More than a third of Africa’s great apes are being put at much greater risk from global mining activities than scientists had previously believed, according to a new study led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv).
The green energy transition’s increasing demand for critical minerals like copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium has led to a mining surge in Africa, a press release from iDiv said. This causes more deforestation in tropical rainforests — the habitat of great apes and many other species.
Chimpanzee habitat cleared for a railway to transport iron ore to a port in Guinea. Genevieve Campbell / iDiv
“Africa is experiencing an unprecedented mining boom threatening wildlife populations and whole ecosystems. Mining activities are growing in intensity and scale, and with increasing exploration and production in previously unexploited areas,” the study said. “Africa contains around 30% of the world’s mineral resources, yet less than 5% of the global mineral exploitation has occurred in Africa, highlighting the enormous potential for growth in this sector. Substantial production increases in the renewable energy sector are expected to cause a boom in mineral exploitation.”
As much as a third of the great ape population in Africa — almost 180,000 gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos — could be threatened by mining, the study said.
The researchers pointed out that mining’s real impact on great apes and biodiversity in general could be even higher, since there is no requirement that mining companies make biodiversity data available to the public, the press release said.
For the study, the research team used data on mining sites in 17 countries in Africa. The team defined 6.21-mile buffer zones to measure direct impacts like noise and light pollution and habitat destruction. They also defined 31.07-mile buffer zones to look at indirect impacts associated with increased human activity, such as roads and infrastructure built to access previously remote areas. This new development puts increased pressure on great apes from habitat loss, hunting and a greater risk of disease transmission.
The team used the African great ape density distribution data to investigate how many apes could be negatively impacted and made maps of areas where high ape densities overlapped with frequent mining.
“Currently, studies on other species suggest that mining harms apes through pollution, habitat loss, increased hunting pressure, and disease, but this is an incomplete picture,” said Dr. Jessica Junker, lead author of the study, researcher for Re:wild and a postdoctoral researcher at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg’s Institute of Biology and iDiv, in the press release. “The lack of data sharing by mining projects hampers our scientific understanding of its true impact on great apes and their habitat.”
The largest overlaps of mining sites and areas with high ape density in both buffer zones were in the West African countries of Sierra Leone, Mali, Guinea and Liberia. The biggest overlap of chimpanzee density and mining was in Guinea, where as much as 83 percent of the ape population — more than 23,000 chimpanzees — could be impacted by mining activities either directly or indirectly.
Overall, areas with relatively high mining and ape densities were not protected.
The study, “Threat of mining to African great apes,” was published in the journal Science Advances.
The research team also looked at the intersection of mining areas with “Critical Habitat,” which consist of regions that are essential because of their unique biodiversity apart from apes. The team discovered a 20 percent overlap between these. Designation of critical habitat necessitates strict environmental regulations, particularly for those mining projects that are seeking funding from the International Finance Corporation — part of the World Bank — and other entities that adhere to similar standards and are looking to operate inside these zones. Earlier efforts to map Africa’s critical habitat have failed to include major areas of ape habitat that could qualify under global benchmarks.
Direct and indirect impacts of mining on great apes in Africa. Gabriele Rada / iDiv
“Companies operating in these areas should have adequate mitigation and compensation schemes in place to minimize their impact, which seems unlikely, given that most companies lack robust species baseline data that are required to inform these actions,” said Dr. Tenekwetche Sop, who manages Senckenberg Museum of Natural History’s IUCN SSC A.P.E.S. database — a repository of population data on all great apes — in the press release. “Encouraging these companies to share their invaluable ape survey data with our database serves as a pivotal step towards transparency in their operations. Only through such collaborative efforts can we comprehensively gauge the true extent of mining activities’ effects on great apes and their habitats.”
Although these impacts are hard to quantify, they frequently extend far beyond a mining project’s boundaries, and mining companies rarely consider or take steps to mitigate the risks. Furthermore, offset or compensation is based on approximate impacts, which researchers say are often underestimated and inaccurate. And while offset programs generally last only the length of the mining project, most impacts from mining on great apes are not temporary.
“Mining companies need to focus on avoiding their impacts on great apes as much as possible and use offsetting as a last resort as there is currently no example of a great ape offset that has been successful,” explained Dr. Genevieve Campbell, senior researcher at Re:wild and head of the IUCN SSC PSG SGA/SSA ARRC Task Force, in the press release. “Avoidance needs to take place already during the exploration phase, but unfortunately, this phase is poorly regulated and ‘baseline data’ are collected by companies after many years of exploration and habitat destruction have taken place. These data then do not accurately reflect the original state of the great ape populations in the area before mining impacts.’’
Junker emphasized that the best way to protect great apes and biodiversity is to let them be.
“A shift away from fossil fuels is good for the climate but must be done in a way that does not jeopardize biodiversity. In its current iteration it may even be going against the very environmental goals we’re aiming for,” Junker said. “Companies, lenders and nations need to recognize that it may sometimes be of greater value to leave some regions untouched to mitigate climate change and help prevent future epidemics.”
The post Africa’s ‘Mining Boom’ Threatens More Than a Third of Its Great Apes appeared first on EcoWatch.
https://www.ecowatch.com/africa-mining-great-apes-threatened.html
When most of us think of landfills, we think of rotting disposable diapers, apple cores, and old clothing. Our thoughts don’t usually turn to discarded construction materials. However, the U.S. generated 600 million tons of construction and demolition waste in 2018, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That’s more than double the amount of municipal solid waste generated annually.
A lot of wood, concrete, bricks, glass, asphalt, and plastic are going to landfills instead of being recycled or reused. This creates a massive opportunity for improvement. Repurposing materials is a great way to reduce the ecological impact of a project. Demolition waste can be artfully repurposed in home remodeling, construction, and landscaping projects, adding beauty and charm. Reclaiming waste also helps you save money, as many people go into debt when constructing and remodeling homes.
Here are some easy strategies to help you get started.
Plan Ahead
Reclaiming materials typically takes more time than just buying new items. And it requires more planning.
It is challenging to take a cookie-cutter approach to salvaged materials. When constructing or remodeling your home, you may need to customize it to the available materials. One method is to analyze what materials are available and then plan your project design accordingly. The opposite approach is to design your project and then collect the needed reclaimed materials. When taking the latter approach, it is helpful to rely on salvaged materials that are more commonly available.
Regardless, planning ahead and having plenty of storage space is helpful.
Check Whether Your City Requires Deconstruction
A growing number of cities now require that old houses be taken apart by hand rather than knocked down, which puts far more salvaged material into circulation. Portland, Oregon, passed the first such ordinance in 2016. Today it requires deconstruction of any house or duplex built in 1940 or earlier, and the work must be done by a certified deconstruction contractor who documents every salvaged board.
San Antonio has gone furthest. Under the third phase of its ordinance, which took effect January 1, 2025, mechanical demolition is off the table for any single-family home, multi-unit building, or accessory structure built in or before 1945 anywhere in the city, and in or before 1960 in protected areas. City officials report that contractors recover about 70% of a building’s weight, with more than half of that going to reuse rather than recycling.
More than half a dozen cities from Pittsburgh to Boulder have adopted their own versions, and the ReBuilding Center and other reuse nonprofits are pushing for mandatory salvage minimums to make the rules bite. For anyone hunting materials, the practical upshot is simple: if your city has an ordinance, more old-growth lumber, doors, trim, and fixtures are moving through local salvage yards than used to.
Find Good Sources of Salvaged Materials
One of the easiest ways to find free materials and to prevent them from going to landfills is to visit demolition sites. This can be a great source of windows, doors, woodwork, fixtures, and even appliances. Construction sites can be excellent sources of surplus or slightly damaged materials and supplies. Construction dumpsters are often packed with useful materials.
It is essential to speak with the foreman to get permission before taking any materials. If you are seeking something specific, ask the contractors working on-site if they have found that window or door you want. They might be willing to set materials aside for you. But again, ask for permission first.
Antique malls, architectural salvage stores, and home improvement donation centers are good sources of anything from windows and doors to hardware, tile, and plumbing fixtures.
The Habitat for Humanity ReStore network is another valuable source of new and used building materials, and the proceeds benefit a good cause. Build Reuse, the national nonprofit for building material reuse, maintains a membership directory that will point you to salvage stores and deconstruction contractors in your region. ReuseWood.org, a directory built by the American Wood Council and Canadian Wood Council with Build Reuse, lets you search by ZIP code for barn wood, timbers, millwork, flooring, and reclaimed doors and windows.
Peer-to-peer platforms have become the fastest way to find one-off pieces. Craigslist, Freecycle, Facebook Marketplace, Nextdoor, OfferUp, and local Buy Nothing Project groups all turn up leftover tile, cabinets, pavers, and lumber from neighbors’ finished projects. Setting up saved searches and alerts beats checking in occasionally, since good material moves within hours.
Some people even purchase properties with reclaiming the materials in mind. For example, old barns are filled with gorgeous weathered lumber that can be deconstructed and repurposed.
Utilize Repurposed Materials
Beautify your home with reclaimed and repurposed wood beams and ceramic tiles.
Use cleaned-up bricks recovered from construction debris to create patios, pizza ovens, and pathways, and other attractive features for your new home.
Repurpose shipping containers to make storage sheds. Or stack them to make multi-tiered structures, like a guest room.
Use crushed concrete as aggregate for walkways and driveways.
Sinks, vanities, bathtubs, cabinets, shower stalls, light fixtures, and even toilets can be repurposed.
Find Supplies with Recycled Materials
There are also some construction materials available on the market made from recycled materials.
Plastic bottles are recycled to make composite lumber or bricks, and recycled glass is made into tile and countertops. Old newspapers or blue jeans are made into insulation products, and cork bottle stoppers can make flooring and panels. Purchasing these materials might not be as economical but it does conserve resources.
Using salvaged materials in construction and renovation projects adds character and is a great way to reduce waste. And having an eye for reuse helps conserve precious resources and protect the environment.
Editor’s Note: Originally published on October 3, 2019, this article was updated in July 2026.
The post Using Reclaimed Materials in Your Home & Yard appeared first on Earth911.
https://earth911.com/home-garden/using-reclaimed-materials-in-your-home-yard/
Smart homes are commonplace today. Now, the intelligent yard is poised to join the mix. Meet Graham Hine, CEO of ePlant, which recently introduced the TreeTag. This solar-powered monitor is attached to a tree to monitor its health and send updates wirelessly to a phone. TreeTags are placed onto the side of trees using a screw and measure minor size fluctuations in trees. For example, the bark’s contraction can indicate stress, such as a lack of water. The TreeTag includes an accelerometer to detect movement patterns that may suggest instability and a humidity sensor to augment local weather data. The TreeTag employs artificial intelligence to process and transmit its data to the cloud. You can talk to your tree using ChatGPT as an interpreter. The experience is like chatting with a friend, but it might be about how much water the tree needs to be healthy or a report on its growth and the carbon it has captured as it grows.
ePlant is among the most intriguing and fun devices we’ve seen this year. Technology can help us see the environment in new ways, bolstering our senses with data that lets us identify biases so that we can respond to climate change, local extreme weather, and drought thoughtfully and efficiently. Solar-powered devices like TreeTag, if manufactured with minimal environmental impact, can expand our sensory engagement with the health of forests, orchards, and suburban yards to reduce overwatering, preserve tree and plant species struggling with local weather changes, and potentially increase the yield of food produced per gallon of water used. You can learn more about ePlant at https://www.eplant.com/
UPDATE: ePlant has since pushed TreeTag well past the smart-yard use case that framed this conversation. In May 2025, TreeTags supplied the live physiological and environmental data behind the Avanade Intelligent Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show; sensors on 12 trees fed an app that let visitors ask the trees how they were doing, and the garden took a gold medal. The company also offers precision irrigation for growers using TreeTag as a LoRaWAN dendrometer that can serve a single vineyard block to thousands of acres.
- Subscribe to Sustainability in Your Ear on iTunes and Apple Podcasts.
- Follow Sustainability in Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube.
Editor’s Note: This episode was first published on October 23, 2023.
The post Best of Earth911 Podcast: ePlant CEO Graham Hine Listens to the Trees appeared first on Earth911.
https://earth911.com/podcast/earth911-podcast-eplant-ceo-graham-hine-listens-to-the-trees/
Satellite dishes outlast the subscriptions that put them there. Drive through almost any American neighborhood and you will see them still bolted to fascia boards and chimney straps, aimed at satellites their owners stopped paying for years ago.
The subscriber base that installed those dishes is collapsing. Pew Research Center found in July 2025 that 36% of U.S. adults still subscribe to cable or satellite TV, while 83% watch streaming services. DIRECTV and DISH told investors in 2024 that they had collectively lost 63% of their satellite subscribers since 2016.
Every one of those canceled accounts left hardware behind, and removal and recycling still fall to the subscriber, who gets little support from the provider. For lack of clear information, a lot of that hardware ends up in a landfill.
Can You Recycle Your Satellite TV Dish?
Depending on who you ask, the proper method of disposal for a satellite TV dish can be as clear as, well, a fuzzy TV signal. So let’s tune in to what a dish system is made of, because the answer determines where each piece goes.
A residential satellite system is not one product. It is four material streams bolted together:
- The reflector. The curved part everyone pictures. On modern 18- to 20-inch DIRECTV and DISH installations it is thin, powder-coated steel. Older and larger dishes are often aluminum. Either way, it is scrap metal and easily recyclable in most communities.
- The LNB. The low-noise block downconverter on the end of the arm. It holds a circuit board and is the piece that makes the system electronic waste.
- The mount and hardware. Usually galvanized steel, and usually the heaviest recyclable component in the assembly.
- Coaxial cable. Copper conductor inside plastic jacketing, which scrap yards buy separately as insulated wire.
The Institute for Environmental Research and Education recommends separating those parts of the dish before you haul anything anywhere: detach the LNB, coil the coax, and sort aluminum from steel. That takes about 20 minutes with a screwdriver and a wrench, and it is the difference between a recycler accepting your load and turning it away.
The receiver, DVR, and remotes are a separate question, and an important one. Those are usually leased. If you cancel service and keep them, you will be billed for them.
Once It’s Installed, It’s Yours
This is the part that surprises people. The dish becomes the property of the homeowner at installation. Neither provider sends a technician to take it down when you cancel, and neither is obligated to. DIRECTV’s own support forums state the position plainly: the receivers go back, the dish stays, and what happens to it next is up to you.
Renters have a related wrinkle. The FCC’s Over-the-Air Reception Devices rule protects your right to install a dish under one meter in areas under your exclusive control, such as a balcony or patio, and it limits what landlords and HOAs can prohibit. It does not cover shared roofs or exterior walls, and it does not remove your responsibility to take the dish down and repair the mounting holes when you move out.
Read your lease before you install anything.
The Rules Changed in Some States, But Not Federally
U.S. federal guidelines still do not regulate circuit boards as hazardous waste, and there is no national electronics recycling law. What exists instead is a patchwork of state and local policy.
Twenty-five states plus the District of Columbia have passed electronics recycling legislation, most of it built on producer responsibility principles, and roughly two dozen states ban electronics from landfills outright. Whether your dish system is legally landfill-bound depends entirely on your ZIP code.
One change is worth flagging because it is new and relevant. Oregon’s modernized E-Cycles program took effect January 1, 2026, and the expanded list of covered devices now includes cable and satellite receivers, routers, modems, and game consoles. Oregon residents can drop those off free. The reflector itself is not a covered device, so it still goes to scrap metal, but the electronic half of the system finally has a no-cost home in one more state.
The stakes behind these rules keep climbing. The UN’s Global E-waste Monitor 2024 found the world generated a record 62 million metric tons of electronic waste in 2022 and formally collected and recycled just 22.3% of it. Generation is on track to hit 82 million metric tons by 2030, growing about five times faster than documented recycling.
Don’t Count on the Scrap Value
Earlier versions of this article suggested that local scrap vendors might be willing to pull the system down for the value of the materials. That is worth a reality check in 2026.
Scrap yards pay by weight and by grade. A modern 18-inch dish is a few pounds of thin, coated steel, which grades low and weighs almost nothing. The coax and the mount are worth more than the reflector, and the whole assembly is still unlikely to buy you lunch. Older six- to 12-foot aluminum C-band dishes are a genuinely different story and can be worth hauling. For the small dishes on most roofs, treat scrap as a disposal route rather than a payday, and do not expect a yard to send a crew for it.
Tips To Get You Started
Here at Earth911, we want your satellite TV dish handled properly at the end of its life. That is not the case. Here is the sequence that actually works:
- Check your provider’s recycling page first and know what it covers. DIRECTV’s recycling page issues a prepaid shipping label and routes equipment to R2-certified recyclers. DISH points customers to Best Buy and a UPS mail-in program that offers free recycling if you pay the shipping costs. Both programs are built around receivers, remotes, and small equipment. Neither is designed to take the dish off your roof.
- Return leased equipment on time. Providers typically give you about three weeks from the disconnect date before non-return fees land on your final bill. Get a receipt at the drop-off point and keep it.
- Search for a satellite dish removal service, a handyman, or a local roofing company. Roofers are the right call if the mount is through the shingles, because someone has to seal the penetrations afterward. Removal is a roof job, not a recycling job, and the two rarely come bundled.
- Find a certified recycler for the electronics. Look for R2 or e-Stewards certification, which tells you the downstream processing is audited. Use the Earth911 recycling search to find electronics and scrap metal locations near you.
- Take the reflector and mount to a scrap metal yard. Separate steel from aluminum before you go.
- Consider reuse before recycling. A working dish and LNB have a second life in free-to-air reception, RV and off-grid setups, and amateur satellite work. Offer it to others locally before you scrap it. There are also plenty of repurposing projects if you would rather keep it out of the waste stream entirely.
- Watch out for lead-generation sites. Several “satellite dish removal” domains are referral networks that sell your contact information to whichever contractor is paying, not recyclers. Ask any service directly where the material goes and whether they are certified.
Earth911 Does Not Remove or Recycle Dishes
We regularly receive inquiries about whether Earth911 offers removal services. We do not. Earth911 does not offer satellite TV dish removal or recycling. If a satellite TV provider or one of its representatives tells you otherwise, that is not accurate information.
What Comes Next for Satellite TV
The retirement wave is not finished. DIRECTV shed roughly 288,000 subscribers in the third quarter of 2025 alone, according to reporting by TheStreet. EchoStar reported 6.63 million pay-TV subscribers at the end of the first quarter of 2026 after a net loss of 366,000 in three months, and its Dish DBS unit filed a prepackaged Chapter 11 restructuring on June 30, 2026. The company says Dish Network and Sling TV service continues without interruption.
For subscribers, the practical takeaway is unchanged: corporate restructuring does not come with a dish removal crew. If you are canceling, plan for the disposing of the hardware. Return what is leased, get the dish down safely, split the metal from the electronics, and route each stream to somewhere that will process it. That is a Saturday afternoon’s work that can keep your dish out of a landfill.
Related Reading
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on June 10, 2015. It was most recently updated in July 2026. Feature image courtesy of Alexis Lê-Quôc.
The post Need to Recycle Your Satellite TV Dish? Read This First appeared first on Earth911.
https://earth911.com/eco-tech/looking-to-recycle-your-satellite-tv-dish-read-this-first/
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