Great piece by And Mannle in Environmental Leader. My favorite is number eight, detoxifying pollutants:

As we burn and churn chemicals from the earth into the atmosphere, we are depositing toxins, heavy metals, and radioactive materials all over the place. We have also created tens of thousands of chemical pesticides, pharmaceuticals and industrial compounds which we’re now finding in alarming concentrations in our drinking water – and our own tissues.

But many common plants can absorb these chemicals. Mustard plants can absorb lead, nickel, copper and a host of other metals. Aquatic hyacinth has been used to remove arsenic from drinking water, while the common sunflower was used to soak up radioactive substances in ponds after Chernobyl. Both mustard and sunflower were used to soak up lead at a DaimlerChrysler site in Detroit at half the cost of carting the toxic soil to a hazardous waste dump.

The increasing use of “bioremediation” shows promise in cleaning up vinyl chloride – found in one-third of all Superfund sites – as well as DDT, and other toxins.

Definitely worth reading in full.