October 23, 2025

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ENVIRONMENT

Sustainability

A pedestrian bridge that crosses the Mississippi River in Minneapolis

ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability

Sep 7, 2025

Polluted and poor: Blighted U.S. cities tackle 'toxic soup'

By Carey L. Biron

The worst effect could be seen in poor, minority areas, where heavy industry, manufacturing and transport tend to concentrate.

Magret John (left) delivers a sack of plastic waste collected in her neighborhood to a Human Needs Project official at a collection point in the Kibera informal settlement of Nairobi on Aug. 11.

ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability

Aug 26, 2025

'Restoring dignity': Kenya slum exchange offers water for plastic

The Human Needs Project provides water and sanitation services in a part of Kenya where they are scarce and costly.

Muddied prospectors pan for gold in Manica province, Mozambique, near the Zimbabwe border, in 2010.

ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability

Aug 20, 2025

Mozambique's illegal miners reap risky rewards but land suffers

By Samuel Come

Rivers around mining sites are polluted, and mercury has seeped into the soil, creating a nightmare for farmers.

Villagers pan for gold in Bombana district of Indonesia's Southeast Sulawesi province in 2009.

ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability

Aug 19, 2025

Indonesia grapples with small-scale illegal gold mining

Local authorities face the challenge of encouraging villagers to keep to less-destructive ways of making money, such as sustainable agriculture.

Delegates rest outside of the assembly hall in Geneva on Friday after talks aimed at striking a landmark treaty on tackling the scourge of plastic pollution ended without a deal.

ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability

Aug 15, 2025

'Bad actors' blamed as plastic pollution treaty talks end again without deal

By Robin Millard

Countries said they wanted further negotiations despite six rounds of talks over three years having failed to find agreement.

An Afghan woman walks next to a pile of trash full of plastic bags in Kabul.

ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability

Aug 10, 2025

Momentum sagging at U.N. plastic pollution treaty talks

By Robin Millard

The negotiations have four working days left to strike a legally-binding instrument that would tackle the growing problem choking the environment.

Ecuadorian Ambassador Luis Vayas Valdivieso at the start of plastic waste treaty negotiations in Geneva on Tuesday.

ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability

Aug 9, 2025

U.N. plastic pollution treaty talks progress not 'sufficient': chair

The negotiations, which opened on Tuesday, have four days left to find consensus on a legally binding instrument that would tackle the growing problem choking the environment.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

The byzantine process for converting a foreign driver’s license into a Japanese one entails mountains of paperwork and significant stamina — unless you're a lucky license holder from a country or region where these requirements are waived.

Driving in Japan isn’t hard. Getting the license is.

By Thu-Huong Ha and Mike Fu

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Maruhachi never sleeps in quest for better futons

Maruhachi never sleeps in quest for better futons

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