Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. PET or PETE (polyethylene terephthalate) is the most common plastic for single-use bottled beverages because it's inexpensive, ...

Only 4.7% of plastic produced by U.S. households in 2021 was recycled, according to a Greenpeace USA report. But that's not for lack of consumer participation. Greenpeace said most plastics simply ...

When I visited my friend in Scotland, I was amazed to see how little waste from her family of four actually went into the garbage can. Besides their good habits of buying items with minimal packaging, ...

In a 2019 survey conducted by the Consumer Brands Association on what they labeled the “broken recycling system in America,” 68 percent of respondents said that they assumed any product with symbols ...

This is an excerpt from Consumed: How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic. An odd symbol, made up of three arrows arranged in a triangle, began showing up on plastic containers across America in the ...

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. It’s Earth Day 1990, and Meryl Streep walks into a bar. She’s distraught about the state of the environment.