Peak News and Blog

When a river is a person: from Ecuador to New Zealand New Zealand passed its first rights for nature law in March 2017. In the early 2000s, the idea of giving legal rights to nature was on the fringes of environmental legal theory and public consciousness. There, the Whanganui River, which flows across the North Island, has…

Emissions impossible? Why meat and dairy companies need to be monitored Did you know that the average American eats 3 burgers per week? Our farm animals outnumber humans. The combined total of chickens (19 billion), cows (1.5 billion), sheep (1 billion) and pigs (1 billion) living at any one time is three times higher than…

The next big push for green buildingFor the building industry, reducing embodied carbon is the next big challenge. Green building uses less energy. Today, and in the years ahead, the building industry will need to think about not just a building’s operational emissions but all the energy that goes into creating it—from the harvesting and manufacturing…

The “green” Joe Biden The United States officially rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement last week. The Keystone XL Pipeline was canceled. Climate action has been defined as an urgent national security threat. The federal government has committed to a transition to an electric vehicle fleet. The 11th hour, 59th minute Arctic Wildlife Refuge oil lease sale is…

Washington can’t wait to electrify In the midst of the 2020 election limbo, the Washington State Department of Commerce quietly released a draft of its Washington State 2021 Energy Strategy. And it’s clear that Washington is not on track to reach its 2030 commitment target or its deeper decarbonization emissions target of being carbon neutral by…

But is it recyclable?  There’s a huge discrepancy between how consumers believe recycling works and the system that actually exists. Companies need to do better. If you’re like most American consumers, the term compostable plastic evokes images of plastic bags and packaging gently decomposing into dirt over the course of a few months. It’s reasonable to think…