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What if the solution to the retail industry’s $890 billion returns crisis wasn’t better logistics, but better logic? Disney Petit, founder and CEO of Liquidonate, is proving that the most sustainable return skips the trip back to a warehouse and goes directly to a community in need. Americans returned nearly 17% of all retail purchases last year, generating 2.6 million tons of landfill waste and 16 million tons of CO2 emissions. Each return costs retailers between $25 and $35 to process, yet 52% of consumers admit to participating in return fraud at least once. Petit witnessed this broken system firsthand as employee number 15 at Postmates, where she built the customer service team and created Civic Labs, the company’s social responsibility arm. Her food security product Bento, which allowed people without smartphones to access free food via text message, won Time Magazine’s 2021 Invention of the Year Award. Now Liquidonate has earned recognition as one of Time’s Best Inventions of 2025.

Liquidonate integrates directly with retailers’ existing warehouse and return management systems. When a product comes back and can’t be resold—open box, slightly damaged, or simply unwanted—the platform automatically matches it with a local nonprofit or school that needs it. “It’s the same reverse logistics workflow they already use,” Petit explains. “It’s just redirected toward community good instead of going to the landfill.” The platform handles everything: shipping labels, pickup coordination, and tax documentation so retailers can write off donations. Retailers recover logistics costs through tax benefits while communities receive quality products, and millions of pounds of goods stay out of landfills.

To date, retailers using Liquidonate have diverted over 12 million items from landfills, working with more than 4,000 nonprofits across the country. Liquidonate also tackles return fraud by eliminating “keep it” returns, when customers claim they want to return something but are told to keep the item and still receive a refund. “One hundred percent of the time we’re producing a shipping label for a nonprofit who wants that product,” Petit says. “We completely eliminate that keep-it return option, so we eliminate the returns fraud option.” With $900 billion worth of inventory potentially available for redirection, Petit approaches the business through the lens of environmental justice, building a for-profit company designed to prove that doing good and doing well aren’t mutually exclusive—they’re interdependent.

Nonprofits and schools can sign up for free at liquidonate.com. Retailers interested in partnering can reach out to partners@liquidonate.com.

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Editor’s Note: This episode originally aired on November 17, 2025.

The post Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: Liquidonate CEO Disney Petit On Solving The Retail Returns Crisis appeared first on Earth911.

Want to save time, money, and energy all while adding convenience to your life? Something as simple as using smart plugs throughout your home can help achieve these goals.

The average U.S. household has roughly 65 devices plugged in around the clock, quietly drawing about 770 kilowatt-hours of phantom power every year, about enough to run a refrigerator for nine months. At today’s average residential electricity rate of 17.47 cents per kilowatt-hour, that’s roughly $135 a year wasted on devices nobody uses.

Smart plugs are the simplest, cheapest way to stop electricity waste. The arrival of Matter, the cross-platform smart home standard backed by Amazon, Apple, Google, and Samsung, and the maturing of the low-power Thread wireless protocol mean a smart plug bought today should outlast the app it shipped with and work across whatever smart home ecosystem you switch to next. This updated article covers what changed, what to look for now, and which models are worth installing in 2026.

This article contains affiliate links. If you purchase an item through one of these links, we receive a small commission that helps fund our work.

How Smart Plugs Work

A smart plug sits between a wall outlet and whatever you plug into it — a lamp, a coffee maker, a space heater, an entertainment center. Inside is a relay that opens or closes the circuit on command, plus a wireless radio that listens for those commands from your phone or a smart speaker. Some plugs add an energy meter that reports real-time wattage and cumulative kilowatt-hours back to the app.

Older smart plugs relied entirely on 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and the manufacturer’s cloud services, which meant a server outage or a Wi-Fi hiccup could leave you unable to turn off your lamp. Matter-certified plugs communicate locally over your home network and continue working even when the internet drops. Thread-based plugs go further, forming a self-healing mesh network in which each plugged-in device acts as a relay for the next, extending range and cutting response time, so there’s less waiting for your smart home app to make your smart home work.

In late 2022, the Connectivity Standards Alliance released Matter 1.0, an open, royalty-free standard meant to end the era of locked smart home ecosystems. Matter-certified plugs pair with Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings simultaneously, and it is configured by scanning a single QR code. No brand-specific app required, no separate hub for each platform.

Matter has matured quickly. Version 1.4 added home energy management as a first-class device category and introduced certified routers and access points that double as Thread border routers. Version 1.5, published in November 2025, expanded support to cameras, soil moisture sensors, and additional energy management features. As of 2026, Thread border router certification requires Thread 1.4, which lets security credentials to be passed between platforms, so a plug added through Apple Home can also be controlled from a SmartThings hub.

A Matter plug bought in 2026 should still work in 2030, even if you switch from an Amazon Echo to a HomePod or add a SmartThings station. By contrast, a proprietary Wi-Fi plug from a brand that goes out of business or sunsets its app is a paperweight. That’s a real consideration in a category where startups have come and gone — Wink, Insteon, and others left users stranded when their cloud services shut down.

How Much Energy They Actually Save

Smart plugs save energy only when you use them deliberately. The plug itself draws roughly 1 to 2 watts of standby power, so each one adds about $1.50 a year to your bill before it does any work. That cost is recovered many times over if the plug is used to schedule, monitor, or kill standby loads.

 

Three smart plug features do most of the work:

1. Cutting Standby Loads

The U.S. Department of Energy and the Natural Resources Defense Council estimate that standby power — the electricity devices draw when they’re switched off but still plugged in — accounts for 5% to 10% of residential electricity use, and as much as 23% in homes packed with always-on electronics. The NRDC estimates the national wasted energy spending at about $19 billion a year, or roughly $165 to $440 per household. Older devices, gaming consoles, set-top boxes, and audio equipment are the worst offenders.

 

A smart plug with energy monitoring lets you spot which devices are draining power in standby and either schedule them off overnight or kill the circuit entirely. One reviewer found an old gaming console drawing 50 watts in standby mode, which costs is about $45 a year at average rates.

2. Scheduling and Off-Peak Shifting

Scheduling a coffee maker, towel warmer, or seasonal lights to run only when needed is the simplest savings case. The bigger one is shifting flexible loads — EV chargers, dehumidifiers, pool pumps — to off-peak hours when many utilities offer lower rates and the grid is running on cleaner sources. Earth911’s reporting on vampire loads walks through which household devices are worth targeting first.

3. Smart Plugs can Catch Failures Early

This is the underrated benefit. A refrigerator that suddenly draws 40% more power, a sump pump that’s cycling too often, or a freezer running 24/7 because the door seal failed will all show up in an energy-monitoring plug’s history before they show up on your utility bill. For appliances that fail gradually, the plug is a cheap diagnostic tool.

2026 Performance Standards: What to Look For

The smart plug market has consolidated around a handful of meaningful specifications. A plug bought in 2026 should meet most of these:

• UL or ETL safety certification. This is non-negotiable. Uncertified plugs from unknown brands have been linked to overheating and fires; in 2023 the CPSC announced a recall of Emporia smart plugs over electric shock hazards, and counterfeit electrical products remain a documented risk. Look for the printed UL or ETL mark on the device itself, not just the listing page.
• 15-amp / 1,800-watt rating. Standard for U.S. plugs and sufficient for nearly any single-outlet appliance. Be cautious about controlling space heaters with smart plugs, even at this rating; high-draw devices running for hours can stress the relay.
• Matter certification. Look for the Matter logo (three arrows forming a triangle) on the plug packaging.
• Real energy monitoring. Look for plugs that report actual wattage and cumulative kilowatt-hours, not estimated usage based on assumed device profiles. This is the feature that turns a smart plug into a savings tool rather than a convenience gadget.
• Local scheduling stored on the plug itself continues running when the internet drops. Cloud-only schedules don’t.
• Compact form factor. Older plugs were bulky enough to block the second outlet on a duplex receptacle. Slim designs from Kasa, TP-Link Tapo, and Eve now fit two per outlet.
• Thread support is optional but useful. Thread plugs use less power than Wi-Fi, respond faster, and strengthen your mesh as you add more. They require a Thread border router, which is built into most current Apple, Google, and Amazon hubs.

Recommended Models for 2026

These picks are organized by use case rather than ranked overall. Prices and availability checked April 2026; verify before purchase.

Best Cross-Platform Pick: Kasa KP125M

The Kasa KP125M was one of the first Matter-certified plugs with proper energy monitoring and remains the best balance of features in 2026. It works with Apple Home, Alexa, Google Home, and SmartThings via Matter to track real-time and historical wattage in the Kasa app. It stores schedules locally and is compact enough to stack two in a duplex outlet. UL-certified, 15A/1800W. Around $20 per plug in 2-packs and 4-packs. The Chinese manufacturer, TP-Link, has had its U.S. market presence scrutinized for security concerns — worth considering if that’s a priority for your household.

Best for Apple Home and Thread Mesh: Eve Energy

Eve Energy (Matter) runs over Matter and Thread, joining a Thread mesh automatically to act as a router for nearby devices. Eve’s privacy posture is unusual: no cloud, no account registration, no telemetry, so you can use it without fear of digital surveillance of your home. The energy monitoring is granular enough to capture small changes in appliance behavior, and the app provides detailed cost projections. UL-certified, 15A/1800W. Premium-priced at closer to $40 per plug, but the Thread support and privacy stance justify it for households committed to a local-first smart home.

Outdoor Use: Wyze Plug Outdoor

For holiday lights, pool pumps, garden features, and string lights, the Wyze Plug Outdoor offers two independently controlled, weather-sealed outlets with energy monitoring, a built-in light sensor, and IP64 water resistance. It works with Alexa and Google Assistant, operating from -4°F to 120°F. Typically priced between $25 and $30. Note that Wyze has had several security incidents over the past few years, which is worth weighing for indoor cameras, but matters less for an outdoor plug controlling lights.

Simplest Alexa-Only Setup: Amazon Smart Plug

If your household is already deep in the Alexa ecosystem and you want zero-configuration setup, the Amazon Smart Plug pairs automatically with Echo devices and works through the Alexa app, with no separate setup required. While it provides n o energy monitoring, this Alexa-only costs around $20. The simplest option, but the least flexible if you ever switch ecosystems.

The Bigger Picture

Smart plugs are a small intervention. Cutting standby load might save a household $50 to $200 a year — meaningful, but a fraction of the savings available from more efficient HVAC, water heating, and appliance choices, which together account for the majority of residential electricity use. The case for smart plugs is less about that one number and more about the visibility they provide. Most households have no idea which devices are responsible for their bills until they get the data.

 

The category also has a larger-grid story. Smart plugs that can shift flexible loads to off-peak hours give utilities and grid operators tools to balance demand without building more peaker plants, particularly relevant as electrification of heating and transportation drives residential demand growth. Check out our conversation with ecobee’s Sarah Colvin, which to go deeper into how distributed smart devices are starting to function as grid resources, not just consumer conveniences.

What You Can Do

• Audit before you buy. Walk through your home with a notepad and list devices that run on standby, such as entertainment systems, gaming consoles, printers, set-top boxes, microwaves with clocks, or anything with an LED that stays lit. Those are your first smart plug candidates.
• Start with one Matter plug with energy monitoring. Use it as a diagnostic tool for a week on each of your top suspects before installing a full set. The data will tell you which loads are worth automating.
• Build schedules around the loads you actually use. A coffee maker that runs from 6:30 to 7:30 a.m., an entertainment system that powers down at midnight, and holiday lights on a sunset-to-11 p.m. window. Aim for the plug to spend most of its time off.
• Check for utility rebates. Many U.S. utilities offer rebates on energy-monitoring devices and smart home products that participate in demand-response programs. Your provider’s website or ENERGY STAR’s rebate finder is the place to start.
• Don’t put high-draw appliances on smart plugs. Space heaters, window AC units, and other devices that draw near the 15A rating for hours at a time stress the relay and pose a real fire risk. Use a hardwired smart switch or a smart breaker for those instead.
• Verify safety certification on the physical product. The UL or ETL mark should be printed on the plug itself. If it’s not, return it.

Editor’s Note: Originally written by Sandi Schwartz on March 29, 2023, this article was substantially updated in April 2026.

The post How To Save Energy in Your Home With Smart Plugs appeared first on Earth911.

Female mud snails are developing male reproductive organs near marinas. In Florida, alligators living in lakes contaminated with pesticides are being born with smaller genitals and disrupted hormones. Sea turtle populations are becoming almost entirely female as nesting sands get warmer. The same types of chemicals responsible for these wildlife changes are now found in human placentas, testes, and semen. A new peer-reviewed review brings all of this evidence together for the first time.

A cross-species review published April 23 in npj Emerging Contaminants, led by Oregon State University toxicologist Susanne Brander and Mount Sinai researcher Shanna Swan, brings together evidence from many animal groups, including invertebrates, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, marine mammals, rodents, and humans. The main finding is that pollution and climate change together are now the biggest single cause of biodiversity loss. The chemicals at the heart of this problem—phthalates, bisphenols, PFAS, and microplastics—are lowering fertility and reproductive success in many species, including humans.

Of more than 140,000 synthetic chemicals registered under the EU’s REACH chemical safety regulation, only about 1% have been properly tested for safety, and over 1,000 are known endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Each year, more than 2,000 new chemicals are introduced worldwide. The review’s authors say these chemicals can be effective at concentrations so low they are “analogous to a whisper that is powerful enough to redirect a hurricane.” Because the endocrine system is very similar across vertebrates, scientists have used fish to predict effects in mammals. This is why the human findings in the review are not surprising when compared to what has happened in wildlife.

The article provides new clarity on how climate change and chemical exposure interact. Warmer temperatures have been shown to worsen endocrine disruption. In some fish, heat combined with EDCs changes sex ratios more than either factor alone. At the world’s largest green turtle rookery, almost all hatchlings are now female. In humans, an 80-year study of U.S. birth data found that hotter weather is linked to fewer conceptions. Other studies show that higher temperatures are connected to lower semen volume, sperm count, and sperm quality.

Plastics aren’t inert and “BPA-free” doesn’t mean safe

The article pays special attention to microplastics and nanoplastics, which were only recently recognized as reproductive toxicants. In 2021, researchers found microplastics in human placentas. In 2023, another study found microplastics in human testis and semen samples. A follow-up study found microplastics in every canine and human testis examined, with higher levels in humans. Several studies in the review show that polystyrene microplastics lower fertility, fertilization, and hatching rates in fish, and these effects can last for generations.

The issue of chemical substitution is important here as well. Older PFAS chemicals like PFOA have mostly been replaced, but their substitutes, such as GenX chemicals and other similar compounds, show equal or even stronger estrogen-like effects in lab tests. BPA substitutes like BPS and BPF act almost the same way on hormones. The review also points out that bio-based plastics like polylactic acid (PLA) caused reproductive harm in earthworms, similar to regular polyethylene. This pattern of “regrettable substitution,” where a banned chemical is swapped for a similar, unregulated one that causes the same harm, is now well documented.

The PFAS picture, in 2026

PFAS deserve their own paragraph because the regulatory ground is shifting. EPA’s most recent water testing data shows about 176 million Americans drink tap water contaminated with at least one PFAS compound. The CDC has detected PFAS in the blood of 99% of Americans tested, including newborns. PFAS are now linked to abnormal sperm in Arctic seabirds, in dogs, and in human cohort studies, with a recent systematic review of 30 studies covering nearly 28,000 participants finding moderately elevated odds of PCOS- and endometriosis-related infertility associated with PFAS exposure.

The federal regulatory response is the focus of much controversy. EPA finalized the first national drinking water limits for six PFAS in 2024, setting PFOA and PFOS at 4 parts per trillion. In May 2025, the agency announced it would keep those two limits but extend the compliance deadline to 2031, and eliminate limits on four other PFAS. In January 2026, the D.C. Circuit denied EPA’s request to summarily vacate those four limits; final briefs are due this spring, and a decision is expected in the second half of 2026. While that plays out, individual filtration is the only consumer-side lever that actually removes PFAS from the water already in the tap.

What you can do to reduce your family’s exposure

Individual actions alone cannot solve a problem this big. The review’s main point is that we need broad regulatory changes for whole classes of chemicals, not just one at a time. Still, you can lower your own exposure, and the most effective changes come from a few key steps. The list below is ordered by impact, not by how easy the steps are.

Drinking water: this is where to start

• Start by checking your water. Enter your ZIP code into EWG’s Tap Water Database to find out what has been found in your local water supply. You can also use the EPA’s PFAS Analytic Tools for more information. If you have a private well, have it tested by an EPA-certified lab. Mail-in kits from SimpleLab and Cyclopure cost between $85 and $300.
• Use a filter for your tap water. Choose filters that are certified to NSF/ANSI 53 (carbon-based) or NSF/ANSI 58 (reverse osmosis) for reducing PFAS. Be aware that “tested to NSF standards” is just a marketing term that can be abused, so check that the filter is actually certified. Reverse osmosis and granular activated carbon are proven to work, but most pitcher and refrigerator filters are not certified for PFAS.
• Change filter cartridges on time. EWG senior scientist Tasha Stoiber points out that a used-up filter can release more PFAS than untreated tap water. Keeping up with the maintenance schedule is essential for protection.
• Avoid using bottled water as a long-term fix. A 2024 Columbia University study found about 240,000 plastic particles per liter of bottled water, which is 10 to 100 times higher than earlier estimates. Around 90% of these particles are nanoplastics.

Food contact materials

• Do not heat food in plastic containers. Phthalates are more likely to leach out when heated. Use glass or ceramic in the microwave. If you plan to reuse plastic food containers, avoid putting them through the dishwasher’s high-heat cycle.
• Reduce takeout and fast food when possible. A 2016 study found that people who ate more fast food had higher levels of phthalate metabolites in their urine, likely due to plastic gloves, wraps, and containers. Maine will ban PFAS in food packaging starting in May 2026, with a wider ban by 2030. Other states are following Maine’s lead, but for now, eating fewer plastic-wrapped meals means less exposure.
• Replace nonstick cookware when it becomes chipped or scratched, as it is damaged. PTFE-coated pans can release particles into food. Stainless steel, cast, good, long-lasting alternatives. Also, nonstick pans are not ideal for high-heat cooking like searing.
• Store food in glass or stainless steel containers. This is the easiest change you can make. Glass jars and stainless containers do not release microplastics or phthalates and can last for decades. Replace plastic containers only when they break or stain, instead of buying more. products
• Be cautious when you see the word “fragrance” on a product label. Diethyl phthalate (DEP) is often used as a fragrance carrier and does not have to be listed separately under U.S. labeling rules; it just appears as “fragrance” or “parfum.” Choose products that list all fragrance ingredients or are certified EWG VERIFIED or EPA Safer Choice.
• Plug-in air fresheners are especially high in phthalates, so the easiest solution is to remove them and use ventilation instead.
• Get rid of vinyl shower curtains. The “new shower curtain” smell comes from phthalates being released from PVC. Cotton, hemp, and PEVA shower curtains are easy to find and cost about the same as vinyl ones.
• Check your cleaning products for parabens, triclosan, and APEs. EWG’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning rates products based on an EDC database. Laundry detergent and fabric softener residues stay on clothes and touch your skin for hours, so exposure can add up quickly.
• Be careful with plastic toys labeled with codes 3, 6, or 7, especially for young children who put toys in their mouths. Code 3 is PVC, which contains phthalates. Code 6 is polystyrene. Code 7 is a general category that often includes polycarbonate, a source of BPA. Safer alternatives include wood, natural rubber, organic cotton, and silicone.

Stop pesticides at the property line.

• Think twice before using pyrethroid-based treatments for your home or lawn. Bifenthrin, one of the most common pesticides in the U.S., has been shown to disrupt estrogen receptors in fish at levels often found in urban runoff after rain. The review also notes that people with higher levels of pyrethroid metabolites in their urine tend to have lower semen quality and more sperm DNA damage. If you hire a pest control service, ask about the active ingredients they use and request safer alternatives.
• Buy organic for the produce items with the highest pesticide loads. EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce (the “Dirty Dozen” / “Clean Fifteen”) lets you prioritize organic where it matters most, rather than treating the produce aisle as all-or-nothing.

Where individual action stops working

The authors of the review make it clear that consumer choices alone are not enough. These chemicals are found even in Arctic rainwater, can cross the placenta, and last for centuries in the environment. The solution they propose is coordinated regulatory action: a strong Global Plastics Treaty that targets harmful chemicals, not just plastics in general; regulations that cover whole classes of chemicals rather than one at a time; and rules that make polluters responsible for cleanup costs, rather than passing those costs to utilities and customers.

The reason the review looks at different species is to show that what happens to snails, alligators, and seabirds also happens to humans, just at a different pace. Wildlife data have been warning us for 40 years, and now human data are starting to show the same patterns.

The post Researchers Find The Same Chemicals Wrecking Wildlife Fertility In Humans appeared first on Earth911.

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Editor’s Note: This episode originally aired on February 9, 2026.

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 ocean plastics. Every year, more than 11 million metric tons of plastic enters the ocean. That’s the equivalent of dumping a garbage truck worth of plastic every minute. And we’ve known for decades that marine animals eat this debris. But until recently, no one had systematically quantified how much plastic it actually takes to kill them.

And the answer is, it turns out, disturbing. Less than three sugar cubes worth of plastic increases an Atlantic puffin’s risk of dying by 90%. A loggerhead turtle reaches the same threshold at about two baseballs worth, and for a harbor porpoise, a mass of plastic roughly the size of a soccer ball can kill. More concerning, at the 50% mortality level — that is, where half the animals who consume the plastic die — the volumes that kill them shrink to less than one sugar cube for a puffin and half a baseball for a loggerhead turtle.

Our guest today, Dr. Erin Murphy, is the manager of ocean plastics research at the Ocean Conservancy, and lead author of the study that produced these findings, published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Her team’s research analyzed more than 10,000 necroscopies across 95 species of seabirds, sea turtles, and marine mammals worldwide. It’s the most comprehensive assessment yet of how different plastic types — soft film like bags, hard fragments, synthetic rubber from balloons, and abandoned fishing gear — translate into mortality across marine life.

The findings matter beyond ocean conservation. A 2024 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found microplastics embedded in human arterial plaque of cardiovascular surgery patients, and those with detectable plastics were 4.5 times more likely to suffer a heart attack, stroke, or death in the following three years. The same polymers killing seabirds and sea turtles — polyethylene, PVC, and their chemical additives — are found in human blood, lungs, liver, and placenta.

Dr. Murphy’s research offers policymakers what they’ve been asking for: science-based data to inform decisions about which plastics to regulate and how aggressively to act. Nearly half the animals in her study that had ingested plastics were threatened or endangered species, and with global negotiations on a binding plastic treaty continuing and extended producer responsibility programs expanding across the United States, the timing of this research could not be more relevant.

So we’ll talk with Erin about what her team found, why balloon fragments are amongst the deadliest items for seabirds, how fishing gear became the leading killer of marine animals, and what her research means for the humans who share a planet and a body burden with these species. You can read the full study at pnas.org and find Ocean Conservancy’s work at oceanconservancy.org. Ocean Conservancy is all one word, no space, no dash. Oceanconservancy.org.

So how much plastic is too much for wildlife and for humans? Let’s find out right after this brief commercial break.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

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

Erin Murphy  3:44

I’m doing well. Thank you so much for having me.

Mitch Ratcliffe  3:46

Well, thank you for joining me, and for this really important research. It was a fascinating read. We wrote it up, and I’m really pleased that you would join us to talk about it today. So can you explain what made this study different from previous attempts to quantify plastics’ lethality to marine life?

Erin Murphy  4:01

Yeah. So first, I’ll specify that we focus specifically on macroplastics, which are just plastics that are bigger than five millimeters in length. There’s more research on how microplastics, which are these smaller plastics, can harm animals, because scientists can study these in laboratory settings. Of course, it’s not feasible or ethical to feed animals like whales, sea turtles, or seabirds large plastic items and study what happens to them in the lab. And so as scientists, we really have to depend on opportunistically collecting dead animals in the environment and looking at what’s inside them to understand what’s happening with these bigger plastics.

And so previous research has looked at these sorts of threats as well, but they focused on fewer species, on smaller geographic areas, and they didn’t differentiate by plastic type, like hard plastics versus soft plastics. So they were really important for laying the groundwork for our larger study. But we were actually able to look globally and look at a broader set of species, and also differentiate by these different plastic types and by species size as well, which allowed us to get at some of these species-level understandings.

Mitch Ratcliffe  5:13

So the unfortunate truth is, we are feeding these animals this material by throwing it all away. That is a stark way of starting this conversation. And you use a lot of illustrative examples, like three sugar cubes worth of macroplastic can kill a puffin. How did you arrive at those kind of volume-based comparisons, and why is translating your data into those relatable measures important?

Erin Murphy  5:37

Yeah, so when we did this in the study, we actually looked at the influence of volume based on the animal’s body length. So we reported all of this as a deadly volume per centimeter of body length. But telling people 0.098 centimeters cubed per centimeter doesn’t really mean anything to them. And honestly, when I first got those centimeter-based thresholds, it didn’t mean that much to me.

And so we thought that choosing some iconic species that people could picture would help, but still saying, you know, three centimeters cubed of plastic kills a puffin, or 220 centimeters cubed of plastic kills a loggerhead, doesn’t really paint a picture in people’s heads, and three sugar cubes or a baseball are much easier to picture.

So we chose to do this because I think when people can picture these items, they can really understand that volume, and people do use plastic every single day, and so having volumes like that to compare to allows them to think about how little plastic can kill animals, especially when we compare it to how much we produce or use globally.

Mitch Ratcliffe  6:42

Can you put in context how long it takes for a puffin, for instance, to eat that much plastic? What do they eat in a day or a week generally?

Erin Murphy  6:52

Yeah, that’s a great question, and it’s actually the next step in our research. So to estimate the risk that something poses to wildlife, we have to understand two things. One is your question: how likely are they to be exposed to this threat? The second is, if they are exposed to it, how likely is it to harm them? And so this research really focused entirely on that second piece.

But to fully understand risk, we have to dig deeper into the first part, and that’s what we call likelihood of exposure. And so for puffins specifically, there’s not a lot of research, but we do know a lot about what species are eating, and we know that different species are more or less likely to eat plastic based on where they live, what they eat, and how they feed. So we’re really excited to be working with some really amazing researchers over the next few years to think about how we can connect exposure for these animals to the lethality and understand risk in a more comprehensive way.

Mitch Ratcliffe  7:48

I want to get a sense of what you found. You mentioned in the study that one whale can have a three-gallon bucket in its stomach. What’s the range of objects that you encountered as you were doing the research?

Erin Murphy  8:00

Yeah, this was pretty unbelievable to me, actually, some of the things that we saw in animals, and I’ll just give a few items that stood out to me. But there’s many more. Part of an oar handle from a plastic — or a plastic belt, webbing from the back of a lawn chair, a koozie, rubber pencil topper, fake Easter grass, ice cream tubs, single-use coffee pods, bungee cords, tons of different types of gear, ropes, nets, fishing line.

But I’ll just illustrate kind of how dramatic this can look with one example that really stood out to me, on a sperm whale that researchers in Spain reported on. Sperm whales feed very deep in the ocean, and they use echolocation to find their food. So it may be particularly hard for them to tell plastic from prey. And in this case, it seems like an entire greenhouse washed into the ocean, and this sperm whale happened upon it. It had plastic film cover material for a greenhouse in its stomach, along with a flower pot, a piece of a hose, a plastic burlap sack, plastic craft, and plastic spray bottle, and even fake plastic mulch in its stomach. And unfortunately, this was one of the individuals that did lose its life to plastic ingestion.

Mitch Ratcliffe  9:23

That’s — I mean, that’s shocking in so many ways. You found that one in five animals had plastic in their digestive tract when they died. Was this percentage higher or lower, and in the context of your previous answer, more or less shocking than you expected?

Erin Murphy  9:45

Yeah, I think, you know, it was higher than I expected. And it’s funny, because all of our research was based on previous research. It was a meta-analysis. So we collected data from existing literature. And I’d seen some, you know, similar numbers then reported at more local scales. But I think it still really shocked me to look at so many studies and see, you know, for sea turtles, that was one in two. Sea turtles had plastic in their gut. And for seabirds, one in three.

And when thinking about that at a global scale, that felt higher to me than it should be, and I suppose it’s because it is higher than it should be. These really are high ingestion rates. And for some of these individuals, the bulk amount of plastic in their gut, like that sperm whale, is particularly shocking.

Mitch Ratcliffe  10:35

I want to step back just for a second and talk about how long this kind of research has been going on. Because when I was a child, oceanography was very much in its infancy. How aggressively are we trying to understand what we’re doing to the ocean environment at this point, and where do you think we are in terms of the long arc of beginning to reach that understanding?

Erin Murphy  10:58

Yeah, I don’t know if we’ll ever fully understand it, which is one of the things that makes studying the ocean so interesting. It’s so complex and vast. But, you know, we’ve come a long way, and for plastic pollution in particular, the ’70s was really when we started seeing those first reports of animals eating plastics. You know, and it’s been 50 years since then. Now we have evidence of plastic ingestion in more than 1,300 species, and we’re starting to be able to get at these really more complicated analyses that help us understand like the potential quantity that kills an animal, like this one, or what does that mean possibly for populations.

I think the thing that’s been really impressive in the last decade, though, is how much research has been done on plastics. In particular, 10 years ago, roughly, the first study came out by Jambeck et al. that gave us an idea of the amount of plastic that was getting into the environment. And since then, we have learned so much as a scientific community, and people are working really hard to try to understand what these vast amounts of ocean plastic mean for ecosystems, for human health, for fishing industries and other marine industries that really depend on a healthy ocean, and we’ve been doing a lot of research on how to address it. So I don’t think we’ll ever fully understand everything that we’re doing to the ocean, but I think we’re working hard as a scientific community to get there.

Mitch Ratcliffe  12:38

It’s really disturbing to think about, because plastic in the 1970s was really only — was 10 years into widespread use, and widespread compared to today is nothing, since half the plastic we’ve manufactured in history has been made since 2002. So it sounds like what we’re really delving into now is a real-time accounting of the damage that we’re doing. How do you as a scientist think about what your goal is in terms of bringing the consequences of our decisions back to the public so we can think about it?

Erin Murphy  13:11

Yeah, that’s why I feel very lucky to work with an organization like Ocean Conservancy. We conduct research that we know governments and decision makers need to help address these problems, and we have a policy team and a communications team that are really well trained on helping us bring this research to the decision makers.

And the type of research we’re doing here, in particular on risk assessments, is something that governments are really craving. They want to set science-based targets as they try to address plastic pollution, and part of that is understanding environmental thresholds that we should be aiming for to better protect marine wildlife, to better protect marine ecosystems.

And so when we do research like this, a big part is getting it into the literature, in this sense to the scientific community, but it’s also working with our policy team and our communications team to make sure the public hears about it, and to make sure that decision makers nationally and abroad hear about the work that we’re doing, and can use this to help inform science-based targets that they’re setting right now.

Mitch Ratcliffe  14:22

So one of the materials that you found was most dangerous is rubber, particularly from balloons. It emerged as especially deadly for seabirds, where you estimated that just six pea-sized pieces could create a 90% mortality rate. What’s happening physiologically with balloon fragments that make them so lethal?

Erin Murphy  14:45

Yeah, so if you think about the design of a balloon, they’re super stretchy, and they’re long and they’re thin, and even the fragments seem to have this shape. And so they get stuck at those junctures in the gastrointestinal tract, like between the stomach and the intestine. And the gut moves things along through these wave-like contractions. And it seems like these stretchy materials just kind of stretch with it, and so the gut just isn’t able to move them through as easily. And we see similar things for those plastic bags as well.

Mitch Ratcliffe  15:20

Well, you also point out that sea turtles appear to mistake plastic bags for jellyfish. Is there anything we could do in terms of the chemistry of soft plastics or the appearance of soft plastics to make them less attractive to sea life?

Erin Murphy  15:35

Yeah, I don’t know if there’s a way that we can make them less attractive that I know of. And it’s unfortunate, because we know there are a lot of plastic bags in the environment compared to other plastics. Every year, Ocean Conservancy organizes the International Coastal Cleanup, and plastic bags are consistently in the top 10 items we see most frequently.

That being said, we do know ways of keeping plastic bags out of the ocean and protecting turtles in that way. And so every year — or in this last year, during our Coastal Cleanup — we collected, or our partner organizations collected, more than 1 million bags off our beaches. So this is really important for helping protect ocean animals, because those bags are already very close to their environment, and by removing them from beaches, we prevent them from getting into the ocean.

We also know that plastic bag bans, like the policy that California just implemented, are very effective in reducing the threat that plastic bags pose to marine wildlife, and help by preventing them from getting into the environment in the first place. So there was a recent study published in Science that actually showed that communities that implement bag bans, whether that’s a city, a state, or a country, do meaningfully reduce the amount of plastic bags that end up on beaches by 25 to 47%. So that’s a really significant reduction, and just provides further evidence that we know how to address some of these threats. We have ways of measuring if policies are effective, and it’s really about preventing these bags from getting into the environment in the first place.

Mitch Ratcliffe  17:18

Another example of really short-term human thinking is the impact of fishing gear pollution. Can you talk a little about what you found in terms of what’s being tossed overboard by the boats that are hoping to treat the ocean as an ongoing resource and source of living?

Erin Murphy  17:36

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of the fishing gear that’s lost is lost on accident. Fishing gear can be really expensive for fishermen. Like crab pots can cost thousands of dollars. And so these are very valuable resources for fishers, and they’re expensive to replace.

But unfortunately, one of the challenges with fishing in turbid and wavy environments around storms, especially with things that are set, is that some gear does get lost. And we did see interactions and ingestion of fishing gear by many of these animals. And partially that’s because gear attracts prey species. So we know that for some animals, they’re more likely to interact with fishing gear, and this isn’t just ingestion, but also being entangled in fishing gear, because, you know, that gear is still fishing. And for a lot of these bigger species, fish are their prey, and so they’re also being drawn to these devices, or this lost gear that might have their food in it.

Mitch Ratcliffe  18:44

And your study didn’t look at the external plastic lethality, it was only that which was consumed. So we don’t really fully understand what the consequences of, say, for instance, a net lost at sea is for the ocean yet? Or do we?

Erin Murphy  19:01

Yeah, we have — there’s some studies that have looked at this, but this is actually another study we’re working on. So one of the next papers we’re working on right now is looking at entanglement lethality, and that really will be important for understanding the impacts of plastic pollution together, because ingestion and entanglement, when we talk about these bigger plastics, are the two main threats that we see.

Mitch Ratcliffe  19:24

I feel like we’ve got our bearings and can have a really productive conversation. But folks, we’re going to take a quick commercial break. We’ll be right back.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Now, let’s get back to my discussion with the Ocean Conservancy’s Dr. Erin Murphy, who led a groundbreaking study about the lethal effects of macroplastics in sea life. Erin, nearly half the animals that you studied that had ingested plastics were already listed as threatened. Is plastic pollution accelerating extinction risk, and what species do you feel are most endangered?

Erin Murphy  20:03

Yeah, that’s a great question. Right now, there’s not a lot of research yet on population-level effects of plastic pollution, and our study is really helping build that information out. But it’s just very difficult to understand what’s happening to populations that often we have trouble studying in the first place.

Still, for many marine species, the IUCN Red List notes plastic pollution as a significant threat. Six out of seven sea turtle species are threatened. We saw really high ingestion rates for sea turtles. We know that 5% of the turtles in our data set died from plastic ingestion.

So I think there is a lot of evidence suggesting that this could be contributing to extinction risk. And there are some studies that look at very specific populations that we know are vulnerable, like the Hawaiian monk seal, that have found that plastic pollution is contributing to extinction risk.

And the hopeful piece in the Hawaiian monk seal case was actually that as communities started doing large-scale cleanup efforts in the Hawaiian Islands, they actually saw a rebound of that population. So again, just a reminder that even though we know that this is something that is posing a threat to marine species we really care about, it’s also evidence that targeted and effective intervention strategies can be really important in helping some of these species rebound.

Mitch Ratcliffe  21:34

That’s encouraging. So it isn’t as though we’re doomed, or that nature is doomed. We can intervene in our behavior today and make a change for the better in the future. How does the Ocean Conservancy encourage people to do that?

Erin Murphy  21:49

Yeah, so there was a study that we — some of us co-authored, and the Ocean Conservancy supported — that came out in 2020 that looked at what we would really need to do on a global scale to reduce plastic pollution in the ocean meaningfully enough to hit some of our potential targets. And in this case, we were thinking about just returning to 2010 annual leakage rates into the environment.

And what we found is that we really need sweeping change to our relationship with plastic and our waste management systems. And so we found that to achieve this goal, we would need a 40% reduction in plastic production globally. We would need waste management to reach levels of 98 to 99%, depending on the income of the country. And we would need, annually, 40% of waste that gets into the environment to then be cleaned up.

And at Ocean Conservancy, we really work on policy efforts in all three of those big buckets. And so we have the International Coastal Cleanup, but we also work on upstream policies with our policy teams at the sub-national, national, and international levels to try to work towards some of those goals of reducing plastic production and better managing the plastic waste that we do use.

Mitch Ratcliffe  23:10

You used the phrase “our relationship with plastic,” which is an interesting concept. In 2024, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that microplastics were found in human arterial plaque, and that resulted in much higher risk for cardiovascular events. Do you see what you’re studying as a parallel crisis, or the same crisis, just in a different species?

Erin Murphy  23:35

Yeah, I view that — you know, so they were looking specifically at microplastics, and we focused on macroplastics in this study. That being said, most microplastics that are in the environment are breaking off of these larger macroplastics. So in that sense, I do view this all as part of the same crisis, and I think we need to think about all of the harms that plastic materials are causing to human health, to animal health, and to sociocultural outcomes like our marine and terrestrial industries that are affected by plastic pollution, and we need to think about comprehensive policies that are addressing all of those harms.

Mitch Ratcliffe  24:17

Are there studies that are showing the same types of impacts from plastic in human and non-human species that we can use to start to tell the story in that same illustrative way that you did with the sugar cube analogy, so that people really take this seriously? I mean, the problem with our society is that we’re accustomed to throwing everything away.

Erin Murphy  24:40

Yeah, so there’s a lot of really great research that’s being done on microplastic exposure in other marine and aquatic organisms, and those are more similar to what’s happening in humans. But that human research, and the research on sort of sub-lethal microplastic risks — like the risks to cardiovascular systems, nervous system, gastrointestinal tracts — those are all pretty new, and so this body of research is really building, and I think we’re going to learn a lot in the next decade.

Mitch Ratcliffe  25:14

Do you see an acceleration of your ability to make those kinds of conclusions — well-grounded conclusions — emerging as a result of the advent of something like artificial intelligence? Are we at the dawn of a scientific revolution?

Erin Murphy  25:33

You know, that’s a good question. I don’t know in what ways AI will change the way that we’re doing research. Definitely, the rate at which we are producing research has increased. There’s more people working on these issues, and the scientific process is really just about iterating as a community and building on what we know. And so I think what we’re seeing here is a large-scale interest in this plastics issue and a big concern by the scientific community and by the public.

And as we learn more, we can answer more complicated questions. And so I was only able to do my work because over the last five decades, people have been studying what plastic is in the animals and reporting on that, and we have thousands of published papers now that tell us about what animals are consuming. And each one of those papers is really important in producing this bigger picture. And as we have, you know, similarly more studies on these sort of individual systems and humans, using model organisms like mice, we will be able to do the same sort of thing of painting this bigger picture for humans as well.

Mitch Ratcliffe  26:48

So as we get this higher-resolution view of what we’re doing, both to the planet and to ourselves, how does Ocean Conservancy potentially use those storytelling opportunities to get us to think about things like plastic bans, or the impact of extended producer responsibility on not just what ends up in the environment, but what we design so that it doesn’t end up in the environment in the future? It’s a big, complicated, multifaceted story. Where are we going?

Erin Murphy  27:17

Yeah, that is true, and I am not the policy expert at Ocean Conservancy, but the work that they do is amazing. And they, you know, they go and they talk to the public about these issues and educate the public through blogs and other resources to make sure that people understand the scale of the problem. And they work really closely with local decision makers who are interested in addressing these problems and help them develop bills, help them build support for bills. And, you know, we’ll meet with legislators and other leaders to help them kind of understand the reason that these policies are useful.

So Ocean Conservancy in the last 10 years has done a lot of work on state bills, like helping to push forward California’s SB 54, or specific bills that are targeting problematic plastics. Like recently, Florida passed a balloon release ban. Ocean Conservancy was also really involved in pushing that.

And I think we have seen with plastic pollution — what, for me, one of the things that’s most comforting in studying plastic pollution is actually that people do really seem to care about this issue and do seem willing to make change. So when people find out what I research — strangers — they always tell me about what they’re doing to reduce their plastic footprint, and I think that’s just a sign that there is appetite for change, and people want to understand how to do it. And as an organization, we’re just trying to leverage that passion and that stewardship that does kind of inherently exist in people, especially when they see the plastics that they’re using, and use that and sound science to help develop policies that can actually make a change on this issue.

Mitch Ratcliffe  29:06

Building on what you mentioned a moment ago, based on your findings about which plastics are the most lethal, it sounds like it’s a blend. But should policymakers prioritize specific materials, or just look at broad categories? No more of this type.

Erin Murphy  29:23

I think we need to do both. So we did find that different plastics pose different levels of risk, and I think there’s policies that are smaller and easier to implement, like balloon release bans and bag bans, that are effective in targeting some of these problematic plastics specifically. You know, using that Hawaiian monk seal example as well, having very targeted and strategic cleanups can be really important for protecting animals at sea turtle nesting beaches or seabird nesting areas. There’s these areas that we know are of particular importance for animals.

But still, the total plastic thresholds that we found were also low, and we see all types of plastics in these animals. So at the end of the day, there is too much plastic in the ocean, and we do need sweeping reforms along the entire plastics life cycle, from production to management to disposal, to meaningfully address this issue and protect our oceans.

And it takes longer to implement these policies because it does require some pretty extensive system-wide changes. But I think policies like California’s SB 54, which aims to reduce 25% of single-use plastics used, that’s really a step in the right direction. And so our policy team is on the front lines of making sure that that bill is fully implemented and that we understand the benefits of that policy by monitoring outcomes and effectiveness of it.

Mitch Ratcliffe  30:56

You mentioned earlier that on the International Coastal Cleanup Day, which is a distributed event all over the world but a day, they collected more than a million plastic bags last year. Is the goal in the long term to no longer need to do those cleanups? Or do you anticipate that we’re always going to be needing to do those cleanups?

Erin Murphy  31:18

Yeah, I think unfortunately, at this point, it’s hard to imagine a world where cleanups aren’t necessary. I think when we did that study in 2020, that was led by Lau et al., it was pretty alarming to see how much we would have to reduce plastic production and how well we would have to manage waste to no longer need cleanups at all, and we really did find that cleanups needed to be an important part of this solution.

And there’s already a lot of legacy plastics in the ocean. So I think as far as we can look forward, cleanups will always be an important part of the suite of solutions that we use.

They’re also really effective for monitoring what’s happening in our ocean. So I mentioned earlier that study that was published in Science that showed that plastic bag bans are effective. We were really excited to see that they actually used Ocean Conservancy International Coastal Cleanup data to do that analysis, and it really just emphasizes the value of citizen science. When you go out and collect data during a cleanup on your beach, we can see what changes occur through time in terms of what debris you’re seeing, and that helps us better understand whether it’s targeted policies or these broader policies, if they’re being effective or not.

Mitch Ratcliffe  32:42

What does the Ocean Conservancy do to help people do citizen science beyond the International Coastal Cleanup?

Erin Murphy  32:49

So that program has been going on for 40 years, and that’s really, in terms of citizen science, our main body of work. But we are interested in having citizens engage in other ways. So we often have — you can sign up for our newsletter and get information about opportunities to call your senators or write your senators or legislators about important ocean issues that are coming up.

And we also just have a lot of educational material so that people can start their own cleanup events, or find cleanup events to participate in, so that individuals can be engaged in being part of the solution.

Mitch Ratcliffe  33:31

You’ve mentioned a couple of items of research that you are beginning to pursue now. But if you had unlimited resources for the remainder of your career, what would you like to investigate and build on those findings with?

Erin Murphy  33:44

Yeah, it’s pretty hard to imagine unlimited resources, especially now, I know. But yeah, you know, we already started working on answering some of these next questions that are remaining for us, and I’m really excited about the work that we’re going to be doing over the next three to five years. And I will not be surprised if, you know, this body of work, trying to understand what’s happening to ocean animals, becomes a career-long question for me.

But in the short term, the things we’re really trying to get at is, first, that entanglement piece, which you mentioned — what is the lethality of plastic entanglement. And we also just launched a working group with scientists from all over the world to take what we have learned about the lethality of plastic ingestion and to build out, include what we are learning right now in our research about entanglement, and then bring in that exposure piece.

So that question you asked earlier about how much plastic is a puffin eating, how often does it have a lethal dose — that’s really what we want to get at. We want to know if we have an idea of what’s in the environment, how likely is that to have population-level effects for species? How likely are they to eat a lethal dose? How likely are they to die? And are we worried about populations because of this?

And right now, governments around the world are really trying to determine how to effectively address plastic pollution, and these sorts of comprehensive risk assessments are really helpful in setting targets. And so that’s really what I want to keep getting at: How can we take everything we know and help decision makers better understand, you know, a reasonable goal? Because a perfect goal is an ocean with no plastic, and I think we have to keep working towards that collectively. But it’s also really important to understand what species are being adversely affected and what we can do to immediately protect them now.

Mitch Ratcliffe  35:46

Well, it’s a multi-generational challenge, and I really applaud the work that you’re doing. How can folks keep up with the work that you’re undertaking?

Erin Murphy  35:55

Yeah, we have a brand new website at oceanconservancy.org, and we have a lot of information there, you know, specifically on what our plastics team is doing, but on what our entire organization is doing in terms of bills that we’re working on. They can also sign up for our newsletter to get information about what the organization is working on, and that will give them ample opportunities to participate in being part of the solution to the plastics crisis.

Mitch Ratcliffe  36:20

Erin, thanks so much for your time today. It’s been a fascinating conversation and an encouraging one.

Erin Murphy  36:26

Thank you. It was great to be here.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Mitch Ratcliffe  36:34

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You’ve been listening to my conversation with Dr. Erin Murphy, manager of ocean plastics research at the Ocean Conservancy, and she’s the lead author of the recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that quantifies, for the first time at this scale, how much plastic it takes to kill seabirds, sea turtles, and marine mammals.

You can explore the Ocean Conservancy’s wide-ranging work and sign up for a beach cleanup event at oceanconservancy.org. Ocean Conservancy is all one word, no space, no dash. Oceanconservancy.org.

The numbers Erin and her colleagues reported should stop us in our tracks. The volumes we heard about are disturbing, but imagine — one in five animals had plastic in their gut when they died. For sea turtles, it was one in two. What makes that study especially useful for policymakers is its differentiation by plastic type. Rubber fragments can be targeted because balloons are the deadliest material for seabirds. Soft plastics like bags are the top killer for sea turtles. Ghost fishing gear poses the greatest risk to marine mammals like whales. And each of these findings points to a specific, actionable policy lever: balloon release bans like Florida’s recent legislation, bag bans like California’s, and better gear-marking and recovery programs for the fishing industry.

But the targeted approach is only part of the answer. As Erin emphasized, the total plastic thresholds her team found were low across the board, meaning that every type of plastic poses a threat. “At the end of the day,” she said, “there is too much plastic in the ocean, and we need to do sweeping reforms along the entire plastics life cycle, from production to management to disposal.” That’s a very important quote. Keep it in mind.

A 2020 Ocean Conservancy-backed study quantified what “sweeping” means: a 40% reduction in global plastic production, waste management reaching 98 to 99% effectiveness in its collection and processing of plastic so it doesn’t reach nature, and annual cleanups of the 40% of plastic that still escapes into the environment — and that’s just to return to the 2010 leakage rates.

So that brings us to the elephant in the room — or maybe more to the point, the sperm whale with an entire greenhouse in its stomach — the global plastics treaty negotiations. Which were supposed to deliver a binding international agreement, collapsed in August 2025 in Geneva after oil-producing nations blocked provisions that called for production caps and toxic chemical phase-outs. More than 100 countries in the group known as the High Ambition Coalition were pushing for full life-cycle regulation for plastics, but the requirement that the negotiations reach a consensus gave a handful of petrochemical states an effective veto power. And effective it was.

So between the Busan round in late 2024 and the end of the Geneva talks in 2025, an estimated 7.4 million more metric tons of plastic entered the ocean. The world currently produces more than 460 million metric tons of plastic annually, and only 9% of that is being recycled. Every day, the equivalent of 2,000 garbage trucks of plastic is dumped into our oceans, rivers, and lakes.

However, the collapse of the treaty talks does not mean the end of progress. Erin pointed to evidence that targeted interventions can work. For example, communities in Hawaii conducted large beach cleanups and saw the Hawaiian monk seal population rebound. A study published in Science confirms that bag bans reduce plastic on beaches by between 25 and 47%. California’s SB 54 law aims to cut single-use plastics by 25%. And Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup, which is now in its 40th year, removed more than a million plastic bags from beaches last year. That cleanup data, collected by citizen scientists worldwide, is a research tool providing the time-series evidence that tells us whether policies are working.

So here’s what I want you to leave with from this conversation. Erin’s research focuses exclusively on acute mortality from ingested macroplastics — that’s obstruction, perforation, and torsion of the digestive tract. It does not capture the chronic effects of plastic and chemical exposure or entanglement, which her team will study next. That means the lethal thresholds that she reported likely underestimate the total harm plastic inflicts on marine life.

And the parallel crisis in human health is building from the same source of pollution, which has scattered microscopic shards of plastic across the planet, from the seas to the highest peaks. Most of these microplastics began as macroplastics, like those that are killing puffins and turtles. They break down in the environment into fragments small enough to enter our bloodstream, lungs, liver, and even women’s placentas. As Erin put it, it is all a part of the same crisis.

So one of the most encouraging things that Erin said was also the simplest. When strangers learn about what she studies, they stop and they tell her what they are doing to reduce their plastic footprint. That instinct to environmental stewardship is a real and powerful phenomenon, even if it’s currently being actively suppressed by governments. And the public’s will to protect nature is the foundation that policy, science, and investment will ultimately build on.

The ocean doesn’t need our sympathy. It needs a 40% cut in plastic production, waste systems that actually work, and the political will to treat a binding plastics agreement as a matter of human survival rather than an inconvenience for a few petrochemical companies. Until international negotiations deliver that agreement, the work continues at every other level: state legislatures, coastal cleanups, citizen science, and research programs like Erin’s that give decision makers the evidence-based targets that they’ve been asking for.

So stay tuned, folks, for more conversations about the solutions that can still turn this crisis around. And I hope you’ll take a moment to take a look at any of the more than 540 episodes of Sustainability In Your Ear in our archives. Take the time to share just one of them with your friends or your family. Writing a review on your favorite podcast platform will help your neighbors find us. Folks, you’re the amplifiers that can spread more ideas to create less waste. 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 all 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 and its oceans. Have a green day.

The post Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: The Ocean Conservancy’s Dr. Erin Murphy Documents the Lethality of Ocean Plastics appeared first on Earth911.

The built environment, particularly office buildings other urban facilities, are responsible for 39% of the global energy-related emissions, according to the World Green Building Council. About a third of that impact comes from the initial construction of a building and the other two-thirds is produced over the lifetime of a building by heating, cooling, and providing power to the occupants. Our guest today is leading a key battle to reduce the impact of the built environment. Tune in for a wide-ranging conversation with Rob Bernard, Chief Sustainability Officer at CBRE Group Inc., which manages more than $145 billion of commercial buildings, providing logistics, retail, and corporate office services across more than than 100 countries.

Rob cut his sustainability teeth at Microsoft, as its Chief Environmental Strategist for 11 years, as the company was developing its world-leading approach and collaborating with other tech giants to lobby for policy and funding to accelerate progress. He discusses CBRE’s Sustainability Solutions & Services for commercial building owners, as well as the accelerating progress for renewables, carbon tracking, and economic, health, and lifestyle benefits of living lightly on the planet. You can learn more about CBRE and its sustainability services at cbre.com

Take a few minutes to learn more about making construction and building operations more sustainable:

• Earth911 Podcast: Cityzenith’s Michael Jansen Uses Digital Twins to Reinvent Urban Planning
• Earth911 Podcast: Concrete.ai CEO Alex Hall On Mixing Embodied Carbon Out Of the Built Environment
• Best of Earth911 Podcast: Lowering Construction Impacts With Green Badger’s Tommy Linstroth
• Best of Earth911 Podcast: William Ulrich on Learning From Y2K To Design the Circular Economy
• Best of Earth911 Podcast: Autodesk Spacemaker Aides Building Efficiency With AI Insights
• How to Assess Your Business’ Environmental and Social Impacts
• Passive House Design: Changing the Future of New Home Construction

• Subscribe to Sustainability in Your Ear on iTunes and Apple Podcasts.
• Follow Sustainability in Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube.

Editor’s Note: This podcast originally aired on April 15, 2024.

The post Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: Making Billions of Square Feet of Commercial Space Sustainable with CBRE’s Rob Bernard appeared first on Earth911.

About two tons of satellite material burns up in Earth’s atmosphere every day. That is the steady-state exhaust of a single company’s broadband network, SpaceX’s Starlink, operating at its current scale. Each vaporized spacecraft leaves behind aluminum oxide, lithium, copper, and a growing list of metals the upper atmosphere has never had to contained in these quantities before.

We’re following a familiar human pattern. A commons, like the low earth orbit (LEO) region of space, is declared abundant. Commercial activity scales faster than science can measure the consequences. Governance lags by a decade or more. By the time the damage is legible, it is already expensive to reverse.

We did this to rivers in the 19th century, to the atmosphere in the 20th, and to the deep ocean in a quiet accumulation that stretched across both. A new peer-reviewed analysis published in Advances in Space Research makes clear that LEO is now on the same trajectory, and the chemistry is moving faster than the regulation.

An Atmosphere Already Dominated by Human Metal

The paper, an update to a 2021 study, reassesses how much spacecraft material is now being injected into the mesosphere and lower thermosphere as satellites and rocket stages burn up on reentry. The comparison it draws is that for several metals commonly used in spacecraft, anthropogenic injection now rivals or exceeds the natural input from meteoroids.

What was already true in 2021 is more true now. The researchers incorporate direct observations from stratospheric aerosol sampling — work led by Daniel Murphy at NOAA and published in PNAS in 2023 — which confirmed that roughly 10 percent of stratospheric aerosol particles now contain aluminum and other metals traceable to satellite and rocket-stage burn-up. For decades, the natural baseline was micrometeoroid ablation, what space sent naturally toward our planet. Earth sweeps up roughly 30 to 50 metric tons of cosmic dust every day, a steady rain of mostly sand-grain-sized particles left over from comets and asteroids. Those grains hit the upper atmosphere at speeds between 11 and 72 kilometers per second, vaporize in a thin layer between about 75 and 110 kilometers altitude, and seed the mesosphere with iron, magnesium, silicon, sodium, and trace amounts of nickel, calcium, and aluminum. This process has been running for the entire 4.5-billion-year history of the planet. The metal layers it produces in the upper atmosphere are well-mapped; they are the chemistry the stratosphere evolved with.

Aluminum is a useful tracer because it is a small share of the natural input. Cosmic dust is dominated by silicates and iron, with aluminum running on the order of one to two percent by mass. So when researchers began detecting elevated aluminum in stratospheric aerosol particles in the early 2020s, the signal was unambiguous — meteoritic infall could not account for it. The source had to be terrestrial in origin, vaporized at altitude. Spacecraft, in other words.

Human vehicles have become a second, larger source.

The near-term trajectory is worse. Researchers at the University of Southern California documented an eightfold increase in stratospheric aluminum oxide between 2016 and 2022, corresponding almost exactly to the ramp-up of Starlink and other satellite megaconstellations. In 2022 alone, reentering satellites released an estimated 17 metric tons of aluminum oxide nanoparticles — raising total atmospheric aluminum input about 29.5 percent above natural levels.

The Ocean Parallel

Consider the deep ocean in the 1960s. Dumping was legal, monitoring was barely funded, and the prevailing assumption was that the ocean was big enough to absorb anything. We now know the answer to that assumption after finding microplastics in Mariana Trench amphipods, pharmaceutical residues in Arctic sediment cores, and PFAS in polar bear blood.

Low Earth orbit is in the 1960s-ocean phase. The prevailing assumption among launch operators is that satellites that burn up are satellites that disappear. Michael Byers, Canada Research Chair in global politics and international law, put this directly in a 2024 interview with Scientific American: “There’s this widespread assumption that something burning up in the atmosphere disappears, but, of course, mass never disappears.”

What it does instead is change form. A 250-kilogram satellite, typically about 30 percent aluminum by mass, generates roughly 30 kilograms of aluminum oxide nanoparticles as it ablates through the mesosphere. Those particles are small enough — 1 to 100 nanometers — that they can drift in the stratosphere for decades before settling. Aluminum oxide is not inert. It catalyzes the chlorine reactions that destroy stratospheric ozone, the same chemistry the Montreal Protocol was designed to stop. Crucially, the particles are not consumed in those reactions; they continue to destroy ozone molecules for the duration of their atmospheric lifetime.

The Scale Is Not Hypothetical

As of April 2026, SpaceX alone operates more than 10,000 active Starlink satellites, roughly two-thirds of all functioning spacecraft in orbit. The company has launched over 11,700 total, with about 1,500 already deorbited and replaced. Starlink satellites are designed for a five-year operational life, which means the constellation is, by design, a continuous churn: launch, operate, burn, launch again.

Amazon’s Project Kuiper, Eutelsat’s OneWeb, and a growing roster of Chinese state-backed constellations are moving toward similar architectures. The European Space Agency now tracks roughly 40,000 objects in low Earth orbit, about 11,000 of them active payloads, the rest debris or derelict hardware. Statistical models from ESA estimate another 130 million fragments smaller than one centimeter, each traveling fast enough to destroy whatever it hits.

Research published in Geophysical Research Letters projects that once currently planned megaconstellations are fully deployed, roughly 912 metric tons of aluminum will reenter the atmosphere every year, producing around 360 tons of aluminum oxide annually. A separate NOAA modeling study published in 2025 found that sustained alumina injection at expected 2040 levels could alter polar vortex speeds, warm parts of the mesosphere by as much as 1.5°C, and measurably impact the ozone layer.

Two Kinds of Pollution, One Commons

The orbital damage is happening on two fronts simultaneously, and they reinforce each other.

Atmospheric injection is the slow-accumulating chemistry problem. Every satellite that completes its mission becomes tomorrow’s stratospheric dust. A newly upgraded lidar system at the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Germany can now simultaneously detect lithium, sodium, copper, titanium, silicon, gold, silver, and lead in the upper atmosphere — each element a chemical fingerprint for specific spacecraft components. On February 20, 2025, the instrument registered a sudden spike in lithium vapor that researchers traced to a Falcon 9 upper stage reentering overhead.

The measurement capability is arriving just as the pollution is scaling.

Orbital debris is the faster-moving physical problem. SpaceX reported that its Starlink satellites executed 144,404 collision-avoidance maneuvers in the first half of 2025, due to collision warnings every couple of minutes, for six months straight — three times the previous rate. Two Starlink satellites have fragmented in orbit in the past four months, each creating a trackable debris field. Space is getting filled with junk that led to the International Space Station performing avoidance maneuvers twice in a single six-day window in November 2024, and again in April 2025.

Darren McKnight, a senior technical fellow at the debris-tracking firm LeoLabs, told IEEE Spectrum that certain orbital altitudes at 775, 840, and 975 kilometers have already passed the debris-density threshold where collisions generate fragments faster than atmospheric drag can remove them. This is known as the Kessler syndrome, proposed by NASA scientists Donald Kessler and Burton Cour-Palais in 1978, and it is no longer hypothetical in every band.

“Some operators in low Earth orbit are ignoring known long-term effects of behavior for short-term gain,” McKnight said, “Some will not change behavior until something bad happens.”

The Governance Gap

There is no body that regulates the cumulative atmospheric impact of satellite reentries. No operator is required to submit an environmental impact assessment for a constellation’s aggregate burn-up.

The FCC licenses spectrum.

National launch authorities license liftoff.

Debris mitigation guidelines from the UN’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space are voluntary, and compliance is inconsistent. The chemistry of the upper atmosphere is, in regulatory terms, nobody’s jurisdiction.

The United Nations Environment Program took a first step in late 2025, releasing a report titled Safeguarding Space: Environmental Issues, Risks and Responsibilities. It framed space debris and atmospheric injection as “emerging issues” deserving the attention international bodies already give to ocean pollution and transboundary air quality. This is the same framing UNEP used for atmospheric ozone depletion in the 1970s before the Montreal Protocol. Measuring something does not fix it. But it is the necessary precondition for fixing it — and for the first time, the measurement infrastructure is catching up to the pollution.

The Counter-Case, Honestly

Not every specialist agrees the situation is as urgent as the headlines suggest. A skeptical review published in March 2026 argued that the Kessler cascade framing oversimplifies a risk that plays out on timescales of decades to centuries, and in specific orbital bands rather than across all of LEO. The review is right on one narrow point: the ISS has operated continuously at 400 kilometers since 2000, its debris risk is managed in real time, and the environment is not in a runaway state.

What the skeptical case does not resolve is the atmospheric chemistry. The Kessler debate is about whether low-earth orbit becomes unusable. The alumina question is about whether the recovery of the ozone layer — a genuine success story of international environmental governance — is quietly being undone from above. Those are different problems. The first might take a century. The second is already measurable and is projected to worsen within fifteen years.

The post We Are Doing to Low Earth Orbit What We Did to the Oceans appeared first on Earth911.

$850 billion. That’s what retail and e-commerce returns will cost in 2026, generating 8.4 billion pounds of landfill waste — and a surprising share of it involves products that worked perfectly. They just didn’t look the way people expected. About 22% of consumers return items because the product looked different in person than it did online, and for home goods and textiles, that number climbs higher. The culprit has a name: metamerism — the way colors shift under different light sources, so the navy sectional and the matching throw pillow that looked identical on your screen clash under your living room LEDs. Don Carli, founder of Nima Hunter and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Communication, joins Sustainability In Your Ear to explain why this keeps happening and what it would take to stop it.

The fix isn’t a moonshot. The relevant standards — glTF for digital rendering and ICC Max for physical material appearance — already exist and were designed to be connected. Digital textile printing already makes it possible to produce fabrics with pigment recipes that match under any lighting condition, not just one. What’s missing is coordination: brands putting spectral consistency requirements into their supplier purchase orders, the same way the GMI certification transformed packaging quality once Target and Home Depot required it. The Khronos 3D Commerce Working Group has already standardized how products look across digital screens — the next step is bridging that standard to the physical object. When we get this right, a sofa stays in the home it was ordered for instead of traveling a thousand miles back to a distribution center and ending up in a landfill. That’s what circularity looks like when it’s applied to the seam between the digital world and the physical one. Follow Don’s work at WhatTheyThink.com and on X at @DCarli.

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Interview Transcript

Mitch Ratcliffe  0:08

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

Let’s take another look at the topic of e-commerce returns and how to reduce them by tuning the economy for less waste. We’re going to start with making what you see online look like what you receive on your doorstep.

Now here’s a number that should stop you in your tracks the next time you shop online: $850 billion. That’s how much retail and e-commerce returns will cost in 2026. And here’s another number: 8.4 billion pounds of landfill waste generated by those returns in a single year — roughly the same as burying 10,500 fully loaded Boeing 747s in the ground. That’s a lot of waste.

Now you might assume that most of these returns are about fit — pants that don’t fit, shoes that pinch. But 22% of consumers report returning items because the product looked different in person than it did online, and for home goods and textiles categories, where fit isn’t the issue, that percentage climbs even higher. A sofa that passes every quality specification still gets returned because it clashes with the throw pillow that also passed every specification — when they don’t look alike in the home, both can end up in a landfill, because repackaging costs more than recovery.

Today’s conversation is about why that happens and what we can do about it. My guest today is Don Carli. Don’s a good friend and the founder of the consulting firm NEMA Hunter Incorporated. Two of Don’s recent articles on the site What They Think got me thinking about how an apparently esoteric discussion of color calibration and spectral profiles actually represents something much larger — the fine-tuning we can do to the 20th-century industrial system that was never designed to connect digital promises to physical reality.

Don is also a Senior Research Fellow with the nonprofit Institute for Sustainable Communication, where he has directed programs on corporate responsibility, sustainability, advertising, marketing, and enterprise communication. He’s also a member of the board of advisors for the AIGA Center for Sustainable Design and a member of the Institute for Supply Management.

So here’s why this matters beyond the print and packaging industry, where Don has spent most of his career. The 20th century built industrial systems optimized for mass production: make a lot, ship it out, and hope people keep it. These systems created enormous efficiencies on the one hand, but they also created enormous waste — often hidden in the seams between suppliers, brands, and retailers, where no single stakeholder owns enough of the problem to force a solution. In fact, it really means nobody lost enough money to care.

What Don’s work reveals is that we now have the technical architecture to fine-tune these legacy systems — not replace them, but recalibrate them. The standards exist. The measurement hardware exists. The digital rendering pipelines exist. What’s missing is the coordination: getting brands, retailers, and others to share data they currently hold separately, and to recognize that the costs they’re each absorbing individually are symptoms of the same system failure — a failure of color calibration.

And this is what sustainability can look like in practice: not moonshot reinventions, but the patient technical work of closing gaps between digital and physical, between specification and reality, and between what we promise customers and what we deliver. If we get this right, we can reduce waste, cut costs, and rebuild trust with consumers who’ve learned to expect that what they see online isn’t quite what they’re going to get.

You can follow Don’s work on X. His handle is @DCarli — that’s spelled D-C-A-R-L-I, all one word, no space, no dash.

So can we calibrate what we see online with what we experience when we open a package, reducing the need to return a purchase? Let’s find out after this brief commercial break.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Mitch Ratcliffe  4:29

Welcome to the show, Don. How are you doing today?

Don Carli  4:31

Fantastic, Mitch. I’m really glad to be here with you today and looking forward to the conversation.

Mitch Ratcliffe  4:37

Always great to talk with you, Don. This came up in our discussions over the past couple of months, and then I read the article and wanted to follow up. To start off, can you walk us through a typical scenario? A customer orders a navy sectional and a matching throw pillow from different suppliers. They appear to be the same color — they both pass all the quality specifications we’ve talked about — but under the living room lights, the consumer finds they clash. What happened between the approved image and her disappointment? Where did the system break down?

Don Carli  5:15

We’ve all had this experience at some point in our lives. In part, it’s because of the nature of human perception. We would like to think that color is a constant thing, but color is an interaction of multiple variables.

One variable is the light source — specifically, the distribution of wavelengths in that light. As you know, the visible spectrum is a small part of all the radiation there is. There’s ultraviolet light you can’t see, there’s infrared light you can’t see, and then there’s all the colors in between — the ROYGBIV: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet — the colors we’re familiar with. Every light source has a different distribution of those energies.

Second, the material an object is made of has its own capacity to absorb different wavelengths, and that can vary. So you have variation in the energies emitted by the light source, variation in the energies absorbed and reflected by the object, and then there’s the viewer. Our visual system takes up a big part of our brain — it’s not just our eyes, but our eyes have a lot to do with it. Some of us are colorblind, for example, and in other cases, color is simply not a constant thing.

I worked with the Bauhaus artist Josef Albers for many years — he wrote the book The Interaction of Color. He used to say, ‘When you put one color next to another color, you get a third color for free,’ because those two colors interact with each other.

To put it simply: you put on a pair of socks and a pair of pants in your bedroom under incandescent light. The pants are brown, the socks are brown. You go out into the daylight. The pants look green. The socks are still brown. What happened? The light changed. Because daylight has more energy at one end of the spectrum, it reflects more blue light, making the brown look greener.

Mitch Ratcliffe  7:56

That’s really interesting to think about — how we’ve moved from an era of commerce where, say, items in the Sears catalog were originally sketched, versus photographed. As we introduced greater verisimilitude in our catalogs, or on Amazon —

Don Carli  8:17

We set expectations differently. Exactly.

Mitch Ratcliffe  8:20

So how should we think about the expectations we’re setting — both as sellers of things and as consumers? How should we be thinking about this?

Don Carli  8:30

In part, most of this is simply not taught. Most students in grade school, high school, or even university are not given any exposure to the psychology of human perception. There’s a physiological and psychological basis to all of this, and we just don’t know about it.

The problem has always existed. What’s happened with e-commerce — and with sophisticated computer graphic rendering of objects that don’t yet exist in the real world but look real — is that we’re setting expectations. On my screen I see this couch. It looks brown. The pillows look brown. So I expect that when they arrive, they’re both going to look brown.

Unfortunately, the lighting in homes now is no longer even incandescent. LEDs have really unusual spectral curves — they can be the problem. If I had been able to see what those items were going to look like under the lighting in my home, I might be less disappointed. I’d say, ‘Oh, wait — they don’t match.’ But in developing the systems for e-commerce, the companies that develop software for rendering — the tools designers use to develop the rendering of images for websites and monitors — simply don’t take these things into consideration.

Mitch Ratcliffe  10:10

Our economy was massified in the 20th century but it’s moving toward personalization in the 21st century. And what you’re describing — what you named in the article — is metamerism.

Don Carli  10:21

It’s not my term. It’s metamerism — or ‘metamerism,’ yes. That’s fine.

Mitch Ratcliffe  10:27

This phenomenon, combined with changing lighting technology and the changing nature of our homes — which can allow more or less light in, and offer a variable lighting palette —

Don Carli  10:37

A variable lighting palette, yeah.

Mitch Ratcliffe  10:38

— suggests that the palette will always be changing. So how do we create consistent expectations among consumers when we’re trying to communicate what we offer?

Don Carli  10:57

Well, standards help to begin with. We do not have a set of coordinated standards today that allow the designer to anticipate the observer’s environment and lighting conditions for a given product. Second, we don’t have standards in place to communicate between what the designer intends and what the manufacturer produces — because it is possible to create pigments and dyes that do not exhibit metamerism. Really.

It’s been standard practice in some industries where it matters. If you go to an informed paint company and say, ‘I want a non-metameric match of this swatch,’ they would use a device called a spectrophotometer, which measures the absorption curve of the pigments employed — so that under any lighting condition, the appearance doesn’t change, because the curves have been matched.

But I can create a match that only looks correct under one light source, which is typically what happens when people revert to either a monitor — which only has three emitters: red, green, and blue — or printing, where typically you have cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. If you want to truly match, you have to match the curve.

New printers being used for digital textiles actually have 10 channels, and it is possible to use pigments across those channels to make the absorption curve of the material non-metameric — or at least less metameric. We’re waiting for standards to come together, and that will only happen, I believe, if the brands suffering the greatest economic loss from this mismatch problem take action to put the requirements in their purchase orders and to support pilots that address that 22% of returns due to color perception that you described.

Mitch Ratcliffe  13:27

You do point out that IKEA, Amazon, Wayfair, and others have funded the Khronos 3D Commerce Working Group to ensure that products look consistent across different apps and websites. So they want consistency when rendered on a digital screen, but they’re apparently okay with the fact they don’t look the same when they arrive?

Don Carli  13:54

Yes, I like the disconnect. It’s interesting. First of all, it would require collaboration across industry — across groups that don’t typically talk to each other. I don’t think it’s willful. I think it’s more like, ‘Wow, they just haven’t gotten around to that.’ Nobody fully realized how much was at stake. And the potential for a connection between the two standards that do exist is actually very good and straightforward, because they’re both extensible standards.

What’s needed — as I said — is for the businesses that are right now losing approximately $850 billion a year due to returns to ask: How much of that is attributable to consumers who’ve been given permission by e-commerce companies to say, ‘Something doesn’t look right, so I want to return it’? We’ve made it easy to return things.

Mitch Ratcliffe  15:09

The customer was always right.

Don Carli  15:11

That’s correct. And it’s going to be hard to put that one back in the bottle. So now we have to ask: out of the $850 billion — which is just the retail cost of the goods, not the cost of reverse logistics, not the cost of reprocessing, not the disposal of that returned product to landfill or incineration — if you take it all together, it’s probably $1.25 trillion, maybe even $1.5 trillion. And if you said, ‘Okay, but how much of that is because somebody said the colors don’t match?’ — even being very conservative, say 10% — that’s still enough money to justify addressing the root cause of the problem.

Mitch Ratcliffe  16:00

$150 to $200 billion….

Don Carli  16:03

Just rounding error, right? So you could say to companies like Adobe — that develop the software for rendering objects that are going to be manufactured — take IKEA as an example. IKEA doesn’t fill its catalogs, whether online or physical (though there’s no longer a physical catalog), with actual photography. Those are computer-generated images. They look real, but they don’t exist in the physical world when rendered. Very often, the product isn’t manufactured until after you’ve bought it — you bought it on the basis of a computer graphic rendering that looks photorealistic. It’s called Physically Based Rendering.

So if those systems were specifying color with the manufacturing process in mind — which is very often digital textiles printing — they could choose their colors to be less subject to metamerism, or even to specifically eliminate metamerism. They could also provide the ability to predict: run the model through a set of tests to see, ‘Is this design going to be subject to metamerism?’ And carry that logic forward to the manufacturer. They’d have to put that in their purchase orders. They’d have to bridge two standards — one called glTF, the other called ICC Max.

The point is, the consumer doesn’t need to know any of this. The consumer needs to understand that it’s possible to make things match under different lighting conditions — or at least to have less divergence from their expectations under different lighting conditions.

Mitch Ratcliffe  17:58

I agree that the consumer should be able to expect that. What I hear is that so far, the pain hasn’t been great enough. But we’re also at a point where simply reducing the waste would be worthwhile on its own, with other benefits as well —

Don Carli  18:10

Oh, absolutely. But the financial ones alone —

Mitch Ratcliffe  18:15

The financial ones are enough? Yes. And then all the environmental and social costs of returns on top of that. But let’s talk about how to actually hack toward a solution. Is it possible now — or over the course of the next decade, say — for me to have a phone app that I use in my home? I sample the light in the morning, I sample the light at noon, I sample it at sundown, and in the evening — sometimes with external light, sometimes with just internal. I could say, ‘This is my light profile. Give me things that will look like what I expect.’

Don Carli  19:00

That’s a great question. The question is: would the average consumer go to that extent? Probably not. But the retailer could do what amounts to a survey of the whole home that the products are going to go into. If it’s a major purchase — a couch, carpets, a new home — you could model the interior of that house very easily.

Technologies like Matterport, for example, can scan the interior of a house and give you a virtual view of what it looks like — they use it in real estate all the time. So that’s possible. And it’s also possible to model different lighting scenarios: you say, ‘I’m going to put in LED lighting with variable color temperature, so during the day I may look at it under one light, and at night it’s going to be warmer.’ You can factor in where natural light comes in through windows across the year.

But that may be overkill for most consumers. It might be appropriate for businesses — especially places where the harmony of floor coverings, wall coverings, and furnishing objects matters. Still, it shouldn’t be necessary for the average consumer.

Phones are increasingly gaining the ability to sense color in a spectral sense. I think within three years, that capability should be standard in most phones as a matter of course, and more specialized devices will be available for around $100 if you want them. But I think it’s really incumbent on the retailer and the brands — not on the consumer — to meet expectations first and foremost. And I think an increasing number of consumers who care about environmental and social costs are going to put that expectation on the retailer and the brand: model the environment, predict the degree to which the products being manufactured are subject to metamerism. Those variables can be measured and controlled in design and manufacturing so that the in-home or in-store environment is less subject to lighting variation affecting the perception of color match.

Mitch Ratcliffe  21:55

So I think this is a great place to stop and take a quick commercial break, because we’ve set the stage — and the lighting — to talk about what’s going to come next. Let’s figure out the hack. Stay tuned. We’ll be right back.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Mitch Ratcliffe  22:13

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Let’s get back to my conversation with my friend Don Carli. He’s founder of NEMA Hunter, a market research and product design advisory firm in New York City.

Don, so we understand the variability of light, the variability of settings, the combination of colors — all of these affect our perception of color. And we talked about the fact that phones will have increasing photographic analysis capabilities, so they can sense the full spectrum, not just what we see but the entire range of light affecting our perception. But as you say, it really is incumbent upon the retailer to have a solution that makes something look like my expectation when it arrives at my home. Is this a suggestion that the future of retail is more personalized — that there may be personal shoppers who come to your home early in a brand relationship and do a scan, or who give you the tool? Maybe they send it to you and you return it after completing your color profile. Are we at the beginning of really tuning the economy to deliver exactly what we want so that waste can be reduced?

Don Carli  23:29

I think there are examples of it already in place. There’s a very interesting company that grew out of a team of Navy SEALs and special operations people who had to model environments they were going to enter — and they couldn’t do that using big, complex systems. They needed a hack. They were able to take imagery from various sources and build a 3D model reconstruction of a building so they could plan their approach. One of them left and started a company called Hover.

This isn’t a commercial for Hover, but it’s an interesting case. Hover solved a problem for people who wanted to remodel the exterior of their homes. You could take your phone, take six to eight photos of your house from the exterior, send those photos to Hover, and they would create a 3D reconstruction of your home. Then they worked with manufacturers of siding, roofing, and windows, and allowed the builder to generate not only an estimate of what it would cost to put new siding and windows on your house, but a rendering of what it would look like. The precedent is there: the consumer had the device, nobody had to go out to do an estimate, the contractor loved it because they didn’t have to send anyone to measure — all done accurately using cell phone imagery.

Matterport is another company that makes a device for interiors and does the same thing. And there are small sensors that a retailer could send you that measure color temperature of light — but I don’t think that will be strictly necessary.

Mitch Ratcliffe  25:31

Nor necessarily environmentally responsible, to send out loads of sensors.

Don Carli  25:34

Exactly. So for the retailer, like Radio Shack, if it’s an in-store environment, that’s one thing — they do have the ability to simulate different lighting conditions in-store. Think of it like going to an audio shop —

Mitch Ratcliffe  25:54

You can’t do that anymore, but okay.

Don Carli  25:56

Just imagine going to buy a stereo, or to an audiophile shop —

Mitch Ratcliffe  26:03

We’re showing our age, knowing what that is.

Don Carli  26:05

They bring you into a listening room. The point is, it’s constructed for the purpose of evaluating what something is likely to sound like in your home. I think we can do the same thing in-store with variable lighting.

But online is becoming e-commerce where items are never in a store. You order from a computer-rendered image on your screen, and after your order is placed, the item is manufactured. That’s the link that has to be established: the link between the creator of the design for the object and the supply chain instructions provided to the manufacturer, so that the objects are not subject to metamerism — so they are less subject to variation in the lighting conditions in your home. It is a matter of giving the correct instructions about the materials to be used, and specifying how they’re to be measured by the manufacturer. The brands that design the couch, the pillow, the carpet, the curtain, the flooring — they should own the equipment to do the measurement and support the linkage of the standards that communicate how to maintain color consistency across different lighting and viewing conditions, so the consumer isn’t disappointed.

Mitch Ratcliffe  27:41

This brings me to another concept you introduced, which is the appearance bill of materials — which is in many ways similar to the digital product passports we’ve talked about on the show a number of times, which describe a product’s components and potentially how to recycle it. But this color profile — what would be involved in making that happen at scale? What would it look like to make that a common practice for a furniture retailer, for instance?

Don Carli  28:10

Think of recipes. The way a fabric is produced is changing because of digital printing. We used to make fabric in large quantities using dyes — extremely polluting, very complex — or with high-volume screen printing using fixed screens. Increasingly, fabric printing is achieved digitally, where you can print just one yard or 10 yards of a material using any palette of pigments, matched not just to look correct under one lighting condition, but to look consistent under any lighting condition.

The example of metamerism is: if I have two objects that are supposed to match, and under one lighting condition they do match, but under another they don’t — that is metameric. It changes. But if I blend, or use the right pigment recipe on a given substrate material, they will match regardless of the lighting condition. The pillow matches the couch, the wall covering matches the floor covering.

To do that, you have recipes. I’m going to use this combination of inks, and I have to measure them with a spectrophotometer. The specifier has to tell the manufacturer what the material characteristics are. It’s the same as saying, ‘Use butter, sugar, and flour’ — but not all butter, sugar, and flour are the same. Or like architects who say, ‘Use concrete, aluminum, steel, and wood’ — but what’s the actual recipe for the steel, the concrete, the wood? We have to be more specific at the design and manufacturing stages.

It is kind of like a digital product passport. The standard for glTF, which is used for Physically Based Rendering on monitors, is consistent for rendering on screens — but it doesn’t extend to the world of physical objects, inks, and substrates.

Mitch Ratcliffe  30:59

So that’s the link. Thank you. You’ve also pointed out that the GMI certification — which Target, Home Depot, and CVS began to require, and which describes packaging — was broadly accepted once those brands introduced it. Would color matching with the guarantee that it will look like what you saw when you receive it be a significant differentiator — a value-added differentiator — that would set a brand apart if they embraced and practiced it consistently?

Don Carli  31:34

Why not? We know that consumers are disappointed enough to go through the return process — and it’s not simple. It’s an annoyance. You’re putting people out of their way. They want their couch, they want their cushions, they want their floor covering. They don’t want to go through what it takes. It’s going to be another two weeks, and I’ve got to document all of this, and I have a party this Friday — we’re getting married, whatever it is.

So I think the demand is there. And what GMI established reflects something I believe has been true in manufacturing as long as I’ve known it: manufacturers are going to do what their customers call them to do. If the requirement in the purchase order is that you must adopt this standard or use this material, you don’t argue — if you want the work, you do it. But if you leave innovation in materials to manufacturers and expect them to market and sell it, that’s not their strength. They’re not marketers.

On the other hand, retailers and brands are marketers — and ultimately, the cost is not just economic but environmental and social. That’s where I think today’s consumers, if made aware, will be able to apply enough incentive to brands to build those linkages, use those standards to minimize the cost of returns and the environmental impact of returns, and have a positive impact on customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and the ability to attract consumers for whom systems thinking and circularity matter.

Mitch Ratcliffe  33:30

So the cost of these returns — which we’ve estimated in the $1.3 to $1.5 trillion range — who actually ends up paying that? Would solving this problem represent a tangible reduction in costs for consumers overall?

Don Carli  33:47

It is costing consumers in the end. Let’s say a retailer bought the product for 25% of the retail price. So the thing sold for $100 but cost them $25. When they say they lost $850 billion, they’re estimating that at the full retail price — but it only cost them $25.

Mitch Ratcliffe  34:19

Of course, because that gives them an advantage in taxes — but if —

Don Carli  34:23

If in fact they’re losing 25% of their sales to returns, that’s still going to factor into what they mark things up to recover those costs. It does impact the cost to consumers in the end. And then there are the real costs associated with reverse logistics — shipping it back from you to the distribution center — and then that has to be reprocessed: someone has to inventory it now that it’s been returned, inspect it to see if it’s viable for resale, find a resale partner. Or, as some retailers now do, they simply keep them in huge containers labeled as ‘lot number four’ and have people bid on them sight unseen — unpack those, find the few things in the box that were worth something, and discard the rest.

Mitch Ratcliffe  35:33

So the consumer today expects greater and greater personalization, as you’ve described. On-demand manufacturing is a potentially scalable solution that’s beginning to emerge. But if we don’t master this metameric strategy, returns may actually increase — because the expectation is even greater that it should look exactly like it did when I ordered it.

Don Carli  35:59

Yeah. Appearance mismatch is not the greatest reason for returns — but it’s a substantial percentage.

Mitch Ratcliffe  36:12

My point is to think systemically, rather than just about this particular issue. Is this the right time for us to move toward on-demand manufacturing — particularly now that we want to reduce imports? And if we do that, who should convene the effort to create consistent perception of color and quality for that next generation of a much less wasteful economy?

Don Carli  36:43

I think it ultimately falls to the brands and the retailers, as well as the technology providers for rendering — for the design and rendering of the objects — because circularity and circular thinking is a systems design challenge. You want to design the problem out of existence, rather than trying to cope with it downstream.

There’s no question that the greatest potential leverage is through a better design process that anticipates these downstream factors that lead to returns — whatever they are, whether it’s appearance, fit, or any other reason why people return things. The ability to predict through true digital twins of the object is one key element. You need the NVIDIAs of the world, the Adobes, the Hewlett-Packards, and the instrument manufacturers who can measure color and surface characteristics — the things that allow you to define the recipe for making the object, as well as the recipe for rendering it on screen.

Those are the key stakeholders: the brands using those tools, the companies providing those tools, and the standards bodies that help to encode them in open, extensible standards that allow businesses to communicate one-to-many, instead of being locked into proprietary one-to-one communication chains.

Mitch Ratcliffe  38:26

If a brand is listening, what should their first diagnostic step be? Where’s the right place to begin?

Don Carli  38:36

The first step, of course, is to have a breakdown of the reasons for returns. If they want to address appearance mismatch, they need to know what percentage of their returns are reported by consumers as: ‘The product I received didn’t meet my expectations in appearance compared to what I saw on my screen or in the store.’ They need to know first: is this a problem big enough to make a business case for addressing it?

In most cases, I think they’ll find that if it’s 10%, 15%, or 20% of returns, that’s material. And if they looked at it not just economically but in terms of environmental and social impact — triple bottom line, if you will — I think they can make a business case for why they should seek out a group of like-minded brands to address the root cause through standards and paid pilot programs with manufacturers: to establish and prove that a workflow is possible, practical, and delivers results that reduce cost in a material way, reduce environmental impact in a measurable way, and have a positive impact on customer satisfaction, loyalty, and the ability to attract consumers for whom systems thinking and circularity matter.

Mitch Ratcliffe  40:15

You do a lot of product research and market research. Are brands thinking about this?

Don Carli  40:21

Not enough. Not enough. I believe brands like IKEA do take it quite seriously — and maybe that’s one of the luxuries of being a privately owned entity. So I think we can look to brands like IKEA for leadership. They’ve exhibited that in the past and can continue. But one brand can’t solve this. This is a bigger problem than any one brand can handle.

I think the path forward is really through a coalition of brands that work together and share the costs, the risks, and the benefits of connecting these existing standards — to the benefit of not just current consumers, but consumers going forward. And I think it will reduce the impact on the environment, help make better use of our manufacturing capacity and digital technology, and support onshoring more of our production. That’s an important way to minimize risk — not just the risk of returns, but supply chain risk as well.

Mitch Ratcliffe  41:39

What you’re describing is an optimized system that we don’t currently have. I know we’ve only scratched the surface of the color perception problem here, Don. Thank you for helping me understand it. How can folks follow what you’re working on?

Don Carli  41:53

I write on this topic in an industry publication called WhatTheyThink.com. And there is an active discussion taking place within the Khronos Group, 3D Commerce, and related standards bodies about this general concept of Physically Based Rendering. In the printing world, there’s another group called the International Color Consortium — ICC.org — that has been looking at the problem from a manufacturing perspective: how do you manage appearance, not just color but appearance overall, because it’s not only the color of a thing that can differ, sometimes it’s the surface characteristics or texture. These standards take both into consideration.

I think some preliminary discussions are starting to emerge — whether in Reddit or in these two groups, which are open — that are beginning to look at how these things connect.

Mitch Ratcliffe  42:59

There’s a saying that an airplane is a set of standards in flight. What we’re talking about here is the setting of a standard set of expectations about how our economy should work efficiently. I hope folks take to heart what we talked about today. I want to thank you for your time, Don; this was a fascinating conversation.

Don Carli  43:19

I think it can have a profound impact on the amount of waste that goes to landfill, and I think it will also improve the ability to satisfy increasingly conscious consumers along the way. Thank you, Mitch. Take care.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Mitch Ratcliffe  43:49

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You’ve been listening to my conversation with Don Carli, founder of NEMA Hunter, a market research and product design advisory firm in New York. Don’s commentary on color perception, metamerism, and the gaps in our digital-to-physical rendering pipeline appears regularly at WhatTheyThink.com — all one word, no space, no dash — and you can follow him on X at @DCarli, that’s D-C-A-R-L-I.

This conversation started with a sofa and a throw pillow that refused to match, and it ended somewhere much larger. The $850 billion in annual e-commerce returns we discussed — growing toward $1.25 to $1.5 trillion when you add reverse logistics and disposal costs — is what happens when a 20th-century industrial system tries to serve 21st-century expectations without changing its underlying architecture. The system was designed to produce at scale and absorb returns as a cost of doing business. The consumer was always right. The platform made returns frictionless. And what got lost in the middle — in landfills, in incinerators, and in the carbon cost of reverse logistics — was invisible to the balance sheet and to the customer who clicked ‘return.’ In other words, we engineered a system to overwhelm people with choice so that they would inevitably buy, but at the cost of tremendous waste.

So Don isn’t just describing a color problem. It’s a calibration problem — and calibration is a systems problem. You heard about all the parts of the solution that are available already. What doesn’t exist is a coordination layer: the shared commitment by brands and retailers to making a product and the recipe for showing it on screen speak the same language, so that it represents things accurately across a variety of different lighting settings.

The transition Don is pointing toward is from mass manufacturing to what we might call calibrated manufacturing — production designed not just to meet a specification, but to meet the specific expectations of one person. Personalized manufacturing. The on-demand, digital-first model that’s already emerging will only work if the variety of perceptions we experience is accounted for from the start. If we move to on-demand without solving the metamerism problem, Don warned, returns will increase, not decrease. We will have built a faster, more responsive system for disappointing people.

The circular economy framing that anchors so much of this podcast is usually applied to materials — keep them in use, close the loop on plastics, design products for disassembly and reuse. But Don’s argument adds a dimension we don’t talk about enough: design for reduced returns is design for circularity too. The waste reduction potential is real, and it needs to happen upstream — at the design and specification stage — before a single unit of the product actually ships.

This is what tuning the economy looks like in practice: not a moonshot reinvention of everything, but the patient technical work of closing the gaps — the many gaps between what we promise and what we deliver as businesses. The leverage points are well defined. Brands and retailers that own product specifications need to bridge the color standards challenge in their purchase orders. And consumers who are already demanding more and returning more can apply market pressure too, especially the growing segment of people for whom systems thinking and environmental impact are part of how they evaluate a brand. But we have to communicate that to the brand and to the policymakers around that market in order to drive systemic change.

Don’s closing thought is what stays with me: when we actually tune the system to deliver what people want and expect, we can stop producing waste that nobody intended and nobody wants. That’s not just good business. That’s what a circular economy looks like in practice when it’s applied to the seam between the digital world and the physical one — the place where, right now, billions of pounds of material quietly disappear into the ground.

We’ll continue to explore this — we’ll probably have Don back to talk more — and in the meantime, I hope you take a look at our archive of more than 550 episodes of Sustainability In Your Ear. We’re in our sixth season, folks, and I guarantee there’s an interview you’re going to want to share with a friend or member of your family. And by the way, writing a review on your favorite podcast platform will help your neighbors find us — because folks, you are the amplifiers that can spread more ideas to create less waste. Please tell your friends, your family, your co-workers, the people you meet on the street, that 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: Don Carli On Tuning What We See Online To Reduce eCommerce Returns appeared first on Earth911.

The global energy system is changing in two big ways: it is moving from centralized fossil-fuel generation to distributed renewables, and it is becoming more digital in how energy is measured, traded, and optimized. Steve Wilhite, Executive Vice President of Advisory Services at Schneider Electric, works at the intersection of these complementary yet challenging transitions. Schneider supports more than 40% of the Fortune 500 with energy procurement and sustainability strategies, managing over $50 billion in annual energy spending. His experience shows something that pledges and press releases often miss: the biggest challenge for corporate sustainability is not money, technology, or political will. The real issue is the gap between ambition and the ability to deliver. Companies are making Science-Based Targets commitments faster than they are building the infrastructure to meet them. Scope one and two emissions are being managed better, but scope three emissions, which come from a company’s supply chain, still present a systems problem that no single company can solve alone. Schneider’s zero-carbon supplier program suggests what it takes to close this gap. When the company started its own effort to cut emissions from its top 1,000 suppliers by 50% in five years, all 1,000 signed up within two weeks. However, about 84% of them did not fully understand what they had agreed to. Achieving success meant creating measurement tools, education programs, and action plans to help the whole ecosystem, not just individual companies.

This critical conversation explores how renewable energy is bought, including the difference between physical and virtual power purchase agreements. Steve also explains why the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) market became more complex as it grew, and why 10% fewer renewable deals closed in 2025 compared to 2024, as tech companies used up available clean energy. He also addresses a key question in clean energy: is AI helping the environment overall, or do its energy needs still outweigh its efficiency benefits? Schneider processes over a million energy invoices each month, and about 50,000 of them had issues that took 10 to 15 business days to resolve. Now, a team of AI systems can handle these in seconds. Accurate energy consumption and billing data directly affect emissions reporting, energy efficiency, and money-saving market decisions. He describes Schnieder’s approach as “frugal AI”: using the right-sized models for each task, running them on clean energy, and choosing simple solutions over complex ones. Looking ahead, electrification is building a global digital energy network in which every meter and adjustment contributes to a new system independent of central plants. As intelligence spreads, power can shift to consumers, communities, and businesses. Schneider is enabling this shift by building a mesh grid in which each point both produces and consumes energy, coordinated by AI. These changes fundamentally reshape the global energy landscape. The central question: will we intentionally build this new, distributed system, or will we repeat centralized patterns digitally?

To learn more about Schneider Electric’s sustainability efforts, visit se.com.

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Interview Transcript

 

The post Sustainability In Your Ear: Schneider Electric’s Steve Wilhite Maps the Renewable Energy Transition appeared first on Earth911.

More than half the world’s population—4.4 billion people—live in cities today. That number is expected to rise to 80% by 2050. Our guest, Nadina Galle, is a trailblazing ecological engineer and author of The Nature of Our Cities. She is an ecological engineer who studies the intersection of nature and technology in urban environments. Nadina developed the concept of an Internet of Nature (IoN) that uses tools like artificial intelligence, automation, and sensors to support and enhance ecosystems within cities. Nadina’s book offers a transformative perspective on how urban spaces can be reimagined in the face of climate change and sprawling development. She shares the inspiring story of the Groene Loper project in Maastricht, Netherlands, where soil sensors were deployed to monitor tree health. The results were remarkable, with trees supported by this technology growing up to three times larger than those without it. This is a powerful example of how technology can not only protect trees but also transform urban spaces into healthier, greener environments.

From fire and the wheel to the reinforced concrete frames that define modern buildings, we are surrounded by technology. We tend to forget that technology emerged in response to nature — too often, we treated nature as the enemy, the chaos to be contained instead of recognizing that nature’s cycles and changes are the harmony we need to join to sustain society. The loss of any semblance of natural patterns, which ultimately leads to the depletion of the resources necessary for life, has inevitably led to the collapse of previous major civilizations. Modern society has more runway than previous societies because we have created a global economy, but that risks an even greater fall for our species when the ecological underpinnings of our prosperity collapse. The Nature of Our Cities, is a powerful, straightforward, and emotionally resonant book to help you think through your role and choices in the restoration of nature. You can find it on Amazon or Powell’s Books.

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Editor’s Note: This episode originally aired in December 2024.

The post Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: Author Nadina Galle on The Nature of Our Cities appeared first on Earth911.

Every gallon of gasoline burned in a small generator releases about 20 pounds of CO₂. For campers, that also means noise, fuel handling, spill risk, and combustion exhaust in the places people visit for cleaner air.

A portable power station is not impact-free. Batteries require minerals, manufacturing, shipping, and responsible recycling. But when the right unit replaces generator fuel, especially when paired with solar panels, it can cut on-site emissions while keeping phones, lights, coolers, cameras, and medical devices running.

The market now includes models from EcoFlow, Jackery, Bluetti, Anker, and newer brands. Picking well means more than buying the largest battery. It means choosing enough capacity, fast enough charging, durable battery chemistry, and a clear end-of-life pathway.

Why Campers Are Moving Beyond Gas Generators

Traditional gas generators burn fuel, producing carbon monoxide, and often breaking campground noise rules. They also require fuel cans, oil changes, and careful outdoor placement.

A portable power station uses a rechargeable battery instead. There is no combustion exhaust at the campsite and no carbon monoxide from operation. You should still keep any power station dry, uncovered, and within its recommended temperature range, but the air-quality difference is clear.

Solar charging is the most direct path to displacing generator fuel without simply moving the emissions elsewhere. The displaced-emissions math starts with a simple formula: gallons of gasoline avoided × about 20 pounds of CO₂ = displaced combustion emissions. If your camping season avoids 10 gallons of generator fuel, that eliminates roughly 200 pounds of CO₂ that would have been released at the tailpipe, along with carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and hydrocarbon pollution.

The actual reduction in emissions depends on whether the battery is charged from solar panels, which produce no fuel emissions during use. Grid charging shifts the emissions from the campsite to the power plant, and the actual footprint depends on the local energy mix. A battery station charged from coal-heavy grid power is cleaner at the campsite but not emission-free overall.

Five Specs That Decide Your Camping Experience

Choosing the right portable power station starts with five practical specs.

Battery Capacity

Capacity, measured in watt-hours (Wh), determines runtime. A 1,024Wh unit can run a 50W mini fridge for roughly 17 hours, or recharge phones, cameras, and a laptop through a weekend. Bigger is not always greener: unused capacity adds weight, cost, and manufacturing impact.

Output Wattage

Output determines what you can run at once. Coffee makers, kettles, pumps, and cooking appliances can each draw 500W to 1,500W or more. Check surge wattage requirements for your appliances and devices, because fridges and pumps often spike briefly at startup, sapping the battery more quickly.

Charging Speed

Faster charging can improve the camping experience, especially when you need a quick top-up before departure, a short recharge during a stop, or fast power recovery on multi-day trips.

However, fast charging time should be considered together with real input conditions. For example, the EcoFlow DELTA 3 Plus can charge from 0% to 100% in 56 minutes with 1,500W AC input, but many campground pedestals, shared circuits, or older home outlets may not consistently provide that level of power, so actual charging time varies.

Weight and Weather Protection

For car camping, users can usually tolerate some extra weight, but a portable power station under 30 pounds is easier to carry, load into a vehicle, and move around the campsite.

For weather protection, portable power stations often use a layered design, with the core battery pack and battery management system receiving higher protection first.

For example, the EcoFlow DELTA 3 Plus battery pack and BMS are rated IP65, helping them resist dust and low-pressure water jets while protecting the most critical energy storage and control components. However, the overall unit enclosure is rated IP20, so it is best used in a dry, well-ventilated environment away from direct rain exposure. This helps protect the ports, display, and external electrical components while extending the overall lifespan of the device.

Battery Chemistry and Lifecycle

Many current camping models use lithium iron phosphate, or LiFePO4/LFP. Compared with older nickel manganese cobalt batteries, LFP generally offers longer cycle life, strong thermal stability, and a cathode chemistry that avoids cobalt and nickel. That is helpful from a lifecycle perspective, but it does not make the battery impact-free.

The most sustainable unit is one that is right-sized, used for years, charged as cleanly as practical, and recycled properly.

End-of-Life Matters

Lithium batteries should never go into household trash or curbside recycling. Damaged or improperly handled lithium batteries can cause fires in waste trucks and recycling facilities, and the materials inside — including lithium, cobalt, and nickel — are valuable enough to recover through proper channels.

Start here: Enter your ZIP Code in the Earth911 Recycling Search to find a battery drop-off location near you. You can also use The Battery Network’s drop-off locator (formerly Call2Recycle) to locate participating retailers like Best Buy, Home Depot, and Lowe’s that accept rechargeable batteries.

If your portable power station is damaged, swollen, or no longer functioning, do not open it yourself. Contact the manufacturer or your local household hazardous waste program for safe handling instructions.

Some manufacturers also offer brand-specific return programs. For example, EcoFlow’s Trade-In Program allows eligible owners to return older EcoFlow portable power stations for store credit toward an upgrade. Jackery and Bluetti both provide recycling guidance through their support channels, though dedicated take-back infrastructure varies by region.

Whatever brand you choose, check whether the manufacturer offers a return, trade-in, or recycling pathway before you buy. A durable power station paired with a clear end-of-life route is a better environmental choice than a cheaper unit that eventually becomes e-waste.

How the Top Camping Models Stack Up

Spec	EcoFlow DELTA 3 Plus	Jackery Explorer 1000 v2	Bluetti AC70
Capacity	1,024Wh	1,070Wh	768Wh
AC Output	1,800W	1,500W	1,000W
AC Charge Time	56 min with 1,500W input	About 1.6 hrs standard; 1 hr emergency mode	45 min to 80%; ~1.5 hrs to 100% (950W Turbo)
Weight	About 27.6 lbs	23.8 lbs	22.5 lbs
Battery Type	LiFePO4	LiFePO4	LiFePO4
Cycle Life	4,000 cycles to 80%	4,000 cycles to 70%+	3,000+ cycles to 80%
Solar Input	1,000W	400W	500W
Expandable	Yes, up to 5kWh	No	Yes, with compatible expansion batteries
End-of-Life Pathway	EcoFlow Trade-In Program	Check manufacturer and local recycling options	Check manufacturer and local recycling options

The cycle-life row deserves a closer look. A 4,000-cycle rating to 80% remaining capacity is not the same as 4,000 cycles to 70%+ remaining capacity. Jackery markets the Explorer 1000 v2 as LiFePO4, and its official spec lists 4,000 cycles to 70%+ capacity. Buyers should compare the retained-capacity percentage, not just the cycle number.

Best for Off-Grid and Multi-Day Trips: EcoFlow DELTA 3 Plus

The DELTA 3 Plus is strongest where performance and sustainability overlap: fast AC charging, high solar input, long cycle life, and expansion. Its 1,000W solar input is especially important for off-grid camping because a battery can only replace generator fuel if it can recover enough energy during the day. EcoFlow’s 4,000-cycle-to-80% LFP rating and Trade-In Program also support the product’s environmental positioning beyond the first few trips.

Best for Lightweight Portability: Jackery Explorer 1000 v2

Jackery’s Explorer 1000 v2 is lighter and simple to use, with slightly more listed capacity than the EcoFlow unit. It is a good fit for campers who prioritize portability and moderate loads, but its 70%+ retained-capacity threshold is worth noting when comparing long-term value.

Best for Budget-Conscious Campers: Bluetti AC70

Bluetti’s AC70 is smaller and lighter, with enough power for phones, lights, cameras, fans, and efficient coolers. Its lower capacity can be a benefit for campers with modest needs — less battery material, lower cost, and less unused capacity to carry. The trade-off is a 1,000W AC output ceiling that limits high-draw appliances.

Match the Unit to Your Camping Style

Weekend Car Camping

For two or three nights, a 700–1,100Wh power station usually covers lights, phones, cameras, a fan, and an efficient cooler. The Bluetti AC70 works for lighter loads; the EcoFlow DELTA 3 Plus adds more output and solar recovery headroom.

Extended Off-Grid Trips

For four nights or more, solar input becomes critical. A unit with 500W or higher solar input can recover meaningful energy during a few hours of strong sun. The DELTA 3 Plus reaches up to 1,000W across dual MPPT inputs, making it better suited to campers trying to avoid generator backup.

RV and Overlanding

RV and overlanding setups need more careful sizing. Before buying, confirm continuous AC output for your largest appliance, enough capacity for overnight loads, expandable storage if your power needs may grow, and pass-through charging if you need to use devices while recharging.

Three Mistakes First-Time Buyers Make

1. Ignoring charge conditions. Fast charge times depend on input wattage. Confirm the power required to hit the advertised number.
2. Overbuying capacity. Bigger batteries weigh more, cost more, and carry a larger manufacturing footprint. Buy enough capacity, not the most capacity.
3. Skipping solar compatibility. Without enough solar input, a power station is just a battery that slowly drains. For off-grid camping, solar recovery is what turns it into a practical generator replacement.

Pack the Right Power

The best portable power station is the one that matches your real camping habits. Weigh capacity against portability, check output against your appliances, verify charge conditions, and consider the full lifecycle: chemistry, cycle life, solar charging, and end-of-life handling.

For campers who want quieter, cleaner trips without oversizing their setup, the comparison above points toward the EcoFlow DELTA 3 Plus for its combination of fast AC and solar charging, expandable capacity, a 4,000-cycle LFP battery rated to 80% retention, and a manufacturer-backed trade-in pathway. Its 1,000W solar input, in particular, makes it the most practical option here for replacing generator fuel on multi-day trips. That said, each unit in this comparison fills a different camping niche — weigh your own trip patterns, power needs, and budget to find the best fit.

About the Author

This sponsored article was written by Kevin Zhao.

Related Reading

• The Earth911 Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling Guide
• Portable Solar Energy Systems for Home and on the Go
• How To Prepare for Increasingly Common Blackouts

The post Guest Idea: How to Choose the Best Portable Power Station for Camping appeared first on Earth911.

On April 30, a fusion company took a step that would have seemed like science fiction just five years ago. It applied to connect a 400-megawatt fusion power plant directly to the largest electricity grid in the United States. Commonwealth Fusion Systems told the regional grid operator PJM that it plans to supply fusion-generated electricity from its Virginia plant, the Fall Line Fusion Power Station, aiming to deliver power to the grid by the early 2030s.

For fifty years, fusion has been the subject of energy jokes, always said to be 30 years away. Now, that timeline is finally starting to change. Private fusion companies have raised about $9.8 billion so far. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has officially separated fusion from fission in its rules, and at least three U.S. companies are actively seeking permits or building grid-scale plants. This progress does not guarantee that commercial fusion will arrive on time.

Still, by 2026, the policy, funding, and engineering questions are no longer just theoretical. Today’s decisions will shape how the next decade of clean energy develops.

Fusion vs. Fission: Two Opposite Reactions

Both fusion and fission release energy from atomic nuclei, but they do so in opposite ways.

Fission is the reaction in every commercial nuclear plant operating today, which splits a heavy atom (typically uranium-235 or plutonium-239) into lighter fragments, releasing energy and a cascade of neutrons that sustain a chain reaction.

Fusion does the inverse: it forces two light nuclei together to form a heavier one. Most fusion designs use deuterium and tritium, both of which are isotopes of hydrogen. The reaction produces helium plus a high-energy neutron, releasing energy in the process. It is the same reaction that powers the Sun.

The practical differences are important. Fission needs a certain amount of fuel and a controlled chain reaction. If cooling fails, leftover heat can cause a meltdown, as happened at Fukushima and Three Mile Island. Fusion does not require a chain reaction or a critical mass, so it does not melt down. The plasma created by fusion reactions must be kept at about 100 to 200 million degrees Celsius for the reaction to continue. If those conditions change, the reaction stops on its own.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) found that fusion machines do not produce the kind of residual heat that requires emergency cooling. That is why, in 2023, it decided to regulate fusion as a byproduct material rather than as a power reactor.

Environmental Impacts: Where Fusion and Fission Diverge

During normal operation, neither fusion nor fission plants release carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases. The main environmental concerns are about waste, managing fuel cycles, and the materials used to build each type of reactor.

Fission’s Long Tail

Spent nuclear fuel from fission reactors contains isotopes that remain hazardous for very long periods. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of roughly 24,100 years; uranium-235, about 700 million years. Cesium-137 and strontium-90 — major radiological contributors in spent fuel — have half-lives near 30 years but require shielded storage for centuries. The global inventory of spent nuclear fuel exceeds 400,000 metric tons, and no country has yet opened a permanent geological repository, although Finland’s Onkalo facility is near operational status.

Fission also requires uranium mining, milling, and enrichment. These are energy-intensive steps that affect land use, water, and create waste. After a plant is built, decades of carbon-free electricity can help balance out those early impacts, but the effects are real and mostly felt near mining communities.

Fusion’s Smaller, Shorter Footprint

A fusion reactor mainly produces helium, a valuable element, as direct waste; it is a non-toxic and non-radioactive gas. The main radiation concerns relate to two other sources: tritium, the radioactive hydrogen isotope used as fuel, and the reactor’s structural materials, which become radioactive over time as they are hit by high-energy neutrons during operation.

Tritium has a half-life of about 12.3 years. This is short for nuclear materials, but still long enough that any release into the environment is a real concern. Tritium can combine with water to form tritiated water, which living things can absorb. The main way to manage this is to contain and recycle tritium within a closed fuel loop. Reactor structures, usually made of special steels and ceramics, become radioactive during use. When removed, they generally become safe to handle within 50 to 100 years, which is much shorter than the thousands of years needed for fission waste.

Fusion also avoids the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation that comes with fission. Fusion systems do not use fissile material, so there is no uranium enrichment, no plutonium production, and no chain reaction that could be used for weapons. This is one reason the NRC decided that fusion’s risks are more like those of particle accelerators and medical isotope facilities than those of traditional nuclear plants.

At a Glance Fusion vs. Fission: Opposite Reactions
	Fission	Fusion
Reaction	Heavy atom splits into lighter fragments	Light atoms combine into a heavier one
Typical fuel	Uranium-235, plutonium-239	Deuterium (from seawater) and tritium (bred from lithium)
Chain reaction?	Yes — must be actively controlled	No — reaction halts if conditions falter
Long-lived waste	High-level waste hazardous for tens of thousands of years	Mostly activated reactor materials, hazardous on the order of decades to about a century
Meltdown risk	Decay heat can damage core if cooling fails	No decay heat sufficient to require emergency cooling
Greenhouse gases (operation)	None directly	None directly
Commercial status (2026)	Mature; ~440 reactors operating worldwide	Pre-commercial; first grid connections targeted 2028–early 2030s
Source: Earth911 analysis of U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, IAEA, and Fusion Industry Association data.

The Environmental Caveats

Saying fusion is environmentally clean does not mean it has no environmental impact. There are three  concerns that anyone interested in sustainability should consider:

• Tritium is scarce. Worldwide, civilian tritium stocks are only about 25 to 30 kilograms, mostly made as a byproduct of Canada’s CANDU heavy-water fission reactors. Many of these reactors are set to retire this decade. A 1-gigawatt fusion plant would use more than 50 kilograms of tritium each year. The industry plans to make tritium inside the reactor by lining the walls with lithium, but this has never been proven to work at commercial scale.
• Lithium-6 and the Minamata problem. To breed tritium effectively, reactors need lithium enriched in the rare isotope lithium-6, which represents only about 7.6 percent of natural lithium. The old industrial process for separating it, called column exchange or COLEX, uses a lot of mercury and is now banned for new use under the Minamata Convention on Mercury. Right now, only Russia and China are thought to produce enriched lithium-6. Cleaner methods are being developed, but supply chain issues remain a real challenge.
• Neutron damage and decommissioning. The 14-MeV neutrons generated by deuterium-tritium fusion damage reactor materials more than fission neutrons do. Reactor walls and components will need to be replaced from time to time, producing low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste that must be managed. Over a plant’s lifetime, fusion produces more waste by weight than fission, but the radioactivity fades much faster.

Where Commercialization Stands in 2026

Fusion is now much more than a single lab experiment. According to the Fusion Industry Association’s 2025 Global Industry Report, there are 53 private fusion companies that have raised a total of $9.77 billion. Of that, $2.64 billion came in the 12 months ending July 2025, the second-largest yearly increase since the report started. The F4E Fusion Observatory said that by September 2025, total global private fusion funding was about $15.2 billion.

Three U.S. companies are now further along than the rest:

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (Massachusetts and Virginia)

Commonwealth, which started at MIT, is building a tokamak—a doughnut-shaped magnetic chamber—called SPARC at its Devens, Massachusetts, campus. The demonstration machine is about 75 percent finished and is expected to start operating by late 2027. If SPARC achieves net energy gain, the company plans to build the 400-megawatt Fall Line Fusion Power Station in Chesterfield County, Virginia. Google and the Italian energy company Eni have already signed agreements to buy power from that plant. An application to connect to the grid filed in April 2026 is the first step in a process that will take four to six years before approval. Without the grid connection, there’s no place for the electricity generated to go.

Helion Energy

Everett, Washington-based Helion uses a different approach called a field-reversed configuration, which aims to generate electricity directly from the fusion reaction’s magnetic field and avoids using a steam turbine. It has signed the world’s first fusion power purchase agreement, promising to deliver 50 megawatts of fusion electricity to Microsoft data centers starting in 2028. Helion began construction of the Orion plant in Malaga, Washington, in July 2025 and obtained its Conditional Use Permit from Chelan County in October 2025. Its prototype, Polaris, has reached plasma temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius. Many see the 2028 deadline as ambitious.

Inertia Enterprises

Inertia was founded in 2024 to bring the laser-driven inertial confinement method, developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility, to market. In April 2026, it announced a $450 million funding round and one of the largest public-private research partnerships in the history of DOE national labs. The company is working with LLNL to scale up the fusion-target manufacturing techniques used in NIF’s December 2022 ignition shot, which was the first lab experiment to achieve target gain by producing 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy from 2.05 megajoules of laser energy.

ITER and the International Track

ITER, an international tokamak project involving 35 countries and being built in southern France, updated itsrelease schedule in 2024. The first plasma is now expected in the mid-2030s, with operation starting in 2035 and full deuterium-tritium fusion beginning in 2039. ITER will not produce electricity, but it is still the most ambitious test site for the physics and engineering challenges that future commercial fusion plants will face.

The Regulatory Picture: Fusion Is Not Fission

In April 2023, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission unanimously voted to regulate fusion machines under 10 CFR Part 30 — the byproduct materials framework that already governs particle accelerators, medical isotope facilities, and industrial irradiators — rather than under the regime that governs fission reactors. Congress reinforced this approach in the bipartisan ADVANCE Act of 2024.

In February 2026, the NRC released its proposed rule to formalize this framework. The rule focuses on regulating tritium handling, neutron-activation products, and waste streams, instead of emergency cooling systems, because fusion machines do not create the leftover heat that fission reactors do. This is a significant policy change that addresses fusion’s real risks directly, which can speed up permitting for serious developers but also means those developers must clearly show their safety plans.

The Skeptical Case

Fusion’s commercial supporters are confident, but not everyone agrees. Daniel Jassby, who spent 25 years as a fusion researcher at Princeton’s Plasma Physics Laboratory, wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that fusion plants will need a lot of support infrastructure, even when the reactor is not running. He also says they may need more workers than fission plants of similar size and could create more low- to intermediate-level waste than fission, although the waste is much less radioactive.

The Sierra Club’s 1986 policy on fusion is still in place; it raised concerns about tritium release, decommissioning costs, and whether fusion is a better investment than renewables. A more recent Sierra Club essay says things have changed enough to reconsider fusion, but questions about cost, fuel-cycle viability, and how soon fusion can be deployed are still unanswered.

Even within the industry, 83 percent of fusion companies surveyed in 2025 said securing investment remains a major challenge. They estimate they need another $77 billion to build the first commercial plants, which is about eight times the money raised so far.

What This Means for the Energy Transition

The reason to pay attention to fusion in 2026 is not that it will solve the climate crisis this decade. Solar, wind, batteries, geothermal, and existing nuclear plants are already helping, with falling costs and a 15-year head start. The real point is that the next decade’s electricity demand, driven by AI data centers, the electrification of heating and transport, and industrial decarbonization, will require a diverse mix of reliable, low-carbon sources.

If fusion works at scale, it can provide reliable electricity with low emissions over its life, create little long-lived waste, and carry a low risk of nuclear proliferation. Whether fusion makes it to the grid by 2030 depends on scientists, funding, and regulations aligning. Maybe Helion, possibly with a smaller-than-promised first delivery, will win the race. Commonwealth’s Virginia plant in the early 2030s will need its grid interconnection process to move on schedule. Other players will follow later. None of these events is a sure thing.

The post The State of Fusion Energy in 2026: Real Reactors, Real Grids, Real Caveats appeared first on Earth911.

The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970 — 56 years ago — and, goodness, how the world has changed since then. We’ve come a long way since the days of burning our trash and pumping our gas guzzlers with leaded gasoline. In honor of those 56 years, here are 56 important changes and milestones since the first Earth Day.

Legislation

The U.S. government has led much of the environmental charge, starting with the implementation of the EPA (1) in July 1970. Later that year, the Clean Air Act (2) targeted air pollutants, followed by the Clean Water Act (3) in 1972 and the Endangered Species Act (4) in 1973.

Some lesser-known national laws included the Safe Water Drinking Act (5) in 1974, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (6) in 1976, the Toxic Substances Control Act (7) in 1976, the National Energy Act (8) in 1978, and the Medical Waste Tracking Act (9) in 1988.

In some cases, states have led the charge. Oregon passed the first bottle bill (10) in 1971, Minnesota’s Clean Indoor Air Act (11) was the first law to restrict smoking in public places (1975), and Massachusetts required low-flush toilets (12) for construction and remodeling in 1988.

Green Innovations: The Early Years

In order to comply with all the laws from the 1970s, we needed new technology to ensure consumers could adhere to the new standards. Consider:

• The “Crying Indian” PSA debuts in 1971 (13)
• Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) gets banned in 1972 (14)
• The energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulb launches in 1973 (15)
• Cars begin displaying fuel economy labels in the mid-1970s (16)
• In 1975, all cars are manufactured with catalytic converters to limit exhaust emissions (17)
• Chlorofluorocarbons are banned from aerosol cans starting in 1978 (18)
• The first curbside recycling program begins in New Jersey in 1980 (19)
• In 1986, McDonald’s switches from foam to paper food containers (20)
• Mercury is removed from latex paint in 1990, providing a viable alternative to banned lead paint (21)
• Earth911 launches the first U.S. recycling directory in 1991 (22)
• Energy Star certification debuts in 1992 for appliances and electronics (23)
• The U.S. Green Building Council begins in 1993 (24)

The Political Movement

The Green Party (25) launched in 1984, which was just the beginning of green issues entering the mainstream. One Percent for the Planet (26) was founded in 2002 to challenge businesses to donate to environmental causes, and the ISO 14001 standard (27) established environmental management. Companies are now facing pressure to allow employee telecommuting (28).

Things really developed after the release of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (29) in 2006. NBC debuted Green Week (30) in 2007. Carbon offsets (31) alleviated corporate green guilt. Bisphenol A (32) made us all question plastic purchases. Hybrid vehicles (33) generated tax credits and gas savings. Plastic bag bans gave rise to a reusable bag (34) craze. Fracking (35) and the Dakota Access Pipeline (36) were two of the most hotly contested news stories of the decade, at least until the 2016 election.

Green Tech: The Next Wave

In the past 10 years, emerging green tech has made eco-friendly a way of life, including:

• LED light bulbs (37)
• Portable solar panels on backpacks and watches (38)
• Plant-based plastics (39)
• Motion sensor lighting (40)
• Faucets with automatic shut-off (41)
• Low volatile organic compound (VOC) paint (42)
• Recycled plastic clothing (43)
• Ride-sharing mobile applications (44)
• Natural cleaning products (45)
• Biodiesel engine vehicles (46)
• Food waste composting (47)
• Portable air purifiers (48)
• Europe’s Green Deal introduced global recyclables shipping regulations to reduce pollution in low-income nations (49)
• Corporate borrowers headed toward $500 billion in bond financings for the renewables transition (50)
• President Biden rejoins the Paris Climate Accord on his first day in office. (51)

The Latest Five: 2022–2026

The pace of innovation has not slowed. Five more milestones have reshaped the environmental landscape since that 51st Earth Day:

• The Inflation Reduction Act (52), signed into law in August 2022, became the largest climate investment in U.S. history, directing roughly $370 billion toward clean energy tax credits, EV incentives, methane reduction, and domestic clean manufacturing. Analysts projected it will drive more than $4 trillion in cumulative capital investment over a decade and put the U.S. on track for a 40% emissions reduction by 2030. Sadly, many of its key provisions have been defunded or eliminated by the Trump Administration.
• The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (53), adopted by 188 governments in December 2022, set the most ambitious biodiversity protection commitment in history. Its headline “30×30” target calls for conserving 30% of the planet’s land, freshwater, and ocean areas by 2030, a goal that would require doubling current protected land coverage and quadrupling marine protections.
• America’s first commercial direct air capture plant (54), opened by Heirloom Carbon Technologies in Tracy, California in November 2023, marked the arrival of atmospheric carbon removal at commercial scale on U.S. soil. The plant uses limestone to absorb CO₂ directly from the air, with the captured carbon injected into concrete for permanent storage. In May 2024, Climeworks activated the world’s largest direct air capture facility, the Mammoth plant in Iceland, with a design capacity to remove 36,000 tons of CO₂ per year.
• Solid-state batteries (55), a next-generation alternative to conventional lithium-ion technology, moved from laboratory promise toward commercial reality between 2022 and 2026. Unlike liquid-electrolyte batteries, solid-state versions are less flammable, achieve higher energy density, and degrade more slowly. In early 2025, Mercedes-Benz began road-testing a prototype EV powered by a lithium-metal solid-state cell that extended driving range 25% over comparable liquid-battery models. Multiple automakers and cell manufacturers now target commercial production between 2027 and 2030.
• Perovskite and tandem solar cells (56), a new photovoltaic technology that pairs conventional silicon with thin perovskite layers, pushed solar efficiency into territory once considered theoretical. By 2024, tandem cells in laboratory settings exceeded 34% efficiency — well above the roughly 22% ceiling of standard silicon panels only a few years ago. manufacturers in Asia and Europe began scaling pilot production lines. Because perovskite cells can be printed on flexible substrates, they open the door to solar surfaces on buildings, vehicles, and everyday objects that conventional panels cannot reach.

The past 56 years have been huge when it comes to saving the environment. Expect more to come, including a resurgent EV industry, nuclear fusion, regenerative agriculture, restorative forestry, and more, as costs and the cool factor improve.

Editor’s Note: Originally published on April 18, 2018, this article was most recently updated in April 2026.

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