The race to defuse an oil ‘time bomb’ disaster threatening the Red Sea – Grist Magazine

A 1992 file photo of FSO Safer off the coast of Yemen (by Maasmond Maritime/Piet Sinke CC BY-NC-SA 2.0via Flickr).

Ten days ago, the crew of a ship called the Nautica lifted anchor in Djibouti and motored north in the Red Sea. Two tugboats met the vessel about five and a half miles off the coast of Yemen, then guided it into place alongside the FSO Safer, a crumbling, abandoned oil tanker thought to hold 1 million barrels of crude.

Thus began an operation that’s the ecological equivalent of placing the pin back into a hand grenade…

How do you tackle microplastics? Start with your washing machine – the Grist

Laundrymat (sic) by alessandro silipo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr.

Simple filters could help remove microfiber pollution from your laundry. But experts say a broader portfolio of solutions is needed to address the problem.

As environmental challenges go, microfiber pollution has come from practically out of nowhere. It was only a decade or so ago that scientists first suspected our clothing, increasingly made of synthetic materials like polyester and nylon, might be major contributors to the global plastic problem…