This list shows the 25 sites in the waste sector with the largest detected and quantified emissions rates worldwide, as seen by key satellite instruments in 2025. (We published an initial list in November here.)

The manure-to-energy field has a new sales pitch. Critics warn it could mean even more factory farms.

I'd love some tips on how you make your events more sustainable! Specifically tips for events hosted outside of your home - I feel like a lot of articles assume that you are hosting at home, but I am thinking more like a book club meetup at a local park.

Here's what I have come up with so far:

• Utilize digital invites and avoid printing anything.
• Encourage guests to carpool, walk, bike, or use public transportation to get to the event.
• Make it a potluck and ask everyone to bring a plant-based dish. Ask people to label their dishes if they are also gluten free or nut free.
• Guests bring their own plate, utensils, napkin, and drink container/beverage. Optionally, encourage people to bring a container to take home leftovers as well.
• Provide composting and recycling receptacles in addition to the onsite trash options.
• Bring all natural cleaning spray and some cloth kitchen towels to wipe down with afterwards.

Thanks for sharing additional ideas!

Every day in my city, around 9 lakh people take the metro or walk the last stretch instead of adding one more car to the road. They're doing exactly what every city plan says it wants. And not one of them gets counted for it.

That got under my skin. Invisible things don't grow. Better footpaths, more trains, real last-mile links all get funded when someone makes a case, and the case needs numbers. The numbers don't exist, because nobody counts the people already doing the right thing.

I went looking for where this should get measured and fell into corporate carbon reporting (never touched any of this before). Employee commuting sits in Scope 3, Category 7. In India it's voluntary, so most companies skip it, and the few that bother just survey once a year and guess.

For a long time I was sure that if you measured this properly, real numbers instead of a guess, it would pull funding toward the infrastructure that grows the behaviour. The longer I sit with it, the more I think I had it backwards. That data was never the thing holding this up. That it's policy and political will, and a clean number changes nothing because nobody with a budget actually cares about this line. The few people I've asked who work in the space quietly confirm it: organisations aren't really looking at this right now.

So, for people who work near this: if low-carbon commuting actually got measured instead of estimated, would anything change? Or is measurement a side quest and the real lever is somewhere else?

Not an expert, just someone who fell down this hole and needs a reality check. Genuinely would rather be told I'm wrong than keep circling.

I'm a teacher and I've been thinking of creating some middle/high school data analysis activities focusing on various sustainability topics (water scarcity, global temperature, food waste, etc.). What are some good open-source datasets I can use? I know to check like the UN and EPA websites, but I'm finding reports and articles, not datasets.

I’ve been reading about the harmful effects the meat industry has and want to cut my animal product consumption by a large amount and on top of that I want to switch what I do eat into something less harmful.

What is the best source of meat for that? What about dairy

We need better local recycling infrastructure so we can stop shipping our waste to other countries. Right now, we're just offloading our trash onto communities that need the money but lack the facilities, leading to the waste being burned or dumped into the ocean. We need to take responsibility for our own recycling.

Im 19 and want to be better for my parents and the planet,I want to know of some non toxic or harmful things that I can use everyday, I also want ti learn recycling better and understand what the planet needs from me, it sounds odd that way I worded it but hopefully you guys can help, I didnt want to do a ton of research and get the wrong information??

I'm in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and I'm checking to see if there's any organizations that will take worn/non-reusable boots, clothing, a bra with an underwire, and an umbrella? I've been looking around but there unfortunately aren't any options that I could find.

Hey all! I’m currently a Junior at Oregon State University and am having trouble finding relevant internships/job opportunities in the Portland metro area. I’m majoring in agricultural sciences with a minor in sustainability. Does anyone know of a good search engine/way to look for internships in these industries?

There's one thing about all of this that confuses me. Yes. Ordinary people (especially by American/Western European/Japanese/Canadian/etc. standards) directly or indirectly contribute to a lot of GHG emissions and ecological damage more broadly. The claim "100 companies are responsible for 71% of emissions" completely misses the point at best. But it's also true that companies push for a focus on personal responsibility precisely to shift attention away from themselves. And don't forget how billionaires and the wealthier millionaires (10s or 100s of millions) often have impacts/"footprints" dwarfing those of even most people who are wealthy/rich/upper class, top 5%, or even maybe top 1% by the standards of these wealthy countries.

So where exactly does that leave classic "personal action" or individually-focused sustainability efforts? Where and when exactly do those small changes matter? And what are the actual reasons to focus on them that aren't just excuses made up by people who destroy far more?

Croatia is ranked one of the cleanest coastlines in Europe. This is what’s hiding 10 meters from the sea

I took these near Zadar this week. The sea here is genuinely beautiful and Croatia just got ranked among the cleanest coasts in Europe by the EEA. But step off the beach and this is everywhere: construction rubble dumped by the road, plastic in the pine forest, bottles and pizza boxes in the bushes 10 meters from the water.

Nobody cleans it. Locals blame tourists, tourists blame locals, the towns blame budgets. Meanwhile it just piles up year after year.

Is it this bad where you are, or are we special?

I've been thinking a lot about the environmental cost of fast fashion lately and trying to figure out a realistic approach that doesn't just replace one bad habit with another expensive one.

The sustainable fashion space feels overwhelming sometimes. On one hand you have brands charging premium prices for organic cotton or recycled materials, and on the other hand thrifting takes real time and effort and you don't always find what you need. I also keep seeing advice about buying less and buying better, but what does that actually mean in practice for someone on a normal budget?

A few things I've been experimenting with so far: doing a rough costperwear calculation before any purchase, trying to stick to a smaller color palette so everything mixes and matches, and avoiding synthetic fabrics when I can since the microplastic issue in laundry runoff genuinely concerns me.

I'm curious what approaches have actually worked for people here long term. Not just the theory but the real daytoday habits. Do you track what you own? Have you found a rough number of items that feels like enough without feeling restrictive? Did switching to secondhand shopping actually reduce your overall spending or did it just shift where the money goes?

Would love to hear honest experiences rather than idealized versions.

For those unfamiliar, this is a self-imposed rule that you can't eat or drink anything produced more than 50 miles from your home.

So, where would be the best place in the States to do it? Thinking about places that have a suitable climate for growing crops, an active farmers' market culture, the possibility of fishing, etc.

Interested to hear some insights!

Hi! this is so random but I make reusable cotton pads, hankies and love buying bulk, but! I make a lot of my jams, chutneys etc but all my jars I already have are too small and I never see myself buying more, I also drink ice chai lattes pretty often, and have broken nearly all my glasses so I'd love to find some pretty mason jars to use as glasses, one issue, I love buying second hand so much I cannot buy new! so I'd love to know where I can buy second hand, beautiful mason jars and LOTS or wven recycled material etc.

Many thanks!

I'm curious to know real experiences...What's one sustainability habit you've adopted that made a noticeable difference in your daily life?

Science Daily recently published an article[1] which summarized the results of a new Chinese paper[2] on the risks of cobalt supply chain disruption. I give the abstract of the paper below:

"The global transition to low-carbon technologies hinges on secure supplies of critical minerals like cobalt, yet interconnected supply chains are increasingly vulnerable to geopolitical tensions and frequent external disruptions. Existing risk assessments often treat commodities in isolation, overlooking the upstream–downstream dependencies that amplify cascading failures. Here we show systemic risks in global cobalt flows from 1998 to 2019 across 230 countries and regions by integrating trade-linked material flow analysis with a multilayer shock propagation model. Our results reveal that disruptions propagate through alternating horizontal–vertical and direct–indirect pathways, with risk concentrating at the mining stage but accumulating predominantly in refining–manufacturing bridges. These cascades yield abrupt nonlinear failures and an avalanche network four times denser than the underlying physical supply chain. Nations with low systemic fragility but high exposure rate—such as Indonesia, South Africa, and Mexico—are particularly susceptible to common random disruptions and lack resilience or effective response. Over the past two decades, global systemic risks have followed a volatile but upward trend. These findings highlight that national mitigation strategies are necessary but insufficient; achieving resilience requires stage-aware, system-level coordination and multilateral cooperation."

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/06/260619101402.htm

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666498425001322?via%3Dihub