While driving west on I-70, there are views of beautiful trees, snow-capped mountains, and also piles of orange/yellow rock dispersed through the trees. These orange scars on Colorado’s hillsides are abandoned hard rock mines and the piles of tailings left behind. Tailings are the byproduct of mines that turn an orange hue over time as they are exposed to the elements. Colorado has nearly 23,000 inactive and abandoned mines out of an estimated 150,000 abandoned mines in the United States. These mines not only pose risks for the curious off-trail hiker who could fall into a collapsed mine, but they also pose the greatest threat to Colorado water quality through the perpetual pollution of acid mine drainage

Some pollution is easy to see; plastic waste floating in the ocean or the grey smog that covers city skylines. However, there is a lot of pollution that the everyday American is exposed to that can’t be seen with the naked eye. There is contamination in our food, water, and  air. There seems to be more conversation around water contamination with PFAs or the pesticides used on our vegetables, but what about what we breathe each day inside our homes? Indoor air quality can be a threat to our health, and environmentalists and lawyers continue to look for ways to limit a person's exposure to this everyday pollution.

Greenwash is a verb defined by the Marriam-Webster Dictionary; “to make (something, such as a product, policy, or practice) appear to be more environmentally friendly or less environmentally damaging than it really is”. The environmentalist Jay Westervelt, coined the term in a law review article in 1986 describing marketing that intentionally deceived consumers into thinking a product or company was sustainable.

Governor Polis signed Senate Bill 24-005 into law on March 15th, 2024, which prohibits landscaping practices for water conservation. The bill prohibits nonfunctional turf, artificial turf, and invasive plant species from being planted on applicable property.

Groundwater supplies 38% of the drinking water in the United States, and nearly half of the drinking water in the world. Groundwater is a freshwater source contained in aquifers that is extracted for human consumption by wells that are drilled into the aquifer.

In 1907, arguably one of the most transformative inventions of the modern world was born; synthetic plastic. Since that time, every object known to man likely contains polyethylene, the world’s most abundant plastic.