1. Negotiations for historic global plastics treaty break ground

Global leaders cheered to the strike of a recycled-plastic gavel in March, signifying a landmark decision by the United Nations Environment Assembly to create the first-ever legally binding international treaty to curb plastic pollution. With 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic having been produced to date, the decision marks a historic moment in addressing one of our blue planet’s greatest crises.

Negotiations for the global plastics treaty began in November in Uruguay, where representatives from more than 150 countries came together to start discussing details and goals. This International Negotiating Committee (INC) aims to finalize a formal treaty in a series of upcoming meetings by the end of 2024.

Without major efforts to reduce plastic pollution, projections show that 12 billion metric tons of plastic waste could end up in the natural environment or landfills by 2050. Plastic accounts for 85% of marine debris already, and the volume of plastic in the ocean may triple by 2040. Some groups are working to curb this pollution by capturing plastic waste in river mouths before it enters the sea. The Clean Currents Coalition, a global cleanup network facilitated by our team at the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at the University of California Santa Barbara, has collected nearly 1,000 metric tons of plastic from rivers in eight countries. However, it’s going to take more than a few trash wheels to solve the problem.

Recycling is also not the entire answer, at least as currently implemented. Of all the plastic ever produced, only 9% has been recycled. Ultimately, it seems we need to reduce our global dependence on this substance, and a legally binding international agreement that operates across the entire supply chain is an essential first step.

2. Sea level rise

One of the primary drivers of sea level rise is the thawing of global ice. A study published in November provided some bleak news from Greenland’s largest ice sheet, suggesting that it is thawing at an accelerated rate and will add six times more water to the ocean than scientists previously thought. The calculations show that by the end of this century, it will add 0.5 inches to the global ocean level, an amount equal to Greenland’s overall contribution to sea level rise over the past 50 years.

Scientists are closely monitoring the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, also known as the “Doomsday” glacier, as a new study shows it is capable of shrinking faster than it has in recent years. The glacier is the size of Florida and accounts for about 5% of Antarctica’s contribution to changes in global sea level; if it were to collapse into the ocean, it could cause a rapid rise in sea levels. Focusing on just the United States, NASA released a study in October showing the average level of sea rise for the majority of coastlines in the contiguous United States could reach 30 centimeters (12 inches) by 2050.

The analysis draws on almost three decades of satellite data, and the results could help coastal communities prepare adaptation plans for the coming years, which may bring an increase in flooding. The estimated waterline increase will vary regionally: 25-36 cm (10-14 in) for the East Coast, 36-46 cm (14-18 in) for the Gulf Coast and 10-20 cm (4-8 in) for the West Coast. Experts cite climate change as a leading cause of the sea level rise, along with natural factors, such as El Niño and La Niña events and the moon’s orbit.

3. A major milestone in shark and ray protection

In November, governments from around the world came together at the 19th Conference of the Parties (CoP19) to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in a massive showing of leadership to increase the protection of nearly 100 species of sharks & rays. CoP19 parties voted to list 54 species of requiem sharks, six species of hammerhead sharks and 37 species of guitarfish under CITES Appendix II.

The designation limits international trade and grants greater protection to these species, many of which are threatened with extinction by the unsustainable global trade in their fins and meat. This is a huge win for shark conservation as it brings 90% of the internationally traded shark species under CITES protection. Previously only 20% had been protected. International trade of these species will only be permitted if they are not endangered as a result, and will require an export permit to ensure that legal and sustainable trade is taking place.

The proposals were championed by Panama, the host country, and co-sponsored by more than 40 other CITES-party governments. It is one of 46 proposals that was adopted by the delegation at the conference and reaffirms international commitments to protect both terrestrial and marine species that are impacted by the global wildlife trade. In addition to the nearly 100 species of sharks and rays, the parties voted to increase the protection of 150 tree species, 160 amphibian species, 50 turtle and tortoise species and several species of songbirds.

4. Momentum builds for a global moratorium on seabed mining

2022 marked a dramatic change in what previously appeared to be an almost inevitable march toward the start of the controversial emerging industry of deep-sea mining. Marine policy experts deemed that the “two-year rule” triggered by Nauru in 2021 had unclear legal footing and implementation, undercutting efforts to see seabed mining start as soon as July 2023 under whatever regulations are in place at the time.

Scientists this year also came together to highlight substantial scientific gaps in our understanding of the environmental impacts of seabed mining. Countries, businesses and scientists also united in strengthening a call for a global moratorium, or pause, on seabed mining. In a major shifting of political winds at the June-July UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Pacific states, including Palau, Fiji, Samoa and the Federated States of Micronesia, led an alliance calling for a moratorium. France later became the first nation to call for a complete ban on the activity. Twelve nations have now taken formal positions against deep-sea mining in international waters this year.

Amid this growing opposition, the International Seabed Authority approved its first mining trials since the 1970s. These commenced in September in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an area beyond national jurisdictions in the Pacific Ocean that contains rare-earth elements and metals. In November, a new report suggested that seabed minerals may not be necessary at all and that their demand could instead be met by recycling and existing terrestrial reserves.

5. Asia-Pacific ocean leadership

The Asia-Pacific region is home to the most biologically diverse and productive marine ecosystems. The countries in this region are also characterized by having a larger population and stronger economic growth than any other region. And yet many global conversations calling for increased ambition in ocean leadership have historically lacked Asia-Pacific representation. 2022 suggested a turning of that tide. The G20, hosted this year in Indonesia, included an entire summit, the O20, devoted to ocean health issues. There appears to be nascent interest in carrying this leadership tradition forward at the next G20 summit, to be hosted in September by India. Similarly, Japan will host the G7 summit in Hiroshima next May and has engaged in discussions to elevate the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 14, which deals with the ocean, as a major topic.

With the rising threat of climate change, countries in the Asia-Pacific region have turned their attention this year to blue carbon. China, which lost more than half of its mangrove swamps between 1950 and 2001, is making some initial progress in protecting its marine ecosystem by creating an international mangrove center, national standards for coral reef restoration and its first comprehensive methodology for blue carbon accounting. At COP27, the UN climate conference that took place in November in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, the establishment of the International Blue Carbon Institute was announced. The institute will serve as a knowledge hub to develop and scale blue carbon projects. It will be housed in Singapore to focus on supporting Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.

Indonesia has taken action to slow the loss of its mangroves, the world’s largest collection, through multiple initiatives such as launching the Mangrove Alliance for Climate. This slow but steady emerging leadership in oceans by countries in the Asia-Pacific region is a promising sign.

6. Outer space ocean

Oceans may not be as exclusive to Earth as we previously thought. A new study reveals that 4.5 billion years ago Mars had enough water to be covered in an ocean as deep as 300 meters (nearly 1,000 feet). The Mars that we know in the present day is a reddish color and averages temperatures of negative 62 degrees Celsius (negative 80 degrees Fahrenheit), making it unable to support water in any form other than ice. During the first 100 million years of Mars’ evolution, ice-filled asteroids that carried organic molecules crashed on the planet, allowing for conditions supportive of life to emerge long before they did on Earth.

Because Mars does not have plate tectonics, the surface preserves a historical record of the planet’s history; researchers were able to gain insight into the red planet’s wetter past, as well as into the formation of the solar system, from a meteorite found on Earth that was part of Mars’ original crust billions of years ago.

7. Ocean giants

This year brought both ups and downs for the world’s largest charismatic marine megafauna: whales. Scientists are looking into what is causing a 40% decline in birth rates of the Pacific gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) population that travels along the U.S. West Coast on its migration from Baja, Mexico, back to the Arctic. This past year’s decline brings the birth rate to the lowest level since 1994. The scarcity of food sources in their Arctic feeding grounds due to climate change is one main factor scientists say they believe is contributing to the decline.

Another study showed that blue, fin and humpback whales feed at 50-250 meters (164-820 feet) below the surface, which coincides with the ocean’s highest concentrations of microplastics. The authors estimated that blues ingest 10 million pieces per day. Some progress was made on mitigating one of the largest threats to large whales: ship strikes.

The waters off the southern coast of Sri Lanka are important blue whale habitat for feeding and nursing, but also a busy shipping lane that creates a high risk for fatal collisions. The largest container line in the world has started ordering its ships to slow down in this region and travel outside the known whale habitat, helping to reduce the risk of collisions by 95%. The tech-driven platform Whale Safe (one of our projects at the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory), designed to prevent whale-ship collisions and piloted in southern California, was replicated and deployed in the San Francisco region, helping to create a safer environment for whales off the U.S. West Coast.

8. Explosive interest in blue carbon

Climate change continues to be the biggest threat facing our ocean and planet. 2022 brought a happy but belated influx of investment and attention to blue carbon, a term that refers to using mangroves, tidal marshes, seagrass beds, and other marine ecosystems to sequester carbon dioxide in the fight against climate change.

Mangroves have the potential to store up to 10 times as much carbon as tropical rainforests. In addition to the pivotal role they might have in preventing climate change, blue carbon ecosystems also protect coastal communities from flooding and storms and provide habitat for marine life. As a result, protecting these marine ecosystems was a key topic at COP27, a focus of research by academic institutes and an area of investment by companies such as Google and Salesforce (whose co-founder, Marc Benioff, also funds the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, where we work).

Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, and Google announced a $2.7 million blue carbon AI research project that will help researchers understand blue carbon ecosystems in the Indo-Pacific and Australia. At COP27, Salesforce, the World Economic Forum’s Friends of Ocean Action and a global coalition of ocean leaders announced the High-Quality Blue Carbon Principles and Guidance, a blue carbon framework to guide the development and purchasing of high-quality blue carbon projects and credits. In the last decade alone, the oceans have absorbed about 23% of carbon dioxide emitted by human activities and investment in their protection and recovery will be vital to the overall fight against climate change.

9. Marine heat waves and coral reefs

Record-breaking heat events took place across the globe this year, and not just on land. Rising ocean temperatures are a cause for concern because they increase stress on already vulnerable ecosystems like coral reefs. The sea surface temperatures over the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef were the warmest November temperatures on record, raising fears this may be the second summer in a row of a massive coral bleaching event that affected 91% of surveyed reefs last year.

The news isn’t all bad, though. Innovative finance mechanisms are being leveraged to protect coral reefs from these threats. In Hawai’i, The Nature Conservancy purchased an insurance policy to protect the state’s reefs from hurricanes and tropical storms. If wind speeds reach 50 knots (57.5 mph) or more, the policy will pay out, allowing for rapid reef repair. This is the first policy of its kind in the U.S., although similar approaches have been used in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras. Creative finance solutions like this will continue to be a key component of protecting these vital ecosystems.

10. A decisive year for the ocean

2022 was a big year for ocean policies, marked by a number of breakthroughs by the international community, some of which had been long-awaited after pandemic-induced delays. Major themes addressed reducing plastic pollution, protecting marine biodiversity, supporting the blue economy, decarbonizing shipping and more. Key policy moments included a landmark deal to ban harmful fishing subsidies that was reached after 20 years of negotiations at the World Trade Organization. The historic agreement specifically prohibits subsidies to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and to fisheries targeting overexploited fish stocks. At the UN Ocean Conference, member states made more than 700 conservation commitments pledging to expand marine protected areas, end destructive fishing practices, increase investments and expand blue economies.

More than 100 nations have affirmed voluntary commitments to protect 30% of their oceans by 2030. At the conference, the Protecting Our Planet Challenge announced it will invest at least $1 billion to support this goal. Several countries also announced plans to create and expand marine protected areas, including Colombia, which, if it fully implements its plan, would become the first country to achieve the 30% goal ahead of the 2030 target.

In November, the Green Shipping Challenge launched at COP27, with more than 40 announcements by countries, ports, and companies detailing measures to decarbonize shipping, an industry that currently emits close to 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Many of the announcements were related to green shipping corridors and technological developments for climate-neutral ships, such as innovative propulsion systems, sailing cargo ships and the production of low- and zero-emission fuels.

Finally, to cap off 2022, after two years of delay from the pandemic, the UN conference on the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) took place in Montreal. Early on the morning of Dec. 19, delegates reached a historic new global biodiversity agreement that outlines 23 conservation targets to prevent biodiversity loss over the next decade, including protecting 30% of land, fresh water and the ocean by 2030. During negotiations, there were strong disagreements among delegates about how much funding was needed to reach these goals and who should pay for it. In the final agreement, nations collectively committed to spending $200 billion per year on biodiversity conservation.

Callie Leiphardt is a project scientist at the Benioff Ocean Initiative, where she works on projects to develop science- and technology-based solutions to ocean problems, such as the Whale Safe project to reduce fatal whale-ship collisions along the California coast. Her background is in conservation planning, particularly with marine mammals. Douglas McCauley is an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and director of the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory. Neil Nathan is a project scientist at Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, where he works on issues such as deep-sea mining, marine protected areas in the high seas and shark monitoring using drones and artificial intelligence. Nathan has a background in natural capital approaches, which aim to incorporate the value of ecosystem services into decision-making and planning. Rachel Rhodes is a project scientist at the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, where she works on Whale Safe. Her background is in marine geospatial data and strategic environmental communications. Aaron Roan leads technology and engineering initiatives across projects at the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory. He comes from Google and Slack and has spent more than a decade using technology, machine learning and data to help with ocean science and conservation.

Banner image: A whale shark swimming with remoras in Ras Mohammed National Park, Egypt. Image by Cinzia Osele Bismarck / Ocean Image Bank.

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Graham, A. G., Wåhlin, A., Hogan, K. A., Nitsche, F. O., Heywood, K. J., Totten, R. L., … Larter, R. D. (2022). Rapid retreat of thwaites glacier in the pre-satellite era. Nature Geoscience, 15(9), 706-713. doi:10.1038/s41561-022-01019-9.

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Plastic pollution is among the most pressing environmental issues given the rapid increase of disposable plastic products over the past decade. Every year, about 8 million tons of plastic waste escapes into the oceans from coastal nations, and forecasts suggest this could double by 2025 if drastic action is not taken.

1. Seabin project

Seabin Project is a clean tech startup on an ambitious mission to help solve the global problem of ocean plastic pollution and ocean conservation. Andrew Turton and Pete Ceglinski launched Seabin Project in Australia, back in 2015, to extract plastic from the ocean. As part of the project, floating “seabins” were installed to skim plastics and other debris from harbour water before they can reach the ocean — a key preventive solution previously identified by scientists and conservationists, including the National Geographic Society.

Each bin can capture 90,000 plastic bags a year.

Learn more: https://t.co/ZZX0Masf50@Seabin_project pic.twitter.com/o3xjEixIKQ

— World Economic Forum (@wef) September 23, 2022

“We are now in the 6.0 (next generation technology), which includes smart technology, water sensors and a modem for cloud-based or IoT connectivity,” said CEO and co-founder Ceglinski, explaining how their commercial product acts as a floating garbage bin and intercepts trash, oil, fuel and detergents. Data estimates suggest their technology with each Seabin allows them to capture 90,000 plastic bags every year for less than $1 a day. The collected debris is then recycled or sent to a waste management facility.

2. Capturing marine litter

The Seabin Project is accelerating its global expansion with the “100 cities by 2050” campaign, selecting Marina Del Rey in Los Angeles as the second city after Sydney, Australia. From July 2020 to November 2022, the project captured 100 tons of marine litter in Sydney, while in Los Angeles, 2.1 tons were captured between July 2022 to November 2022. The city choices weren’t random as the team believes the world’s marinas and ports are the perfect places to start helping clean the oceans.

With no huge open ocean swells or storms inside the marinas, these relatively controlled environments provide the perfect locations for Seabin installations.

The Seabin Project

3. A severe problem

Most of the plastic trash in the oceans flows from land. Trash is also carried to sea by major rivers, which act as conveyor belts, picking up more and more trash as they move downstream. The problem increases when plastics break down into microplastics moving freely through water and air. Plastics often contain additives making them stronger, more flexible, and durable. But many of these additives also extend the life of products when they become litter, with some estimates ranging to at least 400 years to break down.

Poonam Watine, Knowledge Specialist at the World Economic Forum’s Global Plastic Action Partnership, believes that innovative solutions like the Seabin can prove to be a significant step in the right direction to mitigate and prevent plastic pollution.

“High impact and inspiring trailblazers like Seabin provide a glimmer of hope on how to take action to the impending plastic crisis through alternative solutions,” said Watine.

WASHINGTON—A ceremony on the Capitol’s West Lawn to light a 78-foot red spruce from Pisgah National Forest earlier this month heralded the festive holiday season. The tree was one of nearly 5 million Christmas trees harvested in North Carolina this year.

“Our Capitol Christmas tree reminds us of the importance of working together to be good stewards of our environment, so that future generations can enjoy the bounties of forests and Christmases still to come,” said Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina.

The tree will light up the West Lawn until the first week of January, when its wood will be recycled to make musical instruments, according to the U.S. Forest Service. These instruments will be donated to local North Carolina communities.

The tree’s afterlife as newly crafted violins, guitars and mandolins demonstrates one of several sustainable ways to dispose of Christmas trees—a key issue for increasingly climate-conscious consumers weighing the choice between real and artificial trees. 

A survey conducted by the National Christmas Tree Association estimated that almost 21 million trees were purchased in the U.S. in 2021. Around 10 million artificial trees are reported to be purchased each season.

The growth of the artificial tree market has had an acute impact on growers with consumer preferences shifting towards artificial trees over the past 30 years, said Jill Sidebottom of the National Christmas Tree Association.

The reason for the shift is likely multi-faceted. The Association’s survey found that the median price of a real tree in 2021 was $69.50. Higher costs of production and constrained supply means this will likely increase this year, according to a New York Times analysis. The shortage in supply can be partially attributed to planting decisions made a decade ago, the newspaper said. Trees must grow for five to 15 years before they are ready to be harvested.

Artificial trees, which also retailed at a median price of $70 in 2021, may also become more expensive as production and transport costs increase globally. However, these can be re-used for many years, making them more affordable in the long run.

A comparison between real and artificial trees has left some consumers concerned about the sustainability of purchasing real trees. The debate is a nuanced one. Real trees capture and store carbon during their lifetime. However, once cut down for Christmas, their potential to harm the environment depends on those who buy and dispose of them.

According to Ian Rotherham, emeritus professor at Sheffield Hallam University in England and a researcher on wildlife and environmental issues, the comparison must involve more than just the act of cutting down trees. 

“If you’re cutting down a Christmas tree from a mixed-age plantation, where you take some of the trees out and you leave some in, that actually has no impact on the carbon capture of that plantation because the trees will compensate relative to the space that you’ve freed up,” he said. 

Harvesting a large number of trees that are the same size and age at once will have some impact. However, “they will probably then replant another crop into that same space … So, to some extent that will balance, so long as you are then disposing of the tree when you have used it in a responsible way,” he said. 

For every Christmas tree harvested in the U.S., one to three seedlings are planted the following spring, according to the National Christmas Tree Association.

The best option for the environment, in Rotherham’s view, “depends on what you do with it after you’ve used them.”

A real tree that is dumped in a landfill will produce methane as it decomposes. Methane is a greenhouse gas that has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere. While carbon dioxide has a longer-lasting effect on the climate, methane drives the speed of warming in the near term.

The methane produced by a two-meter tree as it decomposes is equivalent to emitting 16 kilograms of carbon dioxide, according to Carbon Trust, a U.K.-based nonprofit focused on climate change and carbon emissions. If all 21 million U.S. consumers who purchased a real Christmas tree last year disposed of it in landfill, the climate impacts would be the equivalent of 42,283 homes’ energy use for one year, according to an analysis using EPA data.

A less harmful alternative is burning the tree. This method simply releases the carbon dioxide that it stored while growing, meaning there is no net increase in the atmosphere, although burning the tree would produce other harmful air pollutants.  

The most benign option, according to Rotherham, is to use and re-plant a living tree. However, this can be challenging in cold climates, so where that is not possible, he recommends composting the tree or taking it to a community site to be chipped. When spread on the garden, the tree returns organic matter to the soil and helps to store carbon.

Sidebottom, whose organization represents growers and allied businesses within the farm-grown Christmas tree industry, did not consider the comparison between real and artificial trees a close call. “The bottom line is that fake trees are always, no matter how many years you use them, going to end up in a landfill somewhere,” she said. 

Artificial trees have a significant environmental impact from the beginning of their lives. Most sold in the U.S. are made from plastic in China. Manufacturing and transporting a two-meter tree results in the release of approximately 40 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions, according to Carbon Trust.

While the initial environmental impacts of artificial trees are significant, their greenhouse gas contributions will eventually fall.

“With an artificial tree, you can end up with a carbon footprint that is almost negligible if you use it for long enough,” said Rotherham. “But then, at the end of its life you have the disposal issue. Depending on what it’s made of it won’t be easy to recycle.”

If an artificial tree is dumped in a landfill at the end of its life, it will take centuries to break down and will produce methane in the process, according to a recent study on how plastics perform in landfills.

Real trees, on the other hand, are not normally dumped in landfills, said Sidebottom.

“Most communities will either have a curbside pickup for recycling, or they will have an area that operates year-round where you can take [your tree] and it can be mulched,” she said. “There aren’t that many trees that would end up in a landfill.”

More than 4,000 communities across the country have Christmas tree recycling programs. These ensure proper recycling is accessible even to residents without much outdoor space.

Some communities have found other, inventive ways to re-use their trees. Wood can be collected and re-used to create arts and crafts, or musical instruments, as in the case of the Capitol tree. Other communities shred trees and use the remains to create hiking trails. Some Christmas trees are even placed in zoos for the animals to enjoy, Sidebottom said.

Consumers will have their own personal preferences about real or artificial trees based on convenience, price and tradition. The key, said Rotherham, is in ensuring they are used and disposed of responsibly.

For those who choose artificial trees, they are best used year after year to reduce the climate impact. For consumers who prefer the tradition and smell of a real tree, it is important to remember that they make great mulch, or, as with the red spruce on the Capitol lawn—or violins.

Diplomats negotiating guidelines for an international convention on hazardous wastes this month in Switzerland debated a new section on the “chemical recycling” of plastic debris fouling the global environment. 

The 1989 Basel Convention, which seeks to protect human health and the environment against the adverse effects of hazardous wastes, was updated in 2019 when 187 ratifying nations agreed to place new restrictions on the management and international movement of plastic wastes—and to update the treaty’s technical guidelines.

Since then, the plastics industry has tried to quell mounting anger over vast mountains of plastics filling landfills and polluting the oceans by advancing chemical recycling as a means of turning discarded plastic products into new plastic feedstocks and fossil fuels like diesel. 

Scientists and environmentalists who have studied the largely unproven technology say it is essentially another form of incineration that requires vast stores of energy, has questionable climate benefits, and puts communities and the environment at risk from toxic pollution. Some of them even view the inclusion of the chemical recycling language in the implementing guidelines as a threat, although it remains to be seen what that language will ultimately say.

“The text is nowhere near settled,” said Sirine Rached, the global plastics policy coordinator for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), which with the Basel Action Network has called chemical recycling of plastics “a fantasy beast that has yet to establish its efficacy and economic viability, while already exhibiting serious environmental threats.”

Rached said the group’s “priority is for the guidance to focus on environmentally-sound management and to refer to technologies only on the basis of sound peer-reviewed references, and not on industry marketing claims, and this involves not speculating on how technologies may or may not evolve in future.”

“The solution is making less plastic,” Judith Enck, founder and president of the environmental group Beyond Plastics and a former EPA regional administrator, told a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works at a hearing on Dec. 15. 

U.S. lawmakers are weighing their own ideas for addressing the plastics crisis. “We need to cut plastic production by 50 percent in the next 10 years, and we can do it,” she told them, adding that chemical recycling produces “more fossil fuel and the last thing we need is more fossil fuel.”

Such a dramatic cut in plastic would devastate the economy, said Matt Seaholm, chief executive officer of the Plastics Industry Association, which represents companies that produce, use and recycle plastic. “Our industry wants to recycle more,” and deploying more mechanical recycling and  chemical recycling will help, he told lawmakers. “We love plastic,” he said. “We hate the waste. We need to collect, sort and ultimately reprocess more material.”

Wide agreement exists that the 11 million metric tons of plastic pollution that enters the oceans every year “is devastating,” Erin Simon, head of plastic waste and business for the World Wildlife Fund, a conservation group that operates in 100 countries, said in an interview.  “It’s wreaking havoc on our species, our ecosystems and in the communities that depend on them.

“You really do need this coordinated global structure” that treaties can provide, she added. “Because it’s clear that it’s not going to happen just with voluntary initiatives alone.”

Writing Guidelines for Chemical Recycling

The world is making twice as much plastic waste as it did two decades ago, with most of the discarded materials buried in landfills, burned by incinerators or dumped into the environment, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group that represents developed nations. Production is expected to triple by 2060. Globally, only 9 percent of plastic waste is successfully recycled, according to OECD.

Nearly all of the plastic that gets recycled goes through a mechanical process involving sorting, grinding, cleaning, melting and remolding, often into other products. But mechanical recycling has its limits; it does not work for most kinds of plastic and what gets recycled, such as certain kinds of bottles and jugs, can only be recycled a few times.

Chemical recycling consists of new and old technologies, hailed by the industry but seen as an unproven marketing ruse by environmentalists, that governments must now study and regulate if they are to successfully confront a menacing problem that spans the Earth and has even invaded our bodies with microplastic particles.

A Basel Convention committee met in the second week of December in Switzerland to debate whether the Basel treaty’s technical guidelines should be updated to include chemical recycling, which is also sometimes referred to as “advanced recycling,” and if so, under what terms.

The debate occurred within the framework of the Basel Convention and any language on chemical recycling that makes it into its technical guidelines will be seen as acceptable tools for managing plastic waste. The guidelines are likely to carry over into the negotiations over the next two years on an international treaty governing plastic pollution and ongoing plastics manufacturing.

Those treaty talks have barely begun, with a first negotiation session among delegates a few weeks ago in Uruguay. 

The technical guidelines for the Basel Convention are supposed to represent the best available technology for protecting humans from various hazardous wastes, said Lee Bell, an Australia-based policy advisor for the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN). He is also the  co-author of a 2021 IPEN study that detailed how chemical recycling generates dangerous dioxin emissions, produces contaminated fuels and consumes large amounts of energy.

“Many parties and observers are of the view that there is no proof that chemical recycling is what you would call best available technology … or best environmental practice,” he said. 

The concern, he said, is that chemical recycling’s inclusion in the technical guidance “becomes a sort of formal endorsement by the (Basel) convention, and therefore by the U.N.”

It then would be possible for advocates of chemical recycling to point to the Basel technical guidance and say, “‘let’s just adopt those wholesale as part of the new plastics treaty,’” Bell said. “And I think this is exactly what’s going on.”

Stewart Harris, senior director of global plastics policy for the American Chemistry Council, said it’s too soon to say what role chemical recycling might play in a global plastics agreement. But, he said, the Basel Convention technical guidance is important.

“The Basel Convention guidance on the environmentally sound management of plastic waste is a key resource for all countries looking to support the transition to a more circular economy for plastics,” Harris said. “Properly classifying chemical recycling will help governments assess how these technologies fit into national waste management plans.”

In a joint release with the International Council of Chemical Associations following the first round of plastics treaty talks, held Nov. 28 to Dec. 2 in Uruguay, the two industry groups favored an agreement that “moves nations closer to a future where plastics remain in the economy and not in the environment.”

Industry opposes caps on soaring plastic production, which Enck and other environmentalists say is the only way to ultimately solve the environmental crisis that is plastic waste and pollution.

In the United States, the fight over chemical recycling has occurred in statehouses, local communities, in Congress and inside the Environmental Protection Agency. The American Chemistry Council, a leading industry advocate for chemical recycling, this year celebrated adoption of legislation by 20 states over the past five years aimed at easing regulatory pathways for chemical recycling.

“The appropriate regulation of this is really critical if you want to scale advanced recycling, and you want to use more recycled material in your products,” Joshua Baca, vice president of plastics for the chemistry council, told Inside Climate News.

But plastics were never designed to be recycled, and environmental advocates have been fighting back, trying to block new chemical recycling facilities that have been proposed in various states across the country.

In Pennsylvania, a Houston start-up called Encina has proposed a $1.1 billion chemical recycling plant for plastic waste in Point Township that has left local officials and professors at Pittsburgh universities perplexed about whether the company’s plans were at all feasible. Nearby residents, meanwhile, worried about impacts to air, water and quality of life. 

In northeast Indiana, Inside Climate News found Brightmark Energy struggling to get its chemical recycling facility, using a technology called pyrolysis, up and running. The company could not precisely say what percentage of plastic waste it would actually turn into fuel or plastic feedstocks.

And while Fulcrum BioEnergy does not market its waste-to-jet fuel plant proposed for Gary, Indiana, as chemical recycling, it would employ a similar technical process, gasification. Inside Climate News found that the company’s plans to use municipal solid waste are complicated by an anticipated 30 percent plastic in its feedstock, which reduces carbon benefits and can gum up the production process. In Gary, an environmental justice community, residents have filed a Civil Rights Act complaint with the EPA against the state regulators who approved the Fulcrum air permit.

“Technologies that worsen the climate crisis, perpetuate a reliance on single-use plastics, and adversely impact vulnerable communities cannot be viewed as viable solutions moving forward,” a group of 35 members of Congress wrote in July, urging the EPA to fully regulate chemical recycling emissions and to stop working to promote the technology as a solution to the plastics crisis.

A Global Solution

Plastic waste is a global problem and the countries of the world are working on a global solution.

In March, against the backdrop of what U.N. officials described as a “triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution,” the United Nations Environmental Assembly voted to start two years of negotiations for a treaty to end global plastic waste.

At the Uruguay meeting, the discussion focused on a process for the negotiations and other preliminary matters. Early fault lines emerged. Some countries favored more of a bottom-up approach in which each of them would set their own goals, while others suggested a harder-line approach with global mandates.

The United States, a major plastics producer and consumer is advocating for a treaty that features national action plans, much like the 2015 Paris climate agreement. (The U.S. did not ratify the Basel Convention on hazardous wastes). 

“Plastic pollution does not have a one-size-fits-all solution,” a State Department official said in a written statement. “Many participants emphasized the importance of national action plans under a future agreement and the importance of allowing for country-driven approaches that reflect different national contexts.”

The U.S. approach amounts to “low ambition,” said Neil Tangri, also from the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. “Every country is already doing what they want to do. The whole point of an international treaty is to get countries to go beyond what they want to do.”

Scientists have also been weighing in on the proposed plastic waste treaty and chemical recycling.

“We know that we’re using more than 10,000 chemicals in everyday plastic products,” said Martin Wagner, a Norwegian University of Science and Technology associate professor of biology, who was among 13 scientists to jointly publish a letter in the journal Science, in November, urging plastics treaty negotiators to recognize the myriad of toxic chemicals that comprise plastic materials. “We know that 2,400 of those chemicals are actually classified as toxic and hazardous.

“Still, they’re allowed to be used in everyday plastic products,” said Wagner, who studies what plastics and endocrine-disrupting chemicals do to human and ecosystem health. “So we have clearly a shortcoming there with regards to regulating hazardous chemicals and plastics.”

Wagner was also among nine scientists to write another letter in Science in April, advocating for a global cap on plastic production.

Capping plastic production will increase the price of making new plastics, and would then make recycling more economical, while helping to end plastic pollution, he said.

Chemical recycling likely needs to be in the mix of potential solutions, but it raises a lot of questions, Wagner said.

“It’s unclear how (chemical recycling) would scale to deal with the mega- and gigatons of plastic waste that we are producing,” he said. “And then there is the problem of chemical safety. And technically, I really don’t understand how they would get rid of all those chemicals.

“That’s why I’m cautious about promoting this chemical recycling as a silver bullet solution. It has a role to play but I am not sure how big of one.”

Continuing the Negotiations, But with Skepticism

At the Basel Convention meeting in mid-December in Switzerland, environmental groups watched closely as a committee worked on language for the proposed new section on chemical recycling. Those conversations were kept confidential.

Environmental groups such as the International Pollutants Elimination Network, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives and the Basel Action Network have tried, without success, to keep the committee from including chemical recycling in the technical guidelines.

Another Basel working group will pick up the talks in February, before delegates from countries that are parties to the Basel treaty meet in May, where the technical guidelines could be resolved.

For now, however, records from the technical committee meeting show language inserted to interject a measure of skepticism about solutions from chemical recycling. For example, one change notes that “further scientific evidence for the ecological and economic benefits is still necessary for final evaluation.”

Even the United States, which is not a party to the Basel Convention but participates in an advisory role, urged cautionary language around chemical recycling in the Basel technical guidelines.

“Given the uncertainty about the environmental impacts of chemical recycling and the role the technology can play in addressing plastic waste, we support the guidelines highlighting that further evidence is needed to assess the life cycle impacts of chemical recycling processes and demonstrate commercial viability,” a U.S. official suggested.

Plastic recyclers in Europe offer a mixed assessment of chemical recycling.

“Chemical recycling could have the potential to build upon mechanical recycling processes if it can treat the waste which currently cannot be mechanically recycled into high-quality plastics,” said Emilia Tarlowska, a spokeswoman for Plastics Recyclers Europe, a group representing European recyclers that closely follows the U.N. deliberations.

But she also said that “chemical recycling is in its infancy” and barely out of the “laboratory.”  

“It is perhaps too early to tell if these technologies have the potential to significantly contribute to the challenges presented by plastics waste,” she said. 

For its part, the U.N. Environment Program, in a document prepared in advance of the plastics treaty talks in Uruguay, identified chemical and mechanical recycling as two main ways for “closing the loop of plastics in the economy,” or getting away from a linear “take-make-waste” model.

“Chemical recycling includes a wide array of technologies that for the most part are not yet proven at scale,” the text said. “Chemical recycling tends to be energy intensive and should only be used when the overall environmental profile is comparable to or better than other proven management options.”

Diplomats negotiating guidelines for an international convention on hazardous wastes this month in Switzerland debated a new section on the “chemical recycling” of plastic debris fouling the global environment. 

The 1989 Basel Convention, which seeks to protect human health and the environment against the adverse effects of hazardous wastes, was updated in 2019 when 187 ratifying nations agreed to place new restrictions on the management and international movement of plastic wastes—and to update the treaty’s technical guidelines.

Since then, the plastics industry has tried to quell mounting anger over vast mountains of plastics filling landfills and polluting the oceans by advancing chemical recycling as a means of turning discarded plastic products into new plastic feedstocks and fossil fuels like diesel. 

Scientists and environmentalists who have studied the largely unproven technology say it is essentially another form of incineration that requires vast stores of energy, has questionable climate benefits, and puts communities and the environment at risk from toxic pollution. Some of them even view the inclusion of the chemical recycling language in the implementing guidelines as a threat, although it remains to be seen what that language will ultimately say.

“The text is nowhere near settled,” said Sirine Rached, the global plastics policy coordinator for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), which with the Basel Action Network has called chemical recycling of plastics “a fantasy beast that has yet to establish its efficacy and economic viability, while already exhibiting serious environmental threats.”

Rached said the group’s “priority is for the guidance to focus on environmentally-sound management and to refer to technologies only on the basis of sound peer-reviewed references, and not on industry marketing claims, and this involves not speculating on how technologies may or may not evolve in future.”

“The solution is making less plastic,” Judith Enck, founder and president of the environmental group Beyond Plastics and a former EPA regional administrator, told a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works at a hearing on Dec. 15. 

U.S. lawmakers are weighing their own ideas for addressing the plastics crisis. “We need to cut plastic production by 50 percent in the next 10 years, and we can do it,” she told them, adding that chemical recycling produces “more fossil fuel and the last thing we need is more fossil fuel.”

Such a dramatic cut in plastic would devastate the economy, said Matt Seaholm, chief executive officer of the Plastics Industry Association, which represents companies that produce, use and recycle plastic. “Our industry wants to recycle more,” and deploying more mechanical recycling and  chemical recycling will help, he told lawmakers. “We love plastic,” he said. “We hate the waste. We need to collect, sort and ultimately reprocess more material.”

Wide agreement exists that the 11 million metric tons of plastic pollution that enters the oceans every year “is devastating,” Erin Simon, head of plastic waste and business for the World Wildlife Fund, a conservation group that operates in 100 countries, said in an interview.  “It’s wreaking havoc on our species, our ecosystems and in the communities that depend on them.

“You really do need this coordinated global structure” that treaties can provide, she added. “Because it’s clear that it’s not going to happen just with voluntary initiatives alone.”

Writing Guidelines for Chemical Recycling

The world is making twice as much plastic waste as it did two decades ago, with most of the discarded materials buried in landfills, burned by incinerators or dumped into the environment, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group that represents developed nations. Production is expected to triple by 2060. Globally, only 9 percent of plastic waste is successfully recycled, according to OECD.

Nearly all of the plastic that gets recycled goes through a mechanical process involving sorting, grinding, cleaning, melting and remolding, often into other products. But mechanical recycling has its limits; it does not work for most kinds of plastic and what gets recycled, such as certain kinds of bottles and jugs, can only be recycled a few times.

Chemical recycling consists of new and old technologies, hailed by the industry but seen as an unproven marketing ruse by environmentalists, that governments must now study and regulate if they are to successfully confront a menacing problem that spans the Earth and has even invaded our bodies with microplastic particles.

A Basel Convention committee met in the second week of December in Switzerland to debate whether the Basel treaty’s technical guidelines should be updated to include chemical recycling, which is also sometimes referred to as “advanced recycling,” and if so, under what terms.

The debate occurred within the framework of the Basel Convention and any language on chemical recycling that makes it into its technical guidelines will be seen as acceptable tools for managing plastic waste. The guidelines are likely to carry over into the negotiations over the next two years on an international treaty governing plastic pollution and ongoing plastics manufacturing.

Those treaty talks have barely begun, with a first negotiation session among delegates a few weeks ago in Uruguay. 

The technical guidelines for the Basel Convention are supposed to represent the best available technology for protecting humans from various hazardous wastes, said Lee Bell, an Australia-based policy advisor for the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN). He is also the  co-author of a 2021 IPEN study that detailed how chemical recycling generates dangerous dioxin emissions, produces contaminated fuels and consumes large amounts of energy.

“Many parties and observers are of the view that there is no proof that chemical recycling is what you would call best available technology … or best environmental practice,” he said. 

The concern, he said, is that chemical recycling’s inclusion in the technical guidance “becomes a sort of formal endorsement by the (Basel) convention, and therefore by the U.N.”

It then would be possible for advocates of chemical recycling to point to the Basel technical guidance and say, “‘let’s just adopt those wholesale as part of the new plastics treaty,’” Bell said. “And I think this is exactly what’s going on.”

Stewart Harris, senior director of global plastics policy for the American Chemistry Council, said it’s too soon to say what role chemical recycling might play in a global plastics agreement. But, he said, the Basel Convention technical guidance is important.

“The Basel Convention guidance on the environmentally sound management of plastic waste is a key resource for all countries looking to support the transition to a more circular economy for plastics,” Harris said. “Properly classifying chemical recycling will help governments assess how these technologies fit into national waste management plans.”

In a joint release with the International Council of Chemical Associations following the first round of plastics treaty talks, held Nov. 28 to Dec. 2 in Uruguay, the two industry groups favored an agreement that “moves nations closer to a future where plastics remain in the economy and not in the environment.”

Industry opposes caps on soaring plastic production, which Enck and other environmentalists say is the only way to ultimately solve the environmental crisis that is plastic waste and pollution.

In the United States, the fight over chemical recycling has occurred in statehouses, local communities, in Congress and inside the Environmental Protection Agency. The American Chemistry Council, a leading industry advocate for chemical recycling, this year celebrated adoption of legislation by 20 states over the past five years aimed at easing regulatory pathways for chemical recycling.

“The appropriate regulation of this is really critical if you want to scale advanced recycling, and you want to use more recycled material in your products,” Joshua Baca, vice president of plastics for the chemistry council, told Inside Climate News.

But plastics were never designed to be recycled, and environmental advocates have been fighting back, trying to block new chemical recycling facilities that have been proposed in various states across the country.

In Pennsylvania, a Houston start-up called Encina has proposed a $1.1 billion chemical recycling plant for plastic waste in Point Township that has left local officials and professors at Pittsburgh universities perplexed about whether the company’s plans were at all feasible. Nearby residents, meanwhile, worried about impacts to air, water and quality of life. 

In northeast Indiana, Inside Climate News found Brightmark Energy struggling to get its chemical recycling facility, using a technology called pyrolysis, up and running. The company could not precisely say what percentage of plastic waste it would actually turn into fuel or plastic feedstocks.

And while Fulcrum BioEnergy does not market its waste-to-jet fuel plant proposed for Gary, Indiana, as chemical recycling, it would employ a similar technical process, gasification. Inside Climate News found that the company’s plans to use municipal solid waste are complicated by an anticipated 30 percent plastic in its feedstock, which reduces carbon benefits and can gum up the production process. In Gary, an environmental justice community, residents have filed a Civil Rights Act complaint with the EPA against the state regulators who approved the Fulcrum air permit.

“Technologies that worsen the climate crisis, perpetuate a reliance on single-use plastics, and adversely impact vulnerable communities cannot be viewed as viable solutions moving forward,” a group of 35 members of Congress wrote in July, urging the EPA to fully regulate chemical recycling emissions and to stop working to promote the technology as a solution to the plastics crisis.

A Global Solution

Plastic waste is a global problem and the countries of the world are working on a global solution.

In March, against the backdrop of what U.N. officials described as a “triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution,” the United Nations Environmental Assembly voted to start two years of negotiations for a treaty to end global plastic waste.

At the Uruguay meeting, the discussion focused on a process for the negotiations and other preliminary matters. Early fault lines emerged. Some countries favored more of a bottom-up approach in which each of them would set their own goals, while others suggested a harder-line approach with global mandates.

The United States, a major plastics producer and consumer is advocating for a treaty that features national action plans, much like the 2015 Paris climate agreement. (The U.S. did not ratify the Basel Convention on hazardous wastes). 

“Plastic pollution does not have a one-size-fits-all solution,” a State Department official said in a written statement. “Many participants emphasized the importance of national action plans under a future agreement and the importance of allowing for country-driven approaches that reflect different national contexts.”

The U.S. approach amounts to “low ambition,” said Neil Tangri, also from the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. “Every country is already doing what they want to do. The whole point of an international treaty is to get countries to go beyond what they want to do.”

Scientists have also been weighing in on the proposed plastic waste treaty and chemical recycling.

“We know that we’re using more than 10,000 chemicals in everyday plastic products,” said Martin Wagner, a Norwegian University of Science and Technology associate professor of biology, who was among 13 scientists to jointly publish a letter in the journal Science, in November, urging plastics treaty negotiators to recognize the myriad of toxic chemicals that comprise plastic materials. “We know that 2,400 of those chemicals are actually classified as toxic and hazardous.

“Still, they’re allowed to be used in everyday plastic products,” said Wagner, who studies what plastics and endocrine-disrupting chemicals do to human and ecosystem health. “So we have clearly a shortcoming there with regards to regulating hazardous chemicals and plastics.”

Wagner was also among nine scientists to write another letter in Science in April, advocating for a global cap on plastic production.

Capping plastic production will increase the price of making new plastics, and would then make recycling more economical, while helping to end plastic pollution, he said.

Chemical recycling likely needs to be in the mix of potential solutions, but it raises a lot of questions, Wagner said.

“It’s unclear how (chemical recycling) would scale to deal with the mega- and gigatons of plastic waste that we are producing,” he said. “And then there is the problem of chemical safety. And technically, I really don’t understand how they would get rid of all those chemicals.

“That’s why I’m cautious about promoting this chemical recycling as a silver bullet solution. It has a role to play but I am not sure how big of one.”

Continuing the Negotiations, But with Skepticism

At the Basel Convention meeting in mid-December in Switzerland, environmental groups watched closely as a committee worked on language for the proposed new section on chemical recycling. Those conversations were kept confidential.

Environmental groups such as the International Pollutants Elimination Network, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives and the Basel Action Network have tried, without success, to keep the committee from including chemical recycling in the technical guidelines.

Another Basel working group will pick up the talks in February, before delegates from countries that are parties to the Basel treaty meet in May, where the technical guidelines could be resolved.

For now, however, records from the technical committee meeting show language inserted to interject a measure of skepticism about solutions from chemical recycling. For example, one change notes that “further scientific evidence for the ecological and economic benefits is still necessary for final evaluation.”

Even the United States, which is not a party to the Basel Convention but participates in an advisory role, urged cautionary language around chemical recycling in the Basel technical guidelines.

“Given the uncertainty about the environmental impacts of chemical recycling and the role the technology can play in addressing plastic waste, we support the guidelines highlighting that further evidence is needed to assess the life cycle impacts of chemical recycling processes and demonstrate commercial viability,” a U.S. official suggested.

Plastic recyclers in Europe offer a mixed assessment of chemical recycling.

“Chemical recycling could have the potential to build upon mechanical recycling processes if it can treat the waste which currently cannot be mechanically recycled into high-quality plastics,” said Emilia Tarlowska, a spokeswoman for Plastics Recyclers Europe, a group representing European recyclers that closely follows the U.N. deliberations.

But she also said that “chemical recycling is in its infancy” and barely out of the “laboratory.”  

“It is perhaps too early to tell if these technologies have the potential to significantly contribute to the challenges presented by plastics waste,” she said. 

For its part, the U.N. Environment Program, in a document prepared in advance of the plastics treaty talks in Uruguay, identified chemical and mechanical recycling as two main ways for “closing the loop of plastics in the economy,” or getting away from a linear “take-make-waste” model.

“Chemical recycling includes a wide array of technologies that for the most part are not yet proven at scale,” the text said. “Chemical recycling tends to be energy intensive and should only be used when the overall environmental profile is comparable to or better than other proven management options.”

GUATEMALA CITY — After heavy rains, hotel workers and other residents in Honduras walk up and down beaches picking up everything from plastic bottles to toys to medical waste. They’ve become experts at garbage cleanup. It piles up in the sand if they don’t move quickly, and then tourists might complain or even stop coming, which could be disastrous for the many residents who rely on work in local hotels and shops.

Some towns on Honduras’s Caribbean coast have banned single-use plastics and implemented more rigorous recycling plans. But the trash keeps coming. A lot of it, it turns out, doesn’t come from the locals, but rather from landfills and illegal dumping sites hundreds of miles away, in inland Honduras and neighboring Guatemala.

“It goes into the food chain and even disrupts coral,” says Jenny Myton, the conservation program director at the Coral Reef Alliance. “This affects everything — animal life and health, but also the economy and tourism.”

Guatemala’s 485-kilometrer (300-mile) Motagua River is one of the biggest conduits of this torrent of waste. An estimated 20,000 metric tons of trash from the Guatemala City landfill and illegal dumping sites flows into the river on its way to the Caribbean each year. Ocean currents push it northeast, where it washes up on the beaches of Tela and other Honduran towns. The rest of it can stay floating out at sea for as long as six months before sinking to the bottom.

The problem has elicited cleanup efforts, recycling programs and garbage divergence plans by everyone from local communities to international NGOs. But many of them also admit that these are only temporary solutions. The root cause of the problem — garbage collection and storage at landfills across the region — will be much harder to make right.

“A new waste management plan must be set up for Guatemala and Honduras, including both citizens and industries,” a 2020 study on waste management in the region said. “Recycling and integrated waste management systems should be implemented everywhere within a country (including smaller towns and villages in the mainland).”

Fixing the landfill

The Guatemala City landfill is located in the Zone 3 neighborhood in the city’s north, and takes in everything from food waste to plastic to medical equipment — and not just from the city proper. Thirteen surrounding municipalities also rely on the landfill as their principal disposal site, which then feeds into the local watershed and ultimately pollutes the Caribbean hundreds of miles away.

Landfills may just look like simple holes in the ground where waste piles up. But they’re actually complex operations with sophisticated technology, intended to prevent waste from creating public health issues and environmental harm. Modern landfills usually include multiple “cells” for controlled dumping, a drainage and rainwater collection system, and a network of pipes and vents to prevent the buildup of methane gas, which is emitted as organic waste breaks down over time.

But the landfill in Guatemala City is decades behind technologically. Garbage piles up dozens of meters high, so unstable that it can shift like an ocean current, swallowing up garbage pickers unexpectedly. The lack of methane vents can lead to gas buildup, fires and toxic smoke.

And the lack of a formal water drainage system has led to a naturally flowing river of contaminated liquids moving out of the dump.

“I’ve rarely seen such a blatant and concrete example of unintended consequences,” said Trae Holland, executive director of Safe Passage, an NGO working in the area. “From a sanitation and waste management standpoint, the medieval approach in Guatemala City is transcending its physical location to become an international problem.”

Guatemala City municipal authorities didn’t respond to Mongabay’s request for comment about what it’s doing to actively address waste management at the landfill. Some organizations tell Mongabay they’ve worked closely with officials to improve the situation, saying they want this problem gone as much as anyone else does. Others say there’s little evidence that the government is taking any environmental action whatsoever.

In recent years, the government pushed back the landfill so it wasn’t encroaching on residential buildings. It decorated the entrance gate with flowers. But the prevailing waste management strategies appear to have gone unchanged.

“It’s this Arcadian paradise,” Holland says. “The front looks like the entrance to a university now that the garbage has been pushed away from the front. This is obviously not solving any problems, right? It’s just a PR move.”

But problems at the dump aren’t just technological. They’re also wrapped up in the political and social struggles of the country. It’s expensive and controversial, for example, to create a new landfill somewhere else. Zoning can be complicated, not only because the area must be strategically located to mitigate environmental hazards, but also because nearby residents and businesses would fight back against the plans.

Unregulated dumping has given rise to an entire informal economy for the impoverished residents of Zone 3, with families entering the landfill each day to pick out plastics and other items that can be sold to middlemen recyclers. Children used to pick trash out of the river, a practice that’s now banned. Gangs oversee a lot of what’s bought and sold there, complicating efforts by groups looking to help struggling families.

During the pandemic, the landfill shut down several times, putting so much stress on trash pickers that several households reported suicides by family members, Holland says. Gangs couldn’t collect extortion fees, which led to kidnappings of children and retaliatory violence.

As difficult as the last several years have been, Holland says, the pandemic may have gotten city officials’ attention for the better and may, in the long run, lead to improved waste management.

“The municipality, I can tell you right now, woke up to some of the issues in that community and in that zone that they were ignoring before,” he says. “And I feel very strongly, in fact, that that’s going to be a net positive.”

Temporary solutions

With systematic changes to the Guatemala City landfill slow to come, some stakeholders have shifted their focus downriver, where the trash is freer from the same complex social and political issues.

The Ocean Cleanup, an international organization engineering creative ways to remove plastic from the oceans, came to Guatemala in 2018 in hopes of developing a method for intercepting the trash on the Motagua River.

“If something is done about the source, that would be ideal, but I think we have to recognize that the brunt of this is more complicated than that,” CEO Boyan Slat tells Mongabay. He adds, “We asked ourselves, what is the fastest, most cost-effective way to stop this plastic from going into the ocean?”

Slat, a Dutch entrepreneur, founded The Ocean Cleanup when he was just 18, after having gone viral for a TEDx talk about what innovative technologies can bring to conservation efforts. His organization has raised millions of dollars since then, but has also been criticized for its flawed technology and lack of results.

In Guatemala, its pilot project involved installing “Interceptor 006,” a fence 50 meters (164 feet) wide and 8 m (26 ft) high that’s designed to catch plastic in its mesh while letting the water through.

In a video released by The Ocean Cleanup, the trash fence starts out looking like it’s going to succeed. The trash stops at the fence and starts to build up, with the water passing through free of plastic. But after a while, the sheer magnitude of trash gets to be too much and the infrastructure starts to bend. Then holes form and the plastic pushes through.

“We thought we truly cracked the nut,” Slat says, “that we collected what’s roughly a million kilos [2.2 million pounds] of plastic … and then seeing a big chunk of that disappear again, almost literally slipping through our fingers. In the matter of two hours, we went from the highest high to a substantial low.”

The Ocean Cleanup is working on a new type of interceptor that hasn’t operated anywhere else, and which will look “evolutionary rather than revolutionary” when compared to the previous one, Slat says. However, he doesn’t divulge any details about its design.

He also says the organization is working with local partners to develop recycling and incineration programs as well as methods of waste fraction (the sorting of waste into biodegradables, glass, batteries and other categories).

The Guatemala 2.0 solution, as Slat calls it, should be ready by the end of the first quarter of 2023. And while it won’t solve the waste management issues at the landfill or stop illegal dumping at different points along the Motagua River, it should help slow the amount of trash entering the Caribbean.

Banner image: Trash floats near a boat in the Caribbean. Photo courtesy of Caroline Power. 

Citation: Kikaki, A., Karantzalos, K., Power, C. A., & Raitsos, D. E. (2020). Remotely sensing the source and transport of marine plastic debris in Bay Islands of Honduras (Caribbean Sea). Remote Sensing, 12(11), 1727. doi:10.3390/rs12111727

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Vaping for a day and tossing it away is all the rage. Electronic cigarette sales have boomed in recent years, with single-use, throwaway devices growing in popularity, particularly among youth in some countries such as the United States and United Kingdom. This new, trendy face of the tobacco industry — touted for creating a smoke-free, but not tobacco-free, world — carries a heavy, and yet unquantified, environmental burden.

A recently published probe by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that 150 million disposable vapes are tossed out every year in the U.S. alone. Amounting to five every second, this consumption produces vast amounts of e-waste, sending up to 30 metric tons of lithium to U.S. landfills annually — enough to provide batteries for around 6,000 electric vehicles. Lithium is a vital ingredient in rechargeable electronics, including laptops and cellphones.

Earlier this year, another investigation found that the equivalent of 10 metric tons of lithium is thrown into the trash in the U.K. every year, even as demand for this precious material continues sky rocketing. The International Energy Agency and other bodies have warned that lithium shortages could lie ahead as supplies become stretched.

“Little is documented about the harmful effects on the environment brought about by the production of these devices, but the disposal of e-cigarette cartridges and batteries represents a major environmental concern,” reads a report published earlier this year by the World Health Organization. “The majority of plastic e-cigarette liquid cartridges are not reusable or recyclable and end up in gutters, streets and waterways.”

These consumer devices come with an environmental impact that has yet to be fully accounted for, say experts. But it is well established that they use precious resources required for humanity’s transition to green economies. They also are laden with plastics, toxins and metals that represent a burgeoning and potentially explosive waste problem, for which e-cigarette manufacturers have provided little consumer guidance.

As such, e-cigarettes have been classified as a “rising environmental threat,” but they are only part of the global harm linked to the tobacco industry.

Tobacco and its Earth impacts

Long before that moment when a spent e-cigarette is tossed away and discarded in the gutter or in a trash can, tobacco leaves a long trail of environmental damage.

All along its supply chain, from cultivation to post-consumer waste, “tobacco harms our environment, and destroys our forests, uses our safe drinking water, and pollutes our air,” Ruediger Krech, director of public health at the WHO, told Mongabay in an interview. These multiple impacts continue growing, which, “of course, is adding unnecessary pressure to our planet’s already scarce resources and fragile ecosystems.”

According to researchers and activists, tobacco is implicated in adding pressure to violating at least five critical planetary boundaries: impacting Earth’s biosphere integrity, climate change, the release of “novel entities” (including toxic pollutants), freshwater use, and land-system change.

Research by Nick Voulvoulis, deputy director of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, assessed the tobacco supply chain and found that in terms of climate, the industry as a whole emits an estimated 84 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalent each year; that’s comparable to a country such as Peru’s carbon emissions.

Water use, too, is enormous: 22 billion liters (5.8 billion gallons) are used along the tobacco supply chain annually, roughly equivalent to the municipal water use of the U.K.

In addition, up to 5% of global deforestation is associated with tobacco farming, either to clear land for new farmland, or for the wood needed to carry out the curing process. A report by the WHO and the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that 200,000 hectares (nearly 500,000 acres) are cleared each year for tobacco, driving habitat and biodiversity loss.

The brunt of this environmental harm is felt in developing countries — including China, India, Brazil, Indonesia and Zimbabwe — where the majority of tobacco cultivation and cigarette production now occurs: “Tobacco competes with essential commodities for resources and places significant pressures on the health of our planet and its most vulnerable inhabitants,” Voulvoulis’s study states. His research estimated that converting the land currently used for tobacco to food crops could feed 20 million people.

While this research sheds light on a vast range of environmental harm, it is by no means comprehensive. Voulvoulis said his life-cycle analysis likely “underestimated some of the impacts.” Plastic pollution from cigarette butt disposal, for example, was not included, nor were harms related to electronic cigarettes.

Tobacco control experts and researchers say the industry frequently downplays the environmental damage linked to its products along the supply chain, claiming that greenwashing is common and that industry efforts are insufficient in the face of tobacco’s environmental toll.

“We need to unravel these tactics that the tobacco industry is using. Very often they try to greenwash their reputation as a sustainable and eco-friendly industry,” said Krech. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

The industrywide response to such charges can be summed up by what a Japan Tobacco International spokesperson wrote in an email to Mongabay, detailing action to reduce carbon emissions and address other environmental concerns. “As a company, we have a responsibility to operate sustainably, minimize our environmental impact, and contribute positively to the communities we operate in … We aim to reduce the impact of our own operations and our supply chain on the environment, by implementing best practices and encouraging innovation.”

Butts: The most ubiquitous polluter

The world has long been hooked on tobacco, but there are some signs this addiction is waning, if only slightly. Globally, prevalence of tobacco use is falling and now is below 20% of the population, according to the Tobacco Atlas; It estimates there are around 1 billion smokers and 200 million who use “other tobacco products.

“We are definitely seeing overall declines in adult prevalence, which is splendid, and I would say significant declines,” said Jeffrey Drope, co-author of the report and a tobacco control expert at the University of Illinois. “That said, we still have a billion smokers. So, it’s not like our work is done. That’s a lot of smokers.”

Those billion or so smokers puff on an estimated 6 trillion cigarettes per year, mostly using cigarette filters composed of plasticized cellulose acetate. As many as 4.5 trillion cigarettes butts are discarded into the environment, amounting to nearly 800,000 metric tons of waste ending up in streets, on beaches, and in oceans. Contrary to common belief, these filters do not fully biodegrade; instead they break up slowly over time into smaller fibers and microplastics. Thus, experts say, they contribute to an already massive global plastic pollution problem that has sparked urgent U.N. treaty negotiations.

Cigarette butt harm doesn’t stop at the plastic, says Thomas Novotny, co-director of San Diego University’s Center for Tobacco and the Environment. They are packed with thousands of chemicals, toxins, and even heavy metals which continue leaching once disposed of.

Dannielle Green, a marine ecologist at Anglia Ruskin University in the U.K., reviewed the evidence of cigarette butt pollution in terrestrial and aquatic environments, and she underlines the potentially lethal and sublethal impacts these can have on species: “There’s evidence for reproductive rate effects, … changes in growth, malformations and developmental impacts.”

Research has shown nicotine and other chemicals in cigarette butts are toxic to “microbes, plants, benthic organisms, bivalves, zooplankton, fish, and mammals,” but warn that “critical” knowledge gaps remain. Wider ecosystem-level impacts, says Green, are among those. The concern around e-cigarette disposal and their chemical impacts is thus occurring in the context of an already massive load of environmental harm.

Producing a green sickness

Smoking sickens and kills people — lots of them. More than 8 million people die due to smoking every year, according to estimates, with massive economic costs attached.

But these health impacts run deeper, and go beyond those who consume the product, say experts. Researchers and activists in tobacco-growing countries describe a situation whereby many tobacco farmers become ensnared in a cycle of farming that is not only potentially damaging to their and their families’ health and the environment, but is also rarely financially viable.

In Brazil, Marcelo Moreno, a public health expert with the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, studies the health impacts of tobacco farming. He explains that tobacco farmers face multiple health issues due to exposure to pesticides and other chemicals at higher rates than other crops, while long, arduous work results in musculoskeletal issues and chronic pain. In addition, a condition known as green tobacco sickness — a form of acute nicotine poisoning — is often prevalent, understudied, and underreported among tobacco farmers in many producer countries — a disease often exacerbated by a lack of suitable protective equipment.

Due to the intensive demands of farming and production of tobacco falling on family farms, child labor is said to be rampant in the tobacco industry, exposing children to these varied health risks.

According to a U.S. Department of Labor report, “Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor,” children on tobacco farms in producer countries such as Indonesia are “exposed to pesticides, work long hours, carry heavy weight, and work in extreme heat, among other activities.” In the U.S., which continues to be a major producer of tobacco, child labor and labor violations are also reported.

A study published in 2021 from southern Brazil, where most of the country’s tobacco is produced, found “a high prevalence of [green tobacco sickness], pesticide poisoning, respiratory, and musculoskeletal problems” among child workers.

This dangerous form of farming doesn’t result in financial gains in many cases, says Drope: “In some countries, [farmers] are literally going into debt each season, but because they’re in these contractual relationships [with tobacco companies], they’re obligated in the next growing season to continue to grow tobacco,” he said. “So, they’re trapped. They’re trapped in a brutal debt cycle in some countries.”

In a study released last year, researchers in Bangladesh concluded that family labor, land and environmental costs drive down any profitability for farmers, stating that “tobacco cultivation is not as beneficial as popularly perceived.”

According to the Bangladesh-based tobacco control group PROGGA, the list of environmental concerns linked to farming include deforestation, overuse of pesticides, land degradation, and water pollution. Around 30% of the country’s deforestation is estimated to be driven by tobacco, and it contributed to the ecological decline of the country’s Halda River, a vital breeding habitat for Indian carp.

This pattern plays out in other producing countries. Experts describe tobacco as a “fickle” crop requiring vast amounts of agrochemicals which over time can deplete soils, and it’s one that demands the use of vast amounts of wood to be burned in the tobacco curing process. To meet and combat wood demand, reforestation efforts have taken place in some locations. In Zimbabwe, for example, a report published earlier this year states such efforts “are not widely implemented” and are “largely inadequate.” Critics argue that tobacco company efforts at corporate social responsibility often amount to little more than industry promotional activities conducted in many producer countries.

Little data exist on the environmental impact of tobacco farming in Brazil, one of the world’s largest tobacco producers, but Moreno says the health impacts are indicative: “We know that tobacco farming is damaging to the environment, but we cannot precisely say how it occurs,” he said. “We can say if these people are contaminated then [the farms] use massive quantities [of agrochemicals] that can obviously contaminate water and soils.”

Kevin Genga, an environmental activist and anti-tobacco campaigner in Kenya, paints a similar picture, underlining that chemicals used by the industry degrade soils. “You find that when they use too many chemicals the soil structure gets to be overutilized,” he said. “After maybe two, three or four seasons of doing that activity, these soils cannot be self-dependent to yield crops that are consumed by the community.”

A past industry-funded report carried out in Bangladesh, Brazil and Kenya sought to identify if tobacco farming prevents “farmers and rural communities from prospering.” “Overall, we found no evidence of this. In fact, among our samples, tobacco growing appears to play an important role in the livelihoods of tobacco farmers and labourers” in the three countries, the report states. “Some issues” were found, including “small-scale land and forest clearance, incidents of child labour and green tobacco sickness.”

Kicking the (cigarette) butt habit

At the opposite end of the supply chain, Novotny and others are categorical in their assertion that to solve the cigarette butt pollution problem, cellulose acetate filters must be banned as a single-use plastic. Tobacco control groups are aiming to have these filters written into the global plastics treaty currently under discussion. Such a move is “perhaps the fastest and easiest” way to address issues of “global public and environmental health,” tobacco control groups said in a recent statement.

That position is not supported by some in the industry: “Banning the use of cellulose acetate filters, before viable alternatives come to market, will do little to help the environment, but will instead risk driving consumers to purchase illegal cigarettes,” wrote the spokesperson from Japan Tobacco International.

Non-cellulose acetate biodegradable filters have been proposed to beat the plastic problem. But while these would reduce plastic pollution, they won’t necessarily solve chemical pollution, says Green, due to leaching of accumulated toxins. In fact, though research on this new type of filter is limited, a study published in 2021 suggests they may contain higher concentrations of metals and metalloids, potentially worsening their impacts.

That’s an issue, acknowledges Tadas Lisauskas, co-founder and CEO of Greenbutts, a biodegradable filter company. But he defends his company’s focus on solving the plastic problem: “If you’re producing fewer metric tons of plastic, that’s automatically going to be a plus for the environment,” he said.

The only way to eliminate the persisting chemical pollution, he said, would be to “do away with cigarette smoking,” something his company does not advocate: “We don’t want to change people’s behaviors,” Lisauskas explained. “People have been smoking for millennia, that’s not going to change.”

Novotny, who is also the founder of the Cigarette Butt Pollution Project, labels biodegradable filters as a “distraction” from the wider issue: “[T]hese butts are still contaminating the environment with the chemicals that exude from them,” he said. “This solution benefits the tobacco industry and not smokers or the environment. It will encourage people to smoke and to discard toxic butts.”

“We want there to be a global effort to eliminate tobacco use and [eliminate] the enormous health burden that filtered, unfiltered, or biodegradable filtered cigarettes continue to [have] impact[ing] humankind,” he added.

Some critics also call for a ban on disposable electronic cigarettes, for youth-attracting flavors to be outlawed, or for the products to be far more strictly regulated. “First of all, there needs to be much more in the public awareness of how environmentally disrupting these novel products like e-cigarettes are,” WHO’s Krech said. “We think that they need to be strictly regulated as well because they endanger wildlife with the plastics, nicotine, heavy, metals, the lead, the mercury, and the lithium.”

Kicking the tobacco-growing habit

To effectively tackle the environmental and social harm done by tobacco growing, advocates say farmers should be supported to find alternative cash crops. That in turn would address food security issues.

Next year’s World No Tobacco Day, to be held May 31, 2023, is centered around possible alternatives to tobacco land use. Redirecting and regenerating land to produce food instead of tobacco is key to providing sustainable solutions for farmers and the environment in many parts of the developing world, said the WHO’s Krech.

Last year, a partnership between the WHO, the World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization launched a “Tobacco-free farms” project to work with farmers to swap their tobacco crops for iron-rich beans. That project has already supported more than 1,000 farmers in quitting tobacco growing across Kenya. By March 2022, more than 135 metric tons of beans were produced, a figure that has now risen to around 400 metric tons, said Joyce Nato, the WHO’s lead on the project.

“We help our tobacco farmers to move away from tobacco farming to alternative livelihoods, and we are ready to support them [all the way] to the market, which has always been an issue,” Nato said in an interview. And these innovative farmers aren’t only harvesting beans. They “can later on choose other alternative value chains they want to grow.”

Plans are afoot to introduce this particular project to other counties, and to launch a similar initiative in Zambia, another major tobacco producer where there’s appetite for change: “So, we feel that this is a big success!” Nato said.

“We must stop tobacco growing, because it is not beneficial to the farmers, it’s only beneficial to the industry,” Nato concluded, adding that what is good for the social and economic well-being of farmers will also benefit the environment — helping protect soils, water, and the climate: “Tobacco is a contributor to that [harm]. Tobacco growing is a contributor to environmental hazards.”

Banner image: Every year, volunteer beach cleaners pick up millions of cigarette butts; it’s estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are released into the environment each year. Contrary to common belief, standard cigarette filters are not fully biodegradable. Researchers and activists point out that “downstream approaches” such as cleanups are not sufficient to stem the tide of tobacco-related pollution and they’re calling for a ban on filters. Image courtesy of Marevivo Onlus/Ocean Conservancy.

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