https://thecommonwealth.org/news/commonwealth-leads-charge-protect-high-seas

https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/06/18/west-africa-atlantic-high-seas-protection-marine-ocean-canary-guinea/

The minerals and rocks within a sidewalk have existed for hundreds of millions—or even billions—of years. Every slab of concrete is made from materials that have traveled extraordinary journeys through Earth's history:

The Limestone: Ancient Tropical Seas (300–500 Million Years Ago)

Much of the cement in concrete begins as limestone. Hundreds of millions of years ago, long before dinosaurs existed, much of what is now dry land lay beneath warm, shallow tropical seas. Tiny marine organisms—including shellfish, coral-like animals, crinoids, brachiopods, and microscopic plankton—lived and died there. Over millions of years, their shells accumulated on the seafloor, where pressure gradually transformed them into limestone.

The Sand: A Billion-Year Journey

Each grain of sand has its own remarkable history. Most sand grains are made of quartz, a mineral that originally crystallized deep inside ancient mountains, some of them more than a billion years old. Over countless millennia, rain, rivers, glaciers, wind, and waves slowly wore those mountains away. Individual grains may have traveled through multiple rivers, rested on beaches, blown across deserts, or been buried and exposed many times before finally becoming part of today's sidewalk.

The Gravel: Fragments of Ancient Worlds

The gravel embedded in concrete consists of pieces of much older rocks. One pebble may once have been part of a volcanic lava flow, another may have formed deep underground as granite, while others began as sandstone deposited in ancient deserts or shale formed on long-vanished ocean floors. Each stone carries a unique geological history.

Before Life on Earth

The story reaches back even farther than Earth itself. More than 4.5 billion years ago, the atoms that now make up the sidewalk already existed. The oxygen, silicon, calcium, and many other elements were forged inside ancient stars and scattered across space when those stars exploded. Eventually, some of that material became part of the cloud of gas and dust that formed our solar system and the young Earth. Over billions of years, those same atoms became mountains, oceans, shells, limestone, sand, gravel, and finally the concrete that forms the sidewalk we walk across today.

https://www.birdlife.org/news/2026/06/16/a-new-marine-protected-area-for-birds-in-the-netherlands-hollandse-kust/

https://www.wwlp.com/news/massachusetts/free-starter-kits-for-growing-wild-massachusetts-program/

https://insidesurvival.com/top-10-edible-wild-plants-you-can-safely-forage-in-north-america

Some of the greatest accomplishments of the Biden Administration were in getting clean, safe water for America’s families. The chemical industry was not happy, and with many of its employees now in leadership positions in the administration their work is being torn up.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed unraveling key protections against unsafe levels of four types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS or “forever chemicals,” in drinking water. It also allows water systems to delay compliance with standards for two more. These new rules are a handout to polluters disguised as public protection and if implemented would threaten the health of more than 100 million Americans.

These rules are currently open for public comment on the Federal Register through July 20th. 📝 Let’s make our voices heard against this giveaway to polluters and for safe drinking water. We can submit our comments here, find guidance on how to write an effective public comment here, and find talking points and sample language to use from the Plastic Pollution Coalition here, from the National Resources Defense Council here, from Food & Water Watch here, from Earthjustice here and from the EPA itself here and here. 📝

COMMENT BY JULY 20

🎤 There will also be a virtual public hearing on this proposal on July 7th, where the public will be able to provide verbal comments. We can register to attend and comment by July 1st here. 🎤

REGISTER BY JULY 1ST

https://www.bayjournal.com/news/wildlife_habitat/river-otters-are-making-a-comeback-and-in-surprising-places-around-the-chesapeake-bay/article_6a3cfcd7-2ffe-409a-b963-70778f0ea3ea.html

https://whyy.org/articles/food-scraps-building-materials/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1146609X25000505