Marc Angelo Coppola

You know an invention has its drawbacks when even the guy who invented it says he’s sorry he did so.

That would be John Sylvan, inventor of the easy-to-use Keurig coffee maker-an invention deemed ” the most wasteful form of coffee ” on the planet.

Sylan says he regrets the creation largely due to its severe ecological impact. The Keurig uses disposable plastic coffee pods, called “K-Cups,” which are not easily recyclable or biodegradable.

“I don’t have one,” Sylvan said of the Keurig. “They’re kind of expensive to use. Plus it’s not like drip coffee is tough to make.”

Convenience-obsessed America is the world’s largest coffee consumer. Nearly 85 percent of adults in America drink coffee. According to the National Coffee Association, nearly 1 in 5 adults drink single-cup-brewed coffee in a single day.

Last year, Keurig Green Mountain sold a whopping 9.8 billion K-Cups-enough to circle the Earth more than a dozen times. Keurig says it wants all K-Cups to be recyclable by 2020, but by then it could be too late.

Egg Studios CEO Mike Hachey created the viral video ” Kill the K-Cup ” last month, which highlights the fact that 13 billion K-Cups went into landfills last year.

“Do you feel OK contributing to that?” Hachey asks.

K-Cups are not the only culprits affecting the environment. America represents only 5 percent of the world’s population, but generates nearly a quarter of the world’s trash.

Many everyday items that we take for granted have a significant impact on Mother Earth. Here are a few humble household supplies that hurt the environment more than you’d expect:

1. Anti-bacterial soap

These small quanitities then end up in streams and other bodies of water. They can disrupt algae’s ability to perform photosynthesis and build up in fatty tissues of animals higher up in the food chain.

2. Lawn mowers

“Lawn and garden equipment really does add to air pollution,” Cathy Milbourn, spokeswoman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), told ABC last year. “People can reduce the impact it has by using [lawn equipment] in the early morning or in the late afternoon. Or perhaps not at all.”

3. Tea bags

According to a report by Which? Gardening, teabags produced by the some of the top tea manufacturers-including Twinnings, Tetley and PG Tips-are only about 75 percent biodegradable.

While most teabags are made with paper fiber, they also include plastic polypropylene-an ingredient that makes teabags heat-resistant but is not fully biodegradable.

Whitney Kakos, the sustainability manager for Teadirect, says the use of polypropylene is an ” industry-wide practice.” There are also the luxurious silken (basically plastic) tea bags. Supposedly of higher quality and visually appealing, these bags are actually harmful to consumers and contribute to landfill waste.

4. Plastic bottles

The national recycle rate for PETs, or bottles made with polyethylene terephthalate, is only 23 percent-which means 80 percent of plastic water bottles end up in landfills. And even if we were on our environmentally best behavior, not all plastic bottles placed in designated containers are recycled because only certain types of plastic can be recycled in limited municipalities.

5. Microbeads

According to a recent study by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, these tiny pieces of plastic find their way down our drains through filtration systems to the ocean. Soaking up toxins like a sponge, they then contribute to the plastic pollution of water bodies, potentially starve coral reefs of proper food and negatively affect other marine organisms.

6. Disposable razors

Add that to the higher environmental cost of production using raw materials and the water used while actually shaving and you’ve got one of the most wasteful bathroom products around.

7. Paper cups

Every year, Americans toss out more than 80 billion single-use cups, thanks to our morning coffee runs. These cups are also coated with low-density, heat-resistant polyethylene that is not biodegradable. In addition to these cups’ heading for a landfill and taking more than 20 years to decompose, the very process of making them is extremely harmful to the environment. Production consumes forests and large volumes of water, and expels dirty water.

8. Wooden chopsticks from restaurants

But despite taxes levied in 2006 and warnings of government regulations to monitor production in 2010, disposable chopstick use, production and discard is on the rise and continues to devastate forests in China at an alarming rate.

CREDIT: screenshot/Under the Dome, YouTube

Over the course of a weekend in early March, more than 175 million people in China tuned into a highly personalized and unprecedentedly science-driven documentary about the country’s debilitating smog problem. Produced by former Chinese news anchor and environmental reporter Chai Jing, the 104-minute “Under the Dome” caught the Chinese public at a moment of intense focus on the wide-ranging impacts of air pollution from coal-fired power plants and vehicle emissions.

Then, a few days later, the government ordered media outlets to “absolutely discontinue coverage of the documentary.”

The Beijing Internet Management Office posted a dispatch saying to “please remove all reports, commentary, and other contents about Chai Jing’s “Under the Dome” from the home pages and news pages,” adding that the Internet Management Office would “check in five minutes” so please “act quickly.”

As ClimateProgress reported when the documentary first came out, what made the release especially significant was that the Chinese government, known for spiking any media painting the government in a bad light, had not banned the documentary. China’s new environment minister, Chen Jining, even praised it, saying it reflected “growing public concern over environmental protection and threats to human health.”

Why this sudden turnaround from co-opting the documentary’s message to quashing its very existence?

According to Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Wilson Center, “Under the Dome” was banned for its popularity, not for its message. Speaking during a discussion after a screening of the film at the Wilson Center on Thursday, Daly said that the film allowed Chai Jing to “control the discourse” around China’s crippling air pollution problems.

“The banning of ‘Under the Dome’ is not a Chinese governmental denial or rejection of environmental concerns or Chai Jing’s argument,” said Daly, who believes instead that the ban is a reminder that the the Central Government insists on setting the agenda and providing the solutions. Daly said that Chai Jing’s telling of the story in a very personal voice, and her statement that fighting air pollution was a “personal battle” are radical notions in China.

“Are you allowed to fight personal battles on this scale in China?” Daly asked.

Many have compared the lecture-style film, replete with charts and visual aids, to Al Gore’s 2006 “An Inconvenient Truth,” but Chai’s original motivation for making the self-sponsored film was deeply personal. She used to pay little attention to the smog engulfing her home city of Beijing, but that changed when she found out she was pregnant in 2013. Shortly thereafter, she discovered through a sonogram that her child had a benign tumor.

“I’d never felt afraid of pollution before, and never wore a mask no matter where,” Chai, 39, says in the video. “But when you carry a life in you, what she breathes, eats and drinks are all your responsibility, and then you feel the fear.”

In the film, Chai laments with dismay all the time she spent in Beijing thinking that the air pollution was just fog. She says one of the first times she realized there was “something more to the fog” was when the U.S. Embassy in Beijing started monitoring PM 2.5 concentrations and making them publicly available in 2008. PM 2.5 is an especially hazardous form of particulate matter air pollution that is 2.5 micrometers in diameter or less, or about 1/30th the diameter of a human hair. When inhaled, these tiny particles can pass through the respiratory tract all the way into the lungs. On top of asthma, studies have linked extended exposure to PM 2.5 to heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune disease, lupus, and other ailments.

Daly said that while the most important thing about this film is that it’s a Chinese voice speaking to China, the many Western influences apparent in the film’s production should not be overlooked. On top of its references to PM 2.5 readings from the U.S. Embassy, Daly noted the documentary is also in the style of a TED Talk, relies heavily on NASA data, has been likened to Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring – which is often credited with inciting the environmental movement in the U.S. – works in the tradition of video journalism programs such as “60 Minutes,” and is even named after the American TV series “Under the Dome.”

“This is in part a product of the U.S.’s policy of engagement with China,” said Daly. “This kind of cultural exposure has a profound impact over time.”

Daly said that the Chinese leadership’s decision to ban the film over its popularity is ultimately harmful to the country’s efforts to be a persuasive international force, and that it redirects attention from the acute challenges of controlling air pollution to the standard questions about governance and transparency. He also said that when foreigners express anger over the ban, Chinese figures of authority get upset over what they see as foreign meddling. This is a cycle that’s been going on since China started modernizing 35 years ago.

The optics of the ban also somewhat darken the prospects for China’s potential role in the critical international climate talks this year, where leaders will decide on a new climate change treaty to go into effect by 2020. China’s place in the ongoing discussion was elevated at the end of 2014 when the country made a made a powerful joint pledge with the U.S. to limit greenhouse gas emissions during President Obama’s visit to the Chinese capital. In the pledge, the U.S. committed to cut its emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 and China agreed to get 20 percent of its energy from non-fossil-fuel sources by 2030 and to peak greenhouse gas emissions that same year.

In the film comparisons are made to Los Angeles’ pollution problem during the “age of oil” before environmental regulations went into effect as well as “the Great Smog” that usurped London in the middle of the 20th Century. Chai points out how damaging air pollution was to those cities during their critical periods of development. China, especially the area around Beijing, has grown at a more rapid pace and is using far more fossil fuels than either of the growth spurts experienced by London or L.A.

In an indication of the potential for future change in China, the documentary is still available for viewing by international audiences throughout the world, including in L.A. and London, on YouTube.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee

On Sunday, the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting published a story that alleged that Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) had unofficially banned its employees from saying the words “climate change” and “global warming” in official communications. The charge of censorship clashes sharply with Florida’s vulnerability to the effects of climate change, particularly sea level rise.

But Ben Kirtman, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Miami who’s been in contact with members of the DEP and other state agencies in the past, wasn’t surprised by the report. He told ThinkProgress that he’d spoken with employees of other Florida agencies – he declined to name which ones – who had said that they, too, had been told not to talk about climate change in their professional capacity. So before he read the FCIR report, he knew that this censorship was likely occurring, at least at some agencies.

“The first thing they said to me was, ‘Oh we’re not allowed to talk about that,'” Kirtman said of a meeting in which he brought up climate change with employees of a state agency.

The FCIR report included multiple interviews with former employees of and volunteers with the state’s DEP, all of whom said the unwritten rule had been implemented soon after Gov. Rick Scott (R) took office in 2011. Both the DEP and the governor’s office denied the existence of a policy on talking about climate change to the FCIR, and Gov. Scott himself has also reportedly said that the claims aren’t true. The DEP confirmed its stance denying the policy to ThinkProgress Monday.

“It’s simply not true – there’s nothing else to add,” Dee Ann Miller, spokesperson for Florida’s DEP, said. “We have no such policy.”

CREDIT: AP PHOTOS/BRENDAN FARRINGTON

But Kirtman said he thinks there’s been a “concerted effort” from Gov. Scott’s administration to prevent climate change from being a major part of the state government’s discussion. Gov. Scott has historically avoided questions regarding climate change, saying in 2010 that he had “not been convinced” that the phenomenon was happening, but answering only “I’m not a scientist” during last year’s gubernatorial race.

Kirtman said he thinks the unofficial policy on mentioning climate change at the DEP was a political move on the part of the governor’s office.

“I believe it was a political mistake, that the Scott administration made this political calculation that they would lose political support if they allowed their administration to talk about climate change,” he said, adding that he thought Gov. Scott was following the lead of some members of Congress in trying to ignore the issue of climate change.

Kirtman’s previous experience with Florida agencies may have stifled his surprise at the FCIR report, but David Hastings, professor of marine science and chemistry at Florida’s Eckerd College, said he was shocked by the article.

“At first I thought it was out of the Onion or some other kind of satirical website,” he said. “It was like a page out of 1984. It was Orwellian. That they are not allowing a word to be used…it’s scary.”

Both scientists – along with Jeff Chanton, the John Widmer Winchester Professor of Oceanography at Florida State University – were dismayed by the article’s claims. Chanton said the unwritten rule amounted to “muzzling science,” and Kirtman said he thought it would be difficult for the state to make significant headway on mitigating and adapting to climate change if state agencies like the DEP weren’t allowed to talk about it.

That’s important because, in Florida, the threats surrounding climate change and its impacts are only becoming more dire – the state, especially the Southern region, is particularly vulnerable to sea level rise and the ecological, economic, and infrastructure-related problems that come with it. Though Scott last month announced a proposed effort to mitigate the effects of sea level rise in Florida, Florida’s state government has been slow to act on climate change.

The scientists stressed the need for the state to use the latest climate science to inform its decisions on climate change, and said the state needed to start planning for climate impacts now, or risk much costlier adaptation measures in the future.

“To say you can’t talk about the best available science is crazy,” Kirtman said. “It’s like telling doctors they can’t do a CAT scan when people have cancer because, ‘I don’t believe in it.'”

Both Kirtman and Hastings expressed worries that the policy was anti-business too. Acting on climate change could bring a variety of business opportunities to the state – in renewable energy, resilient building and retrofitting, and other areas – and blocking that economic growth goes against the governor’s pro-jobs mentality.

All three scientists were among the five who met with Gov. Scott last August, in an attempt to provide him a basis on what climate change is and what effects it’s having in Florida. The scientists left that meeting unsure whether Gov. Scott had gotten the message – he’d taken up about a third of the 30-minute meeting with small talk and hadn’t asked any climate-related questions, they said – but they’re still hopeful that the governor will meet with them again on the issue. They’re also hopeful that the governor’s office will address the policy on climate change censorship, saying definitively that state employees will be able to speak about climate change from now on.

“What the administration needs to do is come out and say, ‘we’ve made a mistake, were sorry, and we’ll do better in the future,” Chanton said. “I believe they’ll do the right thing.”

The idea that there are “patches” of trash in the oceans is a myth created 15 years ago that should be abandoned in favor of “plastic smog,” like massive clouds of microplastics that emanate out of the five subtropical gyres. My recent publication in the journal Plos One, estimates 269,000 tons of plastic from 5.25 trillion particles, but more alarming than that is it’s mostly microplastic (>92 percent in our study) and most of the plastic in the ocean is likely not on the sea surface.

Recent research has shown microplastics in ice cores, across the seafloor, vertically throughout the ocean and on every beach worldwide. The little stuff is everywhere.

If you follow the life of plastic in the oceans, as we have done for 50,000 miles since 2009, you find the large items leaving coastlines in droves, then it rapidly shreds as it migrates toward the calmer waters of the subtropical gyres where sunlight, waves and nibbling fish rip it to micro-size particles smaller than a grain of rice. Microplastic then flow through the bodies of billions of organisms, making their way out of the gyres to deeper currents, and ultimately the seafloor. That’s the end-life of plastic.

Visualize the problem as “plastic smog” much like the way you can look up and visualize clouds of air pollution over cities. It’s very similar. We solved the air pollution problem by stopping the source with better emission controls on cars and power plants. There were people that suggested sucking air pollution out of the sky, but because people could look up and see the problem they understood that only stopping the source would work. The exact same logic applies to microplastic pollution in the world’s oceans. Because there are only a handful of scientists that understand ocean plastic pollution, and the public largely relies on the media for information, there’s an unusual amount of attention given to ideas to suck up plastic from the sea.

What 5.25 trillion particles tells us is that emission controls are the only viable solution. And that’s where we need your help. By supporting our microbead ban, which is one of many campaigns to phase out bad plastic design, you will make a long-lasting impact on fixing the problem.

Watch here as I provide an overview of our recent study:

However there is a plan to clean the oceans and it’s amazing