A product many have not even heard of is causing an apocalypse of sorts for the world’s orangutans.

In Indonesia and Malaysia, rainforests are being slashed and burned at an alarming rate to make way for a third world cash crop: palm oil.

Palm oil has become almost ubiquitous in household products; it is used in instant ramen dishes, shampoo and conditioner, makeup and skin care products, chocolate-hazelnut spreads and nearly half of all packaged goods at any given supermarket. Many manufacturers have turned to palm oil because it is so cheap—until one factors in the cost to both human health (it is horrible for your heart), and the irreplaceable rainforests both our global ecosystem and the native orangutans depend upon.


To date, over 90 percent of orangutan habitat has already been destroyed. Additionally, smoke and debris from the fires are causing further damage to our primate relatives.


“The problem with fire and smoke is absolutely dire,” said Lis Key, International Animal Rescue’s communications manager in a Takepart interview. “Wild orangutans and orangutans in centers like ours are badly affected by the smoke. Some suffer upper respiratory tract infections, which can even prove fatal. Some of the babies we’ve taken in recently have been suffering not only from dehydration and malnourishment through lack of food but also breathing problems from the polluted air.”


One must wonder if a lower price point is worth the suffering and even possible extinction of living beings.

Luckily, it is not game over for orangutans yet, and there are steps we can all take, right now: boycott products or companies that use non-sustainable palm oil, write to companies that make products you use with this ingredient and tell them you won’t support unsustainable palm oil, educate friends and family and click here. A different ending to this story may yet be possible.

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Mushroom-foam is as cheap as Styrofoam, requires no fossil fuel, and creates no plastic pollution, biodegrading in your garden in just a couple of weeks


Ikea is switching to a new mushroom-based, biodegradable alternative to polystyrene (Styrofoam) packaging for its furniture and home decor.

Known as Mycofoam, the product is made of agricultural waste products like corn or hemp husks, oat hulls or cotton burrs and mushroom spores.

The agricultural waste is molded into the desired shape and then seeded with mushroom spores, which begin to sprout mycelium, the vegetative part of fungi that forms a web of hairlike roots that typically hold soil together, but in this case hold the packaging together.

The mycelium threads spread rapidly throughout the material, digesting and binding it into a durable, shock-resistant foam.

When the foam reaches a desirable consistency, it is heated and dried to stop mycelium growth, so it can be used to cushion and protect everything from glass and ceramics to electronics and furniture.


Once the packaging has served its purpose it can be “tossed in a lake to feed fish” or into your compost pile to fertilize your garden, says the video below. In these moist environments, Mycofoam is completely biodegraded in just a couple of weeks.


Styrofoam on the other hand takes thousands of years to decompose and harms countless animals and other organisms that ingest it in the process.

Created from waste products, the material requires no fossil fuel, making it just as cheap (and probably cheaper to make in the future) as polystyrene.

Hopefully Ikea’s idea will spread and all Styrofoam packaging will be replaced with “mushroom-foam.”

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Trader Joe’s was one of the first chain grocery stores to begin selling organic food, but their products have not necessarily been eco-friendly. A vast amount of the produce that can be found at Trader Joe’s is needlessly covered in plastic, but that is about to change soon.


The company recently announced that they will be cutting down on their use of plastic, and reduce their consumption of plastic by roughly 4 million pounds each year. More than half of that plastic, 2.5 million pounds, is being cut from the produce department.

Now, many produce items that can be safely sold loose will not contain any packaging. This change will save the company a ton of money, and those savings are reportedly being noticed by customers as well.

At one Trader Joe’s location, a customer said that they found a single head of garlic for $.49, when before the same item was sold in packs of two for $1.39 before. For this item, the loss of packaging came with a 25% reduction in price, and customers say that this has happened all over the produce section.

There were some food items that just needed plastic to be kept fresh, although a statement from Trader Joe’s noted that they were seeking solutions for more eco-friendly packaging for these situations.

“The outcome of our test was not tolerable from a food-waste perspective, so we are in pursuit of alternatives. While we may not always arrive at the right solution the first time, we remain steadfast in our dedication to this important work,” the statement read.

The company also said that they will be phasing out the use of styrofoam trays and looking for a variety of different ways that they can cut down on waste in their stores.

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Trader Joe’s has been keeping their customers informed about the changes through their website and on their podcast, “Inside Trader Joe’s.”

In the press release, the company explained that:

A fundamental focus of sustainability is maintaining product integrity and preventing food waste. We strive to balance the key role packaging plays in this effort with the overall impact packaging has on the ecosystem, as we approach making any changes. We are also aware that the realistic opportunities for recycling materials, along with differing understandings of what is the “best choice” for sustainability, makes this work complex. While most of the plastic in our packaging has the highest recyclability acceptance rate in the U.S., reducing the amount of plastic packaging in our stores is another important focus of our sustainability.

Trader Joe’s has also taken some other measures recently, in addition to reducing packaging and no longer offering single-use plastic bags. The company has also promised to get rid of Bisphenol A, or BPA, from their packaging.

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A group of young Peruvians has launched a project called ‘Bio Plant’ in order to help the world use less plastic. They have created biodegradable dishes made of banana leaves to reduce environmental pollution caused by excessive disposal of plastic. Every banana leaf plate used instead of a plastic one is one less item polluting our planet!

Chuwa Plant
This innovative product can decompose within 2 months – it’s completely degraded naturally before the 60 days are up. Those commonly used plates and containers made of polystyrene (styrofoam) on the other hand take up to 500 years, causing untold amounts of damage to the flora and fauna of the oceans and wildlife on land.

Chuwa Plant
With the co-financing of the Innóvate Peru Program (through the Bio Challenge contest aimed at supporting the development of innovative solutions focused on the sustainable use of the resources of our biodiversity), they were able to design and manufacture specialized machines – a presser, a shipper, and a die cutter – for the production of the biodegradable dishes. With the new equipment, they are able to manufacture 50,000 dishes monthly.

Josué Soto, the leader of the project, explained how they are working directly with small producers in the Peruvian Amazon, who are provided with a fair price and technical training to take advantage of the losses of banana cultivation.

The Chuwa Plant group has also made these dishes with paper and cardboard cellulose – all of which (including the banana leaf plates) are disposable (single use), resistant to various temperatures, liquids and can be used with any type of food.

Josué Soto said that they do not need to cut down banana trees or pluck their leaves as they break off when pickers remove the clusters of bananas from the tree.

The plates are rectangular in shape, measuring 22 cm x 16 cm x 3 cm (height) and are not carcinogenic because they do not contain styrene, a petroleum derivative that is found in other types of containers.


Bio Plant plates have already been in use in traditional and patron celebrations in various regions of the country. The group plans to enter the natural restaurants and ecological wineries market with their product. “The approximate sale price of our dishes is 100 to 120 soles (US$29.64-35.56) for 100 dishes, depending on the thickness of the sheet, but over time it may be more accessible to all consumers,” said Soto in Spanish.

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Hempearth, the Canadian cannabis firm, has designed the world’s first plane made and powered by hemp – the non-psychoactive member of the cannabis family 10 times stronger than steel. Interestingly, everything from the seats, the wings, the plane walls and even the pillows are made from hemp. The plane, with a wingspan of 36 feet, can hold one pilot and four passengers. What’s more? It runs on 100% hemp oil!

Hemp is lighter than traditional aerospace materials (such as aluminium and fiberglass) and therefore requires a lot less fuel to reach a high altitude. Most importantly, hemp is non-toxic, sustainable, requires way less water and land to grow than cotton, and compared to steel or carbon fibre, has almost no environmental impact.


Hempearth CEO Derek Kesek says:

“This plane project is our first experiment with industrial hemp, and we plan to explore many other uses. Once we establish structural testing and information from this project, we will apply it to other forms of construction. This is the kind of future we all want here on Earth. The sky may not be the limit.”


Hempearth is also developing hemp composites in Montreal, which could replace all fiberglass in aviation and other industries — such as construction. It recently turned down Dupont as they “don’t and never will sign or work with fascist companies that are associated with military, The Rockefellers, The Rothchilds and or the Military Industrial Complex”.

“I build things organically and take it one thing at a time,” Kesek adds. “Richard Branson is my biggest inspiration because he is showing that it’s not business as usual any more: if you want something you go get it.”

When the first hemp plane is completed, its first flight is set to take place at The Wright Brother’s Memorial in Kitty Hawk North Carolina – the birthplace of aviation.

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Volunteer divers just pulled 3200 pounds of garbage off the ocean floor of Florida’s Deerfield Beach. Imagine if we had cleanup efforts like this all over the world!

Opossums attract and then kill thousands of ticks per acre, per week, making them one of our best allies in stopping the spread of Lyme disease, researchers say.


A study compared squirrels, mice and opossums, which all eat ticks, and found opossums were the most effective exterminators.

Ticks favor opossums twice as much as the other rodents, the researchers, from Syracuse University, found.

Fortunately, for humans, possums are also the most effective at killing the disease-carrying pests.

Opossums kill almost every tick that occupies them, the study found. A single opossum kills over 5500 ticks per week.

“Opossums are extraordinarily good groomers it turns out – we never would have thought that ahead of time – but they kill the vast majority – more than 95% percent of the ticks that try to feed on them,” disease ecologist Rick Ostfeld explained.

“So these opossums are walking around the forest floor, hoovering up ticks right and left, killing over 90% of these things, and so they are really protecting our health.”

Worldwide, more than 1.3 million people die each year of infectious diseases transmitted by a vector, such as a mosquito, sand fly or tick, according to the World Health Organization.

Vector-borne diseases also inflict heavy tolls on crops, livestock and wildlife, the study’s authors wrote.

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Teenager wins Google Science award for genius invention that could cheaply remove most microplastics from the ocean


Because microplastics are so small — some as tiny as grains of sand — scientists have had a hard time figuring out to remove them from the soil and the sea.

Now, an Irish teenager has come up with a promising solution for this seemingly impossible task — a magnetic liquid that attracts microplastics to itself.

18-year-old Fionn Ferreira was kayaking one day when he spotted a rock covered in oil from a recent spill. Clinging to the oil were a bunch of tiny pieces of plastic.

“It got me thinking,” Ferreira told Business Insider. “In chemistry, like attracts like.”

Plastic and oil are nonpolar, making them likely to stick together in nature

Ferreira wondered if the effect could be recreated using ferrofluid, a magnetic, oil-based liquid invented by NASA in 1963 to keep rocket fuel moving in zero gravity.

Today ferrofluid is used to control vibrations in speakers and to seal off electronics to keep debris out.

Ferreira makes a more environmentally friendly version of the liquid than the kind used in rocket fuel, using recycled vegetable oil and magnetite powder, a mineral found naturally on Earth’s surface.

When he first drops the liquid into a container of water contaminated with microplastics, it disperses and turns the water black.

Then he dips a magnet in the water, which pulls out all the ferrofluid, plastic and all, leaving clear water behind.

The method removed 88% of the micrplastics in his test samples.

The most difficult type of microplastic to remove was polypropylene, used to make all sorts of plastic packaging. Still, the ferrofluid removes 80% of polypropylene.

The easiest microplastics to remove were microfibers from plastic clothing such polyester, spandex and Lycra.

Washers and dryers are currently not equipped to filter these microfibers, which are a major source of ocean plastic pollution, so this is great news for that application.

Additionally, Ferreira‘s invention can be used at wastewater treatment plants as a sort of catch-all for microplastic pollution before it enters rivers, lakes and oceans.




Ferreira has won the Google Science award, $50,000 and educational funding for his invention.

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A Mexican researcher has discovered a way to make plastic from cactus that biodegrades in a month and is safe to ingest.

Credit: Jorge Valencia/KJZZ
Sandra Pascoe Ortiz, a chemical engineering professor at the University of the Valley of Atemajac, has come up with a new use for the prickly pear cactus - a staple in the country's diet - using its juice as a base for biodegradable plastic.

Her most recent samples are light green, paper thin and tough enough to be used as bags.

Pascoe Ortiz hopes the cactus-based plastic will help reduce the impact of solid waste in Mexico and around the world.

Watch the video below to learn more:


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While the world focuses on the menace of plastic straws, there has been another contender that is creeping up everywhere on our planet. Yes, plastic straws are awful and the corporations and other organizations banning it are absolutely right. But did you know that cigarette butts are actually the most polluting man-made pollutant in our oceans? As per reports, it turns out to be true.



Yes, our vast focus and energy are somewhat focused just into one thing. Cigarettes should be the next thing to see more widespread bans and there needs to be more awareness about their awful effect on nature.



On 22nd April in Brussels, volunteers collected about 120,000 cigarette butts. Almost all smokers just dispose of them anywhere and everywhere. Under a tree, into the drains, or just about anywhere onto the road. This minute gesture definitely seems to bear no consequence. But studies show that the cigarette butt-flicking habit is causing alarm among both human and animal population.


Contrary to popular belief, cigarette butts contain plastic – cellulose acetate. They also contain about 4000 other chemicals, none of which are biodegradable. These minute pieces of waste can contaminate vast amounts of water, even 500 liters of it! They make up the very first waste product that is found in our environments. To every smoker out there, try to do your bit and carry a mini-ashtray or just dispose the butt into the trash can. Our planet is not your universal ashtray.


In recent times, major corporations, environmental groups, and even parts of countries have joined the anti-plastic-straw movements.

Major global corporations from Starbucks to McDonald’s and hotel chains like Hyatt to Marriott have introduced bans for plastic straws.

Cigarettes have taken over the planet like wildfire and are present in practically every space imaginable. But Government regulation or any kind of regulation to their disposal has not seen any discussion on it. This, in turn, means that untraceable amounts of cigarette butts make their way into our oceans. Fortunately enough, there are quite a few organizations and people who are striving to bring light to this matter.

One initiative, in particular, the Cigarette Butt Pollution Project, is looking to get cigarette butts banned. They are manufactured using cellulose acetate, which is a plastic type that takes 10 years to biodegrade.


There are over 5.6 trillion cigarettes manufactured in a year with these toxic filters. But the majority of them are dumped absolutely irresponsibly.

Another initiative called the Ocean Conservancy sponsors the cleanup of one shoreline each year ever since 1986.

During each cleanup during the past 32 years, cigarette butts are the item which is collected the most. Over 60 million of them have been collected from the beaches on the planet.
All of those butts can account for 1/3rd of all the collected waste such as wrappers, bottle caps, containers, bottles, and eating utensils, all combined.
More often than not, people just carelessly dump their trash on the beach and it ends up in our oceans. This waste then ends up in the wildlife as Microplastics.

The discarded cigarette filters contain several hundred or even thousands of artificial chemical compounds. Not to forget, they are also made using synthetic fibers.


So if you are one that cares about the planet, then urge people to dump their trash responsibly. If you are a smoker, then please do your bit and just use trash cans to dump your waste. We have only one planet to live in and we share it with infinite other life forms. Let’s take care of it.

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Environmentally Friendly Since Walt

All of this builds on the company’s longtime dedication to environmental stewardship. The tradition of a strong commitment to sustainability began with Walt Disney himself and it has only continued to grow with tremendous support and passion from Disney cast members. Bob Iger, chief executive of Disney, has repeatedly said that he wants Disney to be the most admired company in the world.

Mark Penning, vice president of Disney’s animals, science and environment team, added in, “Not just for creating incredible content but for being a responsible citizen of the world… Our guests tell us the environment is important, so it’s a big deal for us.”

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According to experts, the second largest emperor penguin colony in Antarctica has disappeared, due to a catastrophic event.

Back in 2016, thousands of penguin chicks from the Halley Bay colony disappeared following extreme weather conditions. During a storm, the sea ice where they where raised was destroyed. Therefore, the whole chicks drowned in the Weddell Sea.

Credit: Peter Fretwell/British Antarctic Survey via AP
Ever since the colony has struggled to repopulate as the they failed to produce any more chicks, BBC reports. A team from the British Antarctic Survey has noticed the extinction of the huge colony using satellite pictures.

For the second year in a row NO emperor penguin chicks have survived in the artic, scientists believe this is due to declining ice. This planet is dying.

— abbie (@AbbieDavy) April 25, 2019

“The sea ice that’s formed since 2016 hasn’t been as strong. Storm events that occur in October and November will now blow it out early. So there’s been some sort of regime change. Sea ice that was previously stable and reliable is now just untenable,” Dr Peter Fretwell from the British Antarctic Survey told BBC News.

While between 14,000 and 25,000 breeding emperor penguin pairs, were heading Halley Bay yearly, since the catastrophic event only a few were spotted.

Credit:Xinhua/Liu Shiping


“What’s interesting for me is not that colonies move or that we can have major breeding failures – we know that. It’s that we are talking here about the deep embayment of the Weddell Sea, which is potentially one of the climate change refugia for those cold-adapted species like emperor penguins.

And so if we see major disturbances in these refugia – where we haven’t previously seen changes in 60 years – that’s an important signal, ” Dr. Phil Trathan told BBC News.

That means even most of the pairs avoided to breed in the last two years, or they headed to new breeding sites. However the question remains. Can the penguins survive the climate change?


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The Nepalese Army has removed two tons of waste from Mount Everest under its Mount Everest cleanup campaign.

Credit: Nepal Army
According to the Nepalese Army, the cleanup campaign was launched on April 14, 2019 as part of the 24th annual "Wildlife Week", a program organized by the Sagarmatha National Park Office.

After the cleanup campaign was concluded, the army transported half of the non-biodegradable waste by helicopter to the Blue Waste To Value Company. The remaining ton of waste was taken to the army barraks in Okhaldhunga for treatment, according to a press release issued by the army.

The Nepalese army has also pledged to provide the manpower and machines necessary for the Clean Mountains Campaign which will run until May 19, 2019.

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As some rumours swirl around the internet that there will be more plastic than fish by 2050, there are also some great stories about local recycling, like this one about Goby The Fish.

This local beach decided to do something simple, instead of just placing a ton of boring old garbage cans around the beach, they made a giant see through fish out of some barbed wire and mesh, and added a sign to it that said “Goby loves plastic, please feed him”.

The key to the success was that kids had no pleasure in recycling plastics into those old crusty blue bins, but when it turned into a game where they had to “feed” Goby it just took off.


Goby to this day is constantly being fed, and most of the times he actually gets more than he he needs for a days meal. He’s usually taken away by the city overnight to empty all his plastic that he’s eaten, and then brought back the next morning with an empty stomach so people can continue to feed him again and again.

My question is, why is there not a Goby on every single beach in this world!?

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“HempWood” is 20 percent harder than oak, and grows 100 times as fast. It’s a sustainable alternative for hardwood furniture, flooring and more.


Now that it’s legal to grow hemp in the United States, a man who’s spent the last decade developing hemp “hardwood” is building a $6 million factory to manufacture the product en masse. His patented product called “HempWood” is made out of compressed hemp pulp fibers, held together with a soy-based glue.

While that may sound like some newfangled version of particle board, it’s not. It looks and feels like oak, but is actually 20 percent harder than the famous hardwood tree.

It also grows 100 times as fast. While it takes an oak tree at least 6 decades to mature, it takes hemp 6 months.


Thats good news for oak trees, as they are among the most endangered trees in the planet because of the high demand for solid oak furniture. The owner of the new start up company Fibonacci, Greg Wilson, was a pioneer in the bamboo flooring industry before hemp became legal.

The company uses technology popularized by China’s strand-woven bamboo industry, in addition to technology developed at Wilson’s other company SmartOak, which creates engineered wood products using logs that would otherwise be converted to wood chips. HempWood will be used to make blocks, boards, flooring, cutting boards and skateboards, all at prices far cheaper than oak, the company said.

The company will be headquartered in Kentucky, where more than 40,000 acres of hemp are already being cultivated.

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We’ve all heard the warning that there will be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050.

People are working on strategies to remove millions of tons of plastic waste from the ocean, but it will end up right back in it if we don’t figure out what to do with it.

Plastic bottles can’t actually be recycled into new plastic bottles, and once plastic is created, it pretty much never goes away.

Adidas plans to get the ball rolling by making 1 million pairs of running shoes out of 11 million plastic bottles recovered from the ocean, near the Maldives.


Adidas strives to eventually eliminate virgin plastic from its supply chain altogether.




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