The earth is our island home. Her wealth is great but threatened. Trash is destroying her beauty and resources. Sulphur Springs, Hopkins County, and the northeast corner of Texas can build business and keep our ecosystem healthy.

Here are five reasons Scott Pruitt should be fired immediately. 1- In Pruitt's first year in office, he spent more than $105,000 on first-class flights. 2. Pruitt paid a health care lobbyist, who is married to an energy industry lobbyist, $50 a night—a sweetheart deal in that neighborhood—for access to a condo just a block from the Capitol. He and his daughter stayed there on and off at a cost of more than $6,000, and it was used at times for Republican fundraising events. When authorities had to break down the door after he was mysteriously unresponsive one day, the EPA used taxpayer dollars to cover the $2,460 repair. 3. Pruitt insisted on spending $42,000 taxpayer dollars to build a private phone booth in his office. 4. After being denied approval by the White House, Pruitt's office found a loophole via the Safe Drinking Water Act to give massive, taxpayer-funded salary increases to two of his favorite staffers (from $107,435 to $164,200 and from $86,460 to $114,590). It's part of the same workaround he used to hire chemical industry lobbyist Nancy Beck as deputy head of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention so she wouldn't need to agree to an ethics agreement. 5. Pruitt is destroying regulations to ensure clean air and water and is leading Trump's call to back out of the Paris Agreement because he's long been tied to special interests. The Washington Pos editorial board said, "A swamp monster is running the EPA." The LA Times called for Pruitt to be fired and said: "He does not belong in public service. He's an embarrassment even to this administration. Which is saying something." The Concord Monitor said: "The embattled administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, who has never had the slightest interest in protecting the environment, has proven that he has as much contempt for ethics rules as he does the settled science of climate change." There's so much more, but these are just some of the reasons Pruitt is a stain on the EPA, drain on taxpayer dollars, bad for the environment, and should be replaced with someone committed to public service.

Plastic kills over one million sea birds and one hundred thousand marine animals are killed by plastic pollution every year, and that is just what is found in fishing nets. Divers are finding virtual forests of plastic in the oceans, throughout the world. Shopping bags take ten to one thousand years to decompose, and when they do, they leave toxic sludge in the soil and oceans. The time is now to reduce plastic waste, because there is no tomorrow!

In 2016, Syngenta poisoned 19 workers at a research farm in Hawaii. They were exposed to Dow’s nerve gas pesticide chlorpyrifos -- without any protective gear. After the workers were exposed, Syngenta failed to provide adequate decontamination supplies or emergency medical attention. More than 45,000 members of Friends of the Earth like you have called on the EPA to hold Syngenta accountable. But the agency hasn’t responded yet. So now, we need to turn up the heat by pushing Congress to step in.

Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Zinke are trying to open the area near Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado to oil and gas drilling. This National Park is home to iconic and unique landscapes and rare wildlife. Fossil fuel development would put all that at risk while polluting our air, water, and climate. The Bureau of Land Management wants to know what the public thinks of this plan -- but we only have until April 6th to speak up. So we need you to speak up NOW!

Bayer the Bee-Slayer and Monsanto the Butterfly Killer are trying to merge into one giant pesticide corporation. This merger is happening as part of a massive wave of consolidation in our food system. The Department of Justice is still reviewing the merger and Congress could help push the department to reject it -- but we need your help to convince it to act!

Oxitec, owned by biotech giant Intrexon, wants to release millions of GMO mosquitoes in Florida and Texas. These mosquitoes could pose major risks to fragile ecosystems like the Florida Keys and may pose risks to our health. Our environment should not be a testing ground for risky new GMO technologies. We need to stop these experimental mosquitoes before they are released from labs into our environment.

My petition concerns designing new recycling containers that are just as ideal as trash bins for large complexes. For an entire apartment complex and even food-industry spots in San Marcos, it's common to see only a couple of small recycling bins (that someone who owns a house has one of), or even none at all in most cases (just as my apartment complex). This is a striking problem to me, for many institutions where large groups of people consume (apartments/restraunts) dont have the opportunity to recycle; and I fear the continued apathetheic approach to throwing away reusable material will ultimately void desicions to do something about this problem in the first place. This will effect everyone, especially large scale as we already see in our oceans and natural environments, suffocating the niches within the many levels of life. San Marcos recycling policy should reflect similar implementations from the city of Austin.

Bans like this are in place and working in Hawaii and Northern California. It is a shame how many plastic bags are being thrown into the landfill each year. Plastic bags take 1,000 years to decompose. The plastic ends up in our water and ecosystem and it affects our health. Biodegradable plastic bags take only 3-6 months to decompose. What a better idea.

¡Las langostas no merecen ser hervidas vivas ni asesinadas de cualquier otra forma! [Lobsters do not deserve to be boiled alive or killed in any other way!]

My organization is part of a network of more than 200 organizations fighting pipelines and infrastructure have been calling on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Congress to address abuse of its power to review natural gas pipeline projects. Shortly after his confirmation last year, FERC Chairman Kevin McIntyre announced that the Commission would be reviewing is processes, but we fear it will be a dog and pony show. In fact, the only change they've made to their process so far is to make it even harder for the public to participate by refusing to accept interventions that are received after the short window of opportunity to file one. We sent out the following message, along with the summary of our points that is the petition we're asking you to sign now, as a sign on letter. Here's how we introduced the letter: Sign on to tell FERC, that it's time... Time for FERC to Represent People over Pipelines: Implementing a Public Interest Pipeline Review Process, Giving Proper Priority to People, Environment, Climate and Future Generations. To see the full-text letter go to: http://bit.ly/PublicInterestPipelineReviewSignOn

Two bills in the New Jersey legislature would drive bold new commitments to solar power for individuals, communities and utilities in the state. A3723 in the Assembly and S2314 in the Senate would create new opportunities for families and businesses across the state to go solar and save, helping low-income families and renters to participate in and access the benefits of New Jersey’s new energy economy. These bills would commit New Jersey to getting half of its electricity from renewable sources like solar power by 2030, for more local jobs, more consumer energy choice, and more resilient communities across the Garden State. Tell your lawmakers: Vote YES for solar on upcoming bills scheduled to head to the floor of the Senate and House the week of April 12, 2018!