This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. It’s Earth Day 1990, and Meryl Streep walks into a bar. She’s distraught about the state of the environment.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Over the past decade, public awareness about climate change has ...

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. The triangular loop of arrows that has been the universal symbol of recycling for the ...

It’s a number that you can spot inside the recycling symbol in bottles, containers and other products. The numbers are codes for different types of plastics. The higher the number, the harder it is to ...

It was 1970 when Gary Anderson, a 23-year-old architecture student at the University of Southern California, saw a poster for a design competition. The task was to design a symbol for recycling in ...

As the agency struggles to address low recycling rates, it argues updates to the iconic chasing arrows recycling symbol would reduce “consumer confusion.” EPA is urging the Federal Trade Commission to ...

When I visited my friend in Scotland, I was amazed to see how little waste from her family of four actually went into the garbage can. Besides their good habits of buying items with minimal packaging, ...

Every morning, when state Sen. Ben Allen would grab the newspaper from outside his Santa Monica home, he’d pull off the plastic sleeve bearing the triangular recycling symbol and throw it where he ...

Plastic recycling symbols only tell you what type of plastic an item is made from — not that the item is recyclable. Plastics 1, 2, and 5 are typically recyclable, while 3, 4, 6, and 7 can rarely be ...