trash

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NYC Takes Big Step Toward Ending '24-Hour Rat Buffet'

All businesses now required to use bins

(Newser) - New York City's tradition of piling garbage bags on the sidewalk for pickup is going the way of the dinosaur. As of Friday, all 200,000 businesses in the Big Apple are required to put out their bags of trash in garbage bins, as communities across the country and...

Woman Falls in Dumpster, Gets Compacted by Trash Truck

New Hampshire resident was compacted 4 times and survived

(Newser) - A woman fell into a dumpster while throwing out her garbage and was later rescued from a trash truck that had compacted the contents while she was inside, fire department officials in New Hampshire said. Luckily, neighbors heard her screams, and the trash compartment was equipped with a camera, reports...

In 'Texas' Gift to the Nation,' a Big Ol' Mess

Park rangers remind public to clean up after photos show Big Bend National Park strewn with trash

(Newser) - On Saturday, rangers at Big Bend National Park, affectionately dubbed "Texas' Gift to the Nation," didn't find any gifts on a trail near the park's Panther Junction Visitor Center. Instead, the Houston Chronicle reports that they discovered piles of plastic bags, chip containers, soft drink cups,...

82-Year-Old Arrested Over Her Unpaid $77 Trash Bill

Martha Menefield was handcuffed, briefly taken to jail

(Newser) - After the handcuffs were placed on Martha Menefield, the Valley, Alabama, woman says one of the officers leaned in and "kind of whispered" to her that she shouldn't cry. She had a biting response, per CBS42 : "How would you feel if they came and arrested your grandmama?"...

Plastic Recycling Is a Farce
Plastic Recycling
Is a Fool's Errand
new report

Plastic Recycling Is a Fool's Errand

Greenpeace report says the problem is most plastic just can't be recycled

(Newser) - "Plastic recycling is a dead-end street." So proclaims a new Greenpeace report that makes that very case using an underwhelming set of stats regarding the scant amount of plastic that's recycled in the US. Per the report, at our peak in 2014, America recycled 9.5% of...

She Realized She Was a $110K Lottery Winner. Then, 'Panic'

Va.'s Mary Elliott had already thrown her ticket in the trash; luckily, she found it

(Newser) - It's not clear why Mary Elliott threw away a lottery ticket before finding out whether she'd won, but what is clear is that she'll probably never prematurely toss such a ticket again. The woman from Buckingham County, Va., won $110,000 in her state's Cash 5...

PPE Litter Is Adding Up on the World's Beaches

Environmental groups fear damage, ask users to dispose of trash properly

(Newser) - To the usual list of foul trash left behind or washed up on beaches around the world, add these: masks and gloves used by people to avoid the coronavirus and then discarded on the sand. In the past year, volunteers picking up trash on beaches from the Jersey Shore to...

$340K Painting Found in Dumpster
$340K Painting
Found in Dumpster

$340K Painting Found in Dumpster

Work by French surrealist Yves Tanguy had gone missing

(Newser) - A surrealist painting worth more than a quarter million dollars that was forgotten by a businessman at Duesseldorf's airport has been recovered from a nearby recycling dumpster, police said Thursday, per the AP . The businessman, whose identity was not given, accidentally left behind the painting by French surrealist Yves...

'Disgusting' New Trend Can Sicken People, Wildlife

People are littering the landscape with gloves, masks, and wipes used to fight coronavirus

(Newser) - From California and Texas to New Hampshire and New York , there's a "new, disgusting trend" cropping up around the coronavirus, and it's a potentially dangerous one. The Washington Post and other outlets report on the "small pops of color" suddenly showing up in parking lots, by...

All That Ocean Plastic? It Has an Unexpected Source

It doesn't all come from land-based sources

(Newser) - In 1984, 2009, and 2018, researchers made the trek to Inaccessible Island, which sits between Argentina and South Africa in the South Atlantic. They describe it as a "remote, uninhabited island ... that has a very high macrodebris load"—and that debris is what they were there for. In...

The City of Light Has a Dirty Secret

Refuse of all kinds is piling up in Paris

(Newser) - Paris has long been brimming with culture, romance, beauty—and, in recent years, too much trash. From Place de la République to the Trocadéro gardens, the city is full of homeless people, beer cans, wrappers, cigarette butts, abandoned bicycles and scooters, and (of course) dog poop, the Guardian...

Canada Will Take Back Trash That's Been Rotting for Years

Rodrigo Duterte threatened to dump it in Canadian waters

(Newser) - After a dispute that involved a lot of trash talking from President Rodrigo Duterte, Canada has finally agreed to take back scores of containers of trash sent to the country more than five years ago. The 100-plus containers shipped to the Philippines in 2013 and 2014 by a private company...

Trash Shipped to Philippines in 2013 Leads to Threat of War

Duterte is pretty peeved with Canada

(Newser) - Canadian trash has been sitting at a port in the Philippines for more than five years, and President Rodrigo Duterte wants it gone—or else. Duterte's word choices tend to grab headlines , and this instance is no exception: "I'll give a warning to Canada maybe next week...

Mark Zuckerberg Tosses Out Some Decent Trash

'Times' feature follows around a garbage picker, who finds a working vacuum cleaner, hair dryer

(Newser) - Mark Zuckerberg insists he's pushing Facebook on a path toward greater privacy for users. And Business Insider notes that if Zuckerberg read the New York Times on Sunday, he got a real taste of what it feels like to have your privacy violated. There, in a feature on a...

China Clears Over 9 Tons of Trash From Mt. Everest

The world's tallest mountain is covered in a lot of junk

(Newser) - The world's tallest mountain is covered in a whole heap of trash. That's why a Chinese team of 30 people has been tasked with hauling decades worth of climbers' garbage off Mt. Everest. Since April, they've managed to bring down over 9 tons of cast-off mountaineering gear...

Fighterfighters Rescue Man From Garbage Truck
Man Pulled From
Garbage Truck

Man Pulled From Garbage Truck

Authorities don't know how he got there

(Newser) - Officials say it took firefighters in Philadelphia over two hours to free a man who somehow wound up stuck in a trash truck's compactor section, the AP reports. WCAU-TV reports firefighters had to use ladders to get into the vehicle so they could remove bags of trash to reach...

Hong Kong Is Almost Completely Trashed
Hong Kong Is Almost
Completely Trashed
LONGFORM

Hong Kong Is Almost Completely Trashed

City says its landfills will be totally full in next few years

(Newser) - Hong Kong's 7.4 million denizens create a lot of trash—15,000 tons of garbage are disposed of every day. But at only 427 square miles, the city is quickly running out of space to put all that garbage. In a close look at a smelly subject, Motherboard...

Beekeeper's Surprise Find May Help Our Plastic Problem

Possible solution: hungry caterpillars

(Newser) - Many scientific discoveries can be attributed to a happy accident—the discovery of penicillin thanks to moldy petri dishes, for instance. Might our mounting plastic crisis be solved similarly? One scientist and amateur beekeper in Spain has discovered that the larvae of wax moths, which live on beeswax and thus...

One 2-Ton Whale Was No Match for 30 Plastic Bags

Bags, other waste found in stomach of euthanized whale in Norway

(Newser) - Norwegian zoologists have found about 30 plastic bags and other plastic waste in the stomach of a beaked whale that had beached on a southwestern Norway coast, the AP reports. The visibly sick, 2-ton goose-beaked whale was euthanized, Terje Lislevand of Bergen University said Friday. "The [whale's] stomach...

Flint's New Problem Literally Stinks

Trash pick-up has stopped as the mayor, city council battle over a contract

(Newser) - Flint residents' water is trashed, and now their trash is temporarily, well, trashed, too. The beleaguered city learned on Saturday that trash pick-up would cease effective Monday. "Until a new agreement is officially in place, we ask the residents not set their trash out at the curb to prevent...

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