A typical American baby goes through roughly 2,500 to 3,000 disposable diapers in the first year of life — seven or eight a day, every day, for two to three years. The bill lands somewhere between $840 and $1,200 a year, depending on brand, size, and the tariffs that quietly raised diaper prices in 2025.

Multiply it across the country, and the picture changes again. The last time it counted, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated U.S. disposable diaper generation at 4.1 million tons in 2018, about 1.4 percent of everything Americans threw away that year. The agency found no significant recycling or composting of disposable diapers.

The diaper is one of the most engineered, most subsidized, most disposed-of consumer products ever invented, yet we still have almost no idea what to do with it when it’s full.

Rising Household Costs

Diaper costs have crept up. Industry sources put the average disposable at $0.22 to $0.33 each, with monthly outlays of $70 to $100 typical for a home with a new baby. Tariff-affected brands imported from overseas are running higher. Over a full diapering cycle of roughly 2.5 years, a single child produces around 6,500 soiled disposables.

That bill is not evenly distributed. The National Diaper Bank Network (NDBN) Diaper Check 2024 found that 46 percent of U.S. families with children under four reported diaper insecurity, meaning they could not always afford enough diapers to keep a child clean and dry. That share has climbed from roughly one-third a decade earlier. The Urban Institute estimates nearly 8 million American children live in households that struggle to afford diapers. Diapers are not covered by SNAP or WIC, and in 23 states, they are still taxed at rates as high as 7 percent, though Missouri, Nevada, and Alabama all eliminated or paused their diaper taxes in 2025.

Diaper insecurity carries a mental-health load too. NDBN’s research found that caregivers without enough diapers were twice as likely to report near-daily depression. The household story of diapers is not just an environmental story. It is a poverty story dressed up in a baby-aisle marketing budget.

What’s Actually in That Diaper

The modern disposable is an unrecyclable marvel of materials engineering. According to EDANA, the European nonwovens trade body, the average baby diaper is roughly 35 percent fluff pulp made from wood-derived cellulose, 33 percent super-absorbent polymer (SAP, usually sodium polyacrylate, made from petrochemicals), 17 percent polypropylene plastic, 6 percent polyethylene plastic, 4 percent adhesives, 4 percent other materials, and 1 percent elastics.

The composition has shifted dramatically. Absorbent content rose from about 1 percent in 1987 to nearly 38 percent by 2019 as manufacturers pursued a thinner, more absorbent product. The “ultra-thin” diaper marketing of the last two decades is, in materials terms, a fossil-fuel story: fewer trees, more polymers.

That polymer matters as the diaper heads for a landfill. Polyethylene, polypropylene, and sodium polyacrylate are not biodegradable. The elastics aren’t either. Even the adhesives are designed to hold a wet load together for hours, so they don’t readily break down in conventional recycling streams.

Do Diapers Persist for 500 Years?

The widely cited statistic is that a disposable diaper takes up to 500 years to decompose in a landfill. That number deserves a closer look. Disposable diapers in their modern form have existed only since 1948, so no one has ever seen one fully decompose. The 500-year figure is an extrapolation from polymer breakdown rates, not a measured outcome. Because the plastic and SAP components are not biodegradable on any human timescale, and a sealed modern landfill design inadvertently inhibits decomposition, not accelerates it. The estimated timescale is likely correct, or even conservative.

Instead of decomposing, soiled diapers in a landfull produce methane. As the cellulose fraction breaks down anaerobically, it generates methane, a greenhouse gas that traps roughly 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide over a 20-year window. Landfill gas capture varies widely by locale. Where it isn’t captured, diaper waste contributes directly to near-term climate warming.

There is also a public-health dimension. The EPA has noted that disposable diapers introduce pathogens into the waste stream through the human waste they contain, including rotavirus, hepatitis, and other viable organisms that survive in landfill leachate. Most municipal solid-waste systems treat diapers as ordinary trash even though their contents would, in any other context, require infectious-waste handling.

Recycling Exists — Barely

Curbside-style diaper recycling does not exist in the United States. Diaper recycling is one of the harder problems in the circular economy. The product is wet, fouled, fastened to itself, and built from a chemistry that resists separation. A handful of programs have tried.

FaterSMART, the joint venture between Procter & Gamble and Italy’s Angelini Group, has operated a diaper recycling plant in Treviso, Italy, since 2017, using high-temperature steam pressure to sterilize used diapers and separate plastic, cellulose, and SAP. P&G expanded the approach into a pilot in Amsterdam with TerraCycle and the Dutch municipal waste authority AEB, which distributed recycling bins in two districts. The technology works. Whether it can scale is a political and economic question.

NappiCycle, a Welsh company, takes another route, converting used diapers and other absorbent hygiene products into fibers that are blended into asphalt for road resurfacing. A 1.4-mile stretch of highway in Wales now contains the equivalent of more than 107,000 used diapers in its road surface. The fibers reportedly make the asphalt quieter and longer-lasting. Fifteen of Wales’ 22 local authorities now collect or plan to collect absorbent hygiene products separately.

Knowaste, a UK company that ran a 70,000-ton-per-year diaper recycling plant in the Netherlands, closed in 2007 after a new incinerator beat it on price. It turned out burning dirty diapers was cheaper, which may be a short-sighted perspective. That failure is worth remembering. Diaper recycling is a problem of cheap landfilling and cheap incineration crowding out higher-value end-of-life alternatives.

DYPER and TerraCycle offer the closest thing to a U.S. consumer option, a bamboo-pulp diaper subscription paired with a mail-back composting service. Used diapers ship via UPS to a TerraCycle facility, where they are commercially composted over three to six months and end up as soil used in highway medians and similar applications. The catch is cost: the ReDYPER service adds about $39 a month to an already premium subscription. It is a workable model for households that can afford to pay roughly double the average disposable bill.

The Cloth Question, Honestly

The cloth-versus-disposable debate has raged for decades. The most rigorous public assessment remains the UK Environment Agency’s 2008 update of a lifecycle analysis that concluded both cloth and disposable diapers had broadly similar overall environmental footprints — but in different categories. Disposables dominated in waste generation and raw-material extraction. Cloth dominates water and energy use from laundering. Neither produces a sustainable environmental benefit.

The interesting finding was that the comparison was highly sensitive to parent behavior. Washing at 60°C instead of 90°C, line drying instead of tumble drying, and reusing diapers across multiple children reduced the cloth-diaper footprint by up to 40 percent. The UK updated the analysis in 2023, reporting that reusable nappies produced about 25 percent less CO₂ than single-use ones under typical conditions, which is a meaningful but not enormous advantage.

The life cycle analysis literature suggests that cloth, used well, has a lower footprint and a vastly smaller waste stream. Where the real impact sits — fluff pulp and SAP — is exactly where the consumer has no options to change their habits.

Upstream: The Trees and Oil You Don’t See

While the conversation about diapers usually ends at the curb. The bigger story is upstream.

Fluff pulp, the softwood cellulose that gives a diaper its bulk and wicking, comes overwhelmingly from southern pine plantations in the U.S. and from boreal forests in Canada and Scandinavia. Industry estimates put U.S. diaper-driven softwood consumption at about 250,000 trees a year, and an analysis from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, summarized by the World Economic Forum, places global crude oil consumption for the disposable diaper industry at roughly 248 million barrels a year, about the same amount of oil used by Belgium annually.

FSC certification of fluff pulp varies sharply by manufacturer. Pampers states that all of its wood pulp is third-party certified and that it uses FSC-certified pulp; Huggies, Seventh Generation, and The Honest Company make similar claims on their premium lines. But the disclosures rarely specify whether the certification is FSC 100% (entirely from certified forests), FSC Mix (which can include a minority of uncertified fiber), or FSC Recycled. Beneath the certified labels, most diaper marketing leans on the phrase “responsibly sourced,” a term with no industry-wide definition and no audit requirement, which a manufacturer can use without any independent verification of the supply chain. Aparent comparing two boxes on a shelf cannot map the certification language to a provable environmental outcome.

The SAP absorptive supply chain is even less visible. Sodium polyacrylate is synthesized from acrylic acid, which is derived from propylene, a petrochemical feedstock. Every “ultra-thin” generation of diaper has increased that dependency on fossil fuels. There is no commercial bio-based SAP at scale yet, though research programs are ongoing.

Each diaper is a small unit of forest, a smaller unit of crude oil, and a packet of human waste, tied together by adhesives engineered to hold for eight hours and then sit in the ground indefinitely.

Policy Is Moving — Slowly

The regulatory landscape is starting to catch up. The European Union’s Single-Use Plastics Directive requires extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes for absorbent hygiene products and mandates clearer labeling on plastic content and proper disposal. France banned a list of chemicals used in diapers in 2020 after a national agency found measurable levels of pesticides and dioxins in retail products.

In the United States, the policy conversation has focused almost entirely on affordability, such as by eliminating sales tax on diapers and pushing to include them in WIC and SNAP eligibility. Both are needed. Neither addresses the waste stream. A handful of states are beginning to consider EPR frameworks that include hygiene products, but the U.S. is years behind Europe on this issue.

What You Can Do

At home:

• Consider a hybrid system: cloth at home, disposables for travel and daycare use. The approach captures most of the cloth waste reduction without the all-or-nothing commitment that derails many cloth attempts.
• If you stay with disposables, look for FSC-certified fluff pulp and skip varieties with added fragrance or lotion — neither offers any benefit and both add chemistry your child doesn’t need.
• Donate unopened diapers your child has outgrown to your local diaper bank rather than throwing them away. The NDBN locator maps member organizations.

In your community:

• Ask your municipal waste authority whether they are tracking absorbent hygiene product recycling pilots. The Welsh model is replicable; what’s missing in most U.S. cities is the political will to act.
• Support state-level legislation eliminating sales tax on diapers. As of mid-2025, 23 states still tax them. The NDBN state issues tracker lists active bills.
• Support inclusion of diapers in WIC and SNAP. Both programs explicitly exclude diapers despite being intended to cover basic needs.

At the policy level:

• Push for federal EPR consideration of absorbent hygiene products. The EU has shown that this is administratively feasible. The U.S. has not yet taken the step, but momentum is growing.
• Engage with state-level circular-economy bills that would extend producer responsibility to products beyond packaging.

The post Diaper Dilemma: $840 a Year, 500 Years to Decompose appeared first on Earth911.

Spring is officially here, inspiring gardening plans as well as dread of lawn chores. Before you immerse yourself in another year of yard maintenance, we have a question for you: When was the last time you reevaluated your yard maintenance tactics and outdoor plant selections? An environmentally friendly approach to a low-maintenance yard can save you money, time, and effort while it benefits the local ecosystem.

By carefully selecting the right plants, including natives and perennials, you can minimize watering and yearly plantings — resulting in less work for you and a lower water bill. And by employing natural gardening techniques, such as composting and companion planting, you can keep your soil healthy and keep pests away — without chemicals.

Naturally, a healthy and biodiverse yard looks different depending on your climate and region. Are you familiar with the plants that are native to your region? It’s exciting to choose the optimal plants for your garden because you know you’re giving them the best chance of success — plus, you’re helping the surrounding ecosystem.

Before selecting your plants, be sure to check the noxious weed lists or your county extension office to make sure you don’t pick invasive plant species. Some low-maintenance plants may be invasive in your region. For example, English Ivy, an attractive, low-maintenance vine, is an aggressive invader and on the noxious weed of the United States list.

With careful plant selection and eco-friendly gardening strategies, you’ll enjoy a low-maintenance yard, save money, and benefit Mother Earth too! Check out the tips and plant recommendations in the following infographic from HomeAdvisor.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on March 31, 2021, and was updated in April 2026.

The post Infographic: Tips for an Environmentally Responsible, Low-Maintenance Yard appeared first on Earth911.

24. That is the average number of electronic devices sitting in a typical American home right now. Phones in drawers, tablets behind the TV, chargers without their devices, and devices without their chargers. Most of those products are headed for a landfill or a shipping container, not a recycler.

Electronics are the fastest-growing solid waste stream on the planet, and U.S. households are an outsize engine. The UN’s Global E-waste Monitor 2024 found that global e-waste reached a record 62 million tons in 2022, which is up 82 percent since 2010, and is rising five times faster than electronics recycling capacity. Americans produce roughly 46 to 48 pounds of it per person per year. Most of those discarded devices contain materials worth real money and environmental harms worth understanding.

The 2022 e-waste pile contained an estimated $91 billion in recoverable metals, according to the United Nations, including roughly $19 billion in copper, $16 billion in iron, and $15 billion in gold. About $62 billion of that value was lost to landfills, incinerators, or unregulated dumping.

Translate that into household terms. The metals in a single discarded smartphone include small but meaningful quantities of gold, silver, palladium, copper, and cobalt. Multiply by the 151 million cell phones, 40 million computers, 20 million televisions, and 23 million small appliances Americans throw away each year, and the unrecovered value runs into the billions for U.S. households alone.

The materials don’t disappear; they just stop circulating. Mining companies extract more virgin gold and copper from the ground while millions of pounds of the same metals sit on shelves in junk rooms and lie fallow in landfills.

What’s Driving the Growth

The average U.S. smartphone replacement cycle has stretched to 3.64 years in 2024, according to Assurant; that’s up from under 3 years a decade ago, yet the underlying hardware can typically last 5 to 7 years with software support. That gap between when consumers upgrade and when the device actually fails is where most e-waste is born.

Behind the phones, a longer parade of devices is generating serious volume. Wearables, smart speakers, e-cigarettes, lithium-powered toys, and cheap rechargeable accessories now show up in municipal waste streams in quantities that did not exist a decade ago. The WHO documented more than 1,000 hazardous substances associated with informal e-waste recycling, including lead, mercury, and brominated flame retardants, all of which can leach from devices that are crushed or burned rather than processed properly.

What the U.S. Actually Recycles

The picture here is genuinely confusing, and reporting that pretends otherwise is wrong. The most-cited EPA estimate of consumer electronics recycling puts the U.S. rate at 38.5 percent, but that figure dates from 2018. More recent independent estimates put the actual U.S. rate closer to 15 percent, with global formal recycling at 22.3 percent in 2022. The gap between the two numbers reflects the difference between what enters a recycling program and what actually gets recovered as usable material.

The remainder follows three main paths. Some heads to U.S. landfills, where heavy metals contribute to leachate problems. Some is incinerated, releasing dioxins from PVC and other plastics. And roughly 90 percent of exported e-waste is processed in low- and middle-income countries, where informal recyclers — often including children — strip devices by hand or by burning. A systematic review in PubMed Central links e-waste exposure in children to reduced lung function, altered thyroid function, ADHD, and lower cognitive scores. None of that shows up on the product box when you buy it.

The Household Financial Picture

Households absorb the cost from two directions at once. They pay for new devices that replace working products, and they leave material value on the table when they discard what they own.

A reasonable estimate, using the per-capita value of unrecovered e-waste metals from the UN report and U.S. generation rates, puts the recoverable value sitting in the average American household’s old electronics in the range of several hundred dollars over a few years. That is metal the household paid for, embedded in devices the household paid for, and the household will not recover unless the device reaches a refiner that can extract it.

The cost on the other side — replacement spending — is easier to size at the industry level than the household level. The Consumer Technology Association puts U.S. consumer technology retail revenue at roughly $505 billion in 2024, which works out to nearly $3,900 per household when spread across the 131 million U.S. households tracked by the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey. Even allowing for wide variation across income tiers, much of that spending replaces devices that were repairable or still functional.

Right to Repair Is Starting to Bite

The most consequential policy shift on e-waste in the past two years has been the spread of right-to-repair legislation. As of mid-2025, eight states have passed right-to-repair laws covering consumer electronics: New York, California, Minnesota, Oregon, Colorado, Maine, Washington, and Massachusetts. Oregon’s law, which took effect January 1, 2025, became the first in the country to explicitly ban “parts pairing,” the practice of using software to disable replacement components installed by independent shops.

These laws do not immediately reduce e-waste, but they change the economics. When manufacturers must supply parts, tools, and documentation to independent repairers, the cost of fixing a phone or laptop drops. When repair is cheaper than replacement, more devices stay in service. The Repair Association tracks more than 40 active bills across at least 20 states in 2025.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for electronics covers 24 states, but there is substantial variation in how well-funded and enforced those programs are. A patchwork is still better than nothing, but the absence of a federal framework means a device thrown away in one state may be treated as toxic and a device thrown away in another may end up in a regular dumpster.

What You Can Do

The interventions here are tiered, with very different impacts depending on where you can act.

At home:

• Before replacing a device, check whether repair is feasible — battery swaps and screen replacements are the two most common smartphone failures and both are repairable.
• Sell or donate working electronics rather than storing them. The Earth911 recycling search tool provides local options by ZIP code.
• For batteries, including the lithium cells in earbuds, e-bikes, vapes, and power tools, use The Battery Network (formerly Call2Recycle), the North American battery stewardship program, which operates collection sites at most major retailers.
• For phones specifically, manufacturer trade-in programs (Apple, Samsung, Google) and carrier programs typically capture more material than dropping a phone in a generic recycling bin, because the devices are tested for reuse first.
• Buy refurbished when you can. Certified refurbished phones and laptops are typically 30 to 50 percent cheaper than new and have the same useful life.

In your community:

• If your state hasn’t passed a right-to-repair law, ask your legislators why. The model bill from the PIRG Right to Repair coalition is a good starting reference.
• Support EPR legislation that puts the cost of end-of-life management on manufacturers, not municipalities.
• Push back on devices that are designed against repair — glued-in batteries, paired parts, and service-only components — by buying brands that score well on iFixit’s repairability index.

Individual household action on e-waste matters, but it is not where the leverage lives. Changing product designs and recycling policy, both of which are moving slowly in the right direction, is the path to a more sustainable electronics industry. Your household choices buy time and recover value while the larger system catches up.

The post Electronics: The Fastest-Growing Waste Stream in Your Home appeared first on Earth911.

A single load of synthetic laundry can shed hundreds of thousands of plastic microfibers into wastewater. Multiply that by the roughly 300 wash cycles an average U.S. household runs each year, and the case for rethinking laundry gets concrete fast—not just the detergent itself, but the chemistry that rinses out, the plastic that carries it home, and the residue that stays on fabric after the cycle ends.

We’re Orange House, a plant-based cleaning brand built around food-grade orange oil. We wanted to share how we think about the trade-offs in sustainable laundry—concentration, packaging, residue, and third-party testing—because the answers aren’t always the obvious ones, and because consumers deserve more than a “natural” label to go on.

Why we built our formulation around orange oil

We chose orange oil as a primary active ingredient because of its natural performance as a grease-cutting and stain-removing agent. For us, it represents a conscious move away from chemical-heavy conventional systems while still delivering the cleaning results families expect. Plant-based doesn’t have to mean underpowered.

But we also know that sustainability in laundry isn’t defined by a single ingredient. Every wash cycle contributes to environmental pressure in two main ways: the chemical substances released into wastewater, and the residues that stay behind on fabric in direct contact with skin. A good formulation has to address both.

Some laundry additives—especially fabric softeners and certain enhancers—can coat fabric surfaces and remain even after rinsing. The American Cleaning Institute has published guidance on how these products interact with fibers. We optimized our detergents to clean effectively and rinse away thoroughly, which reduces residue build-up over repeated washes.

Trace impurities: why we test for 1,4-dioxane

Product safety isn’t just about what goes into a formula—it’s also about what slips in during manufacturing. 1,4-dioxane is a well-known example. It’s not an ingredient; it’s a byproduct that can form during the production of certain surfactants and foaming agents, and the EPA classifies it as a likely human carcinogen.

Since December 31, 2023, New York State law has required that finished household cleansing products sold in the state contain no more than 1 ppm of 1,4-dioxane—the strictest such limit in the country. We test against that benchmark.

Our finished-product testing was performed by Intertek Testing Services Taiwan Ltd. using a method aligned with USP-NF 2023 <467> for residual solvents, analyzed by Headspace Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (Headspace GC-MS). Testing was conducted between March 20 and March 27, 2026, with a limit of quantitation of 0.5 ppm. Under those conditions, 1,4-dioxane was not detected in our final formulation.

For us, sustainable laundry means more than a “natural” label. It’s a commitment to minimizing total material usage and reducing cumulative chemical exposure over time—and being willing to publish the data that shows it.

The packaging trade-off most brands skip

Packaging is where a lot of laundry sustainability claims fall apart. Every detergent bottle eventually becomes waste, and highly diluted formulas compound the problem: more bottles per year, more transportation weight, more emissions per wash.

We addressed this with a concentrated format—including our 4-liter design—that delivers more washes per container. Increasing efficiency per use reduces the number of bottles a household goes through annually, which is a straightforward way to cut plastic waste without asking consumers to change their routines.

We’ll be candid about a trade-off other brands sometimes obscure. Paper-based detergent containers can appear more environmentally friendly, but many of them require internal plastic linings that make them difficult to recycle in practice. A single-material plastic that actually gets recycled in local infrastructure can have a better real-world outcome than a multi-material paper container that ends up in landfill. Neither option is perfect; we chose the one we believe performs best in the waste stream most of our customers live in.

Testing for sensitive skin

After washing, trace detergent components can remain embedded in textile fibers. For people with sensitive skin or atopic dermatitis, residual detergent has been linked to skin barrier irritation. That’s why residue behavior matters as much as the active ingredient list.

We subjected our detergent to a Human Repeat Insult Patch Test (HRIPT), a standard dermatological evaluation. The test ran for six weeks across 108 participants, including people with sensitive skin, and used repeated exposure followed by a controlled challenge phase. Under the test conditions, no signs of irritation or sensitization were observed.

Our goal isn’t to eliminate chemistry—it’s to optimize it. Our micellar orange oil technology combines citrus oil with molecular structures that encapsulate and remove dirt using less detergent per wash. Orange House detergents are dermatologically tested and carry the USDA Certified Biobased Product label at 85% biobased content, verified through the USDA BioPreferred Program’s ASTM D6866 testing protocol.

What to look for in any sustainable detergent

The broader point we want to leave you with: choosing a better detergent comes down to informed decision-making, not marketing claims. Whether or not you choose Orange House, these are the questions worth asking about any product on the shelf.

• Concentration: How many loads per container? More concentrated formulas mean less plastic, less shipping weight, and lower emissions per wash.
• Packaging honesty: Is the container actually recyclable in your local system—or is it multi-material packaging that sounds greener than it performs?
• Residue and rinse-out: Does the formula rinse cleanly, or does it coat fibers with additives you’ll end up wearing?
• Third-party testing: Has the finished product been tested for trace contaminants like 1,4-dioxane by an accredited lab? Is the data published?
• Independent certifications: Look for labels that require third-party verification—USDA Certified Biobased Product, EPA Safer Choice, or dermatological testing with disclosed protocols.

Innovation in formulation and packaging design can align real cleaning performance with environmental responsibility. We built Orange House to prove that. But even if the detergent you choose isn’t ours, asking these five questions pushes the category in the right direction—one load at a time.

About the Author

This sponsored article was written by the Orange House team. Orange House is a plant-based cleaning brand whose products are formulated around food-grade orange oil and tested to meet New York State’s 1,4-dioxane standard. Learn more at orangehouse.com.

The post Guest Idea: How to Choose a Laundry Detergent That’s Better for the Planet appeared first on Earth911.

Corrugated cardboard makes its way from warehouse to mill in about two weeks. In contrast, plastic packaging can take centuries to break down, and even the most optimistic estimates say only 5 to 6 percent of U.S. plastic is actually recycled. This difference highlights both the promise and the challenges of creating a circular packaging economy.

Back in April 2020, when this article first appeared, the recycling industry was still struggling after China banned imported recyclables in 2018. Around that time, DS Smith opened its first North American recycling plant in Reading, Pennsylvania, marking the first closed-loop corrugated packaging system. Five years later, the circular packaging sector has become a $245 billion global market and is expected to nearly double by 2034.

However, growth does not always mean true circularity. The gap between what companies promise and what recycling systems actually deliver is under more scrutiny than ever.

How the Recycling Loop Works and Where It Breaks

Many people picture recycling as a simple process: items go from the curbside bin to a materials recovery facility (MRF) and then become new products. In reality, the process is more complicated. Mixed curbside collections have about a 25 percent contamination rate in baled recyclables from MRFs, so more sorting is needed before they can be turned into new materials. In the past, this extra sorting was often done cheaply in other countries.

After China stopped buying U.S. recyclables in 2018, the U.S. was left with about a third of its collected materials and no place to send them. This led to a crisis: many communities lost their recycling programs, and it became obvious that the U.S. needed more domestic processing and cleaner materials from better recycling programs.

Paper and corrugated cardboard are still the big success stories in circular packaging. In 2024, the U.S. recycled over 33 million tons of cardboard, or about 90,000 tons each day, reaching a recovery rate between 69 and 74 percent, according to the American Forest & Paper Association. The share of recycled paper used at U.S. mills has grown from 36.6 percent in 2005 to 44.4 percent in 2024.

Aluminum also does well, with the average beverage can containing about 73 percent recycled material.

Plastic is still a major challenge. Only about 5 to 6 percent of U.S. plastic packaging is recovered and made into new packaging or products.

A Growing Market With Caveats

Europe is leading the way in recycling growth, thanks to strict regulations. North America is catching up through corporate ESG commitments, extended producer responsibility programs, and state-level policies.

Paper-based packaging leads in circular packaging revenue, making up about 40 percent of the global market in 2024. This is due to advances in fiber recovery technology and the fact that consumers are used to recycling cardboard. Reusable and refillable packaging is growing quickly, but it is still a small part of the market. As a result, the food and beverage sector makes up nearly 47 percent of circular packaging demand, and packaging companies are teaming up with recyclers to meet this need.

Industry consolidation signals how seriously investors have bet on this sector. In July 2024, Smurfit Kappa completed its acquisition of WestRock to form Smurfit WestRock, one of the world’s largest paper-based packaging companies, with $32 billion in combined revenue and 100,000 employees across 40 countries. Separately, International Paper announced an agreement to acquire DS Smith in a deal valuing DS Smith at approximately $9.9 billion. These deals suggest that fiber-based, recyclable packaging is a durable growth market.

The DS Smith Model, Five Years Later

In March 2020, DS Smith opened its first North American recycling plant in Reading, Pennsylvania, right next to an existing paper mill and corrugated packaging facility. These three sites could make, use, collect, and recycle corrugated boxes in about two weeks, creating a true closed loop. DS Smith got clean materials from distribution centers, packaging facilities, and retailers instead of mixed curbside collections, which helped keep contamination low.

Since then, this model has grown significantly. DS Smith, now part of International Paper, and other companies have shown that fiber-based packaging circular systems can work on a large scale. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s 2024 Global Commitment Progress Report, which covers over 1,000 organizations representing 20 percent of global plastic packaging production, noted that companies like Amcor have “doubled the share of recycled content in their plastic packaging, making as much progress in four years as in the four decades before,” according to EMF leader Rob Opsomer.

Where Optimism Meets Reality

But the numbers are more complex than market growth projections suggest. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF) found that the 2025 targets set by its member companies in 2018—to cut virgin plastic use by 18 percent, reach 26 percent recycled content, and achieve 100 percent reusable, recyclable, or compostable packaging—are now mostly out of reach without major changes. Together, these companies have avoided using 9.6 million tons of virgin plastic since 2018, but that is less than 3 percent of annual plastic production. At the same time, the overall market increased plastic packaging use by 8 percent.

Scaling up reusable packaging has been especially hard. Even though 64 percent of EMF Commitment participants have started pilot programs, reuse models make up only 1.3 percent of packaging, according to the Foundation’s 2024 analysis. The main obstacles are structural: the U.S. lacks a shared reverse logistics system, does not offer enough consumer incentives, and has no binding policies to make reuse practical.

Greenwashing has made the credibility problem worse. In October 2024, the legal advocacy group ClientEarth released a report saying that vague plastic recycling claims, like “100-percent recyclable” and circular loop images, mislead consumers about the real environmental impact of products and violate UK and EU consumer protection laws.

“The thing that blew my mind,” said Myles Cohen, founder of consulting firm Circular Ventures, at the September 2024 Packaging Recycling Summit, “is that in the company’s defense, they argued, ‘Hey, our statements were just classic puffery.’” Cohen called greenwashing “a pet peeve that damages not just individual companies but the packaging and recycling industries as a whole.”

Consumer trust is clearly declining. According to 2024 data, 32 percent of Americans now doubt that curbside recycling works, up from 14 percent four years ago. A related trend called “greenhushing” has also appeared, where brands stop talking about their sustainability progress to avoid criticism.

What Actually Works

Not all circular packaging strategies are equally effective. The evidence shows a clear ranking of materials:

• Fiber-based packaging, like corrugated cardboard and paperboard, has proven circularity supported by real infrastructure. The DS Smith model is successful because it uses clean materials and relies on commercial, not residential, collection systems.
• Aluminum is the most valuable recyclable material. Recycling just one can saves as much energy as half a gallon of gas. Beverage cans contain 73 percent recycled content, and steel cans are recycled at an 80 percent rate, so metal packaging truly supports a circular system.
• Reusable packaging is most effective in closed-loop commercial settings, such as logistics, food service, and institutional supply chains. It does not work as well in consumer retail or quick-service restaurants, where returning packaging is expensive and unreliable.
• Compostable packaging is only a limited solution. More industry analysts are skeptical because most communities do not have home composting, industrial composting facilities often reject packaging, and composting creates greenhouse gases instead of recovering materials.
• Plastic recycling needs a very specific approach. PET bottles and HDPE containers are recycled more successfully than most other plastics. Flexible plastics like films, pouches, and sachets are still mostly unrecyclable on a large scale and often end up polluting the environment.

The EPA estimates that updating U.S. recycling infrastructure will cost between $36.5 and $43.4 billion, mainly for better packaging recovery, more composting capacity, and improved plastics processing. This investment has been slow to happen because there are no binding policy requirements.

The E.U. Regulatory Push and the U.S. Gap

Europe has moved decisively. The E.U.’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) requires 70 percent of all packaging waste to be recycled by 2030, with plastics recycling rates targeted to double to 55 percent. Member states must cut packaging waste per capita by 15 percent by 2040 versus 2018 baselines. The European Commission is also requiring products claiming to be biobased, biodegradable, or compostable to meet minimum, verifiable standards to combat greenwashing.

In the U.S., California is leading the way with extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws and the new Voluntary Carbon Market Disclosures Act, both aimed at reducing greenwashing in sustainability claims. However, there is little action at the federal level.

At the November 2024 Busan negotiations for a UN Global Plastics Treaty, countries failed to reach a binding agreement. This has left a major policy gap and prevents a coordinated global effort.

What You Can Do

If you want to make a positive difference, it helps to be both a conscious shopper and an active citizen. Here are some steps you can take in your daily life:

• Choose fiber and aluminum products. Corrugated boxes, paperboard, and aluminum cans have real end-of-use recycling systems. Recycling these materials truly closes the loop.
• Don’t just trust the label. “Recyclable” does not always mean it can be recycled where you live. Check if your local program accepts the material, and use Earth911’s recycling search to see what is accepted in your area.
• Focus on reducing packaging, not just recycling. Buying products with less packaging, choosing concentrates, or picking refillable options has a bigger environmental impact than recycling alone.
• Support EPR policies. Extended producer responsibility moves recycling costs from cities and taxpayers to the companies that create packaging. This is a structural solution that market growth alone cannot achieve.
• Ask companies for details. If you see vague claims like “eco-friendly” or “100-percent recyclable,” ask questions: Where is it recyclable? What infrastructure is used? What percentage of the material is actually recycled? Demand clear, verifiable answers.

If you value the environment, keep a variation on Smokey Bear’s familiar advice in mind: Only you can prevent the economy from burning down the planet. Your response needs to combine thoughtful choices when shopping with active communication with friends, family, the businesses you frequent, and the representatives you elect.

Editor’s Note: This article, originally authored by Gemma Alexander on April 14, 2020, was substantially updated in April 2026.

The post Where Is The Circular Packaging Economy In 2026? appeared first on Earth911.

Most of us feel a small sense of satisfaction when we take out the recycling. Whether you set materials on the curb, bring electronics to a drop-off center, or schedule a rubbish pickup in London, it can feel like the final step in doing the right thing.

That moment is just the beginning of a complex journey. Once your recyclables leave your hands, they enter a global system shaped by local policies, international markets, technology, and consumer demand.

Understanding what happens next is key to becoming a more informed and effective recycler.

Step 1: Collection and Transportation

After recyclables are collected from homes, businesses, or drop-off points, they are transported to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). The type of collection system your community uses — single-stream (all recyclables in one bin) or multi-stream (separated by material) — significantly affects what happens next.

Single-stream systems are convenient for households, but they often result in higher contamination rates. When paper, plastics, metals, and glass are mixed together, broken glass can embed in paper fibers, food residue can spoil cardboard, and plastic bags can tangle machinery. That contamination increases processing costs and can cause entire batches of recyclables to be diverted to landfill.

Transportation also has an environmental cost. Trucks burn fuel, and in rural areas recyclables may travel long distances before reaching a sorting facility. Efficient routing and cleaner vehicle fleets can reduce this footprint, but the logistics of waste collection remain an important piece of the sustainability puzzle.

Step 2: Sorting at the Materials Recovery Facility

Once recyclables arrive at an MRF, they are unloaded onto a tipping floor and fed onto conveyor belts. From there, a combination of human workers and automated systems separates materials by type. Here’s how the sorting typically works:

• Screens and trommels separate items by size and shape.
• Magnets pull out ferrous metals like steel.
• Eddy current separators eject non-ferrous metals such as aluminum.
• Optical sorters use infrared technology to identify different types of plastics.
• Air classifiers help separate lightweight materials from heavier ones.

Despite advanced technology, human oversight is still essential. Workers remove contaminants, such as plastic bags, food waste, garden hoses, and other non-recyclable items that can damage equipment or reduce material quality.

The goal at this stage is to produce clean, marketable streams of materials — bales of cardboard, aluminum, PET plastic, HDPE plastic, and so on. The cleaner the input, the higher the value of the output.

Step 3: Processing into Raw Materials

After sorting and baling, materials are sold to reprocessors. These facilities transform recyclables into raw materials that manufacturers can use to make new products.

Paper and Cardboard

Baled paper is shredded and mixed with water to create pulp. Contaminants like staples, tape, and plastic coatings are removed. The clean pulp can then be turned into new paper products, from packaging to tissue. However, paper fibers shorten each time they are recycled, which means paper can only be recycled a limited number of times (typically five to seven cycles) before the fibers become too weak for reuse.

Plastics

Plastics are more complicated. Different resin types — such as PET (#1) and HDPE (#2) — must be separated because they melt at different temperatures and have different properties. After sorting, plastics are washed, shredded into flakes, melted, and formed into pellets. These pellets become the feedstock for new plastic products.

However, not all plastics are equally recyclable. Flexible films, multi-layer packaging, and mixed plastics are often difficult or uneconomical to process. Even when technically recyclable, they may lack strong end markets.

Glass

Glass is crushed into cullet, cleaned, and melted down to form new bottles or jars. Unlike paper and plastic, glass can be recycled indefinitely without losing quality. In practice, however, much collected glass is downcycled into road aggregate or construction fill rather than new containers, limiting its closed-loop value. However, contamination — especially ceramics or heat-resistant glass — can disrupt the process.

Metals

Aluminum and steel are highly valuable and can be recycled repeatedly without degradation. Recycling aluminum, for example, uses significantly less energy than producing it from raw ore. This makes metal one of the most successful recycling categories.

Step 4: The Role of Global Markets

Recycling is not just a local activity; it is deeply connected to global commodity markets. For years, many countries exported large volumes of recyclable materials overseas for processing. China’s 2018 National Sword policy, which banned imports of most recyclable materials and set strict contamination limits, reshaped this landscape, forcing exporting countries to improve domestic sorting and reduce contamination.

When demand for recycled materials is strong, recycling programs thrive. When commodity prices drop, municipalities may struggle to cover processing costs. This economic reality explains why some communities adjust accepted materials or emphasize contamination reduction campaigns.

In short, your recycling bin is connected to international supply chains and market dynamics that most people never see.

Step 5: E-Waste Is A Special Case

Electronic waste follows a different and often more complicated path. Devices like smartphones, laptops, and televisions contain valuable metals — including copper, gold, and rare earth elements — but also hazardous substances such as lead and mercury.

Responsible e-waste recycling involves:

• Manual disassembly to recover components.
• Shredding and separation of materials.
• Specialized processes to extract precious metals.
• Safe handling of toxic elements.

Improperly managed e-waste can end up in informal recycling sectors, where unsafe practices harm both workers and the environment. That’s why certified electronics recyclers are critical for ensuring materials are recovered responsibly.

The Contamination Problem

One of the biggest threats to effective recycling is contamination. When non-recyclable items are placed in recycling bins — often with good intentions — they can cause entire loads to be rejected.

Common contaminants include:

• Plastic bags in curbside bins.
• Food-soiled containers.
• Garden waste.
• Diapers and textiles.
• Tanglers like hoses and cords.

Reducing contamination requires clear communication, consistent labeling, and public education. The more accurately we sort at home, the more likely materials are to be successfully recycled.

The Energy and Climate Equation

Recycling generally saves energy compared to producing materials from virgin resources. For example:

• Recycling aluminum saves 90–95% of the energy required for primary production.
• Recycling paper reduces the need for logging and lowers water usage.
• Recycling plastics can cut greenhouse gas emissions compared to manufacturing new resin from fossil fuels.

However, recycling is not a silver bullet. The environmental benefits depend on clean material streams, efficient processing, and strong demand for recycled content.

Beyond Recycling: Moving Up the Waste Hierarchy

While recycling is important, it sits below reduction and reuse in the waste hierarchy. The most sustainable product is often the one that was never made. Choosing durable goods, repairing items, and embracing refill systems can significantly reduce the volume of materials entering the waste stream.

When disposal is necessary, understanding the journey of recyclables can help us make smarter decisions. Proper sorting, supporting recycled-content products, and advocating for better waste infrastructure all play a role.

The Takeaway

The path from your recycling bin to a new product is far more complex than it appears. It involves advanced technology, human labor, global trade, and shifting economic conditions. Each stage — collection, sorting, processing, and manufacturing — presents both opportunities and challenges.

By learning what happens after recyclables leave our homes, we can improve our habits and strengthen the system as a whole. Recycling doesn’t end at the curb; it continues through a chain of processes that depend on informed, engaged consumers. And when we understand that journey, our small daily actions gain greater meaning — and greater impact.

About the Author

This sponsored article was written by Deian Kace.

The post Guest Idea: What Really Happens After You Drop Off Recycling? appeared first on Earth911.

Project Repat, founded by Ross Lohr and Nathan Rothstein, had prevented more than 11 million T-shirts from landfills while bringing some sewing work back to the United States when we talked with them in 2019. They’re still going strong. Tune into a classic conversation as Earth911’s Mitch Ratcliffe talks with Rothstein about the inspiration behind Project Repat and the massive changes in U.S. T-shirt manufacturing over the past 30 years. After migrating to Mexico, T-shirt printing jobs have gone overseas and few American companies still make them.

Project Repat has a better idea: turn old shirts into keepsake quilts hand-sewn using T-shirts sent by customers. Instead of tossing a T-shirt in the donation bin, it can be turned into a part of a memorable and snug quilt. Love a sports team? Make a quilt of the team T-shirts and jerseys you’ve purchased over the years. Want to remember a school or a company where you worked? In all likelihood, you have the makings of a Project Repat quilt. Reasonably priced  based on the size, Project Repat takes your order and receives your shirts by mail, then turns them into fleece-backed quilt.

• Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.
• Follow the podcast on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube.

Editor’s note: This epsiode originally aired on October 7, 2019.

The post Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: Project Repat Is Saving US Jobs & T-Shirts From Landfills appeared first on Earth911.

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

1. Invest in Reliable Equipment

• The core hardware list hasn’t changed much — but what’s available at each price point has improved considerably.

  Aquarium or tank. A 100-gallon tank remains the recommended starting point for a serious home system. It gives you flexibility in fish species, plant density, and system stability. Acrylic tanks are lighter and optically clearer; glass tanks are heavier but scratch-resistant. Expect to pay $300–$600 for a quality 100-gallon tank. Search current options on Amazon.

  If you’re new to aquaponics, the AquaSprouts Garden Kit is a well-reviewed all-in-one beginner system that fits a standard 10-gallon aquarium. It includes a grow bed, submersible pump, mechanical timer, and light bar mounting system, and costs $75–$90. The aquarium itself is sold separately.

  Canister filter. For a 100-gallon aquaponics tank, target 500–600 gallons per hour (GPH) of water turnover, well above what the tank volume alone would suggest, because the fish load demands high filtration. The Fluval FX2 (~$269 on Amazon) is consistently top-rated for tanks up to 100 gallons, featuring 4-stage filtration, Smart Pump technology that auto-adjusts flow, and a built-in water change system. A solid budget alternative is the Penn-Plax Cascade 1000 (~$199 on Amazon), which handles up to 100 gallons, recirculating the water more than twice an hour.

  Air pump. Dissolved oxygen is critical for fish health and for the beneficial bacteria driving nitrification. A quality air pump — or a canister filter with an integrated spray bar — will keep oxygen levels stable. A 2025 review in Reviews in Aquaculture found that micro-nano bubble (MNB) aeration increased butterhead lettuce yield by 35% compared to conventional diffusers, and raised nitrate concentration in the water. MNB systems are commercially available but not yet mainstream for home setups, so a conventional air pump remains the practical choice for most beginners.

  Grow lights (optional, system-dependent). Indoor systems need supplemental lighting. Full-spectrum LED grow lights have dropped substantially in price and energy draw. Look for LED bars with daylight-spectrum output (5000–6500K) sized to your grow bed. Search LED grow lights on Amazon.

  Water heater (optional). Tilapia require 70–85°F. If your space runs cooler, a submersible aquarium heater is essential. Search aquarium heaters on Amazon.

2. Choose Your Setup

Three system types work at home scale. The choice depends on available space, target crops, and tolerance for complexity.

Media bed are recommended for beginners. Plants grow in a bed of inert media, such as expanded clay pebbles, gravel, or lava rock, positioned above or beside the fish tank. A pump floods the bed periodically, then drains back. The media supports roots and houses beneficial bacteria. Research from Texas A&M confirmed media beds are the most forgiving system for beginners and support the widest range of crops, including fruiting vegetables like tomatoes and cucumbers. The Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service provides detailed DIY build plans.

A 2025 study found that carbonized rice husks and cocopeat as grow media can yield five times more crop than traditional expanded clay aggregate (LECA), though they decompose over time and require more frequent replacement.

Nutrient film technique (NFT). A thin stream of water flows continuously through PVC tubes past plant roots dangling inside. Excellent for herbs, lettuce, and small greens in tight or vertical spaces; the tubes can be wall-mounted. Vertical aquaponics setups can increase productivity per unit area by up to 160% compared to horizontal systems, based on research with strawberries and basil. NFT kits are available on Amazon for both DIY and complete systems.

Raft (deep water culture). Plants float on foam rafts with roots submerged directly in nutrient-rich water drawn from the fish tank. They produce a higher yield than NFT for leafy greens, but requires more robust filtration because solids aren’t removed by a media bed. More common in semi-commercial operations than small home setups. Check options on Amazon.

A growing range of IoT sensors let you track pH, dissolved oxygen, ammonia, and temperature continuously from your phone. WiFi pH/EC meters designed for hydroponic and aquaponic systems are now in the $60–$120 range. For beginners, manual weekly testing is fine. For anyone running a system unattended or scaling up, continuous monitoring significantly reduces the risk of a water quality crash.

3. Add the Fish

An aquaponics system will support many species of fish. Several of the most popular options are:

• Tilapia: The most common aquaponics fish for good reason. Tilapia tolerate temperature swings, pH variation, and elevated ammonia better than most species. They grow quickly (typical harvest: 6–8 months), are inexpensive to stock, and provide a dual harvest of vegetables and protein. Best for warm indoor or greenhouse systems (70–85°F).
• Koi: Popular ornamental choice. Koi tolerate poor water quality and are hardy once established, but they’re susceptible to a range of pathogens and aren’t typically harvested for food. Well-suited to media bed systems where water quality is easier to maintain.
• Bluegill, perch, and catfish. Solid edible alternatives to tilapia in cooler climates where tilapia’s warmth requirements are a challenge. Texas A&M’s fish species selection guide covers temperature ranges, feed conversion ratios, and disease susceptibility for home-scale species in detail.

These are great options, but you can also consider carp, perch, largemouth bass, bluegills, guppies, and more. Purchase fish from a reputable aquaculture supplier or local fish hatchery when possible — disease-carrying fish is one of the fastest ways to crash a new system. Pet store fish are not certified disease-free.

4. Add the Plants

Like fish, the options are endless when deciding which vegetables to grow in your aquaponics system. Some popular options include broccoli, celery, cucumbers, and basil.

But because different plants require different conditions, you’ll want to select plants that will thrive in your setup. As Go Green Aquaponics explains, it is important to consider the following:

1. System: What type of aquaponics system you will use – plants with no root structure do well in a raft setup, while root vegetables do well in a media bed.
2. The optimal temperature and pH level for your fish and your plants – the closer the match, the more successful you’ll be.
3. Environment: the amount of light, temperature and – if you’re setting up your system outside – rain the plants will get.
4. How much space you have for plants versus how much space the plants need to grow.
5. Plant-to-fish ratio: The more fish you plan on having, the more plants you need to absorb the nutrients.

5. Maintain Your System

Keeping healthy plants and fish will require regular maintenance. Some tips include:

• Feed your fish two to three times daily in small amounts. Overfeeding is the most common cause of ammonia spikes in home systems. Uneaten food decomposes rapidly and overwhelms the beneficial bacteria that keep the system in balance.

  Test pH weekly. Target range is 6.4–7.4, with most systems running best around 6.8–7.0. The API Freshwater Master Test Kit (~$35 on Amazon) tests pH, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate in one kit — the standard recommendation for aquaponics monitoring. For more serious systems, the LaMotte Aquaponics Water Test Kit (~$85 on Amazon) covers nine parameters including dissolved oxygen and carbon dioxide, and comes with a rugged carrying case. To raise pH naturally, dissolve a tablespoon of food-grade potassium carbonate (potash) in a bucket of system water, add it slowly to the tank, and retest after 24 hours before adding more.

  Test ammonia and nitrate weekly or biweekly. Ammonia should be below 2 ppm; nitrates should stay under 160 ppm. Elevated ammonia: feed less, increase aeration, or reduce fish density. High nitrates: add more plants or remove some fish.

  Mind the cycling period. A new system takes 4–6 weeks to fully cycle and for the bacterial colony to establish and nitrogen conversion to stabilize. Don’t increase fish load or plant density during this period. Ammonia and nitrite readings near zero consistently is your green light.

The following video from Rob Bob’s Aquaponics provides guidance on how to check the pH, ammonia levels, and nitrate levels.

Get Some Fish In Your Garden

Aquaponics is an easy and environmentally conscious way to grow produce and raise fish at the same time. It can be used to grow all your favorite leafy greens, and there are endless varieties of fish that will adapt well to this system. Just keep up with regular maintenance and aquaponics will prove to be a viable and sustainable new way to garden.

The science of aquaponics is advancing quickly. Three developments from recent peer-reviewed literature are worth knowing about, even if most aren’t yet practical for home systems:

Algae co-cultivation. Reviews in Aquaculture reports that introducing macroalgae such as Spirogyra spp. can nearly double plant yields compared to traditional aquaponic systems. Co-cultivating microalgae (Chlorella) with plants in raft systems also controls ammonia at twice the efficacy of non-algal systems. This is emerging research — not yet mainstream for home growers — but a promising direction for anyone looking to push yields further.

Decoupled system design. Research from the Journal of the World Aquaculture Society (2024) documents that decoupled systems, which separate the aquaculture unit from the hydroponic unit, allow optimized conditions in each component, resulting in better nutrient utilization and increased productivity compared to coupled designs. Decoupled systems allow independent pH management for fish and plants, which is otherwise a constant compromise in standard coupled setups. Commercially available decoupled systems are beginning to become available; for DIY builders, it’s a worthwhile design consideration when scaling up.

AI and IoT integration. A 2025 Sustainable Environment Research review emphasizes that monitoring strategies using artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and renewable energy can significantly enhance aquaponic system efficiency. For home growers, this means the WiFi monitoring systems mentioned in Step 2 are part of a broader wave of automation coming to small-scale aquaponics. The good news: prices will continue to drop.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on March 17, 2021, and updated in April 2026. Feature image of outdoor aquaponics system courtesy of Vasch~nlwiki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

About the Author

David Thomas is founder and editor-in-chief of Everything Fishkeeping, a fishkeeping and aquascaping magazine. He has been keeping fish since he was a child and has kept over 12 different setups. His favorite is his freshwater tank with Tetras and Loaches.

The post How To Grow Vegetables With Aquaponics appeared first on Earth911.

It’s tough to think about “celebrating” Earth Day after the federal government rolled back over 400 environmental protections in 2025. Earth Day 2026 is a direct response to those changes. This year, organizers aren’t just asking you to reduce, reuse, or recycle. Instead, they want to spark a global response to the renewed influence of the fossil fuel industry.

Earth Day is on Wednesday, April 22, 2026. This marks the 56th anniversary of the first Earth Day in 1970, when 20 million Americans took to the streets and helped lead to the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the EPA. This year’s theme, Our Power, Our Planet, was announced by EARTHDAY.ORG in January. It puts civic action, rather than personal lifestyle changes, at the center. That’s an important shift.

EARTHDAY.ORG picked Our Power, Our Planet to push back against the idea that environmental progress depends only on who is in federal office. The 2026 manifesto says that people-powered action created these protections in the first place, and that same energy can defend and rebuild them. Small steps still matter, but they need to go hand in hand with political action.

This year’s tone is noticeably more confrontational than past Earth Day framing. Where previous themes, such as “End Plastic Pollution” and “Invest in Our Planet,” emphasized personal and corporate behavior, 2026 is centered on organizing, voter engagement, and policy defense. The official call to action names town halls with elected officials, grassroots campaigns to protect environmental laws, and teach-ins at schools and universities, alongside the more familiar community cleanups and tree plantings.

Portland’s Earth Day event, for example, will be held on April 11 at Parkrose Middle School, takes a similar approach with the theme Earth in Motion. It focuses on everyday choices that link transportation, energy, and food systems. The message is the same: local actions add up.

Earth Week: April 18–25

Earth Day falls on a Wednesday this year, which can make it hard for some people to take part. EARTHDAY.ORG has made April 18, a Saturday, the main action day, with Earth Week running through April 25. If you’re planning or joining an event, you have the whole week to get involved.

You can find free planning toolkits at The Earth Hub, EARTHDAY.ORG’s resource portal. The toolkits include a Community Cleanup Kit, Tree Planting Organizer, Teach-In Curriculum, Town Hall Planning Guide, Peaceful Demonstration Guide, Voter Registration Drive Kit, and Faith Gathering Resources. Each one comes with step-by-step planning materials, promotional templates, and talking points.

Where to Find Events

Organizations across the country are running events through the full month of April. A few highlights:

• The National Audubon Society’s network of over 400 chapters and 31 centers is hosting events in almost every region. Activities include bird walks, invasive species removal days, native plant sales, and family nature days. You can use Audubon’s event finder to locate the nearest activity.

• The Nature Conservancy is offering volunteer habitat restoration opportunities tied to its 75th anniversary, plus free downloadable activity guides for adults and children.

• EARTHDAY.ORG’s Great Global Cleanup connects individuals and groups to organized litter and debris cleanups worldwide.

Actions That Match the Moment

You can also try some of EarthDay.org’s 50 steps to make a positive difference in your daily life. Individual actions still matter, but this year, Earth Day encourages you to think about the impact you’re making. Here’s a helpful way to look at it:

Personal and household

• Join or organize a local cleanup through EARTHDAY.ORG’s Great Global Cleanup or your Audubon chapter.
• Plant native species in your yard or containers. Audubon’s Native Plants Database can help you find the right species for your region.
• Use the Earth911 recycling search to find local drop-off options for hard-to-recycle materials before Earth Day.
• Calculate your carbon footprint with The Nature Conserviancy’s free calculator. Then set one specific reduction goal, such as cutting your driving by a third through better shopping planning, and toss in a few more vegetables to replace some of the meat in your diet.

Community and civic

• Attend or co-host a teach-in at a local school, library, or community center using EARTHDAY.ORG’s free toolkits.
• Contact your U.S. representatives about specific environmental protection rollbacks. TNC’s nature pledge action and Audubon’s climate action pledge both offer easy ways to send an email.
• Organize a voter registration table at any Earth Day event.
• If you own a business or are an employer, use Earth Week to announce or move forward with a specific sustainability goal. This could be a new procurement policy, a waste reduction target, or a plan to switch your fleet to electric vehicles.

Critics of Earth Day have often noted the gap between the day’s symbolic energy and real, lasting change. That criticism is valid. This year’s approach addresses it more directly than most of the past 55 Earth Days. Still, the reality is that one day of awareness, no matter how big, can’t replace ongoing pressure on policies and institutions.

The best thing Earth Day 2026 can do is connect people with organizations that keep working year-round, and encourage you to stay involved after April 22. Look for events that offer ways to keep participating, like joining a chapter, plugging into an advocacy network, or helping out at a community garden throughout the season—not just on one Wednesday in April.

The post Earth Day 2026: Our Power, Our Planet Is A Call To Activism appeared first on Earth911.

As the spring flowers start to appear and the days get longer, the urge to dig in the dirt returns. But you don’t have to wait for warmer weather to get growing. Starting plants from seed extends your relationship with the garden, gives you more control over seed sourcing, and saves real money compared to buying nursery starts, sometimes as much as 90% per plant.

Seed starting is also a lower-waste choice. You don’t need plastic nursery pots or peat-heavy commercial growing media, and get the option to select organic or open-pollinated varieties that big-box stores rarely carry. Here’s how to do it right.

This article includes affiliate links. If you buy something through these links, we earn a small commission that helps support our work.

Choose Seeds Worth Growing

Not all seeds are created equal, or equally easy. For beginners, stick to varieties with reliable indoor germination rates. Good bets include basil, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, chives, lettuce, melon, onion, pepper, and tomatoes.

For direct sowing outdoors, which lets you skip the indoor start entirely, beans, beets, carrots, corn, peas, spinach, squash, and zucchini all transplant poorly and are better started where they’ll grow.

When selecting seeds, consider choosing open-pollinated or heirloom varieties — they let you save seeds at season’s end and replant the following year, compounding your savings over time. Rebel Gardens’ certified organic 13-variety heirloom pack (seeds grown and packed in the USA in 100% recycled packets) is a solid starting point, as is Purely Organic’s USDA-certified vegetable starter kit. For herbs, Sweet Yards’ organic herb seed pack covers the kitchen essentials — basil, cilantro, dill, parsley, thyme, and more.

Reuse Containers or Go Soil Blocking

The sustainability case for seed starting is strongest when you skip buying new plastic plug trays. Save nursery flats from prior seasons or raid the recycling bin for 2- to 3-inch containers such as single-serve yogurt, applesauce, or pudding cups. Wash thoroughly and punch drainage holes in the bottom.

A more advanced option is soil blocking. A soil blocker tool compresses growing medium into self-contained cubes that need no container at all. Roots hit air at the block’s edge and stop growing (a phenomenon called air pruning), which produces a denser, healthier root mass.

Ladbrooke’s 20-block Mini 4 Blocker is the most widely used model for home gardeners.

Get Your Growing Medium Right

Don’t use garden soil or standard potting mix for seed starts; both are too dense and can introduce pathogens. You need a dedicated starter mix: light, sterile, and fine-textured enough to let tiny roots push through.

A premixed option, Old Potters’ Professional Germination Mix, offers a pH-adjusted medium made from peat moss, perlite, and vermiculite that eliminates the guesswork of blending your own starter soil. Or mix your own by combining equal parts perlite, vermiculite, and peat moss, then add 1/4 teaspoon of lime per gallon to neutralize the peat’s acidity.

Peat moss extraction raises sustainability concerns. It’s a slow-renewing carbon store. Coco coir, made from coconut processing byproduct, is a renewable alternative with similar moisture-retention properties. Plantonix’s coco coir + perlite + vermiculite bundle is worth considering if you want to skip peat entirely.

Heat Is the Underrated Variable

Most vegetable seeds germinate best between 65–85°F, and soil temperature matters more than air temperature. A spot near a heat vent can work, but that can be inconsistent. A seedling heat mat is the most reliable solution because it warms the root zone 10–20°F above ambient air temperature, which can cut germination time.

The VIVOSUN Seedling Heat Mat is a top-rated, UL-certified 10″×20.75″ mat that fits standard nursery flats and allows you to control the temperature. For an all-in-one solution, SOLIGT’s 60-cell seed starter kit with grow light and heat mat bundles tray, dome, light, and mat in a single purchase.

Before germination, seeds need consistent moisture, not light. Cover your flat with plastic wrap, a humidity dome, or a pane of glass to hold humidity while seeds sprout. Once you see green, remove the cover immediately: trapped humidity post-germination promotes damping-off, a fungal disease that collapses seedlings at the soil line.

Water Smart, Not Hard

Overwatering kills more seedlings than drought does. The goal is consistent moisture, which will make the soil feel like a well-wrung sponge, not a puddle. A fine-mist spray bottle is better than pouring water from above, which can displace seeds and compact the growing medium.

A quality garden mist sprayer runs under $25 and pays for itself immediately.

Grow Lights: Non-Negotiable Unless You Have a South-Facing Window

Seedlings need 12–16 hours of light per day. A sunny south-facing window might deliver 6–8 hours on a clear day. The gap produces leggy, weak starts that struggle when transplanted. Grow lights eliminate the variable entirely.

Position the bulb 2–4 inches above seedlings and use an outlet timer to automate the schedule. Full-spectrum LEDs are the current standard, as they run cooler and more efficiently than fluorescents. GROWFRIEND’s 40-cell all-in-one kit includes dual LED grow lights, a heat mat, humidity dome, and a soil moisture meter in one package.

Label Everything Because You Will Forget

This sounds obvious until you’re staring at 60 identical seedlings in March. Label every cell or flat immediately after sowing, noting the variety and the date. Reusable plant markers and a waterproof pen cost almost nothing and save considerable grief later.

Waterproof garden plant markers with permanent pen included are available in packs of 100+ for a few dollars.

Feed Lightly, Starting at Week 3

Commercial seed-starting mix contains little to no fertilizer by design, as high fertility can burn delicate seedlings. But after the first true leaves appear, plants need a nutritional boost. Start with a diluted liquid fertilizer (half the label-recommended strength) and apply weekly.

Fish emulsion and kelp-based fertilizers are popular organic choices that provide a balanced nutrient profile without the risk of chemical burn from synthetic fertilizers.

Thin Ruthlessly

Sowing two or three seeds per cell is standard practice. It hedges against low germination rates. But once sprouts emerge, you need to thin to one per cell. The instinct is to leave multiples “in case.” Resist it. Crowded seedlings compete for light, water, and nutrients, and the result is weaker plants across the board.

Thin by snipping extras at soil level with small scissors rather than pulling, which can disturb roots of the seedling you’re keeping.

Pot Up Before Roots Get Crowded

Seed-starting mix has almost no nutrients. Once seedlings develop their first true leaves, which are the second set, after the initial seed leaves, they need more root space and fertility. Move them into 3- to 4-inch pots filled with a nutrient-rich potting mix.

This “potting up” step is often skipped, and seedlings suffer for it, becoming stunted, yellowed, slow to establish when finally transplanted. Pot up early rather than late.

Harden Off: Skipping This Step Is Costly

Indoor seedlings are soft. They haven’t experienced wind, direct UV, or temperature swings. Transplanting directly from a grow light to full outdoor sun causes transplant shock that can set plants back weeks or can kill them outright.

Harden off over 7–10 days: start with 2–3 hours in filtered shade on a mild day, gradually increasing sun and wind exposure. Growveg’s hardening-off guide has a clear day-by-day schedule.

Timing: Use a Planting Calendar, Not Gut Feel

The single most common beginner mistake is planting too early. Tomatoes and peppers in the ground before nights are consistently above 50°F will sulk rather than grow. Frost-tender crops started too early indoors get root-bound before it’s safe to plant them out.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac planting calendar calculates seed-starting dates based on your last frost date. Input your zip code and it generates a personalized schedule. Check the forecast in the 48 hours before any outdoor transplanting.

What You Can Do

• Start with easy wins: basil, broccoli, lettuce, and tomatoes have high germination rates and forgive beginner mistakes.
• Choose open-pollinated seeds: you can save and replant them each year, building independence from annual seed purchases.
• Skip peat when possible: coco coir-based growing media performs similarly and avoids harvesting slow-renewing peat bogs.
• Reuse containers: clean nursery flats or single-serve food containers reduce plastic demand before a single seed goes in.
• Use a heat mat and grow light: these two tools account for the majority of seed-starting failures when absent.
• Harden off every seedling: skipping this step costs plants; the process takes 10 days and pays off every time.
• Time your starts correctly: use a frost-date-based planting calendar, not the date on the seed packet, which isn’t calibrated to your region.

Related Reading on Earth911:

• Home Economics: Are Vegetable Gardens Worth It?
• 8 Ways to Green Your DIY
• Earth911 Recycling Search

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published April 30, 2015, by Sarah Lozanova, and most recently updated in March 2026.

The post Seed, Sprout, Spectacular: Tips for Starting Your Garden From Scratch appeared first on Earth911.

It always strikes us as amusing how many DIY projects you see online that seem to require more time and more money than it would take to simply buy the thing they’re trying to DIY in the first place. Are we missing the point?

We think that doing things ourselves and taking back the power to create instead of simply consuming is absolutely vital to the green movement. But if you don’t already have the materials and spend a lot of money purchasing craft supplies, does it really make sense to DIY?

These eight projects are true do-it-yourself masterpieces. One-of-a-kind outdoor projects you can make for almost nothing, with supplies you most likely already have or can easily pick up second hand for a song. Roll up your sleeves and let’s get started!

1. Teapot/Teacup Bird Feeder

Do you have one of Grandma’s old tea sets lying around that doesn’t quite fit into the sleek modern aesthetic you’ve been cultivating? Put it to great use by feeding the birds in your area — in style.

Thrift stores are always awash in old china, so if you don’t already have the old tea set, consider going wild and spending a few bucks for this DIY delight. You’ll find blogger Dinah Wulf’s instructions for the teacup bird feeder at DIY Inspired.

Safety note: Use sturdy twine or cord — not chain — to hang the feeder. Birds can catch their toes in chain links, which causes serious injury. The National Audubon Society also recommends cleaning seed feeders every two weeks (more often in hot, humid weather) by scrubbing with soap and water and soaking in a 50-50 vinegar-water solution to prevent the spread of avian disease.

2. Gardening Tool Storage

What on earth do you do with those rusty-as-heck, old-school garden rakes hanging around your garage? Well, if you’re any sort of DIY genius, you press them into service as a gardening tool holder.

The original inspiration for this project came from Beth Logan at Artstuff Ltd., whose blog has since gone offline. For a current walkthrough, see the Repurposed Rake Tool Rack tutorial at DIY n Crafts (project #14 in their roundup of 25 ways to reuse old garden tools). The concept is embarrassingly simple — remove the rake handle, mount the head tines-out on a fence or garage wall, and use the tines themselves as hooks for trowels, gloves, and pruners — but eye-catching enough to make you look like a DIY pro.

3. Bottle Tree

Do you like wine? No, I mean do you really like wine? Do you want a reason to drink more of it? And does your garden need a cute border? This sustainable, upcycled garden border may be just the project for you. You might have to expand your drinking list to include bottles of various shapes, sizes, and colors — but variety is the spice of life.

When friends ask how you managed to collect so many bottles, just laugh gaily and then distract them with your dainty teacup bird feeder. The bottle tree tradition itself runs deep — Mississippi garden writer Felder Rushing traces the practice back through African American Southern folk art and, by his own research, as far as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. See his bottle tree gallery and history for inspiration, or jump straight to his how-to guide for building one out of a cedar snag, rebar, or just about anything else.

4. Colorful Outdoor “Tiles”

If your backyard isn’t perfectly landscaped and manicured, with an impeccably tiled “outdoor living space,” don’t despair. You can use up all those half-empty paint cans and create a Pinterest-worthy colorful backdrop for evenings spent clustered around a fire or barbecue.

Pop a few coats of paint on cement tiles and you have a one-of-a-kind flooring solution. If you rent, the same effect could be achieved on a more temporary basis by letting the kids go wild with sidewalk chalk and create a mosaic masterpiece. Check out Elsie’s Painted Patio Tiles at A Beautiful Mess for the back story on this DIY idea. (Heads up: the original author noted she had to touch up the paint each spring in Missouri winters — a porch and patio floor enamel will hold up better than wall paint.)

5. Home Sweet Gnome

Okay, this one might be the least practical idea of the bunch, but that may be why I love it oh so much. If you have a stump in your backyard and you’re not willing or able to pay the truly insane amount it costs to have it ground down and removed, how about making it into a little gnome home? This is the perfect outdoor project if you have small children in your life.

Construct the trappings of a little house — door, windows, winding garden path — from found objects or natural materials, and affix them to the stump. Bonus points if you don’t tell the kids about this particular DIY project and allow them to simply stumble upon it one day in the garden. My mind would have been blown if I had come across one of these as a seven-year-old. For a step-by-step build, see this Gnome Tree Stump Home tutorial on Instructables.

Safety note: Don’t use an angle grinder to gouge windows or doors into a stump. Use a chisel and mallet for shallow detail work, or attach decorative pieces (driftwood, bark, polymer clay) to the outside instead.

6. Mosaic Stepping Stones from Broken China

Every household eventually accumulates a small graveyard of chipped mugs, a single survivor from a four-piece dinner set, or a beloved teapot with a hairline crack. Rather than tossing them — broken ceramics generally aren’t accepted in curbside recycling — embed them in concrete stepping stones for a garden path that’s genuinely one of a kind.

This pairs beautifully with the teacup project above: any teacups that don’t make it past Project #1 (you will break a few) can come back as paving. The DIY mosaic stepping stones tutorial at Gardening.org walks through the full process — breaking ceramics safely inside a drop cloth, sizing pieces to half-inch to one-inch fragments, pressing them into wet concrete, and sealing the surface so sharp edges don’t cause injury underfoot. Basic mold options include an old cake pan, a plastic plant saucer, or a purpose-built stepping stone form from a craft store.

Safety note: Wear safety glasses and heavy gloves when breaking ceramics. Once cured, run a finger over the surface to check for protruding edges and file or sand any down before placing the stone where bare feet might land.

7. Vertical Pallet Herb Garden

Shipping pallets are one of the world’s most abundant near-free materials. Small businesses, garden centers, and feed stores often have stacks of them out back, and asking politely beats the alternative of seeing them landfilled. Mounted vertically against a sunny wall or fence, a pallet becomes a stacked planter that holds enough herbs to keep a kitchen in basil, thyme, parsley, and chives all season.

Grit Magazine published a clear how-to for a vertical pallet planter — line the back and sides with landscape fabric or heavy plastic to hold soil, fill through the slats, and plant each gap as its own row. The gaps act as natural divisions, so different herbs don’t fight for the same root space.

Safety note: Use only heat-treated pallets for anything edible. Look for the IPPC stamp with the letters HT (heat treated) and avoid any stamped MB (methyl bromide — a fumigant restricted under the Montreal Protocol). Unstamped pallets are unknowns; skip them for food crops. The same heat-treated pallets are fine for ornamental flowers either way.

8. Punched Tin Can Lanterns

Steel food cans — soup, tomato, coffee — are one of the most recyclable materials on Earth, but the recycling-then-buying-something-decorative loop has plenty of slack in it. With nothing more than a hammer, a few nails of varying sizes, and the freezer, an empty can becomes an outdoor lantern that throws constellation patterns across a patio at dusk.

HGTV’s tin can lantern tutorial covers the trick that makes this project work: fill the can with water and freeze it solid before punching, so the ice supports the can wall and prevents denting. Sketch your pattern on paper, tape it to the frozen can, punch through with a nail at each marked dot, and let the ice thaw. Drop in a battery tealight (much safer outdoors than a real flame) and group them along a walkway or down the center of an outdoor table.

The Point of All This

None of these projects requires you to buy more than a tube of waterproof adhesive, a bag of concrete, or maybe a stepping stone mold. The materials — chipped china, leftover wine bottles, empty cans, a forgotten pallet, an old rake — are already in your house or someone else’s. That’s the point. The greenest project is the one that uses what already exists, and the best part is that yours will look like nobody else’s.

Editor’s Note: This article, originally authored by Madeleine Somerville on June 17, 2015, was updated with corrected links and new ideas in May 2026.

The post Outdoor Projects You Can DIY for Almost Nothing appeared first on Earth911.

Nevada just shattered its March statewide high temperature record by 6 degrees, which is a ‘72 miles per hour in a school zone’ kind of margin. And it happened during the hottest 11-year stretch in 176 years of recorded temperature tracking.

A mid-March heat wave in the American West pushed temperatures in Laughlin, Nevada, to 106°F, far above the previous March record of 100°F. The fact that this happened in March is alarming, especially since it coincided with a near-total collapse of the region’s snowpack. This sets the stage for an early and possibly severe wildfire season. The heat also fits a troubling trend confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization last week: 2015 through 2025 have been the 11 warmest years ever recorded on Earth.

Usually, temperature records are broken by small amounts. What happened in Nevada last month was very different. Some places broke monthly high temperature records by as much as 8 degrees. Reno had seven days above 80°F in March, compared to the previous record of just two days. “It’s not just that we broke monthly records,” said Nevada State Climatologist Baker Perry, “but it’s by how much we broke the monthly records, and not just in one place.”

A Snow Drought That Wasn’t in the Forecast

The heat wave didn’t hit a typical winter landscape. Nevada was already experiencing what Perry calls an unprecedented snow drought. Even though winter precipitation was close to normal and there were big storms in mid-February, warm, moist air arrived soon after. This caused what the National Weather Service called the second-highest single-day snowmelt ever recorded in the eastern Sierra, only surpassed by flooding in 1997.

Normally, snow melts slowly through April and May, but this year it happened all at once in late February and early March. SNOTEL monitoring stations across Nevada show the impact clearly: 70% of sites in northern and central Nevada now report zero inches of snowpack. That’s not just low—it’s gone. The incidence of drought is closely correlated with rising atmospheric CO2 levels recorded at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which is threatened with defunding by the Trump Administration.

What worries scientists most is the combination of these events. “To have these two unprecedented, exceptional events happening at once is a combination that is particularly concerning,” Perry said.

What This Means for Fire Season

Wildfire risk isn’t only about heat. It depends on the sequence of conditions leading up to fire season, and this year’s setup is especially dangerous.

The snowmelt and early rains caused plants to grow weeks ahead of schedule. This early growth creates lots of fine fuels. As these plants dry out over the spring—now with less moisture from snowpack—they become the kindling that can fuel fast-moving fires.

Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District Division Chief August Isernhagen said the early green-up could lead to conditions we haven’t seen before as fire season approaches. He urged people to be even more careful than in recent drought years.

“The majority of our starts, and nearly all of our catastrophic fires are human caused,” Isernhagen said in a statement from the University of Nevada, Reno.

Mountain forests face another challenge. Dawn Johnson, Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the NWS in Reno, explained that losing snowpack this early means heavy timber can become drought-stressed much sooner than usual, turning it into a fire hazard months earlier than normal. A cooler storm pattern expected in early April might bring some relief, but experts warn it may be too little, too late to make a real difference.

Eleven Years. No Exceptions.

The Nevada heat wave wasn’t an isolated event. It happened during the longest stretch of global heat ever recorded.

The WMO’s State of the Global Climate 2025 report, released on March 23, confirmed that every year from 2015 to 2025 is among the hottest ever recorded. Depending on the data, 2025 was either the second- or third-warmest year since records began, with temperatures about 1.43°C above pre-industrial levels. Atmospheric CO₂ reached its highest level in 2 million years, and ocean temperatures set a new record for the ninth year in a row.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres put the streak in stark terms: “When history repeats itself eleven times, it is no longer a coincidence. It is a call to act.”

The report also introduced a new measure called Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI). This tracks the difference between the energy the planet receives from the sun and the energy it sends back into space. In 2025, EEI was at its highest since records began in 1960. Surface temperatures, which get most of the attention, only show about 1% of the planet’s extra heat. Over 91% is absorbed by the oceans, which have taken in the equivalent of about 18 times the world’s total annual energy use each year for the past 20 years. EEI gives a clearer picture, showing that the planet is becoming more out of balance.

“In 2025, heatwaves, wildfires, drought, tropical cyclones, storms and flooding caused thousands of deaths, impacted millions of people and caused billions in economic losses,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. She added that the changes driven by human activities “will have harmful repercussions for hundreds — and potentially thousands — of years.”

What’s happening in the Western U.S. matches the WMO’s global findings perfectly. The report highlighted major glacier loss in 2025 along North America’s Pacific coast. These events aren’t separate—they’re both signs of the same warming trend, just showing up in different ways and times.

“We seem to be entering this new era where temperatures will be significantly higher than what they were ten years ago,” said climate scientist Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick of Australian National University. She explained that the changes of the past three years can only be explained by climate change.

What About the Cold in the East?

This is where things get both surprising and important.

If you live in the Northeast, Midwest, or Southeast, 2025 might not seem like a record-warm year. Some parts of the eastern U.S. have had cold snaps and severe winter weather that made national news. So how does that fit with 11 straight years of record global heat?

This actually makes sense in climate science. Climate change doesn’t warm every place at the same time. Instead, it disrupts atmospheric patterns like the polar vortex, which usually keeps cold air over the Arctic. As the Arctic warms much faster than the rest of the planet—about four times the global average, according to NOAA—the polar vortex weakens and shifts, letting cold air move into areas that don’t usually get it.

In other words, the same forces causing record heat in Nevada are also behind the unusual cold in the eastern U.S. These aren’t opposites—they’re both results of a destabilized climate system. Weather feels local, but our climate is shared. When the West is hot in March and the East is cold, both are signs of the same disrupted system.

What You Can Do

• If you live in the West, check current wildfire risk conditions through the National Interagency Fire Center and understand your local evacuation routes and readiness steps before fire season peaks.
• Lower the risk of starting fires. Most wildfires are caused by people, so be extra careful during high-risk times. Don’t have campfires during bans, avoid dragging chains on your vehicle or trailer, and make sure your equipment doesn’t create sparks.
• Support climate policy at both the state and federal levels. Reach out to your Congressional representatives. The WMO data shows the trend is clear. The decisions we make now will shape how severe fire seasons are in the future.
• Cut your home’s carbon footprint by using energy efficiently, choosing cleaner transportation, and making changes to your diet. One person’s actions won’t solve the global problem, but when many people make changes, it can have a real impact on emissions.
• If you live in the eastern U.S., don’t let cold winters make you ignore climate data. Pay attention to what’s happening across the country—the same atmosphere connects us all.

Related Reading on Earth911

How to Prepare Your Home for Wildfire Season

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