Everyone has heard about bee declines, but with so much attention focused on domesticated honeybees, someone has to speak up for the 4,000 species of native bees in North America. Natural history photographer Clay Bolt is on a multi-year quest to tell the stories of our native bees, and one elusive species – the Rusty-patched […]
Your intake of glyphosate is happening through the food you eat, the water you drink and the places where you live and play. Some sources deliver higher amounts than others – for example, non-organic oats sprayed with glyphosate before harvest, and foods made with genetically modified soybeans. Other sources are not so clear, so we […]
Microbiologists at EPFL and the University of Edinburgh have discovered that red squirrels in Britain and Ireland carry the two bacterial species that cause leprosy in humans. Once rampant in medieval Europe, leprosy dramatically declined by the end of the Middle Ages for reasons that are still unclear. About a century ago, leprosy in Europe […]
Monsanto’s signature herbicide glyphosate, first marketed as “Roundup,” is now the most widely and heavily applied weed-killer in the history of chemical agriculture in both the U.S. and globally, according to a landmark report published today. The paper, published Feb. 2, 2016 in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Sciences Europe, reports that to date 18.9 billion […]
At the grocery store, most foods — meats, breads, cheeses, snacks — come wrapped in plastic packaging. Not only does this create a lot of non-recyclable, non-biodegradable waste, but thin plastic films are not great at preventing spoilage. And some plastics are suspected of leaching potentially harmful compounds into food. To address these issues, scientists […]
BioBag® is a world leader in providing bags and films for the collection of organic waste for the purpose of composting. Unlike regular plastic, BioBags can be consumed by micro-organisms that live in our soils. Because we use starches from renewable crops, our bags can be readily composted along with organic waste in municipal composting […]
More than 18 million Americans got their drinking water from systems with lead violations in 2015, according to a groundbreaking Natural Resources Defense Council report. The problem could be significantly more pervasive because many more water systems known to have such violations — including that in Flint, Michigan — do not even show up as […]
Harvesting Liberty is a short film that documents visionaries Michael Lewis (of Growing Warriors) and Rebecca Burgess (of Fibershed) as they collaborate to reintroduce industrial hemp to the American landscape. Growing Warriors is a Kentucky-based farming program designed to train, assist, and equip military veterans with the skills, tools and supplies needed to grow organic […]
Insecticides that are sprayed in orchards and fields across North America may be more toxic to spiders than scientists previously believed. A McGill research team reached this conclusion after looking at changes in the behavior of individual Bronze Jumping Spiders both before and after exposure to Phosmet, a widely used broad spectrum insecticide. It is […]
Many homeowners are getting their lawns ready for the summer by spreading herbicides, fertilizers and other chemicals. There are alternatives, including organic lawn care, that still gives you a lush, green lawn. The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) March 15 Soils Matter blog post explains why you might consider an organic approach. “The grass […]