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Feed The Future

The Truth Behind India’s Hunger: Abundance Doesn’t Mean Food Security

Fixing food loss is key to ending hunger, protecting resources, and ensuring sustainability in India.

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Economy Ideas In The News Society

The “Right To Repair” That Could Fix Our Throwaway Economy

In 2022, 62 million tons of electronic devices ended up in the trash. This results in the loss of valuable resources, significant social and environmental impact, and the perpetuation of a linear production and consumption system based on waste.

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Food / Travel Green

Mezcal, The Trendy Spirit Has An Ugly Secret

As demand soars for the traditional spirit, so does the mountain of waste created in producing it. Producers see creative, sustainable solutions.

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Green Ideas

Meet The Brazilian Waste Pickers Working In Dumps That “Don’t Exist”

Despite being forbidden since 2010, rubbish dumps are still a common feature on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. It’s time to know the lives of those who scrape out a living there.

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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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Green Or Gone

Latin America Joins Global Race To Score ‘Zero Waste’

Activists in Colombia are working with public and private entities, offline and online, to reduce and recycle every ounce of solid waste produced.

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Green Or Gone

How Recycling Goes Down In The Heart Of Buenos Aires

A waste processing center in the Argentine capital turns almost half the city’s refuse into reusable materials such as compost, wood chips and plastic pellets.

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In The News

When Agribusiness Gives You Lemon Pulp, Make Biofuel

In Argentina, one of the world’s biggest citrus producers is recycling its farming waste as fuel and fertilizers.

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Green Or Gone Society

In Argentina, Recycling Household Trash Into Design Treasures

A cooperative that’s giving formerly jobless Argentines a second chance has evolved from a recycling enterprise into a flourishing sustainable-design business. Many of its partners could never have seen this coming when they lost their jobs back i

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Food / Travel Geopolitics Society

A Profit-Minded Quest For Reducing Food Waste

With half of the world’s food tossed out, how can we be less wasteful? For starters, looking for smart new ways to earn money by decreasing waste.

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Geopolitics Society

Why This Man Is Walking Across France To Collect Garbage

AIX-EN-PROVENCE — Over the past two days, Hervé Pighiera has picked up 118 cigarette butts, 60 cigarette packs, 69 plastic bottles and 7.75 kilos of non-classifiable garbage, including a little dollhouse armchair made of wicker and plastic. Pighiera is on a mission to clean roadsides. On July 12, this smiling fellow in a straw hat, […]

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Economy Society

Rio 2016: What A Shame That Brazil Is Hosting The Olympics

When Rio de Janeiro won its Olympic bid back in 2009, Brazil was hailed as a nation on the rise. Now, it is the wrong place at the wrong time to host the 2016 Summer Games.

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Ideas Society

Our Food … Is In The Trash

Despite huge amounts of food still being wasted every day in the world, initiatives in various countries demonstrate growing public awareness about this modern-day abomination.

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Future

How China Profits From Recycling The World’s Waste

BEIJING — The world now produces over four billion tons of waste every year. China buys some of it — mainly scrap metal, plastic and paper — to feed demand from factories and construction companies. Here on Dongzhimenwai, a street in downtown Beijing, people gather to sell their waste. Old ladies line up with carts of plastic bottles, stacks of newspapers and even bits of toys and metal kitchenware they’ve collected. The plastic bottles are melted down to make everything from acrylic clothing to electronics. Buyer Liu Aiguo explains what happens to this so-called trash once it’s in his hands. […]

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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 Society

Going Green: 10 Carbon-Neutral Projects Around The World

“It’s not easy being green.” — Kermit the Frog PARIS – For some of us, being green is a hard-to-quantify choice of using a reusable bag at the grocery storetaking or taking public transport. But for others, environmental friendliness is a hard calculation to reach carbon-neutral status. That means removing as much carbon dioxide from […]

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Society

Were Ancient Greeks The Original Recyclers?

A common archaeological theory holds that ancient Greeks threw their trash in the fields, which would explain the abundance of ceramic shards. But a dissenting narrative has emerged.

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Economy Society

Olympic Spending: What Sochi Didn’t Learn From Moscow And London Games

SOCHI – For those around the world watching the Olympic Games on television, the location of the event is not, in the end, what matters. The important thing is who is skating faster, spinning better and winning golds and silvers. And then, before we know it, they ski away – in just a couple of […]

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Society

Cairo’s Christian Ragmen, Unlikely Inventors Of Eco-Waste System

CAIRO — “Have you seen this? The streets are so filthy, it’s disgusting!” Suzie Greiss doesn’t even live in one of Cairo’s notoriously poor corners, but rather in the middle-class neighborhood of Heliopolis, where the head of Egypt’s Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE) says she can no longer stand the filth that […]

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Society

Trash Collection In Poland As A National Metaphor

Recycling is slow going in Poland, and you can see the results all of the streets and sidewalks. What does it all say about the Polish character?

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Future

Environmental Red Alert For The Volga, Europe’s Longest River

MOSCOW – The Volga River, the longest in Europe and one of Russia’s natural jewels, has not so much flowed for decades. When it’s not covered with ice, it fills with fish-killing microorganisms, and emits a putrid stench. Environmental organizations describe the situation in the Volga region in alarming terms, noting that the region is […]

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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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Society

Dumpster Diving Behind A French Bakery – The Freegan Movement Takes Off In France

LYON – Those familiar with the Freegan movement know that dumpster diving to find food to eat is nothing new. But organizing free food distributions to denounce food waste is a novel form of Freeganism – as practiced by the activists from the Gars Pilleurs organization founded by two young men from Lyon, east-central France. […]

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Eyes on the U.S.

A Leaking Nuclear Site In Washington State, And No One Seems To Care

WASHINGTON – Radioactive sludge has long been leaking from a nuclear site less than 10 kilometers from one of the West Coast’s biggest rivers, and no one seems to care. According to Tom Carpenter, director of environmentalist organization Hanford Challenge, this virtual media blackout should come as no surprise. The consequences of the leak will […]

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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

Cash In The Trash: Japanese Garbage Man Finds $120,000

JAPAN TODAY, NHK (Japan), AFP Worldcrunch HIROSHIMA – A worker at a waste disposal facility in Hiroshima in western Japan, has found more than 10 million yen (about $120,000) in cash in a pile of garbage. The money, whose origin has yet to be determined, was spotted by a monitor on a conveyor belt. Some […]

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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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