U.S. PIRG

Q: Can recycling solve our plastic pollution problem? We'll let our zero waste expert Celeste Meiffren-Swango take it from here. Have a question you'd like answered? Drop us a comment or send us a DM and we'll ask one of our experts here at PIRG to give their take.

New Report w/ @uspirg Education Fund We identified 5 of the most-used generic “#therapist” or “#psychiatrist” characters on Character.AI & had an open-ended conversation with each about #MentalHealth. The responses were extremely troubling consumerfed.org/reports/no-lic…

My colleagues at @uspirg just put out a new report looking into the risks of using AI chatbots as mental health therapists. Scary stuff! pirg.org/edfund/resourc…

Stay safe this weekend.

The F-35 is proof we need #RightToRepair. Read the full article by Charlie Schuyler and Nathan Proctor: pirg.org/articles/the-f…

Congratulations to the winner of @nProctor's selection for the 2026 Worst in Show awards, annual anti-awards that spotlight the most harmful, invasive, wasteful, and unfixable tech on display at CES -- the large consumer electronics showcase. youtube.com/watch?v=TdBWSF…

Napster-era copyright laws gave modern manufacturers license to stifle repairs. Read the full article by Right to Repair Associate Julius Shieh: pirg.org/articles/90s-k…

Together with @backmarket, we’re calling out the worst offenders at CES. Worst in Show is back, and voting is officially open. If a product is glued shut, impossible to fix, or screams planned obsolescence, congratulations, it might be a frontrunner. Vote now at the link below!

For our End of Year Drive, we’re raising funds to help tackle plastic pollution in the year ahead. Will you donate today to help PIRG move our country beyond plastic? pirg.org/take-action/ye…

In the new year, we’ll be urging companies to cut down on wasteful plastic packaging, advocating for the right to repair our electronics, and more. You can help make that work possible by donating before midnight on Dec 31: pirg.org/take-action/ye…

62% of that trash either ends up being piled into our ever-expanding landfills or being burned in incinerators. Only 24% is recycled and only 9% is composted.

We produce a whole lot of trash. But where does it all go? “Trash in America” breaks down exactly how much Americans throw away in a year and where all that stuff goes. pirg.org/edfund/resourc…

Every 16 hours, Americans throw away enough plastic to fill the country’s largest football stadium to the brim. There’s no doubt about it: The plastic waste problem is huge. But how do different solutions stack up as far as fixing the problem? pirg.org/articles/these…

We should be able to trust that our farms and food are free of toxic chemicals -- but one billion pounds of pesticides are used to grow our food each year. pirg.org/articles/these…

Cleaning up every single plastic pellet that enters our environment isn’t the solution. We need to stop plastic pollution at the source by reducing the amount of plastic we produce in the first place.

From just a single spill in 2021, billions of nurdles blanketed nearby beaches after a shipping container sank off the coast of Sri Lanka.

These tiny pellets -- sometimes called “nurdles” -- are about the size of a grain of rice, and they make up the building blocks of all plastic production. Trillions of them enter our environment every single year. That’s trillions with a T.