FDA Rejects NRDC Call to Eliminate BPA from Food Packaging

“The agency has failed to protect our health and safety, in the face of scientific studies that continue to raise disturbing questions about the long-term effects of BPA exposures. The FDA is out-of-step with scientific and medical research”- NRDC

Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup : 2011 Report

Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup has become the world’s largest volunteer effort for ocean health. Nearly nine million volunteers from 152 countries and locations have cleaned 145 million pounds of trash from the shores of lakes, streams, rivers, and the ocean on just one day each year.

World Cleanup 2012

“There’s 100 million tons of illegal garbage lying around the world. Waste is everywhere, in cities, beaches, oceans, forests. To change this we have to come together and create a real global change.” In 2012, from 24th of March until 25th of September, the Cyber-environmentalists team of World Cleanup 2012 invites all the people and countries to be a part of these Olympic Games for the clean world.

Better Beaches for Everybody

“Studying plastics in the marine environment through UNCW over the past four years, I have studied beaches in Hawaii, Bermuda, South Africa, Brazil, and California taking samples from the wrack line. On all the beaches mentioned, I have found a higher concentration of broken fragments of plastics than cigarette butts. But Wrightsville Beach tells a very different story…”

3rd Best Paper Award Announced

Marine Pollution Bulletin and Elsevier Science instituted has awarded the annual prize for “best paper” to Skye Morét-Ferguson (corresponding author), Kara Lavender Law, Giora Proskurowski, Ellen K. Murphy, Emily E. Peacock and Christopher M. Reddy for their paper entitled “The size, mass, and composition of plastic debris in the western North Atlantic Ocean” (Marine Pollution Bulletin 60 (2010) 1873-1878).

First French Seaside Resort to Have Smoke-Free Beach

Nice has become the first French seaside resort to introduce a tobacco-free beach. The Centenaire beach, a central beach off the Promenade des Anglais, which already acts as the city’s wheel-chair friendly beach, is to be labeled “plage sans tabac.”

Hawaii Plastic Bag Fees Gain Support

A proposal to collect fees from customers who choose disposable paper and plastic shopping bags is gaining support as it works its way through Hawaii’s Legislature.

Is Protecting the Environment Incompatible with Social Justice?

Humanity’s challenge in the 21st century is to eradicate poverty and achieve prosperity for all within the means of the planet’s limited natural resources. Oxfam investigates the question of whether environment conflicts with development and social justice.