Marc Angelo Coppola

Hershey’s Milk Chocolate and Kisses to go non-GM

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Hershey intends to remove genetically-modified ingredients from Hershey’s Milk Chocolate and Kisses by the end of the year.

The company plans to ditch emulsifier polyglycerol polyricinoleate (PGPR) and artificial vanillin for the brands as it pledges to shift to “simple ingredients”.

No artificial colors and flavors or HFCS

Hershey said in a statement: “We are specifically looking to formulate new products and transition existing products to deliver on no artificial flavors, no synthetic colors, no high fructose corn-syrup and to be gluten-free.”

Hershey’s clean label initiative comes just days after Nestlé USA committed to removing artificial colors and flavors in its confectionery range.

Jeff Beckman, director of corporate communications at Hershey, told ConfectioneryNews. “We are looking closely at every ingredient in our products and how we describe them. We will strive for simplicity with all of our ingredients, but we may not achieve it with every product.”

Hershey has been under pressure from consumer groups to remove or label GMOs for a number of years.

Follows an earlier move in Canada

For Hershey’s Milk Chocolate and Kisses, the company will move to natural vanilla, non-genetically modified sugar and milk from cows that have not been treated with growth hormone rBST.

Hershey replaced artificial vanillin with natural vanilla and removed PGPR in Canada a few years ago. The Canadian products still contain soy lecithin, which Hershey has previously described as “basically a natural emulsifier made with soy beans”.

‘Simple snacking products’

In the US, Hershey also intends to roll out “simple snacking products” without high-fructose corn syrup or artificial colors & flavors, such as Brookside Dark Chocolate Fruit & Nut Bars.

It also plans to introduce a full ingredient glossary and profiles of the firm’s suppliers on its website.

Beckman said the shift to ‘simple ingredients’ could take a number of years, but said Hershey would provide updates on its progress.

The company said it would initially cost more to source ‘simple ingredients’, but pledged to maintain consumer prices. Last year, the company increased wholesale prices 8% globally in response to rising cocoa, dairy and nut prices. “No other action is planned at this time,” it said in a Q&A on its simple ingredients policy.

  • Simple Ingredients: Ingredients that are simple and easy to understand, like fresh milk from local farms, cocoa beans and sugar.

  • Sharing What’s Inside: Sharing information on ingredients sourcing, manufacturing and labeling.
  • Thoughtful and responsible sourcing: Working with suppliers to source sustainable ingredients, e.g 100% certified cocoa and traceable palm oil.

Mars under the spotlight

Mars has now come under pressure to remove artificial dyes following Nestlé and Hershey’s recent announcements.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest said in a release : “If Nestle can do it, Mars can do it.”

The organization has called on Mars to remove artificial colors linked to child hyperactivity in its M&M’s brand.

Mars has removed these dyes for M&M’s in Europe, but the brand contains Blue 1, Blue 2, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, and Red 40 in the US.

Joe Rogan – Why You Need To Try The Sensory Deprivation Chamber

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The Sensory Deprivation Chamber will show you all the different issues in your life that you don’t like, things that are bothering you and things about your behavior that you need to change. And then, something truly amazing happens…

“This is one of the greatest tools ever for exploring thinking, exploring the way you think and sort of making an audit of all your own personal thoughts and ideas.” ~ Joe Rogan

Plant Power: Dutch company harvests electricity from living plants to power streetlights, Wi-Fi, and cell phones

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A Dutch company harnesses electricity from living plants, and then uses it to power cell phone chargers, Wi-Fi hotspots, and now over 300 LED streetlights in two sites in the Netherlands. Plant-e debuted its “Starry Sky” project in November 2014 at an old ammunition site called HAMbrug, near Amsterdam, and plant power is also being used near the company’s headquarters in Wageningen.

Many researchers are looking for ways to basically generate electricity from thin air, and this idea is similar. Plant-e ‘s founders looked to the natural world and asked where lost energy could be harnessed and used by humans. They found it in the byproduct of photosynthesis in plants. Plant-e’s plant power modules could mark the dawn of the next revolution in clean energy.

Harvesting energy from growing plants has come a long way since middle school science fair projects featuring clocks run by potatoes. Plant-e’s approach is built on the same principle, but is radically different because it does not require damaging the plant in order to harness its energy. Not only can electricity be generated without harming the plant, but the amount of electricity is actually quite substantial.

Related: Biophotovoltaic moss tables generates electricity through photosynthesis

For the Netherlands streetlight projects, Plant-e’s electricity generation process involves plants growing in two-square-foot plastic containers. Plants undergo photosynthesis, essential turning solar power into sugars. As they grow, plants always produce more sugars than they need, and the excess is cast out through their roots into the surrounding soil and break down into protons and electrons. Plant-e’s system uses electrodes in the soil to await the breakdown of this plant waste, thus conducting electricity.

Company founders hope that their technology will someday be used to provide power in poor areas of the world where plant life is abundant, such as in rice paddies or near wetlands. If they can figure out how to do this in a cost-effective way, it means that this new clean energy could bring electricity to people who have never had it which, by current estimates, is nearly 25 percent of the world’s population.

Via Yes Magazine

Images via Plant-e and Shutterstock

Hankook’s Revolutionary Airless i-Flex Tire is Puncture-Proof and 95% Recyclable

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Unlike the automobile, the pneumatic car tire has undergone little innovation over the past 100 years. Now Korean manufacturer Hankook is giving the humble wheel a makeover with the i-Flex, an airless tire that is light, puncture-proof, and made from 95% recyclable materials!

The i-Flex was just unveiled at the 2013 Frankfurt Auto Show this week. The tire is composed of polyurethane synthetics, and the entire unit is fabricated with the rim and measures 155/590 R14. Geometric cells inside the wheel allow the tire to function without the need for air, eliminating the stress of having to check for pressure, fixing flats, and improving fuel economy.

Hankook has yet to announce any production plans for the i-Flex, but experts speculate that it is only a matter of time before the manufacturer follows in the treads of other airless tire makers like Bridgestone and Polaris. The company is concurrently working on another prototype in conjunction with the University of Cincinnati dubbed the ” eMembrane ” which able to transform its shape depending on road conditions.

Wind Turbine Bridge Transforms Italian Viaduct Into Public Space

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A bridge that repurposes abandoned viaducts, produces energy AND looks futuristically sleek? Yes, it can be true, and it is Italy’s proposed Wind Turbine Viaduct called “Solar Wind.” Southern Italy is dotted with unused viaducts, and rather than spending $50 million to tear them down, town officials near Calabria held a competition called “Solar Park South,” open to designers and engineers asking them to come up with an environmentally conscious way to re-use the existing structures.

Solar Wind, conceived by the design team of Francesco Colarossi, Giovanna Saracino and Luisa Saracino, has an abundance of green benefits. Using the space between the viaduct, the team proposed installing 26 wind turbines, which would produce 36 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year!

Additionally, the roadway across the bridge would be densely lined with solar cells coated in clear plastic, producing another 11.2 million kilowatt hours. Much like New York’s Highline, but on a much more grandiose scale, the entire viaduct itself would be turned into a promenade and park. Drivers may pull off to take in gorgeous coastal views, solar powered greenhouses would be installed along the bridge, creating an ultra-fresh farmer’s market.

The entire structure is like a green Utopia, repurposing abandoned structures, producing a combined 40 million kilowatt hours of electricity (that is enough to power 15,000 homes), while creating a chance to take in the surrounding panoramic views, and buy the freshest of produce! Sounds much better than merely tearing down the old viaducts.

How to Grow a Forest Really, Really Fast

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A forest planted by humans, then left to nature’s own devices, typically takes at least 100 years to mature. What if we could make the process happen ten times faster? Eco-entrepreneur Shubhendu Sharma’s figured out a way of growing native, self-sustaining forests anywhere in the world, with the efficiency of industrial processes. He tells us how.

Back in 2008, I was an industrial engineer at Toyota in India, helping prepare assembly lines and dispatch systems for car manufacture. One day, a scientist named Akira Miyawaki came to the factory to plant a forest on Toyota’s campus. He gave a presentation on his methods, and I became so fascinated that I decided I wanted to learn how to plant a forest myself.

Miyawaki is quite famous, and very old; he’s now 87. He has planted around 40 million trees all over the world, and in 2006, he won the Blue Planet Prize, the equivalent to the Nobel Prize in the environmental field. His method’s based on what’s called “potential natural vegetation”- a theory that if a piece of land is free from human intervention, a forest will naturally self-seed and take over that land within a period of around 600 to 1,000 years, with the species that would be native and robust, and that would require no maintenance. Miyawaki’s methodology amplifies that growth process to establish a mature, native forest in ten years - ten times the normal rate of forests planted by humans.

If a piece of land is free from human intervention, a forest will naturally self-seed and take over within a period of around 600 to 1,000 years. Akira Miyawaki’s methodology amplifies that growth process to establish a mature, native forest in ten years.

Intrigued, I volunteered with Miyawaki and studied his methodologies, and then planted a forest of 300 trees of 42 species in a 93-square-meter plot in my back garden. It was such a success that I decided to quit the car industry to start Afforestt, a for-profit company devoted to planting native forests for all kinds of clients, from farmers to corporations to city governments.

Mushrooms growing through rice paddy straw, a locally sourced amendment for soil. Photo: Afforestt

Here’s how it works.It takes six steps.

1. First, you start with soil. We identify what nutrition the soil lacks.

2. Then we identify what species we should be growing in this soil, depending on climate.

3. We then identify locally abundant biomass available in that region to give the soil whatever nourishment it needs. This is typically an agricultural or industrial byproduct - like chicken manure or press mud, a byproduct of sugar production - but it can be almost anything. We’ve made a rule that it must come from within 50 kilometers of the site, which means we have to be flexible.

4. Once we’ve amended the soil to a depth of one meter, we plant saplings that are up to 80 centimeters high, packing them in very densely - three to five saplings per square meter.

Photo: Afforest

5. The forest itself must cover a 100-square-meter minimum area. This grows into a forest so dense that after eight months, sunlight can’t reach the ground. At this point, every drop of rain that falls is conserved, and every leaf that falls is converted into humus. The more the forest grows, the more it generates nutrients for itself, accelerating further growth. This density also means that individual trees begin competing for sunlight - another reason these forests grow so fast.

6. The forest needs to be watered and weeded for the first two or three years, at which point it becomes self-sustaining. After that, it’s best to disturb the forest as little as possible to allow its ecosystem, including animals, to become established.

Of course, you have to keep an eye on the forest in case of changing conditions. Rainfall patterns, for example, are different from what they were in the past, and that could affect native species. Oman, where I am doing a forestation project, is getting more rainfall year after year, so biodiversity is actually increasing. We’ve gone from having to plant thorny, bushy species that can grow in any desert to choosing more deciduous species.

This is why, for every species chosen, we do a thorough survey first. We go by real-time data, gathering information for our native species databases. So while a book on native trees may say that X, Y, Z species belongs to a particular geographic region, until we see that species grow full bloom and in good health in that region with our own eyes, we won’t select it as a forestation species.

The soil is amended before saplings are planted. Photo: Afforestt
A freshly planted sapling. Photo: Afforestt

Here’s the funny thing: I have no expertise about how to determine native species for forests! But I worked around this by applying car manufacturing models. At Toyota, I worked with the supplier development team, organizing assembly lines and dispatch systems for cars being manufactured in India. I applied these manufacturing principles to forests, developing a computer program that registers tree species’ specific parameters, such as how high it grows, in what months it blooms, the kinds of temperatures it can tolerate, and so on. For example, if there’s a species that grows up to 50 feet, the one planted next to it should grow only up to 20, because we don’t want a conflict after five years. In other words, we use car-assembly logic to pick an ideal combination of trees to best utilize vertical space. So it’s not me or any individual expert who decides what species to plant, at what ratios: the software figures it out.

We have to let each forest grow and see what can or can’t live in complete harmony with surrounding species. Those that die, we do not replace - that’s nature. It evolves by trial and error.

For water, we have a pattern requirement of how much water is required per square meter. For example, in India, it’s five liters per square meter. But we cannot predict with 100 percent accuracy the behavior of forests after five or ten years, because you can’t know what kind of bird species, predators, or pests are going to attack in time. We want 100 percent survival, but the survival rate we have is around 92 percent. That 8% percent gap is what we work to bridge. We aim to take our methodologies to such perfection that no trees will die. But it’s still a natural process; we have to let the forest grow and see what can or can’t live in complete harmony with surrounding species. Those that die, we do not replace - that’s nature. It evolves by trial and error.

A two-year-old forest. Photo: Afforest.

One great thing about growing a forest is that you can eat it. The forest I grew in my backyard has 42 species of trees, of which 18 are fruit. Our guava trees produce so much fruit that we harvest at least five kilos a day. All my neighbors are getting guava nectar that my mother makes because we have such an abundance.

But not everyone wants a forest full of food - and forests aren’t necessarily good for producing single cash crops. A native forest has to be biodiverse to thrive - including a mix of at least 50 to 100 different species. So if market demand encourages farmers to nurture only fruit species, they will ignore the non-useful species, and the forest won’t survive.

Forests aren’t necessarily good for producing single cash crops. A native forest has to be biodiverse to thrive - including a mix of at least 50 to 100 different species.

At Afforestt, we grow four different types of forest. If I’m designing a forest for a corporate setting, the primary agenda will be aesthetics - a higher ratio of species with flowers, for instance. If I make a forest primarily for the sake of water conservation, the tree species should grow huge and have deep roots. In a public park, we’d choose species that grow small fruits to attract birds, appealing to park visitors. A forest on a farm would include more fruit species in the mix - up to half, including nuts, which offer high value as they can be preserved for a long time. Other useful trees for farming communities include those that produce oil seeds, fodder for cattle, or firewood for humans. So the combination depends on space and the priorities of the client.

An Afforest project transforms a barren piece of land into a lush, dense forest on a residential estate. Photo: Afforestt
A bird visits Sharma’s experimental backyard forest. Photo: Afforestt

As for tangible environmental benefits, in my own garden, I’ve seen an increase from seven bird species to 17 in two years. I think if I were to do the same survey now, I’d find 20 species. Our groundwater used to disappear every summer, but the trees helped recharge our aquifer, so it returned after the second year, too. In cities, green areas improve air quality, increase biodiversity, and reduce the heat-island effect, which improves the microclimates of residential areas. Natural native forests are beneficial because they require no maintenance, in contrast to most urban landscaping, which is immensely resource-intensive, diminishing its ecological value. We also plant forests specifically to conserve groundwater tables.

I would love to partner with someone to conduct environmental studies and collect official data. It’s really expensive. There’s a specific scientific methodology to measure groundwater levels, for example.

So far, we’ve planted 43,000 trees for 33 clients. But our plan is to automate the system so that we can give anyone anywhere in the world step-by-step instructions on how to plant a native forest. We plan to crowdsource knowledge of native tree species; I’m working on a website for this part of the project and plan to launch it within a year. To make soil analysis easy for remote clients, we are also developing a small, GPS-enabled soil probe that will test soil and upload the data onto our server. When the probe is integrated with our database, at the push of a button you’ll know the soil constituents and what nutrients it needs, and we’ll be able to immediately send a complete species list and a detailed procedure.

In my backyard forest, I’ve seen an increase from seven bird species to 17 in two years… Our groundwater used to disappear every summer, but returned after the second year, too.

The hardware can be used to monitor the growth of this forest by reading how much sunlight is reaching the ground, changes in soil nutrition and moisture, and so on. We’ll launch five forest plantations in different places using this method, to prove that by using our methodology and following it step by step, anyone can make their own forest.

Once we’re able to share our afforestation methodology remotely, I believe we can increase scaling exponentially. Afforestt is a vehicle for offering afforestation methodology to people, but it’s the people who implement it who will make forestation scalable. Together, we can bring back entire lost forests.

Watch Sharma’s TED talk, “How to grow a tiny forest anywhere,” below. A version of this interview was originally published on the TED BlogThe TED Fellows program hand-picks young innovators from around the world to raise international awareness of their work and maximize their impact. .

White House Says Climate Change Impacts More Americans Than Terrorism | VICE News

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Even as President Barack Obama seeks the blessing of Congress for sustained attacks on the Islamic State, he’s being accused of slighting the threat of terrorism compared to the risks posed by climate change.

“It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you’ve got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris,” Obama told the news site Vox in an interview. “We devote enormous resources to that, and it is right and appropriate for us to be vigilant and aggressive in trying to deal with that – the same way a big city mayor’s got to cut the crime rate down if he wants that city to thrive. But we also have to attend to a lot of other issues, and we’ve got to make sure we’re right-sizing our approach so that what we do isn’t counterproductive.”

Vox asked Obama whether the news “sometimes overstates the level of alarm” about terrorism, “as opposed to a longer-term problem of climate change and epidemic disease.”

“If it bleeds, it leads, right?” Obama replied. “You show crime stories and you show fires, because that’s what folks watch, and it’s all about ratings. And, you know, the problems of terrorism and dysfunction and chaos, along with plane crashes and a few other things, that’s the equivalent when it comes to covering international affairs.”

Accounts of progress in battling disease or feeding more people are “not a sexy story,” he added. “And climate change is one that is happening at such a broad scale and at such a complex system, it’s a hard story for the media to tell on a day-to-day basis.”

Pressed on the comments, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that more people will face a “direct, daily impact” from climate change or disease than terrorism.

But the US leader’s conservative critics swiftly jumped on his characterization of the Paris killings in January as a random attack at a time when the Islamic State – the al Qaeda offshoot that has seized control of much of Iraq and Syria – has been beheading Western hostages and burned a captured Jordanian air force pilot alive in a cage.

“What the hell?” conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh wondered on his widely aired show. “What daily impact? What dramatic changes in people’s lives is brought on by global warming? Is unemployment because of global warming? Is the fact that people can’t get health insurance, is that because of global warming?”

And even before the Vox interview, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee – a once, and perhaps future, Republican presidential contender – told Fox News that “a beheading is much worse than a sunburn.”

New safety rules for ‘bomb trains’ under White House review. Read more here.

Obama has repeatedly warned of climate change as a long-term threat. In his January State of the Union speech, he noted that the Pentagon has called climate change a “threat multiplier.” An October report from the Defense Department noted that a warming world “will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict,” fueling shortages of food and water, raising the odds of epidemics and making disputes over resources worse.

And the new National Security Strategy from the White House calls the issue “an urgent and growing threat to our national security.”

“The present day effects of climate change are being felt from the Arctic to the Midwest. Increased sea levels and storm surges threaten coastal regions, infrastructure, and property. In turn, the global economy suffers, com­pounding the growing costs of preparing and restoring infrastructure.”

The Institute for Economics and Peace estimates the number of deaths from terrorism has increased fivefold since 2000, with nearly 18,000 victims in 2013. The war in Syria accounts for much of the current toll, the group reported last year.

On the other hand, the World Bank estimates that climate change “threatens to put prosperity out of reach of millions and roll back decades of development progress.”

Earnest told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl on Tuesday that “more people are directly affected by those things than by terrorism.” But he wouldn’t elaborate when asked whether the administration considered climate change a greater threat than terrorism: “I wouldn’t have a whole lot more to say about what the president has said in that interview.”

Follow Matt Smith on Twitter: @mattsmithatl

mount everest climbing climate change

Climbers Can No Longer Scale a Section of Mount Everest Because of Climate Change | VICE News

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After last year’s deadly avalanche on the slopes of Mount Everest, authorities in Nepal have ordered climbers to shift their route away from the scene of the snowslide.

Instead of hugging the western shoulder of the rugged Khumbu Icefall, the new path authorized by the body that regulates operations on the world’s highest peak will take climbers through the middle of the icefall. The idea is to leave climbers less exposed to the kind of avalanche that killed 16 Sherpa guides in April 2014 – a risk that could become more common as Himalayan glaciers retreat in the face of a changing climate.

The route may be more difficult for climbers, but “some things are more important,” Mohan Krishna Sapkota, a spokesman for Nepal’s Tourism Ministry, told VICE News.

“They have changed the route to make the expeditions avoid the more risky area,”

Sapkota said. “Our prime objective is to make a safer route than before.”

Tony Olejnicki, an Australian mountain guide who was on the mountain in 2014, called the decision “very sensible.” But he said it would mean bringing more equipment up the icefall, which he said is just like it sounds: “It’s like a big waterfall, if you like, of big blocks of ice.”

‘Things are changing, that’s for sure, the glacier environment, the glacier dynamics – it’s all changing.’

“If you go through the middle, you have to go across ladders,” Olejnicki told VICE News. “You need to put an aluminum ladder across the crevasses. These ladders have been brought by people, Sherpa porters, about 700 meters up from base camp.”

Last year’s avalanche effectively closed down the 2014 climbing season when surviving sherpas refused to return. It was the single deadliest day in the long history of efforts to conquer the 29,000-foot (8,800-meter) mountain, which has claimed more than 250 lives.

The Himalayan peaks of Everest and its sisters are sometimes called Asia’s water towers. The same snows that pose such a risk to mountaineers are a hydrological storehouse for the continent, but it’s been losing a bit of its stock every year.

“Things are changing, that’s for sure, the glacier environment, the glacier dynamics – it’s all changing,” Jeffrey Kargel, a University of Arizona geologist, who has conducted regular studies on the high slopes of Everest, told VICE News.

In 2014, a Chinese study found the glaciers atop Everest had shrunk by about 10 percent over the past four decades. A multinational study the year before put the figure at around 13 percent over 50 years and found the mountain’s snowline was 180 meters (585 feet) above where it had been in the early 1960s.

Glaciers have waxed and waned atop the Himalayas for centuries. But Kargel said human-induced changes in atmospheric and oceanic systems risk destabilizing those rivers of ice.

Alaska’s Iditarod sled dog race has been re-routed because there’s not enough snow. Read more here.

“You have the potential to enter into a new and unfamiliar regime of glacial hazards – a new and unfamiliar regime, so that Sherpa guides who know full well how the last decade has been might not understand what this next decade brings,” Kargel said. “It adds an additional layer of complexity to planning, and I would say that even without climate change, the ice falls and hanging glaciers are absolutely treacherous.”

There’s no way to completely avoid risks when climbing the world’s highest peaks – “But if it’s possible to skirt the most horrific hazards, that’s a good thing.”

Warmer air carries more moisture, which falls as snow in high elevations. The weight of that snow can break chunks of ice off hanging glaciers, like the one behind the 2014 disaster. And warmer temperatures and water from melting ice can combine to weaken a glacier’s grip on the underlying rock, Kargel said.

“Instead of ice being frozen to the bed, it finds itself on a slippery, wet surface and falls off,” he said.

And Olejnicki said that without the snowpack to cement it, the loose rock at the top of the mountain would leave Everest “not really climbable.”

“If you have exposed, loose rock, it’s dangerous and it’s not fun,” he said. The ice is “not necessarily safe, but you need this snow and ice cover to be able to climb up.”

Nepal can’t really afford a Sherpa boycott of Mount Everest after avalanche. Read more here.

The 2014 deaths were the last straw for some guides, who also have complained about the Nepalese bureaucracy. British Columbia-based PeakFreaks announced it was abandoning Everest in 2015, citing “drastic alterations to the weather” as well as safety concerns. In a statement posted on its website, PeakFreaks said it will concentrate on taking climbers to other mountains “free from thorny politics, crumbling glaciers, and looming ice-falls.”

And Olejnicki, who led climbers up Everest for five seasons before the disaster, said he was turning his attention to other peaks as well. The Sherpa deaths were “very upsetting,” he said, but the business of reaching the roof of the world was getting to be a grind. It’s a grueling, weeks-long trek, “But for me as a climber, it’s boring,” he said.

“Sometimes people who’ve been doing something over and over again, it all becomes the same,” he said.

But for many like Kargel, whose work has taken him about two-thirds of the way up the mountain, “There are no words” to describe Everest.

“Whenever I get above the treeline, it’s special like coral reefs are special and tropical rain forests are special,” Kargel told VICE News. “The tundra above the treeline is so beautiful. The wildlife, the flora and fauna, which are so exquisitely adapted to that range of condition, it’s just breathtaking.”

Follow Matt Smith on Twitter: @mattsmithatl

Toxic Waste Spill in North Carolina: Coal Ash (Part 1) | VICE News

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Coal ash, which contains many of the world’s worst carcinogens, is what’s left over when coal is burnt for electricity. An estimated 113 million tons of coal ash are produced annually in the US, and stored in almost every state — some of it literally in people’s backyards. With very little government oversight and few safeguards in place, toxic chemicals have been known to leak from these storage sites and into nearby communities, contaminating drinking water and making residents sick.

On February 2, 2014, up to 39,000 tons of coal ash and 27 million gallons of contaminated water spilled out into the Dan River in North Carolina after a pipe broke underneath a coal ash pond at a Duke Energy power plant. The environmental disaster thrust Duke Energy, the country’s largest electricity company, into the spotlight, revealing a history of violations and inadequate oversight of ponds at all of its plants across the state.

In part one, VICE News travels to North Carolina to visit a river that’s been poisoned with arsenic from a nearby Duke Energy site, speak with a resident who has found toxic heavy metals in her drinking water, and question a Duke Energy spokesperson about the power company’s policies.

Watch “Showdown in Coal Country”

Watch “Petcoke: Toxic Waste in the Windy City”

Read “Humans Are Destroying the Environment at a Rate Unprecedented in Over 10,000 Years”

Read “The Economic Cost of Carbon Pollution Is Much Greater Than Estimated, Say Stanford University Researchers”

Read “The EPA Tightened Rules on Coal Waste, But Not Enough, Say Environmentalists”

9 Houseplants That Clean The Air And Are Basically Impossible To Kill

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Pop quiz: which is more polluted, indoor air or outdoor air? 10 times out of 10, indoor air in your house, office or apartment is going to be worse than the air outside. Indoor air pollution has been ranked among the top 5 greatest risks to public health by the EPA, and stagnant indoor air allows pollutants to build up and stick to the things inside of your home.

The things in our homes emit some nasty toxic chemicals like formaldehyde for example. You can also be impacted by pollutants like pollen, bacteria, mold, and various outdoor contaminants that find their way inside.

Fortunately, houseplants can help us solve some of these air quality issues. Even if you don’t have a green thumb, these houseplants are basically impossible to kill. Let’s check them out!

1. Garden Mum

This plant was found by NASA to be a real air-purifying beast. It removes ammonia, benzene, formaldehyde, and xylene from your home’s air. It’s popular and inexpensive, plus they can be planted outside too.

2. Spider Plant

Spider plants are incredibly easy to grow, so if you’re a beginner, this is a great one to start with. It lights bright, indirect light and sends out shoots with flowers on them that will eventually grow into baby spider plants that you can propagate yourself. Before too long, you’ll have more spider plants than you’ll know what to do with.

3. Dracaena

There are over 40 kinds of dracaena plants, which makes it easy to find the right one for you. They remove benzene, formaldehyde, trichloroethylene, and xylene from the air. They are toxic to cats and dogs though, so if you have pets, you might want to think twice about this one.

4. Ficus

Ficus trees are a favorite of mine as they are able to grow quite large depending on the type of pot you have them in. They typically stand between 2 and 10 feet tall and have some serious air cleaning abilities. You can also keep it outside in the spring and summer. The ficus removes benzene, trichloroethylene and formaldehyde from indoor air.

5. Peace Lily

Not only does the peace lily send up beautiful flowers, but they’re impossible to kill and have great air cleaning abilities. They flower through most of the summer and prefer shady spots with moist but not soggy soil. It removes ammonia, benzene, formaldehyde and trichloroethylene.

6. Boston fern.

This plant likes cool locations with high humidity and indirect light. Bathrooms are a perfect spot for these little friends. They remove pollutants like xylene and formaldehyde from indoor air.

7. Snake Plant/Mother-in-law’s Tongue.

I see this one all over the place in offices and restaurants – and for good reason. They’re pretty much impossible to kill. They need water only occasionally and prefer drier conditions. They don’t need much direct sunlight either. They remove benzene, formaldehyde, trichloroethylene and xylene from indoor air.

8. Bamboo Palm

Bamboo palms are most effective at filtering formaldehyde. They thrive in full sun and bright light. They grow as high as 12 foot too, making them an incredible presence indoors. They remove benzene, formaldehyde and trichloroethylene.

9. Aloe Vera

Aloe is a multi-use plant for sure. It has health benefits when consumed in smaller amounts, helps relieve burns, and cleans your indoor air as well. It removes formaldehyde effectively from indoor air.

Image credit: F. D. Richards, Flickr

One Person’s Trash Is Another’s Treasure: 10 Foods You Can Grow From Scraps

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One of the biggest challenges to living off the grid in a sustainable way is figuring out what to do with your trash. It’s less a problem of disposal and more an issue of figuring out how to make use of everything you bring in. Making a compost heap is a great way to dispose of old food scraps and turn it into nutrient-rich soil. It takes your trash and turns it into a sort of black gold. But did you know you can regrow a lot of your food scraps?

What kind of foods can you regrow? Let’s run down the list.

1. Carrots.

Carrots are an easy one. Simply chop the tops of your carrots off, leaving about three quarters of an inch of the carrot still attached to the greens. Put in soil and water. A new carrot will grow out of the top.

2. Celery.

This was a good one for my household. We eat a ton of celery! Instead of throwing out the base of your celery, simply plant it in some decent soil and it’ll start regrowing almost immediately. Harvest it as you need it, and eventually you’ll never buy celery again.

3. Onions.

When you go to chop an onion, cut the roots off the bottom of the onion. Be sure to leave a little bit of the vegetable with the root. You don’t need much. Put the roots in soil, water frequently, and a new onion will grow out of it.

4. Green onions.

Like celery, simply plant the bases of your green onions in some soil and harvest as necessary. It will regrow rather quickly.

5. Romaine lettuce.

Leave a couple inches of leaf on the base of the plant and plant it in soil, just as you would celery or green onions.

6. Ginger.

This one isn’t exactly a food scrap, but you can break apart a ginger root and grow more ginger out of it. After about four months, you can re-harvest portions of the new root as you need it.

7. Pineapple.

Pineapple is one of the more difficult ones to regrow due to the length of time it takes and the fact that it only grows easily in some climates. But when you chop the top, leafy portion of the fruit off, plant it directly into some potting soil. A new pineapple will grow out of it.

8. Potatoes

One of my favorites. It’s so easy and you can yield a ton of potatoes out of just a few eyes. As they begin to grow eyes, or those little nodes you see coming out of the skin, chop them up, leaving a small cube of the potato with the eye itself. Plant a few inches apart in deeper soil. This one isn’t for small pots for sure.

9. Garlic.

Again, not exactly a food scrap, but you can take one bulb of garlic and, after fully grown, turn it into about a dozen. Simply break apart the bulb and plant in soil with the sprouted end up in the autumn. It may sound weird, but if you plant in the fall, it’ll begin growing early in the spring and you’ll have your harvest ready by late summer.

10. Mushrooms.

This is also a pretty difficult one to regrow, but it’s possible. Remove the head of the mushroom and plant the stalk in the soil with the very top of the stalk exposed to the air. A new mushroom head will grow out of the stalk if its kept in cool, moist areas without too much light.

Image credit: April Griffus/Flickr

Loggers Accidentally Cut Down World’s Oldest Tree in Amazon Forest

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The giant Samauma tree that is thought to be over 5,800 years old judging on its concentric rings and estimated to be close to 40 meters in height was a major part of the native tribes cultural landscape, countless generations of natives having witnessed the long duration of the tree and having included it in their own culture.

“It is the Mother spirit of the rainforest, from this spirit-tree came the life force of all things living. They have destroyed Aotlcp-Awak, they have brought darkness upon not only our people, but the whole world” explains local tribesman leader Tahuactep of the Matsés tribe.

“For many generations, the Mother tree has brought my people health and good fortune. The roots of the Mother tree spread throughout the rainforest and bring its life spirit to the world. What will be left of the animals, of the plants and of our people now that the Mother spirit is gone” asks Kalahuaptl, a local shaman. “They have murdered the Mother spirit knowingly, they have done this to kill our people and take the spoils of the land” he adds, visibly shaken by the destruction of the millennia-old Samauma tree.

Anna Golding, local researcher for non profit organization and conservancy group Rainforest Protection Coalition (RPC), an initiative stemming from Berkeley University in California, believes the ‘incident’ was intentionnal. ” There are large portions of this national reserve that are rich in oil and natural gas. There has been committed action by energy corporations to lobby the government to exploit the area for years. The protected zones have been cut in half over the past decade and this is only their latest attempt to get rid of the local populations who are fighting to preserve their cultural heritage and lifestyle” she admits.

“These actions are clearly perpetrated with the consent of local authorities and the government. If this wasn’t the case, why are local enforcement agencies not prosecuting these corporations? Why are these loggers free to keep doing what they are doing? That is the bigger question” she adds.

Between 1991 and 2014, the total area of forest lost in the Amazon has more than tripled, with most of the lost forest becoming pasture for cattle. Rainforests are the richest places on earth holding the majority of the planet’s biodiversity, yet 100 acres of rainforests are cleared every minute, estimates a recent 2014 World Resources Institute report.

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