Author Archives: David Evans

Adult incontinence products outnumber baby nappies in landfill — and could outstrip them 10-to-one by 2030, according to a new Australian study. Key points:Experts want policy change to divert adult incontinence products from landfillThey say these products are a bigger waste problem than nappiesThe problem is a health, as well as an environmental concernResearchers from the University of Queensland and Southern Cross University found adult products and their impact got less attention, but could have a bigger environmental footprint. Co-author Emma Thompson-Brewster, an expert in waste management, said these were one of the last, and most difficult products yet to be diverted from landfill. “They produce greenhouse gasses, leachate [water pollutants] and also it’s full of plastic so the plastic biodegrades into micro plastics, and there could be other chemicals.”They’re not going away any time soon, and it’s important in any waste management issue that we talk about what the problem is – and the problem here is adult products,” she said.One in four Australians experience incontinence, and unlike babies who age out of nappies, for some it may be a long-term or chronic condition, researchers said. 

Lake Erie will soon have two electric, remote-controlled robots on its shores and in its waters to help remove plastic pollution.The technology is part of the Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup initiative, led by the Council of the Great Lakes Region and Pollution Probe. The Canadian-based organizations joined forces in 2020 to help remove plastic from the Great Lakes.Researchers with the Rochester Institute of Technology found that nearly 22 million pounds of plastic debris enter the Great Lakes each year through different sources and waterways.“That number is quite concerning,” said Mark Fisher, founder and CEO of the council.After seeing plastic-removing technology being used in saltwater environments, the team wanted to try it out on the Great Lakes.“We’ve seen them deployed around the world, in other coastal communities and predominantly, I would say, in saltwater environments,” Fisher said. “We said, well, there’s no reason why they can’t be … tested and deployed in an environment like the Great Lakes.”

The Council of the Great Lakes

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Gautier Peers test drives the BeBot during a press event with The Council of the Great Lakes and Meijer at Muskegon, Michigan in August 2022. Peers is a representative with the BeBot manufacturing company the Searial Cleaners. The BeBot and the PixieDrone were deployed at Lake Michigan during the event.

Over the last two years, the Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup Initiative expanded to more than 30 sites with different types of cleanup technology. After receiving funding from Meijer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the initiative expanded to the United States.“We’ve seen some incredible expansion over the last couple of years in the ability to use new capture and cleanup technologies as part of our work, he said.”The initiative was able to introduce this technology to Northeast Ohio’s waterways through partnerships with Cleveland Metroparks, Lake Metroparks, the Port of Cleveland and the PHASTAR Corporation.Meijer’s $1 million donation funded both robots, the BeBot and the PixieDrone.The BeBot, developed by Niteko Robotics, combs the beaches with a rake that gathers large particles from the sand into a collection bin on the robot. It can climb over obstacles, and carry up to 40 kilograms, or about 88 pounds of material.The PixieDrone, designed by Ranmarine, navigates the lake and pulls floating debris from the water to collect it into the back of the machine. It is equipped with a camera to help it avoid obstacles, and a basket that can hold up to about 42 gallons and 132 pounds.

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The BeBot is emptied, revealing the amount of debris it collected from the Lake Michigan’s beach in Muskegon. The BeBot and PixieDrone were deployed on Lake Michigan during a press event with Meijer and the Council of the Great Lakes in August 2022.

The Council of the Great Lakes

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The PixieDrone is deployed into Lake Michigan during a press event with Meijer and the Council of the Great Lakes in August 2022.

The Council of the Great Lakes

“So, both of them are remote controlled devices and operate slightly differently, but provide very useful and helpful data for the work that we do,” Fisher said.The robots are able to collect larger plastics, like bottles, food containers and cigarette butts, and plastics as small as nurdles – plastic pellets that can range from one to five millimeters in size, Fisher said.After the collection, researchers will sort through the debris to determine and categorize what is collected, Fisher said. This involves recycling material, throwing away waste and returning any organic material, like sticks and plants, back to the beach.There is not yet a definitive number on the amount of plastic in Lake Erie itself, Fisher said, but the data collected will allow them to determine that information.“In terms of absolute numbers, there really isn’t one at this stage,” he said, “which is why, the work that we’re doing through the Great Lakes plastics cleanup and on individual beaches and marinas is really helping us understand what is showing up in different lakes, but also different communities that are bordering Lake Erie and the other [four] Great Lakes.”The BeBot and PixieDrone will be deployed in Lake Erie this fall for the testing phase, led by Ohio State University’s Ohio Sea Grant program, Fisher said. They will be officially deployed around April or May of 2023 and will run until the fall.While the robots will help provide a path to making the shores and waters of Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes clean, Fisher said they are not the solution.“The solution is working further upstream in the economy and our communities to make sure that we’re doing a much better job at providing opportunities to collect, recover this material, obviously recycle it and create opportunities for its reuse in the economy,” Fisher said, “as opposed to it either going to landfill or even worse, showing up in the environment as litter.”The Council of the Great Lakes hopes the robots will spark a larger conversation that can create a lasting impact on plastic disposal and reduction, Fisher said.“It really helps us reach coastal communities, whether it’s both beachgoers or boaters, about this plastics challenge that we face in the Great Lakes region,” he said, “and how we need to be working together to make sure that plastic never becomes waste or litter in the first place.”

When you think of plastic pollution, you might imagine ocean “garbage patches” swirling with tens of millions of plastic bottles and shopping bags. But unfolding alongside the “macroplastic” pollution crisis is another threat caused by much smaller particles: microplastics.

Microplastics — tiny plastic fragments that are less than 5 millimeters in diameter, a little less than one-third the size of a dime — have become ubiquitous in the environment. They form when larger plastic items like water bottles, grocery bags, and food wrappers are exposed to the elements, chipping into smaller and smaller pieces as they degrade. Smaller plastic fragments can get down into the nano territory, spanning just 0.000001 millimeter — a tiny fraction of the width of a human hair.

These plastic particles do many of the same bad things that larger plastic items do: mar the land and sea, leach toxic chemicals into the food chain. But scientists are increasingly worried about their potential impact on the global climate system. Not only do microplastics release potent greenhouse gases as they break down, but they also may be inhibiting one of the world’s most important carbon sinks, preventing planet-warming carbon molecules from being locked away in the seafloor.

Matt Simon, a science journalist for Wired, details the danger in his forthcoming book on microplastics, A Poison Like No Other. He told Grist that it’s still early days for some of this research but that the problem could be “hugely important going forward.”

To understand the potential magnitude, you first have to understand an ocean phenomenon called the “biological carbon pump.” This process — which involves a complex network of physical, chemical, and biological factors — sequesters up to 12 billion metric tons of carbon at the bottom of the ocean each year, potentially locking away one-third of humanity’s annual emissions. Without this vital system, scientists estimate that atmospheric CO2 concentrations, which recently hit a new record high of 421 parts per million, could be up to 250 parts per million higher.

“The biological carbon pump helps to keep the planet healthy,” said Clara Manno, a marine ecologist at the British Antarctic Survey. “It helps the mitigation of climate change.”

The pump works like this: First, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere dissolves into water at the surface of the ocean. Using photosynthesis, tiny marine algae called phytoplankton then absorb that carbon into their bodies before passing it onto small ocean critters — zooplankton — that eat them. In a final step, zooplankton excrete the carbon as part of “fecal pellets” that sink down the water column. Once these carbon-containing pellets reach the ocean floor, the carbon can be remineralized into rocks — preventing it from escaping back into the atmosphere.

Matt Simon’s book, A Poison Like No Other, details the many dangers of microplastics.
Left: Milan Bozic, Right: Jenna Garrett

So where do microplastics come in? Unfortunately, at every step of the process.

Perhaps most concerning to scientists is the way microplastics may be affecting that final stage, the sinking of zooplankton poop to the bottom of the seafloor. Once ingested, microplastics get incorporated into zooplankton poop and can cause fecal pellets to sink “way, way more slowly,” said Matthew Cole, a senior marine ecologist and ecotoxicologist at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the U.K. In a 2016 paper he published in Environmental Science & Technology, he documented a 2.25-fold reduction in the sinking rate for the fecal pellets of zooplankton that had been exposed to microplastics. Other research has shown that plastic-contaminated krill fecal pellets can sink about half as quickly as their purer counterparts.

This reduced sinking rate is a result of microplastics’ buoyancy — especially those made of low-density polymers like polyethylene, the stuff used in grocery bags and likely the most common polymer in the surface ocean. Slower sinking rates mean fecal pellets may spend up to two or even three days more than usual drifting through the water column, presenting more opportunities to be intercepted.

“They’re more likely to break apart, they’re more likely to be eaten by other animals,” Cole said, making it less likely that the carbon will reach the seafloor and become permanently sequestered. 

There are other worries too, about the way microplastics can affect phytoplankton and zooplankton health — potentially compounding the stresses already posed by rising carbon dioxide concentrations, which are making the oceans warmer and more acidic, and are contributing to the expansion of oxygen-depleted “dead zones.” High concentrations of microplastics in water are toxic to phytoplankton, and lab experiments have shown they can cause up to a 45 percent reduction in some species’ growth. Cole’s experiments on copepods, a common kind of zooplankton, have shown that ingested microplastics take up space in copepods’ guts, causing them to eat less real food, produce smaller eggs that are significantly less likely to hatch, and live shorter lives. 

A researcher sifts through sediment to find tiny fragments of microplastic.
Charly Triballeau / AFP via Getty Images

Researchers are still trying to come to grips with what all these laboratory observations could mean on a global scale. But the worry is that a planet-wide population of smaller, shorter-lived ocean algae and zooplankton may not be able to take up as much carbon as their ancestors — exacerbating the problems associated with buoyant fecal pellets. 

“There is something there that we should worry about,” Manno said, stressing the need for more research. To that end, she’s working on a multiyear field study, with research expeditions planned for the microplastics-laden Mediterranean Sea and the moderately cleaner Southern Ocean. Manno said she’s hoping to collect real-world plastic and fecal pellet samples and get a better look at how microplastics interact with zooplankton in the open ocean.

The goal, Manno explained, is to quantify the decline in carbon sequestration related to microplastics and translate that into a dollar cost to society. “The ocean provides us this ecosystem service,” she said. “If something stresses these processes … this is a kind of social benefit that we cannot use anymore.”

If her hypothesis is correct — that microplastics are inhibiting the biological carbon pump — it will add even more weight to a growing recognition of plastic and microplastics as a major climate disrupter. Scientists already know that plastic production and incineration cause massive greenhouse gas emissions, and in A Poison Like No Other, Simon notes emerging research on the way microplastics release exponentially increasing amounts of planet-warming methane and ethylene as they break down.

“They continue emitting forever,” said Sarah-Jeanne Royer, the oceanographer and postdoctoral researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who is conducting that research.

To mitigate their damage to ecosystems and the climate, Royer called for policymakers to double down on removing microplastics from the ocean. But that’s a tall order. Despite some early-stage experiments involving plastic-eating mussels and bacteria, Simon said there are currently no viable, scalable ways to remove all the microplastics that have already accumulated in the environment.

“We have so much microplastic and nanoplastic in so many places on the planet — in the air and the land and the sea — that there’s just no way to pull it all out,” Simon said. “I wish there was a nice, happy solution like a magnet that you could drag through the environment and attract all the microplastics, but unfortunately that just doesn’t exist.”

Instead, he called for people to take steps to limit the release of microplastics into the environment — like by installing a filter on their washing machine — as well as government-mandated caps on plastic production. “We have to stop producing so much goddamn plastic,” he said. “It is out of control at this point.”

New study reveals ‘staggering’ scale of lost fishing gear drifting in Earth’s oceansLost nets, lines and hooks trap wildlife for years as they float in the ocean, sink to the bottom or are washed ashore

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Enough commercial fishing line is left in the ocean each year to stretch to the moon and back, according to the most comprehensive study ever completed of lost fishing equipment.The staggering amounts of lost gear, which includes 25 million pots and traps and 14 billion hooks, was likely having deadly consequences for marine life, one of the study’s authors said.Enough nets were lost or discarded each year to cover Scotland. If all types of lost line was tied together, it would be able to stretch round the Earth 18 times.
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“This is super confronting,” said Dr Denise Hardesty, of the Australian government’s CSIRO science agency, and one of the study’s authors.“This is having an unimaginable toll of unknown deaths that could result in population level effects for marine wildlife.”Published in the journal Science Advances, researchers from CSIRO and the University of Tasmania used standardised interviews with 451 commercial fishers in seven countries to ask what was being lost.Living sea walls and kelp forests: the plans to lure marine life back to Sydney HarbourRead moreResearchers matched those interviews with data on the amount of commercial fishing globally to estimate what was lost. Annual losses included:
78,000 sq km (30,000 sq miles) of purse seine nets and gillnets
215 sq km of bottom trawl nets
740,000 km (46,000 miles) of main long lines
15.5 million km (9.6m miles) of branch lines
13 billion longline hooks
25 million traps and pots
Fishers in the United States, Morocco, Indonesia, Belize, Peru, Iceland and New Zealand were interviewed. The countries were chosen because they had a fishing industry using most fishing methods.Smaller boats lost more gear than larger boats, and bottom-trawl fishers lost more nets than midwater trawlers.A previous estimate put the percentage of gear lost at a higher level, but that research relied on a range of studies, rather than a standardised estimation based on interviews.Hardesty said fishers often lost nets due to bad weather where equipment wasn’t properly secured or floated away, or gear became entangled with equipment from other vessels competing for the same fish.But she said because nets were designed to catch and kill animals, lost gear would continue to entrap wildlife for years as it either floated in the ocean, sank to the bottom or washed ashore.“That’s birds, turtles, whales, sharks, dolphins, dugongs,” she said.“You are then also catching a whole bunch of fish but then not eating them. That becomes a food security problem because that’s protein that’s not feeding people around the world.”Kelsey Richardson, a lead author from the University of Tasmania, said the detailed estimates should help fisheries managers, the commercial fishing sector, and conservationists to better target solutions.The nets were adding to the global problem of marine plastic pollution, she saidHardesty said there were solutions, such as local governments introducing buy-backs of older fishing gear which tended to get lost more often than new equipment. Tags or labels could be attached to gear, and free facilities could be introduced at harbours to allow fishers to discard unusable nets safely.Richard Leck, head of oceans at WWF Australia, said: “These figures are breathtaking. This gives us a sense of the horrendous scale of the problem and the urgent need to tackle it.Off Tanzania, in one of the world’s richest seas, why is the catch getting smaller?Read more“Ghost nets – as they’re known – are a particularly lethal form of plastic pollution for all the marine life we care about. Once these nets are lost from a fishing vessel, they don’t stop fishing.”Leck said a global plastic pollution treaty currently being negotiated through the United Nations needed to address the problem of ghost nets “at a global level to make sure countries are accountable” through transparent reporting and labelling of fishing gear.“This affects all countries – not just the places where nets are lost. This gear can migrate around oceans and continue to catch fish and entangle threatened species.”TopicsFishOceansFishingFoodMarine lifeReuse this content

Plastic recycling labels are everywhere: The ubiquitous “chasing arrows” symbol adorns everything from plastic bags and water bottles to kids’ toys. 

Most commonly, these symbols appear with a number — 1 through 7 — that identifies the type of plastic resin a product is made of. A number 1, for instance, corresponds to polyethylene terephthalate, or PET — the stuff that makes up water bottles. Number 6 is for polystyrene, used in foam cups and trays. The plastics industry insists these icons were never meant to indicate a product’s recyclability, even though that is how they are often perceived by consumers.

In fact, most plastics are not recyclable, largely because there is no market for materials labeled 3 through 7. But that hasn’t stopped the widespread use of the chasing arrows.

Resin identification codes for polystyrene, left, and polypropylene: danielvfung / Getty Images; Mike Bitzenhofer via Getty Images

With no federal program to evaluate products’ recyclability and issue labels for them, third-party organizations have stepped in to play this role instead. One organization in particular, How2Recycle, has devised an elaborate hierarchy with several versions of its own recycling symbol, which it sells to hundreds of companies ranging from Lowe’s to Beyond Meat. 

The organization, whose parent nonprofit is based in Virginia, says it analyzes waste management systems nationwide to figure out whether companies’ products and packaging are recyclable and then issues a corresponding label. It’s ostensibly an attempt to clear up confusion among consumers about what should and shouldn’t go into the blue bin. The group describes its markers as “recycling labels that make sense.” 

This summer, How2Recycle declared a big victory for the companies it sells labels to: It now considers a wide set of products made from polypropylene, or PP — the resin corresponding to the number 5 — to be “widely recyclable,” meaning the organization thinks that more than 60 percent of Americans have access to a curbside or drop-off recycling program that accepts them. Polypropylene accounts for about 14 percent of the U.S.’s plastic production.

The announcement makes polypropylene tubs, bottles, and jars — things like yogurt containers and ketchup bottles — eligible for How2Recycle’s top-tier recycling label: a chasing arrows symbol with no qualifications. 

But industry experts and environmental advocates have raised their eyebrows. Based on federal recycling data, independent national waste management surveys, and firsthand accounts from material sorting facilities, polypropylene recycling isn’t nearly as widespread as How2Recycle’s labeling implies. Even if PP products were technically accepted by facilities that serve a majority of Americans — which researchers say they are not — polypropylene is much more commonly landfilled or incinerated than turned into new products. This is because it is often filled with toxic chemical additives or contaminated with food waste, both of which make it difficult to turn it into new products. It’s usually less economical to sort out polypropylene for recycling than to simply discard it and make new products from virgin material.

Recycling labels from How2Recycle. Grist / Joseph Winters

“Post-consumer PP packaging and products have never been recyclable or recycled … above a few percent,” said Jan Dell, an independent chemical engineer and founder of the advocacy group The Last Beach Cleanup. Through How2Recycle, she said, plastic and packaging companies are “creating their own non-verified data” and ignoring key provisions of the Federal Trade Commission’s Green Guides, a set of requirements meant to prevent companies from making deceptive claims about the environmental benefits of their products. 

As a result, Dell said, the industry has been allowed to deepen the public’s confusion about recycling, gulling people and policymakers into thinking that it will be able to keep pace with plastic manufacturers’ plans to dramatically scale up production. 

How2Recycle is part of a labyrinth of organizations and industry membership programs that promote “sustainable materials management.” When it officially launched in 2012, the organization branded itself as an attempt to clear up confusion among consumers about what they could recycle. Many companies — including Yoplait, Costco, REI, and Microsoft — were quick to sign on, eager to affix How2Recycle’s labels to their products.

The program took the onus off of individual companies for claims about recyclability. How2Recycle would do all the necessary research into specific products’ recycling rates and community access to recycling programs, allowing participants to rest assured that their recycling labels were compliant with federal law. Today, more than 400 companies pay annual membership fees to place How2Recycle labels on their packages, including Amazon, Clif Bar, Walmart, Johnson & Johnson, and Starbucks.

At the top of How2Recycle’s labeling hierarchy is a simple “chasing arrows” recycling symbol, which the organization gives to products that it says are accepted by curbside or drop-off recycling programs that serve at least 60 percent of the American population. This is the label that How2Recycle said in late July some polypropylene products would now be eligible for. Previously, in 2020, the organization had downgraded PP products from the unqualified chasing arrows to a “Check Locally” label that instructed consumers to verify whether their community’s recycling program would accept them.

“As rigid polypropylene access, sortation, and end markets are on an upward trend across the U.S., we are excited to upgrade this packaging format,” Caroline Cox, How2Recycle’s director, said in a press release this summer.

However, other sources paint a very different picture of the United States’ plastic recycling landscape — especially for polypropylene, which is far more difficult to turn into new products than How2Recycle’s labels make it seem. “It is not possible that 60 percent of Americans have access to established recycling systems that accept PP packaging of any type,” Dell, of The Last Beach Cleanup, said. 

Workers sort through plastic and other materials at a material recovery facility, or MRF. Lauren A. Little / MediaNews Group / Reading Eagle via Getty Images

First, she explained, industry data suggests that only 60 percent of Americans have access to any recycling program, let alone one that accepts polypropylene containers. Most facilities only accept plastics that are easier to recycle, such as bottles made of PET. And additional data that Dell is compiling for 2022 shows that only half of the country’s 373 material recovery facilities, or MRFs — specialized plants that process and sort all the items people toss in their blue bins — say they accept polypropylene tubs, one of the most recyclable PP products out there (think margarine containers and cottage cheese cups). As a result, only 28 percent of Americans have access to recycling programs that accept these polypropylene containers.

“Overall accessibility for plastic recycling has dropped, if anything,” said John Hocevar, Greenpeace’s oceans campaign director. In recent years, labor shortages and high prices for recycled materials have caused cuts in curbside recycling programs, and many MRFs have stopped accepting most plastic resins. 

What’s more, Hocevar and others argue that the accessibility of recycling programs is a distraction from a more important metric: the real recycling rate. Just because polypropylene is collected doesn’t mean it will ultimately be recycled. According to the most recent available data from the Environmental Protection Agency, only 2.7 percent of polypropylene “containers and packaging” were recycled in 2018. If you include all forms of polypropylene, that number falls to just 0.6 percent.

One reason PP is difficult to recycle is that it’s not as clean or pure as other kinds of plastic. Unlike products made from PET or high-density polyethylene (HDPE) — labeled with the numbers 1 and 2, respectively — polypropylene products, labeled with the number 5, often contain toxic additives that make it difficult to turn them back into usable items. Another reason is that PP is typically collected in bales of mixed plastic that include a variety of resins labeled with the numbers 3 through 7.

In order to be recycled, PP must be picked out of these bales and then sold to an extremely limited number of facilities that will actually accept that plastic. (​​In 2020, Greenpeace estimated that the U.S. only had enough processing capacity to recycle less than 5 percent of its PP waste.) The whole process is prohibitively expensive, especially since the final product must be competitively priced against virgin plastics. According to the EPA, the U.S. generated more than 8 million tons of polypropylene waste in 2018, the most recent year for which data are available.

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Jeff Donlevy, a member of California’s Statewide Commission on Recycling Markets and Curbside Recycling and general manager of Ming’s Recycling, a company based in northern California, said that many facilities continue to accept polypropylene — even if they have no intention of recycling it — because of outdated, 10-or-more-year contracts with cities. At the time when many of these contracts were signed, MRFs said they would accept polypropylene because they could send mixed plastic bales to China for sorting and recycling. But in 2018, when China enacted its “National Sword” policy and closed its borders to most plastic waste imports, U.S. MRFs were saddled with a glut of resins that are uneconomical and logistically difficult to turn into new products.

Of the roughly 80 MRFs in California, Donlevy said the vast majority are not recycling plastics made of resins labeled number 3 and above. This includes polypropylene, number 5. Most facilities are “just landfilling whatever number 5 they get,” he said. 

How2Recycle says on its website that it takes four factors into account when determining a product’s recyclability — collection, sortation, reprocessing, and end markets — but it is not transparent about the exact methodology it uses to evaluate these criteria. Much of its data comes from an industry report conducted by How2Recycle’s parent organization that looks at a “non-random” sample of large recycling programs throughout the U.S., along with a random sample of recycling programs in smaller communities. In the most recent edition of the report, these censuses consisted of web searches for each recycling program to determine what kinds of plastic they accept. 

Environmental advocates question the results of these analyses, but they say the larger issue is that How2Recycle fails to say anything about the real recycling rate of PP products. Again, the “widely recyclable” label is only supposed to reflect a material’s acceptance by curbside and drop-off recycling programs. But this information is not printed on the organization’s unconditional recycling labels. Donlevy said this oversight “misleads the public.” 

It may also contravene sustainable packaging guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, a government agency that promotes consumer protection. By slapping recycling labels without qualifiers onto polypropylene tubs and other containers, How2Recycle appears to be ignoring key provisions of the FTC’s Green Guides, a set of detailed but nonbinding requirements for claims about products’ environmental benefits. The U.S. government does not have a program to issue or approve recycling labels, so this is the primary check for labels created by private groups.

At the broadest level, the FTC says it is deceptive to “misrepresent, directly or by implication, that a product or package is recyclable.” This means that companies should not use a recycling label without qualifiers — like How2Recycle’s gold standard chasing arrows symbol — unless they can prove that recycling facilities for their labeled products are available to at least 60 percent of consumers. Critically, the commission also calls on companies to substantiate that these facilities “will actually recycle, not accept and ultimately discard” labeled products. 

Marketers “should not assume that consumers or communities have access to a particular recycling program merely because the program will accept a product,” the FTC says in the Green Guides’ statement of basis and purpose. Although the guides aren’t legally binding, activity that is inconsistent with them can be used as evidence of a violation of the FTC Act’s provisions on “Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices” and can result in fines or additional rulemaking. State governments can also cite the Green Guides when building false advertising or consumer protection cases.

Dell lamented that the FTC has never, to her knowledge, taken action to stop a company from misusing an unqualified recycling label. But courts have. Take, for example, a 2018 lawsuit filed by a consumer against Keurig over claims that the company’s polypropylene coffee pods were “recyclable.” Keurig argued that its labels were consistent with the Green Guides, but a U.S. District Court in California disagreed and refused to dismiss the case. The court said that even if the coffee pods were technically collected by municipal recycling programs, they were not in practice being recycled. Keurig settled the case this year for $10 million and has changed the labels on its coffee pods.

Keurig coffee pods. Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Greenpeace argues that How2Recycle is using similar sleight with its own labels, claiming recyclability with insufficient substantiation. “Polypropylene does not come close to meeting the requirements” for recycling labels laid out by the FTC, the organization said in a press release. It is neither accepted at recycling facilities that serve 60 percent of the population nor actually recycled at a significant rate. 

In response to Grist’s request for comment, Paul Nowak — executive director of How2Recycle’s parent organization, GreenBlue — said that How2Recycle’s labels not only satisfy the Green Guides’ requirements but “go beyond them.” Although How2Recycle does not have internal data on the real recycling rate for polypropylene, Nowak said How2Recycle has reviewed “letters of support” from MRFs saying that they plan to expand their recycling capacity for polypropylene. Nowak declined to share these letters with Grist.

How2Recycle’s website offers some clarification. Although the organization claims to consider “sortation” and “reprocessing” for products that will feature its labels, How2Recycle explains online that it ultimately does not take into account the real-world recycling rate when evaluating a product’s recyclability — in contrast to definitions of recyclability from other organizations, like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, an international nonprofit that advocates for a circular economy.

Nowak insists that How2Recycle spent “several months” verifying data on the increased recyclability of polypropylene. But Dell thinks there’s an irresolvable conflict of interest at play, since How2Recycle and the organizations whose data it cites are run and funded by companies that make and sell plastics. “We’ve got all these front groups funded by the plastics and products industry to create and perpetuate the myth that plastics are recyclable,” she said.

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The recent push to make polypropylene “widely recyclable” started outside How2Recycle, with a separate industry group called the Recycling Partnership — a nonprofit whose board of directors includes executives for major brands and plastic industry groups: Keurig Dr. Pepper, Nestlé, the Association of Plastic Recyclers, and the American Beverage Association, among others. The organization lists roughly 80 “funding partners” on its website, including two of North America’s main petrochemical industry trade groups, the American Chemistry Council and the Plastics Industry Association.

In 2020, a few months after How2Recycle downgraded PP products to only be eligible for the “Check Locally” label, the Recycling Partnership launched a new initiative — directly funded by many plastic brands and industry trade groups — to “ensure the long-term viability of polypropylene.”

The Recycling Partnership claims it contributed to a spike in polypropylene recycling over the past two years through a series of 24 grants worth $6.7 million. The group did not respond to Grist’s request for more information, but a press release notes that the funding helped “support sorting improvements and community education across the U.S.” According to the Recycling Partnership, these grants increased the amount of polypropylene recovered by 25 million pounds annually. Now, the group says its proprietary “National Recycling Database” shows 65 percent of Americans having access to PP recycling.

According to Nowak, the Recycling Partnership approached How2Recycle with this data in early 2022, requesting that How2Recycle reevaluate its labeling for polypropylene. After what Nowak described as a lengthy evaluation process, he said the data matched what he was seeing with How2Recycle’s own analysis, as well as information provided by an outside consulting firm. In response to Grist’s request for comment, the consulting firm said it provided How2Recycle with access-to-recycling data and “end market” research to show there is a market for polypropylene that ultimately does get recycled. The firm did not share data on polypropylene’s real recycling rate and told Grist to reach out to the Recycling Partnership.

How2Recycle, meanwhile, has its own web of connections to big brands and the plastics industry. The group’s parent organization, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, is an industry working group whose members include Procter and Gamble, Coca-Cola, and the ExxonMobil Chemical Company, as well as a host of other plastic makers. GreenBlue, the umbrella organization that houses How2Recycle and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, has a board of directors that includes executives from the Dow Chemical Company, Mars, the packaging companies Printpack and Westrock, and more.

Nowak said he is aware of concerns over potential conflicts of interest, but that How2Recycle’s parent organizations are “very careful about who we start to work with.” At How2Recycle, he added, “we stay neutral in all that.”

Dell has often spoken of the plastic labeling landscape as the “wild, wild West,” with “no sheriff in town” to protect consumers from deceptive recycling claims. The FTC, whose Green Guides may soon be updated for the first time since 2012, declined to comment on How2Recycle’s labeling system, and environmental advocates have expressed frustration that the commission hasn’t done more to enforce the guidelines.

Without stronger government regulation, Dell said, “How2Recycle and the product companies have filled the void to become the deciders” of what should and shouldn’t bear the recycling label.

But states are catching on. California passed nation-leading legislation last year making it illegal for companies to use the chasing arrows on products that are not actually being turned into new products. (In this case the state, rather than How2Recycle, will determine recyclability, and it will take into account both collection and the real recycling rate.) The law is expected to eliminate recycling symbols on virtually all plastic packaging that isn’t made of number 1 or number 2 resins, since those are the only kinds of plastic currently being recycled with significant regularity. It could have an impact on other states, too — if plastic manufacturers decide it is too cumbersome to create new product lines for the California market, they could decide to remove recycling symbols for the whole country.

Hocevar of Greenpeace said the California bill is an important step in the right direction and called on other states to adopt similar policies. Environmental advocates have also cheered a separate effort from the California attorney general’s office, which announced in April that it was launching an investigation into the petrochemical industry’s “aggressive campaign to deceive the public” about the feasibility of recycling.

Representative Alan Lowenthal speaks during a news conference about the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act in 2020. Sarah Silbiger / Getty Images

To truly address the plastic pollution crisis, Hocevar and others say that the top priority should be turning off the tap — limiting the production of plastic that ultimately has to be dealt with. In the U.S., perhaps the most promising move in this direction is the proposed Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, a far-reaching federal bill that would ban carryout plastic bags and other single-use plastic products, require plastics companies to launch and finance programs to manage the waste they produce, and place a moratorium on new petrochemical facilities until the EPA can undertake a comprehensive assessment of the industry’s environmental impact.

In the meantime, Donlevy said that companies should stop trying to trick consumers into feeling good about their plastic consumption. “Producers have to realize they’re using plastic for their benefit and for the consumers’ benefit, which is fine,” he said. “But to put a recycling symbol and say that that cottage cheese or cream cheese or sour cream container is recyclable? You don’t need to do that, that’s not a part of the sales pitch. … The only plastics that are really getting recycled in the U.S. are number 1 and number 2 bottles.”

With just weeks until many neighborhood streets are flooded with candy-seeking trick-or-treaters, environmentalists and sustainability experts say you should consider taking a second look at the sweet treats you might be planning to hand out — or eat — this Halloween.While chocolate is a crowd-pleaser, the ubiquitous candy “has some pretty close associations with two of the biggest environmental crises that we face right now, and that’s the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis,” says John Buchanan, vice president of sustainable production for Conservation International.What’s more, much of the individually wrapped candies plucked from bowls at parties or hauled home at the end of the night contribute to the spooky holiday’s waste problem.“Halloween should really be called Plasticween,” says Judith Enck, a former senior Environmental Protection Agency official under Barack Obama who now heads the Beyond Plastics advocacy organization. Although costumes and decorations are major sources of plastic, the overabundance of non-recyclable candy wrappers is also cause for concern. Broadly, Enck says, the holiday “is a plastic and solid waste disaster.”The trouble with chocolateBut Enck and other experts emphasize that axing the holiday isn’t the answer. “I would vigorously oppose canceling Halloween,” she says.“I have very fond memories of trick-or-treating as a child. My kids had wonderful times trick-or-treating,” adds Carolyn Dimitri, an applied economist and associate professor of food studies at New York University. “It’s our culture, our custom — we give candy on Halloween.”So, if you’re among the roughly two-thirds of Americans planning to pass out candy this year, here’s how experts recommend treating — rather than tricking — the planet with your choices.Understand the impacts of candy“It’s important for consumers, with any product that they buy, that they educate themselves about where it comes from and how it’s made and the impact of the product on the environment and the social implications of it,” says Alexander Ferguson, vice president for communications and membership at the nonprofit World Cocoa Foundation.The environmental, climate and social impacts of popular candy products are largely associated with two common ingredients, experts say: cocoa and palm oil — both of which can be found in chocolate.“In terms of sustainability, the biggest problems in confectionery are in chocolate,” says Etelle Higonnet, an environmental and human rights expert who helped create the first environmental scorecard for chocolate.Companies typically source cocoa and palm oil from tropical areas often inhabited by people in less economically-developed communities, Dimitri says. According to some estimates, about 70 percent of the world’s cocoa comes from West Africa while around 90 percent of the world’s palm oil trees are grown on a handful of islands in Indonesia and Malaysia.Producing cocoa and palm oil has led to the deforestation of critical rainforests, which poses problems for climate and biodiversity, Buchanan says. West Africa’s Ivory Coast, for instance, has lost 80 percent of its forests since 1970.Preserving these rainforests can help the world meet its goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to preindustrial levels, he adds.“Deforestation and land use change are such huge drivers of emissions globally,” Buchanan says. “Even if we had a 100 percent perfect solution to green energy and … decarbonization, if you decarbonize the economy tomorrow, we still have to take nature into account if we are to stay below 1.5 degrees of warming. The global community must address both fossil fuel emissions and emissions associated with loss of natural areas and land use.”Cocoa and palm oil are also linked to human rights issues, including forced labor and child labor.Aside from taking steps to provide living wages to cocoa farmers, many of whom have been paid about $1 a day or less, major chocolate manufacturers such as Mars, Nestlé and Hershey have pledged to stop using cocoa harvested by children. But difficulties tracing cocoa back to farms means companies often can’t guarantee that their chocolate is produced without child labor, The Washington Post’s Peter Whoriskey and Rachel Siegel reported in 2019.The chocolate industry is working on achieving better rates of traceability, or knowing where a product comes from, Ferguson says. “That sounds like a very simple thing, but actually it’s quite a hard thing to do when you’ve got many smallholder farmers and a long and complicated supply chain.”The world has pledged to stop deforestation before. But trees are still disappearing at an ‘untenable rate.’Additionally, poverty underpins many of the labor issues affecting those involved in the production of chocolate. Farmers often have to use their own children, because they can’t afford laborers.“People tend to draw conclusions about the use of children in agriculture, and I think it’s important to keep in mind that for a lot of families there is not any other option,” Dimitri says.Cocoa’s child laborersAvoid palm oilOne of the simplest actions concerned consumers can take is to buy candy that doesn’t use palm oil, Dimitri says.“Palm oil is really popular because it has really good mouthfeel and it’s really inexpensive,” she says. But it is possible to find products without the troublesome ingredient.“A lot of candy companies have tried to reformulate their products so that they don’t have palm oil in them because there’s been resistance to it,” she adds.Make sure to check ingredient labels carefully because some products from the same brand will still contain palm oil, even if other items do not.Don’t boycott chocolate, buy betterYou could buy Halloween candy that doesn’t contain cocoa, but experts caution against boycotting chocolate entirely.Cocoa is mostly produced by individual farmers running small operations, Buchanan says. “If there isn’t a market for cocoa, they’re going to be even worse off, so you’re certainly not going to deal with challenges like child labor by taking away a key source of income.”Instead, Ferguson says, “reward companies that are trying to do the right thing and stay engaged.”Some experts recommend looking for third-party certification labels from groups such as Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance that are intended to help distinguish products that meet certain ethical standards. Though these certifications can be flawed and don’t guarantee a perfect product, they are often better than nothing, experts say.“Given the complexities and the challenges of what we’ve seen, I think that there’s really a risk of letting perfect be the enemy of the good,” Buchanan says.Chocolate companies sell ‘certified cocoa.’ But some of those farms use child labor, harm forests.Still, buying certified chocolate means fewer options — and the candy tends to be more expensive. For example, Tony’s Chocolonely, a company that sells Fairtrade-certified chocolate, offers 100 individually packaged chocolates for $48.69. Alter Eco also offers certified food products, including 60-count boxes of individually wrapped truffles for $49.99.Higonnet also points consumers to resources such as the Chocolate Scorecard, which surveys major chocolate companies and ranks them based on criteria such as traceability and transparency, living income, child labor, and deforestation and climate, among others. According to the 2022 scorecard, several major brands that sell more affordable candy options are overall “starting to implement good policies.”“The best thing, regardless of whether you’re buying from a big company or a small company, is to be pushing them and asking them what are they doing to be part of the solution,” Buchanan says. “It’s not as easy as just going to small specialty companies. Those companies have their role and they can do things differently with the way they operate, but they also have a small footprint. We need the big companies as well.”Sign up for the latest news about climate change, energy and the environment, delivered every ThursdayMinimize wasteIt’s also important to try to reduce the amount of non-recyclable waste and uneaten candy that gets thrown away. Keep in mind that you can donate unopened Halloween candy to organizations that send treats to soldiers and first responders or local community drives. But be sure to check donation requirements. Homemade items, for example, often aren’t accepted.Many candy wrappers aren’t commonly recyclable, says Enck of Beyond Plastics, which provides a tip sheet for cutting back on plastic during Halloween. If possible, she suggests buying candy in bulk and putting it in paper bags, which can be recycled. Some popular candies, such as Nerds, Dots and Junior Mints, can also come individually packaged in recyclable cardboard boxes.Although candy doesn’t stay good forever, it can remain safe and edible for longer than you might think, says Gregory Ziegler, a professor of food studies at Pennsylvania State University who specializes in chocolate and confectionery.“From a safety standpoint, candy is pretty safe,” Ziegler says. “It has very little moisture in most of it and a lot of sugar is really what protects it from much microbial growth that might make it unsafe.”But, he notes, there is a difference between safe and edible. The shelf life for most candy ends because of texture or flavor change, which can affect enjoyment, he says. For example, if chocolate melts and rehardens it can develop a white-ish cast known as bloom, which isn’t harmful but might cause the candy to taste bad.Ziegler recommends storing Halloween candy in a dry, sealed container. You can also put sweets into the freezer or refrigerator. “Almost all the reactions that cause candy to go bad slow down the lower the temperature is.”Most candy should last six months, he says. “If you treat it right, maybe longer than that.”

(from left to right) Andrea Smith, Carbon Reduction Project Manager (Chichester District Council), Lissie Pollard (the Final Straw Foundation), Canon Precentor, The Reverend Dr Jack Dunn (Chichester Cathedral) and Councillor Penny Plant, Cabinet Member for Environment and Chichester Contract ServicesThis fish, nicknamed Nellie has been moved around the local area since 2019. It will be in the Cathedral grounds throughout October. It is made from scrap metal, including old trailer parts and metal warehouse clothing cages.The idea is simple – the public fills Nellie up with their used plastic bottles and aluminium cans, illustrating just how many of these disposable items we use and the huge volume of waste we create.Nellie is a visual way to bring home the message that we are filling our oceans and sea life with plastic.It aims to highlight the huge volume of single-use plastic bottles still in use every day in the UK, estimated at 7.7 billion every year.Every single day, it’s been estimated that around 16 million plastic bottles in the UK are not recycled, which means they will end up in landfills, incinerators or our natural environment.The Cathedral’s Canon Precentor, The Reverend Dr Jack Dunn, said: “We are delighted to be working with the District Council, and the Final Straw Foundation, once again – this time hosting Nellie on the Cathedral Green this October. Her arrival marks the start of a season of the Cathedral celebrating our beautiful and diverse environment here in East and West Sussex. Further details of this, including a special event for families this Half Term, can be found on our website: chichestercathedral.org.uk”Lissie Pollard, from the Final Straw Foundation, is pleased with Nellie’s impact.She said: “We really hope the fish will be a talking point at the Cathedral, encouraging people to think about how many water or soft drinks bottles they buy and dispose of each year. It will hopefully inspire the local community to remember to always carry a reusable bottle, and to be more conscious about recycling effectively. Our primary goal is to reduce these items in the first place through the use of reusable items, so that we don’t need to recycle them at all.”Councillor Penny Plant, Cabinet Member for Environment at Chichester District Council said: “It’s really important that we encourage people to recycle as much as they can, and I know that these sorts of visual reminders can be extremely effective at helping change people’s behaviour, by making people realise just how much waste is created. Plastic pollution in the ocean is a huge problem which we can all help play our part in preventing and I’m delighted that our council was able to organise Nellie’s return to Chichester. The sculpture is intended for plastic bottles and cans only, and we would ask that people do not place soft plastic bags or coffee cups in there. I urge everyone to make sure that they recycle their plastic bottles once they have finished with them as well as trying to reduce their use of plastic them in future.”

Global healthcare injection molding and packaging leader continues to strengthen efforts to address plastic waste and advocate for circularityNORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / October 10, 2022 / Technimark, a global manufacturing provider for the medical devices, pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare markets, announced today that it has joined the Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council (HPRC) to further invest in its commitment to current and expanding sustainability efforts. HPRC is a private technical coalition of industry peers across manufacturing, healthcare and recycling industries seeking to improve the recyclability of plastic products within healthcare.”We are very pleased to welcome Technimark as a new member,” said Peylina Chu, director of HPRC. “In addition to having a wealth of plastic packaging expertise, Technimark also brings recycling expertise to the table, as they operate an in-house mechanical recycling facility and have been recycling post-consumer and post-industrial materials for almost 20 years. This unique combination of manufacturing and recycling experience will be a welcome addition to HPRC as we look to collaborate across the value chain to enable plastic recycling solutions in healthcare.”Corporate Vice President, ESG, Katie Distler, is looking forward to engaging more deeply with HPRC as the company strives to reduce its environmental impact.”We are driven to develop innovative solutions for our customers,” said Distler. “We’re passionate about addressing the issue of plastic waste and our involvement with HPRC will enable us to participate with like-minded plastic recycling innovators to further revolutionize the process.”Since the founding of its own plastics recycling company in 1995, Technimark has been actively engaged in plastic recycling and spearheading sustainability solutions for its clients around the world.”We understand that our customers desire more sustainable solutions, of which we can offer many now,” added Technimark’s Senior VP of Sales for Healthcare, John Rugari. “We view recycled healthcare plastics as a valuable resource and we are excited to join with the HPRC to address barriers and advance viable, safe and cost-effective solutions for the healthcare sector.”Technimark’s Director of Material Development, Tom Frantz, will serve on the HPRC Steering Committee and play a key role in the relationship.”We are elated to partner with HPRC in the research, testing and development of new methods for recycling medical plastics for use in producing new healthcare products,” said Frantz. “Working alongside other experts to promote and improve circularity will greatly benefit the industry and the planet.”About TechnimarkTechnimark is a global manufacturing solutions provider for the healthcare, consumer packaging and specialty industrial markets. Technimark specializes in precision injection molding, value-added assembly and full supply chain services. Technimark provides clients with customized, end-to-end solutions based on technology and innovation that improve quality, reduce risk, lower costs and speed products to market. With facilities in the United States, Mexico, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom and China, Technimark delivers high-quality products worldwide. As part of Technimark’s commitment to sustainable and responsible business practices, the company has embedded the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact into strategies and operations, and committed to respecting human and labor rights, safeguarding the environment, and working against corruption in all its forms. For more information, visit technimark.com.Contact:Chuck Norman, APR[email protected]+1 919.625.9873About HPRCHPRC is a private technical coalition of industry peers across manufacturing, healthcare and recycling industries seeking to improve the recyclability of plastic products within healthcare. HPRC is made up of brand leading and globally recognized members committed to shaping the future of plastics recycling and reducing the environmental footprint of not only their own operations but also the operations of their customers. Committed to continuous dialogue, HPRC explores ways to enhance the economics, efficiency, and ultimately the quality and quantity of healthcare plastics collected for recycling. HPRC is active across the United States and Europe working with key stakeholders, identifying opportunities for collaboration and participating in industry events and forums. For more information, visit www.hprc.org and follow HPRC on LinkedIn.View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council on 3blmedia.com.Contact Info:Spokesperson: Healthcare Plastics Recycling CouncilWebsite: http://www.hprc.orgEmail: [email protected]SOURCE: Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council