Articles by Grist staff

Turtle Wane

Having depleted their own nation’s once-plentiful turtle populations, Chinese buyers are now offering top dollar for turtles from the southern U.S. In the last three years, there’s been a dramatic upswing in the number of turtles exported to China, where the animals’ meat is considered a delicacy and their shells are ground up to make […]

Too Cool, from School

Pennsylvania State University has undertaken a massive new recycling program — not for paper or plastics or food waste, but for the mammoth piles of stuff that students leave behind at the end of every school year, from sneakers to TVs to sofas. The end-of-term junk problem grew into a major headache on U.S. campuses […]

Swiss Miss

In a closely watched referendum, Swiss citizens voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to keep nuclear power going strong in the country. Although Switzerland has abundant sources of hydroelectric power, voters rejected two initiatives on the ballot that would have phased out the nation’s five nuclear power plants over the coming decades. Philippe de Rougemont, representative for […]

A Shore Thing

Controversy is bubbling along the East Coast of the U.S. as a handful of companies press forward with plans to build offshore wind turbines — 858 off the Maryland shore, 221 off Virginia, and 130 off Cape Cod, Mass. There are now some 15,000 wind turbines on U.S. land, providing clean, renewable power and decreasing […]