If you've ever looked at the bottom of a disposable bottle or cup, you've probably noticed a recycling symbol. Seeing this, many people assume the item should be put in a recycling bin. Yet many plastics are incapable of being recycled...

Right now, discarded parts from old spacecraft, bags of pee, and dead probes are just floating around in space, but it doesn’t have to be like that. Let's take a look at some of the ways we've figured out to reduce, reuse, and recycle in...

If everyone would just put more in the recycling bin instead of the trash can, the world would be a better place. Right? Well, that’s not exactly true. For many items that end up in the recycling bin, you’ve actually created more trash...

What if we could harness the power and value of all that we discard? Circular economy builder Garry Cooper presents a compelling vision for transforming cities into sustainable, circular economies, citing real-world examples of how...

Almost all batteries, even single-use batteries, are theoretically rechargeable. That's because the metals and other chemicals are still there in the battery. So chemically speaking, a dead battery is actually not that different from a...

Hank serves up a buffet of news items that includes an approximate date for the end of everything, scientific proof that when it comes to sex bigger IS better, and a look behind how the London Olympics are going green. Bon appetit!

Today, Squeaks and Mister Brown explore the world of plants with an experiment! They'll learn what plants actually need to grow, which can help them with their garden and even help feed people in space!

Jessi teaches Squeaks all about recycling, and together, they recycle his old crayons to make cool new ones!



Second Grade Next Generation Science

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PS1.B: Chemical...

Artist Dianna Cohen shares some tough truths about plastic pollution in the ocean and in our lives -- and some thoughts on how to free ourselves from the plastic gyre.

You probably already knew that plastic can be bad, but scientists have taken a closer look, and found out it can be bad in surprising ways.

Less than 10% of plastic trash is recycled -- compared to almost 90% of metals -- because of the massively complicated problem of finding and sorting the different kinds. Frustrated by this waste, Mike Biddle has developed a cheap and...

Join SciShow as we explore what happens to your stuff after you toss it into the little green bin with the arrows on it.

Bacteria have evolved some pretty incredible abilities. They may never star in a big summer movie, but here are six bacteria with amazing superpowers.

Comedian Aparna Nancherla loves to take out the trash. In this funny and sharp meditation on garbage -- "the stuff that our modern, consumerist, carbon-powered culture makes us buy endlessly, and often for no reason" -- she shares...

Can we solve the problem of ocean plastic pollution and end extreme poverty at the same time? That's the ambitious goal of The Plastic Bank: a worldwide chain of stores where everything from school tuition to cooking fuel and more is...

Composting is a way to turn scraps of food you aren't going to eat anymore into healthy soil for your garden! But how does food turn in to dirt?! Mister Brown and Squeaks take a trip to SoilCycle, a place that makes compost in...

Composting becomes more widespread and accessible all the time, keeping millions of tons of food waste from ending up in landfills every year. But there is one quirk of some composting programs that can be a little annoying: they don't...

You've filled up your cart and made it to the front of the grocery line when you're confronted with yet another choice: what kind of bag should you use? It might seem obvious that plastic is bad for the environment, and that a paper bag...

How could you dispose of your cooking oil when you're done cooking? The easiest thing to do might be to pour it down your drain -- but if you save it up and send it to a processing plant, it can gain useful new life as biodiesel, a...

Though not everyone is excited about it, plastics are pretty much everywhere. But what problems are they causing and is there anything we can do to solve those problems?

Plastic is quickly becoming a problem and we're eager to point fingers, but honestly, the reason there's so much plastic everywhere isn't just because of human negligence.

For centuries, billiard balls were made of ivory from elephant tusks. But when excessive hunting caused elephant populations to decline, they began to look for alternatives. John Wesley Hyatt took up the challenge. In five years, he...

Phones, TVs, solar panels, and electric car batteries are all made of some rare and unusual elements. As our modern world creates more and more of these technologies, will things go from "rare" to "nonexistent" and what will we do then?

In this video Paul Andersen explains the basics of solid waste including trends over time, basic composition, and disposal. A brief description of the three R's (reuse, reduce, and recycle) is included as ways to minimize waste. ...