The bag your potato chips come in is seven layers deep. Metalized polyester, a plastic coated with a thin layer of metal, keeps out light. Polyethylene, a common plastic, holds the seal. A printed film provides the label. An oxygen barrier, a layer that blocks oxygen, helps prevent spoilage. There’s another sealant (a layer that helps bond the package), another structural layer for strength, and a food-contact inner skin that directly touches the chips. Each of those layers solves a problem for the manufacturer: preserving freshness, supporting branding, and extending shelf life. Together, these layers are a package no U.S. recycling system can recover for future use.

To put the potato chip bag problem in context, consider American packaging waste as a whole. Americans generated roughly 82.2 million tons of containers and packaging in 2018, about 28 percent of all municipal solid waste, according to the EPA’s most recent national accounting. Plastic packaging contributed more than 14.5 million tons of the total. Those figures are now seven years old. EPA has not issued an updated Facts and Figures report since, even as e-commerce shipments and single-serve formats keep multiplying the number of small, lightweight, hard-to-recycle packages moving through American homes.

The freshest picture comes from California, which is now doing what the federal government has stopped doing. CalRecycle’s SB 54 Material Characterization Study, conducted by Cascadia Consulting Group at 16 landfills in early 2025, found that about 8.5 million tons of single-use packaging and foodware were buried in California landfills in 2024, roughly 21 percent of everything the state landfilled that year. Plastic accounted for about 3.1 million tons of that covered material. Flexible and film plastics — the category that includes chip bags — turned up across all sampling sectors, from single-family curbside collection to commercial routes and self-haul loads. One state, one year, and the composite pouch is everywhere the waste auditors looked.

While composite pouches present a recycling challenge, some rigid plastics fare better. The rigid side of the plastic waste stream — PET water bottles, HDPE milk jugs, some polypropylene tubs — has a functioning recovery system. NAPCOR’s 2024 PET Recycling Report put the U.S. PET bottle collection rate at 30.2 percent; over 70 percent of bottles that reach a curbside bin actually are sorted, baled, and reprocessed into new material.

The situation shifts again when looking at flexible packaging specifically. Flexible bags, pouches, wrappers, and refill sacks that have quietly taken over the grocery aisle are a different story. The U.S. Plastics Pact’s most recent impact report reported a combined U.S. plastic packaging recycling rate of 13.3 percent. Flexibles within that number are a rounding error. Most estimates put flexible-packaging recycling in the United States below 2 percent.

Greenpeace’s 2022 assessment concluded that no type of U.S. plastic packaging meets the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s definition of ‘recyclable,’ a 30 percent recycling rate across a region of 400 million people.

Why does the material resist recovery

Three things make flexible plastic packaging structurally hard to recycle:

• Flexible plastic packaging is not made of a single resin but is often three to nine layers of different plastics and metals bonded together. Mechanical recycling requires a clean, mono-material feedstock, and these laminates cannot be separated into their constituent materials.
• Flexible bags are too light for materials recovery facilities (MRFs) to sort effectively. They tangle in screens intended for separating paper from containers, and often jam equipment, prompting shutdowns for removal.
• It has no domestic end market. Before China’s 2018 National Sword policy, a ban on imports of many types of foreign waste, much of the U.S. flexible-packaging stream was exported. That relief valve closed. Domestic reprocessing capacity (U.S.-based facilities to clean and reuse the material) for multi-layer flexibles has not been built because no private processor can make the economics work at the price a commodity market will pay for the bale (a compressed block of collected plastic packaging).

Composite film is what industry insiders call a “residual cost material”—meaning the combined cost of collecting, transporting, and processing it exceeds what any buyer will pay for the recovered commodity. The private market will not recycle it.

What store drop-off actually does

For a decade, the polite answer to “what do I do with this bag?” has been: take it to the front of your grocery store. The bins marked for plastic bags and film — operated by the Wrap Recycling Action Program (WRAP) and branded by retailers including Walmart, Kroger, and Target — accept clean polyethylene films: grocery bags, bread bags, dry-cleaning bags, produce bags, and some case-pack overwrap, but not chip bags and other packaging made with composites that combine plastics, paper, and metals.

Most of the polyethylene that does get captured at drop-off goes into composite lumber — Trex decking is the dominant end market, which is a form of downcycling rather than a closed-loop system. It’s a better outcome than landfill. It is also not what the word “recyclable” on the package implies.

Advanced recycling: real, overstated, and controversial

When mechanical recycling cannot process a feedstock, industry increasingly points to “advanced” or “chemical” recycling, which includes pyrolysis, gasification, and solvent-based depolymerization, as the solution for films and flexibles. The promise: break the polymer down to monomer or fuel-feedstock molecules that can be re-polymerized or combusted.

The promise is technically real, though many critics question its promised results. The scale is not yet. Most operating U.S. pyrolysis facilities produce pyrolysis oil sold as fuel, which, from a climate perspective, is combustion with extra steps. A 2023 NRDC analysis found most “advanced recycling” projects in the U.S. are either producing fuel rather than new plastic or operating at a pilot scale. Facilities designed for polymer-to-polymer chemical recycling, such as Eastman’s Kingsport, Tennessee, plant, and Alterra’s Akron facility, process a small fraction of national flexible-packaging generation.

Twenty-five states have now classified advanced recycling as “manufacturing” rather than waste management, easing permitting requirements and exempting the facilities from solid-waste oversight (regulatory supervision for handling waste). Environmental-justice advocates (groups focused on pollution impacts on vulnerable communities) argue the reclassification moves emissions and solid-residue handling out from under the permitting regime designed to protect fenceline communities (neighborhoods directly next to industrial sites). The argument is not settled.

The EPR turn

The meaningful change in the flexible-packaging story over the past eighteen months has not come from new recycling technology. It has come from policy: seven U.S. states now implement Extended Producer Responsibility laws for packaging.

Oregon’s program went operational on July 1, 2025, with the Circular Action Alliance serving as the producer responsibility organization (PRO) that manages the program, supported by roughly $200 million in producer funding for the first year. The state plans to build out 144 PRO-operated recycling collection centers across the state. Colorado, California, Minnesota, Maryland, Washington, and Maine are at various stages behind Oregon, with California’s SB 54 program — the most expansive of the group — scheduled to be fully activated in 2027.

What EPR changes, in plain terms, is that the producer — the brand that chose the seven-layer laminate for branding and shelf life reasons — now pays for the collection and recovery of the package after a consumer uses it. The fees are eco-modulated: simpler, mono-material, more-recyclable packaging pays less; hard-to-recycle multi-layer flexibles pay more. Over time, the fee differential is intended to push producers toward redesigning packaging.

Why we’re paying for the old ways

The externalities the household pays for without seeing them, from flexible packaging specifically:

• Landfill tipping fees. At the Environmental Research & Education Foundation’s 2024 weighted-average U.S. tipping fee of $62.63 per ton, the flexible-packaging share of the ~14 million tons of plastic packaging generated annually represents hundreds of millions of dollars in direct municipal disposal cost funded through utility bills and solid-waste budgets.
• MRF fire risk. Flexible packaging is the stream that most commonly carries lithium-ion batteries — from disposable vapes, earbud cases, and lithium cells — into the recycling system. Fire Rover’s 2024 annual review reported that publicly tracked MRF and transfer-station fires rose roughly 20 percent year over year, with total damage and operational impact estimated at $1.2 billion annually. Much of that cost is passed through to municipalities in the form of higher processing fees.
• Marine and microplastic pollution. Lightweight flexible packaging is disproportionately represented in litter and marine-debris inventories because it is light enough to blow out of collection vehicles, bins, and landfills. Microplastic shedding from degrading film is a growing concern for surface waters and the food chain.
• Incinerator air quality. When flexibles are combusted in waste-to-energy plants, the emissions include PM2.5 particles, hydrogen chloride from chlorinated layers, and metals from inks and lamination, which disproportionately fall on the communities that host those plants. Sixteen of the twenty largest U.S. incinerators operate in majority or above-average communities of color.

None of these costs appear on the grocery receipt. Yet, you’re paying these fees until EPR programs force producers to do so.

What You Can Do

For individuals and households, you can make these choices:

1. Buy the format that’s actually recyclable where you live. Rigid containers — a jar, a bottle, a tub — can be recycled; flexible pouches in most places cannot. When the product is available in both formats, the rigid is the better environmental choice, even when weight is accounted for.
2. Separate clean polyethylene film for store drop-off. Grocery bags, bread bags, dry-cleaning bags, produce bags, and case-pack overwrap are the films that the WRAP system actually handles. Anything with foil, zippers, or mixed layers should not go in the drop-off bin.
3. Do not put flexible packaging in your curbside bin. In most municipal systems, composite packaging is treated as contamination that reduces the value of the entire load.

At the community and policy level, you can get involved:

1. Support packaging EPR in your state. Seven states have laws; a dozen more have active bills. The programs work only when constituents push, and they push when the programs pass.
2. Ask brands directly. Eco-modulated EPR fees move producers toward better design only if producers perceive consumer pressure alongside the fee. Social-media and direct-contact campaigns targeting specific CPG brands have moved packaging decisions before and will again.
3. Be skeptical of “chemical recycling” claims. When a brand points to a pyrolysis partnership as evidence of circular packaging, ask which facility, what output, and at what scale relative to the package volume the brand puts into the market.

The post The Chip Bag Problem: America’s Least Recycled Material Is Also Its Fastest-Growing appeared first on Earth911.

Washington claims vessel was violating its blockade of Iranian ports and failed to comply with instructions

The Indian government has voiced a “strong protest” after three Indian seafarers were killed in US military strikes against oil tankers travelling through the strait of Hormuz.

US Central Command confirmed that its aircraft had fired two Hellfire missiles at the engine room of the MT Settebello as it sailed through the Gulf of Oman on Wednesday.

Pull the sheets back from the numbers and the American mattress starts to look less like a product and more like a disposal problem. The United States throws out an estimated 18.2 million mattresses a year — roughly 50,000 every day — and only about 19% of them are recycled. The rest, more than four out of five beds, are landfilled or incinerated.

A mattress is one of the largest, bulkiest, and most expensive things you own, and almost none of it has to be wasted. Recyclers can recover 80 to 95% of a mattress — steel, foam, fiber, and wood that become new products. Yet the default path for most beds is a hole in the ground, and that default costs the typical household twice: once to buy the bed, and again to get rid of it. Most mattresses are built to last seven to ten years, so a single household will buy and discard several over a lifetime. The bed itself is the obvious expense: a new queen mattress averages around $1,500, and even budget models start near $400.

The hidden cost shows up at the curb. Getting rid of an old mattress averages about $100 and runs from $40 to $200 or more depending on how you do it. Junk-hauling services typically charge $80 to $250. Municipal bulk pickup is often free but can mean a two- to eight-week wait, and many landfills tack on a $20 to $40 bulky-item fee. For a household replacing a bed every several years, disposal alone quietly adds up.

Why the landfill is the worst place for it

Mattresses are built to resist compression, which makes them miserable landfill tenants. Each one can take up as much as 23 cubic feet of space even after compacting, and their steel springs tangle and damage the heavy equipment that operators use to manage the waste. Multiply that by tens of thousands a day and mattresses become a stubborn drain on landfill capacity.

The waste is also material that holds real value. A typical mattress contains roughly 25 pounds of steel and 9 pounds of cotton, plus foam and wood. Across its programs, the Mattress Recycling Council reports keeping more than 555 million pounds of steel, foam, fiber, and wood out of landfills by recycling over 14 million mattresses. Buried beds throw all of that away.

A recycling system exists, but it’s uneven

Where you live largely decides whether recycling is even an option. Four states — California, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Oregon, whose program began January 1, 2025 — run extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs. A small fee on every new mattress funds free drop-off through the industry’s Bye Bye Mattress program. The access is meaningful: in 2024, 98.4% of California residents lived within 15 miles of a collection site.

Once a mattress is dismantled, up to 75% of its materials become new products. The foam and fiber go into carpet padding, springs are melted down as scrap steel, and box-spring wood is chipped into mulch or biomass fuel. Outside the four EPR states, though, recycling depends on a patchwork of private facilities, and most households still pay to haul a bed away.

What you can do

• Recycle it where you can. In California, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Oregon, drop-off is free through byebyemattress.com. Everywhere else, search by ZIP Code on Earth911’s recycling locator to find the nearest facility, if one is available.
• Donate a bed that still has life. Charities, shelters, and reuse organizations accept clean, structurally sound mattresses. Reuse beats recycling because it skips the dismantling step entirely.
• Extend the lifespan you already paid for. A protector, a supportive foundation, and regular rotation can push a quality mattress toward the long end of its seven-to-ten-year range, cutting both cost and waste.
• Ask the retailer about takeback before you buy. Many sellers will haul away your old mattress on delivery, sometimes routing it to a recycler. Confirm where it actually goes.
• Back producer-responsibility laws. EPR programs are the single biggest reason recycling is free and accessible in some states and not others. Their expansion is what moves the national recycling rate above 19%.

The post 18.2 Million Mattresses Disposed a Year, and Most of Them Get Buried appeared first on Earth911.

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

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

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

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Interview Transcript

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

From 1980 through 2024, the United States averaged 9 weather and climate disasters per year, each causing at least $1 billion in damage. Over the most recent five years, that average jumped to 23. The country is not facing the same weather it built its infrastructure to handle.

A new National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, released May 19, 2026, argues that the way to absorb the coming climate shocks is to stop treating energy and water as separate research problems. The report was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy to guide a proposed Regional Energy–Water Technology Pilot program and makes the case that severe weather, aging infrastructure, electrification, and the explosive growth of data centers have pushed the two systems to a point where failures in one cascade into the other.

Coordinated research across the water and energy infrastructure, the researchers say, is essential for reliability.

How Severe Weather Couples Two Systems Into One Failure Mode

Energy depends on water, and water depends on energy. While this sounds simple, the report shows that the connection between them has become fragile in reality.

Power plants use water for cooling. Hydropower releases water to make electricity. Drinking water systems need electricity to pump, treat, and pressurize water. Wastewater plants also need electricity to prevent pollution in rivers and bays. If any of these links break under stress, the problem spreads to the other systems.

The committee points to Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 as a key example. When ERCOT’s grid failed in Texas, it did more than leave millions without power. It also shut down water treatment and distribution, resulting in boil-water notices for millions of Texans, and left some communities without safe water for days. The report says events like this are likely to happen more often.

The mechanisms behind that expectation are documented across the rest of the report:

• Thermal power vulnerability. From 2000 through 2015, 43 U.S. power plants reported shutdowns due to high water temperatures, most occurring during summer heat waves, drought, or both. Nuclear plants accounted for 25 of those shutdowns.
• Future capacity losses. Modeling cited in the report projects that future water availability and rising temperatures will decrease U.S. national thermoelectric power capacity by an average of 2.5 percent, with individual plant impacts ranging from a 31 percent decrease to a 6 percent increase, depending on location.
• Saltwater intrusion. In South Florida, sea-level rise combined with groundwater pumping is pushing saltwater into freshwater aquifers, forcing the use of energy-intensive reverse osmosis to produce drinking water. The climate impact becomes a permanent energy cost.
• Wildfire feedback loops. Wind-driven contact between vegetation and overhead power lines sparks wildfires. Utilities respond with public safety power shutoffs. The shutoffs strain water systems that need electricity to maintain pressure. Firefighting depletes reservoirs. After the fire, runoff carrying combustion byproducts and damaged pipe materials degrades water quality for months.
• Compound drought and heat. Drought and extreme heat now co-occur more often, simultaneously raising electricity demand for cooling and reducing water available for thermoelectric generation and hydropower. Each stress amplifies the other.

What the Report Recommends

The committee’s main recommendation is for the Department of Energy to create a group of regional pilot projects. Instead of single demonstrations, these would be coordinated investments to test how integrated energy–water solutions work in different parts of the country. For example, drought in the Southwest is very different from flooding in the Gulf Coast or grid failures during cold weather in the Plains.

Two recommendations focus on preparing for severe weather. Recommendation 2-3 says pilot projects should clearly consider the effects of possible extreme events. Recommendation 2-5 goes further by asking DOE to make proactive risk management at the energy–water intersection a main goal of the program. This includes investing in risk assessment, scenario planning, and early warning tools.

The committee is clear about what is at risk. Without careful scenario planning and investment in coordinated solutions, the report says that cascading failures will increasingly threaten economic stability, public health, environmental protection, and national security.

Why This Recommendation Is Vulnerable Right Now

The proposed pilot program falls under DOE’s Hydropower and Hydrokinetic Office, which was renamed from the Water Power Technologies Office in early 2026 and reorganized into the new Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation. The office’s framing under the current administration emphasizes affordability, reliability, and energy dominance rather than climate adaptation.

This approach brings both an opportunity and a risk. The opportunity is that an energy–water pilot program can be supported for its reliability and economic benefits, without needing to rely on climate-change arguments to gain political support. The risk is that the climate-related research priorities identified by the National Academies committee could be left out of the program if no one outside DOE advocates for them.

The NOAA billion-dollar disasters database, which provided key evidence for the report, was discontinued in May 2025. Climate Central now manages the dataset, but losing the federal version shows how fragile the data infrastructure has become.

It is difficult for research recommendations to carry their full weight when the supporting evidence is being defunded.

What You Can Do

Right now, public pressure on Congress and industry trade groups can influence whether the pilot program is funded, designed effectively, and focused on the climate-related risks described in the report. Here are some concrete actions, listed from most to least impactful:

Contact Your Members of Congress

• Find your representatives. Use house.gov to find your House member by ZIP code, and senate.gov for your two senators.
• Request three specific actions: full funding for the DOE Hydropower and Hydrokinetic Office’s regional energy–water pilot program in the next fiscal year; clear language in the appropriations report that directs the program to include the National Academies report’s Recommendations 2-3 and 2-5 on extreme-event risk; and restoration of federal funding for the NOAA billion-dollar disaster tracking and the climate and infrastructure data programs that researchers, utilities, and insurers rely on.
• Make your message local. Members of Congress pay more attention to issues that affect their constituents directly. Mention the energy and water utilities in your area, recent disasters your region has faced, and the local economic impacts. A letter specific to your district is more effective than a general petition.
• Target the relevant Congressional committees. If your member sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, or either chamber’s Appropriations Committee Energy and Water Development subcommittee, your contact carries extra weight.

Engage Industry Where It Already Has Standing

The report often points out that professional associations are some of the most trusted ways to move energy–water research from policy into real-world practice. Members of these groups can advocate for change from within.

• If you work in or with a water utility, ask whether your utility is engaging with the American Water Works Association’s Water 2050 initiative and its sustainability and resilience strategic priority. Urge utility leadership to file public comment in support of the DOE pilot program through AWWA’s federal advocacy channels.
• If you work in or with an electric utility, groups like the Edison Electric Institute, American Public Power Association, and National Rural Electric Cooperative Association all have federal advocacy programs. Supporting coordinated energy–water research matches their members’ interests in reliability and stable rates, especially as data centers increase demand.
• If you are a utility customer, remember that public utility commissions and city councils decide water and electric rates and approve investments in resilience. Speaking up at resource planning hearings is one of the few times residents can directly influence how utilities prepare for severe weather. Support the Research and Data Infrastructure
• Defend the data. Climate Central’s takeover of the billion-dollar disasters database is useful but does not substitute for the federal data infrastructure that utilities, insurers, and grid operators depend on. Write to your representatives in support of restoring NOAA’s climate and weather data programs in the next appropriations cycle.
• Use and reference the report. The National Academies report is free to download. If you work in planning, journalism, policy, or research, its approach to viewing energy-sheds alongside watersheds offers a helpful perspective that can influence local decisions.
• Pay attention to your state’s utility regulators. State public utility commissions are now key places where decisions about resilience investments for extreme events are made. Their meetings are open to the public, their decisions depend on public comments, and they often do not get the attention they deserve considering the money they manage.

The National Academies committee chose its words carefully when talking about climate change. While the word climate appears often, the report focuses on risk, extreme events, changing conditions, and resilience in uncertain times. No matter what language is used in future funding debates, the facts remain: heat waves and droughts are happening more often and together, hurricanes are getting stronger faster, wildfires are starting earlier and burning larger, and the country’s energy and water infrastructure was built for a climate that is now gone.

The report is valuable because it goes beyond just describing the problem. It offers a specific federal solution: a regional pilot program at DOE that can help close the gap. Whether this program is created as the committee intended will partly depend on how many people push for it.

The post Energy and Water Need to Be Researched Together: Contact Your Representatives appeared first on Earth911.

Travel back in time to hear the origin story of Algenesis, which started as two companies in one, a biotechnology innovator and footwear maker. Today, the company is a leading maker of bio-based plastics. In 2023, Algenesis had just begun making a new, sustainable material and found a clever way to prove its utility to get big companies to embrace it. Join the conversation hear why a shoe company was the best a practical application to prove the value of a plant-based, compostable bioplastic foam. Stephen Mayfield, a professor of Biology at UC San Diego and director of the California Center for Algae Biotechnology, invented Soleic, an algae-based rubbery foam material that can be used in footwear, surfboards, and other products in the place of petroleum-based polyurethane foam. He launched Algenesis, a biotechnology-based materials science company to commercialize Soleic.

Note: This article contains affiliate links that help fund our Recycling Directory, the most comprehensive in North America.

But shoe companies did not come running to use Soleic, which biodegrades completely in sea water and compost piles. Along with Algenisis president Tom Cooke, a footwear and apparel industry veteran who had worked for Reef and Vans, Steve launched Blueview Footwear, maker of the world’s first compostable shoe. Steve and Tom join me today to talk about the evolution of Algenesis and Blueview, as well as the many materials Soleic could replace across a variety of product categories. The companies have also developed compostable, plant-based fabrics and a bioplastic waterproofing technology that biodegrades into organic material in a home compost pile. You can learn more about Blueview Footwear at blueviewfootwear.com and its parent company Algenesis Materials at algenesismaterials.com.

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Editor’s Note: This podcast originally aired on February 20, 2023.

The post Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: Algenesis & Blueview Launch the Algae-Based Polyurethane Industry appeared first on Earth911.

Ivan Rogers, Britain’s EU ambassador from 2013 to 2017, says party’s ideas did not ‘remotely measure up’ to challenge

• UK politics live – latest updates

Labour arrived in power with no big idea on the future relationship with the EU, a former British ambassador to Brussels has said.

Ivan Rogers, Britain’s EU ambassador from 2013 to 2017, said Labour presented “a ragbag of issues” on the EU in its manifesto, which didn’t “remotely measure up to the challenge of the times” and would “make no measurable difference to the UK macroeconomy”.

This blog has now closed – our coverage of this crisis in the Middle East continues here

If the US genuinely wants a deal it will have to engage with Iranian demands on sanctions relief, says Danny Citrinowicz, the former head of the Iran branch of Israeli military intelligence.

Today’s exchange of strikes shows how easily both Iran and the US can slide towards another round of escalation, says Citrinowicz, who is now a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council.

If Washington is unwilling to accept that reality, it should recognize the likely alternative: continued confrontations with Iran that could eventually spiral beyond anyone’s control and lead to military conflict under less favorable conditions.

Even a limited military campaign designed to weaken Iran would not fundamentally alter Tehran’s negotiating position. It has not happened in the past, and there is little reason to believe it would happen now. Iran emerges from the latest exchange of blows convinced that it can absorb pressure and respond to attacks.”

Legal and moral responsibility of all countries in the region (especially those located along the southern shores of the Persian Gulf) to prevent the US military and Israel from using their territory or facilities to plan, organise, execute, or support hostile actions against Iran.

Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

The number of peer-reviewed scientific studies authored by scientists at the EPA has declined since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second administration, according to a new analysis.

The analysis was published by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a nonprofit organization that advocates for public employees in the natural resource and environmental professions. The report tracks the number of peer-reviewed scientific studies authored by EPA scientists since 1977. 

According to PEER’s analysis, 61 peer-reviewed publications by EPA scientists have been published so far this year, putting the agency on track to publish 183 articles by the end of 2026. That would be 67% of the number of articles published the previous year and 54% of the number of articles published in 2024.

“These numbers represent a diminution of scientific contributions from the fewer, remaining EPA scientists,” Kyla Bennett, a science policy director at PEER and a former EPA attorney, said in a statement. “The net result is that the scientific contribution of EPA to a greater understanding of what affects human health and the environment will be diminished.”

Peer-reviewed publications can take years to review and publish, meaning the work for a publication may have occurred during a previous administration. But the decline in publications may indicate a shift away from long-term basic research at the agency, according to PEER. 

Since Trump took office, hundreds of scientists have been terminated from the EPA or have chosen to resign, and scientists working within at least one of its research office have been told to pause efforts to publish research, representing “millions of dollars of research, potentially, that’s now being stopped,” one EPA employee told The Washington Post anonymously.

In February, the EPA took final steps to eliminate the Office of Research and Development, the arm of the agency responsible for conducting research. In its place, Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that a new office, called the Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions, would be formed but would not operate as a separate division. 

Six EPA scientists who signed an open letter expressing frustration about changes to the agency, including the elimination of the Office of Research and Development, were terminated and have filed claims with the federal government arguing that their terminations were illegal retaliation.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org.

Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

A wave of US strikes represents the gravest test yet of the fragile truce. Here’s what happened, what officials are saying and whether the deal can survive

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The US has launched strikes across southern Iran for a second consecutive day. Although there have been several breaches since a ceasefire was agreed between the two sides in April, the attacks this week – launched after the downing of a US helicopter over the strait of Hormuz – represent the most serious and extensive breakdown of the truce to date.

The US president, Donald Trump, has raised the prospect of further attacks, while his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has told reporters if strikes “have to happen [Friday] night, they will be strong and they will be clear”.