Plastic has long had the planet in its grip. All too often it is found piled up on beaches and floating as “plastic islands” in the ocean. But it also clogs the stomachs of birds and other animals, and has even made it into the human bloodstream. To date, just 9% of the world’s plastic has been recycled. Some 12% has been burned, and the rest has ended up on landfills or in nature.

But as dire as the situation sounds, there is light at the end of the plastic tunnel, writes intergovernmental economic organization, the OECD, in its new Global Plastic Outlook report. If countries around the world make a concerted effort….

Smoking not only kills people, but also severely impacts the environment, the World Health Organization said in a report released Tuesday. The report, Tobacco: poisoning our planet, published to coincide with World No Tobacco Day, said smoking kills 8 million people every year. Along with that, the production and consumption of tobacco leads to the loss of around 600 million trees, 200,000 hectares of land, and 22 billion tons of water every year, it said…