"Hong Kong boasts glittering skyscrapers, seamless transportation and billion dollar infrastructure projects, but it is struggling with a much more mundane problem: disposing of its trash."

"Joleah Lamb began her career as a coral biologist on the Great Barrier Reef. Every now and then she’d note a scrap of plastic as she swam through. But when she started studying reefs in Asia, she came across a completely different level of detritus."

"Two decades after its scheduled closure, a zombie garbage incinerator divides a working-class town in Massachusetts."

"Would you want an industrial waste dump near your house? Probably not. But across the country, environmental hazards like waste dumps tend to be located near minority communities."

"The Environmental Protection Agency is touting cleanups at seven of the nation’s most polluted places as a signature accomplishment in the Trump administration’s effort to reduce the number of Superfund sites, even though records show the physical work was completed before President Donald Trump took office."

"Previously accused of sabotaging the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, Steven Gardner is now likely to be its next chief."

"It’s one of the dirtiest places in America. Former residents of Tar Creek, Oklahoma, want to know why Trump’s EPA chief didn’t prosecute allegations of wrongdoing during a federal buyout program."

"Like many Portland residents, Satish and Arlene Palshikar are serious recyclers. ... But recently, after loading up their Prius and driving to a sorting facility, they got a shock. 'The fellow said we don't take plastic anymore,' Satish says. 'It should go in the trash.'"

"The head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is seeking a 30-day extension in the agency’s timeline to consider a proposal to prop up coal and nuclear power plants."