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Green

The Tiny “Garbage Museum” Brings Recycling To Life In Nepal

Shyamanand Singh crafts sculptures from discarded paper, bottle caps and other materials. He’s opened a free museum in his house to inspire others.

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Green Ideas Society

Ratatouille Was A Documentary: A French Philosopher Dives Into The Paris Garbage Crisis

The ongoing strike of garbage collectors in France shows us why we try so hard to hide how much garbage we throw out. As trash piles up in the streets, philosopher Gaspard Koenig reminds us that it wouldn’t be so hard to recycle and compost more of it.

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Future Green Or Gone Society

Toxic Cities, Expendable Lives: The Waste Crisis In India And Beyond

Unless we question the socio-economic structures associated with the production of waste and waste management, we’ll never dig out of the waste crisis.

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blog

Can This Ingenious Catamaran Clean Away Ocean Plastic Pollution?

LÜBECK — The scourge of plastic litter in the oceans is measured in billions of floating tons of pollution, estimated to affect some 40% of the world’s waterways. But a solution to this massive environmental problem may be coming from a small shipyard in Northern Germany, where an ingeniously designed catamaran is being built to […]

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Geopolitics Green Or Gone

Waste In Brazil, Where Environmental Failure Meets Dire Poverty

Brazil has utterly failed to find an environmentally friendly response to waste disposal. The struggling economy makes change unlikely, meaning ever more garbage “pickers” making modest livings sifting through the dumps.

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Future Society

Smart Cities International: Vienna Data, Tahiti Tech, Berlin Bins

Here is a preview of our exclusive newsletter to keep up-to-date and stay inspired by Smart City innovations from around the world.

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Society

Garbage-Burning Plants And The Rise Of China’s NIMBY Wars

Woefully under-regulated and sometimes abjectly illegal, waste incineration plants across China are raising resident hackles and, worse, releasing unknown levels of toxins into the air.

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blog

Outrage In Colombia Over Dead Horse In Garbage Truck

It was just a month ago that public anger exploded in Colombia after reports of horses drawing tourist carriages being worked to death in the coastal city of Cartagena de Indias. Now, another bout of equine outrage is trending on social media sites after a picture surfaced of a dead horse left in a garbage […]

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Society

In India, From Ragpicker Girl To Woman Eco-Entrepreneur

PUNE — Every morning Rebecca Kedari pulls a cart through an upmarket neighborhood in this city of 3.3 million to collect household waste. Ten years ago Rebecca would not even been able to enter this area of Pune, in western India. “Before I had to go outside the city to look for dry waste and bring it back. The work conditions were bad and collecting the waste took me at least 6 hours,” she says. She now wears a local government identity card, has a health insurance plan, and is part of the KKPKP — a waste pickers’ union set […]

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Future

Has A 20-Year-Old Found A Cheap Way To Clean The Planet’s Oceans?

Dutch aerospace student Boyan Slat, 20, has an idea that could conceivably remove millions of tons of toxic trash from the world’s waters. It even has a revenue model. But will it work?

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Society

Naples, The Beauty And The Horror

Luigi De Magistris, a left-leaning former prosecutor, was the latest would-be savior for the troubled Italian city. But look around, things in Naples are worse than ever.

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Economy Society

In Peru, A Troubled City On Top Of The World Tries To Rise Out Of Purgatory

Once a simple gold-mining camp, La Rinconada is considered the world’s highest city. But its 30,000 inhabitants live amid ice melt and endless piles debris. Can Peru finally clean it up?

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Future

Massive Swirl Of Ocean Debris To Be Designated New State By UN

LA STAMPA (Italy) Worldcrunch PARIS – These are not the sorts of “islands” where you’d plan your next tropical vacation. Located in vast areas of the world’s Oceans, by some accounts comprising an area twice as big as Texas, they are home to neither human nor animal life. Instead these islands are instead simply monstrious […]

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Future

Will Plastic Bags Ever Disappear?

A technological marvel, the plastic bag has become a symbol of humankind’s ecological footprint. Laws and habits are decreasing their use, but the alternative is sometimes worse.

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Society

Paradise Lost – How Tahiti Is Turning Into An Open Garbage Dump

TUBUAI – For the past 30 years, local residents from the Austral Islands have been dumping their garbage just a few kilometers from the Tubuai airport, in the swamps. “When the hole starts to overflow, we pack it with machines, we fill the hole and dig a new one,” explains Therese, who owns a bed […]

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Society

The Dirtiest River In The World

JAKARTA – The color of the brackish water running down the drain across Pak Udis’ paddy field changes everyday: it goes from blue to green or red. One only needs to take a look around to understand why. A textile factory was built a few meters away from this Indonesian peasant’s parcel. Over the last […]

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