The 3 R's – reduce, reuse and recycle – all help to cut down on the amount of waste we throw away. They conserve natural resources, landfill space and energy. Plus, the three R's save land and money communities must use to dispose of waste in landfills. Siting a new landfill has become difficult and more expensive due to environmental regulations and public opposition...

The waste humans generate waste has been detrimental to our environment for quite some time now. Humans are generating too much trash and cannot deal with it in a sustainable way. Waste that is not biodegradable and cannot be properly be recycled is filling our oceans and landfills...

Much of the planet is swimming in discarded plastic, which is harming animal and possibly human health. Can it be cleaned up? Plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental issues, as rapidly increasing production of disposable plastic products overwhelms the world’s ability to deal with them. Plastic pollution is most visible in developing Asian and African nations, where garbage collection systems are often inefficient or nonexistent...

Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, cloud forests are dying, and wildlife is scrambling to keep pace. It has become clear that humans have caused most of the past century's warming by releasing heat-trapping gases as we power our modern lives. Called greenhouse gases, their levels are higher now than at any time in the last 800,000 years...

As the world seeks to slow the pace of climate change, preserve wildlife, and support billions of people, trees inevitably hold a major part of the answer. Yet the mass destruction of trees—deforestation—continues, sacrificing the long-term benefits of standing trees for short-term gain.

Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but they are disappearing at an alarming rate. Between 1990 and 2016, the world lost 502,000 square miles (1.3 million square kilometers) of forest...

Biodiversity loss refers to the decline or disappearance of biological diversity, understood as the variety of living things that inhabit the planet, its different levels of biological organisation and their respective genetic variability, as well as the natural patterns present in ecosystems. In mid-2019, the United Nations (UN), in collaboration with IPBES, presented an ambitious report on biodiversity warning that out of a total of eight million, one million species are in danger of extinction. Some researchers even dared to talk about the sixth mass extinction in the history of the planet...

Renewable energy is useful energy that is collected from renewable resources which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, including carbon neutral sources like sunlight, wind,rain,tides,waves, and geothermal heat. The term often also encompasses biomass as well, whose carbon neutral status is under debate.This type of energy source stands in contrast to fossil fuels which are being used far more quickly than they are being replenished...

E-waste is electronic products that are unwanted, not working, and nearing or at the end of their “useful life.” Computers, televisions, VCRs, stereos, copiers, and fax machines are everyday electronic products. The ongoing challenge of how best to dispose of used and unwanted electronics isn’t a new one and dates back at least to the 1970s. But a lot has changed since then, particularly the number of electronics being discarded today...