trash news stories on Newser

False Alarm— Trash Bag Mistaken for Man Stuck in Sewer

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 14:28:57 CDT

It turns out a worker wasn't stuck inside a pipe in New Jersey's second-largest city. Jersey City Fire Chief Darren Rivers says it was actually a bag of trash. He says workers with the Jersey City Incinerator Authority were checking the pipe with a camera when they thought they saw...

Garbage Cam Airs Dirty Trash Habits

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 11:28:20 CDT

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...

Newborn Tossed in Trash Chute Survives 8-Story Fall

Mon, 23 May 2011 14:54:03 CDT

A newborn baby tossed down a New York City housing project's trash chute survived the eight-story fall because he landed on a pile of garbage and the compactor was jammed. A maintenance worker heard the baby's cries coming from the trash compactor yesterday morning in the Walt Whitman Houses in...

Big Stink: Great Garbage Patch's Size Exaggerated

Evann Gastaldo — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 07:41:46 CST

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 its mass to...

Hong Kong Is No. 1 in Trash

Nick McMaster — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:06:07 CDT

Hong Kong is now the trash capital of the world, producing more waste per capita than any other place, reports Time . The 7 million residents produce 6.45 million tons per year for the honor. The city's waste-heavy ways include a dependence on take-out food, along with all those plastic...

Mystery Swirls Around Atlantic Garbage Patch

Kate Schwartz — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 16:10:00 CDT

Though you may be more familiar with its more famous cousin, the Texas-size Great Pacific Garbage Patch, there does indeed exist a mass of tiny plastic pieces in the Atlantic. But the North Atlantic Gyre is turning out to be the more mysterious of the two: A two-decades-long study released...

Indian Tribe Doesn't Want US Trash on Sacred Land

Evann Gastaldo — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:04:00 CDT

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...

Burning Trash Made Us Sick: Troops

Kevin Spak — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 10:57:00 CDT

Hundreds of service members and employees of Kellogg Brown & Root have filed lawsuits against the contractor, which burns vast amounts of trash on US bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying the thick smoke from the burn pits has made them sick. KBR operates more than two dozen of the...

Plastic Garbage Patch Found in Atlantic

Evann Gastaldo — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:10:00 CDT

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—pushed together by...