Sierra Magazine

1 day ago | sierraclub.org | Jessian Choy

One of the best ways you can do right by yourself and the planet is to keep your stuff going as long as possible. The longer you can keep it out of a dumpster, the better. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the United States produced nearly 300 million tons of landfill waste in 2018, amounting to approximately five pounds of trash per person every day. When it comes to recycling something like plastic, it’s complicated.

1 week ago | sierraclub.org | Katharine Gammon

At Virginia's Joint Base Langley-Eustis, the water is rising and the land is sinking. Most of the area, which includes Fort Eustis and Langley Air Force Base, sits just above sea level on a marshy peninsula that juts out where the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean meet. High tides cause some flooding on the base daily. The doors on buildings most at risk are affixed with metal sheets called door dams to keep water out.

1 week ago | sierraclub.org | Jessian Choy

J. Knox in San Francisco asks, "What does it mean when products are SCS Sustainably Grown certified?"There’s no federal law that defines common green agriculture terms like sustainable, carbon neutral, and regenerative. What’s more, those claims don’t always mean a product is certified organic or pesticide-free. Here’s what you need to know about these common eco-labels and what SCS Sustainably Grown in particular does and doesn’t cover.

1 week ago | sierraclub.org | Ben Jealous

Distributed by Trice Edney NewswireThe last living link of my family’s story of origin in antebellum Southern Virginia died at age 105 a few years ago. My grandmother, Mamie Todd, was born in 1916. Her grandparents were born into slavery. She fought Jim Crow. She stood up for Black teachers and students in a segregated school system in which she taught in her early career. She supported my mom when, at 12, she signed on as a named plaintiff in one of the feeder cases to Brown v. Board of Education.

2 weeks ago | sierraclub.org | Alisha McDarris

For decades, scientists have studied the invisible signatures embedded in tree rings to track climate shifts and understand forest history. But in recent years, advances in plant genetics have unlocked the potential for trees to give scientists solutions to questions that may otherwise go unanswered—from tracing stolen timber to linking a suspect to a crime scene. “Trees, like humans, are all genetically unique,” says research geneticist Richard Cronn, who works for the US Forest Service.