California was the first state to charge customers 10 cents for plastic bags, and now it is the first state to ban single-use plastic bags completely. The decision is a result of a referendum, in which 52% of people voted "bag, bye."

Hyperspectral imaging, which analyzes the tenderness of meat or ripeness of fruits, could stop large amounts of food from being tossed out at restaurants. And if Silicon Valley can turn it into an app, then home cooks can benefit as well. A similar technology could be used to scan people’s retinas to detect Alzheimer’s disease, or examine oil rigs for dangerous gasses.

Americans toss 14 million tons of used, unwanted clothing per year, most of which go into landfills or incinerators. This includes donated clothes, which are often bypassed by charities
because there are just too many clothes and most of them are poorly-made items that are not meant to last. Fast fashion's model of putting new styles up almost weekly is resulting in people disposing those clothes at double the speed, making us all move quickly towards an environmental disaster. (And no, the continent of Africa does not want your year-old Forever 21 crop top.)

Cities plant stinky female gingkgoes—comparable to the odor of vomit or dirty socks—because they can withstand the pollution of dense urban areas for hundreds of years; many other trees barely last a decade. One surprising note: "It turns out the ginkgo, like some species of fish, can spontaneously change sex. This evolutionary adaptation allows ginkgoes to propagate when the sex ratio is imbalanced."

A new way to understand climate change? Translate empirical data into sheet music. This composition depicts sound of climate change in Alaska’s yellow cedar forests. "Each note in the piece is a single tree from the study site, while its pitch conveys the age and loudness conveys its size."