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The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published a report last year finding that plastic pollution is quickly increasing as waste management and recycling efforts are falling short. The organization found that the world is producing twice as much plastic waste as two decades ago, now 353 million metric tons (mt), with the bulk of it ending up in landfill, incinerated or leaking into the environment, and only 9 percent successfully recycled. The OECD’s first Global Plastics Outlook report shows that as rising populations and incomes drive increases in the amount of plastic being used and discarded, policies to decrease it are failing. The OECD states that reducing plastic waste will require, among other things, cooperation through innovation and efforts to improve waste management. The United States, given its new, yet little know, national recycling strategy is the latest attempt by the country and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to do just that. The questions is: Can anyone describe the new strategy?

The essence of strategy, according to economist, business strategist and Harvard Professor Michael Porter, is choosing what not to do. This perspective is very important here as the United States is attempting to please everyone with the new strategy (it is to increase the recycling rate by 50 percent by 2030, by the way). History tells us however that, without creating urgency around the effort, very little will be accomplished over the next seven years whether we have cooperation or not. If we are to look back over this same period of time, we will see that the numbers and application points for plastic have only skyrocketed even with many cooperative team efforts to reduce plastic use and increase recycling within both the public and private space.

The majority of plastics produced today are virgin plastics that are made from gas or crude oil. According to OECD’s outlook report, global production of plastics from recycled plastics constitutes a mere 6 percent of production. In this day of carbon accounting, it is interesting to know that plastics account for 3.4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and, without management, are expected to rise considerably. Nearly two-thirds of plastic waste comes from plastics with lifetimes of under five years, with 40 percent coming from packaging. As mentioned above, only 9 percent of plastic waste is recycled. 15 percent of plastic is collected for recycling but 40 percent of that is disposed of as residues that cannot be effectively reconstituted. In the U.S., 73 percent of plastic is landfilled while 19 percent is incinerated, and 4 percent is recycled while 4 percent is uncollected.

OECD has found that there is now an estimated 30 metric tons of plastic waste in oceans, and a further 109 metric tons has accumulated in rivers. The build-up of plastics in rivers implies that leakage into the ocean will continue for decades to come. This is true even if plastic waste could be significantly reduced.

All of the above begs the question whether our plastic dilemma is at a crisis point deserving of voluntary cooperative management efforts or a truly strategic organization set out with the urgency to actually make a dent in this problem. There are paths for this with laws such as the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act, which mandates EPA to collaborate with key partners to identify recommendations for overcoming barriers to recycling. Congress also passed the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act that provides $350 million for EPA to implement the Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling grant program to implement this vision.

In addition, the EPA has announced its national recycling strategy.

The National Recycling Strategy is organized by five strategic objectives in its attempt to create a more resilient national recycling system:

1. Improve markets for recycling commodities.

2. Increase collection and improve materials management infrastructure.  

3. Reduce contamination in the recycled materials stream.

4. Enhance policies to support recycling.

5. Standardize measurement and increase data collection.

EPA plans to collaborate across all levels of government, including Tribal nations, as well as with public and private stakeholders to achieve these ambitious goals, but do these goals have the urgency that is needed to meet the ultimate mission?

Let’s focus for a minute one of the EPA strategy’s objectives in particular: “Continue to fund research, development, demonstration and deployment of new

Technologies and processes for recycling.” Partnerships are to include universities, private industry and other research organizations. This type of cooperative space can provide dividends for the strategy if, and I would say, only if EPA creates an entrepreneurial environment where social innovation can thrive and EPA’s why, embedded in the national recycling strategy, matches up with how the work will be accomplished on the ground. At Duke University and Duke Hospital, where I work, we are undergoing research in this management space and welcome the aid.

Management consultant Peter Drucker, in his book “Management,” stated that unless we determine “what the yardstick of measurement in an area will be, the area itself will not be seen.” The EPA has now rolled out a “yardstick” implementation platform that will seemingly manage the national recycling strategy. This platform aims to help stakeholders learn to see, plan and act. For this yardstick to work however, the question must become: How does the EPA influence these stakeholders to act with urgency so its new funding leads to real change and the outcomes the country is looking for? Other countries recycle at much higher rates than the U.S., some nearing 65 percent, so let’s hope the new efforts being rolled out by EPA can have a specific, measurable, attainable and timely impact.

Jeremy Pare is a visiting assistant professor business and environment.at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment in its Environmental Science and Policy Division Business and Environment Concentration. He also is an associate professor at Thomas College in Maine as part of its MBA program and consults with the Maine Manufacturer’s Extension Program focusing on change management.

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The flames and deadly black smoke that billowed high over a small town on the Ohio and Pennsylvania border Monday were an acute reminder of a type of commonly used plastic with a particularly troublesome environmental and health record.

To prevent exploding rail cars, flying shrapnel and the uncontrolled release of killer gases, authorities vented vinyl chloride, a precursor of polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, and then burned the vinyl chloride in what officials described as a controlled manner, following Friday’s 50-car Norfolk Southern Railroad train derailment near East Palestine, Ohio, about 55 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. Local media showed dramatic video of an explosion and fire after Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro ordered evacuations.

On Tuesday, Ohio Director of Public Safety Andy Wilson said at a press conference that the fire was out and there had been no serious injuries, CBS Pittsburgh reported.

While the drama played out in Northern Appalachia, the story actually begins with an insatiable global demand for plastic and what United Nations officials describe as a “triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution.”

Vinyl chloride has been used to make polyvinyl chloride, used commercially to make such products as floor tiles, roofing and tents, for nearly 100 years. And there have been battles between industry and environmentalists over PVC for decades.

The versatile form of plastic that can be made to be rigid and durable for pipes, or soft and flexible for products such as intravenous bags and tubing, is no longer used as much as in the past in food packaging due to environmental health concerns. But it’s still a major building material for the construction industry, including siding and windows. 

But one national environmental group, the Center for Biological Diversity, has been pressing the Environmental Protection Agency since 2014 to regulate PVC waste as hazardous. And health experts have also talked about having PVC declared a “persistent organic pollutant” under the 2001 United Nations Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, a treaty that seeks to protect human health from chemicals that remain intact in the environment for long periods. 

Those chemicals now litter the planet, accumulate in the fatty tissue of humans and wildlife, and have harmful impacts on human health and the environment. The U.S. has not ratified the treaty but participates as an observer.

“This derailment and explosion, while it’s not discharging PVC, it is indicative of the hazardous nature of this material,” said Emily Jeffers, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “As long as we continue to use PVC, we will continue to have accidents like this and it is entirely preventable.

“If we regulate PVC as the hazardous waste that it is, that could potentially force producers to develop materials with less toxic properties,” Jeffers added. “We lived without PVC before and I am pretty sure we can live without it again.”

Petrochemical facilities that make or use vinyl chloride or PVC are often found in communities of color in states like Louisiana, Texas and Kentucky that shoulder the health burdens from their polluting emissions. 

EPA last May agreed to look into a 2014 petition from the Center for Biological Diversity to designate PVC a hazardous material, following a 2021 lawsuit seeking the same designation. 

In January, the agency made a tentative decision denying the request, arguing that regulations would not have a meaningful impact while adding that the agency didn’t have the time or resources to create new PVC regulations. A public comment period closes Monday.

Like other chemicals, PVC has its own lobbying group in Washington. Called the Vinyl Institute, it touts the benefits of vinyl and the vinyl industry, which it said encompasses nearly 3,000 vinyl manufacturing facilities, more than 350,000 employees and an economic value of $54 billion. 

PVC and vinyl are the third most used plastics in the world, according to the institute, which says on its website:  “We are fiercely committed to achieving the policy agenda that helps the U.S. vinyl industry grow and create jobs.”

PVC has been used a lot, said Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician, epidemiologist and director of Boston College’s Global Public Health Program and Global Observatory on Planetary Health. But, he added, “it has problems at every stage” of its lifecycle, beginning with potential dangers to workers who make it. 

Vinyl chloride is classified as a known human carcinogen. Researchers in the 1970s first linked its occupational exposure to a rare form of cancer—angiosarcoma of the liver—to rubber workers at a factory in the Rubbertown complex of chemical plants in Louisville, Kentucky. “There’s also some evidence it causes brain cancers,” he said.

PVC also contains a variety of chemical additives, such as phthalate plasticizers, some of which are blamed for disrupting the human endocrine system. 

“There is good evidence” that toxic ingredients in PVC “can leach out of plastics products and get into drinking water or blood products,” said Landrigan, whose research has helped drive U.S. public health policies on childhood lead exposure, pesticide exposure and the response to health impacts of 9/11 rescue workers in New York.

The industry has disputed such assertions. A 2017 report, for example, from the PVC Pipe Association maintains that PVC piping meets the “highest standards for quality and safety.”

Vinyl Institute spokeswoman Susan Wade said that PVC can and is being recycled, and according to the institute’s website, the industry has a goal of boosting the recycling of vinyl materials. “We know we have a good story to tell,” she said, pointing to a lifecycle carbon emissions study from McKinsey & Company that shows using PVC sewer pipes has less impact on the climate than using pipes made from concrete or iron.

But Jan Dell, a chemical engineer who founded and runs The Last Beach Cleanup, a nonprofit group that fights plastic waste, said that “PVC is by far the worst” of the plastics. “PVC wars go back years and years,” due to risks it has posed to the people and the environment, she said. Vinyl chloride itself, in factories and during transportation, as the trail derailment shows, “is gnarly,” she added.

EPA has also tracked only a “negligible” amount of PVC recycling, she said.

The problem is its composition, she said, adding: “It’s toxic when it’s recycled with other stuff.” 

The recycling woes are not unique to PVC. Dell worked with another environmental nonprofit, Beyond Plastics, to publish a report last year that found that less than 6 percent of all plastics are recycled in the United States.

Along with what Dell called a fairly successful push to get PVC out of food packaging, there have been battles over PVC in toys, particularly those that contained phthalates, which are now regulated by the Consumer Products Safety Commission.

But PVC plastic is still used widely to make gift cards—a problem called out in November by Dell and Beyond Plastics.

“Unfortunately, many big brand companies are choosing to use PVC  plastic to make their gift cards,” according to a Beyond Plastics holiday shopping alert in November. “Major retailers offer dozens of PVC gift cards for sale in their stores and informal surveys indicate that as much as 70 percent of the gift cards sold in stores are made from PVC plastic.”

Beyond Plastics called on all companies to commit to stop selling all PVC gift cards and switch to paper or electronic gift cards.

Eric J. Beckman, a University of Pittsburgh chemical engineering professor, said the starting raw materials for PVC are chlorine and ethylene, and both of those chemicals are very energy intensive to produce.

If a company tries to recycle PVC by melting it, “it tends to fall apart at the molecular level,” while generating unwanted byproducts such as hydrochloric acid, Beckman said. Companies that are attempting chemical recycling of plastics using a process such as pyrolysis try to remove any PVC from the waste stream “so as to not muck up their process,” he added.

“The way to lessen the use of vinyl chloride is to find alternatives to PVC,” he said.

Greenpeace has suggested some substitutes for PVC such as clay, glass, ceramics and linoleum. Others have suggested metal, fiber cement, and stucco, depending on the use, or other types of plastics.

Finding alternatives to PVC, he said, “would be good on many levels.”

In Pittsburgh, Matt Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Project coalition, said the derailment should serve as a further incentive to move beyond a petrochemical and fossil fuel economy in the region. He noted that a new Shell plastics manufacturing plant near Pittsburgh has been flaring excess emissions, among other incidents related to the region’s robust fracked fossil gas development. 

“It is time to put an end to the health, safety, and economic risks to people in this region by shifting priorities away from building out this hazardous infrastructure to a healthier and more prosperous one.”

Industry figures show record production in 2021, and almost none of that plastic is getting recycled.

By some estimates, the world’s food system is responsible for one-quarter of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions.

It happens because forests get cleared to make room for farms and livestock. Cows and rice paddies emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Fossil fuels are burned to power farm machinery, make fertilizer and ship food.

Anyone focused on the climate effects of diet should keep a few broad things in mind.

First, beef, lamb and cheese tend to have the biggest effects on emissions by far — creating the most greenhouse gases per gram of protein — in part because cows and other ruminants are more resource-intensive to raise. Pork, chicken, eggs and many types of fish typically have smaller effects on emissions (though they can create other environmental concerns). Plant-based foods usually produce the fewest emissions of all.

So the most straightforward way of reducing diet-related emissions is to consume less meat and dairy and more plants. It’s especially the case if you live in the United States, where red meat consumption is much higher than in many parts of the world.

According to a World Resources Institute analysis, if the average American simply replaced a third of the beef they eat with lower-emissions pork or poultry or legumes, their food-related emissions would fall 13 percent. Moreover, a number of studies have found that people who currently eat a meat-heavy diet could shrink their food-related footprint by one-third or more by going vegetarian.

It sounds like a no-brainer, but the other big way to shrink the climate effect of your diet is simply to waste less food. According to some estimates, Americans throw out roughly 20 percent of the food they buy.

Other popular strategies are less clear-cut, at least when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions.

Studies differ on whether grass-fed beef, for instance, is any more climate friendly than conventional feedlot beef, although some argue it’s better for animal welfare. Organic crops tend to require more land than traditional crops, which could lead to more emissions if such farming results in more deforestation.

As for debates over locally grown produce, or paper vs. plastic bags, those are relatively small in the grand scheme of things, since transportation and packaging are a sliver of food’s climate effects.

And, of course, there are other concerns besides climate change.

For example, when compared with meat, wild fish can be a lower-emissions option. But that comes with a caveat: The world is already catching about as much wild fish as it possibly can. Most fisheries are being fished at their maximum sustainable level, while others are being overexploited. So more people switching to fish could require, among other actions, increasing the number of sustainable fish farms worldwide.

— Brad Plumer

Read more:
Your Questions About Food and Climate Change, Answered

HONOLULU (AP) — A whale that washed ashore in Hawaii over the weekend likely died in part because it ate large volumes of fishing traps, fishing nets, plastic bags and other marine debris, scientists said Thursday, highlighting the threat to wildlife from the millions of tons of plastic that ends up in oceans every year.

The body of the 56-foot (17-meter) long, 120,000-pound (54,431-kilogram) animal was first noticed on a reef off Kauai on Friday. High tide brought it ashore on Saturday.

Kristi West, the director of the University of Hawaii’s Health and Stranding Lab, said there were enough foreign objects in the opening of the whale’s intestinal tract to block food.

“The presence of undigested fish and squid lends further evidence of a blockage,” she said in a news release from the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources.

The whale’s stomach contained six hagfish traps, seven types of fishing net, two types of plastic bags, a light protector, fishing line and a float from a net. Researchers also found squid beaks, fish skeleton and remains of other prey in the whale’s stomach.

It’s the first known case of a sperm whale in Hawaii waters ingesting discarded fishing gear, West said.

The whale’s stomach was so large West’s team wasn’t able to examine it completely. They suspect there was more material they weren’t able to recover.

Researchers found nothing wrong with other organs they examined. They collected samples to screen for disease and conduct other follow-up tests.

Sperm whales travel across thousands of miles in the ocean so it’s not clear where the debris came from.

Scientists say that more than 35 million tons (31.9 million metric tons) of plastic pollution is produced around Earth each year and about a quarter of that ends up around the water.

Marine debris harms numerous species.

Seabirds can ingest as much as 8% of their body weight in plastic. Endangered Hawaiian monk seals and green sea turtles can get caught in plastic nets and die. Sharks and other apex predators eat smaller fish that feed on microplastic, which can then endanger their own health.

In addition to eating plastics, large whales are harmed when they become entangled in fishing gear or other ropes in the ocean. The drag from debris can force whales to use more energy to swim and make it harder for them to eat, causing starvation.

On Tuesday, marine mammal responders freed a humpback whale that was caught in rope, a bundle of gear and two buoys off the Big Island.

Sperm whales are an endangered species found in deep oceans across the world. A 2021 report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated there were about 4,500 sperm whales in the waters around the Hawaiian Islands, from the Big Island in the south to Kure Atoll in the north.