mss

Common Blue #Violets (Viola sororia) in their variegated form, shot on 4/4/25.
#Bloomscrolling #Wildflowers #Flowers

Poll found 82 percent of voters would vote for a political candidate who makes protecting clean water and curbing water contamination from industrial agriculture in Iowa a priority.

“And this is not a partisan thing.”

All already covered by the (should be a quarter) deposit. Let's FIX the bottle bill...don't just keep it limping along hamstrung.

I've picked up maybe a can or two that falls under that category in the past year. Meanwhile I've picked up almost a thousand WATER BOTTLES. I've picked up almost 500 beer cans. A few hundred shooters. A few hundred pop cans.

Iowa bottle bill advocates say Iowans support expanded redemption process • Iowa Capital Dispatch Advocates Iowa's bottle bill said the majority of the state supports keeping or expanding the law to make redemption more accessible.

Happy to see news and suggestions to expand the bottle bill, but a minor tweak to include "a similar noncarbonated soft drink that is packaged in a metal can, in liquid form, and intended for human consumption" is pathetically inadequate.

The Aldo Leopold Amendment - this is everything. Without clean water, air, and soil, nothing else matters.

1/3

Citizen science rediscovers rare South African moth A strikingly handsome emerald-green moth, lost to science for nearly one-and-a-half centuries, has been rediscovered in South Africa by citizen scientists who posted photographs of it online. The…

An emerald-green moth missing for nearly 150 years has been rediscovered in South Africa.

Photos posted online confirmed the survival of Drepanogynis insciata, once known only from 1870s specimens — highlighting the power of citizen science platforms like iNaturalist.

A dirty glass bottle for Crown Royal, sans label, littered on the ground in a stormwater management area.

Always surprised at people who chuck big, beautiful glass bottles outside. They're so recyclable, and have a dignity and gravitas that deserves better disposal than a common Great Value™ brand flimsy plastic water bottle.

Close-up photo of Pseudoutanacris grilla, a newly discovered grasshopper species, perched on a plant stem. The grasshopper has striking bright blue eyes, olive green head and body, vivid red-orange coloring on its thorax and upper legs, and long black antennae. Text reads: "New species of grasshopper from Ecuador. Meet Pseudoutanacris grilla, a new-to-science species!" Photo by felipecampos on iNaturalist.

When an iNaturalist observation from Ecuador's cloud forests caught researchers' attention, they knew they had something unusual: a grasshopper with a striking red and green pattern previously only known from Bolivia and Peru, thousands of kilometers to the south.

A littered, empty water bottle with a Kirkland label (thanks for the trash Costco!). The label includes deposit values for different states: HI-ME: 5¢ OR: 10¢ CTRV CA: CRV IA is noticeably absent, because these bottles are SO DIFFERENT from the pop bottles that are already covered by the bottle bill. Apparently.

Look at all those other states that manage to include these pernicious things in their deposit systems. Iowa needs a better bottle bill, to include water bottles as well as increasing the deposit to at least 10¢ so we don't find hundreds of these on our roadsides and natural spaces every month.

An empty plastic bottle of Great Value (Walmart) brand water sits littered on a bed of dry leaves and reeds. This and many other single-use beverage containers ended up in a stormwater basin like hundreds across Iowa City. Who cleans them up? Does all this plastic just get covered in silt and stay there forever?

One of 23 water bottles picked up at a local stormwater retention basin in just 30 minutes. Why do we tolerate Walmart, Costco, and other companies tossing their garbage all over our neighborhoods? These should be part of Iowa's bottle bill.
#bottlebill #nationalbottlebill

Vape waste legislation and pilots increase due to facility fire issues New bills in California and New Jersey, and programs in New York and Missouri, aim to reduce recycling and waste facility fires caused by lithium-ion batteries in what some are calling the “vape effec...

I've got a half-dozen of these things sitting in my garage after picking them up as litter. They can't go in the regular trash because their batteries are a fire risk. The state should either outlaw them, or require the vape shops that sell them to take them back & pay to dispose of them properly.

Livin' the dream.

Meijer testing new large capacity bottle return machines Two Meijer stores are testing new large capacity bottle return machines that can accept several containers at a time.

Great! Now a national bottle bill please.

The people and companies creating trash should be the people and companies responsible for disposing of it. If Meijer & other grocers want to profit off these products, they should do their part to make sure they are recycled properly.

Listening, Hyvee?

A flimsy plastic water bottle, Kirkland brand (thanks Costco! Will you support a national bottle bill so people don't have to keep cleaning up your garbage?), littered on the ground.

A littered plastic water bottle, "Pure Life" brand, littered on the ground.

Litter of the day: a pair of water bottles picked up along a local trail.

Why doesn't Iowa's bottle bill cover these? Why do lawmakers think they should be treated differently than beer cans and pop bottles? Would I be picking up dozens of these a week if they had a ten-cent deposit?

#bottlebill

Bottle bill supporters face same challenges, new economic conditions for 2026 Bottle bills will face the same hurdles as in years’ past, but supporters in places like Maryland and Washington hope new perspectives on domestic manufacturing and EPR can help make their case.

Iowa's Bottle Bill is in dire need of updating, but the legislature seems to think it's working fine.

My 2025 data begs to differ:
* 673 water bottles
* 447 beer cans
* 150 pop cans
* 234 shooters
* 120 beer bottles
* 98 energy drink cans
* 98 pop bottles
* 64 sports drink bottles

#bottlebill

A glass bottle of Don Julio tequila with a rounded cork stopper sits littered on the ground.

Always fascinated to find these fancy heavy glass shooter bottles littered out on the ground as if they were common gutter Fireballs. It's like winning a really crappy lottery.

Prickly Lettuce is one of my favorite weedy plants. The pale yellow flowers are so pretty and delicate sitting atop a giant prickly monstrosity.

Ten tiny glass bottles of Absolut, all picked up along a quarter-mile or so. They actually have a deposit, but imagine if it were a quarter, having kept up with inflation, instead of a paltry nickel.

You could buy another tiny glass bottle of Absolut with the proceeds.
#bottlebill

January 2026 Newsletter January 2026 Newsletter

Nice summary of the recent committee half-hearted review of Iowa's 2022 changes to the bottle bill.

What's frustrating is that this is an obvious problem with a proved, tested solution...if only lawmakers have the will. There aren't many problems that are this simple to fix. #bottlebill

It’s weird that Trump can stand up to allies but not Russia

That's an amazing word.

Love these guys and their little rocket-ship inflorescences.

Editorial: We are in moral exile. We must resist. Authoritarianism thrives on resignation. This is why the most urgent task before us is not simply political opposition, but moral recovery. We must relearn what it means to be a people capable of nonv...

"Many Americans now describe a feeling that is hard to name but impossible to ignore: estrangement. A sense of being out of place in one's own country. Not because of disagreement or political loss, but because the moral language of the nation no longer sounds familiar. "

Toxic substances in PET bottles scrutinized by researchers Virgin and rPET bottles in Michigan and California leached additives and hazardous chemicals, per a study funded by the Alliance for Mission-Based Recycling. It’s the latest research to raise question...

As if littering our roads and waterways isn't bad enough....

Jan. 6, 2021: A visual archive of the Capitol attack NPR’s Jan. 6 archive brings together reporting, video, documents and testimony to show what really happened during the Capitol riot. Explore the timeline, cases and evidence behind the attack.

NPR's Jan. 6 archive brings together reporting, video, documents and testimony to show what really happened during the Capitol riot. Explore the timeline, cases and evidence behind the attack.

A littered blue bottle cap sits on abstractly patterned cement.

Patterns on cement + the blue plastic of a bottle cap. Not quite art, but visually interesting nonetheless.

A Great Value branded plastic water bottle, littered on the ground.

An Ice Mountain branded plastic water bottle, littered on the ground.

A Kirkland branded plastic water bottle, littered on the ground.

More than 30 flimsy plastic water bottles picked up in just an hour walking around the neighborhood. A lot has changed in 50 years, but littered beverage containers are still a HUGE problem. Time to catch up and include water bottles in Iowa's bottle bill.

What Can Hundreds of Pieces of Litter Tell Us About Manhattan?

Interesting article about litter in different neighborhoods in Manhattan.

Also includes a bit about how litter is managed in affluent areas vs. less affluent areas, which parallels our Downtown District and its Ambassadors program vs. the rest of the city on our own.

How Iowa's bottle bill works. It's a closed-loop system that helps keep recyclables out of our landfills, and effectively internalizes the costs of the garbage generated by an industry to those creating the garbage, instead of offloading to our municipal waste systems.