Editor’s note: This story is provided by Aspen Journalism, a nonprofit, investigative news organization. For more,visit aspenjournalism.org. As a shy and bearded young architecture student at the ...

This is an excerpt from Consumed: How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic. An odd symbol, made up of three arrows arranged in a triangle, began showing up on plastic containers across America in the ...

Gary Anderson was studying architecture at the University of Southern California when he saw the poster. It was 1970, and environmentalism was in the air, along with a broader antiestablishment vibe. ...

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. It’s Earth Day 1990, and Meryl Streep walks into a bar. She’s distraught about the state of the environment.

You’ve surely seen it before on a laundry detergent bottle label, printed on a ready-made salad bag or stamped onto the container of a thousand other products lining the shelves of grocery and retail ...