Articles by Grist staff

Spy-ghetti

Ancona, Italy, announced yesterday that it will pay $70,000 for satellite photographs to help it pinpoint the exact location of illegal toxic waste dumps in the city. Italy’s Environment Ministry says at least 152,000 tons of illegal refuse, much of it toxic, are dumped in the nation each year, primarily by organized gangs dubbed the […]

No More Genetically Modified Haggis

A British law requiring genetically modified foods to be labeled as such — in restaurants and bakeries as well as supermarkets — has caused manufacturers, retailers, and restaurant chains to make a mad dash to rid their goods of GM ingredients. But the law is also causing a fair amount of confusion, because different companies […]

Dirt Poor

Some 60 percent of the hillside areas in Central America and the Andean region of South America show signs of serious soil erosion, according to a new report by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), based in Cali, Colombia. Tropical hillsides, which comprise 9 percent of the world’s landmass, lose 13 billion tons of […]

Platforms, Shoo

Oil companies are looking to save millions of dollars in costs by leaving oil platform towers in place in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast to serve as artificial reefs instead of paying to remove them, as required under state and federal law. California state Sen. Dede Alpert (D) is sponsoring a bill that […]