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Overwhelmed by ever more clothing donations, charities are exporting the problem. Local governments must step up

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Wednesday, November 20, 2024

anna.spoka/ShutterstockWhat happens to your clothes after you don’t want them any more? Chances are, you will donate them to op shops run by a charity organisation. There are more and more clothes in circulation, and they are getting cheaper and lower quality. That means the clothes you give away are worth less and less. For charities, this means donated clothes are less gift, more rubbish. Our new research explores what happens to clothes and other textiles after we don’t want them across nine cities in Europe, North America and Australia. The pattern was the same in most cities. The sheer volume is overwhelming many shops. In Geneva, donations to charity shops have surged 1,200% in three decades, from 250 tonnes in 1990 to 3,000 tonnes in 2021. Worldwide, we now dump 92 million tonnes of clothes and textiles a year, double the figure of 20 years earlier. There’s less and less value in managing these clothes locally. As a result, charities are forced to send more clothes to landfill – or sell bale after bale of clothing to resellers, who ship them to nations in the Global South. Local governments usually handle other waste streams. But on clothes and textiles, they often leave it to charitable organisations and commercial resellers. This system is inherited from a time when used clothing was a more valuable resource, but the rising quantity of clothing has pushed this system towards collapse. From January, all EU states have to begin rolling out collection services for used textiles. But in Australia and the United States there are no moves to do the same – even though these two countries consume the most textiles per capita in the world. As we work towards creating circular economies, where products are continually reused, this will have to change. Textile waste is a new problem Historically, textiles were hard to make and hence valuable. They were used for as long as possible and reused as rags or other purposes before becoming waste. These natural fibres would biodegrade or be burned for energy. But synthetic fibres and chemical finishings have made more and more clothes unable to biodegrade. Fast fashion – in which high fashion trends are copied and sold at low cost – is only possible because of synthetic fibers such as polyester. These clothes are often worn for a brief period and then given or thrown away. What happens to this waste? To find out, we looked at textile waste in Amsterdam, Austin, Berlin, Geneva, Luxembourg, Manchester, Melbourne, Oslo and Toronto. In eight of these cities, charities and commercial resellers dealt with the lion’s share of clothing waste. But in Amsterdam, local governments manage the problem. Across the nine cities, most donated clothes go not to charity shops shelves but to export. In Oslo, 97% of clothes are exported. The flood of clothes is producing strange outcomes in some places. In Melbourne, charities are now exporting higher quality secondhand clothes to Europe. But we found this forces independent secondhand clothing outlets to import similar clothes back from Europe or the US. Charity organisations usually export the clothes across the Global South. But shipping container loads of secondhand clothes and textiles can do real damage environmentally. Clothing that can’t be sold becomes waste. In Ghana, there are now 20-metre-high hills made of clothing waste. Synthetic clothes clog up rivers, trap animals and spread plastics as they break apart. This practice has been dubbed “waste colonialism”. Uganda has recently banned imports. The secondhand clothing export industry provides work, but its social and environmental impacts have been devastating. What should we do? At present, charities and resellers are struggling with managing the rising volume of donations, but they have little room to change. Exporting excess clothing is getting less profitable, but moving to local sorting and resale would be even less so due to higher costs and too many clothes collected relative to demand for secondhand items. These clothes are disposed of by consumers who live in cities in wealthier countries. The actions city leaders take can reduce the problem globally, such as encouraging residents to buy fewer new clothes and boosting local reuse, repair and recycling efforts. Charity shops are inundated with fast fashion donations. triocean/Shutterstock We are already seeing seeing grassroots initiatives emerging in all nine studied cities promoting local reuse and repair, with some receiving government support and others operating independently. To make real change, municipal governments will have to take on a larger role. At present, municipal governments in most of the cities we studied have limited roles, ranging from sending clothing waste to landfill to sharing data on clothing recycling bins, letting charities and resellers set up collection points and supporting repair and swapping. Here are three ways local governments could take the lead: 1. Curb overconsumption Dealing with waste is a major role for municipal governments, and comes with major costs. To reduce clothing waste, cities could launch campaigns against overconsumption by focusing on the environmental damage done by fast fashion – or even banning ads for clothing retailers in city centres. 2. Boost reuse Local governments could stop charging charities for the right to collect clothing and instead offer compensation for every kilo of collected textiles to help replace the money they get from sending clothing bales to resellers for export. Cities can also train and support circular economy practitioners, such as those involved in repair and upcycling. 3. Reduce exports of clothing waste City leaders could reduce textile exports by recognising them as a waste stream and including textiles in their waste management planning. One thing is certain – if we keep going as we are, flows of clothing waste will only grow, leading to more waste locally – and greatly increase the waste problem overseas. The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

We give or throw away more and more clothes every year, overwhelming charities and triggering large exports of secondhand clothing. There’s a better way

What happens to your clothes after you don’t want them any more? Chances are, you will donate them to op shops run by a charity organisation.

There are more and more clothes in circulation, and they are getting cheaper and lower quality. That means the clothes you give away are worth less and less. For charities, this means donated clothes are less gift, more rubbish.

Our new research explores what happens to clothes and other textiles after we don’t want them across nine cities in Europe, North America and Australia. The pattern was the same in most cities. The sheer volume is overwhelming many shops. In Geneva, donations to charity shops have surged 1,200% in three decades, from 250 tonnes in 1990 to 3,000 tonnes in 2021. Worldwide, we now dump 92 million tonnes of clothes and textiles a year, double the figure of 20 years earlier.

There’s less and less value in managing these clothes locally. As a result, charities are forced to send more clothes to landfill – or sell bale after bale of clothing to resellers, who ship them to nations in the Global South.

Local governments usually handle other waste streams. But on clothes and textiles, they often leave it to charitable organisations and commercial resellers. This system is inherited from a time when used clothing was a more valuable resource, but the rising quantity of clothing has pushed this system towards collapse.

From January, all EU states have to begin rolling out collection services for used textiles. But in Australia and the United States there are no moves to do the same – even though these two countries consume the most textiles per capita in the world. As we work towards creating circular economies, where products are continually reused, this will have to change.

Textile waste is a new problem

Historically, textiles were hard to make and hence valuable. They were used for as long as possible and reused as rags or other purposes before becoming waste. These natural fibres would biodegrade or be burned for energy.

But synthetic fibres and chemical finishings have made more and more clothes unable to biodegrade. Fast fashion – in which high fashion trends are copied and sold at low cost – is only possible because of synthetic fibers such as polyester.

These clothes are often worn for a brief period and then given or thrown away.

What happens to this waste? To find out, we looked at textile waste in Amsterdam, Austin, Berlin, Geneva, Luxembourg, Manchester, Melbourne, Oslo and Toronto. In eight of these cities, charities and commercial resellers dealt with the lion’s share of clothing waste. But in Amsterdam, local governments manage the problem.

Across the nine cities, most donated clothes go not to charity shops shelves but to export. In Oslo, 97% of clothes are exported.

The flood of clothes is producing strange outcomes in some places. In Melbourne, charities are now exporting higher quality secondhand clothes to Europe. But we found this forces independent secondhand clothing outlets to import similar clothes back from Europe or the US.

Charity organisations usually export the clothes across the Global South. But shipping container loads of secondhand clothes and textiles can do real damage environmentally. Clothing that can’t be sold becomes waste. In Ghana, there are now 20-metre-high hills made of clothing waste. Synthetic clothes clog up rivers, trap animals and spread plastics as they break apart. This practice has been dubbed “waste colonialism”.

Uganda has recently banned imports. The secondhand clothing export industry provides work, but its social and environmental impacts have been devastating.

What should we do?

At present, charities and resellers are struggling with managing the rising volume of donations, but they have little room to change. Exporting excess clothing is getting less profitable, but moving to local sorting and resale would be even less so due to higher costs and too many clothes collected relative to demand for secondhand items.

These clothes are disposed of by consumers who live in cities in wealthier countries. The actions city leaders take can reduce the problem globally, such as encouraging residents to buy fewer new clothes and boosting local reuse, repair and recycling efforts.

tshirts on charity shop rack — Charity shops are inundated with fast fashion donations. triocean/Shutterstock

We are already seeing seeing grassroots initiatives emerging in all nine studied cities promoting local reuse and repair, with some receiving government support and others operating independently.

To make real change, municipal governments will have to take on a larger role. At present, municipal governments in most of the cities we studied have limited roles, ranging from sending clothing waste to landfill to sharing data on clothing recycling bins, letting charities and resellers set up collection points and supporting repair and swapping.

Here are three ways local governments could take the lead:

1. Curb overconsumption

Dealing with waste is a major role for municipal governments, and comes with major costs. To reduce clothing waste, cities could launch campaigns against overconsumption by focusing on the environmental damage done by fast fashion – or even banning ads for clothing retailers in city centres.

2. Boost reuse

Local governments could stop charging charities for the right to collect clothing and instead offer compensation for every kilo of collected textiles to help replace the money they get from sending clothing bales to resellers for export. Cities can also train and support circular economy practitioners, such as those involved in repair and upcycling.

3. Reduce exports of clothing waste

City leaders could reduce textile exports by recognising them as a waste stream and including textiles in their waste management planning.

One thing is certain – if we keep going as we are, flows of clothing waste will only grow, leading to more waste locally – and greatly increase the waste problem overseas.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Read the full story here.

Photos courtesy of

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Construction is the world’s biggest polluter, yet Labour still refuses to tackle it | Simon Jenkins

Refurbishing an old building is subject to full VAT, but it isn’t if you build a polluting new one. The government’s priorities are all wrongYou can damn oil companies, abuse cars, insult nimbys, kill cows, befoul art galleries. But you must never, ever criticise the worst offender of all. The construction industry is sacred to both the left and the right. It may be the world’s greatest polluter, but it is not to be criticised. It is the elephant in the global-heating room.It’s hard not to feel as though we have a blind spot when it comes to cement, steel and concrete. A year has now passed since the UN’s environment programme stated baldly that “the building and construction sector is by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases”. The industry accounts for “a staggering 37% of global emissions”, more than any other single source. Yet it rarely gets the same attention as oil or car companies.Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

You can damn oil companies, abuse cars, insult nimbys, kill cows, befoul art galleries. But you must never, ever criticise the worst offender of all. The construction industry is sacred to both the left and the right. It may be the world’s greatest polluter, but it is not to be criticised. It is the elephant in the global-heating room.It’s hard not to feel as though we have a blind spot when it comes to cement, steel and concrete. A year has now passed since the UN’s environment programme stated baldly that “the building and construction sector is by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases”. The industry accounts for “a staggering 37% of global emissions”, more than any other single source. Yet it rarely gets the same attention as oil or car companies.Everywhere, building anew is revered. In her budget last month, Rachel Reeves refused to end the 20% VAT imposed on the refurbishment of old buildings, while continuing to exempt new ones from VAT. This amounts to a subsidy for polluting, carbon-intensive activities, much like her failure to index fuel duty. She is doing so because she and the prime minister, like the Tories before them, are putty in the hands of Britain’s powerful construction and oil lobbies. In his party conference speech, Keir Starmer promised to “bulldoze” local planners who impeded developers. He wants to build 1.5m new homes, and defies locals who oppose him. He even harks back to the 1940s and 50s in planning new towns in the countryside, the most carbon-costly, car-reliant form of development imaginable.Of course, Britain needs more homes, and many of these are likely to be new ones. Yet there is plenty the government could do to free up houses. Britain’s regulation of its existing building stock is atrocious. Council tax bands have been frozen since 1991, meaning people rattling around in homes that are too big for them are discouraged from moving. A million homes in England are now estimated to be lying empty and millions more are underoccupied. Deterred by the VAT that applies to refurbishing existing buildings, developers are allowed to demolish 50,000 mostly reusable buildings a year. The release of their embodied carbon is colossal.A much greater conversation is needed about the merits of constructing new homes versus retrofitting existing housing stock. While Labour has pledged to build 300,000 eco-friendly new homes each year, and is expected to tighten environmental standards for construction projects, the housebuilding lobby will fiercely resist any changes. The dominant cry is still build, baby, build. Rarely is it “convert”, “retrofit” or “reuse”. There are plenty of reasons we should be wary of this simple mantra, aside from the climate costs. Building lots more houses in south-east England would only worsen the widening gap between north and south, for example. Towns awash in brownfield sites need restoring, while villages should be allowed to grow organically, rather than being forced to swallow giant housing developments.Starmer is relying on his energy secretary, Ed Miliband, to mitigate the emissions from his construction boom. The latest astonishing proposal is for western Europe’s biggest solar panel farm in the Oxfordshire countryside. It will utterly destroy this area, passing through 15 villages. Britain needs renewable energy, but this should be planned according to national priorities, not allowed to deface the countryside wherever a landowner chooses. And if we are to reduce our impact on the environment, we surely also need to be taking a closer look at properly valuing and zoning the rural landscape in general. Bulldozing all sense of town and country planning to appease a commercial lobby is a shocking abuse of the last shred of local democracy in Britain – the public’s right to some say in the physical future of its communities.

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Circuit’s usual practice is to avoid remedies that would paradoxically lead to lesser environmental protections than if the environmental groups hadn’t challenged it at all. “When confronted with similar circumstances, our court has repeatedly remanded to an agency without vacating a flawed but environmentally protective agency action,” he noted.Where this ruling goes from here is unclear. The FAA could, in theory, appeal the ruling to be reviewed by the entire D.C. Circuit, where Democratic appointees hold a majority. (The two judges who ruled against CEQ’s authority were appointed by Republican presidents.) The environmental groups could also asked the entire D.C. Circuit to review the remedy itself. If the D.C. Circuit reverses the panel’s ruling, neither party may be interested in taking it any further to the Supreme Court.But the justices may already be aware of the issue with CEQ’s rulemaking authority. Next month, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, a NEPA case about when and how federal agencies must consider environmental impacts. None of the parties in that case questioned CEQ’s rulemaking authority. A group of conservative law professors filed a friend-of-the-court brief in September that argued it might be invalid.“As a component of the White House, there is no doubt that CEQ has authority to promulgate rules of administration to guide agencies in their implementation of NEPA’s procedural requirements,” the law professors told the justices. “But there is no basis for those rules’ being judicially enforceable, and the D.C. Circuit’s enforcement of them was another source of reversible error.” It would be stunning if the justices took the same blunt approach in that case as the D.C. Circuit did this week. 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Campaigners are calling for stricter controls on rodenticides after finding that birds of prey in England are increasingly being exposed to high doses of rat poison

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Government

Satellite Images and Documents Indicate China Working on Nuclear Propulsion for New Aircraft Carrier

For the first time, a group of U.S. researchers has concluded that China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor to power future aircraft carriers

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Adding nuclear-powered carriers to its fleet would be a major step in realizing its ambitions for a true "blue-water” force capable of operating in seas far from China in a growing global challenge to the United States.“Nuclear-powered carriers would place China in the exclusive ranks of first-class naval powers, a group currently limited to the United States and France,” said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. “For China’s leadership, such a development would symbolize national prestige, fueling domestic nationalism and elevating the country’s global image as a leading power.”Researchers at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California said they made the finding while investigating a mountain site outside the city of Leshan in the southwest Chinese province of Sichuan, where they suspected China was building a reactor to produce plutonium or tritium for weapons. Instead they concluded that China was building a prototype reactor for a large warship. The project at Leshan is dubbed the Longwei, or Dragon Might, Project and is also referred to as the Nuclear Power Development Project in documents.Neither China’s Defense Ministry nor Foreign Affairs Ministry responded to requests for comment. Satellite images and public documents helped identify likely carrier project There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury team is the first to confirm that China is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship.“The reactor prototype at Leshan is the first solid evidence that China is, in fact, developing a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier," said Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at Middlebury and one of the researchers on the project. "Operating a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is an exclusive club, one that China looks set to join.”Drawing on satellite images and public documents including project tenders, personnel files, environmental impact studies — and even a citizen’s complaint about noisy construction and excessive dust — they concluded a prototype reactor for naval propulsion was being built in the mountains of Mucheng township, some 70 miles (112 kilometers) southwest of Sichuan's provincial capital Chengdu.The reactor, which procurement documents indicate will soon be operational, is housed in a new facility built at the site known as Base 909, which houses six other reactors that are operational, decommissioned or under construction, according to the analysis. The site is under the control of the Nuclear Power Institute of China, a subsidiary of the China National Nuclear Corporation, which is tasked with reactor engineering research and testing.Documents indicating that China’s 701 Institute, formally known as China Ship Research and Design Center, which is responsible for aircraft carrier development, procured reactor equipment “intended for installation on a large surface warship” under the Nuclear Power Development Project as well as the project’s “national defense designation” helped lead to the conclusion the sizable reactor is a prototype for a next-generation aircraft carrier.Satellite mages from 2020 to 2023 have shown the demolition of homes and the construction of water intake infrastructure connected to the reactor site. Contracts for steam generators and turbine pumps indicate the project involves a pressurized water reactor with a secondary circuit — a profile that is consistent with naval propulsion reactors, the researchers say.An environmental impact report calls the Longwei Project a “national defense-related construction project” that is classified “secret.”“Unless China is developing nuclear-powered cruisers, which were pursued only by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, then the Nuclear Power Development Project most certainly refers to a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier development effort,” researchers wrote in a detailed 19-page report on their findings shared exclusively with the AP.Jamie Withorne, an analyst at the Oslo Nuclear Project who was not involved in the research and reviewed the findings, said Middlebury's team made a “convincing argument.”“From the identifying reports, co-location with other naval reactor facilities, and correlating construction activity, I think it can be said that it is likely the Longwei Project is housed at Base 909, and it could potentially be located at the identified building,” she said.The research does not, however, provide clues as to when a Chinese nuclear-powered carrier could be built and become operational, she said.Sarah Laderman, a senior analyst with Open Nuclear Network, a program of the U.S.-based NGO PAX sapiens foundation, said the findings were “carefully conducted and thoroughly researched.”“Given the evidence presented here, I see a compelling case made that China seems to be working towards building a nuclear propulsion system for its naval surface ships (likely aircraft carriers) at this location,” said Laderman, who is based in Vienna and was not involved in Middlebury’s research. Pursuit of a nuclear-powered carrier China’s first carrier, commissioned in 2012, was a repurposed Soviet ship, and its second was built in China but based upon the Soviet design. Both ships — named the Liaoning and the Shandong — employ a so-called “ski-jump” type launch method, with a ramp at the end of a short runway to help planes take off.The Type 003 Fujian, launched in 2022, was the country's third carrier and its first to be indigenously designed and built. It employs an electromagnetic-type launch system like those developed and used by the U.S. Navy. All three carriers are conventionally powered.Sea trials hadn’t even started for the Fujian in March when Yuan Huazhi, political commissar for China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy, confirmed the construction of a fourth carrier. Asked if it would be nuclear-powered, he said at the time that would “soon be announced,” but so far it has not been.There has been speculation that China may begin producing two new carriers at once — one Type 003 like the Fujian and one nuclear-powered Type 004 — something that it has not attempted before but that its shipyards have the capacity to do.Matthew Funaiole, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ China Power Project, said he doubts China's next carrier will be nuclear-powered. Instead, he said, he would expect the People's Liberation Army Navy's fourth carrier to focus on optimizing the existing design of the Fujian carrier with “incremental improvements.”Nick Childs, senior fellow for naval forces and maritime security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the Chinese “have taken an incremental approach to their carrier development with a number of ambitions that will evolve over time.” “For now, their deployments have been relatively cautious, remaining largely within range of shore support, but projecting influence and to some extent coercion within their near waters.”Eventually, however, “larger carriers more akin to their U.S. counterparts will give them more options to project power,” Childs said. It takes several years to build a carrier and bring it into operation, but developing nuclear propulsion for its next generation of warships would eventually give China more power to run advanced systems, such as electromagnetic launchers, radars and new technology weapons, Childs said.“As well as obviating the need for the ship to refuel regularly and therefore giving it much greater range, nuclear power means that without the need to carry fuel oil for the ship there will be room aboard for fuel and weapons for its aircraft, extending their capabilities,” Childs said.“Much will depend on what overall size the next carrier is, but the addition of nuclear power will represent a significant step further in China’s carrier development with a vessel more comparable to the U.S. Navy’s carriers.”Zhao, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said nuclear-powered carriers would provide the Chinese military “with greater flexibility and endurance to operate around strategic hotspots, especially along the First Island Chain, where most territories disputed by China are located,” said Zhao. The First Island Chain includes the self-governed island of Taiwan, which China claims as its own and vows to annex it by force if necessary. The U.S. is obligated by a domestic law to supply Taiwan with sufficient weapons to deter invasion, and it could provide assistance to the island from its bases in the Pacific in the event of an invasion or blockade. Tensions also have risen in the South China Sea between China and neighboring nations over territorial disputes and maritime claims.“These carriers could also extend Chinese operations deeper into the Western Pacific, further challenging the U.S. military’s ability to ‘intervene’ in regional matters that China views as best resolved by countries from the region only,” Zhao said.Chinese President Xi Jinping has tasked defense officials with building a “first-class” navy and becoming a maritime power as part of his blueprint for the country’s rejuvenation.The country’s most recent white paper on national defense, dated 2019, said the Chinese navy was adjusting to strategic requirements by “speeding up the transition of its tasks from defense on the near seas to protection missions on the far seas.”The People's Liberation Army Navy is already the world’s largest navy with more than 370 ships and submarines. The country also boasts powerful shipbuilding capabilities: China’s shipyards are building many hundreds of vessels each year, whereas the U.S. is building five or fewer, according to a U.S. congressional report late last year.However, the Chinese navy lags behind the U.S. Navy in many respects. Among other advantages, the U.S. currently has 11 carriers, all nuclear powered, allowing it to keep multiple strike groups deployed around the world at all times, including in the Indo-Pacific.But the Pentagon is growingly increasingly concerned about China’s rapid modernization of its fleet, including the design and construction of new carriers.That aligns with China's “growing emphasis on the maritime domain and increasing demands" for its navy "to operate at greater distances from mainland China,” the Defense Department said in its most recent report to Congress on China's military.And China's “growing force of aircraft carriers extend air defense coverage of deployed task groups beyond the range of land-based defenses, enabling operations farther from China’s shore,” the report said.Tang reported from Washington D.C.Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

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Indigenous

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The Green Amendment: New Mexico, Part One

Join Maya van Rossum, Founder of Green Amendments For The Generations, in her exploration of New Mexico’s biggest environmental issues and the role a NM Green Amendment could play in the fight for environmental justice with: Senator Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, legislative sponsor of the New Mexico Green Amendment; Emma Rose Cohen, CEO/Founder of the sustainable business Final; Beata Tsosie-Peña, Environmental Health and Justice Program Coordinator for Tewa Women United; Artemisio Romero y Carver, founding member of Youth United for Climate Crisis Action (YUCCA); and Dee George and Penny Aucoin, fracking waste accident victims impacted residents of Otis, NM.

Government

Activism

Documentary

928 The Threat Continues...

Since the 1950s deadly nuclear fallout has threatened millions of Americans from nuclear fallout carried east in the atmosphere across the United States, from the Nevada Test Site. “928 The Threat Continues...” tells the story of massive contamination from concentrated nuclear fallout that rained down during heavy storms, on communities and major cities for 40 years. Hundreds of thousands of cancer cases and deaths were the result. The Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Energy knew the truth, but covered it up. Multiple generations may still face the long-term affects. Through current interviews with scientific experts and surviving victims across the country, plus footage from historic interviews with victims, whistle-blower scientists and journalists, we tell the devastating story of those affected by the deadly radioactive fallout. In Act 3, obscure government videos from US government websites reveal that the threat of cancer death to Americans from Nevada Test Site contamination continues even today! NTS has been renamed, the Nevada National Security Site or NNSS. Presidential administrations from Harry Truman to the present day have kept the highly contaminated former Nevada Test Site operating. Donald Trump while in office ordered the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to start testing newly designed battlefield nuclear weapons at the NNSS despite the existence of The Non-Proliferation Treaty – 1970. Not withstanding the treaty, the extremely reckless aboveground testing area at the NNSS called Big Explosives Experimental Facility or B.E.E.F. tests non-nuclear bombs that send tons of highly contaminated nuclear dirt 10,000 feet into the atmosphere where the winds carry it east. It needs to be stopped now! The film asks viewers to inform their congressman and vote.

Chemicals

Crisis

Government

Lake Victoria: An Ecosystem in Turmoil

Decades of mismanagement, environmental changes and a burgeoning population have created tensions for the 40 million people living on the shores of the world's second largest freshwater lake, Lake Victoria. Desperate fishermen use illegal nets and overfish the East African lake's dwindling stocks, while many fishermen have had to turn to other forms of work - much of which has a detrimental impact on the health of the lake and its residents. Lake Victoria: An Ecosystem in Turmoil follows some of those trying to eek out a living on the lake: a Kenyan fisherman who illegally crosses the border into Uganda in the search for fish; a Ugandan who gave up fishing to become a palm oil farmer; and a Tanzanian gold miner using mercury with his bare hands to extract the precious mineral from unregulated mines on the lake's shores. But how well do they comprehend the pressure that they’re putting on the lake, and can the regional governments and communities take action before irreversible damage happens?

Land Use

Water

Government

Ground Operations: Battlefields to Farmfields

Combat veterans from the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan find a new mission and personal healing with new careers as organic farmers and ranchers.

Health

Agriculture

Government

1948 and Counting

Reports on Costa Rica's ability to manage without a military since 1948, despite invasions based in Nicaragua. Addresses the role of private armies serving multinational corporations, and whether the country's civil guard is a military by another name. Places Costa Rica in the context of Central and Latin American populist struggles against US backed regimes in El Salvador, Chile, Panama, Nicaragua and Honduras. Touches on the colonial history and explores whether Costa Rica depends on US military backing, and whether it is able to maintain independence from the US.

Government

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Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

Overwhelmed by ever more clothing donations, charities are exporting the problem. Local governments must step up

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What should we do?

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Construction is the world’s biggest polluter, yet Labour still refuses to tackle it | Simon Jenkins

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Suggested Viewing

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1948 and Counting

Join us to forgea sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Join us to forge
a sustainable future