If you took one long-haul flight each year for the past decade, the world would eventually pay about $25,000 for it. You won’t see this charge on your credit card, but the cost shows up somewhere—maybe as a hotter field with less rice, a stronger hurricane, or a factory forced to close on days that are too hot to work. This estimate comes from a Nature study published in March 2026 by researchers at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley. They created a new way to link damage from specific emissions to certain places and years.

That $25,000 figure is based on the social cost of carbon, a dollar estimate of the harm caused by releasing one ton of carbon dioxide into the air. While it might seem abstract, it is one of the most important numbers in American policy. It helps decide if a fuel-economy rule is worth it and influences permits for pipelines and power plants. Over the last four presidential administrations, this number has been raised, lowered, removed, and brought back. What we think a ton of carbon costs today affects how much the country is willing to do about climate change in the future.

What Is the Social Cost of Carbon?

Think of the cost of carbon like a garbage bill, the metaphor the authors of the Nature study use. When you put trash on the curb, someone has to pick it up, haul it away, and store it somewhere. You pay for that service. Carbon dioxide works the same way, except no one sends an invoice—it’s more like using a credit card, the bill for which your children or great-grandchildren will eventually pay.

Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for centuries, quietly heating the planet, damaging crops, intensifying storms, and wearing down economies. Somebody, somewhere, eventually pays. The social cost of carbon is an attempt to figure out how much.

The number comes from combining climate science with economics. Researchers model how one extra ton of CO₂ affects global temperatures over the next century or two, then estimate how those temperature changes damage human health, farm yields, labor productivity, property, and economic growth. They add up the losses and express them in today’s dollars.

Two technical choices drive almost every disagreement about the final number:

• Global versus domestic damages. Should the United States count the damage that occurs in India, Brazil, or Bangladesh from American emissions? Carbon mixes in the atmosphere — a ton released in Ohio warms the planet the same as a ton released in Mumbai — so the economic case for global accounting is strong. The political case for domestic-only accounting is that the US government works for Americans.
• The discount rate. This is the trickiest piece. Economists “discount” future damages to express them in present-day dollars. A higher discount rate makes future harm look cheap today; a lower one makes it look expensive. Using a 7% discount rate, $1 trillion in climate damage in 2100 is worth only about $4 billion today. Using 3%, the same damage is worth about $86 billion. Same science, same damage, twenty times the present value.

That second choice, how much weight to give your grandchildren’s losses compared to your own savings, is where climate economics becomes a moral question.

A Short History of a Disputed Number

2008: A Court Forces the Issue

Federal agencies ignored carbon pricing for most of the modern regulatory era. That changed after the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Bush administration over weak fuel-economy standards for light trucks and SUVs. In 2008, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that assigning zero value to carbon emissions in cost-benefit analyses was “arbitrary and capricious.” The court stated: “the value of carbon emissions reduction is certainly not zero.”

That decision created a legal obligation. If federal agencies wanted to write rules that survived court review, they had to put a price on carbon. They just did not yet have one they could agree on.

2009–2016: The Obama Administration Sets the Framework

In 2009, President Obama convened an Interagency Working Group of federal economists and scientists. In 2010, the group published its first official estimate of the social cost of carbon: $21 per ton of CO₂.

In the following years, as climate models were updated, the estimate rose, reaching about $50 per ton (2020 dollars) by the end of the Obama years. This value was based on a 3% discount rate and global damages.

That framework, which involved interagency process and peer-reviewed models with global scope, was used in more than 65 federal rules and 81 subrules between 2008 and 2016. It shaped appliance efficiency standards, power plant emission limits, fuel-economy requirements, and rules governing methane leaks from oil and gas infrastructure. A higher social cost of carbon justified stricter rules. A lower one did not.

2017–2020: The First Trump Administration Rewrites the Math

Within months of taking office, President Trump signed Executive Order 13783, disbanding the Interagency Working Group and withdrawing its estimates. The Trump EPA recalculated the social cost of carbon by counting only US damages and raising the discount rate to 3%-7%. As a result, Obama’s $52 per ton estimate fell to between $1 and $7 per ton.

That lower number was, as Resources for the Future explained, “too low to make climate policies economically justifiable.” Rules that had provided a cost-benefit analysis supporting strict emissions rules under Obama suddenly no longer did so. The Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of Obama’s climate policy, was repealed partly on the grounds that the climate benefits recalculated with the lower number no longer exceeded the costs. According to Scientific American, the change in the social cost of carbon was “determinative” in at least half a dozen petroleum-sector rollbacks during the first Trump term. Simply, it gave emitters an easy out.

2021–2024: Biden Restores, Then Raises, The Price Sharply

Biden reinstated the working group and set an interim value of about $51 per ton, adjusted for inflation. Legal challenges from some states were dismissed.

In November 2023, EPA set a new central estimate for the social cost of carbon: $190 per ton for 2020 emissions, rising to $230 by 2030 and $308 by 2050. This increase drew on updated climate science, new economic models, a lower discount rate of 2%, and two decades of scientific progress clarifying warming’s impact on economic growth, climate-driven mortality, and previously understated risks.

Other governments took note. Canada adopted the updated EPA number in 2023. Germany adapted the underlying model for its own analyses in 2024.

2025: The Second Trump Administration Tries to Erase It

On his first day back in office, January 20, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14154, “Unleashing American Energy,” which disbanded the Interagency Working Group, withdrew its estimates, and directed EPA to consider eliminating the social cost of carbon from federal permitting and regulatory decisions entirely. The order called the metric “marked by logical deficiencies, a poor basis in empirical science, politicization, and the absence of a foundation in legislation.”

In March 2025, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency would “overhaul” the social cost of carbon. In May 2025, a follow-up executive memorandum directed federal agencies to stop factoring climate-related economic damage into their regulations and permitting decisions, except where statute requires it.

Where agencies are still legally obligated to put a number on it, the administration has settled on an interim estimate of as little as $1 per ton of CO₂, a return to the first Trump administration’s methodology, with domestic-only damages and higher discount rates. The companion social cost of methane dropped from $1,470 per ton to $58. In July 2025, the White House guidance went further, instructing agencies that any required analysis  should be limited to “the minimum consideration required to meet a statutory requirement” and, where possible, should not be monetized at all. The practical effect: $1 per ton on paper, $0 in most decisions.

The cycle is now in its third full reversal since 2008. Each time the number changes, so does the federal government’s willingness to regulate emissions.

What the New Research Adds

The new study in Nature does something the federal estimates have never done well: it separates past damage from future damage, and it assigns both to specific emitters. Their framework treats every ton of CO₂ as an asset that pays out negative returns; it’s a garbage bill that keeps accruing interest. Using that framework, they found three things that reshape the conversation.

A ton of CO₂ emitted in 1990 has already caused about $180 in global damages by 2020. That same ton will cause an additional $1,840 in damages between now and 2100 — 10 times more.  Using the authors’ conservative assumptions, which use a 2% discount rate with damages capped at 2100, the social cost of carbon for a ton emitted today is approximately $1,013. That is more than five times the Biden EPA’s $190 estimate, and higher estimates are possible under longer time horizons or lower discount rates.

Settling the bill for climate damage that has already happened would only cover a small fraction of the damage still to come from the same emissions. Past payments do not clear past debts.

Individuals and Corporations Run Up the Carbon Bill

The study also puts numbers on the kinds of choices that fill everyday life.

• One extra long-haul flight per year for a decade produces roughly $25,000 in future discounted damages by 2100.
• Switching from a meat-heavy to a vegetarian diet for a decade avoids about $6,000 in future damages.
• Installing and using a heat pump for a decade results in an additional $6,000 in avoided damage.
• Cutting driving by 10%, another $6,000 less future cost.

At the corporate scale, the numbers are staggering. Emissions from Saudi Aramco’s fossil fuel production between 1988 and 2015 are estimated to cause $64 trillion in cumulative discounted damages through 2100. ExxonMobil’s comparable share: $29 trillion. These are bigger than the annual GDP of most countries.

Today’s Cost, Tomorrow’s Reality

The social cost of carbon can feel like a number on a page in a regulatory document. It is not. It is a bridge between the world you are living in now and the world you will inherit.

When the federal government uses a low social cost of carbon, or no number at all, it writes rules that allow more emissions. More emissions mean a hotter atmosphere, which means stronger storms, longer fire seasons, lower crop yields, higher air conditioning bills, and more days when outdoor work becomes dangerous. Those consequences do not arrive as a lump sum in 2100.

They arrive gradually, starting now, and compounding in the form of flood and wildfire damage, biodiversity loss, and even defense spending to prevent immigration. The Nature researchers emphasize that their estimates are almost certainly too low because GDP damage functions do not capture losses of biodiversity, loss of cultural homelands, harm to mental health, or many slow-moving impacts such as sea level rise.

When the federal government uses a high social cost of carbon, it writes rules that prevent emissions. Those rules have costs today, sometimes real ones, paid by workers in fossil fuel industries, by consumers adjusting to new standards, by companies retooling their operations. The social cost of carbon does not eliminate those costs. It weighs them against costs that will otherwise fall on other people, in other places, at other times. That weighing is a choice about who counts.

The history traced here is, in that sense, a history of that choice, and none of those decisions are final. Courts have repeatedly ruled that federal agencies cannot treat the value of carbon-emissions reductions as zero. The 2008 ruling that gave rise to this framework is still on the books. Whatever the current administration does, the legal obligation to account for climate damages in cost-benefit analysis remains, and the science underpinning the newer, higher estimates continues to strengthen.

The post The Price Tag on a Ton of Carbon: What It Is, Why It Keeps Changing, and What It Means for Your Future appeared first on Earth911.

An average big-budget movie creates about 3,370 metric tons of CO₂, according to the Sustainable Production Alliance’s 2021 report. That’s like driving over 700 gas-powered cars for a year, or about 33 metric tons of CO₂ for each day of filming. A single TV season can have the same impact as 108 cars. With thousands of productions happening every year in North America, Hollywood’s environmental impact is hard to overlook. Zena Harris, founder and president of Green Spark Group, has spent more than ten years helping the industry turn sustainability goals into practical steps that productions can track. On this episode of Sustainability In Your Ear, she shares how to build sustainable practices into film and TV projects from the very start, instead of adding them at the end when most waste has already been created. Zena started Green Spark Group in 2014 after earning a master’s in sustainability and environmental management at Harvard. She pitched Vancouver’s major studios on a simple idea: sustainability can save money. Her first big project, the X-Files reboot, managed to divert 81% of its waste across 40 filming locations. Since then, her certified B Corp consultancy has worked with Disney, NBCUniversal, Amazon, and other major studios, and she founded the Sustainable Production Forum, which is now in its tenth year.

This conversation comes at an important time. Soon, California’s climate disclosure laws will require studios to report emissions from every vendor in their production supply chain, both before and after filming. Zena points out that while studios are getting ready, most of their suppliers—like small companies that rent generators, handle waste, or provide lumber on tight schedules—are not prepared. The Sustainable Entertainment Alliance has released Scope 3 guidance for productions, and updated Scope 1 and 2 guidance came out in August 2025, but there is still no single tool that everyone uses. The real challenge over the next two years will be closing the gap between what studios must report and what their suppliers can provide. Zena also makes a bigger point about culture. After 12 years in the industry, she sees sustainability experts facing the same obstacles again and again because the way content is made hasn’t changed. The day-to-day work is important, but the bigger opportunity is in climate storytelling. Only about 13% of recent top-rated films mention climate change at all. Tracking the carbon footprint of a TV season is important, but what really matters is how a billion viewers see what’s normal on screen. That’s the influence Hollywood hasn’t fully used yet.

To follow Zena’s work, visit greensparkgroup.com. You can also learn more about the conference she started at sustainableproductionforum.com, or listen to her podcast, The Tie-In, which she co-hosts with Mark Rabin.

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Interview Transcript

Mitch Ratcliffe  0:00

Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear. This is the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society, and I’m your host, Mitch Ratcliffe. Thanks for joining the conversation today.

We’re going to talk about film and television, because every film and TV production starts the same way: with a creative vision, a budget, a shooting schedule, and a huge amount of stuff. Generators burn diesel all day and night at shooting locations. Trucks idle as they wait to move between locations. Sets are built from raw materials only to end up in the landfill when filming ends. Craft services rely on single-use items for literally everything that’s placed on the table for the production team.

Now multiply that by the thousands of productions happening in North America each year, and the scale of the problem becomes clear. The average feature film emits 3,370 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is like driving more than 700 gas-powered cars for a full year. And a single season of a TV show can match the emissions of 108 cars — and that’s not even counting the supply chain, everything that comes onto a set and everything that leaves. Hollywood has promised to be more sustainable many times, and our guest today has spent the last 10 years figuring out what it really takes to make these promises come to life in practice.

Zena Harris is the founder and president of Green Spark Group, a certified B Corp sustainability consultancy that she launched in 2014 with a mission to change the environmental impact of entertainment. She holds a master’s degree from Harvard in sustainability and environmental management, and she came to this work not as an environmentalist, but as a systems thinker — someone who spent her early career in engineering and HR identifying where organizations were leaking efficiency and money. But when she moved to Vancouver and discovered that nobody was focused on sustainability in what had become one of North America’s largest film production hubs, she saw a gap and filled it.

For more than a decade, she’s worked with major studios — including Disney, NBCUniversal, and Amazon — helping them embed sustainable practices in video production projects, and she’s developed measurable goals and built cross-industry collaborations that make lasting change possible.

She also founded the Sustainable Production Forum, which is now in its 10th year and has become the industry’s premier gathering place for turning sustainability talk into coordinated action.

We’ll talk with Zena about what it looks like when a production plans for sustainability from the very beginning, instead of adding it on at the end of the process like we usually do with all of our waste. And she’ll explain her idea of radical collaboration and why making real progress in Hollywood requires everyone — that includes unions, guilds, city governments, power companies, and those top-talent stars — to work together. We’ll also discuss how she uses the circular economy on set, the accountability gap that remains even as California’s new climate disclosure laws start to roll out, and whether the same systems-thinking approach can help business outside the film world.

To find out more about Zena’s work and Green Spark Group, visit greensparkgroup.com — that’s all one word, no space, no dash. Hollywood has the power to change how people think about sustainability, but can it also change how it works behind the scenes? Zena Harris is tackling both challenges at the same time. Let’s see what she’s discovered, right after this brief commercial break.

Mitch Ratcliffe  3:49

Welcome to the show, Zena. How you doing today?

Zena Harris  3:50

Hi. Thanks for having me. I’m doing great. The sun is shining in Tacoma, Washington, and I’m happy to be talking with you.

Mitch Ratcliffe  3:59

Well, I’m so happy to hear that you live in Tacoma. I lived there for almost 50 years. It’s a beautiful place, and I’m glad you’ve inherited it. I really like it. But you started your sustainability career in Vancouver, and you had no entertainment experience, and your first project was helping The X-Files reboot series divert material at 40 shooting locations — and you reduced their waste by 81%. What gave you the confidence to, you know, just call and say, ‘Hey, can I make you more sustainable?’

Zena Harris  4:31

It was a little more than that. You know, there was a lead-up to it. I had studied the film and TV industry in graduate school — I did my master’s thesis on it — so I had a little bit of a background. And the reason I studied it in grad school: I was in a sustainability master’s program, and I wanted to figure out how to shift culture. The first thing I thought of was, okay, people watch TV, we all love movies — that’s where I should start digging in to see what they’re doing. And they weren’t doing a ton. They were doing a little bit, but not too much.

So I talked to all the studio reps and found out what was going on and created a whole framework, like you do in graduate school, and wrote it all up. And then I pitched it to every studio. I sent out a white paper, essentially, to all the studios, and I was like, ‘Hey, let’s talk about this.’ Flew to LA, met with people in person. And I’m like, ‘I’m in Vancouver. I know it’s a major film hub. Put me to work.’ And one person did. She said, ‘Hey, you know, The X-Files is coming. It’s a big show. We have room in the budget to make this great. Let’s see what we can do.’ And that’s what really got me going.

One of the first people I met in the industry was Kelsey Evans. She is the owner of Keep It Green Recycling, which is a local vendor in Vancouver. Now, I had studied the film and TV industry, I know management practices and sustainability and the science, and she knew — like, really knew — the industry. So we worked together on that production, and we still work together today. She’s a friend of mine. She’s fantastic.

We got a lot of stuff done on that show, and that was my introduction into the film industry in practical terms. Vancouver, because it’s a major film hub, has — let’s just say — 20 shows filming at any given time. Sometimes it’s a lot more. But I knew that the work I was doing on that one show could scale. We needed to do it on all the shows. We needed to engage the industry. We needed to train people. So I started Green Spark Group as a vehicle to do this in the industry more broadly.

I think my past experience — prior to even going to grad school — in HR for a multinational company, and I was also an executive director at an international nonprofit where we had working groups and people from all over the world coming together to solve problems and create programs, all that gave me confidence to step into the film industry, look around, learn from others, apply my skills, and build this momentum locally. The company, locally, ended up — now we work across North America and even in other countries. So it’s been a journey.

Mitch Ratcliffe  7:52

Well, you point out that they said, ‘We’ve got room in the budget to make this great,’ but that isn’t always the case. So what’s the pitch to a new client?

Zena Harris  8:00

Yeah, yeah. Well, those are the magic words: ‘We can save you money.’ That is it. That’s it. I mean, look, this has been a movement over the last, let’s say, 12 years — that’s how long I’ve been working in this space. And it’s rare for folks to say, ‘Yeah, we can figure this out in the budget.’ Sometimes it happens, but most people want to know how they can save money. So if you can show them very clearly that they can save money, that pushes the door open. And then you can talk about lots of other things too.

Mitch Ratcliffe  8:43

So tell us about The Amazing Spider-Man 2. You saved them a lot of money. How’d you do it, and how much did you save them?

Zena Harris  8:48

I did not work on that. A colleague of mine, Emellie O’Brien, worked on that. That was actually one of the first productions publicized for saving a lot of money. I think they saved something like — well, I have the number here — $400,000. The cool thing about what happened with that, and also what happened with The X-Files and some others shortly thereafter, is that the studio recorded behind the scenes. They interviewed crew members to talk about what they had done. Then they published some of the stats in a case study and a video.

People in our industry love watching videos, right? So we did a behind-the-scenes for The X-Files, which caught lightning in a bottle — really created a whole movement in Vancouver. We showed that little five-minute behind-the-scenes video to everyone, and they saw their peers in that video because they were crew members speaking about what they had done. Things like that really sparked action in people and this excitement that, ‘Wow, things I have seen and kind of felt uncomfortable with — like waste, nobody likes seeing waste — people saw solutions in those videos. People saw themselves, saw their peers, and that inspired action, awareness, intrigue — like all the stuff you would want to create a movement. I can’t say enough about those early videos. They really helped kind of put us on a trajectory for more awareness and more action.

Mitch Ratcliffe  10:42

A set is kind of like a microcosm of a city. A lot of stuff comes together and then disperses again. We actually did some consulting a few years ago with Hollywood about recycling the material on site — they use the PCs for the first time and then send them to recycling. It’s amazing how wasteful it could be. Tell us about what happens on a set. What’s the input, and what’s the output?

Zena Harris  11:10

Yeah, you are right. It is definitely akin to a city. I mean, if you think about it, for a large film or TV series, there can be 20 different departments working together to make that project happen. Each of those departments brings in some kind of material, some kind of input. The production office will have lots of office supplies, equipment, office equipment, furniture for the office — that kind of thing. Those things are coming in, and then you use them, and then they go out.

Then you can think of production design and construction. These two departments work really closely together, and they’re the ones creating and then building the sets in the sound stage. You can think about all the materials that might be associated with that. Construction is a big input department, where we’re bringing in lots of wood — and other types of material. It’s not just wood, but essentially we’re building a village inside a sound stage to shoot. And it’s all the wood and any other material that goes into that: wallpaper, paint, all sorts of props, set dressing that will go into that space.

So all that’s coming in, and then we use it for a short period of time, and then we have to do something with it. A lot of times, set walls are kind of standard — they can be reused. These are things that, if we recognize the patterns here, we’re using these things all the time. We’re breaking them down, and then we do something with them. A lot of times the breakdown is fast. You don’t have a ton of opportunity to really think. But if we know that there’s a pattern associated — prep, production, and wrap every single show — we know that we can disrupt that pattern. We can plan for it.

This is where thinking ahead and planning like, ‘Hey, we can reuse these walls. Got a lot of doors here — we’re going to reuse these doors. We’re going to send them to a place that will hold them temporarily, like a reuse center, and then those can be redistributed back into the industry.’ Some productions will store this stuff on their own if they have reshoots they think they might have, or another series they might come along. So all of these are options.

The default historically has been — because this is a dynamic industry, because timelines are short, people need to get out of their stage space — to use it, break it down, put it in the dumpster, get that thing out of here, and move on. So we’re saying there’s another way to do it, and just that alone saves the production a lot of money, because those big dumpsters at the end of it all are expensive to haul away. If we can reduce even a few of those, that is a cost savings, and then that material can be diverted and reused. So everything coming in — food, big material like construction material that people think a lot about, anything coming in — has an opportunity to be diverted, redistributed on the back end. And then that action saves money.

Mitch Ratcliffe  14:59

Well, you describe what’s needed as radical collaboration. I’m wondering if you can explain what that means, because Hollywood’s going through a lot of changes right now, and it sounds like sustainability may be the keystone of some new talent or new careers during the production process. So what are the hardest stakeholders in that radical collaboration to get to move from where they are today?

Zena Harris  15:22

Yeah. I think, like I said, I’ve been doing this for a really long time, and one of the things that I’ve picked up over the years is that people in the industry have been conditioned to point fingers. There are different stakeholders in the industry. Crew will point to the union or the studio, for example, and say, ‘You know, those folks need to do something so that I can integrate sustainable practices.’ The unions will point to crew or studios. The studios will point to production or unions. And so at the end of the day, that doesn’t get us anywhere. We’re kind of swirling in this finger-pointing. And nobody really knows what to do. They’re waiting for something. So progress is slow when you do that.

In order to move the needle, I think one of the things we need to do is actually work together in ways that might seem unconventional or radical. I keep reminding myself of the saying, ‘What got us here won’t take us forward.’ So we have to get over ourselves and do something differently. We know that there’s no single organization that’s going to solve all the problems or change the existing system. We need a different approach, a different narrative around all of this — not just kind of deferring to another stakeholder.

This is what I call radical collaboration, because it’s different. Collaboration between crew and unions and studios and creatives and suppliers and industry organizations — in ways that have been different than we’ve tried before, that really haven’t worked so well, or not to the degree we wanted them to work. So instead of reinventing the wheel on that, we need a whole different tack. I think that in order to see success, we need positive reinforcement for people. We need to actually say, ‘Yes, this worked,’ and in increments too — not just the big things. When people see that positive reinforcement, they actually lean in. They actually have more confidence in what they’re doing. And then this increases momentum. That’s kind of my view of radical collaboration and what I think is needed to keep the ball rolling.

Mitch Ratcliffe  18:07

Well, you’re making a really interesting point, which is that people don’t dislike change. They may be a little afraid of it, but they want to see that the extra effort involved in making the change actually is paying off. As the orchestrator of the sustainability activities on set, how do you communicate that to them so that the Teamsters and the members of the Screen Actors Guild all say, ‘Oh, I’m in’?

Zena Harris  18:37

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it’s interesting. You mentioned a couple of different positions there — Teamsters and actors and these sorts of things. Everybody is coming to the production with a different perspective, a different viewpoint, kind of a different mandate within their department. Like, their job is to do this. So everybody sees sustainability in a slightly different way.

One of the things we really strive to do — and I would say this is kind of a standard practice, but what we’re trying to do as a team at Green Spark Group — is go beyond surface-level conversations. Not just say, ‘Here are a few things you could do,’ but really try to have a deeper conversation with people in each of these departments and ask them what they see, what they need to be successful in doing any one of the things that they might want to do differently, and really help them get there. If they’re afraid to talk to someone, well, we’ll help them do that. We will have their back. We will go with them and be a backstop for anything they may not know or feel confident talking about. If it is finding a vendor and they don’t have time to look around, we’ll help them do that.

You know, people say, ‘Meet you where you are.’ But it’s really going beyond surface-level conversations. It’s really tapping into people’s wants, needs, level of confidence, and helping them grow that and helping them shine in their role — whatever it is. I think that sort of human-centric approach is really helpful, and what really moves the needle, or actually builds trust. Because at the end of the day, we can go in there and talk about all sorts of gear. There’s a lot of gear out there. There’s a lot of batteries out there that are going to save emissions. But I have seen multiple times where batteries have been rented, they sit in the gear truck, and people are afraid to use them. Why is that? Let’s talk about that. Let’s really unpack it, and let’s find a safe space to do it. Maybe it’s that lightweight one over there, and we want to just test it out. Totally cool. Let’s make that happen. What’s it going to take to get there?

Mitch Ratcliffe  21:24

This very meta moment — talking about telling stories to storytellers to get them to change their behavior — is a great place to take a quick commercial break. Folks, we’re going to be right back to continue this really interesting conversation.

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Let’s get back to my conversation with Zena Harris, founder and president of the Hollywood sustainability consultancy — although Vancouver, too — Green Spark Group. Zena, your mission is to change the climate of entertainment, and that has a double meaning that clearly was deliberate. But I’m wondering, in the current environment and thinking about the stories we tell about why we do things, with all the whiplashing political winds of the last couple of years, how has that changed your message and your perception of what Hollywood’s trying to accomplish?

Zena Harris  22:16

Yeah, I mean, I’ve said this a few times. We have a lot of momentum. Right now, in 2026, there are more organizations, there are more people thinking about sustainability, there are more tools out there for people to use. There’s a lot of momentum in the industry. So for us at Green Spark Group, we are on a mission to change the climate of entertainment, and it’s incremental, year over year, year over year — and so we’re still working on it. It’s very relevant for us today.

We have had a hand in changing a lot in the entertainment industry over the last 12 years. We started programs, we’ve created strategic plans for industry organizations and training in the C-suite, and started the industry’s first conference. We’re uplifting people and trying to give a platform to people to collaborate and share their ideas. But there’s a lot of opportunity out there. There are still a lot of people who are new to sustainability, and they need someone to help them make sense of it all. It’s taking all this wonderful information that’s been created by various organizations — and we’ve contributed as well — and distilling it and helping them make sense of it all, make decisions that are in line with their values, and implement the things that they want to implement. Save the money that they can save, that they know they can, when they start doing the math.

Mitch Ratcliffe  24:11

Is the money the key thing right now? Is it the sustainable savings, or is it still a commitment to the climate, in the context of, again, all the backlash against the idea of environmentalism?

Zena Harris  24:24

Yeah, I mean, the idea of environmentalism, I think, is kind of in the broader ethos. I think when you get down to talking to people one on one, they want solutions to things — waste they’ve seen, or emissions they’ve encountered on production, or food waste, or whatever it is. Whether they call themselves an environmentalist or they just are a caring and concerned person, everybody wants a positive working experience. And they don’t want that tension internally between, ‘I’m doing this great, creative, wonderful thing in my job, and then I look over here and some negative thing is happening environmentally or whatever.’ People want a holistic, positive work experience. So I think that’s core at the end of the day — to tap into that, and, like I said, just go beyond surface-level conversations and really help people figure that out.

Mitch Ratcliffe  25:35

Let me ask about the other side of that equation, about changing the climate of entertainment. Hollywood has enormous cultural reach, but we did a little research and found that only about 10%, 13% was the number we came up with, of recent top-rated films even acknowledge the idea of climate change on screen. Do you hear creatives on the content side talking about climate? Do they ask you? Do they say, ‘You know, this is interesting, I’d like to learn more, and I might tell a story about it someday’?

Zena Harris  26:05

Yeah. I mean, this idea that the industry reach is certainly enormous — the cultural influence of the industry, wherever you’re interacting with it, whether you love a character on screen, whether you follow an actor in real life and kind of just like what they do, whether you follow — like, I’m an operations kind of person, I like looking at how things work and trying to improve that. But this idea of climate storytelling, a lot of people are thinking about it right now. It’s a huge lever. You will hear that batted around a lot. A lot of industry organizations are doing research on it and trying to get into writers’ rooms and in film schools.

There’s a lot of momentum in that space. We have been engaged a few times in that effort, and it’s proven beneficial. So I would say that 13% — there’s a lot of momentum around this subject, and I can see that number increasing over time. People want stories that reflect the current reality they’re feeling in real life. There are a lot of people working in environmental jobs, or in some shape or form, and I think those kinds of professions will be reflected on screen a lot more in the future. So, yeah, I think there’s a lot of momentum in that space.

Mitch Ratcliffe  27:52

I can see a film about a ranger saving a family from a fire.

Zena Harris  27:57

You can think it, they can do it.

Mitch Ratcliffe  28:00

Let’s turn back to the operational question, as you pointed out you focus on that. One of the common problems that production has, along with every other business, is trying to fully measure what’s going on. Like we were talking about, this set is this midpoint in a very complex supply chain where stuff has flowed in, now it needs to go somewhere in order to either be reused or appropriately recycled, but we can’t fully measure all that. What’s still in the invisible category of information? In the same sense that Scope 3 emissions are hard for a typical corporation to measure, is there a comparable issue with production sustainability?

Zena Harris  28:36

Oh yeah, 100%. Look, there are always more things to measure. As an industry, we have focused a lot on carbon emissions from things like utilities, fuel, air travel, and accommodations. We have a really good handle on that. But those are, like, four categories, right? And, as you said earlier, materials are coming onto production — food, wood, office supplies, you name it, it comes onto production. So those are the things we don’t have a solid handle on. There’s embedded carbon and all that stuff.

There are also lots of industry tools, industry carbon calculators out there — some measure more than others.

Mitch Ratcliffe  (interjects)

Are any of them any good?

Zena Harris  (continues)

Yeah, yeah, they’re good. But some have more inputs than others. Some will only measure those four categories that I mentioned. For years, for example, everybody in the industry wants to know the waste diversion rate, right? But nobody focuses on the carbon emissions associated with that material. We just get a diversion rate, and we call it good. So you have to choose: if you want to know all of that, you have to choose a tool that will allow you to input more of that information. And we don’t have a standard tool yet in the industry that everybody uses, so we can compare apples to apples.

We have guidance in the industry, and that’s really helpful. The Sustainable Entertainment Alliance, which is an industry consortium, has put out guidance on Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3. Their Scope 3 guidance is the most recent, and with new information, new methodology, a lot of people don’t really know what to do with that, and maybe aren’t sure which tool to use to capture some of that stuff. So there’s a lot of uncertainty even around the guidance that’s out there. That’s where you can seek out professionals to help you understand all that stuff.

Mitch Ratcliffe  31:11

One of the characteristics of the change we’re undergoing right now is the recognition of externalities. And in Hollywood production generally — I have some friends who are in the industry — it seems to me that they focused almost entirely on who was in front of the camera and who was behind the camera, and only now are starting to recognize that they’re part of this deeper supply chain. And now California’s new climate disclosure laws are going to require studios to report indirect, upstream and downstream emissions from every vendor by this year. How’s that going to change? And is the industry actually getting the traction on trying to respond to that requirement?

Zena Harris  31:47

The studios are very aware of this. They’ve been preparing for this. The suppliers upstream, downstream are not as [prepared].

Mitch Ratcliffe  31:58

So how are they not prepared? What do we need to do?

Zena Harris  32:00

Well, they haven’t been tracking.

Mitch Ratcliffe  32:10

So they’re the typical company.

Zena Harris  32:13

They are a typical company. These are small companies servicing these projects, these productions. And we’ve been so focused in the industry on pre-production and production — that piece of the content creation process. So if you think of a book that has 10 chapters, we’ve been essentially focusing on one chapter. So you’ve got all of the other ones, and all of the service companies and suppliers and all of that that still incorporates the book, and all of those are contributing in some way.

Now we’ve been collecting data from waste haulers. We’ve been collecting data from people who supply equipment, and even those folks are still trying to get organized with their data. So you can imagine, like every other company, they all have their own operations. So that’s one thing. You can incorporate sustainability into your own company operations, and then you can provide data associated with the product or service that you are providing. And that’s going to matter. Those things roll up into this production reporting, and that production reporting rolls up into the larger studio, who’s going to have to incorporate that into their corporate reporting.

Mitch Ratcliffe  33:54

So do you see this regulation as catalyzing the potential for sustainability at scale in entertainment production?

Zena Harris  34:05

Yeah. I mean, I think it provides people a solid talking point to go up and shake the tree a little bit and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to have to be doing this.’ Look, they’re not going to have all the information they need, probably, in year one. So they’re going to take what they do have, and they’re going to estimate probably across their slate. And then they’re going to work really hard to make that better, more accurate in the coming years. So if you’re not asked in year one as a supplier for certain information, you might be in year two and three. It would be wise, I think, to kind of get your house in order and be able to start reporting on these things, even if you’re never asked. It’s good for you as a company, because you start to understand where your waste is, where your emissions lie, and then you can start making changes accordingly. And yes, that stuff saves money. So it’s good for everyone to be thinking about this, whether you’re asked by a studio or not.

Mitch Ratcliffe  35:16

Well, that’s really the key — that it’s also rewarding to make that kind of additional positive impact, as well as save some money and make more profit in the long run. I mean, that’s what’s rewarding about progress in general.

Zena Harris  35:30

Totally, totally. It’s a ripple effect, right? And then we just get better as an industry, and then an industry that contributes to broader society.

Mitch Ratcliffe  35:40

So after 10 years, how far has the industry come toward the vision that you had when you started Green Spark Group?

Zena Harris  35:50

Oh, gosh. Well, there’s a lot that has happened over these years. Like I said, more people are aware, more people are engaged. But I think that we are swirling within the existing system. Sustainability practitioners that started working on production like I did years ago — we just entered this existing content creation system. And what I’m noticing now is that we’re swirling within the same system. We’re all running up against similar challenges around the world with regard to implementing sustainable practices. So we’re coming up against consistent hurdles, barriers within this system.

For me, that’s an opportunity to look a little bit bigger and say, ‘Okay, well, if we keep running into the same barriers, what if the system shifted? What if the entire system shifted? What are the incentives involved in the system to keep it the way it is?’ And there’s a lot — that’s a whole separate podcast — but all to say, this is where we need to be thinking: how we shift the system, how we have that radical collaboration, how we shift the needle on what suppliers are doing and reporting, and these sorts of things. And that’s what’s going to take us to the next level. We’re going to get over the hump.

Mitch Ratcliffe  37:34

So, given that, imagine that you are Zena, goddess of sustainability, and can put your finger on one thing and change it. What would it be, in order to drive much more rapid transition to a more sustainable production environment?

Zena Harris  37:51

I mean, I think it all comes down to the people — the people in the system that are either allowing or not allowing, either making excuses or open to possibility. It all comes down to that. There are some core elements associated with people, behavior change, these sorts of things. I think mindset is core, absolutely core. I think courage — even to talk about this stuff within your small team or your department, or even in a larger conversation — is pretty critical, to voice some things you’re noticing, or what ideas you have for doing things differently. I think that collective confidence — once you do that, people get on board. They come together. Confidence is critical as well. If you don’t have it, you’re not going to take the next step, right? So there are fundamental human elements that need to be developed, to be encouraged, to be demonstrated. And I think that is going to shift the needle.

Mitch Ratcliffe  39:08

It’s a storytelling challenge in a lot of ways. There’s some carrot, there’s some stick, there’s a lot of nuance to that tale that we need to really make embedded into everybody’s approach to thinking about the work. Zena, thanks so much for your time today. How can folks follow both Green Spark Group and the work you’ve done with the Sustainable Production Forum?

Zena Harris  39:28

Sure. You’re always welcome to check out our website, greensparkgroup.com. We post insights there monthly and have a lot of great information for folks. Also on social media at @greensparkgroup — pick a platform, we’re probably on it. And then the Sustainable Production Forum is online as well, sustainableproductionforum.com, and from there you can get to all of their content, videos, anything you want to know is there too.

And I’ll also just give a quick plug for my podcast that I co-host with my longtime friend Mark Rabin. It’s called The Tie-In, and so folks can also check out stories from crew members, from people doing amazing work behind the scenes. We talk to them all there.

Mitch Ratcliffe  40:21

Zena, thanks so much. It’s been a fascinating conversation. Really enjoyed it.

Zena Harris 

Thank you.

Mitch Ratcliffe  40:31

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You’ve been listening to my conversation with Zena Harris, founder and president of Green Spark Group, the certified B Corp sustainability consultancy she launched in 2014 to change the climate of entertainment. You can find Zena and her team’s work at greensparkgroup.com — that’s all one word, no space, no dash. And check out their conference, the Sustainable Production Forum, now in its 10th year, at sustainableproductionforum.com, also all one word, no space, no dash.

I think the headline from Zena’s work is a pitch, not a principle: ‘We can save you money.’ That’s how she opens a conversation with a studio, and it’s why The Amazing Spider-Man 2 became an early case study, based on the work of a colleague of hers at Green Spark who helped that production save roughly $400,000 through sustainable practices. The implications of these savings are clear when you stand next to the dumpster at the end of a chute and watch a village’s worth of lumber, furniture, wallpaper, and props get hauled away to a landfill because the stage needs to be empty by Monday.

The sustainability opportunity in film and TV isn’t a values problem — the industry’s values are already stated on the record. It’s an operational capacity problem, and Zena’s work is translating aspiration into line items a production accountant can track. And that’s to the benefit of the environment, even if it’s not visible on the bottom line.

California’s new climate disclosure laws are about to change the equation, too. Beginning this year, studios will have to report upstream and downstream emissions from every vendor in their production supply chain. That’s the chapter of the book, as Zena put it, that the industry has never actually opened. The studios knew that this is coming, and they’ve been preparing for it. Their suppliers — the small companies servicing productions on short timelines — mostly haven’t. That gap is the real story over the next 24 months in the entertainment sustainability business.

Zena’s advice to suppliers is the same advice my recent guest Steve Wilhite, who leads Schneider Electric’s power management division, offered corporate energy buyers just a few weeks ago: get your house in order now, because even if you’re not asked for data today, you will be in two or three years. The companies that can report cleanly will win work, while those that can’t will become a balance sheet burden to the studios.

A digital nervous system is arriving now in Hollywood, and every waste hauler, every generator rental company, every lumber supplier is becoming a data-producing node in a network that didn’t exist just one or two production cycles ago. California’s environmental policy is forcing that network into being, and once it exists, it will not unbuild itself, because people are going to see the benefits. They’re going to see the savings that we’ve been talking about throughout this conversation.

And after 12 years in the business, I think Zena’s comment near the end of our conversation — that sustainability practitioners in entertainment are ‘swirling within the existing system’ — is important to note. The hurdles they hit on one production look identical to the hurdles they hit on the next, because the content creation system itself hasn’t changed. That’s the green living myth problem I discussed recently with author Michael Maniates, but with a Hollywood accent: individual actors are doing the right thing inside a structure that continues to produce the same outputs by default. And that can easily become disenchanting. On-set greening is necessary and it’s real, but the industry’s deepest cultural lever is the one that we discussed in passing.

Only about 13% of recent top-rated films even acknowledge climate change on screen. The carbon accounting for a single TV season matters, but the cultural accounting — for what a billion viewers see, what they feel is normal, and what film and television characters drive and eat and care about — that’s the lever that this industry hasn’t yet pulled. Production sustainability builds the operational muscle and the credibility, but climate storytelling is where that credibility will be built at scale, because it will spread these ideas, changing not only Hollywood’s practices, but the practices of an entire world. One without the other leaves the most influential narrative engine on the planet running on the old script, and it’s time for a change.

So stay tuned. We’re going to keep talking with people rewriting what’s possible on set and on screen. And could you take a moment to help spread the word about the sustainable future we can build together? You are the amplifier that can spread more ideas to create less waste. So please take a look at any of the more than 550 episodes of Sustainability In Your Ear in our archives. Writing a review on your favorite podcast platform will help your neighbors find us. So please tell your friends, family, and co-workers they can find Sustainability In Your Ear on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or whatever purveyor of podcast goodness they prefer.

Thank you, folks, for your support. I’m Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Sustainability In Your Ear, and we will be back with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, take care of yourself, take care of one another, and let’s all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day.

The post Sustainability In Your Ear: Zena Harris Brings a Green Spark to Hollywood appeared first on Earth911.

The average American discards roughly 82 pounds of clothing and textiles each year — and most of it lands in a landfill. According to the EPA, more than 17 million tons of textiles were generated as municipal solid waste in 2018, a figure the U.S. Government Accountability Office confirmed was more than 50% higher than in 2000 due largely to the rise of fast fashion. And the recycling rate for clothing and footwear? Just 13%.

Denim is one of the most salvageable things in that waste stream. Because authentic jeans are made mostly from cotton, a natural, biodegradable fiber, they can be recycled into building insulation, pet bed inserts, and thermal packaging, or given a second life through resale and creative reuse.

Here are five ways to put your worn-out jeans to work, and have some fun doing it.

1. Your unwanted denim can be turned into insulation.

Cotton Incorporated’s Blue Jeans Go Green program has been recycling denim into insulation since 2006. Since then, the program has collected more than 5 million pieces of denim and diverted over 2,290 tons of textile waste from landfills. That recycled fiber gets processed into UltraTouch™ Denim Insulation by Bonded Logic — used in homes, thermal packaging, and pet bedding — with some insulation donated each year to building projects in communities in need.

The program accepts any denim item (jeans, jackets, skirts, shirts) that’s at least 90% cotton, in any condition. Drop off locations include Anthropologie, which has committed to diverting 10 tons through the program, and a rotating list of retail partners you can find on the Blue Jeans Go Green recycle page.

You can also mail denim directly to the program at Cotton’s Blue Jeans Go Green™ Program c/o Phoenix Fibers – CIMI, 400 East Ray Road, Chandler, AZ 85225 (a free prepaid label program ended in August 2025, so you’ll need to cover shipping).

Madewell’s denim trade-up program is one of the most practical ways to close the loop on old jeans, regardless of the brand. Drop any pair of jeans of any cut, color, or condition at a Madewell store and receive $20 off a full-priced pair of Madewell jeans. The program is year-round with no limit on how many pairs you bring in.

The program has collected more than 2.3 million preloved pieces. Gently worn jeans are resold through Madewell Forever, the brand’s resale platform with ThredUp; jeans beyond repair are recycled into housing insulation and sustainable packaging via the Blue Jeans Go Green partnership.

You can also mail in denim with a free Clean Out Kit or shipping label if you don’t have a Madewell nearby.

2. Turn your denim into a pair of shorts.

This is probably the easiest way to repurpose a pair of jeans. Even if you don’t sew, you can make long jeans into shorts. Get a pair of sharp scissors, figure out where you want to cut, and then enjoy your new shorts. Remember the old saying, “measure twice, and cut once.” If you’re a sewer (or good with a glue gun), check out this tutorial by Craft & Creativity for some adorable additions to cutoffs.

3. Upcycle your denim into a reusable bag.

One of my favorite ways to upcycle denim is by making reusable bags. You can use the bags as an adorable way to package a gift, as a purse, and as a reusable grocery carrier, just to name a few. I also found this creative phone charging bag. This is another project that could be done simply with a glue gun or, if you don’t have one, some craft glue.

4. Upcycle your denim into some sweet friendship bracelets.

One of my girls’ favorite projects is to upcycle material, including denim, into friendship bracelets. They are able to use their creativity and make each bracelet a special work of art. First, gather supplies like fun buttons, embroidery floss, and any other embellishments you may have on hand. Then cut the denim into strips.

Next is where the fun really begins. Let your kids use their imaginations to dream up some adorable ways to decorate their friendship bracelets. They could even begin by sketching out their ideas so you know how to help them make their vision a reality.

Your kiddos can wear their bracelets proudly and give them as gifts.

Need more ideas on how to upcycle your worn denim? Visit this helpful Pinterest board.

5. Make a craft supply holder with your unwanted jeans and some cans from the recycling bin.

This is a great idea for anyone who wants to organize their craft supplies in one spot. You could make it a kid-friendly craft supply holder by including washable markers, colored pencils, safety scissors and glue sticks. Add a handle and this could be a great way to bring craft supplies on the road with you. I found this example at 8Trends.com.

Denim scraps also work well as ties for garden plants, drawer liners, coasters (backed with felt), small coin pouches, and journal covers. Because denim frays attractively rather than looking ragged, even imperfect cuts tend to look intentional. There’s also a growing community of textile artists on Pinterest’s denim upcycle boards with ideas organized by skill level and material quantity.

Your old jeans are too valuable to throw away. If they’re still wearable, donate them to a local thrift store or trade them in at Madewell. If they’re worn out, recycle them through Blue Jeans Go Green — or cut them into something new. Use Earth911’s Recycling Search to find textile recycling drop-off spots near you.

Editor’s Note: Originally published by Wendy Gabriel on February 6, 2017, this article was updated in April 2026. Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock.com.

The post 5 Fun Ways To Recycle Your Jeans appeared first on Earth911.

Earth911 inspirations. Print them, post them, share your desire to help people think of the planet first, every day.

Today’s quote is from primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall: “The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”

This poster was originally published on May 17, 2019.

The post Earth911 Inspiration: The Greatest Danger to Our Future Is Apathy appeared first on Earth911.

Forty thousand miles of plastic waste wash through the global ocean every year, enough to wrap the Earth at the equator. But walk into the right store, and you can personally shorten that pipeline by a few feet, returning a pair of worn sneakers, a dead laptop, or a piece of furniture destined for the dumpster.

Some retailers have built genuine end-of-life infrastructure for the products they sell — not just a PR line, but real systems with documented results. The seven below have the numbers to back it up, updated for 2026.

Patagonia

Patagonia’s Worn Wear program remains one of the most comprehensive take-back systems in retail apparel. In 2025, customers made more than 137,000 trade-ins — almost 71,000 of them from return and warranty claims — and the online Shop Used feature launched in September 2024 has expanded the secondhand market significantly. Items deemed wearable are cleaned, repaired, and resold through Worn Wear; those beyond repair enter a recycling pipeline.

On the material innovation side, Patagonia partnered with Eastman in 2024 to process 8,000 pounds of pre- and post-consumer clothing waste through molecular recycling — breaking apparel down to chemical building blocks for reuse as new fiber. The brand has also moved aggressively on materials: by fall 2025, over 90 percent of Patagonia’s fabrics were recycled, organic, or traceable. Its 2025 Work in Progress Report disclosed that reducing hang tags by over 40 million pieces has avoided 170,000 pounds of packaging waste. The structural challenge — mechanically recycling blended fabrics — remains unsolved at industrial scale, and Patagonia acknowledges it openly.

Apple

Apple’s trade-in and recycling program sent 15.9 million devices to new owners through refurbishment schemes in 2024 alone. Devices that cannot be refurbished are processed by Daisy, Apple’s disassembly robot, which can now break down 36 models of iPhone into discrete components to recover aluminum, copper, rare earth elements, and other materials. A second robot, Dave, disassembles Taptic Engines to recover rare earth magnets, tungsten, and steel.

The material-recovery numbers are striking. In 2024, 24 percent of all materials shipped in Apple products came from recycled or renewable sources, up from 10 percent in 2019. Recycled aluminum accounted for 71 percent of the aluminum Apple purchased. The company avoided 6.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by using recycled and low-carbon materials in 2024, according to its 2025 Environmental Progress Report. Apple has also surpassed 99 percent on its 2025 goal to use 100 percent recycled rare earth elements in all magnets and 100 percent recycled cobalt in all Apple-designed batteries. Customers can drop devices off at any Apple Store or ship for free.

Best Buy

Best Buy has collected 2.7 billion pounds of electronics and appliances since launching its recycling program in 2009, making it the nation’s largest retail collector of e-waste. The program accepts most consumer electronics at more than 1,000 stores regardless of where items were purchased, collecting more than 400 pounds of product every minute stores are open.

The program has expanded: a mail-in recycling service now lets customers without easy store access ship old tech in purpose-built boxes. A home haul-away service launched for customers who cannot transport large items. Best Buy requires all recycling partners to comply with rigorous environmental management standards and holds them to regulatory compliance and responsible workforce practices. TVs and monitors carry a $25 fee; most other electronics — phones, laptops, tablets, cables — are accepted free.

Nike

Nike’s original Reuse-a-Shoe program launched in 1995 to recycle worn athletic footwear into Nike Grind material for surfaces and new products has evolved into the Recycling + Donation (RAD) service, now available globally.

The program accepts athletic footwear and apparel from any brand and inspects each item to determine donation or recycling eligibility. Wearable items go to nonprofit partners including Soles4Souls for redistribution to communities in need; worn-out footwear is ground down into Nike Grind, which goes into playground surfaces, running tracks, and new Nike products.

Part of Nike’s Move to Zero initiative, targeting zero carbon and zero waste across the supply chain, the  Participating stores accept shoes of any brand — athletic footwear only; no cleats, boots, or sandals. Nike also runs Nike Refurbished, which cleans and resells gently worn or slightly imperfect footwear and apparel at select factory and community stores, extending product life before material recovery.

Staples

Staples pioneered national retail recycling in 2007 as the first U.S. retailer to offer a universal e-waste takeback program. Today the program accepts over 50 types of materials including computers, printers, phones, cables, batteries, crayons, and coffee machines from any brand. Since 2021, Staples has recycled 7,000 tons of e-waste and 19 million ink and toner cartridges, helping HP reach a milestone of 1 billion cartridges recycled.

Staples’ Easy Rewards program currently gives members 500 points (equivalent to $5 back) per month for tech recycling. Ink and toner cartridge recycling earns $2 per cartridge for members spending at least $30 on ink over the previous 180 days, up to a monthly limit. Staples uses certified recyclers whenever possible, and recycled toner material gets routed into road construction aggregate. The company accepts electronics in-store at customer service desks at all U.S. Staples locations.

IKEA

Furniture is the United States’ largest category of discarded household goods, with Americans throwing away approximately 12 million tons of it each year. IKEA’s Buyback & Resell program addresses the problem at the point of sale: customers fill out an online form, receive a value estimate, and bring gently used IKEA furniture to any participating store in exchange for store credit. Items that pass inspection enter the As-Is section for resale; those that cannot be resold are recycled under IKEA’s zero-waste-to-landfill policy.

The U.S. program now runs in 33 stores and, as of 2025, accepts more than 5,000 product types, including tables, chairs, storage units, lamps, and kids’ furniture among many. Globally, IKEA’s circular initiatives contributed to a 24.3 percent reduction in the company’s climate footprint while revenue grew 30.9 percent. Sofas, mattresses, and modified products are not accepted. IKEA Family members currently receive 50 percent more in store credit through May 2026.

REI

REI’s Re/Supply program sold nearly 1.4 million items of used outdoor gear in 2024, double the volume from 2019. The program accepts trade-ins of gently used REI-brand and name-brand gear including backpacks, sleeping bags, tents, and apparel. Members receive store credit; items are inspected, cleaned, and resold at a discount. Selling a used item through Re/Supply emits at least 50 percent less carbon than selling a new equivalent, even accounting for shipping, cleaning, and remerchandising.

REI also became the first major U.S. retailer to reach 90 percent operational waste diversion, achieving zero-waste certification in 2024 that audited and independently verified — ahead of Walmart and Target. Three of its distribution centers hold TRUE Zero Waste certification. In 2024, about 52 percent of the polyester and 45 percent of the nylon in REI Co-op products came from recycled sources. REI also charges brand partners a recycling fee to discourage individual plastic poly bags, and the majority of brands it carries have eliminated them as standard practice.

Related Reading

• Where Is the Circular Packaging Economy in 2026?
• How to Recycle Ink Cartridges
• Close the Loop: A Primer on Circular Economy
• How Patagonia Is Recycling Bottles into Jackets

Editor’s Note: Originally written by Sarah Lozanova on April 10, 2017, this article was substantially updated in April 2026.

The post 7 Retailers With Impressive Recycling Programs appeared first on Earth911.

More than 400,000 tons of release liner waste are generated in the United States every year — and the vast majority ends up in the landfill. You know these slick sheets: they’re the backing on address labels, shipping labels, postage stamps, and every sticker you’ve ever peeled. They look like paper, they tear like paper, but your recycling bin can’t process them like paper.

Label backing sheets, known in industry as release liners, are a hybrid material that confounds conventional recycling systems. Understanding why helps you avoid contaminating your curbside bin, and points toward where real solutions are emerging.

What Makes Release Liners So Hard to Recycle

The paper component of most label backing sheets is called glassine, a highly processed, translucent paper whose fibers have been flattened and aligned to create a smooth surface. Glassine has uses in food wrappers, pastry bags, and envelopes, but its compressed fibers yield very little usable pulp in the recycling process. The paper market runs on fiber strength, and glassine simply doesn’t have it.

The second problem is the coating. Release liners are treated with a release agent — almost always silicone — that prevents labels from permanently bonding to the backing. This silicone layer is what allows you to peel cleanly. It’s also what makes recycling nearly impossible at most facilities; the coating can’t be removed without specialized processing, and when it contaminates paper recycling streams, it degrades the quality of the resulting pulp and can jam machinery.

A third issue is material variation. Some liners use plastic film made from PET (#1 plastic) or polypropylene (#5 plastic) instead of paper as their base, adding another layer of complexity. Without knowing what type of liner you have, there’s no reliable way to route it into a specialized program.

Industry data suggests that historically only about 1–1.5% of liner waste has been recycled. More recent label industry reports put the overall global recycling rate at around 35%, but that figure is heavily skewed by industrial-scale programs in Europe and at large commercial facilities.

For the consumer peeling address labels at home, the recycling rate is effectively zero.

The Bottom Line for Consumers: Not Curbside

Label backing sheets from home use, such as the backing sheet from a page of address labels, the liner from a sheet of postage stamps, the wax paper-like sheet from a roll of stickers, do not belong in curbside recycling. Placing them in the recycling bin contaminates cleaner paper streams and does not help the material reach an appropriate end market.

The exception is if you can verify that your liner is an uncoated, matte paperboard with no silicone feel. That type may be recyclable as regular paper in some municipalities, but it’s uncommon for consumer label products. When in doubt, trash it — a wrong recycling choice is worse than no recycling choice.

Don’t put silicone-coated liners in composting either. The coating prevents biodegradation and will contaminate the compost.

The Label Industry Responds

The past two years have brought significant movement on release liner recycling, almost entirely at the commercial and industrial scale — so, still not helpful for curbside recycling but it promise more mail-in options.

The Tag and Label Manufacturers Institute launched its Liner Recycling Initiative (LRI) in 2024, partnering with paper mill Sustana Fiber. Sustana’s mills in De Pere, Wisconsin and Levis, Quebec can process white silicone-coated paper release liner and remove silicone alongside inks and other contaminants. The LRI is running regional pilots in Chicagoland and the Northeast U.S., with aggregation drop-off locations in Boston, Buffalo, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Wallingford CT, and three Canadian cities.

Avery Dennison’s AD Circular program, which connects commercial label brands and large businesses in the U.S. with vetted recycling providers for liner waste, is designed to kickstart a circular economy in label backing. The company has also partnered with Mitsubishi Chemical’s Polyester Film division for a closed-loop PET liner recycling program. These programs are designed for businesses generating consistent volumes of liner, not for household use.

UPM Raflatac’s RafCycle program provides a similar commercial liner recycling network in the U.S. and Canada, converting used liners into recycled paper, insulation material, and other products.

In 2025, labeling company SATO launched a recycling program at its Kitakami, Japan facility to recycle approximately 19 tons of silicone-coated release liners annually.

Sustainable Alternatives Are Growing

The most direct solution to the release liner problem is eliminating the liner altogether. Linerless label technology applies a special release coating directly to the face of the label, allowing rolls to wind without sticking to adjacent layers. These labels generate no backing waste, and rolls contain significantly more labels per roll, reducing material use and shipping weight.

For consumers who buy labels directly for home organizing, shipping, or small business use, EcoEnclose offers a patent-protected Zero Waste Release Liner made from 100% post-consumer waste that is curbside recyclable alongside regular paper. Their shipping labels, product labels, and sticker sheets use this liner. It’s the only liner of its kind currently available at consumer scale.

What You Can Do

• Do not put label backing sheets in curbside recycling or compost — silicone coatings contaminate both paper and compost streams.
• If you produce label liner regularly at a business, check the TLMI Liner Recycling Map at com for aggregation sites near the Northeast or Midwest U.S. pilots.
• Look for linerless label options when purchasing labels for shipping, home organization, or small business use. They cost roughly the same and eliminate the waste problem entirely.
• If sustainable sourcing matters to you, EcoEnclose‘s Zero Waste Liner products are curbside recyclable, a rare consumer-accessible option.
• Reuse intact backing sheets as non-stick craft surfaces, interleaving material, or temporary labels before discarding.

Related Earth911 Articles

• How to Recycle Paper
• Where Is The Circular Packaging Economy In 2026?
• How to Recycle Cardboard

The post Recycling Mystery: Label Backing Sheets appeared first on Earth911.

More Americans than ever think the environment is in bad shape, and they want the government to do something about it. According to a new Gallup poll released last week, only 35% of U.S. adults rate the overall quality of the environment as good or excellent. That’s the lowest number Gallup has recorded since it started asking the question in 2001.

It’s not just one or two things people are worried about. Drinking water, rivers and lakes, climate change, air pollution, endangered species. Concerns are on the rise across the board.

What People Are Most Worried About

Water is the top concern, and it has been for over two decades. More than half of Americans — 56% — say they worry “a great deal” about drinking water pollution. Another 53% say the same about the country’s fresh water supply. Half are deeply worried about pollution in rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.

Climate change isn’t far behind. A companion Gallup climate report finds that 44% of Americans worry “a great deal” about global warming, close to the all-time high of 46% recorded in 2020. Two out of three Americans say they worry at least “a fair amount.”

The poll also found that 57% of Americans now think the government is doing too little to protect the environment. That’s up from 50% just a year ago, a significant jump in a short time and in the face of an administration dedicated to dismantling U.S. environmental regulations.

While Democrats worry more than Republicans on nearly every issue, independent voters — often the key swing group in elections — have shifted sharply toward deep concern about the nation’s direction: 61% now say the government isn’t doing enough, up from 52% last year.

So What Has Congress Actually Done?

While public concern has been rising, the 119th Congress, which took office in January 2025 with Republicans in control of both chambers, has been rolling back environmental protections at a record pace.

The main tool has been the Congressional Review Act (CRA), a law that lets Congress cancel recently issued regulations with a simple majority vote. In 2025 alone, Congress passed 22 CRA resolutions into law, more than the total number of successful CRA rollbacks in the entire prior history of the law. Most targeted the EPA.

Among the protections eliminated: a rule charging oil and gas companies for methane pollution, standards regulating hazardous air emissions from rubber tire manufacturing, and California’s authority to set stricter vehicle emissions standards, overturned despite a determination by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office that those waivers weren’t even legally subject to repeal.

Meanwhile, pro-environment bills have gone nowhere. The Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act, which would require fossil fuel companies to pay into a $1 trillion climate fund, has gone undebated in committee since January 2025. The Clean Competition Act, a bipartisan carbon border adjustment that would reward cleaner American manufacturers, has also stalled.

The public says it wants more action on the environment. Congress has delivered less.

Tell Your Lawmakers How You Feel

The good news: this is exactly the kind of issue where public pressure can matter. Here’s how to make your voice heard:

• Find your senators and representative and contact them by phone or email.
• Check your lawmakers’ environmental voting records at the League of Conservation Voters Scorecard.
• Ask specifically whether they support fully funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund and passing the Clean Competition Act.
• Share the Gallup poll results with friends, neighbors, and on social media. Public awareness drives political action. Take a stand for the environment you want.

The post Most Americans Are Worried About the Environment. Is Congress? appeared first on Earth911.

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What we call waste is really just misallocated feedstock—raw materials waiting to be cycled back into the next generation of products and packaging. According to research by the World Economic Forum and United Nations Development Programme, the circular economy could unlock $4.5 trillion in new global value by 2030, and investors are racing to capture part of that opportunity. Meet Elizabeth Blankenship-Singh, Director of Innovation at Overlay Capital, an Atlanta-based alternative investment firm whose Waste and Materials Fund is backing both early-stage materials innovators and later-stage recycling operations with established infrastructure. Overlay’s strategy involves investing in innovation and implementation simultaneously—in both startups and established companies—to accelerate progress across multiple layers of the circular economy. It offers a window into where smart money sees the materials transition heading.

Elizabeth explains that sortation is the biggest bottleneck at the materials recycling facilities (MRFs) your garbage and recycling are sent to after curbside collection. The U.S. is simultaneously the world’s leading exporter of scrap aluminum and the number one importer of finished aluminum, because we’ve lacked domestic sorting capacity. Overlay has invested in companies like AMP Robotics, which recently closed a 20-year contract with SPSA, a southeastern Virginia municipal authority, to sort all recyclables from four to five cities using AI-driven systems. When you fix sortation, she says, you trigger a domino effect: recycling rates climb, landfill life extends, and margins improve as higher-purity materials command premium prices.

Overlay’s portfolio also includes next-generation materials companies united by a common thesis: they must be better, faster, cheaper, and more sustainable than what they replace. Cruz Foam converts chitin from shrimp shells into compostable packaging foam. Simplifyber uses cellulose to create biodegradable soft goods through 3D molding, bypassing traditional textile manufacturing entirely. Terra CO2 just closed a $124 million Series B to scale low-carbon cement technology that could cut into concrete’s 8% share of annual global CO2 emissions. Each uses abundant, waste-derived feedstocks and has achieved or is on a clear path to price parity with incumbents.

You can learn more about Overlay Capital at overlaycapital.com.

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Editor’s Note: This episode originally aired on January 12, 2026.

The post Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: Turning Waste Into New Products And Packaging With Overlay Capital’s Elizabeth Blankenship-Singh appeared first on Earth911.

In March 2026, the Arctic’s winter sea ice reached one of the lowest levels ever recorded, at 5.52 million square miles, about 10% below the 30-year average. This was 10,000 square miles less than the 5.53 million square miles measured in 2025. The Arctic winter sea ice covered 5.56 million square miles in 2017 and 5.79 million square miles in 2020, and has been declining since then.

Less white ice means more dark ocean water, and dark water absorbs heat rather than reflecting it, speeding up warming, or so we are told. Yet, any helmsman will attest that the ocean is never truly black, except on a moonless night. Light reflects off the sea as brightly as the sky. A cloud-covered sky lowers the reflection, turning the ocean gunmetal gray.

Science is a cycle of observing, questioning, recording, and sharing. Imagine practicing science with a pair of pint glasses on a sunny day. Fill one glass with cold black coffee and the other with cold white milk. Place a thermometer in each and observe what happens over time.

Both the pint of coffee and the pint of milk will reach the same temperature as the air. The heating occurs through conduction, with the glass in contact with the air. Unlike a black car seat, water molecules are free to move. The chaotic motion of warming water molecules makes it impossible to heat water in a glass or coffee in a mug above room temperature with a hair dryer. Dark waters are not warmed by sunlight and so are not responsible for melting sea ice. Waters are warmed by contact with warmer surfaces, like when a coffee pot is placed on the stove.

The Arctic Ocean connects to the Atlantic Ocean via the Greenland Sea, which is part of the Atlantic. The Svalbard Archipelago is on the threshold between the two oceans. To the east of Svalbard is the Barents Sea. Covering about 540,000 square miles, the Barents Sea is north of Norway and Russia and west of Franz Josef Land. On the continental shelf, it is relatively shallow, with an average depth of about 750 feet.  The average depth of the Arctic Sea to the North is about 3,900 feet.

The Arctic isn’t melting uniformly like a spring pond. Melting starts with warm Atlantic Gulf Stream water. Nearly all the Arctic Sea ice loss, totaling 525,000 square miles, happens in the Barents Sea, a part of the Arctic Ocean. This occurs because of the Coriolis Effect, a phenomenon caused by the Earth’s eastward rotation. The equator moves faster through space than the North Pole. As a result, water flowing north curves to the right. When it enters the Arctic, warm Atlantic water flows directly into the Barents Sea.

In April 1810, the whaler William Scoresby lowered a ten-gallon wooden cask made of fir into the deep after overwintering in the Greenland Sea west of Svalbard. This design was by Joseph Banks, the scientist on Cook’s expedition. Fir was the preferred wood because it is a softwood that insulates better than harder woods. Scoresby was surprised to find that the Gulf Stream water at 100 to 200 fathoms deep was six to eight degrees warmer than the Arctic water above. He didn’t believe it at first and modified the cask to record the temperature more quickly. However, the results were consistent. The Gulf Stream was flowing into the Arctic Ocean, separated from the sea ice by a layer of less salty, denser Arctic water.

Besides discovering changes occurring in the Greenland Sea, Scoresby observed, “changes of climate to a certain extent, have occurred, …, considered as the effects of human industry, in draining marshes and lakes, felling woods, and cultivating the earth” (Scoresby 1821, page 263).

Over time, the loss of vegetation and soils, replaced by hard surfaces that have become heat islands, has resulted in more and warmer stormwater runoff into the Atlantic. This happened without a change in annual rainfall. More water strengthens the Gulf Stream, and as temperatures rise, the expanded water has moved closer to the surface in the Arctic.

In 2007, the Gulf Stream surfaced in Svalbard, and warm water began melting glaciers on land.

During the winter of 2010-2011, the Gulf Stream was observed to have a more pronounced meander onto the Continental Shelf closer to Rhode Island than ever before. This indicates a need for a strengthened Gulf Stream to dissipate more energy.

The Gulf Stream flows past New Jersey at 30 to 40 Sverdrups, or 30 to 40 million cubic meters per second, with a seasonal variation of 5-15%. Maximum flow usually occurs in late summer to early fall. It gathers water as it barrels northward. The Gulf Stream transports more than 100 Sverdrups east of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland,

Only 2-3% of the total Gulf Stream flow is carried by the Norway Current into the Barents Sea, but it punches far above its weight in terms of climate impact in the Arctic Ocean.

Atlantification is the process by which warm Atlantic water melts Arctic sea ice. This leads to thinner winter sea ice that melts faster in summer. NASA imagery shows the Siberian coast from Norway to Alaska opening nearly simultaneously. The counter-clockwise gyre created by Atlantic water entering the Arctic pushes ice against Canada and Northern Greenland.

Rounding Greenland, the Arctic Ocean current flows south along Greenland and into the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland.  Here, the cold, nutrient-rich Arctic water meets warm, nutrient-poor Atlantic water and plunges 11,500 feet down.  The Earth’s largest waterfall, three times taller than Angel Falls, is underwater.

The East Greenland Current will become the Labrador Current after rounding Greenland, carrying oxygen-rich and nutrient-rich waters into the Atlantic. The Grand Banks off Newfoundland will force Arctic waters to mix with warm, salty water, creating arguably the world’s most productive fishing region.

The Northeast Passage, the Arctic Ocean sea route from the Atlantic along the coast of Siberia to the Pacific, opened in the early 2000s.  In 2007, the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago opened to shipping.  The close timing of the two passages’ openings was a surprise, given our understanding of oceanography.  However, solar radiation off the granites and gneiss (igneous and metamorphic) rocks of the Canadian Shield made the difference for a region where warm Atlantic water could not reach.

We need to reduce surface runoff by increasing vegetation cover and soil depth to help water stay on the land where it falls, while restoring the Arctic’s winter sea ice and cooling the climate. Additionally, we should naturally lessen the heat island effects of our structures by providing more shade and transpiration cooling from plants. Slowing down water flow during times of abundance to ensure it is available where and when nature needs it will lower seasonal ocean warming.

There are immediate benefits to having more water on land, such as more greenery, less warming, and decreased ocean swelling. The advantages for land, water, and sky are vast and difficult to fully understand. Still, the benefits of restoring Arctic sea ice are clear and serve as a clarion call for responsible local actions by all property owners, no matter where they are in the watershed we call Earth.

About the Author

Dr. Rob Moir is a nationally recognized and award-winning environmentalist. He is the president and executive director of the Ocean River Institute, a nonprofit based in Cambridge, MA, that provides expertise, services, resources, and information not readily available locally to support the efforts of environmental organizations. Please visit www.oceanriver.org for more information.

The post Guest Idea: Stormwater Runoff into the Atlantic and the Atlantification of the Arctic appeared first on Earth911.

Each year, the U.S. discards 38 to 40 percent of its food, a stubbornly high figure. Yet, other countries like the Czech Republic, Israel, and Denmark show promising solutions that American cities are beginning to adopt.

The global challenge is similarly daunting. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that about one-third of all food produced for people worldwide is lost or wasted each year. This is not just a moral issue, since so many people go hungry, but also a big climate problem. Project Drawdown lists cutting food waste as one of the top three ways to fight climate change. Some countries have been working on this for years and offer lessons for others.

Czech Republic: Rooted in Preservation Culture

Home-grown produce from backyard vegetable gardens supplements family meals throughout the Czech Republic. Residents tend fruit trees, greenhouses, and chicken coops. Many rent municipal allotment plots to use as supplemental gardens. Home composting is common and deeply normalized.

Czechs don’t just eat what their gardens yield—they savor the adventure! During mushroom and wild garlic season, families head outdoors to forage together. Extra produce finds a second life as jams or pickles, or gets frozen and fermented into tangy cabbage. Got leftover fruit? Send it to a local distillery for a splash of homemade liquor. Even stale bread avoids the bin, reborn as crispy breadcrumbs straight from your kitchen.

Apps like Nesnězeno let Czech restaurants, bakeries, cafés, and grocery stores sell extra food as discounted ‘rescue bags,’ priced 50 to 70% below retail — for pickup before closing. This connects surplus food with local buyers looking for a good deal. By the end of 2024, Nesnězeno had 1,487 partner businesses, a 132% increase from the year before, and had expanded across all Czech regions. Prague led with 239,000 rescued packages (41% of the total), followed by South Moravian and Pilsen, according to MediaGuru.

The app has been downloaded by more than 3 million users and has saved over 3 million packages of unsold meals overall.

The Czech Republic’s recycling rate for municipal waste went up from 32% in 2017 to 44% in 2021, just below the EU average. However, separating and collecting food waste is still inconsistent. A new national program for collecting kitchen animal-based waste, starting in 2026, aims to fix this.

Israel: Food Rescue as National Resilience

Food and water security in Israel are inseparable from politics. Leket Israel, the country’s largest food bank, pursues a mission of “food rescue” that serves Israelis regardless of background, coordinating with farms, packing houses, hotels, and catering operations to redirect surplus food to 200 nonprofits serving those in need.

Bustling outdoor food markets are traditional fixtures in Israeli cities, bringing consumers closer to the source of their food. In such busy places, edible food regularly ends up on the ground. Volunteers with Leket collect leftovers to distribute to people in need.

Leket released its 10th annual Food Waste and Rescue Report in late 2025. The report showed that Israel threw away 2.6 million tons of food, or 39% of what it produced, similar to the U.S. This wasted food was worth about $7 billion, or 1.3% of the country’s GDP. Still, there has been progress: food waste per person dropped 13.3% over the last ten years, from 300 kg to 260 kg per year. This improvement is thanks to more public awareness, serving food on individual plates in cafeterias, and more online food orders. But population growth and higher food prices have kept the total amount of wasted food high.

Leket and its partners now rescue about 45,000 tons of food each year, 2.25 times more than a decade ago. Still, this is only 5% of the food that could be saved in Israel. The Food Donation Encouragement Law, first passed in 2018, was updated in 2024 to give more legal protection to donors and require large public institutions to donate food.

In September 2025, Israel released its first national plan to cut food loss and waste, written by the Ministries of Environmental Protection and Agriculture. This was a big step toward better policy coordination. Israeli AgTech companies are also known worldwide for using technology to reduce food waste. For example, Sufresca makes edible coatings to keep produce fresh longer, and Taranis uses drones and AI to spot crop problems early.

Denmark: Culture as Infrastructure

In Denmark, people often leave free food in boxes on the sidewalk. Signs in front of homes might offer free apples or potatoes, or eggs for sale using the honor system. There are also Facebook groups in every major Danish city for dumpster diving, where people collect edible food that supermarkets throw away after the best-by date.

Supermarkets in Denmark lower prices on food that is close to its best-by date, especially baked goods, which are marked down every evening after 7 or 8 p.m. Food producers and supermarket chains work with groups like Too Good To Go and WeFood, Denmark’s first surplus food supermarket, to sell rescued food at big discounts. Chains like REMA 1000, Coop, and LIDL have also stopped offering bulk-buy discounts that encouraged people to buy more than they needed.

Too Good To Go started in Copenhagen in 2015 and has grown quickly. In 2023, the app saved 121.7 million meals worldwide, up 46% from 2022, and helped prevent about 362,000 tons of CO2 emissions. The app now works in over 17 countries and has more than 85 million users.

The WeFood surplus grocery network, which began as a single location in Copenhagen in 2016, has grown to six stores across Denmark. And a voluntary national commitment, “Denmark Against Food Waste,” united more than 25 food producers and retailers behind a shared goal of halving food waste by 2030. An independent third party measures and publishes annual progress.

What the U.S. Has Borrowed

Some of the ideas first used in these three countries are now catching on in the United States. However, there are still big challenges slowing progress.

Too Good To Go started in the U.S. in late 2020 and has been growing ever since. By mid-2025, the app was available in almost half of U.S. states, including cities such as Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle. The number of meals saved grew by 67% each year. In 2024, Circle K convenience stores joined the app nationwide. Too Good To Go now also works with big chains like Whole Foods, Peet’s Coffee, and Just Salad.

Since 2020, most progress on food waste in the U.S. has happened at the state level. In 2024, 29 states introduced 100 distinct food waste bills, and 18 passed. California’s SB 1383, which started in 2022, brought organics collection to 94% of communities and rescued 217,000 tons of surplus food in 2023. Washington state also passed a major law in 2022, requiring businesses that generate large amounts of organic waste to compost or arrange for collection.

Federal legislation has moved slowly. As of 2024, 13 pending federal food waste bills were before Congress, including the bipartisan Food Date Labeling Act of 2023, which would standardize confusing “best by” and “sell by” date labeling  — but none had passed. The lack of national date-label standards is a key driver of household waste, as consumers discard food that is still safe to eat.

In 2015, the U.S. promised to cut food waste in half by 2030. But a 2025 study in Nature Food found that the amount of food wasted per person in 2022, at 328.5 pounds, was about the same as in 2016. The study said that no state is on track to meet the federal goal with current policies. It also pointed out that the U.S. focuses too much on recycling food waste instead of preventing or rescuing it. In contrast, Denmark and the Czech Republic work to keep food from becoming waste in the first place, while U.S. policy mostly deals with food after it’s already lost.

What You Can Do

• Download Too Good To Go or a similar app to save extra food from restaurants and grocery stores in your area.
• Volunteer at a local food bank to help get rescued food to people who need it. You’ll also learn more about food inequality in your community.
• Check out local CSAs and farmers’ markets to help cut down on food lost in big supply chains.
• Composting at home is a simple way to recycle food scraps. If you live in an apartment, see if your city has a compost drop-off program.
• Ask your supermarket to start marking down food that is close to its best-by date. This is common in Denmark but not in the U.S.
• Reach out to your congressional representatives and ask them to support the Food Date Labeling Act. Standardized date labels could make a big difference at the national level.
• Use the Earth911 recycling search tool to find recycling and food drop-off options near you.

Editor’s Note: Originally written by Chloe Skye on March 10, 2020, this article was substantially updated in April 2026.

The post 3 Countries’ Food Waste Strategies: What Can They Teach Us? appeared first on Earth911.

EarthDay.org encourages everyone to invest in the Earth. While that might mean buying stock in sustainable companies, it’s not the only way. Investing in our planet means everyone—governments, businesses, and individuals—doing their part. It’s about building a sustainable green economy, similar to how the world shifted from analog to digital after the space race. Even if you don’t own stocks, you can still support a green economy as a consumer, a citizen, and a community member.

“Everything has to be reinvented in a world of shrinking resources. So why not teach it? Why not embrace it? Why not say we’re going to the moon?” asked Kathleen Rogers, president and CEO of EarthDay.org, in 2022.

Consumers

It’s a common myth that companies only sell what consumers want. If that were true, advertising wouldn’t be such a huge industry. Still, consumers do have influence. If more people chose electric vehicles over SUVs, car companies would offer more EVs and fewer gas-guzzlers.

Consumers can learn more and pick sustainable options. Websites like this one offer tips for finding greener products, from mattresses to shampoo. Every small choice helps, but we can’t solve climate change just by shopping differently.

“We all have hard choices to make and can’t do everything right,” says Rogers. We just have to do the best we can, starting with the most obvious improvements.

“Don’t buy pesticides,” says Rogers. Simply eliminating the intentional purchase of poisons makes a big difference. After that, prioritize choices that either require little effort, like recycling, or that make a big difference in your impact.

But as Michael Maniates, author of The Living-Green Myth, said recently on Sustainability In Your Ear, “It seems to me that our best chance for making a difference is to start thinking, or maybe just thinking harder, about how to be a citizen in community with others, not as a solitary consumer in the checkout line.” He believes green choices are good, but they aren’t enough without getting involved in politics.

Citizens

“Being a conscious citizen is the political piece. It’s register and vote for candidates who have really good plans that will not just promote the economy, but a green one. Because that’s the future,” Rogers said. “There’s some great Republicans on the environment, great Democrats, great Independents. Find them. Find them and vote for them. For the health of our kids, vote green.” If you can’t find a good candidate, become one yourself and run for office.

Don’t underestimate the importance of local elections. EarthDay.org is campaigning for universal climate education in classrooms because schools determine whether kids develop the 21st-century skills that will allow them to make green innovations and discover sustainable climate change solutions.

“If you don’t have an educated public and workforce, who’s going to make the stuff? If you don’t build green consumers, who’s going to buy the stuff? If you don’t educate the kids, who’s going to vote for green politicians?” asks Rogers. If you have kids in school, get involved in the PTA and help ensure kids have access to climate literacy education.

Citizens are also responsible for holding their elected representatives accountable. Write or call your representatives about environmental issues often.

Community

Whether you decide to run for office or prefer to keep your involvement to voting, you can still be an active member of your community. You can join local cleanups, support local businesses—especially regenerative farmers—and plant trees.

EarthDay.org’s Canopy Project primarily works with communities in developing countries. But you can be part of urban reforestation in your own neighborhood.

“We urge people to take tree cover seriously,” says Rogers. Many homeowners see trees as a nuisance because they block views or damage sidewalks. But trees offer much more than just beauty. They provide habitat, store carbon, help reduce the heat island effect—which matters more as summers get hotter—and even filter pollutants.

Even if you can’t plant a tree, you can grow a tomato plant in a pot by your front door or herbs in an apartment window. “It connects us to the natural world in a way nothing else can, and it’s a great educational tool for kids,” says Rogers.

Your workplace is part of your community too, so individuals also play a role in making businesses greener.

“Every industry has opportunities,” says Rogers. Take a look at how your workplace operates. Try to encourage greener choices in your company’s processes and purchasing decisions.

If you can’t manage green consumer choices, citizenship, and community action all at once—or even at all—don’t be hard on yourself.

“Stop blaming us and look at the combination of issues,” says Rogers. No one person has to do it all; we all just have to do the best we can.

Financial and Charitable Investments

One of the most direct ways to back your environmental values is with your investment portfolio and your charitable giving. The sustainable investment market has grown dramatically: assets under management in global sustainable funds reached $3.9 trillion in Q4 2025, up 15% from the prior year, even as ESG investing faced political headwinds in the U.S. That growth reflects a structural shift, not a trend: 88% of global individual investors express interest in sustainable investing, according to a Morgan Stanley survey, with younger generations leading the way.

The options have also expanded well beyond socially responsible mutual funds. Here are several ways to align your money with your values.

Causeway Impact

Doug Heske, founder of Newday Impact Investing and a frequent guest on Earth911’s Sustainability In Your Ear podcast, has built one of the more thoughtful platforms for deploying investment capital to advance environmental and social priorities.

The company’s newest offering, Causeway, brings together high-quality investment portfolios and direct links to vetted nonprofits, so you can see your financial returns and charitable giving in one place. Newday’s portfolios focus on six impact areas: climate action, air and water quality, biodiversity and conservation, healthy soils regeneration, and human equity. A personal impact timeline gives real-time updates from nonprofit partners, letting you track results—from carbon emissions reduced to wells built—alongside your financial performance.

ESG and Clean Energy ETFs

If you want broad market exposure with an environmental focus, ESG exchange-traded funds are the easiest place to start. Large index ETFs from Vanguard (ESGV) and iShares screen for environmental, social, and governance factors while keeping fees low. Expense ratios for major ESG index funds are now between 0.08 and 0.15% per year. Thematic clean energy funds, like the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF and Invesco Solar ETF (TAN), give you more focused exposure to renewable energy, but they are more volatile and work better as smaller parts of your portfolio.

Green Bonds

Green bonds support specific environmental projects such as renewable energy installations, energy-efficient buildings, and sustainable water systems. They have become a major type of fixed-income investment. By 2025, global green bond issuance passed $600 billion each year, with forecasts of about $950 billion in new bonds in 2026. The iShares USD Green Bond ETF (BGRN) offers easy access to investment-grade green bonds for investors who want less risk than stocks but still want to support the environment.

Donor-Advised Funds for Environmental Giving

If charitable giving is your primary goal, a donor-advised fund (DAF) lets you make a tax-deductible contribution now and direct grants to environmental nonprofits over time. Funds like Tides Foundation and Environmental Defense Fund’s giving programs can help channel charitable dollars toward proven climate and conservation organizations. For a more integrated approach, Causeway’s platform (above) connects investment portfolios directly with nonprofit partners, letting impact-oriented investors support both at once.

A quick warning: not all “green” funds are the same. Read fund documents closely, look for clear impact reporting along with financial results, and be wary of ESG labels that don’t have third-party verification. If an investment claims to be sustainable but doesn’t explain how it chooses its holdings, it could be greenwashing.

Related Reading

• Sustainability In Your Ear: Doug Heske on Responsible Energy Investing
• Invest in the Earth This Earth Day and Every Day
• Regenerative Agriculture to Restore Our Earth
• How to Combat the Urban Heat Island Effect

Editor’s Note: Originally authored by Gemma Alexander on March 18, 2022, this article was substantially updated in April 2026.

The post How You Can Invest in Our Planet appeared first on Earth911.

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Editor’s Note: This episode originally aired on December 29, 2025.

The post Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: Dandelion Energy CEO Dan Yates On How Geothermal Leasing Could Transform Home Heating and Cooling appeared first on Earth911.