. In fact, his study concluded that to see the same test-score gains, a district would need to spend anywhere from three to five times as much on class-size reductions than it would on bus retrofits. What’s more, the researchers found that “if a district retrofits its entire bus fleet, the effect on English test scores would be slightly larger than the effect of going from a rookie teacher to one with five years of experience.”
Diesel school buses were built to last a long time, as Schaeffer pointed out, and eventually the older, dirtier pre-2007 models still on the road will break down or be phased out. But until then, schools have a relatively cheap win-win available: the chance to improve overall student health and boost their chances for lifelong success.
More: The Diesel-Chugging Yellow School Bus Finally Goes Green
 

Here’s How You Can Save the Earth, Even After Dying

If you’re planning a traditional Western funeral for a loved one, burial according to industry standards will cost you — in more ways than one. The materials typically used in the process, from embalming chemicals to casket varnishes and sealants, can seep into ground, polluting the water that you use every day.
In addition, U.S. cemeteries contain an estimated 15 tons of casket steel, enough to build almost all of the skyscrapers in Tokyo, according to TalkDeath, an online community dedicated to encouraging positive conversations around death and dying. Even cremation — often considered one of the most environmentally friendly options — spews fossil fuels into the atmosphere.
So what’s an eco-conscious funeral planner to do? A green burial uses biodegradable materials for caskets and shuns the use of chemicals to preserve bodies. That means adopters can help save the planet while saving themselves (or their families) money in the process.
To learn more about green burials, watch the video above.
More: Saving the Earth by Dying