Search

By Joe Emmons, Texas Program Organizer Texas is the birthplace of Hydraulic Fracturing, or “Fracking” as it is more commonly known. Fracking mixes water, (secret) chemicals and sand. Frackers then pump the mixture into the earth at very high pressures to fracture the shale below the surface to release the natural gas and oil trapped within the rock. It’s just one more industrial practice that ensures Texas will continue to lead states in releasing toxic emissions into our air and water. Fracking, in Texas, creates an unbelievable 1.2 barrels of waste for every foot drilled. This waste is all

When the 2019 General Assembly session began in early January, we had high hopes that this would be a banner year for the environment and public health. We had spent the previous four months working with stakeholders from around the state to put together a plan to reduce single-use plastic pollution. We had a commitment from the Governor to fight the climate crisis by supporting mandatory and enforceable carbon emissions reductions across the three largest sectors of Rhode Island’s economy. And we spent a good deal of the previous year talking to Rhode Islanders about the dangers of PFAS

If you have read the news recently, you have probably seen an article or two about a recent study of the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. The articles report estimates of plastic pollution in the trillions, and swaths of plastic waste that are the size of countries.

Those numbers might make it feel like the issue is too massive to solve. You may be asking yourself, “how do we do something about a problem that is thousands of miles away?”

So, how can we wrap our heads around this issue and put it into context? Technically, no country owns these waters since it is in the middle of the Pacific