“Environmental scientists are arguing that the risk of pollution, specifically to the oceans, is too great to ignore and the tiny plastic particles need to be outlawed.

“I think all glitter should be banned, because it’s microplastic,” Dr. Trisia Farrelly of New Zealand’s Massey University said.

Microplastics are defined as plastics that are less than five millimeters in length.

The small size of the craft supply reportedly makes glitter appealing for many animals, who eat the dangerous objects.”

The good news is theoretically you could still have the sparkly bathbombs that are made with biodegradable seaweed glitter.

It’s so gross and hypocritical to frame food waste as a personal failing. Like, people are dying of hunger because someone forgot some leftovers at the back of their fridge and ended up throwing them away. Major chain grocery stores throw away millions of pounds of food because it’s “too much work” to donate it, and then poison it and destroy it when they throw it away to punish dumpster diving. 

Waste is not a personal failing. It’s engineered by corporations, and they profit off of obscuring that.   

Much like water waste - shaming a dripping bathroom faucet for wasting water, while hundreds of gallons get wasted in industrial settings.

Always be suspicious of micro-focused framing of environmental issues, when there’s the possibility of macro-level issues hiding behind them.

Before/After Assholes

Toxic water floods river after EPA disaster at Gold King Mine in Silverton

Source: The Durango Herald

GIFs: The Gasoline Station

This wasn’t an accident. This is on Navajo lands.

Devastating. 

Boost this please!

Regional Safety Tips for Pokemon Go Players

i’ve seen a lot of safety posts but a lot of them revolve around pokemon hunting in urban areas. i noticed a few safety issues when i was out today so…

feel free to add onto this with your local safety tips!

If you're bringing a backpack with you anyway (for your water bottle and stuff), maybe bring a trash bag with you in case you come across litter. That way you can do some good while you're wandering around!

Outside Susan Holmes’ house in southeastern Oklahoma, visitors are welcomed by an entryway lined with oxygen bottles and a machine that collects and concentrates oxygen from the air.

“I take two inhalers twice a day,” Holmes says. “And I have a nebulizer that I use four times a day, and I use oxygen at night.”

She says her asthma returned when she moved to Bokoshe, a decaying town of about 500 people that is flanked by old coal mines. The huge pits have now been filled with hundreds of thousands of tons of coal ash.

About 130 million tons of coal ash are produced every year. Power companies used to keep it in big, open holes called coal ash ponds. No lining was required to stop leakage, and no monitoring, to even know if it was leaking.

Then, in 2008, a ruptured dike spilled more than a billion gallons of coal ash slurry from a pond operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considered classifying coal ash as “hazardous waste.”

The utility industry lobbied hard — and successfully — to avoid the hazardous waste designation. So in 2014, EPA’s new rules said coal ash was not hazardous.

Now, power companies must recycle the ash, store it more securely on site, or send the ash to landfills.

But in the towns where that ash is ending up, nobody is quite happy with those options.

Communities Uneasy As Utilities Look For Places To Store Coal Ash

Photos: Joe Wertz/Stateimpact Oklahoma and Molly Samuel/WABE

If I ever had any significant capital to my name, I would invest in phytomining.

rainy day