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"The Earth is My Mother" by Bev Doolittle and Elise Maclay is a picturebook that explores Native American histories while a courageous young girl explores her relationship with her mother and the Earth. The protagonist has a love for photography, and uses this tool to see the world in a new way.
Lesson idea: After reading this text, introduce a project in which students have to take photos of the world around them and then write a story modeled off of this text.

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What do you do when catastrophic climate events fall on your town the day after high school graduation? Marley and Brianne struggle to save themselves, their town, and life as we know it.

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Students in Hawaii take viewers through the devastating reality that they see on their shores daily. They discuss the importance of eliminating Styrofoam from use.

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Plastic Pollution, Our Oceans, Our Future...

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In this eco-thriller, Noah and his group of sleuths plot to take down a local casino boat that they are convinced is illegally flushing sewage into the harbor.

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Timeline of Environmental Victories Since the First Earth Day

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Timeline of Environmental Victories Since the First Earth Day

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Originally published in 2016 and updated in March 2019, National Geographic highlights milestones of environmental progress since Earth Day was founded in 1970. The inclusion of a wide range of policies and changes made showcases how far we've come in the fight for a better environment.

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The first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, was a milestone event for the planet. An estimated 20 million people took to the streets across the U.S. to raise awareness about the impacts of human activities on the environment.

Since then, the annual tradition has grown to involve billions of people around the world. This year, Earth Day turns 48. To mark this anniversary and to show how much has changed since 1970, we assembled 48 of the most significant accomplishments of the environmental movement since the first Earth Day.
1. 1970 "Environmental Magna Carta"
The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 went into effect the following year, becoming a landmark law that requires every major decision of the federal government to be evaluated for its impact on the environment. This began the era of requiring environmental impact statements for building dams, roads, and other major projects. It has been called the "environmental Magna Carta" for its wide impact and for the precedent it set in government, both in the U.S. and abroad.
2. 1972 Notorious Toxic Chemical Banned
DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) is a colorless, nearly odorless insecticide that was widely used in the post-war era to increase farm productivity and fight mosquitoes. Although a Nobel Prize was awarded for its discovery, scientists eventually realized that DDT was causing problems in the environment, including thinning the shells of birds' eggs. Rachel Carson popularized this research in the 1962 book Silent Spring. After DDT was banned, bald eagles, peregrine falcons and many other endangered bird species returned from the brink of extinction.
3. 1972 Regulating Pesticides
In 1972, the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act was passed, updating a 1910 law that had required truth in advertising for pesticides. The new law charged regulators with considering the impacts of pesticides on human and environmental health, which at the time was a relatively new concept. The Environmental Protection Agency was given more teeth to police the market and restrict and outlaw toxic chemicals.
4. 1972 Cleaning Up Rivers
In 1972, the Clean Water Act passed, with the goal of making all rivers in the country swimmable and fishable again. In just a few years, the resulting efforts to restrict pollution led to rivers that no longer burst into flames.
5. 1972 Marine Sanctuaries Created
Although governments had been protecting land as wilderness areas for more than a century, the idea took longer to catch on for the ocean. In 1972, the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act started the country's system of marine sanctuaries. These special places now protect priceless biological, historical, and cultural treasures, from the reefs of the Florida Keys to shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. The sanctuaries also become a boon to the tourism industry.

Whales, dolphins, seals, and manatees received strict protection from hunting and harassment in U.S. waters with the Marine Mammal Protection Act. As a result, their numbers began to slowly recover in the ensuing decades. A robust eco-tourism business followed in their wake.

The landmark Endangered Species Act resulted in substantial protections for listed plants and animals, including bans on harvesting and a framework that protects critical habitat. In some cases, captive breeding and reintroduction programs began in an effort to reverse decades of population declines caused by human activities. Species that showed significant recovery as a result range from the toothy American crocodile to the plucky Delmarva fox squirrel.
8. 1975 Global Agreement on Endangered Species
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species was drafted for signatures in 1973 and went into effect in 1975. Signatory countries agree to ban or restrict trade in endangered species and their body parts. Although black markets arose for such products as tiger skins and elephant tusks, countries have also worked together to combat such trafficking.
9. 1974 Safe(r) Drinking Water
In response to rising concerns and scientific awareness about the impacts of pollution on health, the Safe Drinking Water Act set quality standards for all U.S. drinking water systems.
10. 1974 Getting the Lead Out of Gas
In 1974, the EPA began a phaseout of lead from gasoline in the U.S., a process that completed in 1995. The toxic element was originally added to boost engine performance, but scientists eventually discovered that it was building up in soils and becoming a serious air pollutant. The EPA estimated more than 5,000 Americans died per year from heart disease linked to lead poisoning. Since the ban, the average level of lead in the blood of Americans has decreased by more than 75%.
11. 1976 Chemical Control
The Toxic Substances Control Act oversees the introduction of new chemicals into the marketplace. Those substances that are found to pose a significant risk to human health or the environment may be restricted or banned. A notable example was the banning of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) after 1978. The chemicals were widely used in industrial applications but were found to cause cancer.
12. 1978 Love Canal Causes National Outcry
After hundreds of residents of the Love Canal planned community in Niagara Falls, New York, were sickened by leaking toxic waste, a spotlight was shined on the dangers of industrial pollution. Local parent Lois Gibbs organized the community after her son took ill, starting a model for grassroots environmental activism. The neighborhood was eventually demolished and cleaned.
13. 1980 Superfund Program Launched
Outrage over Love Canal helped lead to the passage of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, commonly known as Superfund. The goal of the law is cleaning up toxic sites, and the Environmental Protection Agency can try to recover the costs of doing so from the polluters. Love Canal became one of hundreds of sites cleaned up by the program, though many more locations are still awaiting treatment.
14. 1980 Vast Alaskan Lands Protected
Congress passed and Jimmy Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in late 1980, creating a massive series of national parks, reserves, and refuges that protected more than a hundred million acres of wilderness for future generations. Highlights include the national parks Wrangell-St. Elias, Glacier Bay, and Gates of the Arctic.
15. 1982 Saving More Whales
In 1982, the International Whaling Commission finally adopted a moratorium on commercial whaling around the world, in response to more than a decade of protests and pressure from scientists. Although pirate and controversial "scientific" whale hunts continued, the end of large-scale whaling marked a big turning point for the animals, and most species began a slow recovery from the brink of extinction.
16. 1986 McPackaging Improves
In 1986, McDonalds started using biodegradable packaging, in response to criticism from environmentalists over mountains of Styrofoam containers littering roadways and choking landfills. Campaigners declared a major win, and the effort helped usher in a new era of companies both working with advocacy groups and acting on their own to reduce their environmental impact. The effort also helped raise consumer awareness about the impact of their own daily choices.

In 1986, the sprawling Woburn, Massachusetts pollution case was decided in court. Although the result was mixed for the families that sued polluters over injury to their children, the high-profile case set a big precedent in environmental law and in the court of public opinion. The case was depicted in the 1995 book (and later movie) A Civil Action.

In 1987, wildlife biologists made the tough decision to bring all 27 remaining California condors into captivity. They launched a breeding program, which was almost derailed by a tragic fire. But eventually, scientists were able to successfully reintroduce some of the offspring. Combined with efforts to protect the birds in their native habitat, the result has been a slow recovery of the species, which now numbers over 400.
19. 1987 Plugging the Ozone Hole
In 1987, many of the world's nations came together to agree on the Montreal Protocol, which outlawed a series of chemicals that had been destroying the Earth's protective ozone layer. Most famous among these were chlorofluorocarbons. Scientists were concerned that the loss of the ozone layer could lead to blistering rates of skin cancer and other problems. The ozone hole is now healing.
20. 1987 Cleaning Up Sewage
Once industrial pollution was reigned in, regulators turned to another major source of water quality problems: sewage waste. The Water Quality Act of 1987 created the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which helped finance the upgrade of water systems across the country.
21. 1988 Cleaning Up Medical Waste
In the late 1980s, the public was shocked after waves of medical waste washed up on beaches where children played. The response was the 1988 Medical Waste Tracking Act, which compelled healthcare providers to treat their waste seriously and make sure it gets disposed of properly.
22. 1989 Get the Asbestos Out
In 1989 the U.S. began a phaseout of asbestos from many products, after evidence mounted that it could cause a rare form of lung cancer. Asbestos was previously considered a new wonder material thanks to its light weight and resistance to fire.
23. 1990 Clearing the Air
Although the Clean Air Act was originally passed in 1963, it received a major update in 1990, which targeted acid rain and ozone depletion. The law also established a tougher permitting and oversight system for polluters and required cleaner gasoline.
24. 1992 Rio Earth Summit
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development was a major event in Rio de Janeiro that helped focus the world's attention on big environmental problems. It spurred all kinds of solutions, from government to civil society and business. It was there that countries agreed to start working together to address climate change. Countries also committed to increasing their use of renewable energy and to respecting the needs of indigenous people, efforts that were amplified when the UN met again in Rio 20 years later.

In 1991, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists began reintroducing black-footed ferrets to the American West. The species was declared extinct in 1979, but a few dozen individuals were later found and entered into a captive breeding program. Now, there are an estimated 1,000 of the animals in several populations in the wild.
26. 1993 Erin Brockovich Wins Her Case
Later immortalized in film, determined law clerk Erin Brokovich and her firm Masry & Vititoe scored a $333 million win against a California utility accused of poisoning people's groundwater with a toxic chemical. It was the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit.
27. 1993 Green Building Takes Off
In 1993, the U.S. Green Building Council was founded, helping kick off a revolution in environmentally friendly design that continues to grow each year. Architects and manufacturers have made big gains in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and sustainable materials.
28. 1993 Protecting Biodiversity
In 1993, the Convention on Biological Diversity went into effect after being ratified by enough countries. Nations pledged to work to protect biodiversity around the world, in a decision that is often seen as the foundation for sustainable development.
29. 1995 Gray Wolves Reintroduced to Yellowstone
After generations of absence, wolves were returned to an iconic national park. They quickly regained their past position in the web of life, restoring balance to prey species and even changing the course of rivers. Today Yellowstone remains a critical preserve as well as living laboratory for ecology.
30. 1995 Bald Eagle Recovery
In 1995 bald eagles were removed from the Endangered Species List, helping prove the power of the law. Eagles retain legal protection from hunting through other laws.
31. 1997 Early Climate Agreement
In 1997 the Kyoto Protocol was adopted by some countries (although not the U.S). It marked an early serious attempt by world leaders to address global warming in a coordinated way.
32. 2000 Hybrid Revolution
Toyota first introduced the Prius in Japan in 1997, but it came to America in 2000. The high-tech car introduced the hybrid drivetrain to many consumers, helping kick off a movement toward greater fuel efficiency. Within a few years, almost every car company began offering hybrid models.

As the old millennium ended, environmental awareness climbed toward an all-time high, spurred by decades of educational and activist campaigns. Few politicians or corporations could afford to overtly ignore the environment any longer.
34. 2001 Roadless Areas Protected
In January 2001, the U.S. Forest Service adopted the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which protected 58.5 million acres of pristine forests and grasslands from most road construction and logging. The rule remains controversial to industry but is cheered by conservationists.
35. 2002 California Goes Solar
In 2002, California passed an aggressive Renewable Portfolio Standard in order to help stimulate the clean energy industry. After a series of adjustments, the final result is that utilities in the state must get half of their energy from renewables by 2030. Many other states passed similar standards, though the Golden State's is the most ambitious.
36. 2002 Cradle to Cradle Is Published
The book Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart helped introduce their concept of biomimetic, clean design to the public. This helped kick off a new movement to rethink all manmade processes to be more in-line with nature, including the idea of ending the concept of waste and replacing it with the idea that everything can have a use as a material for something else.
37. 2003 Electric Cars Get Cool
Tesla Motors was founded by Elon Musk in 2003, helping make electric cars cutting-edge again (after they languished in obscurity for a century). Other manufacturers also pushed forward with a new round of innovation, helping ramp up a technology that many pundits think will be a boon for the environment.

Love it or hate it, the documentary An Inconvenient Truth helped raise public awareness around the threat of climate change.

In 2006 the U.S. started regulating the commercial fishing industry through catch shares, in an attempt to make fishermen partners in conservation instead of adversaries. The basic idea is that each fisherman is awarded a percent share of the total catch. So the more fish that can be caught, the more each person can benefit. This helps incentivize conservation measures and accelerated the recovery of many declining U.S. fish stocks.

The Energy Independence and Security Act resulted in tougher new fuel economy standards, including the phase-in of standards for SUVs and even large commercial vehicles. Manufacturers had fought the standards for years but eventually worked with the government to meet the standards.

Walk Score was founded in 2007, rating cities, neighborhoods, and more for how pedestrian friendly they are. The company helped raise awareness of the growing walking and biking movements, which aim to get people out of cars and into more livable communities.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued PlaNYC in 2007, a comprehensive plan to reduce New York City's impact on the planet. It included ambitious goals to take the city toward zero waste (by promoting recycling and composting), and supported energy efficiency, tree planting, green space, biking, and much more. Many other cities around the world have issued similar plans.
43. 2009 Massive Marine Monument
In 2009, George W. Bush created the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, which protects some of the most pristine waters in the ocean. The monument was expanded by Barack Obama to nearly 490,000 square miles (1.3 million square kilometers), making it nearly three times the size of California. It protects endemic species of coral and fish, turtles, whales, and much more.
44. 2010 Protecting the Atlantic Coast
In 2010, the Department of the Interior announced a ban on oil and gas drilling in federal waters off the Atlantic Coast until 2017. This was the latest in a series of efforts to limit development off the ecologically sensitive U.S. coasts.

In 2012, Washington's Elwha dams were removed, restoring a wild river to Olympic National Park. This was arguably the most high profile dam removal in a growing movement that has sought to restore natural rivers and see the return of salmon runs.
46. 2015 Climate Agreement
In late 2015, nations came together in Paris and agreed to a new plan to limit global warming. The deal opens for formal signatures on Earth Day, and it will require countries to reduce emissions according to their pledges. Environmentalists are cautiously optimistic that the agreement represents a global turning point.
47. 2017 Tougher Ozone Standards
In August 2017, the Trump administration EPA dropped its decision to delay new Obama-era regulations on ozone, a long irritant that forms when sunlight irradiates emissions from vehicles, power plants, and other sources. In October 2015, the Obama administration tightened the ozone national standard from 75 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion, citing ozone's toll on public health. The Obama administration estimated that the reduction would yield $2.9 to $5.9 billion worth of health benefits in 2025, outweighing its estimated annual cost of $1.4 billion.
48. 2018 Species Show Recovery
In April, the lesser long-nosed bat became the first bat to be taken off the Endangered Species List. After decades of conservation work, including working with agave growers to harvest tequila in a manner more friendly to the bats, the species has recovered its numbers to an estimated 200,000, up from just a few thousand. In June 2017, Yellowstone's grizzly bears were removed from the endangered list, while the American wood stork was removed in 2014. These examples show that the Endangered Species Act is working, conservationists say.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument was created in 2006; it was actually created in 2009.
Update: This story was first published on April 22, 2016 and updated on April 18, 2018.

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48 Environmental Victories Since the First Earth Day

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The first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, was a milestone event for the planet. An estimated 20 million people took to the streets across the U.S. to raise awareness about the impacts of human activities on the environment. Since then, the annual tradition has grown to involve billions of people around the world.

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What can we do to leave a positive environmental impact?

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What can we do to leave a positive environmental impact?

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Why should we work to protect our planet?

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Why should we work to protect our planet?

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Explore easy, everyday ways to prevent climate change and make a positive impact for the world.
A fun challenge: Hold yourself accountable to one of these tasks for a week and watch the change you make in your own community!

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See How It Feels to Be an Ocean Animal Stuck in a Plastic Bag

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See How It Feels to Be an Ocean Animal Stuck in a Plastic Bag

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National Geographic shows how it would feel to be trapped in plastic: the same thing we are subjecting our environment to. This demonstration took place at the National Mall in Washington D.C. in 2016.

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See How It Feels to Be an Ocean Animal Stuck in a Plastic Bag

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Imagine being trapped inside a huge plastic bag. Each year, over a million marine creatures and other birds and animals die from plastic trash. This dramatization featuring National Geographic staff simulates the experience of entrapped marine creatures.

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Learn about the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s advice on being environmentally friendly. Small actions have large ripple effects.

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What would happen to the Earth if we continue to live as we are now?

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What would happen to the Earth if we continue to live as we are now?

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NASA offers facts and statistics about the reality of climate change over the past few centuries. Explore varying impacts of climate change on this website.

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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The rate of change since the mid-20th century is unprecedented over millennia.

Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 800,000 years, there have been eight cycles of ice ages and warmer periods, with the end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era - and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth's orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Credit: Luthi, D., et al.. 2008; Etheridge, D.M., et al. 2010; Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record.) Find out more about ice cores (external site).

The current warming trend is different because it is clearly the result of human activities since the mid-1800s, and is proceeding at a rate not seen over many recent millennia. It is undeniable that human activities have produced the atmospheric gases that have trapped more of the Sun's energy in the Earth system. This extra energy has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land, and widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere have occurred.

Do scientists agree on climate change?

Yes, the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists - 97 percent - agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change.

detailed answer

Earth-orbiting satellites and new technologies have helped scientists see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate all over the world. These data, collected over many years, reveal the signs and patterns of a changing climate.

Scientists demonstrated the heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases in the mid-19th century. Many of the science instruments NASA uses to study our climate focus on how these gases affect the movement of infrared radiation through the atmosphere. From the measured impacts of increases in these gases, there is no question that increased greenhouse gas levels warm Earth in response.

"Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal."

- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that Earth's climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Ancient evidence can also be found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age. Carbon dioxide from human activities is increasing about 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last Ice Age.

References

References
Header image shows clouds imitating mountains as the sun sets after midnight as seen from Denali's backcountry Unit 13 on June 14, 2019. Credit: NPS/Emily Mesner

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Climate Change Evidence: How Do We Know?

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Vital Signs of the Planet: Global Climate Change and Global Warming. How do we know it's happening? Here's the evidence.

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Lynn knows what it takes to survive and is willing to do everything necessary to protect her pond. When strangers show up with the intention of stealing her water to drink, she is prepared and ready to take them on. A novel about the importance of water and the lengths those in desperate need are willing to go to acquire it.

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Canada's Beautiful Coastline Needs Protecting

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Canada's Beautiful Coastline Needs Protecting

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Canada's coastline is the longest in the world and it is at risk and faced with a big question: Commit to saving the waters or let them slip?

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Canada's Beautiful Coastline Needs Protecting

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Two 17 year old best friends are incredibly excited for summer vacation and hope to meet some cute guys. When they finally meet two great guys, some strange things start happening... Turns out, these guys are aliens who live at the bottom of the sea and have come to shore in one last plea to save the oceans. Will they be able to?

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Three teenagers are trapped in a destroyed world where you have to pay for air. Are they able to save the environment and free themselves?

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"From "understory"" by Craig Santos Perez

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"From "understory"" by Craig Santos Perez

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To wonder what type of world will be left for our children and future generations is a prominent concern. This poem explores changes to their livelihood that one generation sees off the coast of the Pacific Ocean.

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We Made Plastic. We Depend on Plastic. Now, We're Drowning In It.

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We Made Plastic. We Depend on Plastic. Now, We're Drowning In It.

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Planet or plastic?
Plastic has become an incredibly valuable material in modern society, but do we need it? Could we survive without it? What is the effect of our plastic consumption? Learn more about this from National Geographic.

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This story is part of Planet or Plastic?-our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

Read this story and more in the June 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine.

If plastic had been invented when the Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England, to North America-and the Mayflower had been stocked with bottled water and plastic-wrapped snacks-their plastic trash would likely still be around, four centuries later.

If the Pilgrims had been like many people today and simply tossed their empty bottles and wrappers over the side, Atlantic waves and sunlight would have worn all that plastic into tiny bits. And those bits might still be floating around the world's oceans today, sponging up toxins to add to the ones already in them, waiting to be eaten by some hapless fish or oyster, and ultimately perhaps by one of us.

We should give thanks that the Pilgrims didn't have plastic, I thought recently as I rode a train to Plymouth along England's south coast. I was on my way to see a man who would help me make sense of the whole mess we've made with plastic, especially in the ocean.

Because plastic wasn't invented until the late 19th century, and production really only took off around 1950, we have a mere 9.2 billion tons of the stuff to deal with. Of that, more than 6.9 billion tons have become waste. And of that waste, a staggering 6.3 billion tons never made it to a recycling bin-a figure that stunned the scientists who crunched the numbers in 2017.

No one knows how much unrecycled plastic waste ends up in the ocean, Earth's last sink. In 2015, Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia engineering professor, caught everyone's attention with a rough estimate: between 5.3 million and 14 million tons each year just from coastal regions. Most of it isn't thrown off ships, she and her colleagues say, but is dumped carelessly on land or in rivers, mostly in Asia. It's then blown or washed into the sea. Imagine five plastic grocery bags stuffed with plastic trash, Jambeck says, sitting on every foot of coastline around the world-that would correspond to about 8.8 million tons, her middle-of-the-road estimate of what the ocean gets from us annually. It's unclear how long it will take for that plastic to completely biodegrade into its constituent molecules. Estimates range from 450 years to never.

Meanwhile, ocean plastic is estimated to kill millions of marine animals every year. Nearly 700 species, including endangered ones, are known to have been affected by it. Some are harmed visibly-strangled by abandoned fishing nets or discarded six-pack rings. Many more are probably harmed invisibly. Marine species of all sizes, from zooplankton to whales, now eat microplastics, the bits smaller than one-fifth of an inch across. On Hawaii's Big Island, on a beach that seemingly should have been pristine-no paved road leads to it-I walked ankle-deep through microplastics. They crunched like Rice Krispies under my feet. After that, I could understand why some people see ocean plastic as a looming catastrophe, worth mentioning in the same breath as climate change. At a global summit in Nairobi last December, the head of the United Nations Environment Programme spoke of an "ocean Armageddon."

And yet there's a key difference: Ocean plastic is not as complicated as climate change. There are no ocean trash deniers, at least so far. To do something about it, we don't have to remake our planet's entire energy system.

"This isn't a problem where we don't know what the solution is," says Ted Siegler, a Vermont resource economist who has spent more than 25 years working with developing nations on garbage. "We know how to pick up garbage. Anyone can do it. We know how to dispose of it. We know how to recycle." It's a matter of building the necessary institutions and systems, he says-ideally before the ocean turns, irretrievably and for centuries to come, into a thin soup of plastic.

In Plymouth, under the gray gloom of an English autumn, Richard Thompson waited in a yellow slicker outside Plymouth University's Coxside Marine Station, at the edge of the harbor. A lean man of 54, with a smooth pate rimmed with gray hair, Thompson was headed for an ordinary career as a marine ecologist in 1993-he was working on a Ph.D. on limpets and microalgae that grow on coastal rocks-when he participated in his first beach cleanup, on the Isle of Man. While other volunteers zoomed in on the plastic bottles and bags and nets, Thompson focused on the small stuff, the tiny particles that lay underfoot, ignored, at the high tide line. At first he wasn't even sure they were plastic. He had to consult forensic chemists to confirm it.

There was a real mystery to be solved back then, at least in academic circles: Scientists wondered why they weren't finding even more plastic in the sea. World production has increased exponentially-from 2.3 million tons in 1950, it grew to 162 million in 1993 and to 448 million by 2015-but the amount of plastic drifting on the ocean and washing up on beaches, alarming as it was, didn't seem to be rising as fast. "That begs the question: Where is it?" Thompson said. "We can't establish harm to the environment unless we know where it is."

In the years since his first beach cleanup, Thompson has helped provide the beginnings of an answer: The missing plastic is getting broken into pieces so small they're hard to see. In a 2004 paper, Thompson coined the term "microplastics" for these small bits, predicting-accurately, as it turned out-that they had "potential for large-scale accumulation" in the ocean.

When we met in Plymouth last fall, Thompson and two of his students had just completed a study that indicated it's not just waves and sunlight that break down plastic. In lab tests, they'd watched amphipods of the species Orchestia gammarellus -tiny shrimplike crustaceans that are common in European coastal waters-devour pieces of plastic bags and determined they could shred a single bag into 1.75 million microscopic fragments. The little creatures chewed through plastic especially fast, Thompson's team found, when it was coated with the microbial slime that is their normal food. They spat out or eventually excreted the plastic bits.

Microplastics have been found everywhere in the ocean that people have looked, from sediments on the deepest seafloor to ice floating in the Arctic-which, as it melts over the next decade, could release more than a trillion bits of plastic into the water, according to one estimate. On some beaches on the Big Island of Hawaii, as much as 15 percent of the sand is actually grains of microplastic. Kamilo Point Beach, the one I walked on, catches plastic from the North Pacific gyre, the trashiest of five swirling current systems that transport garbage around the ocean basins and concentrate it in great patches. At Kamilo Point the beach is piled with laundry baskets, bottles, and containers with labels in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, and occasionally, Russian. On Henderson Island, an uninhabited coral island in the South Pacific, researchers have found an astonishing volume of plastic from South America, Asia, New Zealand, Russia, and as far away as Scotland.

As Thompson and I talked about all this, a day boat called the Dolphin was carrying us through a light chop in the Sound, off Plymouth. Thompson reeled out a fine-mesh net called a manta trawl, usually used for studying plankton. We were close to the spot where, a few years earlier, other researchers had collected 504 fish of 10 species and given them to Thompson. Dissecting the fish, he was surprised to find microplastics in the guts of more than one-third of them. The finding made international headlines.

After we'd steamed along for a while, Thompson reeled the manta trawl back in. There was a smattering of colored plastic confetti at the bottom. Thompson himself doesn't worry much about microplastics in his fish and chips-there's little evidence yet that they pass from the gut of a fish into the flesh we actually eat. (See We Know Plastic Is Harming Marine Life. What About Us?) He worries more about the things that none of us can see-the chemicals added to plastics to give them desirable properties, such as malleability, and the even tinier nanoplastics that microplastics presumably degrade into. Those might pass into the tissues of fish and humans.

"We do know the concentrations of chemicals at the time of manufacture in some cases are very high," Thompson said. "We don't know how much additive is left in the plastic by the time it becomes bite-size to a fish.

"Nobody has found nanoparticles in the environment-they're below the level of detection for analytical equipment. People think they are out there. They have the potential to be sequestered in tissue, and that could be a game changer."

Thompson is careful not to get ahead of the science on his subject. He's far from an alarmist-but he's also convinced that plastic trash in the ocean is far more than an aesthetic problem. "I don't think we should be waiting for a key finding of whether or not fish are hazardous to eat," he said. "We have enough evidence to act."

How did we get here? When did the dark side of the miracle of plastic first show itself? It's a question that can be asked about many of the marvels of our technological world. Since helping the Allies win World War II-think of nylon parachutes or lightweight airplane parts-plastics have transformed all our lives as few other inventions have, mostly for the better. They've eased travel into space and revolutionized medicine. They lighten every car and jumbo jet today, saving fuel-and pollution. In the form of clingy, light-as-air wraps, they extend the life of fresh food. In airbags, incubators, helmets, or simply by delivering clean drinking water to poor people in those now demonized disposable bottles, plastics save lives daily.

In one of their early applications, they saved wildlife. In the mid-1800s, piano keys, billiard balls, combs, and all manner of trinkets were made of a scarce natural material: elephant ivory. With the elephant population at risk and ivory expensive and scarce, a billiards company in New York City offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could come up with an alternative.

As Susan Freinkel tells the tale in her book, Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, an amateur inventor named John Wesley Hyatt took up the challenge. His new material, celluloid, was made of cellulose, the polymer found in all plants. Hyatt's company boasted that it would eliminate the need "to ransack the Earth in pursuit of substances which are constantly growing scarcer." Besides sparing at least some elephants, celluloid also helped change billiards from solely an aristocratic pastime to one that working people play in bars.

That's a trivial example of a profound revolution ushered in by plastic-an era of material abundance. The revolution accelerated in the early 20th century, once plastics began to be made from the same stuff that was giving us abundant, cheap energy: petroleum. Oil companies had waste gases like ethylene coming out the stacks of their refineries. Chemists discovered they could use those gases as building blocks, or monomers, to create all sorts of novel polymers-polyethylene terephthalate, for example, or PET-instead of working only with polymers that already existed in nature. A world of possibilities opened up. Anything and everything could be made of plastic, and so it was, because plastics were cheap.

They were so cheap, we began to make things we never intended to keep. In 1955 Life magazine celebrated the liberation of the American housewife from drudgery. Under the headline "Throwaway Living," a photograph showed a family flinging plates, cups, and cutlery into the air. The items would take 40 hours to clean, the text noted-"except that no housewife need bother." When did plastics start to show their dark side? You might say it was when the junk in that photo hit the ground.

Six decades later, roughly 40 percent of the now more than 448 million tons of plastic produced every year is disposable, much of it used as packaging intended to be discarded within minutes after purchase. Production has grown at such a breakneck pace that virtually half the plastic ever manufactured has been made in the past 15 years. Last year the Coca-Cola Company, perhaps the world's largest producer of plastic bottles, acknowledged for the first time just how many it makes: 128 billion a year. Nestlé, PepsiCo, and others also churn out torrents of bottles.

The growth of plastic production has far outstripped the ability of waste management to keep up: That's why the oceans are under assault. "It's not surprising that we broke the system," Jambeck says. "That kind of increase would break any system not prepared for it." In 2013 a group of scientists issued a new assessment of throwaway living. Writing in Nature magazine, they declared that disposable plastic should be classified, not as a housewife's friend, but as a hazardous material.

In recent years the surge in production has been driven largely by the expanded use of disposable plastic packaging in the growing economies of Asia-where garbage collection systems may be underdeveloped or nonexistent. In 2010, according to an estimate by Jambeck, half the world's mismanaged plastic waste was generated by just five Asian countries: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka.

"Let's say you recycle 100 percent in all of North America and Europe," says Ramani Narayan, a chemical engineering professor at Michigan State University who also works in his native India. "You still would not make a dent on the plastics released into the oceans. If you want to do something about this, you have to go there, to these countries, and deal with the mismanaged waste."

The Pasig River once flowed majestically through downtown Manila, capital of the Philippines, and emptied into pristine Manila Bay. It was a treasured waterway and civic point of pride. It's now listed among the top 10 rivers in the world that convey plastic waste to the sea. As many as 72,000 tons flow downstream each year, mostly during the monsoon. In 1990 the Pasig was declared biologically dead.

The Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission, established in 1999, is working to clean up the river, with some signs of success. Jose Antonio Goitia, the commission's executive director, says he is optimistic that the Pasig could be restored someday, although he acknowledges he has no easy way of doing that. "Maybe the best thing to do is ban plastic bags," he says.

The remaining challenges are clearly visible every day. The river is fed by 51 tributaries, some of them overflowing with plastic waste from squatter settlements that cantilever precariously over creek banks. A tributary near Chinatown, where rickety shanties are wedged between modern buildings, is so choked with plastic debris you can walk across it, forgoing the footbridge. Manila Bay's beaches, once recreational respites for greater Manila's 13 million residents, are littered with garbage, much of it plastic. Last fall Break Free From Plastic, a coalition including Greenpeace and other groups, cleaned a beach on Freedom Island, which is advertised as an ecotourism district; volunteers picked up 54,260 pieces of plastic, from shoes to food containers. By the time I visited a few weeks later, the beach was littered again with bottles, wrappers, and shopping bags.

The scene in Manila is typical of large, overcrowded urban centers across Asia. The Philippines is a densely populated nation of 105 million people that is still struggling with the most basic public health issues, including waterborne diseases such as typhoid and bacterial diarrhea. It's no surprise that it has trouble managing the explosion of plastic garbage. Manila has a metropolitan garbage collection system that stretches across 17 separate local governments-a source of chaos and inefficiency. In 2004 the region was already running out of land to safely dump garbage. The shortage of landfill space, and thus the crisis, continues today.

A small part of the slack is taken up by Manila's informal recycling industry, which consists of thousands of waste pickers. Armando Siena, 34, is one of them. He and his wife, Angie, 31, have lived their entire lives surrounded by trash. They were born on Smokey Mountain, an internationally notorious dump that was officially closed in the 1990s. They now live with their three children near Manila's waterfront in a one-room flat lit by a single bulb, furnished with a pair of plastic chairs, and lacking plumbing, bedding, or refrigeration. The flat is in a garbage-filled slum named Aroma, next to another slum named Happyland.

Every day Siena rides a rickety bicycle beyond Aroma's boundaries, scanning the streets for recyclable rubbish that he can stuff into his sidecar. Plastic soup containers are high-value finds, paying 20 pesos (38 cents) a kilogram. Siena sorts and sells his load to a junk shop owned by his uncle, who trucks the waste to recycling plants on the outskirts of Manila.

Waste pickers like Siena are part of the solution, some activists argue; they just need a living wage. In the Baseco waterfront slum in Manila, a tiny recycling shop operated by the Plastic Bank of Vancouver, British Columbia, pays a premium for bottles and hard plastic collected by waste pickers. It then sells that plastic at a higher price to multinationals, which market their recycled products as socially responsible.

Siegler, the Vermont economist, has worked in enough countries and run enough numbers to be skeptical of such schemes. "There is not enough value in plastics to make that work," he says. "It's cheaper to fund a solid waste management system than to subsidize collecting plastic."

The waste that clogs Manila's beaches and waterways reinforces Siegler's point. Much of it consists of sachets-tear-off packets that once held a single serving of shampoo, toothpaste, coffee, condiments, or other products. They are sold by the millions to poor people like Siena and his family, who can't afford to buy more than one serving at a time. Sachets blow around Manila like leaves falling from trees. They're not recyclable, so no waste picker will retrieve them. Crispian Lao, a member of the National Solid Waste Management Commission, says, "This segment of packaging is growing, and it has become a real challenge for solid waste management."

When Greenpeace cleaned the Freedom Island beach, it posted a tally of the brand names of the sachets its volunteers had collected. Nestlé ranked first, Unilever second. Litterbugs aren't the only ones at fault, says Greenpeace's Abigail Aguilar: "We believe that the ones producing and promoting the use of single-use plastics have a major role in the whole problem." A Unilever spokeswoman in Manila told me the company is developing a recyclable sachet.

After Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from radar screens in March 2014 while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the search for it extended from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean. It captivated a global audience for weeks. No sign of the wreckage appeared. On several occasions, when satellite images revealed collections of objects floating on the sea surface, hopes soared that they would turn out to be aircraft parts. They weren't. It was all trash-pieces of broken shipping containers, abandoned fishing gear, and of course, plastic shopping bags.

Kathleen Dohan, a scientist and the president of Earth and Space Research in Seattle, saw opportunity in the horror: The images from space were pushing a problem into view that had long been neglected. "This is the first time the whole world is watching," she told me at the time. "It's a good time for people to understand that our oceans are garbage dumps." Dohan sensed a tipping point in public awareness-and the events since suggest she may have been right.

The most heartening thing about the plastic waste problem is the recent explosion of attention to it, and even of serious, if scattered, efforts to address it. A partial list of the good news since 2014 would include, in no particular order: Kenya joined a growing list of nations that have banned plastic bags, imposing steep fines and jail time on violators. France said it would ban plastic plates and cups by 2020. Bans on plastic microbeads in cosmetics (they're exfoliants) take effect this year in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and four other countries. The industry is phasing them out.

Corporations are responding to public opinion. Coca-Cola, which also produces Dasani water, announced a goal to "collect and recycle the equivalent of" 100 percent of its packaging by 2030. It and other multinationals, including PepsiCo, Amcor, and Unilever, have pledged to convert to 100 percent reusable, recyclable, or compostable packaging by 2025. And Johnson & Johnson is switching from plastic back to paper stems on its cotton swabs.

Individuals are making a difference too. Ellen MacArthur, a British yachtswoman, has created a foundation to promote the vision of a "circular economy," in which all materials, including plastics, are designed to be reused or recycled, not dumped. Actor Adrian Grenier has lent his celebrity to the campaign against the plastic drinking straw. And Boyan Slat, 23, from the Netherlands, is charging ahead with his teenage vow to clean up the largest garbage patch in the North Pacific. His organization has raised more than $30 million to construct an ocean-sweeping machine that is still under development.

All of these measures help at some level-even beach cleanups, futile as they sometimes seem. A beach cleanup hooked Richard Thompson on the plastic problem a quarter century ago. But the real solution, he now thinks, is to stop plastic from entering the ocean in the first place-and then to rethink our whole approach to the amazing stuff. "We've done a lot of work making sure plastic does its job, but very little amount of work on what happens to that product at the end of its lifetime," he says. "I'm not saying plastics are the enemy, but there is a lot the industry can do to help solve the problem."

There are two fundamental ways industry can help, if it wants or is forced to. First, along with academic scientists such as Jambeck, it can design new plastics and new plastic products that are either biodegradable or more recyclable (see You Can Help Turn the Tide on Plastic. Here's How.). New materials and more recycling, along with simply avoiding unnecessary uses of the stuff, are the long-term solutions to the plastic waste problem. But the fastest way to make a big difference, Siegler says, is low tech. It's more garbage trucks and landfills.

"Everyone wants a sexy answer," he says. "The reality is, we need to just collect the trash. Most countries that I work in, you can't even get it off the street. We need garbage trucks and help institutionalizing the fact that this waste needs to be collected on a regular basis and landfilled, recycled, or burned so that it doesn't end up going all over the place."

That's the second way industry could help: It could pony up. Siegler has proposed a worldwide tax of a penny on every pound of plastic resin manufactured. The tax would raise roughly six billion dollars a year that could be used to finance garbage collection systems in developing nations. The idea never caught on. In the fall of 2017, though, a group of scientists revived the concept of a global fund. The group called for an international agreement patterned after the Paris climate accord.

At the Nairobi meeting in December, 193 nations, including the U.S., actually passed one. The United Nations Clean Seas agreement doesn't impose a tax on plastic. It's nonbinding and toothless. It's really just a declaration of a good intention-the intention to end ocean plastic pollution. In that way it's less like the Paris Agreement and more like the Rio de Janeiro treaty, in which the world pledged to combat dangerous climate change-back in 1992. Norway's environment minister, Vidar Helgesen, called this new agreement a strong first step.

Staff writer Laura Parker and photographer Randy Olson last worked together on a feature on the vanishing Ogallala aquifer, which was published in the August 2016 issue.

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We Depend on Plastic. Now We're Drowning in It.

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The miracle material has made modern life possible. But more than 40 percent of it is used just once, and it's choking our waterways.

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#TrashTag is one way to make evident actions to better the world. This hashtag can encourage others to join in clean efforts. Attached is an interview about how #TrashTag came to be and the effect it has had.

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Steven Reinhold is one of the original creators of the hashtag #trashtag, which encourages people to post pictures picking up trash in the environment. Started a few years ago, it went viral a week ago when a Facebook user named Byron posted a before and after picture of a trash cleanup, and challenged bored teens to get outside and do something for the planet. Steven happens to be from the same small North Carolina mountain town as Julia Roberson, Ocean Conservancy's Vice President of Communications, so they sat down to talk some trash. Julia Roberson: Steven, hello! I can't believe you're from Waynesville!
Steve Reinhold: I know, small world!
Roberson: Ocean Conservancy has been sharing #trashtag all week because of our work on ocean trash. Then I read the story from our local paper Roberson: So, tell me about when you first became aware of trash and the impact it has on the environment. that you were a Haywood County native, like me. I posted on Facebook that I really wanted to interview you for our blog. Within five minutes, your wife (who is a cousin of a classmate of mine from high school) responded and said that she was married to you, and connected us! And a few hours later, here we are talking. Roberson: Totally. It's one of the things that consistently surprises me, all the places that trash and plastic are found, especially in the ocean. From the deepest part of the ocean to the Arctic. And how did #trashtag come about?
Reinhold: This just shows the power of social media-you can be connected to anyone around the world, or someone from a tiny town in North Carolina.
Roberson: Such a great idea. It takes our collective need to document everything on social media and turns it into something good, while doing something good for your community. It's been around for a while, right? Why do you think it took off in the past week?
Reinhold: In our hometown, I grew up on J-Creek, or Jonathan Creek, and there is a place called Beantown Road where people would just dump their trash. And looking back that was the first time that I realized there is trash out in nature. Nature is my therapy and I get out into the wilderness as much as I can. And to me, there was this really interesting juxtaposition when I would go all this way to a mountain or a creek or whatever, and there'd be a piece of trash there. It really stood out because it wasn't supposed to be there. I think a lot of people probably couldn't tell you what species of tree or a flower or a lot of things are, but they can pick out a coke can or a red bull can from a hundred yards, you know?
Roberson: And Bryon's post now has more than 100,000 likes on Facebook, and has been shared over 330,000 times. Wow. So, kind of like the ice bucket challenge from a couple of years ago.
Reinhold: I was out in California doing some mountaineering when we had an inadvertent littering accident. I'm on this road trip with a buddy. We're riding along and we had a piece of trash inadvertently fly out the window. I felt terrible and I decided to pick up a hundred pieces of trash to make up for that. We eventually made our way to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and it was there where we picked up the 100 th piece of trash. And the idea just popped into my head that we should create a hashtag to track this.
Roberson: One of things we work on at Ocean Conservancy is helping people understand what happens on land impacts the ocean. And I love this movement for that reason, because it unites those of us working on beaches, coasts, rivers-with the broader outdoors community that is also tracking this issue. It ties all of us together.
Reinhold: It got a lot of pick up right when we started. Backpacker magazine and others in the outdoor community featured a bunch of us using the hashtag. I think we started using it in 2015 and up until last week there were about 25,000 tags using #trashtag. And then last week a guy named Byron Roman put up a post on Facebook about a cleanup effort in Algeria and used #trashtag. It just kind of hit the internet with the right time, right words. He challenged teens to get out and make a difference.
Roberson: So, what's one of the craziest or most inventive #trashtag images you've seen?
Reinhold: Yes, exactly! We had tried to equate it to a challenge a few times, and with Byron's post it just stuck. You see all these crazy challenges, like the Tide Pod and Kiki Challenges, and this is one that is actually making a difference and doing something good. I'm starting to dream about a celebrity using #trashtag and then challenging others to use it, to bring even more attention to it.
Roberson: Have you seen anyone using #trashtag underwater yet?
Reinhold: Speaking of the connection to the ocean, one of my really good friends growing up, also from Haywood County, Jonathan Merrill, is now second in command on a Coast Guard vessel. He was one of the first people that reached out and said thank you for what you're doing, because we see so much trash out in the ocean.
Roberson: You know what, I actually did not know that. My dad probably does and he'll be really disappointed in me. So, you learn something new every day. Tell me about your job now and how you're able to incorporate #trashtag into your work.
Reinhold: Byron's post will always stand out because it helped it explode in the way it has. But one of my favorite things scrolling through Instagram and seeing people sharing pictures all over the world, in 20 different languages. You can't always get a translation but you see #trashtag.
Roberson: What trash do you find the most?
Reinhold: I've seen a lot from beaches. And you know, one of the first large-scale cleanups we did using #trashtag was here in Haywood County at Lake Junaluska; another was along the Mountains-to-Sea Trail. So, not a beach but definitely a waterway [that flows to the ocean]. And what you probably already know about Haywood County is that no water flows into it. The perimeter is one big ridgeline and all our water originates here. Our county is the highest in elevation on the east coast because of all the mountains that are 6,000 feet. It's a fortress of fresh water, and all our trash is originating here.
Roberson: Bottles and bottle caps definitely feature in our top 10 items of things found on beaches during the International Coastal Cleanup (ICC). I want to use #trashtag for this year's ICC and encourage people to use our app CleanSwell Roberson: Oh yes, it's gorgeous. And wow, I haven't been there in years. Got to go on my next trip home. Steven, thank you so much for talking to me and for raising awareness of this issue-we'll see how many #trashtags we can generate with this year's ICC! to track the amount of trash they're picking up. OK Steven, one last question Steven Reinhold works for The Appalachian Adventure Company (@appalachian_adventure_company) and is one of the original creators of the popular #trashtag.
You can follow him on Instagram at @ramblin_reinhold. -what's your favorite waterway in Haywood County?
Reinhold: Well I jokingly called my Instagram page (@ramblin_reinhold) the digital landfill, because all I did was post pictures of trash. I work with a company now, the Appalachian Outdoor Company and other outdoor gear sponsors, and it's great to be able to combine my work with raising awareness of a big issue-and just getting the conversation started.

Reinhold: Definitely bottles, bottle caps, beer bottles. Lots of granola wrappers.

Reinhold: Oh gosh, well it used to be a secret but so many people know about it now, but Midnight Hole. It's one of the prettiest places in our town.

Reinhold: My pleasure. Haywood County, home of the #trashtag!

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Interview with the Founder of #TrashTag, Steven Reinhold - Ocean Conservancy

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Steven Reinhold is one of the original creators of the hashtag #trashtag, which encourages people to post pictures picking up trash in the environment. Started a few years ago, it went viral a week ago when a Facebook user named Byron posted a before and after picture of a trash cleanup, and challenged bored teens to get outside and do something for the planet.

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In this song, Michael Jackson offers a heartfelt plea for the world to resort to peace, abandon war, and allow the forests to grow again. This song asks humanity to take responsibility for what they have done to the world and work to right their wrongs.

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Michael Jackson - Earth Song (Official Video)

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Are you looking for a way to grow and learn profound things about yourself and the world that surrounds you? Do you get lost in the hustle and bustle? Are you looking for a way to connect? This video encourages modern society to connect to nature and begin to recognize its value once again.

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WE ARE ADVENTURE - "LOST" 2018 Banff Film Festival Entry

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Have you ever wondered what our great world has to offer? This 4:42 minute video captivates its audience with cool visuals and awesome adventures that provide an uniquely inspirational perspective into our planet and all that it offers. If you are teetering on the edge about whether or not to commit to saving our natural resources, watch this video to see all that would vanish from our grasp if a change is not made.
This could be a good opener/attention getter for this unit.

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Learn the facts about plastic's ability to breakdown from this informative infographic. Did you know that plastic bags take 400-1,000 years to decompose but their chemicals still remain? Think about how often you use plastic bags!

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Packing It Out: Cleaning America's Wild Trails

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Packing It Out: Cleaning America's Wild Trails

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In this brief clip, listen to hikers who have made it their mission to pack trash out and #LeaveNoTrace. Positivity and passion drive their mission to make the planet a cleaner place.

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Packing It Out: Cleaning America's Wild Trails

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When John Rodgers discovers a new species of butterflies in his old mill town, he is stuck in a pickle. Is one butterfly worth destroying the livelihood of his town?

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On a trip to Oregon in the summer of 2018, I witnessed marine life attempting to eat (and get suffocated by a) plastic bag. I pulled the plastic out with my flip-flop. Here is my PSA.

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Channeling Katy Perry's hit song "Firework" to make a point about single-use plastic's long lasting effect.

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Can you imagine a world without pollution? It is all around us: in the air we breathe, the water we swim and fish in, and the ground we walk on. What can we do to reduce the amount of pollution contaminating our planet?