garbage

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Garbage Cam Airs Dirty Trash Habits

Camera phone posts pictures of garbage on Facebook, encourages recycling

(Newser) - Now on Facebook: Your garbage. Or at least, the garbage of five households who signed up for a Newcastle University program that posts photos of every item dumped in one garbage can on Facebook. Hoping to raise consciousness about recycling efforts, it uses a sensor and a camera phone to...

Big Stink: Great Garbage Patch's Size Exaggerated

Think 1% the size of Texas, not twice as big

(Newser) - The "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" is often said to be twice the size of Texas—but that and other scary-sounding claims are “grossly exaggerated,” some scientists are now insisting. A new study shows the plastic waste patch is actually 200 times smaller than previously claimed when comparing...

Upside to NYC's Piles of Trash: Mound Saves Suicidal Man

Garbage collection scheduled to resume tomorrow

(Newser) - The snow is melting but the piles of trash are growing—and that was very good news for at least one New Yorker. A suicidal man who tried to end his life by jumping from the ninth floor of a building in Midtown today survived because he landed on a...

Indian Tribe Doesn't Want US Trash on Sacred Land

It's fighting a plan to ship Hawaii garbage to Washington state

(Newser) - Hawaii's landfill space is in such short supply, the state decided to transport thousands of tons of trash 2,600 miles to Washington. Making the journey even more bizarre: The waste would travel over the Yakama Indians' sacred hunting grounds to get to its destination, and the tribe is none...

Old Couple Found Buried Alive in Trash

Trapped in garbage for days

(Newser) - An elderly Chicago couple was found, alive, buried beneath mounds of trash in their two-story home. The neighbors called police after they hadn't spotted the couple, both in their 70s, for days. Responding firefighters in Hazmat suits entered the home to find the couple covered in rotting food and other...

Garbage in stomach of whale found in Seattle
Forget Jonah: This Whale Ate Sweatpants, Surgical Gloves
in case you missed
Apr 24, 2010 8:00 PM CDT

Forget Jonah: This Whale Ate Sweatpants, Surgical Gloves

Beached whale's stomach was full of garbage

(Newser) - Like that episode of Seinfeld come to life, biologists found a golf ball in the stomach of a gray whale that died after getting stranded on a West Seattle beach on Wednesday—but it gets sadder from there, reports the AP . Though the scientists say most of the whale's stomach...

Plastic Garbage Patch Found in Atlantic
 Plastic Garbage Patch 
 Found in Atlantic 
in case you missed it
Apr 18, 2010 3:10 PM CDT

Plastic Garbage Patch Found in Atlantic

Covers thousands of square miles, endangers fish

(Newser) - If you’re planning on taking a cruise, hopefully your ship won’t travel through the “great Atlantic garbage patch” that covers thousands of square miles between Bermuda and the Azores islands. The plastic debris is so small that some pieces are almost invisible, and the floating trash heap—...

Egypt Kills All Pigs— But Pigs Eat All Trash

With no swine to eat garbage, waste piles up on city streets

(Newser) - When the Egyptian government decided to kill all of Cairo’s pigs last spring in a pre-emptive measure to combat swine flu, they apparently forgot that the pigs performed a vital function in a city with poor public services: eating trash, the New York Times reports. The zabaleen, Cairo’s...

Brown Begins Community Service

Singer cleans up in Va. as punishment for Rihanna beating

(Newser) - Singer Chris Brown today began the community labor that’s part of his sentence for beating girlfriend Rihanna, MTV reports, with the singer posting a photo from the work to his Twitter feed. His 6 months of labor will include picking up trash in his native Virginia; Brown, 20, also...

UK Slammed for Dumping Toxic Waste in Developing World

(Newser) - Britain is accused of flouting international law by dumping toxic industrial and medical waste in Brazil and Ghana, the Times of London reports. Brazilian authorities were outraged to find over 1,000 tons of hazardous waste in 90 shipping containers labeled as holding recyclable plastic. "It is disgraceful that...

Woman Tosses Mattress Stuffed With Mom's $1M

It was her mom's life savings

(Newser) - In hindsight, maybe the bank might've been a better idea: An Israeli woman dumped her mom's life savings when she decided to surprise her with a new mattress—and tossed the old one padded with nearly $1 million, CNN reports. City workers are helping the daughter search, and have...

12 Museums of Odd Things
 12 Museums of Odd Things 
May 18, 2009 5:02 PM CDT

12 Museums of Odd Things

(Newser) - Trying to awake from the nightmare of history? Mental Floss' list of 12 "oddly specific" American museums may only give you bad dreams:
  • The SPAM Museum: Complete with a wall of 5,000 SPAM tins and a scale plant where visitors can suit up in white coats and
...

America's Worst Recycling Cities

Cities who divert the least from landfill named and shamed

(Newser) - The average American city recycles about a third of its waste, but the lack of any unified national standard for trash disposal means some cities rate way, way, below average. Mother Jones lists those with the biggest trash piles:
  • Oklahoma City recycles only 3% of its waste. Households have to
...

Recession Harbinger: Less Trash

(Newser) - The current recession was fairly clear to a certain segment of the population as far back as late 2007, the Washington Post reports—landfill operators. Since then, dumps and garbage collectors have seen a steep drop-off in trash—in some cases up to 30%—along with their own jobs. It's...

After Historic Day, Historic Cleanup

Trash-bin shortage caused tons of litter to pile up

(Newser) - Crews working into the wee hours hauled away at least 130 tons of garbage after America’s largest, and messiest, outdoor bash Tuesday, the Washington Post reports. With trashcans removed for security precautions, inauguration attendees littered the National Mall, leaving it looking like a rendition of Disney's Wall-E. Obama gear,...

Under Italy's Mob, Toxic Trash Heaps Growing

Intimidation rife as garbage threatens public health

(Newser) - Heaps of garbage tower in southern Italy’s legal and illegal dumps, and may even be contributing to cancer and birth defects in the area—but the mafia’s grip on disposal makes it near impossible to fix the problem, the Los Angeles Times reports. “For years the waste...

Houston Too Ornery to Recycle
 Houston Too Ornery to Recycle
Jul 29, 2008 1:36 PM CDT

Houston Too Ornery to Recycle

'Independent streak,' cheap landfills have reuse rate at 2.6%, worst among US cities

(Newser) - While other Texas cities are working hard to separate their garbage, Houston still considers recycling to be sissy stuff, earning the oil town the worst recycling rate of 30 top US cities. Houston recycles just 2.6% of its trash, the New York Times reports, while San Francisco is at...

Italy Calls In Shrinks for Garbage Crisis

Berlusconi dispatches psychologists as part of promise to clean up mess

(Newser) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has a “final solution" to Naples' trash problem—and it includes psychologists, Der Spiegel reports. Naples, whose overflowing landfills have led to intermittently trash-choked streets for years, will soon be invaded by an army of volunteers, including a group of psychologists trained in counseling...

Britons: New Trash Laws Are Rubbish

Controversial UK measures get tough on waste

(Newser) - In the midst of a garbage overload, the UK is cracking down on trash with strict new rules, sparking a backlash among Britons, the New York Times reports. Many areas now pick up trash only biweekly, and accept only regulation amounts. Some reject recycling bins tainted with garbage. In response,...

'Super' Mafia Witness Gunned Down in Naples

Slain informant was helping cops bust garbage gangs

(Newser) - The boss of a garbage disposal firm with Mafia links who had turned informant was gunned down in a bar near Naples yesterday, the Guardian reports. The murdered man had been helping police target gangs that control waste disposal in the city, currently gripped by a garbage crisis. He had...

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