Environment

City Council Passes Resolution to Oppose Dakota Access Pipeline

On Dec. 19, the Stevens Point City Council passed a resolution to actively oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline, also known as the DAPL. This resolution was written and proposed to the city by Brewster Johnson,  senior natural resources planning major. The DAPL is a 1,172-mile long crude oil pipeline. It was supposed to go either near or through Standing Rocks ... Read More »

Trimming Back on Holiday Waste

It is that time of year for outdoor light displays, shopping for presents and decorating trees. Between Thanksgiving and New Years, Americans’ waste production increases by 25 percent. For those that celebrate the holidays, how can we keep holiday cheer while still keeping the planet clean? Wrapping paper stays on presents for an average of five days. The presents are ... Read More »

Donald Trump’s 100-Day Plan vs the Four Billion-Year-Old Planet

In President-elect Donald Trump 100-day plan he has proposed two major policies that will impact the natural resources of the country. First, according to his website Trump hopes to “lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward.” Pipelines are categorized as vital because they transport fossil fuel from cheap, domestic sources ... Read More »

Wild Rice Making a Comeback on the Banks of the Fox River

Native wild rice is being brought back to the banks of the Fox River outside Green Bay after decades of cleanup efforts. The Lower Fox River has been included in a Superfund program by the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up the river of polychlorinated biphenyl, or PCB’s. PCB’s come from the recycling of carbonless copy paper. According to the ... Read More »

How Warmer Temperatures are Effecting the Deer Season

The deer hunt is a tradition in Wisconsin that may have been threatened by the abnormally warm weather this fall. Hunters have expressed their worry over the warmer temperatures in November thinking that the deer will not be moving around as much which may make the deer harder to find. When asked why cold and snow were so desirable for ... Read More »

Black Friday Shoppers Trample the Planet and Thanksgiving

The holiday season is here. For many students that means spending time with family, relaxing and shopping on Black Friday. But has this dedication to spending time with family been lost to an opportunity to spend money instead? Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday all mix together to form a mass weekend for Christmas shopping which seems to ... Read More »

Frac Sand Mining: Some Residents Cannot Sand It

On Nov. 22 Winona County in Minnesota voted to ban frac sand mining. Sand mining is the procedure of extracting specific sand types for use in hydraulic fracturing in the western United States. Frac sand mines are found throughout southwestern Wisconsin and neighboring parts of Minnesota. While there are no active sand mining sites in Portage County, neighboring Wood county is ... Read More »

Marrakech Morocco: The Next Step of The Paris Agreements

From Nov. 7- 18 in Marrakech Morocco around 200 countries gathered to follow up in the Paris Climate Agreement from last December. The goal of the Paris COP21 agreements was to get countries agreeing on climate action. The goals for the Morocco convention are to create policies which prevent the negative impacts of climate change. In December of 2015, world ... Read More »

Benefits of Thrift Shopping Go Beyond Saving Money

Buying new clothing can be harmful to the environment and violate human rights, but thrifting is an alternative that helps decrease the harm done around the world. How our clothes are made is not often found at the forefront of our minds. But the manufacturing of much of our clothing is wasteful and harmful to the environment. A recent investigation ... Read More »