Author Archives: David Evans

“We are fishing for marine plastic under sail,” says Steve Green, of Clean Ocean Sailing (COS). From their roving, rabble-rousing home and headquarters on the Annette, a 115-year-old sailing boat, Green and his co-captain, Monika Hertlová, are leading a naval attack on the plastic polluting our oceans — which weighs in at an estimated total between 75 million and 199 million tons.
Based on the coast of Cornwall in the UK, COS launched in 2017 after Green visited an island in the nearby Isles of Scilly archipelago. He was shocked at the amount of plastic pollution he saw. 
“It’s only a mile across, and on the southwest of the island it is six foot deep of all sorts of plastic flotsam and jetsam. It’s full of dead or dying seabirds and dolphins,” says Green, who is “pirate-in-chief” at COS. He decided to do something about the problem and invited other concerned locals to join him in the mission to remove plastic waste from the most inaccessible parts of Cornwall’s commanding coastline. Since then, over 400 volunteers have leapt aboard to join the fixed crew of Green, Hertlová, four-year-old Simon and Labrador Rosie to sail under the Jolly Roger that flies at “Annie’s” prow. 
The 60-ton former Dutch icebreaker acts as a mobile basecamp, sailing the high seas before pulling into rocky coves and river mouths so that a flotilla of smaller kayaks and rowing boats can disembark. The smaller vessels are able to reach shorelines that are difficult to access by land and that are some of the areas worst affected by plastic pollution. Plus, by using non-motorized vessels, they avoid burning carbon-emitting fossil fuels. 
The group has recorded and removed 500,000 individual pieces of plastic with a combined weight of over 70 tons. Green says that about 85 percent of the rubbish they gather is recycled and repurposed. The Ocean Recovery Project in Exeter upcycles some into sea kayaks that COS then uses to remove more rubbish from nature.
COS volunteers Simon and Aude
Many Clean Ocean Sailing volunteers have a deep connection to the land and seas of Cornwall. Simon Myers grew up locally before moving away for work. During a particularly stormy winter, he returned to join the crew with his 16-year-old son Milo. For him and many of the volunteers, the work is a way to combat global issues on a local scale. “Living in western Europe we have been largely insulated from pretty much all of the consequences of our actions over the last 50 or 60 years, but we have an emotional attachment to this landscape, coastline and people. These issues around overconsumption, pollution and climate change are becoming increasingly personal. We love this part of the world. We grew up here and want to protect it,” says Myers.  
Steve Green
The group is prepared to brave all weather and rough seas. They try to stay close to home when the weather demands it, but in favorable conditions they travel far up and down the coast and to the many small islands off Cornwall. 
Green picks up plastic from a river bank.
Green, a native Cornishman, knows the local waterways like the back of his hand. He knows which coves, inlets, beaches and banks are susceptible to excessive plastic pollution. 
Sailing ship Annette at night
Green believes COS’s method of ocean cleanup could be replicated in many of the world’s coastal areas. “There are a lot of traditional wooden boats and still a lot of people with the skills to maintain them,” he says. “I think it’s important to maintain that heritage. So long as you’re not in a hurry it is also an incredibly efficient way to move extremely heavy loads. Once the boat’s started moving, it just glides along not using any energy at all other than the natural forces of the wind and the tide.”
Ghost gear washed ashore
COS also has a “rapid response unit.” “People send us a picture or location and we have about 20 volunteers who are all set up and ready to go to pick up any ‘ghost gear’ before it gets washed out to sea again on the next tide. We have found fish crates and fishing gear from South Africa, China, South and North America. It’s crazy,” says Green. 
COS volunteers clean up a beach.
A system of mutual support built on local friendships is the backbone of COS’s success. Many locals who can’t donate time offer the group goods such as beers, groceries and pasties to help keep the boat afloat and the team energized. 
Rowing to hard to access spots
Annie’s “pirates” are committed to low-carbon plastic pollution cleanup. “We could go out there in big, engine-powered RIBS; we could modify tractors and all sorts to haul vast quantities of rubbish off the coast,” Green says. “But then, we would be creating another problem whilst trying to solve this one. This is nature and people working together in harmony.”
He adds, “By moving the big boat around on the sail and using oars and paddles to move the little boats around, not only are we not disturbing the wildlife but we’re not harming the natural environment at all. It takes a long time and it’s a lot of hard work, but we’re not creating a carbon footprint.”
Volunteers Simon and Milo heaving plastic
Sailing and paddling also holds an allure for volunteers, in addition to minimizing the environmental impact of COS’s work.  “We are standing next to a Jolly Roger, at the mercy of the wind; it’s romantic, it’s under sail. There is a need to have quite visible, demonstrable ways to counterbalance a consumer culture,” says Myers.
The Annette flies the Jolly Roger.
“It’s also about other people seeing us doing this. Perhaps they’ll start to think about not dropping it in the first place or, even better, not buying it. That’s what’s really going to change the world,” says Green. 
The Annette is a 60-ton former Dutch icebreaker.
The going can be tough for the crew, with long days of hard physical work followed by yet more days of careful sorting before sailing up the coast to the recycling center. Despite new waves of pollution washing up ashore with every fresh tide, they are determined to keep fighting back. “It’s great to see a growing amount of people with an attitude of seeing this wonderful planet as our collective home that we’re all responsible for,” says Green. As they continue to recruit new pirates for pollution-busting adventures, their message couldn’t be clearer: “All aboard.”

Last month, Victoria banned plastic straws, crockery and polystyrene containers, following similar bans in South Australia, Western Australia, New South Wales and the ACT. All states and territories in Australia have now banned lightweight single-use plastic bags.

You might wonder why we have to ban these products entirely. Couldn’t we just make them out of bioplastics – plastics usually made of plants? Some studies estimate we could swap up to 85% of fossil-fuel based plastics for bioplastics.

Unfortunately, bioplastics aren’t ready for prime time – except for their use in kitchen caddy bins as food waste liners. In Australia, we don’t have widely available pathways to compost or process them at the end of their lives. Nearly always, they end up in landfill.

That’s why many states are including bioplastics in their plastics bans. Avoiding single-use plastics entirely, whether traditional fossil fuel-based plastics or bioplastics, is more sustainable. And as our recycling system struggles, less plastic of any kind is simply better.

Bioplastics come from plants such as corn – and that comes with environmental impacts.
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Bio-based, biodegradable and compostable are different

Bioplastics is a blanket term covering plastics which are biologically-based or biodegradable (including compostable), or both.

Plastics are materials based on polymers – long-repeating chains of large molecules. These molecules don’t have to be oil-based – biologically-based plastics are made from raw materials such as corn, sugarcane, cellulose and algae.

Biodegradable plastics are those plastics able to be broken down by microorganisms into elements found in nature. Importantly, biodegradable here doesn’t specify how long or under what conditions plastic will break down.

Compostable plastics biodegrade on a known timeframe, when composted. In Australia, they can be certified for commercial or home compostable use.

These differences are important. Many of us would see the word “bioplastic” and assume what we’re buying is plant based and breaks down quickly. That’s often not true. Some biodegradable plastics are even made from fossil fuels.

Compostable bin caddies are the main sustainable use for bioplastics at present.
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Are bioplastics broadly more environmentally friendly?

To understand this we need to look at the whole lifecycle of the plastic, how it is made, used and what happens to it at end-of-life. Manufacturing bio-based plastics generally has lower environmental impacts and has less greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuel plastics.

This isn’t always the case. Producing plastics from plants has an environmental impact from the use of land, water and agricultural chemicals. Increased demand for agricultural land could lead to biodiversity loss and can compete with food production.

Read more:
If plastic comes from oil and gas, which come originally from plants, why isn’t it biodegradable?

Bioplastics often sub in for familiar single use items such as plastic bags, takeaway coffee cups and cutlery. Around 90% of the bioplastics sold in Australia are certified compostable. In most of these applications a reusable alternative would be the most sustainable option.

Some applications have beneficial environmental outcomes: compostable bags for kitchen food waste caddies increase the rate of food waste collected, which means less food waste in landfill and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

What about the crucial question of plastic waste and pollution? Sadly, if bioplastics end up in the environment, they can damage the environment in the same way as conventional plastics, such as contaminating soil and water. A turtle can choke just as easily on a bioplastic bag as a conventional plastic bag. That’s because biodegradable plastics still take years or even decades to biodegrade in nature.

Ideally, bioplastics should be designed to be either recyclable or compostable. Unfortunately, some bioplastics are neither. These pose problems for our waste management system, as they often end up contaminating recycling or compost bins when the only place for them is the tip.

In recent research for WWF Australia, we found widespread greenwashing in the industry, with terms such as “earth friendly” and “plastic-free” adding to the confusion. Regulating the industry and standardising terms would make it easier for us all to choose.

Compostable plastics almost all end up in landfill

Compostable plastics are designed to be broken down in the compost. Some can be composted at home, but others have to be done commercially.

The problem is these plastics aren’t being composted most of the time. Australian Standard compostable plastics are accepted in food organics and garden organics bins in South Australia and some councils in Hobart. But everywhere else, access to these services is limited. Many councils in other states will accept food and green waste – but specifically exclude compostable plastics (some accept council-supplied food waste caddy liners).

Read more:
Do you toss biodegradable plastic in the compost bin? Here’s why it might not break down

This means most compostable plastics used in Australia end up in landfill, where they emit methane as they break down, where it is not always captured. There’s no benefit using bioplastics if they can’t – or won’t – be recycled or composted, especially if they’re replacing a plastic that’s readily recyclable, such as the PET used in soft drink bottles.

Bioplastics still take time to degrade in landfill- and emit methane as they do so.
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Where does it make sense to use bioplastics in Australia?

When you reach for a bioplastic product, you’re probably doing it to reduce plastic waste. Unfortunately, we’re not there yet. We need viable pathways for recycling and composting.

So should we avoid them altogether? If you use compostable bin caddies and compost them at home or your council accepts them, that’s a useful option. But for most other uses, it’s far better to just not use plastic at all. Your reusable coffee cup and shopping bags are the best option.

Read more:
When biodegradable plastic is not biodegradable

An alarming number of strange-looking devices are washing up on Australian shores and the Great Barrier Reef, confounding beachcombers and worrying conservationists.Key points:The echo sounder buoys are used to detect fish in the South PacificQueensland commercial fishing fleets are finding them on the Great Barrier ReefConservationists are repurposing the buoys to target marine debrisThe floating echo sounders, which look like a cross between a landmine and a robot vacuum, are used by some foreign fisheries to detect and attract fish.The buoys, and the nets often attached to them, are becoming a common sight in Australian waters.This week, one of the mysterious-looking buoys washed up on a Queensland beach at Wunjunga in the Burdekin Shire south of Townsville.Reef advocates say they’re sitting on backyard stockpiles of the devices, which have been handed in.The echo sounder buoys have become a weekly discovery for commercial reef line fisherman Chris Bolton, who operates between Cairns and Townsville.”We’re finding them very regularly now, at least once a week,” Mr Bolton said.”I’m not sure how so many are getting lost.”I would say 90 per cent of the ones we find are caught on the reef.”It’s certainly a concern. It’s pollution.”Marine debris watchdog Tangaroa Blue Foundation said the buoys come from the South Pacific where fisheries, especially the long line industry, use them to detect fish.Dozens of the buoys have been donated to the not-for-profit, which is dedicated to the removal and prevention of marine debris.Lost at seaThe foundation’s chief executive Heidi Tate said some have been found as far south as New South Wales.”We do find them washing up in northern Australia every year because of the current from the South Pacific Ocean that comes towards the north,” she said.”A couple of weeks ago someone sent me a photo of one on a Sydney beach.””There are some estimates from the South Pacific fishing fleet area that somewhere between 45 to 65,000 of these beacons can be used annually.”They’ve just been lost.”

South Tyneside CouncilA new seafront sculpture on Tyneside is aiming to cut the amount of plastic waste left by beachgoers.Named Feed the Fish, the artwork at Sandhaven, South Shields, is designed so people can dispose of plastic bottles which are then recycled.South Tyneside Council said it hoped it would encourage visitors to keep plastic off the beach and reduce the amount washed into the sea.The authority will work with schools and local groups to name the fish.Councillor Joan Atkinson, deputy leader of the council, said the landmark would “help to raise awareness of the risk” plastic poses to the environment.”The danger of plastic pollution to marine life and birds is well-documented.”We hope that this new sculpture will inspire and engage beach visitors to support our efforts to keep plastic off the beach and prevent it being washed into the ocean.”Every piece of plastic that is fed to the fish will make a difference to our planet through preventing pollution and supporting recycling.”It comes after the council installed 25 additional recycling bins along the seafront area last summer.Follow BBC North East & Cumbria on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to northeastandcumbria@bbc.co.uk.Related TopicsPlasticPlastic pollutionSouth ShieldsSouth Tyneside CouncilEnvironmentRelated Internet LinksSouth Tyneside CouncilThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

The City of Pittsburgh has delayed the rollout of its ban on single-use plastic bags. City officials said enforcement of the ban, which was previously scheduled to start in mid-April, has been pushed back until October.Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey said the postponement will allow officials to better help businesses and consumers prepare for the transition.“This extra time will allow us to do the work to be able to enact this policy with proper guidance for everyone in order to make this as smooth as possible for all of us,” Gainey said in a statement Thursday.Now starting Oct. 14, the city’s ban will prohibit retailers and restaurants from distributing single-use plastic bags. Stores will be required to post visible notices about the upcoming plastic bag ban 90 days before the policy goes into effect.It’s part of a push to protect Pittsburgh’s waterways and natural lands. Single-use plastic bags sent to landfills can take 1,000 years to decompose and often leach toxic microplastics into soils and waterways.After sampling 50 of the state’s waterways, advocates with PennEnvironment found all of them contained microplastics.
Alongside the measure, the city will launch a website with public information on the ban. The Department of Public Works is slated to distribute to businesses a list of distributors for both compliant paper and reusable bags.That includes paper bags, made of at least 40% recycled material, provided to customers at a charge of at least 10 cents each. Stores that accept food assistance benefits, however, will be able to provide those bags to customers paying with WIC or EBT dollars free of cost.Enforcement of the ban will include a three-step sanctions framework by which inspectors can issue written warnings for initial violations. Those will then be followed by escalating fines.Per the legislation, the city will facilitate and support a pilot reusable bag program through which reusable bags can be purchased, donated and distributed by individuals and organizations.The City of Pittsburgh has encouraged businesses and consumers to begin going plastic-free ahead of the October deadline.Giant Eagle launched a pilot ban on single-use plastic bags at 40 of its stores. While it was cut short due to the onset of the pandemic, a company spokesperson said approximately 20 million single-use plastic bags were diverted from landfills during the two months the ban was in effect.The company said it plans to end the use of single-use plastics in all of its operations by 2025. As of October, the retailer has stopped stocking plastic bags at its stores in Columbus, Cleveland, and Erie, as well as at the Waterworks Market District in Pittsburgh.

Making the case that their local government was built on a culture of white supremacy, Black residents of St. James Parish in the heart of Louisiana’s “cancer alley” have filed a federal lawsuit claiming land-use and zoning policies illegally concentrated more than a dozen polluting industrial plants where they live.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New Orleans by the environmental justice groups Inclusive Louisiana and RISE St. James, and the Mt. Triumph Baptist Church, traces Black history since European settlement in the 1700s through the legacy of slavery and post-Civil War racism, to assert that parish government officials intentionally directed industry toward Black residents and away from white residents.

Outside the Hale Boggs Federal Building in New Orleans on Tuesday, leaders of the two environmental justice organizations and the church said “enough is enough” and called for a permanent moratorium on chemical plants and similar facilities along with a cleaner, safer economic future in their communities.

The plaintiffs said they have been calling for a moratorium and relief from heavy industry for several years, but to no avail.

“This is the day that the Lord has made and we shall rejoice and be glad therein because we smell victory,” said Barbara Washington, co-founder and co-director of the faith-based group Inclusive Louisiana. “Every one of us has been touched by the parish’s decisions to expose us to toxic plants. We all have stories about our own health and the health of our friends. It’s time to stop packing our neighborhoods with plants that produce toxic chemicals.”

Shamyra Lavigne with RISE St. James said: “Over and over, the St. James Parish Council has ignored us and dismissed our cries for basic human rights. We will not be ignored. We will not sacrifice our lives.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights based in New York and the New Orleans-based Tulane University Environmental Law Clinic are counsel for the plaintiffs. Chief among their claims: the parish’s land use system violates the Thirteenth Amendment as a vestige of slavery as well as the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which bars discrimination.

“To our knowledge, this (lawsuit) is the first of its kind in the way it uses the Civil Rights statutes and Constitutional provisions to challenge this kind of pattern and practice,” said Astha Sharma Pokharel, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. The harms that persist today, she said, are linked to “slavery and its afterlife.”

St. James Parish officials did not immediately return requests for comment.

The Challenge of Proving Intent

Legal experts not involved in the case on Tuesday described the lawsuit as ambitious, timely and significant in its ambition and approach.

Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold, a land-use and property rights lawyer at the University of Louisville’s Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, described the lawsuit as “strong and innovative.

“Typically, environmental justice groups have raised allegations of discriminatory local land-use practices in lawsuits against specific land-development projects or specific regulatory decisions,” said Arnold, author of the 2007 book, “Fair and Healthy Land Use: Environmental Justice and Planning,” and the forthcoming book, “Racial Justice in American Land Use.”

“When environmental justice groups have addressed systemic environmental injustices in local land-use practices, they’ve often worked with local governments to seek regulatory and policy reforms, although perhaps in the shadow of threats of lawsuits.”

What makes the St. James lawsuit distinctive, Arnold said, is that it challenges  “the entire set of local land use practices and supports its arguments with a detailed history of how these land use practices have discriminated against and unequally harmed Black communities, which have ongoing impacts.”

A pipeline crosses Highway 18 in St. James Parish, Louisiana. Credit: James Bruggers

Because this pattern of racially unjust land use practices isn’t unique to St. James Parish, “perhaps we will see more such lawsuits in the future,” Arnold said.

The lawsuit illustrates a continued and welcomed emergence of the significance of environmental justice within the field of environmental law, said Patrick Parentau, an emeritus professor of law and senior fellow for climate policy at the Vermont Law and Graduate School. “This has been a long time coming,” Parentau added.

“This is the right team of lawyers to do it,” he said of the lawsuit. “It’s the right clients and the right state.”

Still, Parentau said, proving intent won’t be easy. It won’t be enough to merely map out the location of the industrial plants in Black neighborhoods, he said. “You have to get inside their heads,” he said of the parish land-use decision-makers. “You have to have minutes of meetings. Is there something in writing? Do they have recordings?”

The plaintiff’s lawyers could potentially face skeptical appellate judges and a Supreme Court with its 7-3 conservative majority, should the Louisiana case get that far. Louisiana is in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has been described as the nation’s most conservative.

Despite those obstacles, Parentau said he is “happy as hell to see this,  God love them.”

Pokharel agreed proving intent can be a challenge but said the team’s lawyers have been looking closely at the history of decisions that were made, statements by people who were making the decisions and various land use practices. “We have facts throughout our complaint about how racially discriminatory these actions were, not just the consequences,” she said.

She cited as one example a decision by local officials to offer two-mile buffer zones separating industrial sites that protected certain buildings in white communities but not Black communities. The lawsuit claims that officials agreed, for example, to establish buffer zones for Catholic churches, which were majority white, and schools in white areas, but not churches or schools in Black areas. 

Environmental Injustice as Vestige of Slavery

In Louisiana, parishes are like counties; St. James has five electoral districts. The 5th District is 88.6 percent Black and the 4th District is 53 percent Black, the only two that are majority Black.

The plaintiff’s group’s members live in the areas where their enslaved ancestors labored on brutal sugarcane plantations, and want access to the graves of their ancestors, which have been covered over or fenced off by industries, infringing on religious liberty, according to the lawsuit.

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Plastic production is on track to triple by 2050, a potential influx of hazardous materials that the Earth and humans can’t handle, according to a new report from the Minderoo-Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health.

Experts say the report is one of the most comprehensive to date in compiling evidence of plastics’ risks for humans, the environment and the economy at every stage of their lifecycle. The commission — a group of researchers organized by the Australian foundation Minderoo, the Scientific Center of Monaco and Boston College — found plastics disproportionately harm low-income communities, people of color and children. They’re urging negotiators of the United Nations Global Plastics Treaty to take bold steps, such as capping plastic production, banning some single-use plastics and regulating the toxic chemicals added to plastics. Countries launched the plastics treaty process in March 2022, with the goal of adopting it in 2024.

From production through disposal, plastics impact people and the environment. At fossil fuel extraction sites (most plastics are made from fossil fuels like oil or natural gas) and plastic production facilities workers and surrounding communities are exposed to pollutants that can cause reproductive complications such as premature births and low birth weights, lung cancer, diabetes and asthma, among other illnesses.

Use of plastic products can expose people to toxic chemicals, including phthalates, which are linked to brain development problems in children, and BPA, which is linked to heart attacks and neurological issues. At the end of the plastics supply chain are growing landfills that leach harmful materials into the environment and surrounding communities. These landfills are often found in poor countries, described in the report as “pollution havens.”

“The bottom line is that plastic is not nearly as cheap as we thought it was, it’s just that the costs have been invisible,” Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician, director at the Boston College Global Observatory on Planetary Health and lead author of the report, told Environmental Health News (EHN). In fact, health-related costs resulting from plastic production were more than $250 billion in 2015, the report found.

He explained that the commission’s recommendations for the those discussing the treaty could prevent many of those costs to environmental health and the economy.

Plastics production caps and bans

Countries launched the plastics treaty process in March 2022, with the goal of adopting it in 2024.Credit: United Nations “There needs to be a global cap on plastic production,” Dr. Landrigan said. This cap would allow some plastic production, but prevent the anticipated growth of plastics in the coming years. Production is increasing in part because the fossil fuel industry is looking for new markets as rising demand for renewable energy could decrease the need for fuel, the report says.The commission hopes countries signing the Global Plastics Treaty will ban avoidable plastics alongside capping production. Roughly 35% to 40% of plastic goes into disposable single-use items, and that fraction is expected to increase. “We need to get in charge again of why we use plastic,” Jane Muncke, managing director and chief scientific officer at the Food Packaging Forum who was unaffiliated with the report, told EHN.

Plastic waste and health harms 

Less than 10% of plastics are reused or recycled, according to the report, and the rest is burned or goes into landfills with devastating human and environmental tolls. Areas where plastic is burned experience elevated pollution and health risks. For example, plastic burning is linked to about 5.1% of lung cancers in cities in India, according to the report. Waste from electronics, with plastic and metal components, creates harmful exposures for the people around them, including roughly 18 million children working with electronic waste, the report says.For plastics that remain on the market, the commission hopes to see improved health and safety testing of the thousands of chemicals added to plastics. There are more than 2,400 chemicals added to plastics that are considered a high risk, the report says, and many others have never been tested. “The burden of proof that a chemical is problematic ends up being on society, when people start having health problems,” Andrea Gore, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Texas at Austin, told EHN. To change this, the commission proposes testing chemicals for toxicity before they’re added to plastic products that are sold. Exposure to plastics “falls most heavily on poor people, minorities, Indigenous populations, and of course, kids,” Dr. Landrigan said. He explains that generally, poor countries facing plastic pollution want to see global commitments to reduce plastics and their health harms, while countries that produce plastics might be wary of regulations that reduce the industry’s profits.

“It’ll spin out of control” 

The second negotiation meeting for the Global Plastics Treaty will start in Paris in late May. The initial meeting covered procedures and included representatives from 160 countries. It saw conflict between the High Ambition Coalition, made up of 40 countries who advocate for the treaty to include mandatory actions, and others, including the United States, who want the treaty to result in pledges from each country.For individuals concerned about plastic in their own life, Gore recommends reducing contact with plastic wherever is practical and avoiding heating plastic in the microwave, which can leach toxics. “Don’t panic, because it is easy to get very alarmed,” she said. ”This document gave me hope and has very strong recommendations.” Dr. Landrigan points out that while reducing harms from plastic can seem daunting, there are examples of policy changing the environment for the better, such as the Clean Air Act, which reduced U.S. air pollution by 77% from 1970 to 2019. But, he said, “if we don’t act courageously and just let the plastic crisis continue to escalate, it’ll spin out of control.”From Your Site ArticlesRelated Articles Around the Web

Plastic causes illness and death across its lifecycle, from production to use and disposal, a team of nearly 50 scientists concludes in a report to be made public Tuesday.

The risk can come from being near oil and gas extraction, working in plastic manufacturing plants or living near them, eating food heated in plastic packaging or breathing the air near incinerators where plastic waste gets burned as trash.

The report was produced by the Minderoo-Monoco Commission on Human Health, a body of scientists assembled by the Australian-based Minderoo Foundation, and published by Annals of Global Health, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

The commission concluded that global plastic production, use and disposal patterns are responsible for significant harm to human health, the environment and the economy, and are causing deep societal injustices, particularly to children. It recommended establishing health-protective standards for plastic chemicals under a United Nations plastics treaty that’s being negotiated now, and a cap on plastic production, which is otherwise expected to triple by 2060.

The report is the latest by scientists who have documented the ubiquitous nature of plastic in the world, and the environmental consequences. 

Plastic waste and microplastic particles have been found on the highest mountaintops and in ocean trenches; in the stomachs of whales and other marine mammals, and in our bodies, leading to mounting concerns about what all that plastic might be doing to the planet, wildlife and people. 

The commission’s focus on health accentuates those concerns, especially as they relate to a debate over how plastic affects human health. 

A lead author of the report, Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, a pediatrician, epidemiologist and director of Boston College’s Global Public Health Program and Global Observatory on Planetary Health, said the debate is largely resolved. 

“The level of scientific certainty is absolute,” he said. “There are still details to be worked out about the exact magnitude, but there is no doubt whatsoever that plastic causes disease, disability, premature death, economic damage and damage to ecosystems at every stage of its life cycle. And the life cycle begins with the extraction of the oil, the coal, and the gas that are the building blocks for 98 to 99 percent of plastics.”

Dr. Philip Landrigan speaks at a plastics workshop at Bennington College in 2022. Credit: James Bruggers

Landigran has been studying the health effects of environmental pollutants for decades and worked on the first studies that linked the dangers of lead exposure to children. 

He was also a pioneer in defining children’s unique susceptibilities to pesticides and other toxic chemicals and, while at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, was centrally involved in the medical and epidemiologic studies that followed the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and health impacts to thousands of rescue workers.

In recent years, Landrigan has turned his attention to plastic. The commission, he said, is an offshoot from work he did on human health and ocean pollution with the Scientific Center of Monaco, a partner in the new plastics report, along with Boston College and the Minderoo Foundation. The commission included health experts, biological oceanographers and environmental scientists who collaborated to quantify plastic’s risks to all life on earth.

Among the commission’s key findings:

Plastic causes disease, impairment and premature mortality at every stage of its life cycle, with the health repercussions disproportionately affecting vulnerable, low-income and minority communities, particularly children.

Toxic chemicals added to plastic and routinely detected in people are known to increase the risk of miscarriage, obesity, cardiovascular disease and cancers.

Plastic waste is ubiquitous and the ocean, on which people depend for oxygen, food and livelihoods, is “suffering beyond measure, with micro- and nano plastics particles contaminating the water and the sea floor and entering the marine food chain.”

“It is not ethical to deliberately expose humans to toxic chemicals,” said Sarah Dunlop, co-author and head of plastics and human health at the Minderoo Foundation, based in Nedlands, a suburb of Perth in Western Australia. “And yet, that’s what’s happening every day of our lives. These chemicals are being detected in our blood, our urine, our amniotic fluid, you name it, because the chemicals leach out of the plastic.”

Andrew and Nicola Forrest founded Minderoo Foundation in 2001. Andrew Forrest is a mining magnate and multi-billionaire. The couple has pledged to give away much of their fortune.

In February, the foundation released a report that concluded that despite rising consumer awareness, corporate attention and regulation, there is more single-use plastic waste than ever before—an additional 6 million metric tons generated in 2021 compared to 2019 and still almost entirely made from fossil fuels.

Toxic Chemicals With Our Fast Food

The report synthesizes the state of scientific knowledge on plastics and health, citing scores of research references. It includes a new calculation that health-related losses from plastics production exceeded $250 billion globally in 2015. In the United States alone, health costs of disease and disability caused by certain chemicals used to make plastic likely exceeded $920 billion in 2015, the report found.

Plastic production released nearly 2 gigatons of carbon dioxide annually, which would amount to a single-year cost of $341 billion, according to the report. In all, plastic accounts for as much as 5 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions across its lifecycle, equivalent to emissions from Russia, making it a large-scale contributor to climate change, according to the report. 

The report stands in sharp contrast to how the chemical and plastics industry describes plastics in society. Rather than a scourge, the industry touts oil and gas development as a source of jobs and energy independence, plastics production as means of economic development and plastic products as a social and personal benefit of modern society.

Plastics keep food fresh and safe to eat and reduce food waste and the waste’s methane emissions, industry representatives say. They say that plastics make shipping materials, cars and trucks lighter so they use less fuel, and they note that plastics are widely used in the health care system.  

The industry and trade groups also argue that they are working to end plastic pollution through so-called “advanced recycling” techniques—still largely unproven—that use heat and chemicals to turn plastic waste into fossil fuels and other feedstocks to produce new plastic products.

“We don’t have to get rid of all plastics,” Landrigan said. “I mean, I am a medical doctor. I use IV bags. I use endoscopes. A lot of plastics are essential. But why does 40 percent of current production have to be single-use plastic stuff we use and throw away?”

In an interview, Landrigan sketched out the life cycle of health risks.

One example, he said, is the recent train derailment and disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, which required burning off carcinogenic vinyl chloride from five train cars and produced a huge fire and cloud of toxic smoke. The chemical is used to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic.

Workers exposed to some of the thousands of chemicals used to make plastic are also at risk, as well as communities near manufacturing plants, he said.

“Think about the little kid chewing on the rubber ducky, and swallowing the phthalates that squeeze out of the rubber ducky,” Landrigan said, referring to chemicals used to make plastic more durable. Phthalates are endocrine disrupters that can mimic or block hormones, with potentially serious consequences, studies have shown.

Plastic waste is often dumped in landfills or incinerated—only 9 percent of it is actually recycled and used again—and a large amount of the waste gets shipped overseas “to countries that are least equipped to deal with it,” Landrigan said.

The report cited research that found that pregnant women living in homes with PVC flooring have significantly higher urinary levels of some metabolites of phthalate than pregnant women living in homes made with other flooring materials. That signals greater phthalate exposure.

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To jumpstart a paltry market for recycled plastic, governments across the globe are pushing companies to include recycled materials in their products. Last year, the United Kingdom introduced a tax on manufacturers that produce or import plastic packaging containing less than 30 percent recycled plastic. In 2024, New Jersey will begin enforcing similar rules, albeit with lower targets. California now requires that beverage containers be made of 15 percent recycled materials, and Washington will enact a similar requirement later this year. The European Commission, Canada, and Mexico are all considering comparable moves.

Currently, most plastic products are derived from freshly extracted fossil fuels, including crude oil and natural gas. Incorporating some recycled plastic could reduce emissions, and shrink pollution in waterways and landfills, experts say. But collecting, sorting, pulverizing, and melting post-consumer plastics for reuse is expensive. The new laws will potentially help recyclers find buyers for what would otherwise become waste.

But regulators may need a better way to verify that the new laws are working. While companies can enlist a third-party to certify their use of recycled content, most certifiers take a bird’s-eye view, tracking the materials across a range of products and factories. As a result, an item with a “recycled content” label might be completely devoid of recycled content.

This current approach, called mass balance, poses additional challenges for those seeking to verify recycled content. To work well, mass balance requires trustworthy and accurate data, which are not always available across a convoluted supply chain. Experts warn mass balance may also lead to inflated estimates of recycled content.

Researchers in the U.K. have developed a novel method to measure this recycled content that adds fluorescent dyes to recycled plastics at the beginning of manufacturing. By measuring the change in color, the team can determine the amount of recycled content in each individual plastic product. Through the nonprofit ReCon2, the team is running pilot tests in real-world conditions and says this approach can help prevent fraud, keep costs low, and improve consumer trust.

In 2019, the world generated roughly 350 million tons of plastic, a doubling of production over the past two decades. Just 6 percent of global plastics produced came from recycled plastics, leaving most to be shoveled into landfills, incinerated, or carried into ecosystems. Recycling is not sufficient for solving the problem of plastic pollution, many researchers suggest. Instead, the issue will require some measure of reduction and re-use as well. Nevertheless, scientists say that these new laws and technologies that focus on this last option could mitigate the environmental harms of plastic production.

It’s “imperative” to be able to track materials through this recycling market in a way that makes sense, said Katrina Knauer, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “If we really want to make the circular economy a reality, efficient tracking and quantifiable tracking is going to be the only way we can really do that and create trust in a system.”

Companies like Unilever, Coca-Cola, and PepsiCo have been making claims about using recycled content in their products for years. But the term “recycled content” is as flexible as the term “organic” before regulators clamped down on their usage, said Knauer. Earning those badges now requires ticking several boxes determined by federal agencies in the U.S. and the European Commission in the EU. Recycled content hasn’t received the same kind of regulatory scrutiny.

As the recycling industry develops, “I think we will run into some of the same challenges that we ran into in the past with companies making claims that may not be very true,” said Knauer, who is also the chief technology officer at the Bio-Optimized Technologies to keep Thermoplastics out of Landfills and the Environment, an organization at the Department of Energy that helps companies adopt greener plastics technologies.

Right now, many companies use mass balance, which considers all of the inputs that go into making a product and then balances them with the outputs to calculate the amount of recycled material.

For example, say there are 20 plastic bottles in a recycling bin. Those enter a mass balance when they are handed over to a recycling company. A manufacturer may then buy these bottles from the recycling company, as well as the equivalent of 80 bottles from newly extracted oil or gas. Assuming the manufacturer then produces 100 total bottles, the mass balance will conclude that each bottle is made with 20 percent recycled content.

In 2019, just 6 percent of global plastics produced came from recycled plastics, leaving most to be shoveled into landfills, incinerated, or carried into ecosystems.

But there’s a twist: Under some certification schemes, the company can attribute its recycled material evenly across several plants, including those that haven’t been able to acquire any recycled material. As a result, you usually cannot calculate a single product’s recycled content, if it has any at all.

For Zero Waste Europe, a  network of European communities and experts pushing companies and governments to reduce waste, this makes the mass balance approach “a simplistic and meaningless bookkeeping exercise.” But the problem goes beyond misleading marketing. Recycled material can be lower quality, and too much in a product may threaten the product’s integrity.

There are some benefits to mass balance’s flexible approach. With the supply of recycled plastics limited in some areas, it’s helpful to allow companies to compensate by using extra recycled content in areas with plenty to buy.

Eventually, however, consumers should be able to expect that the bottle in their hands has a specific level of recycled content. “That’s the ultimate goal, but it is a really complex system, and it takes a long time to make changes, so we’ll probably need to rely on mass balance to meet that kind of transition,” said Alix Grabowski, director of plastic and material science at the World Wildlife Fund.

That system complexity is felt in other ways, too. Tracking recycled materials along sometimes tortuous chains of purchases depends on trust between companies, said Wan-Ting Hsu, a material flow research analyst and Ph.D. candidate at University College London. Post-consumer plastic material can pass between many companies and jurisdictions with different rules about responsibility and accounting before it returns to retailers ready to sell it back to consumers.

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Companies have been making claims about using “recycled content” in their products for years, but the term isn’t well regulated. In this video, a plastic bottle is manufactured, used, reclaimed, and recycled. But it’s surprisingly difficult to track how much of a new product is actually made from recycled material.Visual:PepsiCo Recycling/YouTube

In interviews with key stakeholders in the plastics value chain, such as brand owners and recyclers, Hsu has learned that companies struggle to verify the source of material, and often they are left to ask for data from previous owners, which can sometimes be inaccurate. Without better proof of content, companies could make misleading claims, experts say, though they could not point to public evidence of such cases.

Another issue: The methods to certify recycled content vary across certification bodies, and there is little consistency. When the Canadian government commissioned the environmental consultancy company Eunomia to consult with manufacturers, as evidenced in the 2021 report, the manufacturers said they often chose certification schemes that offered the most flexible approach. Under such schemes, the company with 20 recycled bottles in its mix of 100, for example, could claim 20 of its bottles are 100 percent recycled, even when this is not the case.

“At this point we haven’t had any real legislation for this,” said Sarah Edwards, North America CEO at Eunomia. Up until now, she added, companies have used certification more for marketing or as part of longer-term sustainability goals.

The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery told Undark that it requires beverage manufacturers to report data to them directly and does not use third-party certifiers at this time. It would not disclose the method to certify information reported. In a draft rule in Washington state that will be finalized later this year, the Department of Ecology said it will require that producers attest to the accuracy of their data or obtain third-party certification.

Mass balance is especially contentious when it is used to certify products created from chemical recycling, a collection of mostly new techniques to strip plastics down to their basic building blocks, called monomers. In contrast to mechanical recycling, which shreds plastic but keeps its chemical form, manufacturers can use monomers to construct many different kinds of plastics, which are made up of polymers.

As part of the chemical recycling process, a plant may burn a portion of the recycled material into fuel or other byproducts. Though this process releases greenhouse gases, some mass balance certifications allow a company to count the burned plastic towards its output of “recycled content.” The hypothetical supply chain that takes in 20 recycled bottles may still claim to produce bottles with 20 percent recycled content, even if 5 of those recycled bottles have been burnt as fuel.

In its 2021 report, Eunomia wrote that the chemical sector preferred to work with ISCC Plus, a third-party certifier in Germany that allows this kind of tabulation. In Edwards’ eyes, the chemical recycling industry is pushing for this as a temporary tool to get started.

Post-consumer plastic material can pass between many companies and jurisdictions with different rules about responsibility and accounting before it returns to retailers ready to sell it back to consumers.

There’s an additional point of contention: With some processes of reducing polymers down to monomers, molecules can react with ambient elements like nitrogen and hydrogen, inflating their weight with molecules that aren’t plastic. Calculating a mass balance just on weight — the typical approach for mechanical recycling — doesn’t work as well for chemical recycling and can overestimate the recycled content in materials.

A widely cited white paper published by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity committed to creating a circular economy, provided an example: Producing 100 pounds of polyamide, often used in textiles, would require 150 pounds of recycled material if measured with weight, or 170 pounds if measured with calorific value — a unit that quantifies an object’s energy and doesn’t change as readily.

Scientists and engineers have agreed to use more precise units, like calorific value, but “there is quite a bit of argument across the industry” about which units to use, Knauer said.

Michael Shaver, a professor of polymer science at the University of Manchester and one of the researchers involved with ReCon2, said the group had “significant concerns in terms of the mass balance approach.”

“If the public believes that this is a measure of exactly how much plastic is in each package, that’s not what mass balance actually gives you, right?” he said.

Shaver wanted to develop a way to measure the recycled content in each individual product. He joined with Ph.D. student Zoé Schyns and research fellow Thomas Bennett, and together they developed a technique that adds fluorescent dye to the recycled materials during the manufacturing process. Regardless of what happens between the beginning and end of manufacturing, the ratio between fluorescence at the beginning and end reveals the concentration of recycled content in each individual product. Some of the light appears as green within the visible light spectrum, but one strategy is to keep the precise technique a secret so companies do not misuse it.

“We can show not only that everyone in your supply chain acted appropriately, but also that you have the same in all of your different bottles or film,” said Shaver. Although the public results focus on three of the most popular plastic types, the researchers say the approach can be adapted for other kinds of plastics and rules. Sponsors of a year-long trial phase include Kraft-Heinz and Reckitt, two large consumer good corporations, and the U.K.’s leading recycling label, OPRL.

“If the public believes that this is a measure of exactly how much plastic is in each package, that’s not what mass balance actually gives you, right?” Shaver said.

The company believes roll out of the technology would require an industry-wide approach, even as others doubt that plastic producers can adapt to including tracers. Shaver expects that their nonprofit ReCon2 will “shepherd” firms into the program, while it audits participating companies and gatekeeps against products with inaccurate or false recycled content claims. As a nonprofit, it would prioritize keeping the technique as low- cost as possible to promote adoption and minimize fraud through passive compliance.

On a broader scale, Knauer expects that establishing trust in measuring recycled content will take action from governments, as happened with “organic” labels. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may be moving in this direction. In 2021, the agency laid out a national recycling strategy that includes the creation of “recycled content measures.” (A spokesperson told Undark that the EPA hasn’t started working on this yet.)

“I do not think that mass balance is the way we’re going to do it forever,” said Knauer. “I think there’s a lot to be done in this space and a lot more innovation we can certainly do.”

Ian Morse (@ianjmorse) investigates land and extractive businesses, reports on the natural sciences, and writes the Green Rocks newsletter. He is based in Seattle.

A bill has been introduced in the Minnesota Legislature that would allow Minnesotans exposed to toxic substances to sue the responsible companies for the cost of monitoring their health. 
Rep. Jeff Brand, DFL-St. Peter, and Sen. Tou Xiong, DFL-Maplewood, introduced the legislation (HF2794/SF2727), which would apply to people who aren’t sick and allows their legal fees to be reimbursed. People who are sick have other legal remedies.
The bill is aimed at the likes of 3M, which has avoided major litigation from Minnesotans despite contaminating water supplies in the East Metro with a class of chemicals known as PFAS, which are used widely in industrial and consumer products. 
The state of Minnesota settled a lawsuit with 3M in 2018 for $850 million, with the money going to provide clean water to affected East Metro communities. But Minnesotans who believe they’ve been sickened by 3M chemicals have been stymied by a lack of medical monitoring, which could detect whether the contamination is affecting their health.  
Brand said the bill still needs a fiscal note, which is the required government analysis of how much a new law would cost taxpayers — and it may be too late for a committee hearing this session.
Jay Eidsness, staff attorney for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, said the bill is unique in allowing people to make a claim even if they’re not sick. The bill would give some relief to East Metro residents “living under a cloud of uncertainty,” Eidsness said. 
The bill is patterned after a first-of-its-kind Vermont law. Courts in about 16 states have recognized the right to seek medical monitoring, but Vermont’s law marked the first time a state put that right in statute, leaving no question that people could seek reimbursement of costs, according to Safer States, a national alliance of environmental health organizations. 
Vermont lawmakers pushed for the law after a now-shuttered Bennington plastics factory contaminated 8,000 residents’ drinking water, leading to a $34 million class action settlement that included a $6 million medical monitoring fund. 
Xiong went to Tartan High School in Oakdale from 2004 to 2008, and recalls cancer being commonplace at the school. Several THS graduates have been lobbying for bills that will more strictly regulate the chemicals made by 3M — whose headquarters is next door to Oakdale — in Maplewood.
Xiong remembers when state health officials announced in 2005 that 3M chemicals were detected in five Oakdale city water wells. The state health department had begun testing the city’s water for 3M chemicals, which are used in numerous products to repel heat, stains, water, oil and grease. The chemicals have been detected across the globe, contaminating wildlife, people and the environment.
For decades, 3M dumped its chemical waste into a number of unlined Washington County landfills, polluting 200 square miles of groundwater and four aquifers that provide drinking water for thousands of residents.
One of the disposal sites was in Oakdale. It was bought by 3M and designated a Superfund cleanup site in 1985 after the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency found solvents in shallow private wells. Residents then connected to the city’s water system, but chemicals were later found in the city’s water wells, groundwater and soil.
3M and Oakdale began filtering the water in 2006. A 2018 report by the state health department found elevated rates of childhood cancer in Oakdale from 1999 to 2014, and 28% more cases of chronic lymphocytic leukemia in Washington County than the rest of the state from 1999 to 2013.
A group of people east of the Twin Cities sued the company in 2004. Attorneys who were involved in the lawsuit say Brand and Xiong’s bill is a good first step.
After attorney Robert Bilott secured a landmark class action settlement with DuPont in 2004 over pollution 3M-made chemicals caused near DuPont’s plant in West Virginia, he helped represent Washington County residents suing 3M to get clean water and medical monitoring. But they were stymied by Minnesota law, which doesn’t allow medical monitoring claims for people who aren’t sick. 
That meant the lawsuit was narrowed to damage to property values and 3M’s handling of the chemicals. During the trial, lawyers weren’t even allowed to discuss whether the chemicals were harmful. In 2009, a jury decided in 3M’s favor.
The outcome was very different in West Virginia, where DuPont was required to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup costs. The company also had to pay for an independent panel of scientists to study chemical impacts and monitor the health of thousands of West Virginians exposed to chemicals in drinking water. After seven years of study, the panel linked the chemicals to six diseases, including two types of cancer.
“Unfortunately, 3M has never really accepted that science and to this day dismisses any such causal connections between exposure to these chemicals and human health at all,” Bilott said in a November interview. “So it’s been difficult for others to be able to ever get compensated for the harms caused by their exposure because the company continues to dispute that science and oppose regulatory efforts relying upon that science.”
3M did not respond to a request for comment.
Last month, Bilott said during a press conference he’s monitoring the bills moving through Minnesota’s Legislature while pushing for medical monitoring nationwide. In 2018, he filed a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of anyone in the U.S. exposed to the chemicals made by 3M and other companies. He wants the companies to pay for a scientific panel to confirm how much harm the chemicals are causing.
In April, a judge certified the lawsuit to go forward for Ohioans, but the chemical companies are fighting expanding the class to all Americans.
“We’re trying to find ways to address these issues,” Bilott said, “but right now 3M is opposing those efforts everywhere across the country.”