In 2019, scientists found that balloons eaten by seabirds are more likely to kill them than other kinds of plastic yet they do not seem to have been earmarked in the same way as, for example, plastic straws.
'Never ever use these three things in a hotel room,' she warned in a video. Her first tip was to avoid using the 'wall-mounted refillable containers with soap and shampoo' now commonly found in hotel bathrooms.
After 55 days of construction, which involved enough gravel to cover four football fields and enough fuel to power a dozen homes for a whole year, the pipe is once again funneling sewage from Fairfax and Loudoun Counties to the Blue Plains Advanced Water Treatment Plant in Southwest DC.
As commissioner, Gregory will carry forward the transformative projects he helped build, from waste containerization and curbside composting to commercial waste reform... I look forward to working with Gregory to keep pushing forward to build a cleaner, healthier and more just city for all New Yorkers.
I can't do anything about some of these big problems that the world and the city are facing. But I can do one modicum of something nice. So she started cleaning up. Ellen Baum's trash-collecting crusade gained the attention of local media and concerned New Yorkers who have joined the effort to clean up a bridge she considers her back yard.
In a statement on Friday, the council cited legislation that allows council bus drivers to refuse entry where a passenger's clothing is likely to dirty or damage the vehicle, or cause inconvenience or damage to other passengers or the driver. This can include circumstances where a passenger is wearing wet or sandy clothing that could impact the cleanliness and comfort of the shared transport environment, a spokesperson said.
What is troubling me is I've always had an issue with taking a shower and all the oil and dirt flowing down my body. I think it's gross. Besides my resistance to actually taking a shower, I hate getting out of the shower and feeling cold, and trying to get dressed partially wet. When I've been in relationships, I force myself to shower, or I wipe down with hospital-type wipes.
Yet, at least one time, it was. This is a story I heard from Dave Hannaman, who worked at an Army human resources organization when I met with him many years ago. (Dave died in 2021.) Dave had been in the Army, including a stint as a "tunnel rat" in Vietnam. He was one of the brave soldiers who would go down into the tunnels the Viet Cong had constructed and booby-trapped. He was that kind of guy.
My family had Slide Show Night when I was growing up. Not every Saturday, but a whole bunch of Saturdays. Either my sister or I would be in charge of setting up the projector, the screen, and loading the carousel. During the show, there'd be a few landscapes or skylines taken during vacations, but almost all the shots were up close. Like most dads, mine wasn't a professional photographer, but he did a good job of capturing memory triggers: faces, gestures, and decorations.
Jane Jacobs was also one of the voices that challenged this predominantly rationalist logic, arguing that truly vibrant streets are those capable of sustaining the diversity of everyday life, its informal exchanges, and the forms of care and natural surveillance that emerge from them. What these authors share is a fundamental insight: streets are not merely infrastructures for circulation, but social ecosystems, shaped by the relationships, uses, and encounters that take place within them.
On a recent stay at a friend's house, I encountered a familiar problem. The friend, a thoughtful host, had left us washcloths, shampoo, body wash, toothpaste, and towels. She'd set out a bottle of filtered water and plastic cups. But when I stepped into the shower, I discovered that she had not given us what once would have seemed like a basic personal-care necessity: a bar of soap.
On a recent two-week trip to Japan with my fiancé - six cities, six hotels - every stay was gorgeous and perfectly appointed. We wanted for nothing. Except, in most cases, a proper bathroom door. Instead, we spent the better part of two weeks making accidental eye contact through frosted glass and translucent panels while one of us was otherwise occupied. A design choice, apparently. A test of intimacy, definitely.
Then I started noticing something interesting during my interviews over the years-these meticulous dressers often shared certain qualities that seemed increasingly rare. It wasn't about vanity or showing off. After interviewing over 200 people for various articles, from startup founders to burned-out middle managers, I began to see a pattern. The iron-wielders weren't trying to impress anyone. They were operating from a completely different mindset-one that psychology suggests is becoming endangered in our instant-everything world.
When it's dreary outside, I usually hunker down and do household chores - running the dishwasher, catching up on laundry, maybe even taking a long shower and shaving my legs. These days, though, I take the opposite approach: I never do chores that require water use when it's raining outside. That's because I recently learned that my city, Milwaukee, has a shared sewer system - which means rainwater runoff, domestic sewage, and industrial wastewater collect in the same pipes.
Cities around the world share a common goal: to become healthier and greener, supported by civic infrastructure that restores ecosystems and strengthens public life. The question is how to reach this. Global climate targets, local building codes, and municipal standards increasingly guide designers and planners toward better choices. Still, many cities struggle to translate these frameworks into everyday, street-level comfort and long-term ecological protection.
We can make changes to reduce our waste by precycling when we shop, reducing what we purchase, reusing items to get the most use out of them, and recycling when possible. But when we have items to throw away, please dispose of trash responsibly and don't litter. Let's reduce our waste and clean up our planet. It's our only home.
