Whole Foods lags in reducing plastic pollution, report says

Whole Foods lags in reducing plastic pollution, report says | The Hill Skip to content SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images Customers who shop at Whole Foods are getting their groceries with a side order of plastic, a new report has found. After early progress in removing single-use plastic from its stores, Whole Foods’ efforts to …

Adrift Lab classifies new disease caused by plastic ingestion by Lord Howe Island seabirds

A previously unknown disease in seabirds caused by the ingestion of plastic has been found on Lord Howe Island by scientists from the United Kingdom and Australia.Named plasticosis, the newly classified disease is caused by plastic that repeatedly injures soft tissue and leads to the formation of extensive scar tissue in a bird’s stomach.Impacted scar tissue does not operate like healthy tissue and can impact organ structure and function.The discovery was made by a cross-disciplinary team that included scientists from the UK’s Natural History Museum and Australian institutions, which collaborated as part of a global team under the banner of Adrift Lab and classified the disease.Adrift Lab researcher Hayley Charlton-Howard said it raised concern about plastic ingestion in other species, including humans.Plastic ingested in oceanic foodFlesh-footed shearwater birds on Lord Howe Island off New South Wales regularly consume plastics, with scientists surmising plastic ingestion starts at hatching.

Plastic is choking Ghana’s sea

Frustration is written across Richard Yartey’s face as he drags his heavy net to shore. It is filled with plastic bottles and bags, but not fish. This will cost him money. 

“We often have to repair our fishing nets two or three times a week because of the plastic in the water,” he says.

Jamestown in Accra, where Yartey had cast his net, was once a thriving fishing enclave. But Yartey says they now often have to travel to Elmina, a fishing spot about 130km away.

Markets in Accra pay better but the same city also pollutes the waters with discarded water bottles, sachets and other refuse. 

Ghana produces 840 000 tonnes of plastic waste annually, with only a small portion being recycled, according to data provided by the World Economic Forum.

When the unrecycled waste finds its way into the ocean, it’s not only a problem for people. 

“Marine animals like turtles and whales mistake it for food and suffer serious harm or even die,” says Christopher Gordon, of the Institute for Environment and Sanitation Studies at the University of Ghana.

A 2018 United Nations study reported that 80% of municipal solid waste generated in African cities was recyclable and if this was done, it could generate up to $8 billion a year.

In 2019, Ghana launched its national plastic action, which relies on encouraging businesses to make products out of recycled plastic.

Some have heeded the call. Nelplast Ghana, for example, produces pavement blocks from plastic waste and has a workforce of 300 people.

But small-scale private enterprise is an insufficient solution to this major public problem that occurs across Africa. 

Citizen initiatives in Africa recycle about 11% of the recyclable waste, according to a 2022 UN report by Desta Mebratu and Andriannah Mbandi. But there are few large-scale efforts so the rubbish instead ends up as a costly and harmful mess.

In places such as Jamestown beach, every plastic-clogged net is a reminder of the urgent need for bigger solutions. Gordon says a ban on single-use plastic should be one of Ghana’s solutions to pollution. 

This article first appeared in The Continent, the pan-African weekly newspaper produced in partnership with the Mail & Guardian. It’s designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp. Download your free copy here.

The 5 most common recycling mistakes, and how to avoid them

Doing right by the planet can make you happier, healthier, and—yes—wealthier. Outside’s Head of Sustainability, Kristin Hostetter, explores small lifestyle tweaks that can make a big impact. Write to her at [email protected].
I’m standing in front of my recycling bin holding an empty cardboard carton of organic milk. I want to recycle it. Part of the reason I bought this milk, which was about a buck more than the stuff in the plastic jug, is that for several years now I’ve been waging a war against plastic in both my personal and professional life.
Cardboard is one of the most recyclable materials in the world. But a little voice inside my head is nagging, “What about that plastic coating on the inside? Does it matter? It’s still mostly cardboard…right?”
I hope for the best, drop it in the bin, and just like that, I’ve “wishcycled.”
Turns out, my cardboard milk container is not recyclable here in northern Vermont, despite the carton’s How2Recycle label advice. But if I saved it and brought it to my mom’s house in Massachusetts, I could throw it in her bin. (Want to know if you can curbside-recycle cardboard milk and juice containers? Plug your address in here.)
Wishcycling is when you put something in the recycle bin because you want to recycle it. You hope it will get turned into some shiny new object. But you don’t really know if it will and so you decide to let someone else down the line figure it out for you.
Your intentions are good, but you’re actually creating a huge pain in the ass for recycling facilities.
Wishcycling Versus Reality
“Wishcycling adds financial, labor, and environmental burdens throughout every recycling system around the world,” says Michele Morris, director of marketing and communications of the Chittendon Solid Waste District in Vermont, which owns the recycling facility near my home in Stowe, Vermont. “A worker will have to manually pull that thing off the conveyor belt and send it to the landfill, when you could have made that choice and avoided all those impacts throughout the process.” Morris says she sees some wild items come through the facility: shoes, bicycle tires, garden hoses, styrofoam coolers, plastic toys, and even the odd bowling ball or two.
The antidote to wishcycling is pretty simple: Don’t make assumptions and take the time to learn which items are recyclable in your area. I googled “town dump Stowe Vermont”  and found this page which has a tab spelling out what I can recycle where I live.
There’s no magic Google phrase for all locales, though. If you live in a city, say Chicago, try “recycling Chicago.” Within a few clicks you’ll find what you need. If you have specific questions not answered there, find the contact page and pick up the phone. “What’s accepted in your area depends on how far you are from processors and how much recycling your community generates, among other factors,” says Morris. “All these can vary not just regionally, but even within one state.” Some examples of things that can vary region by region: different types of plastics, and yes, those milk cartons.
“People love to say that recycling is broken,” says Stefanie Valenti, editorial director of Waste360. “It’s not, but it is disjointed. The infrastructure hasn’t evolved along with all the different types of materials, mainly plastics, that have come out. The waste management industry is investing lots of money in improving its logistics, but it’s a slow process.”
The whole concept of recycling is based on economics. Recycling was a $2.9 billion business in 2020 and like all markets, it’s based on supply and demand. There’s big demand for certain types of materials, like cardboard Amazon boxes and plastic Miracle Whip jars. But for some materials—like milk cartons—there are fewer processors who can break down the multi-layered material and therefore less of a recycling market for it.
“When in doubt, give a shout or throw it out,” says Morris. “Learn the rules where you live and have faith that those rules are designed to capture the most important and impactful materials while keeping out the undesirable stuff. If you’re not sure, trash it.”
I think back to the thousands of recycling blunders I’ve made over the years: the unused plastic cutlery from Yum Yum Thai, the Scotch tape dispensers, the chipped pint glasses. (Yes, all of those things are no-no’s according to “the container rule,” below.)
But according to Morris, we shouldn’t sweat the small stuff. If we all focused on what she calls “The Big Five” most common recycling mistakes, it would be a huge win for the recycling world and the planet.
The Big Five Curbside Recycling Mistakes
Plastic Bags
Filmy plastic (aka “soft film”) of any kind, including zipper-locks, bubble wrap, plastic padded Amazon envelopes, garbage bags, wrap from toilet paper, and bread bags, don’t work in any single-stream recycling system.
Left: When plastic bags make their way into the single-stream recycling system, they tangle up in the machinery and wreak havoc. Right: When properly recycled, plastic bags get baled and sold to recyclers. (Photo: Boulder Country Recycling Center)
Why it’s a problem: Soft film jams machinery. Workers have to hit the kill switch on the whole operation and manually pull it out of the system. It can also tangle up with other valuable recyclables and then the whole mess gets landfilled rather than sold and repurposed. And if you bag perfectly good recyclables, like plastic water bottles and paper, the whole bag will get landfilled because workers don’t have the bandwidth to unbag and sort them.
The solution: Many grocery stores across the country accept soft film and recycle it properly. Find a local market by entering your zip code here.
Un-Rinsed Containers
Why it’s a problem: Two reasons: Old peanut butter and congealed sauce from your General Tso chicken degrades the value of the material you’re recycling (which defeats the whole purpose). And it can also pose health and safety risks to human workers who have to handle the nastiness and deal with the rats and wasps that get attracted to the facility.
Left: This peanut butter jar is not fit for the bin. Right: After 15 minutes with my puppy, it’s ready to recycle. (Photo: Kristin Hostetter)
The solution: Give your stuff a quick rinse (no need for soap or elbow grease) to remove the majority of the gunk. Or better yet, save water and give your pet another reason to love you. Dogs and cats do a very good job of licking food containers clean.
Rigid Plastic
Single-stream recycling is designed to take rigid, single-use plastic containers from food, drinks, and nonhazardous cleaning materials like shampoo and laundry soap. But don’t assume all plastic is single-stream recyclable. On most plastic, you can find a number inside a triangle of chasing arrows or letters next to it (like PET or HDPE). The numbers and letters, called Resin Identification Codes (or RICs) indicate the type of plastic, but they were never designed for consumer education. “They were created for end-market recyclers and processors to ensure consistency within each bale of materials,” says Morris.
Morris suggests ignoring the numbers and instead getting familiar with your local recycling rules. She says a good general approach is using the container rule, which simply means single-use rigid plastic containers only, like water, soda, and salad dressing bottles, salad containers, and shampoo bottles. The system isn’t designed to take durable plastic items like storage bins, flip-flops, pens, toys, sunglasses, or hampers because items need to be sorted and baled with like products. The recycler can’t collect enough pens, for instance, to create a marketable 35,000-pound load for them to sell. “On the other hand, we know that the overwhelming majority of containers we get will be the types of plastics we want—the types we can sell to processors to be turned into new raw materials.”
Why it’s a problem: While almost anything is technically recyclable, in real world terms there are a bunch of factors at play. First, Morris says, you need to have enough homogenous material (supply) to make it worthwhile from a labor, cost, and space perspective for the facility to collect. Next, you need a recycler willing and able to sort and bale that material. Then you need a marketer to collect the bales and sell it to processors. And finally, you need a processor willing to buy the material (demand) at a cost that sufficiently pays everyone along the supply chain for their labor and transportation and still nets a profit for them. “That’s why we target the common items. We know there is supply and we know there is demand,” she says.
The solution: Ask yourself, “Is this a single-use container?” If yes, bin it, regardless of the numbers or letters inside the arrows. If not, trash it. And try to avoid buying anything plastic if you can.
Scrap Metal 
The container rule applies here, too. Only empty metal food, drink, and nonhazardous cleaning materials containers belong in your bin, like drink, soup, and olive oil cans.
Why it’s a problem: Other metal objects like silverware, bottle caps, metal jar lids, blades from safety razors, and wire hangers can be extremely dangerous for workers and damage recycling machinery.
The solution: Save those items and find a local scrap metal recycler (just Google it!). Metal has value—you might even make a few bucks.
Batteries
Batteries—especially lithium ions—are huge no-nos for curbside recycling and have caused a remarkable number of fires at recycling facilities, landfills, transfer stations, and even during transport.
Dumpster fires, like this one in 2022, are disturbingly common at recycling centers, many of which stem from improper recycling of batteries. (Photo: Boulder Country Recycling Center)
Why it’s a problem: Batteries are extremely sensitive to heat and friction. And, trust me, there’s a whole lot of friction going on at recycling centers. Think: complex mazes of converter belts, metal teeth, grinding gears, vibrating steel mesh, and high-powered magnets and vacuums.)
The solution: Save them in a box and ask your town or local recycling center for the nearest drop-off.
Kristin Hostetter is the Head of Sustainability at Outside Interactive, Inc. and the resident sustainability columnist on Outside Online.

New disease caused by plastics discovered in seabirds

New disease caused by plastics discovered in seabirds Natural History Museum scientists say plasticosis, which scars digestive tract, likely to affect other types of bird too A new disease caused solely by plastics has been discovered in seabirds. The birds identified as having the disease, named plasticosis, have scarred digestive tracts from ingesting waste, scientists …

Hidden dangers on Easter Island: The hunt for microplastics

Although barely noticeable by the human eye, microplastics can take their toll.March 2, 2023, 8:11 AMThe deep blue waters, shimmering cliffs and palm tree-lined beaches of Easter Island face a growing threat: plastic.“So now there are some things that belonged to this beach. For example, the rock belonged to this beach. The shell belonged to this beach. But the plastic, no,” said Rapa Nui native Ludo Tuki Burns.Ivan Hinojosa carries a container of microplastics.GMABurns has spent most of his life preserving the island.He organizes regular beach clean-ups at places suc as Anakena Beach, where he took “Good Morning America” to get a closer look.“The plastic is going to float and then with this tool you are going to take [it out of the water],” said Burns. “And so you will take only the plastic.”Ivan Hinojosa with a tool used to skim plastic out of the water.GMAIvan Hinojosa is a marine biologist who is studying plastic pollution on Easter Island. He estimates a ton of plastic washes ashore each month.Below the surface Hinojosa hunts for microplastics — plastic that has since degraded in the ocean and carried by strong currents from all over the world.“I can distinguish at least five different types of plastic here just with my eye, but in the microscope we’re going to find more,” said Hinojosa.Marine biologist Ivan Hinojosa studies plastic pollution on Easter IslandGMADegrading plastics also release greenhouse gasses that can interfere with the ocean’s ability to store carbon. It’s estimated that degrading plastic in the ocean releases 76 metric tons of methane per year, contributing to climate change, according to a study.Although barely noticeable by the human eye, microplastics can take their toll through food. A study found that 80% of bait fish used to catch local tuna contain microplastics in their stomachs.“For example, the plastic attracts all the chemicals that are in the water. So you have a higher concentration of toxins in the plastics,” said Hinojosa. “So that when the animals eat them, they’re also [eating] plastic and some poison chemicals.”Despite the deluge, the local community is determined to fight back on behalf of future generations. Burns said when things are thrown away, they don’t just disappear. All trash ends up somewhere.“Well, my message is that we are here in the middle of the Pacific and we receive all the things you think don’t matter. We receive it,” he said. “I believe that we can make a change.”

Climate change: Five good-news stories for the planet in 2023

With several major climate-change related disasters hitting the headlines in recent months, the future of the planet can seem bleak – but new breakthroughs are providing scientists with a glimmer of hope. According to MIT Technology Review, early estimates suggest that climate-change causing emissions “reached a new peak” in 2022. Meanwhile, climate disasters “seem to be hitting at a breakneck pace” as China and Europe experienced record heatwaves and devastating floods hit Pakistan, displacing millions.But there are reasons to be hopeful too as scientists and researchers look for new ways to combat climate change in order to safeguard the future of the planet.Save the whales to save the planetScientists have found that whales absorb a large amount of the CO2 being released into our atmosphere, much more than trees. Although nature-based solutions for climate change often focus on forests and wetlands, the oceans absorb an estimated 31% of the CO2 released into the atmosphere. In a new paper, scientists have argued that whales play an important, and overlooked, role as natural carbon sinks. The mammals accumulate carbon in their bodies during their lifetimes. Their longevity (they can live for up to 100 years) makes them “one of the largest stable living carbon pools” in the ocean, according to the study. When they die, they sink to the ocean floor, locking up carbon for centuries. Even their excrement helps, being rich in the nutrients required by phytoplankton – organisms that also absorb carbon.It has been estimated that the average great whale sequesters 30 tonnes of CO2 a year; by contrast, a tree absorbs 22kg. This, said the paper, suggests that restoring whale populations should be just as much a priority as planting forests. “You can think of protecting whales as a low-risk and low-regret strategy, because there’s really no downside,” study author Dr Heidi Pearson, of the University of Alaska Southeast, told CNN.Wheat for a warmer worldA “climate-proof” wheat that flourishes in high temperatures has been developed by a British research team. Wheat provides 20% of the calories consumed globally, more than any other crop, but it has limited variation and there are fears that as temperatures rise existing crops will start to fail. With this in mind, researchers from the Earlham Institute in Norwich, working with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, set up a two-year trial in the Sonoran Desert, in Mexico. They studied 149 wheat lines, including some that had been selectively bred to include DNA from wild relatives, and locally adapted varieties from Mexico and India. To put the crops under the kind of heat stress that is likely in the future, these were planted late in the season, when temperatures are higher. The teams found that plants with “exotic” DNA fared no worse than standard “elite” lines under normal conditions, but achieved 50% higher yields in the hotter temperatures. They were also able to identify markers that would allow beneficial aspects of the exotic DNA to be introduced into elite lines, offering a quick way to boost their resilience. “This is science we can now use to make an impact almost immediately,” Professor Anthony Hall told Science Daily.A climate ‘Moonshot’Researchers have proposed an outlandish new method of combating climate change: firing plumes of moon dust into space in order to deflect the Sun’s rays away from Earth. In an study published in science journal PLOS Climate, a group of astrophysicists argued that dust fired from the Moon could act as an adjustable solar shield. It would, they suggested, take much less energy to fire dust from the Moon than from Earth, and one strategically directed burst could significantly reduce warming for six days or more. This could act as a “fine-tuned dimmer switch”, said Professor Ben Bromley, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Utah. And unlike many geo-engineering solutions to climate change, it would leave our planet “untouched”. But he added that getting the mining equipment and a ballistic device to the Moon would be a “significant project”.The bacteria-eating ocean plasticAround 12m tonnes of plastic ends up in the world’s oceans each year, but in sampling surveys, only 1% of this plastic has shown up. Now researchers think they have found out where some of the missing plastic is going: it seems that bacteria are eating it. When plastic is in the water, sunlight degrades it into tiny “bite-sized chunks”, said Maaike Goudriaan, a doctoral student at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, which are then devoured by the bacteria Rhodococcus ruber, which digests it and excretes carbon dioxide. She stressed, however, that the bacteria do not provide a total solution to the plastic waste problem: lab tests suggest they eat around 1% of the plastic that enters the ocean and though it would be possible to grow more bacteria to eat more plastic, it would require “stupendous amounts” of the bacteria, which would then produce alarming amounts of CO2. As for the rest of the missing plastic, previous studies have suggested that much of it may have simply sunk to the bottom of the ocean. In 2019, a plastic bag was found in the Mariana Trench, in the Pacific Ocean, the deepest place on Earth.England says no to single-use plasticPolluting single-use plastics are to be banned in England, the government has confirmed.Research shows that each year England uses billions of items made of single-use plastic and only recycles about 10% of it. Most of these items used for takeaway food and beverages. In order to combat these numbers the government has placed a ban on single-use plastics, set to go into effect this October. Those living in the UK “won’t be able to buy these products from any business – this includes retailers, takeaways, food vendors and the hospitality industry”, according to government guidance. Plastic cutlery was in the top 15 most littered items in 2020, according to the government, adding that plastic pollution “takes hundreds of years to break down and inflicts serious damage to our oceans”.This new ban is projected to have a significant effect on waste reduction in England. “Plastic is a scourge which blights our streets and beautiful countryside and I am determined that we shift away from a single-use culture,” said Environment Minister Rebecca Pow. Edinburgh’s Plant Based TreatyEdinburgh has become the first capital in Europe to endorse a plant-based diet in order to tackle the climate crisis. The city council has signed up to to the Plant Based Treaty, an initiative which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from animal agriculture.The city hopes to see a reduction in the city’s consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions with “a shift to plant-based diets”, according to an impact assessment report published by City of Edinburgh council in January. The report found food and diet account for 23% of Edinburgh’s consumption-based footprint, with 12% of these emissions from the consumption of meat.Over 240 councillors from all over the UK have signed this treaty, spurring hope that Edinburgh will light the path for other cities around the world.

Biden Administration’s global plastics plan dubbed ‘low ambition’ and ‘underwhelming’

Critics are describing the Biden administration’s opening position in a United Nations effort to reach a global treaty or agreement to end plastic waste as vague and weak, despite its recognition of a need to end plastic pollution by 2040.

The proposal, for example, calls for individual national action plans as opposed to strong global mandates. 

It 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.

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, which are positions similar to recommendations from the chemical and plastics industries.

Made public earlier this month, the U.S. position contrasts sharply with submissions representing dozens of other countries that are part of a “high ambition” coalition including members of the European Union. Those differences reveal deep divisions among some of the 160 nations working to solve a problem the United Nations describes as a triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution. 

And with the second negotiation session scheduled for late spring in Paris, scientists, along with environmental organizations, are making a case that too much is at stake for a weak agreement to come out of U.N. negotiations launched last year amid a global recognition that the world is choking on so much plastic that it threatens its very habitability.

“The U.S. (proposal) is underwhelming, to say the least,” said Bethanie Carney Almroth, an ecotoxicology professor at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, and member of the interim steering committee of a new group, Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, which formed last year. She studies chemicals and particles in the environment, including the microplastics that have become ubiquitous throughout the world, and even in human feces and blood.

Among Almroth’s concerns, the U.S. proposal would rely on national action plans, much as the 2015 Paris agreement does for greenhouse gas emissions blamed for causing climate change.

Some critics argue that the Paris agreement relies too much on collective action without enough incentives or penalties to make sure countries meet their commitments. A U.N. report last year found that individual country pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions put the planet on a path to heat between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius, well beyond the Paris goal of 1.5 degrees, ensuring further climate chaos.

“If that’s where we are going (with plastics), that’s not going to solve any problems,” Almroth said of the plastics challenge. “This is a very international problem … from fossil fuels all the way through the production lines, all the way through our consumerism, all the way through waste, exports and transportation. If we don’t make a global tool to address that, we’re going to fail. And when I say fail, I mean, destroy the planet and make it unlivable for humans.”

State Department officials declined to comment, instead referring to a written statement made in December by Monica Medina, assistant secretary of state, following the first round of negotiations in Uruguay.

“The world is drowning in plastics,” Medina conceded. “This is a crisis for people and nature, and one that is only getting worse.”

But, she said, a “country-driven approach should strengthen ambition. And it should foster innovation over time. Let’s avoid the temptation to impose one-size-fits-all measures that drive down our ambition.”

‘High Ambition’ Coalition Raises the Bar

In all, the United Nations has collected more than 60 opening submissions from participating countries, and another 200 written comments from non-governmental organizations, including environmental and business groups, in advance of a second negotiation meeting to be held in Paris May 29 through June 2. Last March, at a United Nations Environmental Assembly meeting in Kenya, countries agreed to work toward achieving a global plastics agreement within two years.

Some of the countries’ opening proposals are strong and expansive. The European Union, for example, calls for global targets to reduce the production of plastics. The E.U. and other countries articulate their vision for 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.

The 40-member High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution, led by Norway and Rwanda, offered a proposal that notes plastic consumption has quadrupled over the past 30 years and that plastic production would likely double over the next 20. Measures and targets for limiting plastic production will be needed to “reduce pressure on the environment globally,” they wrote.

“Each (country) should be required to take effective measures to reduce the production of primary plastics polymers to an agreed level to reach a common target,” the coalition recommended.

The coalition also wrote that curbing the manufacturing of plastics “will complement efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emission.”

That Norway, a fossil fuel-producing nation, endorses the concept of limiting plastic production is significant, said Vito Buonsante, an environmental lawyer and technical and policy advisor at the International Pollutants Elimination Network, or IPEN, whose submission argues that chemical production and plastic pollution threaten the stability of the global ecosystem.

“We shouldn’t forget that the main problem here is that there’s way too much plastic,” Buonsante said. “And if we don’t slow down the amount of plastic that is produced, that is going to be problematic.”

Because it has a lot of diplomatic weight to throw around, whatever the United States proposes gets a lot of attention.

“The U.S. has quite a footprint on this process,” said Jane Patton, campaign manager for plastics and petrochemicals for the Center for International Environmental Law, a group advocating for “globally mandatory provisions establishing control measures” and a treaty structure “covering all stages of the full lifecycle of plastics” from fossil fuel extraction to waste management, “with obligations and control measures” in each of the stages.

The U.S. is also a major global plastics producer and leads the world in the generation of plastic waste.

“Many of the most powerful corporate plastic producers are based in the United States and they have quite a significant sway over the U.S. government,” she said.

‘Circularity’ Sounds Good, But May Just Be Spin

The U.S. submission contains lofty language. For example, it says the Biden administration supports an objective “focused on the protection of human health and the environment from plastic pollution” and an agreement that includes “legally binding obligations,” such as creating and updating national action plans and national reporting, as well as other “commitments and voluntary approaches.”

The agreement, according to the U.S. delegation, should be designed to prevent and reduce the amount of plastic pollution entering the global environment and promote the sustainable production and consumption of plastic.

Countries would be obligated to show progress and submit new plans on a time schedule, say every five years, according to the U.S. proposal.

Fossil fuel or plastic-producing countries like the United States, China and Saudi Arabia, tended in their submissions to emphasize waste management and national planning.

“The control measures of the (agreement) should focus on managing the leakage of plastic waste to the environment,” China’s submission said.  “National action plans are essential for countries to develop national strategies based on their national circumstances to address plastic pollution domestically and contribute to the global efforts.”

The Saudi submission, echoing Medina’s December statement, said “there is no one size and no common standards that fit all as individual countries.”

The U.S. named extended producer responsibility programs as a potential solution. These programs can make producers responsible for offsetting the environmental impacts of their products and packaging. But the environmental group Beyond Plastics warns that unless they are designed correctly, they lack teeth and will fail.

Buonsante said he appreciated U.S. language around the need to protect public health in any global plastics agreement.

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Australia news live: Woodside profit triples as Ukraine war drives up energy prices; failed recycling scheme to be liquidated over stockpiled plastics

The government will set up a new cybersecurity office inside the Department of Home Affairs and investigate whether to ban the payment of ransoms to hackers, in the wake of major online attacks affecting millions of Australians. Prime minister Anthony Albanese and home affairs minister Clare O’Neil will announce later today that it will establish …