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That long-promised executive order rolling back Obama’s environmental regulations is on its way.

by LenJoywotte Posted on March 27, 2017

If you’re a typical American, you probably throw away too many clothes. But the companies behind those clothes have their own disposal problem, too. When a coat has a busted zipper or a truckload of dresses doesn’t sell, customers and retailers return the items — and those returns often end up in a landfill, contributing to the 14 million tons of textiles Americans toss out each year.

If Nicole Bassett has her way, that’s going to change. Bassett cofounded the Renewal Workshop, a tiny company with a giant goal: create a circular economy for the apparel industry (in other words, find a way to reuse perfectly good stuff).

A native of British Columbia who has worked on sustainability initiatives at companies like Patagonia and prAna, Bassett has secured a factory, five partner brands, and a hardy staff of eight. Her startup cleans and fixes clothes that have been returned to partners, then sells the like-new items on the Renewal Workshop website. Some companies have similar programs for their own products, but the Renewal Workshop is “trying to find a solution that works for the whole industry,” says Bassett.

With her outfit growing quickly, she wears every hat — with one exception. “You do not want me fixing a product,” she says with a laugh. “As soon as it involves a sewing machine, I run away.”

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

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That long-promised executive order rolling back Obama’s environmental regulations is on its way.

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6 Ways to Make Your Fridge Plastic Free

by AmeeCoventry444 Posted on March 27, 2017

In 2010,Scientific Americanconcluded The amount of plastic manufactured in the first 10 years of this century will approach the total produced in the entire last century. The data came from areportthat pointed out the many dangers this material poses to the planet and humans alike.

By cutting down and eventually eliminating the use of throw-away plastics from our food routines, we can help reduce these dangers. It will also help reduce our dependence on pre-packaged, processed foods, and make us more in tune with what we have in our refrigerators. That way, we can cut down on wasted food, which is a huge problem in a country where its estimated that as much as40 percent of the food supply is thrown away.

America has fallen in love with our refrigerators. Weve become so dependent on them that we put everything in there, and this leads to over-crowding, resulting in a less efficient refrigerator and food waste. (If you cant see it, youll forget to eat it.) Modern refrigerators are well-engineered and packed with features that not only keep your food fresh, but prolong its life without the need for excess packaging. These include temperature-controlled doors, airtight crispers and herb storage systems. To get the most out of these fridges, its important to use the features correctly.

Food waste and over-dependence on plastic go hand-in-hand, and to help cut down on both you need to shop thoughtfully, store correctly and understand the needs of the food you eat. Here are six simple steps to take to help achieve a zero-waste and plastic free fridge.

Read more about the dangers of plastic

1. Dont keep produce in plastic bags

Those humidity-controlled drawers in your fridge, known as crispers, work very well when youuse them properly. As a bonus, they mean you dont need to store your produce in plastic bags to keep it fresh. Plastic can actually be the enemy of freshness in these finely-tuned climate-controlled areas of our fridges, as encasing certain produce in plastic encourages the production of ethylene gas that will cause food to spoil more quickly. Consider taking reusable produce bags with you to put your produce in when you shop. You can evenmake your own.

2. Use cloth instead of plastic wrap

Wrap leafy greens and other produce that needs to be contained while in the crisper in a clean kitchen towel or muslin cloth, lightly dampened for produce that needs to be kept moist. You can also buy drawstring muslinproduce bagsfor convenience.

3. Know what should and shouldnt be in the crisper

Some veggies dont like the crisper, unless you have an airtight one. Use a glass container with a lid for carrots, zucchini and cucumbers, which can suffer from limpness in a regular crisper. Celery and other leafy greens do best standing upright in a glass of water. Use your fridges adjustable shelving to create a space for storing your produce in this way when you can. Not only does it preserve it longer, but having it front and center in the fridge means youre more likely to reach for it when you need a snack.Heresa handy guide that goes through the best ways to store all fruits and vegetables, courtesy of the Ecology Center in Berkley, CA.

4. Dont store everything in the fridge

A crowded fridge results in food getting overlooked and eventually spoiling. Below are some other foods you dont need to store in the fridge.

Bread, butter and most root vegetables:Store these in cool, dark places, such as the bottom of a pantry. Bread does best wrapped in a cloth bag and stored on the counter in a bread bin. If you arent going to use it right away, store it in the freezer, not the fridge. Butter keeps well on the counter too when stored in a ceramic butter keeper.
Firm fruit:Fruit stores best in a bowl on the counter. Plus, because its visible and accessible, youre more likely to eat it.
Leafy veg:Vegetables like chard and beet leaves do well in a glass jar with a bit of water out on the counter. Plus, they look nice! The same applies to herbs such as parsley and basil.

5. Use glass containers

Store leftover and pre-prepared or chopped food in glass containers, such as those made by Pyrex. Stainless steel is an option, but glass means you can see whats in it, meaning youre more likely to eat it and its less likely to be wasted. Plus, you can put a glass container right into the oven ormicrowave. You can also just put another plate over the top of a half-eaten meal and put it straight in the fridge, pretty much eliminating the need for plastic wrap in your home. Alternatively, you can use reusable silicon lids that mold themselves to a multitude of containers.

6. Dont forget the freezer

Not just for TV dinners packed in too much plastic, the freezer is your best friend when it comes to prolonging the life of fresh foods, including produce, bread or cooked grains such as pasta and rice. Dont even think about stocking up on gallon freezer bags! Glass containers are excellent in the freezer. Just be sure to choose thick glass, such as Pyrex or Mason jars, and allow a little extra room in the container for food to expand, which it will do when frozen. (You dont want to end up with broken glass in your freezer!)

Read about 5 places plastic is hiding in your home

Start collecting glass jars, the type pasta sauce and jelly come in, and use them for leftovers or chopped-up produce. Just fill them up and pop them in the freezer until youre ready to use them, when they can go straight in themicrowaveto defrost. If youre not convinced about glass, reusable heavy-duty plastic containers, such as those made by Rubbermaid and Tupperware, will last a long time and generally avoid staining and cracking that occur in more flimsy plastic containers.

Next time youre shopping at the grocery store, keep these concepts in mind. Steer clear of food in plastic containers. Instead, look for food in glass jars and cloth bags that you can reuse. Take reusable bags to the store, not only for the checkout counter, but also for the produce department, where you should avoid pre-packed produce. Also, dont walk past the bulk item section. Buying goods in bulk not only saves money, but significantly reduces packaging waste, especially if you bring along reusable cloth bags.

Written by Jennifer Tuohy. Reposted with permission fromNaturally Savvy.

Photo Credit: Sarnil Prasad/Flickr

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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6 Ways to Make Your Fridge Plastic Free

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Major TV networks spent just 50 minutes on climate change — combined — last year.

by LarhondCraft Posted on March 23, 2017

Nanette Barragán is used to facing off against polluters. Elected in 2013 to the city council of Hermosa Beach, California, she took on E&B Natural Resources, an oil and gas company looking to drill wells on the beach. Barragán, an attorney before going into politics, learned of the potential project and began campaigning for residents to vote against it. The project was eventually squashed. In November, she won a congressional seat in California’s 44th district.

To Barragán, making sure President Trump’s environmental rollbacks don’t affect communities is a matter of life or death. The district she represents, the same in which she grew up, encompasses heavily polluted parts of Los Angeles County — areas crisscrossed with freeways and dotted with oil and gas wells. Barragan says she grew up close to a major highway and suffered from allergies. “I now go back and wonder if it was related to living that close,” she says.

Exide Technologies, a battery manufacturer that has polluted parts of southeast Los Angeles County with arsenic, lead, and other chemicals for years, sits just outside her district’s borders. Barragán’s district is also 69 percent Latino and 15 percent black. She has become acutely aware of the environmental injustices of the pollution plaguing the region. “People who are suffering are in communities of color,” she says.

Now in the nation’s capital, Barragán is chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s newly formed environmental task force and a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, which considers legislation on topics like energy and public lands and is chaired by climate denier Rob Bishop, a Utah Republican. She knows the next four years will be tough but says she’s up for the challenge. “I think it’s going to be, I hate to say it, a lot of defense.”

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

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Major TV networks spent just 50 minutes on climate change — combined — last year.

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The Trump administration is about to officially OK the Keystone XL pipeline.

by AnthonySons0985 Posted on March 23, 2017

Nanette Barragán is used to facing off against polluters. Elected in 2013 to the city council of Hermosa Beach, California, she took on E&B Natural Resources, an oil and gas company looking to drill wells on the beach. Barragán, an attorney before going into politics, learned of the potential project and began campaigning for residents to vote against it. The project was eventually squashed. In November, she won a congressional seat in California’s 44th district.

To Barragán, making sure President Trump’s environmental rollbacks don’t affect communities is a matter of life or death. The district she represents, the same in which she grew up, encompasses heavily polluted parts of Los Angeles County — areas crisscrossed with freeways and dotted with oil and gas wells. Barragan says she grew up close to a major highway and suffered from allergies. “I now go back and wonder if it was related to living that close,” she says.

Exide Technologies, a battery manufacturer that has polluted parts of southeast Los Angeles County with arsenic, lead, and other chemicals for years, sits just outside her district’s borders. Barragán’s district is also 69 percent Latino and 15 percent black. She has become acutely aware of the environmental injustices of the pollution plaguing the region. “People who are suffering are in communities of color,” she says.

Now in the nation’s capital, Barragán is chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s newly formed environmental task force and a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, which considers legislation on topics like energy and public lands and is chaired by climate denier Rob Bishop, a Utah Republican. She knows the next four years will be tough but says she’s up for the challenge. “I think it’s going to be, I hate to say it, a lot of defense.”

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

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The Trump administration is about to officially OK the Keystone XL pipeline.

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Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee Has Little in Common With Most Americans

by AlbertiGoin Posted on March 22, 2017

Mother Jones

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One of the main jobs of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee this week has been to deflect attacks on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch by Democrats, who are trying to paint him as a tool of corporations and a foe of the little guy. To that end, Republicans have tried both to humanize the federal judge and to highlight the parts of his background that might make him more relatable to the average American. They’ve got him talking about the Denver rodeo and mutton bustin’ and quoting David Foster Wallace.

But those humanizing efforts are falling a bit flat. That’s largely because when it comes to demonstrating all that he has in common with the regular folks who might come before the court, Gorsuch is his own worst enemy. A graduate of Georgetown Prep, Columbia University, Harvard Law School, and Oxford, Gorsuch is the son of Ronald Reagan’s Environmental Protection Agency chief and spent most of his formative years inside the Beltway, including a stint as a clerk on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. His nomination to the 10th Circuit Court was championed by the secretive billionaire Phillip Anschutz, his former client, and Gorsuch co-owns a Colorado mountain cabin with two of Anschutz’s top deputies.

On Tuesday night, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) asked Gorsuch about how he “liked to get his hands dirty.” If Flake was hoping to reveal a nominee who subscribes to Family Handyman and loves power tools, he was disappointed. The judge responded by reminding the committee how much he loves to ski. (Gorsuch was on the slopes when he learned about the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, whose seat he’s been nominated to fill.) “I always say the family that skis together stays together,” Gorsuch had said earlier in the hearing. Gorsuch told Flake that his daughters were “ferocious double-black-diamond skiers,” and at that very moment, one of them was doing some backcountry skiing near Telluride.

The exchange was unlikely to help most Americans relate to the judge. Today, skiing is largely a sport of the wealthy. A one-day lift ticket at Winter Park, the Colorado resort where Gorsuch said he liked to go, costs $144. A single day of skiing for a family of four could cost nearly $600, not including all the gear and lunch at the lodge. And teaching kids to ski so they can become “ferocious double-black-diamond skiers” is an enormous investment. A single day in the Winter Park ski school will set you back $189 for one child, not including equipment rentals. For most of the country, even with discounts for locals, those costs put skiing largely out of reach.

Earlier in the hearing, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) had asked Gorsuch about his experience in politics. “Are you a lawmaker?” Lee asked. “Have you ever held a position as a state legislator? Have you ever held a position as a member of Congress?” Gorsuch responded with a chuckle, “I’ve served on my kid’s school board.”

The following day, Flake asked Gorsuch about his civic involvement outside of the court, mentioning his school board service. “Boy, that I found taxing, and loved every minute of it,” Gorsuch said. Flake nodded appreciatively, telling Gorsuch, “That typifies the West. People get along. They have to. On a school board there’s no passing the buck there. You’ve gotta make decisions. Local government is like that.”

What Flake seemed to have missed, though, is that Gorsuch never served on a public school board. He was on the board of the Boulder Country Day School, a small private school with tuition that runs from $15,000 to $20,000 a year. That’s a big difference from serving on a public, elected school board just about anywhere in the country.

In fact, Gorsuch is among the most privileged individuals to be nominated to the Supreme Court in recent memory. Justice Clarence Thomas grew up poor in Pinpoint, Georgia, speaking Gullah. His idea of a good time is camping in a Walmart parking lot in his RV en route to a NASCAR race. Sonia Sotomayor hails from a Puerto Rican family and grew up with a single mom in a South Bronx tenement. Samuel Alito is a Jersey boy, the son of Italian immigrant teachers, who graduated from a public high school. At first glance, Gorsuch’s background somewhat resembles that of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., who likewise comes from a tony private-school background—except that Roberts worked summers in a steel mill to pay his way through Harvard.

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Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee Has Little in Common With Most Americans

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Remote Control Hummingbirds!

by TwylaDutton Posted on March 20, 2017

Mother Jones

It tuns out that one of features of my new camera is the ability to control it remotely with my cell phone. If you have even a gram of nerd blood in you, this should make you insanely jealous.1 It’s the coolest thing ever.

And yet, as cool as it is, it still left me twiddling my neurons trying to figure out what I could do with it. One possibility was situations where I need to minimize camera shake. Put the camera on a tripod and then snap the shutter remotely without actually touching anything. But that would be just another example of using a thousand dollars worth of technology to do what a ten-dollar cable release can do. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Then Marian suggested I could set up the camera by our hummingbird feeder and wait for hummingbirds to fly in. So I did. Here’s what the setup looks like:

Then I went into the living room and watched Roger Federer play Stan Wawrinka at Indian Wells. Every time a bird showed up on my camera, I held down the remote shutter button and shot off a few dozen pictures.

Which did me precious little good. Damn, those little buggers are fast. Even with the shutter speed allegedly set at 1/2000th of a second, the pictures were blurry. Also out of focus most of the time, which was a combination of my fault and the camera’s fault. Still, live and learn. Here are the two best shots I got:

The top one is a male Anna’s hummingbird. The bottom one is, I suppose, a female Anna’s hummingbird. The bird folks can enlighten us in comments.

Anyway, I’ll have to try this again. It’s certainly a way of getting some good nature shots without sitting on my hump for hours on end in a muddy patch of dirt. Then again, since the WiFi range for the camera is about ten feet or so, maybe it just means I get a little better selection of where to sit on my hump for hours on end. I’ll have to think of some way to try this with the cats.

1Unless you already have a camera that can do this.

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Remote Control Hummingbirds!

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Think you’ve had it rough this past year? You should hear what the Great Barrier Reef is dealing with.

by chestionareautodrpciv1 Posted on March 16, 2017

According to the cover article in today’s issue of the journal Nature, the iconic reef off the coast of Australia suffered unprecedented coral die-off after last year’s record-breaking bleaching event. Now, as the Southern Hemisphere hits late summer temperatures, central and southern sections of the reef — areas which avoided the worst of last year’s bleaching — are in trouble.

“We didn’t expect to see this level of destruction to the Great Barrier Reef for another 30 years,” coral researcher Terry Hughes told the New York Times. Hughes led the team that conducted aerial surveys to document the bleaching last year, as well as subsequent surveys to assess just how much of that bleaching turned into dying.

Bleached corals don’t always turn into dead corals — some are able to recover when temperatures drop. Er, if temperatures drop. If water temperatures stay high and corals stay bleached, they will eventually starve to death. Without coral building reefs, whole ecosystems may disappear, along with the food, tourism, and jobs they support.

Hughes and his coauthors found that even corals in pristine, protected water were likely to be suffering from heat stress, meaning the only thing left to do to protect corals is, you know, address climate change.

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Think you’ve had it rough this past year? You should hear what the Great Barrier Reef is dealing with.

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A Mini Version of Trump Is About to Take Over the USDA

by ClayLafountain Posted on March 15, 2017

Mother Jones

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Back in 2002, a racially divisive fertilizer and trucking magnate shocked the political world by winning Georgia’s governorship, after being down in the polls the entire campaign. As governor, Sonny Perdue refused to divest himself of his companies, declaring, “I am a small business owner, I’m in the agri-business … That’s about as blind a trust as you can get. We trust in the Lord for rain and many other things.” (Hat tip, Politico.)

Perhaps savoring the similarities with himself, President Trump tapped Perdue as his pick for secretary of the US Department of Agriculture way back in January, promising “big results for all Americans who earn their living off the land.” The nomination promptly languished for six weeks, with no date set for Senate confirmation hearings amid complaints of unreturned calls to the White House from sources close to Perdue. On Friday, Perdue’s nomination took a major step forward when the former governor filed ethics papers required by the Senate.

His Public Financial Disclosure Report reveals a Trumpian tangle (though on a much smaller scale) of business interests and obligations, including three Georgia-based agribusiness and berths on the boards of directors of two agribusiness trade groups. In other words, Trump plucked his agriculture secretary from the very industry the USDA exists to regulate. Unlike the president—and himself, during his time as Georgia governor—Perdue (no relation to the Maryland chicken family) pledged to place the businesses in a blind trust (legal, not theological) and step down from the boards.

While the existence of Perdue’s fertilizer, trucking, and grain-trading firms were already well-known, his presence on those two trade-group boards has drawn little attention. Both groups will presumably be thrilled to see one of their own to take the USDA helm.

The National Grain and Feed Association represents the nexus of industries around livestock feed—grain-trading firms, meat companies, and seed/pesticide purveyors. Perdue sat on its board alongside execs from agribiz giants Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, and Dreyfus. The group’s member list reads like a Big Ag version of the Yellow Pages—it includes meat heavyweights Tyson and JB; seed/pesticide titans Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer Cropscience, Dow, and DuPont; and feed giants like Purina Animal Nutrition.

As for the Georgia Agribusiness Council, Perdue serves as the board of directors’ secretary. The council’s “star sponsors” include Bayer Cropscience, Syngenta, Coca-Cola, and Croplife America, the pesticide industry trade group.

As Politico notes, Perdue did plenty of favors for friends while occupying Georgia’s governor’s mansion. The journal found “more than a dozen instances when he gave positions to business associates and campaign donors, and other occasions when he rewarded his state staff with opportunities in his agriculture and shipping empire after he left office.” Even as Perdue awaits confirmation, one of his Georgia associates is already waiting for him in Trump’s USDA, Politico reports: “Heidi Green, a partner of Perdue’s shipping business who also worked for him in Georgia state government, landed a political appointment as senior adviser at USDA in January. She’s now being mentioned as a likely candidate to serve as his chief of staff.”

Meanwhile, a recent report from Environmental Working Group characterized Perdue as “mired in ethical lapses, self-dealing and back-room deals that raise troubling questions about his fitness to run the department.” Two of the many examples cited by EWG—a $100,000 tax break gained Perdue through well-timed legislation; an appointment to a powerful post for his cousin and business partner, now the junior Senator from Georgia, David Perdue—I teased out in this January post.

EWG also shows that Perdue appointed execs from his fertilizer and grain-trading businesses to powerful state boards—again, without divesting himself of those businesses. Then there’s this:

While in office, Perdue failed to meet his own ethical standards by repeatedly taking gifts – including sports tickets and first-class flights— from registered lobbyists. Shortly after taking office, Perdue signed his first executive order, which prohibited any state official from accepting gifts worth more than $25 from lobbyists.

However, a query of lobbyist expenditures shows that Perdue received at least 53 gifts from registered lobbyists over the monetary limit – totaling more than $23,000–between 2006 and 2010, including a $2,400 flight to a NASCAR race. In 2003, the Office of the Inspector General – an office established by Perdue’s second executive order – investigated whether Perdue’s personal use of state helicopters was appropriate, ultimately leading the Office of the Attorney General to prohibit such uses.

Even so, Perdue doesn’t carry quite the baggage of some of Trump’s more outlandish cabinet picks, like Andy Puzder, who ultimately declined to face a Senate confirmation hearing for the labor department post. He’ll likely zoom through confirmation hearings in the Senate, and get a brisk slap on the back from his cousin and erstwhile business partner, Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.).

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A Mini Version of Trump Is About to Take Over the USDA

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Trump is sending Obama’s auto fuel economy standards back to the drawing board.

by Janette01B Posted on March 15, 2017

A self-described “anonymous environmental activist collective” spelled out “NO MORE TIGERS, NO MORE WOODS” in six-foot-high letters at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

“It’s a protest piece against Trump’s administration’s handling of our environmental policies,” one of the activists told a local ABC affiliate, using a voice disguiser. “He’s been very aggressive in gutting a lot of the policies that we’ve had in place for a very long time. We felt it necessary to stand up and go take action against him.”

Plus the activists don’t like golf courses. “Tearing up the golf course felt justified in many ways,” one activist told the Washington Post. “Repurposing what was once a beautiful stretch of land into a playground for the privileged is an environmental crime in its own right.”

The Washington Post article originally called the action a “daring act of defiance.” Though accurate, the description irritated Eric Trump, the president’s second-oldest son:

The Post then changed its story to say the group “pulled off an elaborate act of vandalism.”

No comment from Tiger Woods, who has golfed with Donald Trump and said he plays pretty well for an old guy.

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Trump is sending Obama’s auto fuel economy standards back to the drawing board.

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Native Americans marched on Washington for their rights — civil, treaty, and human.

by AngelinKelsey Posted on March 10, 2017

Mustafa Ali helped to start the EPA’s environmental justice office and its environmental equity office in the 1990s. For nearly 25 years, he advocated for poor and minority neighborhoods stricken by pollution. As a senior adviser and assistant associate administrator, Ali served under both Democratic and Republican presidents — but not under President Donald Trump.

His departure comes amid news that the Trump administration plans to scrap the agency’s environmental justice work. The administration’s proposed federal budget would slash the EPA’s $8 billion budget by a quarter and eliminate numerous programs, including Ali’s office.

The Office of Environmental Justice gives small grants to disadvantaged communities, a life-saving program that Trump’s budget proposal could soon make disappear.

Ali played a role in President Obama’s last major EPA initiative, the EJ 2020 action agenda, a four-year plan to tackle lead poisoning, air pollution, and other problems. He now joins Hip Hop Caucus, a civil rights nonprofit that nurtures grassroots activism through hip-hop music, as a senior vice president.

In his letter of resignation, Ali asked the agency’s new administrator, Scott Pruitt, to listen to poor and non-white people and “value their lives.” Let’s see if Pruitt listens.

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Native Americans marched on Washington for their rights — civil, treaty, and human.

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