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Lifestyles of the Rich, Famous, and Recycled

Having dispensed with the good news, we can now move on to the goofy news: Danny Seo, the young fashion guru who has been featured in Grist’s pages before as the Martha Stewart of the environmental movement, is packing up his New York life and moving to Los Angeles to position himself as an “environmental […]

Drain, Drain, Go Away

Now, back to typically depressing fare: California’s Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board said yesterday that it would extend exemptions on pollution limits for farmers, meaning that pesticides, salts, and other pollutants will continue to drain from agricultural fields into the region’s watershed. The exemptions were set to expire on Dec. 31, a deadline […]

Washed Up

400 — loads of laundry washed by a typical U.S. household in one year1 35 billion — loads of laundry washed every year in the U.S.2 74 — percentage of U.S. households with washers and dryers3 7 — percentage of washing machines replaced by U.S. consumers each year3 81,000 — annual electricity consumption, in gigawatt […]

Drag Your Computer to the Recycle Bin

In an abrupt departure from past policy, high-tech giant Hewlett-Packard has announced that it will support California legislation requiring computer manufacturers to pay for safe disposal of electronic waste. In October, HP used its considerable clout as the world’s largest maker of personal computers to persuade Gov. Gray Davis (D) to veto an e-waste measure. […]

Delay O’ Fish

In welcome news for commercial fishing operations in New England, a federal judge has ordered an eight-month delay in implementing drastic cutbacks in fishing levels while scientists review federal estimates of the region’s fish population. In September, government scientists acknowledged that the accuracy of fish-count studies on which the original cutbacks were based might have […]

Changing Their Tuna

In other marine news, a new report released by the federal government has found that dolphin populations in the Pacific Ocean are failing to recover from years of tuna fishing, and that some 3,000 dolphins are still killed by tuna boats every year. The report, by the U.S. Commerce Department’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center, contradicts […]

Dodge Bawl

Looking to minimize your impact on the environment? Don’t buy a car — and especially don’t buy anything made by DaimlerChrysler. The U.S.-based automaker ranked dead last on a survey, released yesterday by the Union of Concerned Scientists, of pollution levels in vehicle fleets. The survey looked at the environmental implications of the six largest […]

Let’s Do the Time Warp Again

The first day of a three-day, Bush administration-sponsored conference on global climate change convened yesterday, attracting more than 1,200 scientists and environmentalists but yielding very few surprises. Senior administration officials attending the conference said both the causes and effects of global warming remain uncertain and the country should therefore be cautious about committing to solutions. […]

Americans’ Waste Lines Expanding

One mantra of the environmental movement in the U.S. has been “reduce, reuse, recycle,” but consumption patterns in the country reveal a nearly opposite trend: buy, use, discard. Disposable culture is on the rise across the country, and has been ever since single-use razors and disposable diapers hit the shelves in the 1960s. Now disposable […]

Caspian’s Unfriendly Ghost

The discovery of what may be one of the world’s largest oil fields under the Caspian Sea near Atyrau, Kazakhstan, has western oil companies excited, but environmentalists deeply concerned. The field, estimated to contain about 40 billion barrels of oil, 10 billion of them recoverable, is being developed by a consortium including British Gas, ExxonMobil, […]