News 
New advice on medication disposal: Trash beats take-back, new study suggests
Returning extra medicine to the pharmacy for disposal might not be worth the extra time, money or greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study that is the first to look at the net effects of so-called take-back programs.
Mixed bacterial communities evolve to share resources, not compete
New research shows how bacteria evolve to increase ecosystem functioning by recycling each other's waste. The study provides some of the first evidence for how interactions between species shape evolution when there is a diverse community.
A practical guide to green products and services
A new report provides key information for policy makers and business managers on how to assess the environmental impacts of products and services. It helps to pave the way towards a resource-efficient Europe and aims to help design more sustainable products, which are indispensable in a world of 7 billion people and limited resources.
Plastic trash altering ocean habitats
A 100-fold upsurge in human-produced plastic garbage in the ocean is altering habitats in the marine environment, according to a new study.
Effect of groundwater use: Using water from wells leads to sea level rise, cancels out effect of dams
As people pump groundwater for irrigation, drinking water, and industrial uses, the water doesn't just seep back into the ground -- it also evaporates into the atmosphere, or runs off into rivers and canals, eventually emptying into the world's oceans. This water adds up, and a new study calculates that by 2050, groundwater pumping will cause a global sea level rise of about 0.8 millimeters per year.
Student-devised process would prep Chinese shale gas for sale
Chemical engineering students have designed an environmentally friendly process for turning shale gas extracted from China's Sichuan Basin into a range of profitable products.
From decade to decade: What's the status of our groundwater quality?
There was no change in concentrations of chloride, dissolved solids, or nitrate in groundwater for more than 50 percent of well networks sampled in a new analysis by the USGS that compared samples from 1988-2000 to samples from 2001-2010. For those networks that did have a change, seven times more networks saw increases as opposed to decreases.
First evaluation of the Clean Water Act's effects on coastal waters in California reveals major successes
Levels of copper, cadmium, lead and other metals in Southern California's coastal waters have plummeted over the past four decades, which researchers attribute to sewage treatment regulations that were part of the Clean Water Act of 1972 and to the phase-out of leaded gasoline in the 1970s and 1980s.
Wind pushes plastics deeper into oceans, driving trash estimates up
Decades of research into how much plastic litters the ocean, conducted by skimming only the surface, may in some cases vastly underestimate the true amount of plastic debris, according to an oceanographer.
New harvesting approach boosts energy output from bacteria
A novel energy system increases the amount of energy harvested from microbial fuel cells by more than 70 times.
