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.

In this version of the future, people would still have to grow lots of crops to make bioplastics, but those plastics would be used — and reused — many times. “You basically put it into the system and keep it as long as possible,” says Stegmann.

To be clear, this is a hypothetical scenario, not a prediction for where the plastics industry is actually headed. Many pieces would have to fall together in just the right way for it to work. For one, Stegmann and his colleagues note in their paper, “a fully circular plastics sector will be impossible as long as plastic demand keeps growing.” 

Plastics companies will happily meet that demand by ramping up production, says Steven Feit, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, which did the emissions report showing what would happen if plastics manufacturing grew through the year 2050. “The pivot to petrochemicals has been the plan for years now for the broader fossil fuel industry,” he says. “It’s understood that plastics, as well as nitrogen fertilizers, are the two real pillars of petrochemicals, which are the engine of growth for fossil fuels.”

And as long as the plastics industry keeps producing exponentially more of it, there’s no incentive to keep the stuff in circulation. It’s just so cheap to manufacture, which is why recycling straight-up doesn’t work in its current form. (Among the many reasons why scientists are calling for negotiators of a new treaty to add a cap on production is that it would increase the price and demand for recycled plastic.) Another wrinkle is that plastic can only be recycled once or twice before it becomes too degraded. Some products, like multilayered pouches, have become increasingly complicated to recycle, so wealthy nations have been shipping them all to economically developing countries to deal with. Which is about as far from a circular economy as you can get.

Another issue is the space needed to grow the feedstock crops. “It increases the already huge pressure on land use,” says Jānis Brizga, an environmental economist at the University of Latvia, who studies bio-based plastics but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “Land use change has been one of the main drivers for biodiversity loss — we’re just pushing out all the other species.”

In 2020, Brizga published a paper calculating how much land it would take to grow enough plants for bioplastics to replace all the traditional plastics used in packaging. The answer: At a minimum, an area bigger than France, requiring 60 percent more water than the European Union’s annual freshwater withdrawal. (The new paper did model some land-use considerations, like restricting where biomass could be grown, but Stegmann says that a better understanding of the implications of this biomass growth is an avenue for future research.)

It would also take a whole lot of chemicals to keep those plants healthy. “Many of these crops are produced in intensive agricultural systems that use a lot of pesticides and herbicides and synthetic chemicals,” Brizga says. “Most of them are also very, very dependent on fossil fuels.”

And from a human health perspective, we don’t even want to keep plastics circulating around us. A growing body of evidence links their component chemicals to health problems: One study linked phthalates (a plasticizer chemical) to 100,000 early deaths each year in the U.S., and the researchers were being conservative with that estimate. Microplastics are showing up in people’s blood, breast milk, lungs, guts, and even newborns’ first feces, because we’re absolutely surrounded by plastic products — clothing, carpeting, couches, bottles, bags. 

It’s also not clear what kind of climate effect the plastics will have after they’re produced. Early research on microplastics suggests that they release significant amounts of methane — an extremely potent greenhouse gas — as they break down in the environment. Even if a circular bioplastics economy attempts to keep carbon and methane locked up by turning plastics into long-term building materials or landfilling whatever can’t be used again, nobody knows for sure if it will work. We need more research on how plastics off-gas their carbon under different conditions.

The more plastic we produce, the more corrupted the environment grows — it’s already poisoning organisms and destabilizing ecosystems. “I fear that by the time we get enough answers to all of our questions, it will be too late,” says Kim Warner, senior scientist at the advocacy group Oceana, who wasn’t involved in the new paper. “The train will have already left the station, for what it’s doing to the atmosphere and the oceans and carbon and health and everything else.”

Matt Simon is a science journalist at Wired.

Automobiles on Friday burned in fire that broke out in a noise-barrier tunnel on the Second Gyeongin Expressway, which connects Incheon to Seongnam [YONHAP]

 
An apocalyptic conflagration left a stretch of highway near Seoul a mess of molten plastic and melted cars.
 
And it left relatives of the victims — the dead now numbering five — in utter disbelief.
 
“It can’t be your dad,” a woman sobbed at a hospital with her daughters after hearing that her husband is one of the deceased.
 
The fire broke out Thursday afternoon at the North Uiwang Interchange on the Second Gyeongin Expressway, also known as highway 110, which runs south of Seoul from Incheon toward the east and into the center of the country.
 
According to investigators, a burning garbage truck ignited the plastic, translucent material of a noise-barrier tunnel that covered the elevated highway, and that 830-meter (2,723-foot) tunnel burst into flames, trapping cars and people in their cars.
 
In addition to the five dead, 41 were injured and three remain in critical condition.  
 
The woman’s 66-year-old husband cannot be identified with certainty, and DNA testing will have to be done. The family was told the tests will be completed in a day or two.
 
“Who should we blame?” she asked as she cried over her husband’s death. “Is this the fault of the truck driver?”
 
The victim worked as a personal driver, a friend said. Before he was found dead, he called his boss and said he was inhaling smoke at the scene.
 
“He really wanted to become a taxi driver,” the friend recalled.
 
Cho Nam-seok, 59, who was at the accident site recalls hearing a loud thud after he barely escaped from his melting car. “A friend I was with in the car was not able to get out,” Cho said.
 
His head is wrapped with bandages, and the back of his hand and left ear are severely burned.
 
The plastic material that formed the wall of the tunnel is being blamed.  
 
According to officials, the tunnel was made of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), commonly known as acrylic.
 
The noise-barrier tunnels in Korea are usually made out of PMMA, polycarbonate or glass, with PMMA being used most due to its low price. 
 
In terms of safety, it is the worst, according to experts.
 
Compared to other materials, PMMA is easily ignited, melts quickly and tends to continue burning, according to a report from Korea Expressway Corporation in 2018.
 
As the fire spread to the tunnel, the acrylic material melted and fell on the road and vehicles, which would have accelerated the fire.
 
“As the public and the press have pointed out, the material of the noise-barrier tunnel seems to be the major issue of the accident,” said Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Land Won Hee-ryong after he visited the accident site on Friday morning.
 
“Concerns on about PMMA material for being flammable have always been made by experts.”
 
A total of 55 noise-barrier tunnels in Korea are to be fully inspected, while those still under construction will be finished with safer materials.
 
Police started a full-scale investigation of the accident on Friday.
 
The Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency brought the garbage truck driver in for questioning on the possible charge of involuntary manslaughter. The driver reportedly said a fire broke out in his truck following the sound of an explosion.
 
Authorities have blocked off 20 kilometers of the expressway.

BY KIM JUNG-MIN, SON SUNG-BAE, KIM HONG-BUM, CHO JUNG-WOO [cho.jungwoo1@joongang.co.kr]

At the 68^th International Whaling Commission conference (IWC68) in Slovenia in October, member nations adopted a resolution to support international negotiations on a treaty to tackle plastic pollution. Countries will now aim to report on the status of marine plastic debris. For India, local communities will be crucial stakeholders in tackling ocean plastic.

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) is an inter-governmental body responsible for the management of whaling and the conservation of whales.

It has a current membership of 88 governments from all over the world, including India, which played a critical role in amending the text of the resolution to incorporate reporting commitments on the status of marine plastic by member countries.

Confirming that the impacts of marine plastic pollution on cetaceans is a “priority concern” for the IWC, the Resolution on Marine Plastic Pollution adopted at IWC68, commended the UN Environment Assembly’s March 2022 decision to begin negotiations on an international legally binding instrument to tackle plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.

Though the IWC’s main focus is to keep a check on whale stocks and ensure there is a balance in the whaling industry, it is also concerned with plastics and marine debris because they impact the survival of whales, dolphins, and porpoises, among other marine species.

Plastic ingestion and entanglement in nets are the other issues that lead to injury and death of such marine animals. Welcoming the IWC68 resolution, Sajan John, a marine biologist at Wildlife Trust of India, says, “Since whales and whale sharks are filter feeder animals, they clean the water. When they ingest plastic, it could get into their digestive system and create many issues.”

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that almost 13 million tonnes of plastic enter the oceans yearly, affecting approximately 68% of cetacean species. Plastic ingestion cases are found in at least 57 out of the 90 known cetacean species (63.3%). Ingestion of plastic has been recorded in all marine turtle species and nearly half of all surveyed seabird and marine mammal species. Apart from this, those species that are not directly impacted by ingestion or entanglement could suffer from secondary impacts such as malnutrition, restricted mobility and reduced reproduction or growth, experts at the conference shared.

This resolution, with amendments from India, was one of the major successes at the IWC meeting. The draft Resolution on Marine Plastic Pollution was proposed by the Czech Republic on behalf of the European Union member states parties to the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling; the resolution was co-sponsored by the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Korea, Republic of Panama and India.

Following the adoption of the resolution, India, at the IWC68, shared that in 2019, “20.34 million tonnes of plastic was generated in India, and 60% of the same were recycled against the world average of 20%. So the solid waste management capacity in India, which was only 18% in 2014, increased to 70% in 2021. The Bureau of Indian standards classifies microbeads in cosmetics as unsafe and has banned microbeads in cosmetics. This was implemented in 2020 along with the ban on importing plastic waste.”

At the discussion on the resolution of the IWC meeting, Bivash Ranjan, Additional Director General of Forests at India’s Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC), who was with the country delegation at the meeting, said that one of the early threats India perceived for the marine aqua fauna was plastics.

Ranjan said, “Apart from banning single-use plastic and microbeads, India has also taken steps to clean the coasts and make them plastic-free.” He said that this move (removing all the plastic litter across coasts) will further strengthen the conservation plan of the dolphins.”

Actions post-resolution

In the follow-up to the IWC resolution, the next step is for countries to report on marine plastic waste.

India made an amendment to the resolution asking member countries to report on the status of marine debris around their country and the amount of plastic recycling and usage.

On the implications of the IWC68 resolution to the conservation of cetaceans and whales, Vishnupriya Kolipakkam, Scientist, Wildlife Institute of India (WII) said, “This will help us to identify where and what the problem is. Otherwise, it’s just a resolution that says, let us reduce the use of plastic. The member countries will take the route of sustainable use and reduce single-use plastic. It has a broad general resolution, and many countries are already doing this. But because of India’s intervention, we suggested that member countries have to report back on the status and recycling usage of plastic. Now, it would be more relevant because we can call on people and governments who are not actively doing anything,” she said.

Challenges and solutions for implementation

However, the success of implementing the IWC68 resolution will depend on many factors. In India, a tropical country, plastic pollution does not emerge from a single point source, points John. Many tributaries of rivers drain into the ocean. Many human activities are localised in the rivers’ upstream, and plastics dumped into the rivers eventually end up in the oceans.

John told Mongabay-India, “Most of the time when we talk about marine plastic pollution, it is about removal from the coastal beach and clean up activities. Everything is centered around the coastal area. We are trying to address the issue on the periphery, but we are not trying to address the issues from the upstream. Not much occurs upstream, and there is little awareness or action.”

He pointed out that complete tracking of plastic and collecting the data is beyond quantifiable. “One, we are on the tropical side of the oceans; two, we depend heavily on disposable plastic, so quantifying that would be challenging,” John added.

Local communities will be crucial to the IWC68 resolution’s implementation.

At WTI, John has been looking at different approaches to tackling India’s marine plastic pollution problem. He works with the fisher community, telling them to bring back marine debris found in the ocean. Involving local fishing communities that go to the sea daily is one way to remove plastics from the ocean effectively.

“India has a coastline spanning 8,000 kilometres, and fisher families have almost tripled. If we mobilise them on the east coast, west coast, and the two of our island territories, we can recover plastic,” said John.

The major issues in Indian coasts are bottles, polythene bags, plastic wrappers, and covers. The nets contribute to a small part of the debris, he added.

Also, a complete ban on plastic will be tough. John says, “We have moved from biodegradable to plastics, so everything revolves around plastic now. Plastic use is high in the medical industry, especially during the pandemic. Polymer science has also advanced. If there is an alternative to single-use plastic, those could be given at a subsidised rate. But if the price of the alternative product is high, then people would opt for the cheaper plastic.”

IWC’s initiative on marine plastics

Almost two decades ago, the IWC recognised the significance of marine debris impacts on cetaceans. Plastic pollution spans five of the eight priority areas of environmental concern identified by the IWC’s scientific committee. This was endorsed by the commission in IWC Resolution 1997. In addition, Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG 14) aims to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources, including preventing and reducing marine pollution of all kinds by 2025.

Within the framework of IWC, there was another crucial resolution in 2018 on ghost gear entanglement in cetaceans. The Commission has encouraged the conservation committee, scientific committee, and whale killing methods and welfare issues working group to consider engaging organisations on marking the gears used for fishing so that the net entanglement issues could be examined.

In the IWC68 resolution, the body also recognised the transboundary nature of marine plastic pollution and the importance of international cooperation by IWC’s contracting governments and other international organisations, including the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Arctic Council and International Maritime Organisation (IMO).

As a result, the IWC secretariat was directed to look at ways in which they can engage as a stakeholder within the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) process.

It was recommended that the contracting countries submit reports, voluntarily, to the scientific progress committees on the status, reduction and recycling of plastic, and ingestion in stranded marine animals. The Commission, in the recent resolution, also recommended the IWC secretariat to add marine debris mapping along the Important Marine Mammal Areas (IMMAs). Further, there were also requests to reduce single-use plastics in the IWC day-to-day operations itself. All this will be discussed further in the next meeting, IWC 69.

[This story was produced with support from the Earth Journalism Network’s Biodiversity Media Initiative]

Read more: Unpacking the presence of microplastics in the Bay of Bengal

Banner Image: A humpback whale. Photo by Christopher Michel/Wikimedia Commons.

If you walk along one of Nova Scotia’s many shorelines, you’ll see rocks, shells, and mounds of seaweed. But some of those beaches are also riddled with colourful rubber bands, ropes and fragments of plastic. 

According to Angela Riley, founder of Scotian Shores, a local business dedicated to cleaning the shorelines of the province, the province’s biggest industry is also behind much of the pollution found near the ocean. 

Many of the bands and plastics that end up on the beach are the byproducts of lobster fishing, storing and processing — the system that gets lobsters from the ocean onto people’s dinner plates around the world. 

“Yesterday we cleaned up 300 pounds of garbage, and today, in that exact same spot, there’s probably 10,000 bands in the seaweed,” Riley said. “Sometimes it feels like there’s millions. You pick up the seaweed and hundreds of them fall out. It’s insane.”

After seeing the problem worsen, Riley began to contact some of the lobster processing plants that appeared to have the most debris on the beaches around their facility.

She said she comes from a fishing family and understands the industry, which makes her want to work with lobster processing plants to reduce the pollution that flows from their pipes. 

“It just looks really, really bad on our lobster fishery,” Riley said. “Everybody’s very quick to blame the fishers because they’re the easy target, but we’re finding out that it seems like a majority of [the bands and plastics] are actually coming from the processing plants.”

‘We’re doing everything we can’

Early this year, one company got on board with Riley’s ideas to reduce its environmental impact. Atlantic ChiCan Seafood in Clark’s Harbour, N.S., appeared to be the first to install screens and socks on their discharge pipes. 

Since then, more companies have joined in. 

Johnny Goodwin, the maintenance technician at Long Point Lobster and Seafood, also in Clark’s Harbour, had been using screens to stop debris from coming into the plant for years.

But when his company built a new facility this year, he decided to also install screens on drains and mesh socks on all the pipes that flush water out of the facility. 

“We’re doing everything we can to reduce our footprint and just keep this area clean,” Goodwin said. “I live on an island surrounded by beaches. I love walking the beaches, I don’t like to see debris and garbage that could easily be picked up or captured.”

Goodwin came into contact with Riley on TikTok, where he was posting videos of his new techniques. Riley asked to come to Clark’s Harbour and see what he was working on. 

“I just wanted her to … see what I have and see if there’s any problem with it, basically,” he said. “She pretty much gave me her blessing and tried a few tests with some lobster bands on things I’d made, and everything captured perfectly.”

Half a dozen plants using socks

Goodwin said Long Point Lobster and Seafood handles a million pounds of lobster per season, and at any given time, there are between 100 and 2,000 crates full of lobster floating in the holding tanks. That means around 6,000 gallons of water per minute is flowing in to the facility.

The water then has to flow back out into the ocean, and can take bands, plastic tags, and other debris with it.

He said it took him around 30 minutes to fix this problem, and he has noticed about six other plants in his area doing the same thing.

But the simplicity of the solution made him question why every facility in the province isn’t using the same technique.

“It makes you think … ‘Why does this have to be like this?'” Goodwin said. “And it doesn’t, it really doesn’t … I have six pipes covered with socks and it may have cost $40 and about half an hour’s worth of labour. There’s no reason not to.”

Seeking policy change

Riley said while some plants may think they’re not impacting the environment in a significant way, the bands and plastics are detrimental. 

“So when they do break down, they’re actually breaking down to micro-plastic type things, so animals are eating them and then they become full and they starve,” she said. “We’ve had reports of loons trying to feed them to their babies. And then sometimes in marshes we actually see them growing up around different grasses.”

She said though some facilities are receptive to her concerns, her suggestions don’t always go over well. When she sees a company make positive changes, she said it’s “uplifting.” But she wants to see new regulations put in place.

“One plant out of gosh knows how many in Nova Scotia is not going to make a huge difference,” she said. “So we need something that’s going to be overreaching, like a policy change, to say ‘enough is enough, we’re not going to allow this to happen anymore.'”

Government response

Nova Scotia’s Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture said there are regulations in place that require the area surrounding businesses to be kept clean. 

“Anyone observing litter or waste associated with seafood processing facilities should report the information to the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables,” department spokesperson Marla MacInnis said in an email. 

When asked if Nova Scotia will emulate provinces like New Brunswick that require processing plants to reduce the release of any contaminant into the environment, MacInnis said the province is looking into it. 

“We are currently reviewing New Brunswick’s regulations to help us determine the best way to effect more meaningful change on this issue here in Nova Scotia.” 

It’s time to give up on saving the planet. Nature is screwed, so don’t bother caring about the environment. In the new year, put concern for clean air and water behind you and find other things to focus on.

Or not. Maybe there are reasons to believe in caring for nature.  Recently, leaders from more than 190 countries met in Montreal to safeguard biodiversity — the variety of life on this planet, from individual species to whole ecosystems. In the final hours of a two-week conference, they agreed to protect 30 percent of land and water by 2030. While the so-called 30×30 plan is not legally binding and the United States is famously not part of this, nor many other international environmental treaties, it’s an important step in the right direction.

Global biodiversity is under immense threat as our impact on this planet grows. Our love of cheap burgers means we continue to chop down forests to farm more cows. Unsustainable fishing and pollution threaten our oceans. According to the World Economic Forum, for every pound of tuna we remove from the ocean we replace it with two pounds of plastic. And human-driven climate change has intensified droughts, floods and warmed ocean waters making it harder for plants, animals, and ecosystems to survive.

While we used to think protecting nature was to save polar bears and pandas, we have come to understand that what’s good for wildlife is good for people. Conserving mangroves saves habitat for fish and manatees but also provides a storm buffer and job engine for our community.

Only 17 percent of land and 8 percent of oceans is currently under some form of protection, so the 30×30 goal is ambitious, but not impossible.

If you are a newcomer to Florida, it might be hard to fathom, but alligators almost went extinct just a few decades ago. Due to unregulated hunting and the trade in alligator hides, they were declared an endangered species in the 1960s. Through policy and enforcement, the alligator population recovered enough to be removed from endangered species status in the late 1980s. It was a similar story with Florida’s birds that were almost wiped out over a hundred years ago as their plumes were sought to adorn fashionable hats. The policies ultimately used to protect these birds served as a catalyst for Florida’s conservation movement. There was a time when Floridians did not know a future with Everglades National Park, Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve or Lovers Key State Park. Now it’s impossible to imagine a future without them.

These success stories illustrate that when confronted with the harsh reality of our behavior, we can choose to do better. This moment in time is different because the threats are bigger, necessitating a bigger and quicker response. It won’t be enough to simply remove hunting pressure on a few species when we are paving over entire ecosystems.

To be sure, some will argue the needs of humans should always come before choices to benefit wetlands, wild grasses and coral reefs. But nature is our best insurance for the future. Biodiversity provides our air, food, water, medicines, jobs, recreation and so much more. It makes all of us safer in the face of climate change.

A new year brings possibility and hope. Resolutions to do better. We can and should do more to protect all living things on this planet and ultimately ourselves.

Jennifer Jones, Ph.D., is director of the Center for Environment & Society, part of The Water School at Florida Gulf Coast University. 

A Scots Tory MSP has hit out after the SNP Government admitted it had no idea how many of Scotland’s 19,000 wind turbines may be releasing dangerous chemicals.

There have been concerns for years about the environmental impact from the erosion of microplastics from the colossal turbine blades, which are made with fibreglass and epoxy resin.

One of the chemicals is called Bisphenol A, which has been linked with fertility problems in humans and wildlife. Campaigners say a single turbine can emit up to 62 kilos of microplastics annually, although this is disputed by the renewables industry.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon’s spokesman disputes misleading renewable claims despite not reading bombshell report

Highlands and Islands MSP, Donald Cameron, has attempted to find out more information about the issue with a series of questions at the Scottish Parliament.

In one, he asked the Scottish Government “how it currently monitors leading edge erosion on wind turbines, and whether it has any plans to increase this monitoring”.

Energy minister Michael Matheson replied the SNP-Green administration “is not responsible for taking action in this area”.

Mr Matheson also said the Scottish Government “does not provide funding for continued maintenance of wind turbines” and “has not issued any fines relating to the failure to maintain wind turbines”.

Finally, the Conservative MSP asked the “Scottish Government whether it has any plans to conduct a study on the impact of microplastic pollution and toxic compounds from wind turbines”.

Once again, the minister replied in the negative. “The Water Framework Directive does not currently include the requirement for the monitoring and assessment of microplastic pollution and specifically Bisphenol A in the water environment,” he said.

Speaking to the Scottish Daily Express, Mr Cameron said: “The dangers of microplastics and toxic substances from wind turbine erosion are well-documented, so it’s surprising that the SNP Government isn’t even bothering to monitor this.

“Despite their enthusiasm for windfarms, it appears that the SNP have washed their hands of any potentially harmful effects wind turbine erosion might have on the environment.

“The responsibility for wind turbine maintenance may lie with private companies, but the SNP must at the very least monitor the state of Scotland’s turbines and sanction any companies that don’t comply with safe upkeep.

“Otherwise we could end up facing an environmental hazard as a result of the very same turbines that are supposed to be helping us tackle climate change.”

Mr Matheson said the Scottish Government is funding researcher to “develop the understanding of sources and levels of emerging contaminants, including microplastics, in Scotland’s freshwaters and river sediments and recommend priorities and strategic approaches for future monitoring in Scotland”.

He added: “It is the responsibility of the wind farm operator to properly maintain their wind turbines, in accordance with their planning permission and any conditions imposed.”

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