Hello Manda, " due to" means attributable to or caused by, able to be assigned or credited to. Example: " The cancellation of the concert was due to the rain." "because of" means ' on account of' , it indicates also means or cause. " He lost his job because of his colleague." Here you can't say " due to his colleague".

Due to essentially means because of, but you can't use it to describe an action, i.e. Cherry's sentence is correct, as is learner's. You can only use due to when talking about a noun. Taking learner's sentence, you can say--Her retirement (noun) from professional tennis was due to a foot injury. You CAN'T say, once again borrowing, He lost (verb) his job due to his colleague. Same with caused by/because of. "Caused by" is usually reserved for nouns. "Caused by" implies that something caused something else to happen. The drowning (noun) of the plants (something else) was caused by the rain (something). "Because of"--verbs. "Because of" implies that something happened/was done because of something. The plants drowned (something happened/verb) because of the rain (something). I hope that wasn't too confusing! PS-It's dEfinition.

due to = because of = owing to = on account of They are all prepositions and they have the same meaning which is 'caused by something or someone'. Examples: Maria had to retire from professional tennis on account of (= owing to = because of) a foot injury. = Her retirement from professional tennis was due to a foot injury.