Beginning operation in 1934 after the repeal of Prohibition, Heaven Hill Distilleries located in Bardstown, Kentucky has become the largest family-owned and operated producer and marketer of distilled spirits in the nation. Bottling over 12 million cases of spirits in 2012, one could imagine the amounts of leftover materials that could either go to a landfill or be recycled. Fortunately, Heaven Hill decided to try recycling as part of their KY EXCEL membership. KY EXCEL is Kentucky's free, voluntary environmental leadership program open to individuals, communities, and organizations that wish to improve and protect Kentucky's environment in ways that extend beyond state requirements. Kim Harmon, the Environmental Compliance Manager at the distillery, says, "When we started our recycling program in 2011, we tried to find everything that could be recycled and vendors to take the materials. We recycle paper labels, bands around pallets, aerosol cans, brown paper packing, blue drums, label backing, cardboard, plastic and glass."
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Two hundred years from now, the planet could look very different. This week two landmark studies revealed that West Antarctica's ice sheet is in a state of seemingly inevitable collapse linked to climate change. The slow-motion collapse would by itself eventually lead to a rise in global levels of 3.6-4.5 meters (12-15 feet), overrunning many of the world's islands, low-lying areas, and coastal cities. The only silver lining is that scientists conservatively estimate that the collapse could take 200-1,000 years.
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New research confirms the health benefits associated with outdoor play for children. New research from the University of Bristol shows that while most children spend the largest amount of their after-school time indoors either alone or with their parents, hours spent outdoors with friends has the greatest positive affect on a child's level of physical activity. The correlation works out like this: children get an extra 17 minutes of physical activity for every hour of time spent outdoors.
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So why is Antarctica is not warming as much as other continents, and why are there more droughts in southern Australia? According to new Antarctic ice core research published in Nature Climate Change, rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are intensifying the Southern Ocean winds, which are known to deliver rain to southern Australia, but instead they are pushing them further south towards Antarctica.
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Wire fences booby-trapped with beehives are being built in five African countries to prevent elephants from raiding farms, while also providing local people with honey. 'Beehive fences' are now being put up in Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda by UK charity Save the Elephant, says Lucy King, leader of the Elephants and Bees Project in Kenya — and they are already in use at three communities in Kenya.
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According to a recent study, delicate coral reefs are protecting hundreds of millions of people around the world from stronger storms, rising seas, and flooding. The internationally supported study finds that coral reefs reduce the wave energy that would otherwise impact coastlines by 97 percent.
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Breathing in urban India is hard: of the world's top twenty cities with the worst air, 13 of them are found in India, according to a new analysis by the World Health Organization (WHO). Despite the attention recently given to Chinese cities for atrocious air pollution, many of India's cities are actually worse when comparing annual averages of fine airborne particulates.
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