Pollution

Oil wells from the Dutch colonial era lie scattered across Indonesia, polluting the earth and destroying locals' chances at making a living off anything but oil. We visited the workers who risk their lives daily to survive off the little oil that's left.

Underwater welders have one of the world's riskiest jobs. We followed welders in Indonesia who dive with minimal protection in polluted waters to build piers for petrochemical plants that are booming across the country.

Indonesia ranks as one of the world's biggest contributors to ocean plastics, and a lot of it comes from rivers.

The local nonprofit Sungai Watch saves about 3 metric tons of trash from entering the ocean every day with simple barriers and manual labor.

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.

Thousands of satellites are currently parked in low Earth orbit, with some that will eventually become defunct and fall back towards our planet’s atmosphere. As they reenter the atmosphere, satellites leave behind a trail of chemicals that eat away at the ozone layer. A new study warns against the growing number of…

Read more...