Author Archives: David Evans

Used nappies should be used in housebuilding to save sand, scientists have said.Up to 8% of the sand in the concrete and mortar used to make a single-storey house could be replaced with shredded used nappies without significantly diminishing their strength, scientists from the University of Kitakyushu, Japan, have found.The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, said building regulations could be changed to allow this material to be used, and it would reduce the carbon footprint of the homes as well as finding a use for the otherwise non-recyclable waste.Disposable nappies are usually composed of wood pulp, cotton, viscose rayon and plastics such as polyester, polyethylene and polypropylene. Because they cannot usually be recycled, the majority are disposed of in landfill or by incineration.The lead author, Siswanti Zuraida, and colleagues prepared concrete and mortar samples by combining washed, dried, and shredded disposable nappy waste with cement, sand, gravel, and water, curing the samples for 28 days. They then tested six samples containing different proportions of waste to measure how much pressure they could withstand without breaking. They then calculated the maximum proportion of sand that could be replaced with disposable nappies in a range of building materials.The researchers found concrete made with nappies was as good as conventional materials. They said: “The research also demonstrated that the mechanical properties and microbial content of disposable diaper concrete, in specific compositions, are identical to conventional concrete. Adding 1% diaper to concrete enhances internal curing hydration and produces the most robust, durable material. In addition, a mixture of up to 5% disposable diapers with concrete had the maximum strength at 28 days compared to other percentages.”The scientists said it was unlikely the use of nappies in the mixture would have any negative effects on health, as sodium chloride could be used to sanitise them.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt also found that using waste to create homes had more ecological benefits than incinerating it. The study says: “Compared to other waste management methods such as incineration and co-firing, the recycling of disposable diapers as concrete components has more significant benefits regarding carbon emissions and eco-costs. As a result, the study intends to tackle the problem of housing provision by creating building materials from non-degradable waste, which is cost-effective while meeting building standards.”

For decades, three arrows pointing in a triangular loop have been the iconic symbol for recycling, but that could change. The Environmental Protection Agency — along with thousands of environmentalists and individuals — are urging the Federal Trade Commission to drop the symbol from plastics that aren’t actually recyclable.Misleading labels and false claims about “green” products confuse the public about what can and cannot be recycled or composted, according to the EPA. Environmentalists are urging the FTC to update its Green Guides — designed to help marketers avoid misleading consumers with environmental claims — to combat the problem.“We want consumers to get the information that they need to protect human health and the environment,” said Jennie Romer, the deputy assistant administrator for pollution prevention from the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. “FTC’s Green Guides are really an essential tool to combat deceptive advertising and prevent pollution.”Here’s what you need to know:Why is this happening now?Since 2018, U.S. companies and local recyclers have grappled with a glut of low-value plastics after China effectively banned the import of plastics and other materials. With no markets for what they have collected, regional processing plants have been burdened with paying disposal costs for non-recyclable plastics, said Romer.“There’s really not a point in collecting and sorting material that then doesn’t have anywhere else to go and ends up going to landfills or to an incinerator,” said Romer, who wrote the EPA’s comment.Though the recycling landscape has changed, the FTC has not updated its Green Guides in response.To Romer, the Green Guides need to be updated to prevent greenwashing — misleading claims about environmental impacts — and ensure that consumer expectations are aligned with the ways products are marketed.Many environmentalists agree.Companies are “purposely misleading people” by labeling throwaway plastic packaging as recyclable, said John Hocevar, the oceans campaign director at Greenpeace US.“We have been seeing really widespread use of misleading labels by retailers and consumer goods companies implying that items and especially packaging are recyclable when they aren’t,” Hocevar said.What do the recycling codes mean?Salad trays, milk jugs, clear drink bottles and other household items all are stamped with the recycling symbols — circular arrows with a number in the middle. But what do the numbers really mean?The resin identification code was created to categorize different types of plastics in the late 1980s. The seven categories alert recycling facilities to the type of resin found in each object.According to Patrick Krieger, the vice president of sustainability for the Plastics Industry Association, the codes were originally placed on products so they were readily visible to people hand-sorting plastic.Are the labels misleading?Not all resin numbers are recyclable, according to environmental experts. But putting the number inside the recycling symbol has led consumers to believe that they are.Combining the recycling symbol with the resin identification code “does not accurately represent recyclability as many plastics (especially 3-7) do not have end markets and are not financially viable to recycle,” the EPA said to the FTC in its comment. The EPA stated that the pairing is “confusing” for consumers.Resin No. 1 and 2, like bottles and jugs, are the most readily and economically recycled resins in the United States, according to the EPA. Greenpeace US argues that No. 1 and 2 bottles and jugs are the only plastics that can legitimately be considered “recyclable.”“Just because there’s a recycling symbol on packaging doesn’t mean that you should put it in the recycling bin,” Hocevar said. Most single-use plastic isn’t recyclable at all. Even No. 1 and 2 plastics can only be recycled once before they ultimately end up in a landfill or incinerator.Recycling categories 3 to 7 undermine the efficiency of the recycling process and are costly to collect and sort, Hocevar said.“The problem is that if you put 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 in the bin, they are not going to be recycled and they have to be sorted and removed from the recycling stream,” Hocevar said.What does the plastics industry think?Krieger of the Plastics Industry Association doesn’t agree that labeling is misleading. Krieger said that claims that certain plastics shouldn’t be labeled recyclable aren’t true. According to Krieger, the industry has recycled more than 1 billion tons of Resin No. 3.“That’s a very common misconception [that] often is perpetuated by plastics critics who recognize that people love plastic,” Krieger told The Washington Post.Krieger says plastic critics are “muddying the waters” by creating confusion about what is recyclable to undercut confidence in plastic.How do U.S. recycling rates compare with other countries?In 2016, the United States generated more than 42 million metric tons of plastic, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. According to Greenpeace, only 5 percent of the plastic that the country produced was recycled in 2021.The global results are even more grim.About 23 percent of global plastic waste was either improperly disposed of, burned or leaked into the environment, the EPA cited in its comment to the FTC. Plastics make up between 70 to 80 percent of waste that ends up in the environment, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.What should people do instead?It’s challenging to walk into a supermarket without purchasing a bunch of single-use plastic, but people need to avoid it as much as possible, Hocevar said.People should shift their focus beyond viewing recycling as a solution to the plastic crisis, Hocevar said. Instead, people need to reduce the amount of plastic they buy, reuse and refill it.“We have to stop thinking of all this throwaway plastic as recyclable and treat it for what it is: a very problematic type of waste,” he said.Romer suggests paying close attention to the labels and purchase items in No. 1 and 2 containers that have the highest chance of being recycled into another item. Individually, people should bring their own bags, water bottles and cups to prevent pollution.When will federal officials issue a decision?So far, the FTC has received more than 7,000 comments suggesting updates to its Green Guides — including those from the EPA — since the review was announced in December. But it is unclear whether change will happen anytime soon.Mitchell J. Katz, a public affairs specialist at the FTC, said the agency does not discuss submissions received during the public comment period until all have been reviewed and evaluated.If you would like to submit a comment to the FTC about ways that the Green Guides could be updated, send your suggestions here.

As delegates prepare to meet for a second negotiation on a global treaty to curtail plastic pollution, a pair of new reports from the United Nations Environment Program offers a roadmap of potential solutions to cut plastic waste by 80 percent—but also reveal the complexity of the problem.

Another recent United Nations action blocked what the chemical and plastic industries sometimes call “chemical recycling” from being fully incorporated into important global technical guidelines for managing plastic waste, potentially minimizing the role of such processes in any future global plastics treaty.

Together, this flurry of activity precedes the next round of U.N. plastics treaty talks to be held in Paris May 29 to June 2 as part of fast-tracked negotiations scheduled to wrap up by the end of next year. Last year, 175 nations agreed to find a way to stop future plastic production from choking ocean and land ecosystems and to clean up legacy plastic pollution.

“The way societies produce, use and dispose of plastic is polluting our ecosystems, creating risks for human health and destabilizing our climate,” said Inger Andersen, United Nations Environment Program executive director, in a news conference on Tuesday held to release one of the two new reports, “Turning off the Tap: How the world can end plastic pollution and create a circular economy.”

And, she said, “we know that people in the poorest nations and communities are those that suffer the most.”

The UNEP’s recommendations for achieving an 80 percent reduction globally in plastic pollution by 2040 included:

Promoting more options for re-using plastic, including refillable bottles, bulk dispensers, deposit-return schemes and packaging take-back programs.

Financially incentivize and stabilize commercial markets to promote more recycling of plastic now, while also removing fossil fuels subsidies and enforcing new design guidelines to make plastic more easily recyclable.

Replace certain types of plastic packaging with other materials, including paper.

“We’re talking about a systemic change, a systems change,” said Sheila Aggarwal-Khan, director of the Industry and Economy Division at UNEP. “That means that you cannot solve just one part of the problem. You cannot simply say, ‘Well, let’s just recycle our way out of the plastic pollution crisis.’ Or you cannot simply say, ‘Let’s just simply do away with single-use plastics.’”

Economic costs of plastic pollution “are running in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually,” Andersen said at the briefing from UNEP headquarters in Nairobi. Plastic waste, she added, is “destroying infrastructure, impacting energy production and tourism revenue, clogging our drains and flooding our cities and potentially impacting human health through exposure to hazardous chemicals.”

The starting point for change, she added, “is to eliminate unnecessary and problematic plastics,” and then to “systemically” change how plastics are made, used and recycled.

UN Officials: Solutions are Within Reach

As the U.N. delegates pack their bags for Paris, countries, industries and environmental groups have already been staking out their positions. The Biden administration’s opening position, dubbed “low ambition” by its critics, calls for individual national action plans as opposed to strong global mandates and does not seek enforceable cuts in plastics manufacturing, even though reducing plastic production was a key recommendation of the landmark 2021 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report on the devastating impacts of plastic pollution.

Instead, the U.S. proposal touts the benefits of plastics and calls for improved management of plastic waste such as re-use, recycling and redesigning plastics.

The European Union and a “high ambition” coalition of countries led by Norway and Rwanda are seeking global targets to reduce the production of plastics and phasing out risky chemical additives, such as endocrine disruptors like phthalates, which are used to make plastics pliable and are a threat to human health. They are seeking to end all plastic pollution by 2040.

In its Turning off the Tap report, the U.N. advocated for a circular plastics economy. 

“Circularity” has become something of a buzzword touted by industry, governments and some environmental groups, but with no widely accepted definition, to suggest products are repeatedly made from waste without tapping new natural resources. The U.N. report described circularity as a “zero-pollution plastics economy” that “eliminates unnecessary production and consumption, avoids negative impacts on ecosystems and human health, keeps products and materials in the economy and safely collects and disposes of waste that cannot be economically processed.”

UNEP noted that the world produces 430 million metric tons of plastics each year, of which over two-thirds are short-lived products that soon become waste, and a growing amount, or 139 million metric tons in 2021, after a single use. Plastic production is set to triple by 2060 under a “business-as-usual” scenario.

Solutions are within reach, but they will require nations to agree to work together to “transform the plastics economy,” according to the report. Even with such transformation, “a significant volume of plastics cannot be made circular in the next 10 to 20 years and will require disposal solutions to prevent pollution.”

But tackling the problem could save trillions of dollars in costs from the damage plastics cause to health, climate and marine ecosystems, the report found, while creating a net increase of 700,000 jobs by 2040, mostly in low-income countries.

Chemicals in Plastics Threaten Health, Environment

In a report dated May 3, “Chemicals in Plastics,” UNEP focused on the more than 13,000 chemicals associated with plastic products and manufacturing, noting that only about half of them have been screened for properties that would make them hazardous to people or the environment. At least 3,200 of the 7,000 screened chemicals have been identified as potentially of concern, according to the report. 

Those chemicals include some that persist for extended lengths of time and accumulate in the environment, where they can wreak havoc on wildlife or people. They include polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and some, like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which have been dubbed “forever chemicals.”

Many are used, emitted and released throughout the plastic lifecycle, from the extraction of oil and gas and the production of polymers and chemicals to the manufacturing, use and end-of-life management of plastics, according to the U.N. report. 

This graphic shows the pathways for human and ecosystem exposure to chemicals that are in plastics. It’s from “Chemicals in Plastics,” a May 2023 report by the United Nations Environment Program. Credit: UNEP and Secretariat of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions.

“These chemicals have been found to be associated with a wide range of acute, chronic, or multi-generational toxic effects, including specific target organ toxicity, various types of cancer, genetic mutations, reproductive toxicity, developmental toxicity, endocrine disruption and ecotoxicity,” the report concluded.

The varied chemical nature of plastic also makes it harder to recycle; less than 10 percent is now recycled worldwide.

Among that report’s recommendations were to “reduce plastic production and consumption, starting with non-essential plastics,” and “design and manufacture plastics that are free of chemicals of concern.”

UN Officials See Need to Boost Recycling, But Problems Persist

The American Chemistry Council, a leading lobbying group for plastics manufacturers, declined to comment on the U.N. reports.

But the chemical and plastics industries have, through marketing, advertising and lobbying campaigns, promoted the concept of advanced or chemical recycling and what they call “a more circular economy,” that reduces the need to tap virgin fossil fuels to make its products.

The U.N. report released Tuesday puts an emphasis on mechanical recycling, where waste plastics are typically collected, sorted, chopped, heated and molded into new plastic products. That’s even though mechanical recycling carries certain environmental risks, including, according to new research, the production of microplastics.

Inside Climate News on Tuesday reported on new research in the United Kingdom published in the Journal of Hazardous Material Advances. It found that all the chopping, shredding and washing of plastic at a recycling facility turned as much as six to 13 percent of the incoming waste into microplastics—tiny, toxic particles that are an emerging and ubiquitous environmental health concern for the planet and people.

“Mechanical recycling is probably the best that we have,” said Steven Stone, deputy director of the Industry and Economy Division for UNEP.  “Even if it’s not perfect, we can certainly improve the technology on mechanical recycling. And importantly, by improving the design of plastic products and improving what goes into the products in the first place, that can also help increase the efficiency of mechanical recycling.”

He said that standards for both the design of plastics and the operations of recycling facilities will be needed.

In the press conference, U.N. officials also described chemical recycling, a type of “advanced” recycling, as not really ready for prime time, and a less desirable option than mechanical recycling.

In January, U.S. government researchers found two prominent “advanced” technologies—pyrolysis and gasification—should not even be considered technologies that are “closed-loop,” another term for the circular economy. Pyrolysis and gasification require large amounts of energy and emit significant pollutants and greenhouse gases to turn discarded plastics into oil or fuel, or other chemical feedstocks, synthetic gases and a carbon char waste product.

“There is a huge carbon footprint on chemical recycling,” Andersen said, adding that “a good number of the chemical recycling (operations) today actually don’t recycle.” Instead, she said, companies are turning waste plastic into “very dirty fuels that can be burned off. And that is obviously not the way we want to go with climate change.”

She also said “there is a justice dimension” with chemical recycling; the plants tend to be located near the poorest people “and those who have the least voice in society.”

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CNN
 — 

Countries could slash plastic pollution by 80% in less than two decades, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme.

Plastic pollution is a scourge that affects every part of the world, from the Arctic, to the oceans and the air we breathe.

It’s even changing ecosystems. Scientists recently found rocks made from plastic on a remote Brazilian island, and there is now so much plastic swirling in parts of the Pacific Ocean that communities of coastal creatures are thriving on it, thousands of miles from their home.

The last few decades have seen plastic production levels soar, especially single-use plastic, and waste management systems have not kept pace. The world generated 139 million metric tons of single use plastic waste in 2021.

Global production of plastic is set to triple by 2060 if no action is taken.

HANDOUT EDITORIAL USE ONLY/NO SALES
Mandatory Credit: Photo by The Ocean Cleanup Handout/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (9474204a)
An undated handout photo made available by The Ocean Cleanup on 23 March 2018 shows abandoned nets, ropes and other plastic garbage being pulled out of the ocean at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), located between halfway between Hawaii and California, USA. According to research by a team of scientists with The Ocean Cleanup Foundation, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean is now estimated to contain around 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic weighing 80,000 tons, sixteen times more than previously estimated.
Great Pacific Garbage Patch found to have sixteen times more plastic than previously estimated, At Sea, — – 23 Mar 2018

Handout/The Ocean Cleanup/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now so huge and permanent that a coastal ecosystem is thriving on it, scientists say 

UNEP’s report aims to offer a roadmap to governments and businesses to dramatically cut levels of plastic pollution. It focuses on three main strategies: reuse, recycling and alternative materials.

Reusing plastics would have the greatest impact, according to the report, which recommends promoting options such as refillable bottles, deposit programs to incentivize people to return plastic products and packaging take-back programs. This would be the most “powerful market shift,” reducing plastic pollution by 30% by 2040, the report said.

Scaling up recycling levels could reduce plastic pollution by a further 20%, according to the report. Only around 9% of plastics are recycled globally each year, with the rest ending up in landfill or incinerated.

The report also recommends discontinuing the fossil fuel subsidies that help make new plastic products cheaper, which disincentivizes recycling and the use of alternative materials. Fossil fuels are the raw ingredient for almost all plastics.

The use of appropriate alternative materials for single-use products, such as wrappers and sachets – including switching to compostable materials that more easily break down – could reduce plastic pollution by 17%, the report found.

People collecting plastic waste at Dandora dumpsite, in Nairobi, Kenya.

Simone Boccaccio/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

“The way we produce, use and dispose of plastics is polluting ecosystems, creating risks for human health and destabilizing the climate,” said Inger Andersen, UNEP Executive Director, in a statement.

“This UNEP report lays out a roadmap to dramatically reduce these risks through adopting a circular approach that keeps plastics out of ecosystems, out of our bodies and in the economy.”

The report estimates the investment needed for the changes it recommends will cost around $65 billion a year, but says this amount is far outweighed by the costs of doing nothing. Moving to an economy where plastic is reused and recycled could bring $3.25 trillion in savings by 2040, according to the report, by avoiding the negative impacts of plastic, including those on climate, health, air and water.

Cutting plastics by 80% would save 0.5 billion tons of planet-warming carbon pollution a year, the report estimated. It could also create 700,000 new jobs, mostly in developing countries.

Even with all these shifts, however, the world will still have to manage around 100 million metric tons of plastic waste from short-lived products by 2040, according to the report. That’s equivalent in weight to almost 5 million shipping containers – spread end to end, these could reach from New York City to Sydney, Australia and back again.

Tackling this will require stricter standards for non-recyclable waste and increasing the responsibility of manufacturers for the impacts of their plastic products, according to the report.

The report comes as countries prepare for a second round of negotiations in Paris later this month aimed at agreeing a world-first international plastics treaty, which would address the whole life of plastics from production to disposal. Whether the treaty will include curbs on plastic manufacturing remains a sticking point.

The problem is massive, demoralizing, and ostensibly impossible to fix. But today the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is dropping an urgent report on the extraordinary environmental and human costs of plastic pollution, along with a road map for the world to take action. With several strategies working in concert—like production cuts and more reuse of plastic products—the report finds that humanity might reduce that pollution 80 percent by 2040. The road map lands just weeks ahead of the second round of negotiations for an international treaty on plastics, which scientists and antipollution groups are hoping results in a significant cap on production.View moreThe report emphasizes the devastating price of our civilization’s addiction to plastic, “particularly when it comes to human health costs of plastics—so endocrine disruption, cognitive impairments, cancers,” says Steven Stone, deputy director of the Industry and Economy Division at the UNEP and a lead author of the report. “When you take those along with the cleanup costs of plastic pollution, you get in the range of $300 billion to $600 billion a year. This report is a message of hope—we are not doomed to incurring all of these costs.” In fact, the report notes, with action on plastic pollution, we might avoid $4.5 trillion in costs by 2040.
This road map builds on another alarming report the UNEP released earlier this month, which found that of the 13,000 known chemicals associated with plastics and their production, at least 3,200 have one or more hazardous properties of concern. Ten groups of these chemicals are of major concern, such as PFAS and phthalates. Of particular toxicity are a wide range of chemicals in plastics with endocrine-disrupting properties, which short-circuit the hormone system even in very low doses, leading to obesity, cancer, and other diseases. “There are these costs that are going to manifest in human health, in environmental destruction, in marine litter pollution,” Stone says. “Those are costs that fall on everyone. But the consumer of plastic doesn’t take pay for it, neither does the producer. So that’s a massive market failure.”
Plastic is, at the end of the day, a highly toxic material that’s infiltrated every aspect of our daily lives. The goal above all others should be to stop manufacturing so much of the stuff, so the new road map calls for eliminating unnecessary plastics, like the single-use variety.  But the challenge is that plastic remains absurdly cheap to produce—its many external costs be damned.
“This road map is headed in the right direction but must go much further to curb new plastics production,” says Dianna Cohen, CEO and cofounder of Plastic Pollution Coalition. “We are glad to see an emphasis on reduction and reuse, which are key elements of solutions to plastic pollution, as these actions can most rapidly help us diminish plastic production. Missing in the report is requiring industrial/corporate entities that produce material items to stop making more toxic fossil-fuel plastic, full stop.”
In addition to reducing production, the report argues, the world must improve recycling systems, which alone could reduce plastic pollution 20 percent by 2040. But recycling in its current form is problematic for a number of reasons. For one, the recycling rate in the United States is now just 5 percent of plastic waste. The US and other developed nations have long shipped millions upon millions of pounds of the plastic waste they can’t profitably recycle to developing countries, where bottles and bags and wrappers are often burned in open pits or escape into the environment. 
A core issue is that over the years, plastic products have gotten much more complicated and therefore much less recyclable: Nowadays, food pouches might have layers of different polymers, or a product might be half plastic, half paper. “By agreeing and then imposing design rules that allow, for instance, a limited number of polymers or a limited number of chemical additives that play well within the system, that already improves heavily the economics of recycling,” says Llorenç Milà i Canals, head of secretariat of the Life Cycle Initiative at the UNEP and lead coordinator of the report. “That makes recycling much more profitable because it will take much less to bring those materials back into the economy.”
However, even recycling that’s done properly comes at a huge environmental cost: A study published earlier this month found that a single facility might emit 3 million pounds of microplastic a year in its wastewater, which flows into the environment. The upside, at least, is that the facility would have released 6.5 million pounds of microplastic had it not installed filters, so there’s at least a way to mitigate that pollution. But these tiny particles have now corrupted the entirety of the planet, including a broad range of organisms. And generally speaking, as plastics production is increasing exponentially, microplastic pollution is increasing in lockstep. 
In that sense, then, recycling is making the plastic pollution problem worse. “Plastic was not designed to be recycled, and recycling it only reintroduces toxic chemicals and microplastics into the environment and our bodies,” says Cohen. “The [UNEP] report’s authors even go so far to acknowledge that even if it is achievable, a circular economy of plastics would be decades in the making, and even under the best scenario, following the road map as outlined would lead to approximately 136 million metric tons of plastic flowing into landfills, incinerators, and the environment to cause pollution in the year 2040. That is an enormous—and unacceptable—amount of plastic.”
Really, recycling allows the plastics industry to keep making all the plastic it wants, under the guise of sustainability. “If you had an overflowing bathtub, you wouldn’t just run for the mop first—you turn off the tap,” says Jacqueline Savitz, chief policy officer for the conservation nonprofit Oceana, who wasn’t involved in the report. “Recycling is the mop.”
Another strategy highlighted in the new report is “extended producer responsibility,” in which manufacturers don’t just make the stuff and wipe their hands of it. The plastics industry has long promoted recycling (even though it has known that the current system doesn’t work) because it makes you, the “careless” consumer, responsible for pollution. Extended producer responsibility puts the burden back on the industry, forcing producers to, say, implement systems to take bottles back and reuse them.
Additionally, the new report notes, countries might impose a tax on plastic, which would make it more expensive for manufacturers to churn out virgin plastic. Governments would then use that money to fund recycling programs and other mitigation measures to reduce plastic pollution. “The costs that are externalized to society are actually put up front,” says Stone. “And then recycled materials are much more competitive with the virgin materials. That will be a tremendous benefit for keeping plastics in play longer.”
Another way to keep plastics in circulation is to encourage reuse. So instead of having to recycle a single-use water bottle, ideally people would have their own reusable bottles to fill over and over. Instead of buying shampoo in a plastic bottle each time, people might visit refill stores. Combined, such reuse initiatives could reduce plastic pollution by 30 percent, the new report finds. “It does require systems and investment, but it has the potential to be a big economic opportunity,” says Savitz, of Oceana. “New companies could start out small but could end up being sort of the Amazon of reuse.”
Finally, the report calls for a “careful replacement” of certain plastic products—using paper or compostable materials instead, for instance. “Careful” meaning we wouldn’t want to widely deploy some sort of plastic alternative that ends up being just as toxic. This is already a problem, as plastics producers swap out known toxic chemicals, like bisphenol A (aka BPA), for similar chemicals that may be just as toxic, if not more so—a “regrettable substitution,” as scientists call it.
The good news, at least, is that plastic pollution is finally being elevated to emergency status in the international community. “The fact that there is consensus that this is an issue by all countries, to me means we have a tremendous opportunity,” says Stone. “It’s our job to get the science out there so that people can see the numbers and understand what the stakes are right now. Because plastics pollution is a time bomb, essentially, and we need to deal with it now.”

CNN
 — 

Countries could slash plastic pollution by 80% in less than two decades, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme.

Plastic pollution is a scourge that affects every part of the world, from the Arctic, to the oceans and the air we breathe.

It’s even changing ecosystems. Scientists recently found rocks made from plastic on a remote Brazilian island, and there is now so much plastic swirling in parts of the Pacific Ocean that communities of coastal creatures are thriving on it, thousands of miles from their home.

The last few decades have seen plastic production levels soar, especially single-use plastic, and waste management systems have not kept pace. The world generated 139 million metric tons of single use plastic waste in 2021.

Global production of plastic is set to triple by 2060 if no action is taken.

UNEP’s report aims to offer a roadmap to governments and businesses to dramatically cut levels of plastic pollution. It focuses on three main strategies: reuse, recycling and alternative materials.

Reusing plastics would have the greatest impact, according to the report, which recommends promoting options such as refillable bottles, deposit programs to incentivize people to return plastic products and packaging take-back programs. This would be the most “powerful market shift,” reducing plastic pollution by 30% by 2040, the report said.

Scaling up recycling levels could reduce plastic pollution by a further 20%, according to the report. Only around 9% of plastics are recycled globally each year, with the rest ending up in landfill or incinerated.

The report also recommends discontinuing the fossil fuel subsidies that help make new plastic products cheaper, which disincentivizes recycling and the use of alternative materials. Fossil fuels are the raw ingredient for almost all plastics.

The use of appropriate alternative materials for single-use products, such as wrappers and sachets – including switching to compostable materials that more easily break down – could reduce plastic pollution by 17%, the report found.

“The way we produce, use and dispose of plastics is polluting ecosystems, creating risks for human health and destabilizing the climate,” said Inger Andersen, UNEP Executive Director, in a statement.

“This UNEP report lays out a roadmap to dramatically reduce these risks through adopting a circular approach that keeps plastics out of ecosystems, out of our bodies and in the economy.”

The report estimates the investment needed for the changes it recommends will cost around $65 billion a year, but says this amount is far outweighed by the costs of doing nothing. Moving to an economy where plastic is reused and recycled could bring $3.25 trillion in savings by 2040, according to the report, by avoiding the negative impacts of plastic, including those on climate, health, air and water.

Cutting plastics by 80% would save 0.5 billion tons of planet-warming carbon pollution a year, the report estimated. It could also create 700,000 new jobs, mostly in developing countries.

Even with all these shifts, however, the world will still have to manage around 100 million metric tons of plastic waste from short-lived products by 2040, according to the report. That’s equivalent in weight to almost 5 million shipping containers – spread end to end, these could reach from New York City to Sydney, Australia and back again.

Tackling this will require stricter standards for non-recyclable waste and increasing the responsibility of manufacturers for the impacts of their plastic products, according to the report.

The report comes as countries prepare for a second round of negotiations in Paris later this month aimed at agreeing a world-first international plastics treaty, which would address the whole life of plastics from production to disposal. Whether the treaty will include curbs on plastic manufacturing remains a sticking point.

Research out of Scotland suggests that the chopping, shredding and washing of plastic in recycling facilities may turn as much as six to 13 percent of incoming waste into microplastics—tiny, toxic particles that are an emerging and ubiquitous environmental health concern for the planet and people.

A team of four researchers measured and analyzed microplastics in wastewater before and after filters were installed at an anonymous recycling plant in the United Kingdom. The study, one of the first of its kind, was published in the May issue of in the peer-reviewed Journal of Hazardous Material Advances.

If the team’s calculations are ultimately found to be representative of the recycling industry as a whole, the scale of microplastics created during recycling processes would be shocking—perhaps as much as 400,000 tons per year in the United States alone, or the equivalent of about 29,000 dump trucks of microplastics. The study suggests that rather than helping to solve plastics’ contribution to what the United Nations has described as a triple planetary crisis of pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss, recycling could be exacerbating the problem by creating an even more vexing conundrum.

Other scientists are finding microplastics in human blood, human placentas and in virtually all corners of the planet, and the United Nations has warned that chemicals in microplastics are associated with serious health impacts including changes to human genetics, brain development and reproduction.

The paper was published as United Nations delegates prepare to hold their second meeting to negotiate a potential global plastics treaty later this month in Paris, with one potential outcome being more plastics recycling as the chemical and plastics industry presses governments to keep plastic in the global economy.

“It seems quite backward to me,” said plastics researcher Erena Brown, who led the research while she was a graduate student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. “With plastic recycling, we have designed and initiated it in order to start protecting our environment. I think this study has shown that we have ended up creating a different if potentially slightly worse problem.”

The recycling plant allowed researchers to measure microplastics in wastewater before and after the plant installed filters, which Brown said definitely helped to reduce microplastics.

But even with filters, the study found that the mechanical recycling process that produced plastic pellets to make new plastic products could still allow as much as 75 billion particles of microplastics in a cubic meter of the plant’s wastewater.

In all, they calculated the plant would annually release as much as 3 million pounds of microplastics with filtration, and up to 6.5 million pounds without filtration. 

The study measured microplastics down to a size of 1.6 microns, which Brown said was smaller than two other similar studies that the researchers found. Still, she said, with the widespread prevalence of even smaller micro and nano plastics, smaller than the study’s size limit, the researchers believe their findings underestimate the problem.

“We assume that there are many, many, many particles in sizes smaller than this,” she said.

The researchers also detected microplastics in the air at the recycling facility and suggested that such air emissions should be the focus of additional research since breathing microplastics is a risk to lung health.

Recycling Could Create a ‘Ridiculous’ Amount of Microplastics

The plastics and packaging industries have pushed recycling and consumer responsibility for decades. But plastics are made with thousands of chemicals including additives designed to give them special properties including clarity, strength, color and flexibility. Many of those chemicals are toxic, and increasingly, scientists and environmental advocates have been warning that the complicated chemical nature of so many different types of plastic is what has helped make them so difficult to recycle.

The world is making twice as much plastic waste as it did two decades ago, with most of the discarded materials buried in landfills, burned by incinerators or dumped into the environment, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group that represents developed nations. Production is expected to triple by 2060. Globally, only 9 percent of plastic waste is successfully recycled, according to OECD.

In the United States, the recycling rate could be less than 6 percent, according to a 2022 report by the environmental groups Beyond Plastics and The Last Beach Cleanup.

Kara Pochiro, a spokesperson for the Association of Plastic Recyclers, a trade group representing the recycling industry, said “recycling is an industrial process regulated like any other industrial process in the U.S. Recyclers must conform with national, state, and local regulations regarding all aspects of the business including environmental laws.”

However, Brown said she’s not aware of any requirements anywhere that recyclers must track or limit the number or amount of microplastics in their wastewater effluent. And in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency does not specifically regulate microplastic discharges from wastewater treatment plants, wastewater experts said this week. 

The EPA did not respond to a request for comment.

Environmental advocates expressed alarm at the research findings.

The research suggests that recycling plants in the United States could be “creating ridiculous amounts of microplastics,” said Jan Dell, a chemical engineer who has worked as a consultant to the oil and gas industry and founded The Last Beach Cleanup, the nonprofit that fights plastic pollution and waste.

Dell said the study highlights a problem she said she has “been yelling about for years,” what she calls the “material waste rate” for plastic recycling, “but no one pays attention.” Her own calculations based on industry data she cited in her group’s report last year with Beyond Plastics estimated a 30 percent material loss for recycling PET plastic bottles, commonly used by beverage companies. “To make 100 bottles out of recycled plastic, 143 bottles have to be collected and processed,” she said.

The Association of Plastic Recyclers estimates there are more than 100 post-consumer plastic recycling operations in the United States and Canada. Many are likely sending their wastewater to municipal wastewater treatment facilities.

Generally, treatment plants are supposed to comply with rules that limit solid particles in their effluent. So regulations would capture some, but not all, microplastics—and what gets through would be the smaller and more dangerous particles, Dell said.

Microplastics captured in treatment end up in a plant’s biosolid byproduct, or sewage sludge, which is often spread on land as a fertilizer, allowing microplastics to contaminate the soil and wash into waterways during rain, according to a March report produced by the Minderoo-Monoco Commission on Human Health, a body of scientists assembled by the Australian-based Minderoo Foundation, and published in the Annals of Global Health, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

In fact, more microplastics are estimated to enter the soil from the use of wastewater sludge for agricultural purposes each year than microplastics entering the ocean or freshwater sediments, the commission study found. 

“The presence of (microplastics) in sewage sludge poses a threat to soil health and productivity and could cause harm to soil-dwelling biota,” the Minderoo-Monoco group found.

“Microplastic has to go somewhere,” Dell said. “It doesn’t disappear.”

Study Adds to UN Plastics Debate

California is at the forefront of microplastics regulatory investigations and potential actions, and is weighing options to limit microplastics in water bodies, said Shelley Walther, an environmental scientist at the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts. She’s also leading a task force on microplastics with the Water Environment Federation, an industry group for wastewater professionals.

A 2016 study in Los Angeles found that wastewater treatment designed to collect “suspended solids” are more than 99 percent effective at capturing microplastics, she said. But she also said that the study did not include the smallest of the particles.

Walther said that among the challenges of curbing microplastics is that they are hard to measure. “There’s still not a lot of great technology,” Walther said.

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Evolve Events

McDonald’s Big Mac made the move to paper packaging in 1990 and the fast food chain is making progress on more recent goals to have 100% of products in recycled or renewable materials by 2025.
But shareholder activists focused on environmental and climate issues want McDonald’s to go further, and focus on reusables, now mandated in some countries including France.
The restaurant giant says it will study the economics of reusables, but isn’t convinced it makes more sense than current sustainability practices.

S3studio | Getty Images News | Getty Images

In 1990, McDonald’s ditched the styrofoam home for the Big Mac, and its signature burger has been served ever since in paper wrap. Reusable packaging may be next. 
McDonald’s is making some progress on a goal it set in 2018 to use recycled or renewable packaging in 100% of its restaurants by the end of 2025, but activist shareholders are moving onto the next big target: pressing the fast-food giant for more focus on reusables. 

While there were hundreds of environmental and climate measures introduced by shareholders this spring for annual meetings, one that got dropped in March was at McDonald’s, which reached a deal with shareholder advocacy non-profit As You Sow to withdraw a proposal in exchange for the company agreeing to produce a report on the implications of switching to reusable packaging. 
The battle between McDonald’s and environmentally minded shareholders goes a long way back, starting in the 1980s when multiple grassroots organizations and broader public awareness about the lightweight plastic material known as polystyrene led to the change in the packaging of the Big Mac and other sandwiches. But it wasn’t until 2018 that McDonald’s completely eliminated styrofoam across all of its global markets.
McDonald’s biggest reusable packaging changes are outside US
McDonald’s has made several big packaging changes in recent years, mostly coming from outside the U.S. and following governmental action. The European Commission banned certain single-use packaging, including straws, plates and cutlery, and required all packaging in these categories be designed for reuse as of July 2021, the first time the EU targeted reuse specifically. And at the end of last year, McDonald’s France launched a reusable plastic food container in its signature red color – though not without initiating a new controversy over the decision to not use all glass or metal. 
There are many challenges that come with reusable packaging, and McDonald’s has looked to highlight that as it agrees to conduct more research on the reusables economy. Last month, McDonald’s released a report it commissioned from consulting firm Kearny — with the headline “No silver bullet” — detailing several reasons why reusables may be too expensive to be a sole solution. The report suggests the balancing act the fast food giant is trying to pull off — responding to changes in European regulation when required, but also arguing that it is a mistake to see reusables as the only model for responsible packaging in the future.

A meal tray with reusable dishes and containers is photographed at a McDonald’s restaurant in Levallois-Perret, near Paris, on December 20, 2022. – From January 1, 2023, within the framework of the anti-waste law, fast food restaurants must use reusable dishes for on-site orders.
Julien De Rosa | Afp | Getty Images

High upfront costs, required kitchen and infrastructure changes – whether on or off-site dishwashing capacities – and rises in energy and water use all pose challenges to the operations of reusable packaging, the report said. The report quoted the European Paper Packaging Alliance, which estimated that water consumption for a reusable system with 100 reuses would cost 267% higher than a paper single-usage model.

The report also touched on the potential negative impact to consumer experience and food safety.
“In some circumstances, plastic is the right option to keep things safe and properly contained, let alone making sure that the food you love is tasty and the experience is what you are hoping it would be,” a McDonald’s spokesperson told CNBC.
Food safety measures that could be compromised include the chemicals that can come from color coatings on reusable plastics and the potential for microbiological growth and accumulation if the packaging is scratched – in addition to whatever consumers do with the packaging before they return it.  
“In a climate where it seems that there needs to be an all-or-nothing approach, what’s been missed in reporting on reusables to date is just the actual open scale of it,” the McDonald’s spokeswoman said.

The economics case for reusable packaging

Advocates for reusable packaging argue that the economics will work.
Multinational corporations need to have reusable packaging strategies in place as part of risk management, according to Kelly McBee, circular economy senior coordinator at As You Sow, to comply with a Global Plastics Treaty deemed by the United Nations aimed to end single-use plastic production and usage by 2024 under an international legally binding agreement.
The reusable packaging efforts that McDonald’s has already undertaken in Europe show that a strategy around reuse in the U.S. is possible, McBee said, adding that she expects McDonald’s future report on the topic to “discuss how, when and to what extent the company could pursue reusable packaging in the U.S.”
Furthermore, she says other studies of reusable packaging show that, over time, businesses will save money that otherwise would be spent on disposables.
McBee cited research from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which found that replacing 20% of single-use plastic packaging with reusable alternatives offers an opportunity worth at least $10 billion by weight cost, saving six million tons of material. 
McDonald’s, however, is sticking to its broader sustainability message in packaging.
“There’s unintended consequences of reuse in a world and in a system where we’ve made so much progress. While reuse has been kind of a bright flashy object as of late, McDonald’s has been invested in studying this for a decade,” the company spokeswoman said.
For example, there has already been discussion of converting existing packaging to primarily fiber-based options. Since 2018, McDonald’s has reduced virgin fossil fuel-based plastic in Happy Meal toys by 24.4% globally, and has committed to 100% of sourcing for materials used in Happy Meal toys will be made from more renewable, recycled, or certified materials like bio-based and plant-derived materials and certified fiber by 2025.
Fast-food rivals such as Burger King are testing reusables
Fast-food rivals have been testing reusable packaging options, including Burger King, which worked with Loop, a global recycling company, on pilot programs to create a reuse system at its restaurants in 2020. In New York City, Tokyo, and Portland, Oregon, customers could return reusable cups and containers to participating chains in exchange for a small deposit.
McDonald’s also worked with Loop on a pilot in the U.K. for reusable coffee cups. For a £1 (currently $1.24) deposit, customers could opt into using a returnable Loop cup and could even receive a 20p ($0.25) discount on their purchase. When returned in store, customers could receive their deposit back in the form of cash, a voucher, or a new reusable cup for their next drink. At kiosks, customers could get a voucher or their money returned through the Loop app.
Both the Burger King and McDonald’s pilot programs were live until mid-2022, and the fast food chains are now “assessing the development of the platform,” according to a Loop spokesperson.
Clemence Schmid, general manager at Loop Global, said consumers want reuse and will reward companies that do it, but added that the use of reusable containers and cups “has to make sense to the consumer and be kept affordable, meaning the deposit is reasonable.”
Alluding to McDonald’s concerns, she said the company has to ensure there is enough scale and volume for the usage of reusable products to make economic sense.
Burger King hasn’t made a permanent decision and it did not provide many details on the results of the test.
“The pilot program has now concluded, and we are using key learnings about guest adoption and operational effectiveness in identifying long-term solutions for reusables,” a spokeswoman at Restaurant Brands International, the fast food holding company that owns Burger King, wrote via email.

Matt Prindiville, the former CEO of reuse non-profit Upstream Solutions who recently moved to redeemable container company Clynk, said there is “a sweet spot of finding the right incentive to motivate behavior without discouraging participation or creating an undue burden.”
Whether that be through a deposit incentive or an added discount, Prindiville said that reusable packaging can not only be cost-effective, but also create a better environmental profile for McDonald’s and be a better experience for the customer.
“We generally like eating and drinking out of things that aren’t disposable. It’s not a great experience to drink out of something that you are just going to throw out in the garbage a few minutes later,” Prindiville said.
While moving in the direction of reusable products would require capital improvements and staff training, Prindiville highlighted a recent Upstream Solutions report that saw 100% of 121 businesses and 11 institutional dining programs save money when switching to reusables, factoring in the costs of new labor, products, and increased dishwashing. But there is a need for standardization at scale in order for McDonald’s and other fast food chains to be cost-effective when it comes to reusable packaging, he said. 
Three decades on from the shift away from foam Big Mac packaging, McDonald’s and its franchisees have moved to renewable, recycled, and certified sources in many product areas and across many countries. But the question remains how feasible it is for the company to make the bigger shift to reusable products, a question its recent deal with As You Sow stipulates the company provide an answer to by the end of 2024.