Waste

"Leftover sludge from water treatment plants contains human waste, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals and whatever else washes into the sewer system. It's also used as fertilizer - which concerns some experts."

"In the woods on the northern edge of Scofieldtown Park are remnants of its days as a landfill. Containers lay strewn among the trees -- milk and 7UP bottles that haven't been used since the 1950s. More sinister are rusty paint cans and empty, decaying 55-gallon chemical drums."

"Developers of a controversial coal-fired power plant in Sevier County [Utah] now intend to transport and dispose of the proposed facility's fly ash in Carbon County and Tooele County landfills rather than close to home."

"An incinerator that burns hazardous material from Utah and around the West is facing more than $500,000 in penalties for environmental violations."

"Trafigura, an independent trading company, said Sunday that it had settled a long-running toxic dumping case, agreeing to pay £950 to each of as many as 30,000 residents of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, who said they were injured by a dump in 2006."

Furniture stores and architectural firms get a lot of samples – of fabric, tiles, and carpet. Those samples can pile up. Usually, they get thrown in the trash. But, in some cities, they are starting to make unused design samples available to artists and art teachers. The Environment Report's Julie Grant has more.

A University of Tennessee at Chattanooga study shows that the metals and organic chemicals found in used cigarettes can leak out, contaminating water and killing microorganisms.