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Harvard didn’t divest from fossil fuels. So what does its ‘net-zero’ pledge mean?

by ArtOWIZnfycjs Posted on May 5, 2020

In the lead-up to Earth Day, two wealthy, world-renowned universities made historic decisions about their relationships with fossil fuel companies and commitments to tackling climate change. Oxford passed a motion to divest its endowment from fossil fuels. Harvard, meanwhile, decided to skirt divestment in favor of a plan to “set the Harvard endowment on a path to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050.”

Harvard’s announcement was both mildly celebrated and highly criticized by divestment advocates on campus and beyond, who have put increased pressure on the administration to divest over the last six months. In November, student activists joined their counterparts at Yale to storm the field in protest at the annual Harvard-Yale football game, disrupting the match for more than an hour. In February, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted 179-20 in favor of a resolution asking the school to stop investing in companies that are developing new fossil fuel reserves. And a student and alumni climate group collected enough signatures earlier this year to nominate five candidates to the university’s Board of Overseers, which has a say in who manages the endowment, which was valued at $40.9 billion last year.

In a letter explaining the net-zero portfolio plan to faculty, University President Lawrence Bacow said that divestment “paints with too broad a brush” and vowed to work with fossil fuel companies rather than demonize them. “The strategy we plan to pursue focuses on reducing the demand for fossil fuels, not just the supply,” Bacow wrote. The school says its commitment matches the decarbonization timeline set by the Paris Agreement — but it’s not yet clear what it will entail, and whether the school will be able to fulfill it.

Net-zero emissions promises can mean different things, and in many cases, the entities making the promises haven’t figured out how to make good on them. BP’s net-zero pledge accounts for the emissions from some, but not all, of the fossil fuel products it sells to the world, also known as its scope 3 emissions. Repsol, one of the first oil and gas majors to announce a net-zero target, has a plan that relies on technologies like carbon capture that the company has admitted aren’t viable yet. Even entities with more ambitious and transparent plans, like New York State, haven’t stopped letting utilities invest hundreds of millions in new natural gas infrastructure.

Despite these discrepancies, the concept of achieving net-zero for a company that sells products or a state that consumes energy is relatively tangible: They can invest in renewables, incentivize energy efficiency programs and electrification, try to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. But how do you reduce — or even measure — the carbon footprint of an endowment, which in Harvard’s case is made up of more than 13,000 different funds?

“I think the idea is, at the end of the day, all the companies in the portfolio would be net-zero,” said Georges Dyer, executive director of the Intentional Endowments Network, a nonprofit that helps endowed institutions make their investments more sustainable. While he doesn’t advocate for or against divestment or any other specific strategy, Dyer pointed out that Harvard’s net-zero target has the potential to address the climate crisis across the whole economy, including real estate and natural resources, and not just the fossil fuel sector.

A net-zero portfolio won’t be as simple as only investing in companies with net-zero pledges, since different companies have different definitions of net-zero. Indeed, in his letter to faculty, Bacow admitted that Harvard was not yet sure how it would measure or reduce the endowment’s footprint, explaining the plan would require “developing sophisticated new methods” for both. In a statement shared with Grist, the Harvard Management Company, which manages the endowment, said it would work to “understand and influence” each company’s “exposure to, and planned mitigation of, climate-related risks.” It plans to develop interim emissions targets to ensure success.

Harvard isn’t alone in trying to figure this out. The Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance is a group of institutional investors that was formed at the United Nations Climate Summit last fall. Its members have committed to net-zero investment portfolios by 2050, promising to set interim emissions targets in five-year increments and to issue progress reports along the way. But the group is still looking for answers on how to actually accomplish these goals.

In vowing to work with fossil fuel companies, Harvard’s commitment relies, to a certain degree, on shareholder engagement, a strategy that has seen mixed results thus far. Timothy Smith, director of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) shareowner engagement at Boston Walden Trust, an investing firm, told Grist that investors have made real gains in changing companies’ behavior, attitudes, and policies around climate. He pointed to companies like BP that have not only set net-zero targets but also said they will withdraw from trade associations that have lobbied against climate policy.

“I’m not saying we’re moving far enough fast enough,” he said. “We are not.” Smith acknowledged there have been some failures, notably with Exxon, which has lagged far behind its peers in climate action. Last year, Exxon successfully blocked a shareholder resolution that would have forced it to align its greenhouse gas targets with the Paris Agreement.

Shareholder engagement is not a new tack for Harvard: In September, it joined Climate Action 100+, an investor-led initiative pressuring oil and gas companies to curb emissions and disclose climate risk. But most of Harvard’s funds are managed externally, so its ability to participate directly in shareholder initiatives is limited. Instead, it provides “proxy voting guidelines” to its financial managers. Harvard’s voting guidelines for climate change generally instruct managers to vote in support of resolutions that request that companies assess impacts and risks related to climate change. Other institutional investors have taken a more active stance — the Church of England and the New York State public pension fund, for instance, recently said they will vote against reelecting Exxon’s entire board since it has failed to take action on climate change, as well as filed a resolution asking Exxon to disclose its lobbying activities.

To be clear, no one is implying Harvard should engage with Exxon, since it’s actually unclear whether Harvard has any investment in Exxon. The school only discloses its direct investments — about 1 percent of the total endowment — as required by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The rest of the school’s portfolio, as well as how much of it is invested in fossil fuels, remains shrouded in secrecy. An analysis of Harvard’s 2019 SEC filing by the student activist group Divest Harvard found that of the $394 million disclosed, about $5.6 million was invested in companies that extract oil, gas, and coal and utilities that burn these fuels.

The Harvard Management Company told Grist that it will report its progress toward the net-zero goal annually, with the first report to be released toward the end of this year, but it did not say whether it will disclose its fossil fuel investments.

Harvard’s success will depend, to a large extent, on transparent reporting from the companies it invests in. As part of its new commitment, Harvard announced its support for the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, a financial industry group that makes recommendations for how companies should report their climate-related risks to investors.

This piece is significant, as navigating the financial risks of the impending energy transition is likely a key motivating factor in Harvard’s decision to go “net-zero.” Bob Litterman, a financial risk expert and carbon tax advocate, said this means distinguishing between companies that are well-positioned for the rapid transition to a low-carbon economy — aka a world where policy decisions make emitting carbon a costly endeavor — and those that are not.

“I have heard a number of investors talk about aligning their portfolios with net-zero emissions by 2050,” said Litterman. “You know, it’s not entirely clear what that means, but if what it means is that they’re trying to position their portfolio to do well in that scenario, that makes sense to me.”

But for divestment advocates, maximizing returns is beside the point. In an op-ed for the Crimson, the campus paper, alumnus Craig S. Altemose criticized Harvard’s net-zero plan for ignoring the question of responsibility for the climate crisis and the fossil fuel industry’s track record of spreading disinformation and lobbying against climate policies. He also argued that the plan is not aggressive enough to meaningfully help the world avoid the worst effects of climate change.

In a Medium post, the group Divest Harvard argued that “a good-faith effort to reach carbon neutrality would have acknowledged that divestment is the logical first step.” Oxford University ran with that concept: After its initial announcement to divest, Oxford instructed its endowment managers work toward net-zero across the rest of its portfolio.

Across the spectrum, divestment advocates and sustainable investing experts agree that Harvard’s net-zero endowment pledge represents a step forward. But how big a step? In an interview with the Harvard Gazette, Bacow framed the entire initiative in dubious terms, saying, “If we are successful, we will reduce the carbon footprint of our entire investment portfolio and achieve net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions.” Harvard has a lot of questions left to answer if it wants to turn that “if” into a “when.”

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Harvard didn’t divest from fossil fuels. So what does its ‘net-zero’ pledge mean?

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Study: Gas-powered appliances may be hazardous for your health

by Sang41834480885 Posted on April 30, 2020

Stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures have dramatically improved outdoor air quality in cities around the world, but a new study published Tuesday shows that indoor air quality may pose acute risks of its own — especially now that the novel coronavirus has us all spending so much time at home.

The UCLA Fielding School of Public Health study found that after just an hour of using a gas-fired stove or oven, levels of nitrogen dioxide — one of a group of gases that contribute to smog formation and are considered harmful to human health — inside California homes reached levels that exceeded both state and national ambient air-quality standards. The compromised indoor air quality caused by gas-powered furnaces, stoves, and water heaters could increase the likelihood of respiratory and cardiovascular disease and premature death, according to the study.

“The goal of this report is to provide information to Californians on how pollution from gas-fired appliances affects the air they breathe, and the related health effects,” Yifang Zhu, the study’s lead researcher, said in a statement. “California’s state agencies often focus on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impacts, but there has been much less focus on how fossil fuel use in household appliances can adversely impact indoor air quality and public health.”

The research, commissioned by Sierra Club, comes as recent studies have linked air pollution to higher rates of COVID-19 mortality. Inhaling nitrogen oxides poses especially acute risks to children and the elderly. Meanwhile, residential gas appliances emit approximately 16,000 tons of nitrogen oxides to outdoor air each year — which Rachel Golden, deputy director of Sierra Club’s building electrification program, notes is more than twice the NOx emissions from all of California’s gas-fired power plants combined.

Air pollution concentration matters a great deal, so residents of smaller homes and apartments often have it worse. Researchers found that after an hour of cooking in a small household, more than 90 percent of smaller residences had peak levels of nitrogen oxides that exceeded national ambient air quality standards. As Grist’s resident advice columnist Eve Andrews reminded us last week, indoor air quality isn’t always better than what you’re breathing outdoors.

The study also highlights environmental justice issues, since low-income households tend to have less space and more unmet maintenance needs, which can increase indoor emissions on top of being more at-risk for poor outdoor air quality. These factors may contribute to higher rates of respiratory challenges among low-income communities — particularly communities of color — which in turn may make residents more vulnerable to developing serious complications if they contract COVID-19.

To decrease indoor air pollution, the study proposes that households transition to zero-emission electric appliances. If all residential gas appliances in California were immediately replaced with clean energy alternatives, the resulting decrease in pollution would result in approximately 350 fewer deaths, 600 fewer cases of acute bronchitis, and 300 fewer cases of chronic bronchitis annually.

Without a massive public intervention, however, it seems unlikely that these appliances will be replaced at that scale, at least not in the homes of many low-income residents that could benefit the most. Golden says that policymakers can prioritize a just transition by focusing on efforts to reduce pollution and lower energy bills for vulnerable households, especially given the economic fallout from COVID-19.

“State agencies have a central role to play in helping people replace polluting gas appliances with clean, pollution-free electric alternatives like heat pumps and induction stoves,” Golden told Grist.

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Study: Gas-powered appliances may be hazardous for your health

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Some economics nerds just realized how much climate change will cost us

by ShaynaFranz Posted on October 3, 2019

A bunch of economists just put down their calculators and concluded that we should act on climate change sooner rather than later. Really.

For decades, economists have suggested that the government should charge a fee on every ton of carbon dioxide that gets emitted, giving companies a bottom-line incentive to change their polluting ways. The conventional wisdom is that we’d ease into it, starting with a low price — say, $40 per ton — and gradually ramp it up over time.

But according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that prevailing wisdom is backwards. The authors argue that a carbon tax should start out steep, above $100 per ton (and potentially above $200 per ton), rise higher for a few years, and then slowly fall over the next few centuries as people get the whole climate crisis thing under control.

Such a high price would encourage countries and businesses to clean up their act much faster. Part of the reason is that we need to make up for lost time. The implication is that the United States and most governments have waited so long to put a price on carbon that a milder approach just doesn’t make much sense.

“To me the most surprising result of the research was how quickly the cost of delay increases over time,” said Robert Litterman, a risk management expert who used to work for Goldman Sachs, in a statement accompanying the study. His team found that if the world procrastinated on a carbon price by just one more year, the damages from climate change would climb an additional $1 trillion. Waiting 10 years would put the price tag at $100 trillion. In other words, the time to act was yesterday (or, like the 1980s).

No one knows exactly how much our planet is going to heat up in the coming decades. The degree of nightmarishness depends on the amount of greenhouse gases we send into the atmosphere and how quickly and ferociously the planet responds with feedback loops that accelerate warming. The euphemism for this is “uncertainty.”

Because studying the climate is a risky business, the researchers borrowed a model from the world of finance, which is hyper-focused on measuring risk (hello β). Their unconventional model considered the damage climate change would bring to agriculture, coastal infrastructure, and human health in the future. Their takeaway: For something as high stakes as the climate crisis, governments should be trying to avoid the worst outcome at all costs.

“We need to take stronger action today to give us breathing room in the event that the planet turns out to be more fragile than current models predict,” said Kent Daniel, a professor at Columbia Business School, in the statement.

The researchers aren’t the first to recommend this “start high, decrease later” approach to implementing a carbon tax, nor are they the first to propose such a steep price. A landmark report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year suggested that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels would take an array of tough climate policies, including a carbon price of at least $135 per ton by 2030, and perhaps as high as $5,500 per ton.

Around the world, carbon prices are either nonexistent or simply not cutting it. Though more than 40 countries have implemented some sort of carbon price, including Canada, Mexico, and Switzerland, their prices are generally considered too low to be very effective.

Even though old-school Republicans and even some oil companies have publicly called for a nationwide carbon tax, it’s not like voters are clamoring for it. Measures have failed in otherwise environmentally-friendly states such as Washington and Oregon in recent years. No carbon tax exists in the United States, though California and a group of states in the Northeast have cap-and-trade programs that serve a similar purpose. Offering an even higher tax would unlikely help a measure’s odds of passing.

So how to square all this? Perhaps a little wordplay will help. A recent study said that people might be more willing to rally behind a plan to tax carbon if proponents simply dropped the t-word and called it “a fine on corporations” instead.

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Some economics nerds just realized how much climate change will cost us

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‘Never give up’: Greta Thunberg takes climate strike to the White House

by ChristieAndes Posted on September 13, 2019

This story was originally published by HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

WASHINGTON — Greta Thunberg, the famous 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist who kicked off a global movement of students leaving school to demand action on the climate crisis, joined other youth activists at a rally outside the White House on Friday.

A few hundred people, mostly teenagers and young children, gathered on the Ellipse south of the White House carrying signs that read “I want you to panic!” and “Why are we studying for a future we won’t have?” They chanted, “This is a crisis, act like it!” and “No more coal, no more oil, keep that carbon in the soil.” When someone mentioned President Donald Trump, the crowd booed and yelled “Shame!”

After marching a short distance toward the White House, numerous protesters lay down on the ground for an 11-minute “die-in” ― what one speaker called a “mass extinction.” The protest represented the 11 years that scientists say world governments have to rein in greenhouse gas emissions to stave off potentially cataclysmic climate change.

“We are striking today to save tomorrow!” Nadia Nazar, the 17-year-old co-founder of the Zero Hour movement.

Trump has a long history of denying the threat of climate change, often arguing that spells of cold weather somehow disprove the long-term warming trend. His administration has taken an ax to a slew of environmental regulations meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions — all part of its so-called “energy dominance” agenda. Thunberg told CBS in an interview last month that she wouldn’t “waste time” talking to Trump if given the opportunity.

Thunberg spent most of the rally surrounded by peers and a throng of reporters wielding cameras. She quietly joined a series of chants, and when finally given a chance to speak, simply expressed her gratitude for such a large turnout.

“This is very overwhelming,” she said. “Never give up. We will continue.”

Jeff Hunt, a 28-year-old resident of Washington, D.C., was among those participating in Friday’s rally. He carried a sign that read, “When I grow up I want to be Greta Thunberg,” and told HuffPost that like Thunberg, he thinks Trump is a lost cause.

Instead, Hunt hopes the event helps sends a message to the rest of the country and world that we are nearing a dangerous tipping point and it is time to make radical, economy-wide changes that will protect future generations.

“I have high hopes that the generation beneath me will be much more plugged in,” he said. “I feel like my generation has kind of dropped the ball, if you look at our voting habits and our dedication to actually change our lifestyle.”

Thunberg rose to fame last year when she went on strike from school following Sweden’s hottest summer on record. For weeks, she sat outside her country’s Parliament, holding a “School strike for climate” sign and demanding that local politicians enact policies in line with the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate action.

School strikes quickly popped up in other countries. And in March, an estimated 1.4 million young people in more than 100 countries mobilized for a global strike, part of what has come to be known as the Fridays for Future movement. Tuesday’s gathering outside the White House comes ahead of a weeklong global strike slated for the week of September 20.

Thunberg traveled to the United States by sailboat to reduce her carbon footprint. While in the United States, she’s expected to testify before Congress, speak outside the U.S. Supreme Court alongside youth suing the government over climate change, and attend the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York.

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‘Never give up’: Greta Thunberg takes climate strike to the White House

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Lifespan – David A. Sinclair

by Myrna Posted on September 10, 2019

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Lifespan

Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To

David A. Sinclair

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $14.99

Publish Date: September 10, 2019

Publisher: Atria Books

Seller: SIMON AND SCHUSTER DIGITAL SALES INC


A paradigm-shifting book from an acclaimed Harvard Medical School scientist and one of Time ’s most influential people. It’s a seemingly undeniable truth that aging is inevitable. But what if everything we’ve been taught to believe about aging is wrong? What if we could choose our lifespan? In this groundbreaking book, Dr. David Sinclair, leading world authority on genetics and longevity, reveals a bold new theory for why we age. As he writes: “Aging is a disease, and that disease is treatable.” This eye-opening and provocative work takes us to the frontlines of research that is pushing the boundaries on our perceived scientific limitations, revealing incredible breakthroughs—many from Dr. David Sinclair’s own lab at Harvard—that demonstrate how we can slow down, or even reverse, aging. The key is activating newly discovered vitality genes, the descendants of an ancient genetic survival circuit that is both the cause of aging and the key to reversing it. Recent experiments in genetic reprogramming suggest that in the near future we may not just be able to feel younger, but actually become younger. Through a page-turning narrative, Dr. Sinclair invites you into the process of scientific discovery and reveals the emerging technologies and simple lifestyle changes—such as intermittent fasting, cold exposure, exercising with the right intensity, and eating less meat—that have been shown to help us live younger and healthier for longer. At once a roadmap for taking charge of our own health destiny and a bold new vision for the future of humankind, Lifespan will forever change the way we think about why we age and what we can do about it.

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Lifespan – David A. Sinclair

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The Trump administration tried to bury a climate study on … rice?

by MarisaHarlow Posted on August 16, 2019

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is supposed to use the “latest available science” to help the nation’s farmers avoid risk, according to its own mission. So it was more than a little surprising when, last year, the agency decided not to promote an alarming study (that two of its employees had contributed to) that showed climate change could lessen the nutritional value of rice — a crop the agency says the U.S. is a “major exporter” of.

Here’s the gist of the research: Rice may not be super flavorful by itself, but for millions of people, particularly in Southeast Asia, it’s an important source of both protein and calories. Rice also contains a suite of B vitamins, iron, and zinc. But those nutrients appear to decrease if rice is grown in high ambient concentrations of CO2 — the kind that climate models are predicting for the end of the century. Scientists say that could exacerbate the incidence of illnesses like malaria and diarrheal disease in places that rely on the staple crop.

At first, the Agricultural Research Service, the USDA’s in-house research arm, seemed open to promoting the study. When Jeff Hodson, the director of communications at the University of Washington’s school of public health (from where two of the paper’s contributors hailed), reached out to the ARS about coordinating efforts to get the word out to journalists about the research, he was told the department had begun drafting a press release. But a week later he was notified the USDA had killed its promotional efforts around the study.

In an email explaining the decision to Hodson, a USDA spokesperson wrote, “The narrative really isn’t supported by the data in the paper.” She added: “Please let me know how you will proceed with your own press release.”

Questions about the muffling of the rice research were also circling within the USDA. Lewis Ziska, a 25-year veteran of the department who worked on the study told Grist the decision to keep the paper quiet was a departure from protocol. The highly unusual manner in which the ARS abruptly canceled the press release and the excuse the agency gave for doing so, he said, “indicated that it wasn’t a question of the science anymore, it was a question of the ideology.” He began to wonder if the study was being buried due, at least in part, to the Trump administration’s apparent indifference toward climate change.

“This is the first time that we’ve been told that the data don’t support the findings for any climate paper; that’s never happened before,” Ziska said.

But despite the USDA’s non-promotion, the paper did not quietly fade into academic obscurity. After checking with the interim head of the School of Public Health — who said in an email that the research seemed “straightforward” — Hodson decided to press on with promoting the paper. The university issued a press release that included a quote from Ziska, and they helped connect reporters with him as well as the school’s own scientists. The research garnered coverage in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Seattle Times, among other outlets.

Ziska and his team’s findings that protein, iron, and zinc levels decreased in rice grown in higher carbon dioxide concentrations verified the work of Samuel Myers, a research scientist at Harvard’s Center for the Environment who works closely on the human health impacts of climate change. To Myers, who examined this incident against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s war on climate science, it seemed to be part of a pattern.

“The USDA is part of a federal administration that can only be described in legal terms as ‘exhibiting depraved indifference to climate change,’” he said. Suppressing a study that highlighted the negative effects of global warming on a major food staple is, Myers added, “completely consistent with the way the federal administration has been acting for the past two and a half years.”

The Trump administration’s combative position on all things climate and environment has had a significant and lasting impact on multiple federal agencies. Earlier this month, Ziska decided to abandon his tenure at the USDA after securing a job at Columbia University. At the Environmental Protection Agency, employees say morale has plummeted as the agency continues to roll back key environmental and health regulations. Mentions of climate change have disappeared from government websites.

Rather than try to increase retention rates, some critics say these agencies are happy to lose some of their more seasoned officials. The Bureau of Land Management is planning to move its headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Colorado, in what at least one representative and multiple environment groups have called a scheme to shake its tenured policy officials. And in July, the USDA gave its D.C.-based employees a week to decide whether they would relocate to the department’s new headquarters in Kansas City. Administration officials said the move was aimed at cutting costs; critics said it was yet another attempt to bleed tenured talent.

In a statement to Grist, a USDA spokesperson pushed back on the idea that the agency is suppressing climate change research. “No one attempted to block the paper – it is freely available in the science literature,” the spokesperson wrote, adding that higher-ups at the agency disagreed with the paper’s conclusion that rising levels of CO2 would put 600 million people at risk of vitamin deficiency. “Issuing an ARS press release would have erroneously signified that ARS concurs with the nutrition-related claims,” the spokesperson noted.

“The notion that this is not of public health significance is just ridiculous,” said Harvard’s Myers, in response to the ARS’s position on the research. The controversial study just focused on rice, he added, but “every other food crop across the board is losing nutrients in response to CO2.”

A spokesperson for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science Advances, the journal where the rice article appeared, stood behind the research, saying that the study went through “rigorous peer review” before it was published.

For Ziska, the incident constituted an abdication of one of ARS’s responsibilities, which is working to solve climate change-related issues that farmers face. “It’s surreal to me,” he said.

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The Trump administration tried to bury a climate study on … rice?

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8 Weird Items You Didn’t Know You Could Recycle

by AnneSASMfvyq Posted on June 14, 2019

Recycling is an important part of reducing how much garbage we send to landfills. According to the EPA, Americans generate more than 262 million tons of waste every single year.

Seventy-five percent of this is recyclable material, but only 25 percent of this actually makes it to recycling facilities, a horrifying figure given that 73 percent of Americans have access to curbside recycling services.

Amusingly,?a sizable portion of?these forgotten recyclables are off-the-wall items?like shoes, furniture and – no joke – dentures. Never in a million years would I have known dentures are recyclable! Here are ten of these such items not to send to the landfill!

1. Dentures

The average set of dentures contains approximately $25?of recyclable metals, including silver, gold and palladium. The Japan Denture Recycling Association (yes, that exists) collects false teeth, removing valuable materials and discarding the rest. Once the process is complete, the program donates 100 percent of its earnings to UNICEF. Cool idea, right?

2. Mattresses

Equipped with special saws that aren’t found?in traditional recycling facilities, mattress recycling?factories can separate foam, metal, wood and cloth and?recycle these materials independently. Wood is chipped, foam and cloth are shredded, springs are melted down. Who knows, maybe that wallpaper in your dining room was made from an old mattress!

3. Expired prescriptions

Expired prescriptions should never get into the wrong hands. To help prevent this, some states allow you to donate unused drugs back to pharmacies, while a few charities accept leftover medicines from people who have changed prescriptions, stopped using the mediations or passed away.

4.?Trophies

Got a collection of plastic trophies from your school days sitting in the back of your mom’s attic? It’s time to move on. Lamb Awards, a specialty recycling center, can break down retired awards, melting them down to reuse in new trophies or other post-consumer recycled items.

5. Crayons

Even the stubbiest little crayons can find renewed purpose through the National Crayon Recycle Program. This organization collects broken, worn down crayons and melts them down into new wax so they can be remade and resold. The program says they’ve saved more than 120,000 pounds of crayons from the landfill so far!

6.?Dirty diapers

In the time leading up to potty training, the average baby soils 6,000 diapers. 6,000!?Fortunately, the company Knowaste collects and recycles dirty diapers from hospitals, public restrooms and nursing facilities. Knowaste sanitizes the diapers before separating plastic from organic matter. Plastics are then compressed into pellets and recycled into roof shingles, while paper pulp becomes wallpaper or shoe soles. Genius!

7.?Pantyhose

Got torn pantyhose still taking up space in your drawers? Textile recycler No Nonsense is here to save the day! The organization recycles old stockings by grinding them down (didn’t think it was that hardcore…) and transforming them into things like playground toys and carpet.

8.?Aluminum foil

Aluminum products are among the easiest metals to recycle thanks to their ability to be melted down and turned into new products essentially forever. Luckily, most recycling facilities can handle foil, no problem, as long as it is donated in ball form, instead of loose sheets.

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8 Weird Items You Didn’t Know You Could Recycle

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9 Surprising Health Benefits of Gardening

by CortneyJSWB Posted on April 6, 2019

Gardening can play a significant role in a healthy lifestyle ? and not just because of any fruits and vegetables you grow. Even if you don?t have the greenest thumbs, you still can enjoy the benefits. Here are nine surprising ways gardening can boost your health.

1. It uplifts your mood

A growing body of research has linked being around nature to stress relief and an overall improved mood. And it seems gardening falls under that category. A study on gardening and stress had participants complete a stressful task before assigning them either to 30 minutes of gardening or 30 minutes of indoor reading. Both groups experienced drops in their cortisol levels (the stress hormone), but the gardening group had much more significant decreases. Plus, gardening managed to restore the participants? positive moods after the stress task had brought them down, but reading did not. ?These findings provide the first experimental evidence that gardening can promote relief from acute stress,? the study says.

2. It can strengthen your immune system

Credit: anurakpong/Getty Images

More research is demonstrating how playing in the dirt can be good for your health. A study on immunity found evidence to support the notion that exposure to microbes, especially at a young age, helps to strengthen the immune system and prevent diseases. And another study from Johns Hopkins Medicine corroborates those findings. It found that early exposure to dirt, dander and germs can lower a person?s risk of allergies and asthma. Just remember that dirt also might contain bacteria and parasites that can make you sick. So avoid touching your face with dirty hands, and wash them as soon as you?re done gardening.

3. It promotes brain health

Gardening also has the potential to improve your brain health. A study on dementia recruited 2,805 people age 60 and older who had no known cognitive impairments and followed them for 16 years. Ultimately, there were 115 men (out of 1,233) and 170 women (out of 1,572) who developed dementia during that time. But the researchers noted that those who engaged in daily gardening lowered their risk of developing dementia by 36 percent. In comparison, daily walks dropped the dementia risk by 38 percent for men, but interestingly there wasn?t a ?significant prediction? for women.

4. It?s good exercise

Gardening may help you relax, but it?s also a pretty good workout. Cleveland Clinic qualifies gardening as ?moderate? exercise ? akin to walking or riding your bike, depending on the intensity. And research has catalogued several health benefits of gardening, especially for older adults. A study on seniors found daily physical activity, including gardening, cut their risk of a heart attack or stroke by up to 30 percent, as well as prolonged their lives. And another study on gardening and older adults concluded that gardening was an ideal way for seniors to stay in shape. It specifically helped them maintain their hand strength and dexterity. Plus, at any age, caring for something that?s living can be a helpful motivator to get up and move.

5. It helps you eat healthier

Credit: Jurgute/Getty Images

According to Harvard Medical School, gardening can play a helpful role in maintaining a healthy diet. Just by the nature of what you grow, it can lead you to eat more fruits and vegetables. You also can prevent unhealthy fertilizers and pesticides from getting in your food. And you get to enjoy the benefits of freshly picked produce. ?Vegetables that ripen in the garden have more nutrients than some store-bought vegetables that must be picked early,? Harvard Medical School says. Plus, a study on gardening and diets found people who gardened when they were children were likely to eat more fruits and vegetables later in life. So put those little green thumbs to work.

6. It can be a positive social activity

Social interaction is important for your health and well-being in many ways. ?Adults with strong social support have a reduced risk of many significant health problems, including depression, high blood pressure and an unhealthy body mass index,? Mayo Clinic says. Plus, a social group can give you a sense of belonging, help you cope with trauma and encourage you to make positive choices. And if you?re an avid gardener, working in a community garden might be the perfect fit. One study found people participating in community gardens had significantly lower BMIs ? as well as a lower risk of becoming overweight or obese ? than others in their neighborhoods who didn?t garden. The researchers also found some of the benefits extended to the gardeners? families, as well.

7. It exposes you to vitamin D

We all need vitamin D ? from the sun and our diets ? to keep our bodies healthy. And though it?s important to be careful about exposing your skin to the sun, gardening still is a prime way to keep your vitamin D at an optimal level. A study on vitamin D deficiency found regular gardening (as well as outdoor cycling) lowered the likelihood that older adults ? whose skin often has more trouble synthesizing vitamin D ? would become deficient. Interestingly, people who engaged in brisk outdoor walks did not experience the same benefit.

8. It?s eco-friendly

Tending to a home garden can be an eco-friendly activity and help to combat climate change. And a healthier planet means better health for all of us. A guide from the National Wildlife Federation offers several tips on environmentally friendly gardening. For instance, it recommends trading your gas-powered lawn tools for electric- or human-powered ones.?Stay away from fertilizers and lawn chemicals?to help prevent water pollution. Plus, be conscientious about what you plant. ?Gardeners can play an important role in minimizing the threat of invasive species expansion by removing invasive plants from the garden and choosing an array of native alternatives,? the National Wildlife Federation says.

9. It gives you a sense of purpose

Credit: elenaleonova/Getty Images

Regardless of whether you have a single plant or an entire field, gardening is an ongoing responsibility. And that can give you a sense of purpose and nourish your spirit. Just ask NASA. To combat feelings of isolation, lower stress and break up monotony, NASA’s Human Research Program has experimented with astronauts growing plants in space. ?The countermeasure to sensory monotony is sensory stimulation,? according to NASA. ?Working with plants provides astronauts visual, tactile and olfactory stimulation, and eventually even salivary stimulation with fresh foods and variety.? And even astronauts ? whose job already is out-of-this-world ? found significant meaning in the work. ?Several astronauts agree that the ability to watch plants grow, and to play a part in their growth, provides a strong connection to something bigger than their immediate surroundings,? NASA says.

Main image credit: AndreaObzerova/Getty Images

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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9 Surprising Health Benefits of Gardening

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These kids are striking for their school to cut its carbon footprint

by RoyDalyell Posted on March 15, 2019

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It was only two weeks ago that 16-year-old Azalea Danes says she officially became a climate activist, but she’s done her best to make that time count.

It all started after the high school junior, who attends Bronx School of Science, read about 13-year-old fellow New Yorker Alexandria Villaseñor’s protests outside the United Nations headquarters. Danes’ hunger to learn more quickly snowballed from there. She watched a TED Talk by Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teen who was just nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize after going on strike to protest government inaction on climate change, eventually sparking a global movement. When Danes found out that a massive youth climate strike was coming to the U.S. on Friday, March 15 and thought to herself: “I need to do something about this personally in my community.”

Courtesy of Azalea Danes

Danes is one of the hundreds of thousands of young people participating in today’s global Youth Climate Strike, walking out of classes to protest global leaders’ climate inaction. These kids, many of whom are still in elementary school, may be comparatively new to the environmental movement, but they are among the most motivated stakeholders in today’s climate movement. And they don’t just have their eyes set on a Green New Deal — many of them are looking for solutions closer to home.

The day after Danes found out about the youth climate strike she started an Instagram account to recruit her classmates to join her in a walk out. Within days, she had linked up with other climate-concerned students to draft a mission statement for their strike. And soon, more than 100 of her schoolmates had RSVP’d to the event on Facebook.

The students weren’t just playing hookie. Danes and her peers at the Bronx High School of Science crafted goals intended to make their school greener — demands for which they are willing to suffer through detention in order to make a reality.

Kids at the school are no slouches when it comes to academics — Bronx Science is a specialized public school in New York City that kids must test into to snag a coveted spot  (it’s where actor Tom Holland went undercover for a few days to research his recent role as Spiderman).

Although Danes says she was able to get approval to miss her class for the strike, many others at the school were denied – sometimes because they applied for a pass too late, or because they had a history of tardies or absences. Students without a pass receive a “cut” for missing class, which will only be removed from their record if they serve detention. A “cut” on your record could also have bigger ramifications. Today is the first day that students can select courses for next year — they have a week from now to make their choices. And anyone with cuts on their record won’t be able to enroll in Advanced Placement classes.

With academic pressures working against them, strike organizers at the school had to make a compelling pitch to get kids to skip out on class. “No matter how smart and driven we are to do well in school, we really have to prioritize our own future, take advantage of our civil responsibility, and protest when something needs to happen,” said, Alysa Chen, a 17-year-old senior who is the president of the school’s environmental club.

Chen has been making announcements and organizing other kids in her classes. And on Friday morning, she led roughly 100 students out of around 3,000 enrolled at the school who walked out of their school chanting, “Who’s power? Students’ power!”

On Friday morning, the students walked out through the front doors of the school, past the flagpoles, and across the street to an open sports field. Standing on the bleachers, Chen and other spoke to the crowd of students, including a couple dozen who joined them from another nearby high school.

“I have missed a math test. I’m screwing up my grades,” Bronx Science senior Sebastian Baez told the crowd through a megaphone. But “we are not here to skip school. We are here to change the world.” He then urged his peers to contact elected officials, to register to vote, and to keep talking about climate change after the strike ends — especially back at school.

17-year-old senior Eytan Stanton is another organizer of the strike along with Baez, Chen, Danes, and three others leading the work at Bronx Science. After consulting with his school’s building engineer on how to cut down the campus’s carbon footprint, he worked with his schoolmates to write up sustainability goals, which they included part of their demands for the strike. Together, they broke down the goals for greening the school into short, medium, and long-term deliverables.

Eytan StantonJustine Calma / Grist

The students found the most immediate gains would come from updating the school’s heating system. They want the school to get a summer boiler that they say will be more efficient in heating hot water during warmer months, allowing the school to shut off its larger boilers. They also want to switch from burning No. 2 oil for heat to natural gas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The students are also pushing for smaller actions that have more to do with administrative choices than with big infrastructural changes. They want to make sure all computers are turned off for the weekends, and that utensils used at lunchtime aren’t wrapped in plastic. They also want to see more curriculum on climate change and instruction on how to make personal changes to live more sustainably.

The students have loftier aims for the longer-term, including switching to LED lighting, installing solar panels, and electrifying the heating system.

“It’s all backed by science, and it’s feasible,” said Stanton.

The Bronx Science students say their local focus doesn’t mean they’re ignoring the big picture. Along with those goals, they wrote a mission statement modeled after the format of a U.N. resolution, calling for a “war on climate change” and commitments to stick to goals set in the Paris Agreement.

Around 10:20 on Friday morning, after rallying outside their school for nearly an hour, about half of the crowd returned to class. The roughly 50 remaining students made their way to join a larger rally at New York City Hall. On the subway heading downtown, Arianna Luis, 17, Amara Reid, 17, Maya Schucherm, 16, and May Wang, 16, described what what was at stake for each of them. Of the four girls, only Luis didn’t get a pass to miss class, so she was marked absent for the day, but she had explained to her mom the night before why she was still going to rally. Luis said she feels her community has too much on the line to let an absence stand in the way of taking action.

“If you look at where my family is from in the Dominican Republic, people are farmers,” Luis said. “And if you don’t have enough water to water your crops, nobody’s eating.” Her classmates chimed in, each sharing the effects of climate change and burning fossil fuels that they see all around them — from pollution making people sick in the Bronx and in Beijing, where Wang’s family is from, to dirty beaches that Reid visited the last time her family returned to their native Jamaica.

Maya Schucherm, 16, May Wang, 16, Arianna Luis, 17, Amara Reid, 17,

The students say they know they won’t see changes overnight. Stanton and Chen, who worked to draft the demands for their school, expect the work to continue long after they graduate at the end of of the school year.

For all the Bronx Science students carefully researched demands to their school (they also met with the school’s assistant principal when drafting their plan), the district’s reaction has not yet been fruitful. The New York Department of Education has not endorsed their goals, and efforts to reach assembly members asking them to put pressure on school officials to grant amnesty to student strikes have gone unanswered.

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The New York City Department of Education emailed this response to Grist: “We encourage our students to raise their voices on issues that matter to them, and we also expect our students to be in attendance during the school day. We’ve issued guidance to school communities, and encourage schools to have discussions on current events and about the importance of civic engagement.”

Of the seven authors of the Bronx Science mission statement, Danes is the only underclassman who will still be at Bronx Science next year. Still, she also knows she won’t be alone. She’s exchanged emails with Alexandria Villaseñor, one of the organizers of the U.S. Youth Climate Strike. “I really would love to [meet] because she has been really my inspiration along with Greta Thunberg,” said Danes. At 13, Villasenor is three years younger than Danes. So who says your role models have to be older than you?

Alysa and Marian Chen outside City HallJustine Calma / Grist

As the rally continued outside New York’s City Hall, Alysa Chen’s mother, Marian, joined her daughter during her own lunch break from work. Standing nearby, she held her daughter’s bag and took photos as Alysa led chants and paced along the long line of young people singing in protest.

“I’m so happy they’re taking the lead to save everyone on earth,” Marian Chen told Grist. “Including us.”

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These kids are striking for their school to cut its carbon footprint

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Meet the 16-year-old who went viral after asking Dianne Feinstein to support a Green New Deal

by DRZDemetri Posted on February 26, 2019

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Isha Clarke, a junior at MetWest High School in Oakland, California, was one of about a dozen young people who confronted Senator Dianne Feinstein in an attempt to convince her to endorse the Green New Deal resolution proposed earlier this month by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, and Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts.

The group went into the meeting with high hopes. They emerged disappointed but armed with footage that enraged many in the online environmental community who believe the U.S. needs to remake its economy to tackle climate change.

An edited video of the encounter in the foyer of the California Democrat’s San Francisco office went viral on Twitter over the weekend. A longer version ends with the Senator promising Clarke an internship, a reflection that Feinstein, who has been in office for three decades, knows “how to play the game,” according to The Atlantic’s Caitlin Flanagan.

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Clarke is a member of the climate group Youth vs. Apocalypse, a young people-led organization under the umbrella of the Bay Area’s chapter of the climate advocacy group 350.org. (Editor’s note: Grist board member Bill McKibben is 350.org’s founder.) She was invited to speak at a rally outside of Feinstein’s California office organized by the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate activist organization, and attended by social justice outfit Bay Area Earth Guardians. She then joined the Earth Guardians and Sunrise activists when they met with Feinstein in her office.

Grist caught up with Clarke on Monday to discuss the online reaction to the Feinstein meeting, the Green New Deal resolution, why she’s fighting for climate justice at the tender age of 16, and of course, the internship the Senator promised her. (This conversation has been edited for clarity.)

Q. What was your impression of Senator Feinstein’s reaction to your request?

A. Our feeling about the whole interaction was really bad. At the end of the day, it’s not about her, it’s not about her tone or her reaction, it’s about her vote. We’re focusing on the fact that we went there to ask her to vote yes on the Green New Deal because that is the most important thing. We’re not really concerned with all the other stuff. It’s sort of becoming a distraction, you know?

Q. Did you expect her to say, “Yes I support the version of the Green New Deal” when you confronted her?

A. Yes. We really just wanted her to say that she was in solidarity with us — and that when it comes to her time to vote she would vote yes. I didn’t know that she necessarily opposed it, but I knew that she hadn’t made up her mind yet. I was there to get her to be on the side of “yes.”

Q. Senator Feinstein handed out copies of what she referred to as her “own Green New Deal” during that meeting. What did you think of it?

A. It’s simply not bold enough, and it doesn’t align with science. It doesn’t talk about fracking or offshore drilling, green jobs, or transportation. I also don’t think it takes a bold enough stance on economic or racial justice. It’s really just a watered-down version of the Green New Deal.

Feinstein made the argument that she didn’t think that AOC’s Green New Deal would pass, but quite frankly, neither will her resolution. If we’re going to be offering something to Congress it needs to be something bold. Honestly, right now, it’s more about getting our politicians to take a serious public stance on the Green New Deal and start building the momentum so that when [Democrats] do take back the Senate, and we have more of a political force, we can go right into the Green New Deal. We know that it might not pass but it’s about solidarity.

Q. Did you ask Feinstein for the internship or did she offer it?

A. After the whole interaction, we were leaving and I wanted to bring it back to the purpose [of the meeting], and thank her for her time, because I recognize that she’s a busy lady. She said, ‘Thank you and I really want you to have an internship here so you can understand what it’s like and understand all of the nuance and things like that.’ And then she started to walk away, and I wanted to hold her to that. I mean she just offered me an internship, so I was the one who asked her how I would do that. And the cameras had started walking away so they only heard me asking for the internship. But she had actually brought it up, and I was just following through.

Q. Has her office reached out since Friday?

A. They haven’t reached out. I have their business card. I’m still debating on whether or not I’m going to take [the internship]. It’s a complex situation. The reason why I would take the internship is because I think it’s an incredible opportunity. To be blunt, you have to learn how to play the game to change it. So I think it is a super cool way to be able to do that, and to learn the ins and outs. And I think that it’s also important to have my voice be in the room.

But I wouldn’t take it for a couple of reasons. No. 1: I don’t know what the internship actually entails. Sometimes high school students just do paperwork, and that’s not what I’m interested in. But mostly it’s because I don’t want my having an internship with her to turn into a justification for the whole situation. It’s already kind of being used like that. People are saying, ‘There was a happy ending, and Senator Feinstein offered a girl an internship and whoopdeedoo.’ And I don’t want me having a position there to be a way to cover up everything that just happened.

Q.You have spoken out about gun reform in the past. Now you’re talking about climate. As a politically-active student with limited time, how do you decide which issues to fight for?

A. I am a young woman of color, so I feel drawn to a lot of issues. Part of the reason why I’m working on the Green New Deal right now is because I think it is the most intersectional plan that I’ve seen ever, and it really excites me that I can work for everything I believe in in this one deal. It encompasses economic justice, climate justice, racial justice, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, all of that can be part of the Green New Deal.

You can’t separate climate justice from any other justices because they’re all-in-one. So when I’m fighting for climate justice, I’m fighting for everything else, too.

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Meet the 16-year-old who went viral after asking Dianne Feinstein to support a Green New Deal

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