Author Archives: David Evans

Tiny plastic pellets called nurdles are a major source of global pollution, littering waterways, harming ecosystems and threatening marine life.But plastic pellet pollution is preventable, according to a new report by the international conservation group Fauna & Flora International (FFI), and it’s one piece of the global plastic problem that can and should be tackled.Solving the problem will require coordinated efforts by companies, governments and the International Maritime Organization (IMO), according to FFI. The building blocks of almost all plastic items on the planet are little lentil-sized petrochemical-derived pellets, called nurdles, that are melted together and shaped to create larger plastic products. These nurdles are the raw material for making water bottles, automobile parts, food containers and countless other products we use in daily life.
These pellets pose a huge pollution problem long before they are turned into the products we know and use — littering beaches, absorbing and accumulating bacteria from seawater, smothering seagrass meadows and being mistaken as food by marine animals. Yet this pollution is entirely preventable, according to a recent report by the international conservation organization Fauna & Flora International (FFI).
According to Tanya Cox, FFI marine plastics senior technical specialist, the group worked collaboratively with a broad range of academics, trade associations, corporations, NGOs and policymakers to identify different sources of microplastic pollution. They aimed to identify potential improvements in policies and practices through mandatory measures that can help eliminate the pollution sources by preventing pellet loss at all stages of the supply chain.
Plastic pellets are a significant source of microplastic pollution around the globe, accumulating on beaches and coastlines, breaking down into tiny bits from weathering and destabilizing ecosystems. Yet nurdles are not paid enough attention in discussions of plastic pollution, the report stated.
Plastic pellets on a beach at Norfolk, England, in January 2019. Photo by Ed Marshall/Fauna & Flora International.
Coastal countries are particularly vulnerable to cargo vessel nurdle spills, Cox said, because global shipping routes pass close to coastlines. In 2021, the cargo ship MV X-Press Pearl caught fire off the coast of Sri Lanka carrying more than 1,600 metric tons of plastic pellets. The pellets that were spilled, in what is now considered s the largest spill on record, contaminated not only the waters around Sri Lanka, but also far-away shores where ocean currents carried these billions of pellets.
“If there’s another incident like the X-Press Pearl, any neighboring state is vulnerable to the impact that pellet pollution has once it is in the environment,” Cox said.
According to the report, plastic pellets contain toxic additives; they absorb and accumulate bacteria and environmental pollutants from the water in which they float. These contaminants impact biodiversity, marine life and human health.
Frequently, the small pellets are mistaken for food by marine animals. Once ingested, the contaminants act as a “poison pill” for sea life. It is suspected that pellets are harming species across the taxonomic spectrum, the report stated. They are eaten by a wide variety of marine life, from zooplanktons — which are at the base of the marine food web — to migratory birds, sea turtles and mammals such as seals. Microplastics are now ubiquitous: They’re in the food we eat, the water we drink and even the air we breathe. The full potential impact of plastic pollutants on human bodies, however, is still currently being studied.
“This is a preventable source of pollution that is beyond the immediate control of the consumers,” Cox said. “It’s not something that the public can necessarily eliminate by changing their behavior in the same way that plastic bag pollution can be tackled.”
In general, individuals can address the overall plastic pollution problem by reducing plastic bag use or  shifting to more environmentally friendly alternatives. But individuals can do little to reduce plastic pellet pollution since nurdles are leaked into the environment at various stages along the industrial supply chain — before plastic products are made and before consumers buy them.
To end plastic pellet pollution, the FFI report called for a “robust, coordinated regulatory approach from industry, governments, and the International Maritime Organization (IMO).” Pellet pollution is a global challenge and all countries must commit to mandatory measures that prevent pellet loss and spills on land and at sea, Cox said.
“In order to fully tackle this problem, there has to be complementary, coordinated legal measures that require companies to do everything they can to prevent plastic pellet loss,” she said.
Mouth of the Pasig River along Baseco Compound in the Philippines in November 2018. Image courtesy of Ezra Osorio.
Plastic in the Philippines
The Philippines is one of the largest contributors of plastic pollution to Earth’s oceans. It is an archipelagic country, composed of more than 7,000 islands and many densely populated coastal urban areas, where huge amounts of mismanaged plastic waste enter into waterways, estuaries, ports — winding up on beaches and in the sea.
According to a 2020 research paper, marine biodiversity across the entire archipelago is under threat due to microplastics ingested by aquatic organisms. The study found that sardines in the Philippines’ major fisheries are very vulnerable to microplastic pollution; approximately 85% of the sardines examined at various catch landing sites contained microplastics in their stomachs.
Still, studies and baseline data on microplastics in the Philippines are scant. A 2020 research paper by two of the country’s leading microplastics researchers noted that small amounts of plastic pellets were found in surface water at five river mouths in Manila Bay, possibly due to nurdles and microbeads used as cleansing agents leaking from manufacturing facilities.
Floating microplastics in a surface water sample in February 2019. Image courtesy of Ezra Osorio.
According to environmental engineer Ezra Osorio, one of the study authors, these pellets — even though detected in low quantities — can still impact marine biota through ingestion and contribute to global plastic pollution.
Although plastic pellets in those river mouths were not as abundant as secondary microplastics — tiny particles derived from fragmented larger plastics — Osorio said the finding is still significant because the pellets are not leaked from households, but rather coming from industries making or using the pellets.
“The detection of the plastic pellets in the major rivers draining to Manila Bay shows the occurrence of microplastics in waterbodies in the Philippines and the potential contribution of the industry to the microplastic leakage to the environment,” said Osorio.
Osorio’s suggestion was similar to those found in the FFI report. He said a legal framework was needed to regulate and prevent plastic pellet spills into the environment — requiring proper management in the collection, transportation, manufacturing and disposal of pellets.
He recalled, during one of his visits to a recycling plant, seeing pellet residue washed away in a cleaning process that would no doubt end up in sewers. Since there is no sewage treatment to filter that water, those pellets ultimately end up in rivers, estuaries and the ocean.
It is important for people to be aware and care about the plastic pollution issue, Osorio said, because these are now known contaminants. While the effects on people are still being studied, plastics pose a potential threat to human health via the foods we eat, including fish.
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How do plastic pellets leak into the environment?
Plastic pellet pollution results from both chronic and acute loss, according to the FFI report. Chronic losses are small in scale — such as pellets leaking from poorly sealed sacks that are easily ripped or punctured during manual and mechanical handling — while acute losses involve a larger number of pellets entering the environment in one go.
“They were being spilled in large quantities at different points in the supply chain. Because of general lack of awareness and understanding of the risk of impact, there’s not enough attention on proper handling,” Cox said.
Whether small-scale or large-scale, these leaks and spills all contribute to pellet pollution occurring on both land and at sea.
An illustration of how plastic pellets enter the environment and harm wildlife from the FFI report,“Stemming the tide: putting an end to plastic pellet pollution.” Image by Fauna & Flora International.
According to the report, land-based plastic pellet pollution generally occurs during the production, transport and conversion supply chain stages, wherever and whenever there is careless handling, poor training and limited awareness of impact.
Sea-based plastic pellet pollution can happen during maritime transport, when damaged or improperly sealed containers and unsecured containers fall overboard, the report stated. It can also happen during maritime disasters as with the MV X-Press Pearl.
Once in the environment, plastic pellets are costly, time-consuming and difficult to retrieve and clean up. Thus, they’ll likely remain in the environment doing harm for at least hundreds of years.
Preventive measures, said Cox, are the same regardless of the volume of pellets being handled. The bottom line is to institute safety measures all along the supply chain to ensure fewer pellets reach the environment.
A handful of plastic pellets from a small spill in Pineville, Louisiana. Image by Paul L. Nettles via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).
How can plastic pellet pollution be prevented?
Despite growing evidence documenting the sheer scale of global plastic pellet pollution, attempts to prevent losses and minimize impacts have been limited, as efforts are voluntary and mainly focus on land-based sources, Cox said.
The FFI report outlined pellet loss prevention recommendations that should be applied by industries, governments and the IMO to address the issue across land and sea and at every stage of the supply chain.
The first recommendation: Put regulations in place to tackle pellet pollution on land. FFI urged that all companies handling plastic pellets, regardless of company size or location, be legally required to provide independent, third-party verification that pellet loss prevention measures are implemented and maintained. Moreover, the prevention measures must be monitored for effectiveness at every stage of the supply chain. Standards and certification schemes should meet minimum requirements established in legislation.
The second recommendation addressed a need for improved packaging and labeling of pellets for transport. Legislation should stipulate the use of improved packaging that is resistant to impact, tear and degradation. Moreover, improved communication throughout the supply chain to reduce risk of chronic and acute pellet loss should be done by displaying clear warning labels indicating that the contents are dangerous goods and harmful to aquatic environments.
The third recommendation would put regulations in place to curb sea-based sources of pellet pollution. The report enumerated three key measures that the IMO should take to ensure pellet loss at sea is minimized: Legally classify pellets as marine pollutants, develop standardized disaster response protocols to aid containment and clean-up of future shipping disasters and establish clear protocols or guidance related to liability and compensation claims in the event of accidental loss.
Despite growing evidence documenting the sheer scale of global plastic pellet pollution, attempts to prevent losses and minimize impacts have been limited, as efforts are voluntary and mainly focus on land-based sources. Image by Sören Funk via Unsplash (Public domain).
Some additional measures that should be explored by the IMO, according to FFI, included introduction of minimum requirements for the maintenance of pellet containers and legal limits on the volume of loose pellets transported within containers.
According to the report, these recommendations would allow “the global community to vastly reduce the quantity of pellets” entering the world’s oceans, both through chronic spills and during maritime disasters. It would also ensure that maritime disasters involving plastic pellets were dealt with rapidly and effectively.
Cox said the IMO is exploring options for mandatory measures to eliminate pellet loss from ships. Meanwhile, the European Union is considering mandatory policy requirements for companies handling pellets to prevent loss to the environment.
Additionally, the U.N. Environment Assembly has adopted a landmark resolution to develop the world’s first Global Plastics Treaty that would aim to end plastic pollution through a legally binding international instrument that addresses the full life cycle of plastic, including its production, design and disposal.
“I think that the world is committed to start negotiating the Global Plastics Treaty — looking at tackling plastic pollution at all stages of its life cycle,” Cox said. “We all have a duty to do everything that can be done to prevent plastic pollution.”
According to Cox, dealing with pellet pollution is among the “low-hanging fruit” within a much bigger challenge of tackling global plastic pollution.
“This is an issue and a significant source of microplastic pollution, but it is a preventable one,” she said. “So let’s take steps today to prevent it while we deal with how to solve the other challenges.”
Banner image: An Atlantic grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) on a beach littered with plastic pellets in Norfolk, England, in January 2019. Image courtesy of Ed Marshall/Fauna & Flora International.
Related reading:
In ocean biodiversity hotspots, microplastics come with the currents

Citations:
Fauna & Flora International. (2022). Stemming the tide: putting an end to plastic pellet pollution. Retrieved from https://www.fauna-flora.org/app/uploads/2022/09/FF_Plastic_Pellets_Report-2.pdf
Tanchuling, M. A., & Osorio, E. D. (2020). The microplastics in Metro Manila rivers: Characteristics, sources, and abatement. The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, 405-426. doi:10.1007/698_2020_659
Palermo, J.D.H., Labrador, K.L., Follante, J.D., Agmata, A.B., Pante, M.J.R., Rollon, R.N., & David, L.T. (2020). Susceptibility of Sardinella lemuru to emerging marine microplastic pollution. Global Journal of Environmental Science and Management, 6(3): 373-384. doi:10.22034/gjesm.2020.03.07

Coastal Ecosystems, Conservation, Environment, Environmental Law, Governance, Marine, Marine Conservation, Marine Crisis, Marine Ecosystems, Microplastics, Oceans, Plastic, Pollution, Research, Water Pollution
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Coffee capsules are now ubiquitous: By 2025, the global market for the product is expected to grow to more than $29 billion.These mostly plastic pods are currently popular in Europe and North America, but research predicts their popularity is likely to grow in markets in Asia, particularly China and South Korea.As the global market for coffee capsules grows, so does the waste associated with it: The global footprint of annual coffee capsule waste is about 576,000 metric tons — the combined weight of about 4,400 school buses.Responding to pressure from environmental campaigns like “Kill the K-Cup,” coffee companies have developed capsules made from aluminum or compostable fiber; but progress to ensure that coffee pods don’t contribute to more pollution is still moving at a glacial pace. In 2015, an anonymous user posted a video on YouTube titled “Kill the K-cup.” In shaky footage, the video shows a city overrun by a monster composed of coffee capsules, interspersed with warnings that there are enough K-cups to circle the Earth more than 12 times. “Kill the K-Cup before it kills our planet,” the video warns. After the release of the video, the inventor of Keurig’s K-Cups admitted that he “feels bad sometimes” about creating coffee pods, given their environmental impact.
Coffee capsules are now ubiquitous. By 2025, the global market for the K-Cup and other kinds of coffee capsules is expected to be worth more than $29 billion. More than 40% of U.S. households owned a coffee pod machine in 2020, and in the U.K., the statistics are similar. Coffee capsules are popular in Europe and North America, but research predicts they are likely to spread to markets in Asia next, particularly China and South Korea.
The market for coffee capsules is growing, and waste grows with it. The global footprint of coffee capsule waste is about 576,000 metric tons — the combined weight of about 4,400 school buses. Responding to pressure from environmental campaigns like “Kill the K-Cup,” coffee companies have developed new capsules to move away from plastic, like Nespresso’s aluminum capsules and compostable fiber pods. But progress to ensure that coffee capsules don’t contribute to more pollution is still moving at a glacial pace.

‘A lie built upon a lie’
Keurig, the company responsible for producing K-cups, announced in 2021 that it had converted all its pods from a kind of plastic that’s nearly impossible to recycle to polypropylene, which is recyclable. Consumers are asked to peel the lid off a used capsule, empty the coffee grounds, and deposit the plastic capsules into their recycling bins, which, depending on where they live, are then sent to local recycling facilities. In small print, Keurig adds an important clarification: “check locally, not recycled in all communities.”
A Keurig “K-Cup”. Image by Jan Dell.
The problem is that while some people might put their coffee capsules in their recycling bins, most recycling facilities, called material recovery facilities, or MRFs, are not equipped to sort items smaller than 7.5 centimeters (3 inches). According to a new report by Greenpeace, only one MRF in the U.S. accepts coffee pods made out of polypropylene.
Halo, a competitor of Keurig that sells compostable coffee capsules, estimates that 39,000 capsules are produced every minute globally, and up to 29,000 of these end up in landfills — what it calls an “insane” state of affairs. Small plastics like coffee pods, according to some estimates, can take up to 500 years to decompose in landfills, where they leach chemicals into land and water. In Brazil, only 11% of used capsules were sent to recycling facilities in 2017; while in Hamburg, Germany, coffee pods were banned in 2016 to limit waste and pollution.
Keurig says on its website that through testing with MRFs, it found that small plastics can be recovered, and their tests demonstrate that pods are not too small to be sorted with other plastic containers. Howard Hirsch, a public interest lawyer in California, says that “Big Plastic” — the fossil fuel companies that produce plastic — have sold people on the lie that companies don’t need to keep burning fossil fuels to create new plastics, and that old plastics can be recycled to create new products. “The whole thing is just a lie built upon a lie,” Hirsch says.
In a recent settlement of a class-action lawsuit, Keurig Green Mountain has agreed to pay $10 million to settle the claim that Keurig misled consumers to believe its K-cup pods are recyclable. While Keurig did not admit to anything wrong, as part of the settlement it has agreed to revise its labeling for K-Cup pods, which will now say in larger font: “Check Locally — Not Recycled in Many Communities.”
“We can’t say we won on the merits of the case,” says Hirsch, the lawyer who brought the class-action lawsuit on behalf of consumers in the U.S. “But we can claim victory in so far as we got Keurig to improve the labeling of the products and put up $10 million. I think it sends a strong message to other companies that they should be truthful and accurate in the way they describe the recyclability of their products.”
In early 2022, Keurig Canada also agreed to pay a C$3 million ($2.2 million) penalty for “making false or misleading claims that its single-use K-Cup pods can be recycled.” Keurig did not respond to requests for an interview for this article.
The European Union proposed a new set of rules in November 2022 to drastically cut packaging waste, including coffee pods. The new rules, which still have to be approved by the EU member states and the European Parliament, will require that all packaging be designed in a recyclable way, and companies should ensure it is “recycled at scale“ in reality by 2035.

Are aluminum capsules the answer?
In a paid commercial for Nestlé’s Nespresso brand, George Clooney claims “the sustainability program with Nespresso is surpassed by no one … if you are responsible and want to participate in truly recycling, it’s very easy to do.”
To appeal to eco-friendly consumers, companies like Nespresso started selling aluminum coffee capsules. Nespresso offers recycling bags that coffee drinkers can mail back to Nespresso’s boutiques or their own recycling facility, where it ostensibly “goes back into the aluminum value chain.”
Discarded coffee capsules. Image by Karsten Seiferlin via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
In the U.S., Nespresso teamed up with the New York City Department of Sanitation and Sims Municipal Recycling so New Yorkers can deposit their Nespresso capsules in their curbside recycling bins. It’s a selling point for Nespresso, but it’s difficult to verify the claims of sustainability.
City contractor Sims runs an MRF in Brooklyn that sorts residential recyclable waste, the stuff that New Yorkers put in blue recycling bins. The city sends all the recyclables from homes and public schools to the facility, which is situated rent-free in an old New York Police Department compound. The facility hums with the sound of breaking glass and a sea of moving metal, plastic and waste being shuffled and sorted together.
Kara Napolitano, the outreach and education coordinator at Sims Municipal Recycling, says the facility has used the $1.2 million from Nespresso to develop specialized equipment that can both sort the small aluminum capsules from other waste and remove coffee grounds in the capsules using a shredder. For smelters to buy used aluminum, coffee grounds need to be separated from the aluminum capsules.
Since coffee capsules are smaller than 5 cm (2 in), the company says, they get mixed with the glass recovery stream. This waste stream is sent to a glass-processing facility where glass is separated using optical sorters, and specialized equipment such as an eddy current separate non-ferromagnetic metals like aluminum.
Small plastic pods are not recycled. “No one will buy small plastics, so we can’t invest in a sore thumb,” Napolitano says. The company declined requests to visit the glass facility where it says the aluminum capsules are sorted, nor did it share data on how many aluminum capsules are being captured.
“We don’t have public information on that data … I wonder if Nespresso will share this data at some point,” Napolitano adds.
Nespresso says its global recycling rate for capsules at the end of 2020 was 32%. But these estimates are not independently verified.
Nespresso says it recycled 32% of its capsules globally in 2020. Image by Elham Shabahat.
Nespresso denied requests for interviews and visits to the facility that recycles capsules. Nespresso also did not provide statistics about its most recent recycling rate for aluminum coffee capsules. James Hoffman, author of “The World Atlas of Coffee,” has described Nespresso as “a black box of a company.”
“The back end of recycling systems is non-transparent,” says Jan Dell, independent chemical engineer and founder of The Last Beach Cleanup, a nonprofit that seeks to end plastic pollution. “Companies should be required to prove that products are actually being recycled before they claim recyclability.”

Which is better: coffee pods or drip coffee?
Coffee companies like Nespresso and Keurig often refer to assessments that suggest the environmental impact of capsules is lower than drip or filter coffee. Greenhouse gas emissions, water and fertilizer use occur primarily where coffee is grown. Brewing coffee can be energy-intensive, especially if people make more coffee than necessary or keep their pot warm for a long time. This is why, according to research commissioned by Nespresso and conducted by Quantis, an environmental consultancy, drip coffee fares worse.
“What the studies show is that the capsule or the packaging is only a small part of the impact,” says Sebastien Hubert, scientific director at Quantis. “The biggest source of impact is producing the coffee. The public perception is often focused on the packaging because that’s what people see in the garbage. There is a cognitive bias … people underestimate the impact of agriculture and overestimate the impact of packaging.”
Scientific literature is divided on the issue. Some peer-reviewed research argues that farming, brewing and packaging of coffee are the most energy intensive processes. But other research also suggests that production and packaging of aluminum or plastic capsules can have higher environmental impacts compared to French press or drip coffee. Another study looking at data from Campinas and São Paulo states in Brazil found that aluminum and plastic capsules use the most energy and water, and generate the most waste compared to other ways of brewing coffee.
Waste and disposal of coffee packaging have significant impacts on carbon footprint. Research looking at coffee consumption in Thailand found that disposal of coffee and its packaging also affects toxicity in freshwater and marine ecosystems. Scientists say there aren’t enough studies or solutions that look at what to do with used coffee capsules, at least in relation to recycling and environmental impact.
Research on coffee consumption in Thailand found the disposal of coffee and its packaging affected toxicity in freshwater and marine ecosystems. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Alfred Hill, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Bath, U.K., says there is a lack of data on the merits of coffee capsules over other forms of brewed coffee, based on his research. “There were some preliminary results, but nothing has been peer reviewed or published,” Hill tells Mongabay in an email. “At present there is simply not enough data to assert any claims.”
According to Hubert, life cycle assessments are mostly focused on greenhouse gas emissions, but other impacts matter too. Coffee capsules are made from virgin aluminum. It can take twice as much energy to produce aluminum as opposed to plastic. Mining the bauxite ore to produce aluminum has significant negative impacts. Producing a ton of aluminum can generate 10 to 12 tons of waste, including 3 tons of toxic red mud. Aluminum mining is also associated with human rights violations, deforestation, pollution and poverty in the Brazilian Amazon, Papua New Guinea, India, and elsewhere.
Nespresso did not comment on how many of its capsules are currently produced using recycled aluminum.

The future of coffee pods
While aluminum and plastic capsules remain the most popular containers, compostable coffee pods have entered the market, which some scientists view as a positive step. Compostable coffee pods can be made from plant fibers (like sugarcane bagasse), bamboo or paper — all biodegradable material that people can send to a municipal composting facility or throw in a compost pile at home. Research finds that compostable coffee pods are the least harmful, compared to aluminum and plastic capsules.
But compostable coffee pods are not an easy panacea to the waste problem. Not every industrial composting facility is equipped to deal with biodegradable packaging. Reusable pods are another option, but people prefer the convenience of single-use pods.
Hubert suggests buying organic coffee, reducing energy use while making coffee, and pressuring companies to recycle are the best ways for consumers to influence the industry.
Piotr Barczak, a circular economy expert at the European Environmental Bureau, a network of 180 environmental citizens’ organizations, says focusing on consumer action is the wrong approach.
“It’s not correct to blame consumers for emissions or wastage,” Barczak says. Coffee companies could incentivize people who return capsules for recycling through a refundable deposit fee, he suggests. “These companies benefit from a lack of governance, [weak] environmental policies, a lack of enforcement, and they make huge profits — at the expense of both the environment and people.”
“Companies shouldn’t be making these things, period,” says Dell, the chemical engineer. “They need to innovate better solutions and better material … like fiber and paper.”

Citations:
Maciejewski, G., & Mokrysz, S. (2020). New trends in consumption on the coffee market. Scientific Journals of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, European Policies, Finance and Marketing, 22(71), 132-143. doi:10.22630/PEFIM.2019.22.71.31
Marinello, S., Balugani, E., & Gamberini, R. (2021). Coffee capsule impacts and recovery techniques: A literature review. Packaging Technology and Science, 34(11-12), 665-682. doi:10.1002/pts.2606
Domingues, M. L. B., Bocca, J. R., Fávaro, S. L., & Radovanovic, E. (2020). Disposable coffee capsules as a source of recycled polypropylene. Polímeros, 30(1). doi:10.1590/0104-1428.05518
Hassard, H., Couch, M., Techa-erawan, T., & McLellan, B. (2014). Product carbon footprint and energy analysis of alternative coffee products in Japan. Journal of Cleaner Production, 73, 310-321. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.02.006
Brommer, E., Stratmann, B., & Quack, D. (2011). Environmental impacts of different methods of coffee preparation. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 35(2), 212-220. doi:10.1111/j.1470-6431.2010.00971.x
de Figueiredo Tavares, M. P., & Mourad, A. L. (2020). Coffee beverage preparation by different methods from an environmental perspective. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 25(7), 1356-1367. doi:10.1007/s11367-019-01719-2
Phrommarat, B. (2019). Life cycle assessment of ground coffee and comparison of different brewing methods: A case study of organic arabica coffee in northern Thailand. The Environment and Natural Resources Journal, 17(2), 96-108. doi:10.32526/ennrj.17.2.2019.16
Kooduvalli, K., Vaidya, U. K., & Ozcan, S. (2020). Life cycle assessment of compostable coffee pods: A US university based case study. Scientific Reports, 10(1). doi:10.1038/s41598-020-65058-1
Soares, A. P. S., Mothé, C. G., & Mothé, M. G. (2021). Comparative life cycle assessment of coffee capsule recycling process and its composites reinforced with natural fibers. Journal of Polymers and the Environment, 30(4), 1380-1390. doi:10.1007/s10924-021-02282-4
Tonelli, A., Mosna, D., & Vignali, G. (2018). Comparative life cycle assessment of different packaging systems for coffee capsules. Proceedings of the 4th International Food Operations and Processing Simulation Workshop (FoodOPS 2018), 1-9. doi:10.46354/i3m.2018.foodops.001
Samoggia, A., & Riedel, B. (2018). Coffee consumption and purchasing behavior review: Insights for further research. Appetite, 129, 70-81. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2018.07.002

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Banner image: A selection of Nespresso coffee capsules. Image by Wany Bae via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

Most of the “recyclable” plastic we all use ends up in the landfill. Its a logistics and economics problem. There needs to be a better way to handle this massive waste stream. A company called CRDC Global may have a viable solution.

Plastics play a wide range of crucial roles in modern society, but they also represent a major waste disposal challenge. Particularly when it comes to consumer packaged goods (CPG) the practical reality is that only a small fraction of the plastic is actually recycled, and a great deal ends up going to landfills or to even more undesirable “end of life” scenarios such as incineration or release into the environment. The problem was exacerbated in 2018 when China stopped accepting this waste for hand sorting. There are many positive strategies being implemented to deal with this waste crisis including better collection in the developing world, decomposable alternative materials, and fully sorted collection of plastics at the business-level. There is also a new technology based on hyperspectral imaging which can differentiate the various clear or plastics based on how they “look” at light wavelengths outside of the visible range.

There is another innovative alternative that is gaining momentum because it addresses the sorting challenge and also provides a positive value proposition. CRDC Global has developed a way to turn mixed plastic waste into a synthetic lightweight aggregate, a substitute for the sand used in making concrete and asphalt. This option benefits from a geographic alignment between where plastic waste is generated and where most construction is underway – major population centers. From a business perspective this is a push/pull scenario – the CPG industry needs a plastic waste solution, and the construction industry needs an alternative to sand.
If you look on the bottom or side of “recyclable” plastic containers there is a number between 1 and 7. In terms of recycling, only “1s” and “2s” (PET and HDPE) are practical candidates for recycling into new containers and there is an almost zero tolerance for any mixing of types or contamination with labels or organic matter. Plastics marked “3” to “6” are of minimal value for re-use and “7” stands for “other” and has essentially no value. CRDC has developed a process that can take a mixed load including all these plastic categories and turn it into a new plastic resin. The process is the “brainchild” of CEO Donald Thomson. Ross Gibby, COO, creatively named its output “RESIN8.”
RESIN8 Process: mixed plastic waste (upper left), chopped and ground (upper right), heated and … [+] extruded (lower left), combined with cement to make concrete blocks (lower right)Images from CRDC Global, composite by author

The process is as follows: the mixed plastics are chopped, shredded and granulated into small flakes which can include a reasonable degree of organic contamination (e.g. the residue left in a bottle of ketchup or a peanut butter container). At that stage some naturally occurring minerals are added – similar to those that are used for “liming” of agricultural soils. That mixture is melted and extruded as a foam which hardens to something akin to a plastic lava rock. It is finally ground into granules the size and gradation of fine sand. That material can then be added to cement at a ration of 2% to 25% to make concrete for anything from pre-formed blocks to poured structures or surfaces. High quality sand is a scarce resource in many regions, and it is very expensive to transport. A local alternative is a very attractive concept for the construction industry as long as it is functionally and visually equivalent. The RESIN8 concrete checks all those boxes. Not only that, concrete made with RESIN8 has several advantages compared to conventional concrete. It is lighter weight; it provides higher thermal insulation, and it absorbs more noise. It is just as strong and long-lasting. At the end of its useful life, concrete made with RESIN8 can be recycled to be used as aggregate in new concrete.

CRDC execs with community leaders and industry partnersPhoto via CRDC Global
CRDC Global started with seed capital and through loans from the Alliance To End Plastic Waste and its CEO Donald Thompson is motivated by his desire to leave a better world for his grandchildren. They have now shifted to a mix of family office and institutional investors. They have set up 6 small scale facilities during a proof of concept stage, and currently have three large scale facilities running in Pennsylvania, Costa Rica and South Africa. Their vision is to have 20 sites operating within 3 years each producing around 20 thousand tons of synthetic aggregate sand substitute every year.The CRDC Global RESIN8 production plant in PennsylvaniaPhoto via CRDC Global
The company has a global action plan and its board includes individuals from around the globe who meet via Zoom. 27 different countries have expressed interest in starting to use the technology. There is also on-going research about the process at universities in the United States, Costa Rica, South Africa, the UK and Australia.
CRDC Global is cooperating with a major cleanup project in Alaska which has a huge problem with plastic waste, mostly from Asia, crossing the ocean and ending up on that state’s 33 thousand miles of coastline. There is an excellent video presentation about this GoAK project.
There are several models for how this can work. Existing trash hauling players can divert either all their plastic or plastics 3-7 to a CRDC site. They have also worked with a direct consumer connection they called “The Bag That Builds”, often through presentations at schools through which they find motivated children and “soccer moms” and dads who like the idea of helping with the problem. The slogan they teach potential helpers is that most plastic will end up meeting one of three fates– “burnt, buried or built” with the later being a much better outcome.Consumer filled “Bag that Builds” collection sitePhoto via CRDC Global
These voluntary participants are supplied with a supply of labeled green bags which these consumers can bring it to collection points – either by bagging all plastics together or better yet separating out easily identifiable 1s and 2s for one bag and another with any other kind of plastic everything. In the later scenario CRDC is able to generate income through true recycling of the 1s and 2s to help pay for the overall collection system. Consumers are easily trained to accurately identify things that are made of plastic, and in the process, they get a feeling for just how much plastic they need/use. The CRDC process can use things other than CPG containers, in fact the entire post consumer thermoplastic waste stream. Even the foil/plastic used as a wrapper for something like a granola bar can be handled within this system. “Compostable” plastics or fully biodegradable ones will likely be eliminated during the high heat step but can also be part of RESIN8 if they persist.
If this approach is greatly expanded, it could provide a better end of life alternative for the majority of plastics because there is so much potential demand from the construction side.

GARY, Ind.—For Lori Latham and four other self-described “badass women,” the future of their hometown rests on a battle over 75 acres that lie between a giant steel mill and a failed casino once owned by Donald Trump.

The site sits behind parked railroad cars painted in graffiti, where abandoned concrete silos rise from the sandy southern shore of Lake Michigan, a remnant of a former cement plant that helped build the country’s interstate highway system. Here, a California company called Fulcrum BioEnergy wants to construct a gasification plant and refinery to turn the Chicago area’s trash—as much as 30 percent of it waste plastic—into jet fuel. 

It’s a bid, according to Fulcrum, to make a dent in the airline industry’s contribution to climate change while reducing waste at landfills. The city’s mayor, Jerome Prince, touts what he sees as a green energy future in this once-booming vestige of the Rust Belt.

But Latham and the group she co-founded, Gary Advocates for Responsible Development, along with some national environmental experts, smell a ruse. 

They question the company’s claims of sustainability in what amounts to a complicated, high-energy production process, and the company’s ability to deploy a new combination of technology intended to turn the trash and plastic waste into a gas used to make aircraft fuel. They also say it’s unfair to locate the plant in an environmental justice community already burdened disproportionately by a century of pollution from heavy industry.

Lori Latham of Gary, Indiana, is a founding member of Gary Advocates for Responsible Development, which is fighting a proposed jet fuel plant on a former cement plant site. Credit: James Bruggers

“We use the term greenwashing, where they make things seem like they’re green technologies when they’re really not,” said Latham, a Gary native who works in business development for an engineering firm and also is chairwoman of the environmental justice and climate committee of Gary’s branch of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. “I feel like Gary is being used based on its location, and also based on its demographics just to be a solution for where to put Chicago’s trash.”

The company’s plans, while embraced by the federal government and the airline industry, do not pass a common sense test, said Jane Williams, executive director of the environmental nonprofit California Communities Against Toxics, who has advised the Gary advocates.

“They are taking trash and applying massive amounts of heat to make a fuel, and then burning it,” Williams said. The proposed gasification process uses intense heat to turn the trash and plastic into a synthetic gas, before another process turns the gas into synthetic crude oil, which in turn is used to make jet fuel in an on-site refinery.

“This is one of the most energy-intensive processes I have reviewed in my career,” she said. “That’s a massive carbon footprint.”

In the Fulcrum proposal, Earthjustice attorney James Pew sees an illustration of a national trend in which facilities that burn waste, including plastic, through a process like gasification or a similar method called pyrolysis, are working to skirt health protections in the Clean Air Act.

“This whole fight at the local, state, and federal levels is about getting gasification and pyrolysis incinerators rebranded as non-incinerators so they can … avoid installing pollution controls and monitoring and reporting their emissions,” Pew said. “EPA’s regulations have defined facilities like Fulcrum as incinerators for almost 30 years.”

GARD is organizing opposition among area residents. It’s challenged the proposed plant’s air pollution permit from Indiana state regulators. And it has filed a Civil Rights Act complaint with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The complaint argues that the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s decision to grant Fulcrum its air permit is part of a longstanding pattern and practice of local discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin.

Gary’s 68,000 residents, down from 175,000 in 1970, are 78 percent Black. One in three city residents lives in poverty.

For its part, Fulcrum, based in Pleasanton, California, is a sharp contrast with Gary. An affluent suburb of San Francisco with a poverty rate of 5 percent, it touts the economics of making what it describes as an $800 million investment in Gary, providing about 1,000 construction jobs and 130 to 200 permanent jobs.

“We just feel that we have created, designed and now are just a short time away from proving that garbage-to-fuel is possible,” said Fulcrum’s vice president of administration, Rick Barraza. “It’s doable, and it is a sustainable source of renewable fuel going forward.”

He also dismissed the Gary residents’ opposition and encouraged Inside Climate News to do the same. “I certainly hope that you don’t give too much time to the local citizens that just don’t want that facility in their backyard,” Barraza said. “There’s a local group out there that just doesn’t want the project. And so they’re starting to get vocal.”

$4 Billion in Federal Taxes to Develop Sustainable Aviation Fuel

Fulcrum has been working to turn trash into aviation fuel for more than a decade. The company broke ground on the second phase of its first plant near Reno, Nevada, in 2018, where it’s still seeking to begin full production.

Those efforts are part of a global push to develop what the airline industry and federal government call “sustainable aviation fuel,” or SAF.  In theory, SAF is made by recycling renewable plant- or animal-based materials as feedstock, offsetting the need to use new fossil fuels that would unleash carbon that scientists say needs to remain locked underground to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

Industry and government scientists are experimenting with different feedstocks ranging from animal fats, plant oils and wood waste to trash and plastics. 

Nikita Pavlenko, a program leader with the International Council on Clean Transportation, a nonprofit environmental research group, says he  does not like the term “sustainable aviation fuel” because regardless of what is used to make these new fuels, “it implies it is actually sustainable,” or beneficial. “I always prefer the term ‘alternative aviation fuel,’ because there’s such a wide variation in the climate impacts of those alternatives.”  

California-based Fulcrum BioEnergy wants to turn trash and plastic into jet fuel at this former cement plant in Gary, Indiana. Credit: James Bruggers

In all, aviation contributes about 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. But when other impacts—including the heat-trapping effects of condensation trails planes paint across the sky—are factored in, aviation accounts for as much as 3.5 percent of warming caused by humans, according to research published last year in the journal Atmospheric Environment.

As aviation has soared, so has pressure to reduce its emissions. 

“It doesn’t make sense to give aviation a license to continue polluting if we’re imposing climate policy on (motor vehicle) drivers or people who purchase electricity because those are a much more representative sector of society,” Pavlenko said.

The 290 member airlines of the International Air Transport Association, a global trade association, have committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions from their operations by 2050. In the United States, IATA members include American, Delta, United and cargo giants UPS and FedEx.

The industry is exploring various strategies including burning hydrogen made from renewable energy, making fuel from captured carbon dioxide and even using battery power in small airplanes; in 2015, United Airlines bought a $30 million stake in Fulcrum. Others suggest solutions such as replacing short-haul air travel with trains.

But the industry’s main focus is on improving airplane efficiency and on the development of SAF. 

“The newest commercial airplanes today for passenger or freight…are on the order of 25 percent more efficient than the planes they replaced,” said Robert McCormick, a senior research fellow at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab in Boulder, Colorado “And the aviation industry thinks they can do that, again, with the next generation of planes, which are still probably 10 years out.”

The International Energy Agency expects passenger growth to offset efficiency gains, though, so the industry is still looking for alternative fuels.  

Right now, there’s only one kind of SAF used in the United States, in test flights, said McCormick. It’s made with fats and oils, such as waste cooking oil, beef tallow or soybean oil, he said. 

Widespread industry use could be a long time coming.

“As you might imagine, you have to meet some pretty stringent approvals to legally sell them as aviation fuel as compared to say, a diesel fuel, because trucks are not going to fall out of the sky,” he said.

Decarbonizing air travel will be difficult, acknowledged Sebastian Mikosz, a senior vice president of IATA. “Unlike others in the transportation industry, we have to fight with something that they don’t have to fight with, which is gravity,” Mikosz said. “And our biggest problem is that we have to take our source of propulsion, our energy source, with us in the air.”

The industry is getting help from the Biden administration, which has pledged more than $4 billion to support the research and development of low-carbon fuel. The Biden administration has set a goal for the U.S. to produce aviation fuels with half the carbon emissions of conventional fuel, and to make enough of it by 2050 to meet all domestic aviation fuel demand.

The Plastic Problem

Last year, Fulcrum secured $375 million in tax-exempt revenue bonds through the Indiana Finance Authority to support the Gary project. 

For Fulcrum’s production here, the company plans to collect and sort municipal waste that otherwise would head to a landfill, and shred it at up to two locations outside of Gary. In all, the company plans to divert 700,000 tons of municipal solid waste from the region each year; Chicago alone produced more than 4 million tons of solid waste in 2020, according to a 2021 University of Illinois at Chicago study.

The Gary plant’s feedstock—about half paper and 30 percent plastic, along with wood and other trash—will be hauled into the city in about 90 trucks a day, the company has said. 

The presence of plastic causes two main problems. Plastic is made from a myriad of chemical mixtures. Gasification systems function the best with a consistent feedstock, McCormick said, so plastic waste poses a technical challenge.

Plastic complicates the company’s sustainability claims, as well. 

With plastic waste as a feedstock, McCormick said, “you’re going to have to answer the question, ‘To what extent is it a sustainable aviation fuel compared to biomass?’ It’s not going to have as low of a carbon intensity … simply because the plastic is made out of petrochemicals, (or) fossil carbon.”

At least one airline is specifically targeting plastic waste to make fuel.  United Kingdom-based Virgin Group, which includes the airline Virgin Atlantic, announced in February that it was partnering with U.S.-based Agilyx to produce synthetic crude oil from plastic waste that will then be refined into what it claims will be a lower-carbon fuel.

Fulcrum officials acknowledge plastic in its feedstock reduces its fuel’s climate benefits, even as it claims SAF from its Reno plant will represent  an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases compared to traditional aviation fuel made from fossil fuels. And it expects that percentage to improve at its Gary plant.

Poetry stenciled on boards adorns one of Gary, Indiana’s thousands of abandoned buildings. Credit: James Bruggers

But the company has been less than transparent about how it got to that 80 percent figure. It appears to rely on environmental lifecycle analyses, the kinds of studies that experts often describe as being fraught with assumptions that can skew the conclusions. 

And a 2015 lifecycle analysis for the company’s Reno plant estimated that fuel produced there would result in a product claiming a less-robust climate benefit of 60 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared with traditional fossil fuels.

Fulcrum officials said they updated the 2015 study for the California Air Resources Board, which lists the company’s claims as certified. But Fulcrum did not provide a copy of the updated analysis for Inside Climate News to review. Fulcrum also did not provide any analysis of carbon emissions for the proposed Gary plant.

The company claims benefits to the climate from keeping trash out of landfills, where it rots and releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. But that’s an inexact science as well. Scientists and the EPA have been arguing over how to accurately calculate landfill gas emissions, Inside Climate News reported last year with NPR and Orlando public radio station WMFE.

Environmentalists are skeptical of the company’s claims, though Pavlenko said its fuel would represent “one of the better options” as long as the plastic content is “kept to a limited contribution.”

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Watered down: why negotiators at Cop15 are barely mentioning the oceanWith only two mentions of the word ‘ocean’ in the latest 5,000-word working agreement, delegates fear marine biodiversity is being sacrificed The ocean may cover 70% of the Earth’s surface and contain much of its animal life, but you might not get that impression from the UN discussions in Montreal to save global biodiversity. Some delegates fear marine protections could be severely watered down or dropped entirely.Although overfishing, global heating and acidification are considered an existential risk to what has been called “the lungs of the planet”, so far there are only two mentions of the word “ocean” in the latest 10-page, 5,000-word working agreement at Cop15. There are no specific demands to curtail fishing, protect coral reefs or stop deep-sea mining.In public the ocean, which represents 95% of the planet’s biosphere, isn’t being entirely ignored: delegates have approved a general draft on marine and coastal biodiversity, and there remains hope that the 30×30 pledge to protect 30% of Earth by 2030 will also include the ocean. In private, participants in the working groups – the closed-door sessions where the details are hashed out – say several countries are acting obstructively, with China, Russia, Iceland and Argentina among those accused of being hesitant to commit to specific restrictions.“We’re worried these countries will try and water this down to, say, 10%,” says Simon Cripps, executive director of marine conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society and a Cop15 participant. “We’re already sitting at 7% protection, of which 3.5% is in any way effectively managed, and look – sharks are going to pieces, fisheries are massively overfished, you’ve got coral reefs on the verge. So clearly a 10% goal isn’t working.”Because the negotiations work on a consensus basis, individual countries and coalitions can effectively veto things they don’t like.One of the perceived obstacles is fishing. China maintains the largest distant fishing fleet in the world, operating 17,000 industrial trawlers that fan the globe and cluster along the borders of other countries’ jurisdictions, sucking up vast amounts of fish and squid, for example near the Galápagos. So, when the word “fisheries” was dropped from the latest working document in the section about ending perverse environmental subsidies, it came as little surprise to many: Cripps explains that losing the specific word was a way to keep countries from vetoing the entire section, and making at least incremental progress.Another stumbling block is money. Developing countries are wary of restrictions if no more money is promised to help pay for them. On Tuesday night, Brazil led a group of developing countries that walked out of a finance meeting, protesting that donor countries were refusing to create a new fund for biodiversity. Those wealthier countries argue that Brazil – as well as China, India and other large countries whose economies have ballooned – should start pitching in to pay for biodiversity, too.One hugely important marine issue is simply not on the table at all, namely whether the 30% target will be local or global: will individual countries be asked to protect 30% of their own coastal areas – or is it a vaguer aim to protect 30% of the ocean, somewhere else? “From the start, they’ve been saying it’s a global target,” says Cripps.This means that, even if 30×30 were agreed, it might not help marine biodiversity at all because of yet another unsolved problem: the high seas. Most of the ocean lies outside national jurisdiction, and is effectively lawless. Countries only have sovereign authority up to 200 nautical miles from their coast; everything beyond is considered the high seas, ruled by nobody. A separate set of UN negotiations has been under way for years to agree a high seas treaty, but the last round of talks ended in failure. They are reconvening in March 2023 to try again.Can Cop15 protect ocean biodiversity from the big fish of the ‘blue economy’? | Guy StandingRead moreWithout that treaty, any agreements made in Montreal to protect ocean on the high seas are legally meaningless, as there would be nobody to enforce the rules. There are regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs), which set quotas to prevent species, such as tuna, from being overfished on the high seas, but their enforcement powers are limited in scope and they are heavily influenced by commercial fisheries. Countries could also use the parallel negotiations as an excuse not to act, arguing that protecting the ocean isn’t a matter for Cop15 at all.A few nations have been forging ahead closer to home, with Costa Rica, France and the UK proposing ambitious limits off their own coastlines – though almost all the UK’s marine protected areas still allow bottom-trawling.“Designation is not protection,” says Steve Widdicombe, director of science at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory. “You can allocate a particular label or piece of ocean and say, ‘Oh, it’s a marine protected area, it’s a site of special scientific interest, it’s a nature reserve’ or what have you. Well, you’ve still got bottom-trawling going on in there, you’re still pumping sewage into it.”“Not every piece of sea is the same as every other piece of sea,” he adds. “We can choose 30% of the open ocean, away from every consumer – that’s absolutely fine, accessible, easy stuff to do. But it doesn’t help any coral. It doesn’t help any mangroves. It doesn’t help seagrass.”Cripps raises the possibility that even if the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) fails to reach an agreement, the ocean might already soon be 30% protected in some form. “You’ve gotta ask – if CBD doesn’t get consensus, are we gonna get 30×30 anyway?” he says.But he points out that it means business as usual – with nothing changing in terms of overfishing, deep-sea mining, acidification, microplastics or any of the other threats facing the embattled ocean.“It should be much easier [to protect 30% of the ocean] than the land – that is the conundrum and the paradox here,” National Geographic explorer-in-residence Enric Sala told the conference. “Thirty percent is not the goal: it’s a milestone. Studies show we need something closer to half of the ocean if we are to prevent the collapse of our life support system during our lifetimes. But it is the unprotected 70% where our use of resources really has to be done more responsibility, to let that 30% help to regenerate the rest of the ocean.”Conservationist Sol Kaho’ohalahala, a seventh generation Hawaiian, agreed. “In a native Hawaiian perspective it is almost saying as though only 30% of our ancestors are important and that the other 70%, we might just have to put them aside.”TopicsCop15Seascape: the state of our oceansOceansMarine lifeAnimalsWildlifefeaturesReuse this content

It’s the year 2050, and humanity has made huge progress in decarbonizing. That’s thanks in large part to the negligible price of solar and wind power, which was cratering even back in 2022. Yet the fossil fuel industry hasn’t just doubled down on making plastics from oil and gas—instead, as the World Economic Forum warned would happen, it has tripled production from 2016 levels. In 2050, humans are churning out trillions of pounds of plastic a year, and in the process emitting the greenhouse gas equivalent of over 600 coal-fired power plants. Three decades from now, we’ve stopped using so much oil and gas as fuel, yet way more of them as plastic.Back here in 2022, people are trying to head off that nightmare scenario with a much-hyped concept called “bio-based plastics.” The backbones of traditional plastics are chains of carbon derived from fossil fuels. Bioplastics instead use carbon extracted from crops like corn or sugarcane, which is then mixed with other chemicals, like plasticizers, found in traditional plastics. Growing those plants pulls carbon out of the atmosphere, and locks it inside the bioplastic—if it is used for a permanent purpose, like building materials, rather than single-use cups and bags.At least, that’s the theory. In reality, bio-based plastics are problematic for a variety of reasons. It would take an astounding amount of land and water to grow enough plants to replace traditional plastics—plus energy is needed to produce and ship it all. Bioplastics can be loaded with the same toxic additives that make a plastic plastic, and still splinter into micro-sized bits that corrupt the land, sea, and air. And switching to bioplastics could give the industry an excuse to keep producing exponentially more polymers under the guise of “eco-friendliness,” when scientists and environmentalists agree that the only way to stop the crisis is to just stop producing so much damn plastic, whatever its source of carbon.But let’s say there was a large-scale shift to bioplastics—what would that mean for future emissions? That’s what a new paper in the journal Nature set out to estimate, finding that if a slew of variables were to align—and that’s a very theoretical if—bioplastics could go carbon-negative.The modeling considered four scenarios for how plastics production—and the life cycle of those products—might unfold through the year 2100, modeling even further out than those earlier predictions about production through 2050. The first scenario is a baseline, in which business continues as usual. The second adds a tax on CO2 emissions, which would make it more expensive to produce fossil-fuel plastics, encouraging a shift toward bio-based plastics and reducing emissions through the end of the century. (It would also incentivize using more renewable energy to produce plastic.) The third assumes the development of a more circular economy for plastics, making them more easily reused or recycled, reducing both emissions and demand. And the last scenario imagines a circular bio-economy, in which much more plastic has its roots in plants, and is used over and over.“Here, we combine all of these: We have the CO2 price in place, we have circular economy strategies, but additionally we kind of push more biomass into the sector by giving it a certain subsidy,” says the study’s lead author, Paul Stegmann, who’s now at the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research but did the work while at Utrecht University, in cooperation with PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. If all three conditions are met, he says, it is enough to push emissions into the negative.

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Richard Kirby, a marine biologist based in Plymouth, England, was looking at zooplankton wriggling under a microscope when he spotted something else: shreds of plastic pieces interlaced with the tiny creatures.

This wasn’t unusual to Kirby. He’d collected the sample off the sea of Plymouth for the purpose of raising awareness about microplastic pollution in oceans. Examining plankton is routine for Kirby, and so is observing microplastics in his samples.

Ghastly plastic now lurks among all the beautiful glass of the diatoms in my plankton sample. Microplastic fragments and plastic microfibers. Every inshore sample I now collect contains our plastic litter. @zeiss_micro pic.twitter.com/KAo89s8EXy— Dr Richard Kirby (@PlanktonPundit) November 29, 2022

Plastic pollution in oceans has been increasing at an alarming rate over the years. According to the World Wildlife Fund, 88 percent of marine species have been affected by plastic contamination.

People are familiar with seabirds dying from eating cigarette lighters, or turtles suffocating as a result of mistaking plastic bags for jellyfish, but there is very little awareness about plastics that harm creatures at a smaller level, Kirby explains. Ingesting microplastic can even kill plankton that are crucial sources of food to other marine life, including fish. This is because plankton cannot get a sufficient amount of food into their guts if they’re already occupied by little shreds of plastic.

Plastic is almost ubiquitous in oceans, and can even be found in environments that used to be considered pristine, says Kirby. “You can even find plastics in plankton samples collected in Antarctica, for example.” Plastic shreds from clothing are a significant polluter at the micro level. Microplastic can also come from tires, road markings, and personal care products.

Plankton aren’t mistaking microplastics for food, exactly, says Bill Perry, an associate professor of biology at Illinois State University. They are filter-feeding , during which they extract small pieces of food and particles from the water. In doing so, they gather up microplastics, too.

The damage that microplastics cause is not just confined to microscopic marine organisms like plankton. In fact, it is more pronounced in species that are located higher in the food chain, explains Perry, and which eat smaller creatures that have themselves consumed microplastics. In 2020, Perry conducted a study that examined the presence of microplastics in two different fish species in drinking water reservoirs that belonged to McLean County in Illinois. Perry’s research group collected 96 fish, and they detected microplastics in all of them. “The fish seemed to be swimming in essentially a soup of microplastics in the reservoirs,” he says.

Eating microplastics, as you might imagine, is not very good for marine animals. Fishes can face problems with growth and reproduction, says Grace Saba, an associate professor who also researches organismal ecology at Rutgers University. Their guts start to have more and more plastic and less food, and they don’t have enough energy to put toward growth and reproduction like they would if they weren’t eating microplastics.

The microplastic problem is only going to get worse: A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency projects that the amount of microplastics in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean will rise by 3.9 times in 2030 as compared to the microplastics level in 2008 in the region.

Once microplastics enter the ocean’s food chain, it’s hard for them to leave. Individual animals may excrete microplastics, but “the thing about poop in the ocean is that it serves as a food source for marine animals, including plankton and filter feeders,” Saba explains. In this way, microplastics get continuously recycled. Marine scientists in the future will probably be spotting microplastics in their samples, too.

Some 74 million metric tons of microplastics, the equivalent of more than 3 million plastic bottles, are falling on Auckland yearly, new research finds.
These tiny plastic fragments — shed from car tires, synthetic fabrics, plastic bottles, and other products — make their way into the atmosphere, waterways, and the sea. Scientists suggested that ocean currents may be ferrying microplastics from afar, and that crashing waves off the coast of Auckland are casting these particles into the air. The particles pose a risk to public health, according to the paper, which follows on a recent study that found microplastics buried deep in the lungs of human cadavers.

For the new research, scientists gathered tiny plastic particles at two locations in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. They recorded a daily average of 4,885 airborne particles per square meter, a figure that far outstrips previous tallies of 771 in London, 275 in Hamburg, and 110 in Paris.

Researchers attributed the difference to more sophisticated measuring techniques, which allowed them to identify particles as small as one-hundredth of a millimeter. To track the smallest particles, scientists applied a dye that glowed under certain conditions. The findings were published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
“The smaller the size ranges we looked at, the more microplastics we saw,” Joel Rindelaub, a chemist at the University of Auckland and lead author of the study, said in a statement. The tiniest particles pose the greatest health risk as they can enter the bloodstream and build up in organs, including the testicles, liver, and brain, the paper said.

“Future work needs to quantify exactly how much plastic we are breathing in,” Rindelaub said. “It’s becoming more and more clear that this is an important route of exposure.”

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