Tracking plastic pollution hot spots

A new platform out Monday could allow for a global crackdown on plastic waste sites, thereby preventing plastic pollution from entering the oceans.

  • Global Plastic Watch uses satellite imagery and artificial intelligence techniques to identify likely plastic waste sites in a similar way as space-based imagery is used to locate deforestation hot spots.

Why it matters: By pinpointing sites where land-based waste enters waterways, Global Plastic Watch can allow governments and nonprofits to work to mitigate such pollution. The old adage in environmental protection, that you can’t mitigate what you can’t measure, applies here.

Threat level: The ubiquitous nature of plastic waste threatens the viability of what many oil companies see as a source of future revenue. From the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to microplastics showing up on the highest mountain peaks and deepest oceans, reducing the amount of plastic waste could have significant benefits.

Zoom in: Global Plastic Watch is a project funded by the Australia-based Minderoo Foundation. It has already revealed numerous, previously undocumented large-scale waste sites across 24 countries mapped so far, according to Fabien Laurier, who leads technology and innovation for the foundation.

  • The tool, whose interface resembles maps tracking other environmental problems, from wildfires to carbon dioxide emissions, provides for the possibility of partnerships with governments that are contributing a significant amount of land-based plastic waste.
  • One such country, Indonesia, is already using the technology to find undocumented or illegal waste sites, according to a Minderoo Foundation statement.

What they’re saying: “Plastic pollution on land contributes to more than 90% of plastics getting into the ocean,” Laurier told Axios in an interview.

  • “But up until now, the scientific understanding and waste management, in general, has been relying on estimates and models that are most often than not inconsistent, sometimes even inaccurate.”
  • “The goal here was to make sure that we would know where the plastic on land, provide the data to governments so they can better manage it, and stop it from entering rivers and the oceans in the first place,” Laurier said.

The big picture: The new tracking tool is similar in concept to other projects launched in the past few years, such as Global Fishing Watch and Flaring Monitor, which keeps tabs on natural gas flaring.

  • It takes advantage of publicly available data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellite constellation and AI-driven data analysis to provide real-time monitoring capabilities.

Margaret Renkl: On an endangered river, another toxic disaster is waiting to happen

NASHVILLE — Almost four years ago, spurred by my decades-long fascination with Homer’s story of the lotus-eaters, my husband and I made a pilgrimage to the Mobile-Tensaw Delta in Alabama to see American lotuses in full bloom. Jimbo Meador, our guide, was happy to take us on his boat to see the extravagant flowers.

A certified master naturalist, he was also happy to take birders to see the more than 300 species of birds that have been identified in that magnificent delta and to talk with history buffs about the original peoples who lived in the area or the fort where the last major battle of the Civil War was fought or the spot in the river where a ghost fleet of World War II Liberty ships was once anchored. Mr. Meador has spent his whole life talking about the crucial role the Mobile-Tensaw Delta plays in the human and ecological life of the region.

The biologist E.O. Wilson called this delta “arguably the biologically richest place” Americans have.

It’s also one of the most beautiful, an ecosystem that includes not just open water but also marsh, swamp and hardwood forest. From Mr. Meador’s flat-bottom boat, the delta feels entirely separate, a quiet world of sunshine and drifting clouds and lapping water and birdsong. Self-contained. Untouched.

But the Mobile-Tensaw Delta is far from untouched. Nine rivers feed into it, and rivers carry more than just water. They also carry microplastics; fertilizer, pesticides and animal waste from factory-farming operations; silt from storm water runoff; and heavy metals from mines and factories — and that’s on top of the devastations wrought by damming or wetland development or the granddaddy of all environmental threats: climate change.

These are the kinds of human-made perils that cause a waterway to be included on America’s Most Endangered Rivers, an annual list published by the nonprofit American Rivers. In this year’s report, the Mobile River, for which the delta is partly named, came in at No. 3, threatened by a coal ash storage pond at the James M. Barry Electric Generating Plant.

Alabama Power has dumped 21.7 million tons of coal ash in a storage pond on land that lies within a hairpin crook of the Mobile River. Open to the elements, surrounded on three sides by water, separated from the river by only an earthen dam, the unlined storage pond is leaking heavy metals into the groundwater, which then makes its way to the river.

Coal ash is a byproduct of burning coal for power. It contains high levels of toxic metals, including arsenic, lead, mercury, uranium and selenium. Utility companies have historically disposed of the ash by mixing it with water and storing it in pits or ponds constructed for that purpose. Because coal plants require massive amounts of water to generate energy — burning coal to boil water to create the steam that turns the turbines — they and their storage ponds are most often located on bodies of water.

“For decades, utilities have disposed of coal ash dangerously, dumping it in unlined ponds and landfills where the toxins leak into groundwater,” according to a report last year by the nonprofit legal organization Earthjustice. There are hundreds of these coal ash storage facilities across 43 states and Puerto Rico, and almost all of them are leaking toxins into groundwater.

The leaking storage pond at the Barry plant on the Mobile River was built in 1965, when storing coal ash in holding ponds was the norm. But as Carly Berlin of the nonprofit news organization Southerly pointed out in 2020, that strategy is no longer standard: “A considerable industry shift is underway,” she wrote. “Many Southern utilities are moving to excavate the material and relocate it to dry, lined landfills away from rivers or recycling it into building materials like concrete.”

Damon Winter/The New York Times
Damon Winter/The New York Times

Not Alabama Power, though. It plans to pump the water out of its Barry plant pond and cap the ash in place on the banks of the Mobile River. Even if it weren’t already leaking into the groundwater, that strategy would still leave the toxic storage pond vulnerable to extreme weather events, like the catastrophic flooding that swamped Duke Energy’s coal ash storage ponds at the Sutton power plant near Wilmington, N.C., in 2018. A hurricane’s storm surge or rising water in extreme rain events could destroy the earthen dam and spill coal ash directly into the river. Once there, it would threaten the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, Mobile Bay and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico.

“We’ve got an A-bomb up the river,” John Howard, a resident of Mobile County, told the CNN producer Isabelle Chapman. “It’s just waiting to happen.”

We know what happens — to a river’s ecosystem, to human communities — when the dam on a coal ash pond finally breaks. In 2008 the collapse of a retaining wall at a Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash pond near Kingston in East Tennessee spilled more than a billion gallons of coal ash into the nearby river system, covering some 300 acres of Roane County with toxic sludge. It remains the worst industrial spill in U.S. history.

What followed that toxic spill was a yearslong cleanup operation that sickened workers by the hundreds. Dozens have since died, the majority from diseases linked to heavy metal contamination — “respiratory, cardiac, neurological and blood disorders, as well as cancers,” according to the nonprofit news site The Daily Yonder. “The jury in a 2018 court case determined that many of these ailments could have been caused by long-term coal ash exposure.” In that case, the U.S. District Court found in favor of 200 plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the T.V.A. contractors who supervised the cleanup. (In “Tip of the Ashberg,” an episode in its podcast, “Broken Ground,” the Southern Environmental Law Center gives a full and heartbreaking account of the spill and its aftermath.)

The heavy metals in coal ash do not biodegrade, and the environmental cost of releasing so many toxins into flowing water is impossible to calculate. The coal ash holding pond on the Mobile River contains almost four times as much toxic material as the sludge that spilled in Kingston. And it is leaking.

In better news, the Environmental Protection Agency announced this year that it was finally getting serious about protecting groundwater from coal ash contamination — a move that was greeted with cautious optimism by environmental groups. “That was great to see,” said Cade Kistler, a full-time advocate for the nonprofit Mobile Baykeeper, in a phone interview last week. “It makes it crystal clear that Alabama Power’s plan is illegal under the E.P.A.’s rule because it will leave coal ash in groundwater. And that pollution is going to continue for generations if they move forward with this plan to cap it in place.”

Nevertheless, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management — which has a long history of siding with industry over the environment — has already approved the cap-in-place plan, according to Mr. Kistler. “This clarification from the E.P.A. should force them to move the coal ash. It’s just a matter of how long it’s going to take the E.P.A. to push back on Alabama.”

The fact that the Mobile River has just made American Rivers’ most-endangered list may bring even more scrutiny to the A-bomb on the riverbank, Mr. Kistler said. “We’re hopeful that the list will make more people aware of the extreme danger and shortsightedness of Alabama Power’s plan. Across the Southeast, utilities are moving 250 million tons of coal ash away from their coastal sites, where hurricanes and sea-level rise pose such a threat. The citizens and environment of Alabama deserve the same protection.”

I have never been on an oyster boat in Mobile Bay, where generations of families have made their livelihoods. I have never visited nearby Africatown, a community founded by some of the people who were smuggled into Alabama on the Clotilda, the last ship to bring enslaved Africans into this country, a ship that now lies at the bottom of the Mobile River. I don’t belong to any of the human communities that would be devastated if the earthen dam keeping Alabama Power’s coal ash out of the Mobile River ever collapses.

But I have been in the American Amazon, as the Mobile-Tensaw Delta is known. I have heard the songbirds calling, and I have seen the ospreys fishing. I have fallen under the spell of the intoxicating American lotus in full bloom, and I can hardly bear to think that any of these treasures, human and environmental, could be in such danger.

I called up Mr. Meador, who is no longer giving public tours of the delta. I wanted to ask how he feels about seeing the Mobile River on a top-10 list of America’s endangered rivers. “You know, I grew up on Mobile Bay when the water was so clear, and now the water is never clear,” he said. “The whole thing is just really sad to me. We’ve already lost so much.”

Margaret Renkl, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the books “Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South” and “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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The ocean's biggest garbage pile is full of floating life

Researchers found that small sea creatures exist in equal number with pieces of plastic in parts of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which could have implications for cleaning up ocean pollution.

In 2019, the French swimmer Benoit Lecomte swam over 300 nautical miles through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to raise awareness about marine plastic pollution.

As he swam, he was often surprised to find that he wasn’t alone.

“Every time I saw plastic debris floating, there was life all around it,” Mr. Lecomte said.

The patch was less a garbage island than a garbage soup of plastic bottles, fishing nets, tires and toothbrushes. And floating at its surface were blue dragon nudibranchs, Portuguese man-o-wars, and other small surface-dwelling animals, which are collectively known as neuston.

Scientists aboard the ship supporting Mr. Lecomte’s swim systematically sampled the patch’s surface waters. The team found that there were much higher concentrations of neuston within the patch than outside it. In some parts of the patch, there were nearly as many neuston as pieces of plastic.

“I had this hypothesis that gyres concentrate life and plastic in similar ways, but it was still really surprising to see just how much we found out there,” said Rebecca Helm, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina and co-author of the study. “The density was really staggering. To see them in that concentration was like, wow.”

The findings were posted last month on bioRxiv and have not yet been subjected to peer review. But if they hold up, Dr. Helm and other scientists say, it may complicate efforts by conservationists to remove the immense and ever-growing amount of plastic in the patch.

The world’s oceans contain five gyres, large systems of circular currents powered by global wind patterns and forces created by Earth’s rotation. They act like enormous whirlpools, so anything floating within one will eventually be pulled into its center. For nearly a century, floating plastic waste has been pouring into the gyres, creating an assortment of garbage patches. The largest, the Great Pacific Patch, is halfway between Hawaii and California and contains at least 79,000 tons of plastic, according to the Ocean Cleanup Foundation. All that trash turns out to be a great foothold for living things.

Denis Rieck
Denis Rieck
Denis Rieck
Denis Rieck

Dr. Helm and her colleagues pulled many individual creatures out of the sea with their nets: by-the-wind sailors, free-floating hydrozoans that travel on ocean breezes; blue buttons, quarter-sized cousins of the jellyfish; and violet sea-snails, which build “rafts” to stay afloat by trapping air bubbles in a soap-like mucus they secrete from a gland in their foot. They also found potential evidence that these creatures may be reproducing within the patch.

“I wasn’t surprised,” said Andre Boustany, a researcher with the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. “We know this place is an aggregation area for drifting plastics, so why would it not be an aggregation area for these drifting animals as well?”

Little is known about neuston, especially those found far from land in the heart of ocean gyres.

“They are very difficult to study because they occur in the open ocean and you cannot collect them unless you go on marine expeditions, which cost a lot of money,” said Lanna Cheng, a research scientist at the University of California, San Diego.

Because so little is known about the life history and ecology of these creatures, this study, though severely limited in size and scope, offers valuable insights to scientists.

Denis Rieck
Denis Rieck
Denis Rieck
Denis Rieck

But Dr. Helm said there is another implication of the study: Organizations working to remove plastic waste from the patch may also need to consider what the study means for their efforts.

There are several nonprofit organizations working to remove floating plastic from the Great Pacific Patch. The largest, the Ocean Cleanup Foundation in the Netherlands, developed a net specifically to collect and concentrate marine debris as it is pulled across the sea’s surface by winds and currents. Once the net is full, a ship takes its contents to land for proper disposal.

Dr. Helm and other scientists warn that such nets threaten sea life, including neuston. Although adjustments to the net’s design have been made to reduce bycatch, Dr. Helm believes any large-scale removal of plastic from the patch could pose a threat to its neuston inhabitants.

“When it comes to figuring out what to do about the plastic that’s already in the ocean, I think we need to be really careful,” she said. The results of her study “really emphasize the need to study the open ocean before we try to manipulate it, modify it, clean it up or extract minerals from it.”

Laurent Lebreton, an oceanographer with the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, disagreed with Dr. Helm.

“It’s too early to reach any conclusions on how we should react to that study,” he said. “You have to take into account the effects of plastic pollution on other species. We are collecting several tons of plastic every week with our system — plastic that is affecting the environment.”

Plastic in the ocean poses a threat to marine life, killing more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals, according to UNESCO. Everything from fish to whales can become entangled, and animals often mistake it for food and end up starving to death with stomachs full of plastic.

Ocean plastics that don’t end up asphyxiating an albatross or entangling an elephant seal eventually break down into microplastics, which penetrate every branch of the food web and are nearly impossible to remove from the environment.

One thing everyone agrees on is that we need to stop the flow of plastic into the ocean.

“We need to turn off the tap,” Mr. Lecomte said.

The ocean's biggest garbage pile is full of floating life

Researchers found that small sea creatures exist in equal number with pieces of plastic in parts of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which could have implications for cleaning up ocean pollution.

In 2019, the French swimmer Benoit Lecomte swam over 300 nautical miles through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to raise awareness about marine plastic pollution.

As he swam, he was often surprised to find that he wasn’t alone.

“Every time I saw plastic debris floating, there was life all around it,” Mr. Lecomte said.

The patch was less a garbage island than a garbage soup of plastic bottles, fishing nets, tires and toothbrushes. And floating at its surface were blue dragon nudibranchs, Portuguese man-o-wars, and other small surface-dwelling animals, which are collectively known as neuston.

Scientists aboard the ship supporting Mr. Lecomte’s swim systematically sampled the patch’s surface waters. The team found that there were much higher concentrations of neuston within the patch than outside it. In some parts of the patch, there were nearly as many neuston as pieces of plastic.

“I had this hypothesis that gyres concentrate life and plastic in similar ways, but it was still really surprising to see just how much we found out there,” said Rebecca Helm, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina and co-author of the study. “The density was really staggering. To see them in that concentration was like, wow.”

The findings were posted last month on bioRxiv and have not yet been subjected to peer review. But if they hold up, Dr. Helm and other scientists say, it may complicate efforts by conservationists to remove the immense and ever-growing amount of plastic in the patch.

The world’s oceans contain five gyres, large systems of circular currents powered by global wind patterns and forces created by Earth’s rotation. They act like enormous whirlpools, so anything floating within one will eventually be pulled into its center. For nearly a century, floating plastic waste has been pouring into the gyres, creating an assortment of garbage patches. The largest, the Great Pacific Patch, is halfway between Hawaii and California and contains at least 79,000 tons of plastic, according to the Ocean Cleanup Foundation. All that trash turns out to be a great foothold for living things.

Denis Rieck
Denis Rieck
Denis Rieck
Denis Rieck

Dr. Helm and her colleagues pulled many individual creatures out of the sea with their nets: by-the-wind sailors, free-floating hydrozoans that travel on ocean breezes; blue buttons, quarter-sized cousins of the jellyfish; and violet sea-snails, which build “rafts” to stay afloat by trapping air bubbles in a soap-like mucus they secrete from a gland in their foot. They also found potential evidence that these creatures may be reproducing within the patch.

“I wasn’t surprised,” said Andre Boustany, a researcher with the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. “We know this place is an aggregation area for drifting plastics, so why would it not be an aggregation area for these drifting animals as well?”

Little is known about neuston, especially those found far from land in the heart of ocean gyres.

“They are very difficult to study because they occur in the open ocean and you cannot collect them unless you go on marine expeditions, which cost a lot of money,” said Lanna Cheng, a research scientist at the University of California, San Diego.

Because so little is known about the life history and ecology of these creatures, this study, though severely limited in size and scope, offers valuable insights to scientists.

Denis Rieck
Denis Rieck
Denis Rieck
Denis Rieck

But Dr. Helm said there is another implication of the study: Organizations working to remove plastic waste from the patch may also need to consider what the study means for their efforts.

There are several nonprofit organizations working to remove floating plastic from the Great Pacific Patch. The largest, the Ocean Cleanup Foundation in the Netherlands, developed a net specifically to collect and concentrate marine debris as it is pulled across the sea’s surface by winds and currents. Once the net is full, a ship takes its contents to land for proper disposal.

Dr. Helm and other scientists warn that such nets threaten sea life, including neuston. Although adjustments to the net’s design have been made to reduce bycatch, Dr. Helm believes any large-scale removal of plastic from the patch could pose a threat to its neuston inhabitants.

“When it comes to figuring out what to do about the plastic that’s already in the ocean, I think we need to be really careful,” she said. The results of her study “really emphasize the need to study the open ocean before we try to manipulate it, modify it, clean it up or extract minerals from it.”

Laurent Lebreton, an oceanographer with the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, disagreed with Dr. Helm.

“It’s too early to reach any conclusions on how we should react to that study,” he said. “You have to take into account the effects of plastic pollution on other species. We are collecting several tons of plastic every week with our system — plastic that is affecting the environment.”

Plastic in the ocean poses a threat to marine life, killing more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals, according to UNESCO. Everything from fish to whales can become entangled, and animals often mistake it for food and end up starving to death with stomachs full of plastic.

Ocean plastics that don’t end up asphyxiating an albatross or entangling an elephant seal eventually break down into microplastics, which penetrate every branch of the food web and are nearly impossible to remove from the environment.

One thing everyone agrees on is that we need to stop the flow of plastic into the ocean.

“We need to turn off the tap,” Mr. Lecomte said.

Taiwan to ban PVC in food packaging starting July 2023

Taipei, April 30 (CNA) The manufacturing, import and sale of food packaging containing polyvinylchloride (PVC) will be banned in Taiwan starting in July 2023, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) announced on Friday.

Wang Yueh-bin (王嶽斌), executive director of the EPA Recycling Fund Management Board, explained that although it is less commonly used compared to the past, plastic containers using PVC can still be found on some dairy packaging.

PVC packaging can release plasticizers when used to store liquids, and overexpose to the substance can lead to the risk of cancer when the liquids are consumed, Wang said, noting that this plastic material may also contain stabilizers which can also harm people’s health.

When burned, PVC containers can release dioxins and heavy metals, and while incinerators use filters to catch these materials, contaminated ashes might still leach into the ground to pollute the environment, he added.

The ban on PVC packaging has already become an international norm, the EPA official said, citing South Korea and New Zealand as one of them.

With this new measure, Wang said Taiwan can expect to reduce some 79 metric tons of PVC food packaging every year.

According to the EPA, the ban on PVC packaging will fall under Article 21 of the Waste Disposal Act, which stipulates that for articles such as packaging or containers that pollute the environment, “the central competent authority may officially announce their prohibition of use and the restriction of manufacturing, import and sales of such items.”

When the ban gets underway in July next year, the EPA said people caught selling PVC food packaging will be fined anywhere between NT$1,200 (US$40.74) and NT$6,000, while those caught manufacturing and importing such items will be subject to a NT$60,000-NT$300,000 fine.

U.S. plastic recycling rates have fallen below 6 percent

Americans are recycling far less plastic, according to an analysis published Wednesday, with rates falling below 6 percent in 2021. The new findings come as this waste has rebounded from the pandemic, despite global efforts to curb pollution.

The research from Beyond Plastics and the Last Beach Cleanup aims to shed light on the state of recycling in the United States given a delay in federal reporting. The Environmental Protection Agency last published recycling rates in 2020 based off data through 2018 and did not update it last year.

Drawing on the most recent EPA data available and last year’s plastic-waste exports, the new report estimates that Americans recycled 5 to 6 percent of their plastics, down from the 8.7 percent in 2018. But the real figure could be even lower, it added, given factors such as the plastic waste collected for recycling that is “sent to cement kilns and burned.”

“The plastics industry must stop lying to the public about plastics recycling. It does not work, it never will work, and no amount of false advertising will change that,” said Judith Enck, who heads Beyond Plastics and served as a regional EPA administrator during the Obama administration. “Instead, we need consumer brand companies and governments to adopt policies that reduce the production, usage and disposal of plastics.”

Though plastics use fell in the early days of the pandemic, consumption has surged along with economic activity. Meanwhile, plastic waste exports — which the authors said are counted toward recycling numbers without proof — have plummeted in the wake of import bans by countries such as China and Turkey.

Plastics production in on track to unleash more emissions than coal-fired power plants by the end of the decade, research has found, with the industry emitting at least 232 million tons of greenhouse gases each year.

Millions of tons of plastic end up in the oceans each year, ensnaring turtles and other wildlife. Even Mount Everest has not escaped microplastics pollution. The United States contributes most to this deluge, according to a National Academy of Sciences study, generating about 287 pounds of plastics per person.

Postcards from the town in Japan that’s aims to produce zero waste — and is nearly there

At the current rate of emissions, the world will burn through its remaining “carbon budget” by 2030 — putting the ambitious goal of keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) irrevocably out of reach, according to the latest report from the U.N. Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change.

In an emailed statement, the EPA told The Washington Post it is “aware of the report and will review the data.” The agency said it expects to update its “Facts and Figures about Materials, Waste and Recycling” webpage later this year.

According to the United States’ first national recycling strategy, the EPA is aiming to achieve a 50 percent recycling rate by 2030. Some critics faulted that strategy for not taking aim at current levels of plastics production.

The nation’s plastic recycling rate peaked at 9.5 percent in 2014, according to EPA data, “although that number also counted U.S. exported material as recycled when it was largely burned or dumped,” the report states.

High recycling rates for other materials such as post-consumer paper, cardboard and metal “prove that recycling can be an effective way to reclaim valuable natural material resources,” the report said. “The problem lies not with the concept or process of recycling but with the material itself — it is plastic recycling that has always failed.”

Plastics, the vast majority of which are made from fossil fuels, can take hundreds of years to decompose. Rather than fully degrade, plastic breaks down into smaller pieces called “microplastics.” Over the course of a lifetime, individuals on average unknowingly consume more than 44 pounds of microplastics.

Globally, only 9 percent of plastic is recycled, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) first Global Plastics Outlook, which was published in February. Fifty percent ends up in landfills, 19 percent is incinerated, and 22 percent is “mismanaged” and ends up in uncontrolled dump sites, is burned in open pits or ends up as litter.

“Despite the stark failure of plastics recycling, the plastics, packaging, and products industries have waged a decades-long misinformation campaign to perpetuate the myth that plastic is recyclable,” the report states.

In late April, California Attorney General Rob Bonta opened an investigation into fossil fuel and petrochemical industries’ role in “causing and exacerbating the global plastics pollution crisis.” Bonta’s office issued a subpoena to ExxonMobil, one of the world’s biggest oil companies, seeking information into its efforts to mislead consumers about the efficacy of plastics recycling.

Not a single plastic service item “has even been recyclable” by the legal definition outlined by the Federal Trade Commission “green guides,” the report found, including the polypropylene cups and lids touted by Starbucks.

In March, the United Nations adopted a first-of-its-kind, legally binding treaty to “end plastic pollution.” The details of the treaty will be hashed out by 2024.

U.S. plastic recycling rates have fallen below 6 percent

Americans are recycling far less plastic, according to an analysis published Wednesday, with rates falling below 6 percent in 2021. The new findings come as this waste has rebounded from the pandemic, despite global efforts to curb pollution.

The research from Beyond Plastics and the Last Beach Cleanup aims to shed light on the state of recycling in the United States given a delay in federal reporting. The Environmental Protection Agency last published recycling rates in 2020 based off data through 2018 and did not update it last year.

Drawing on the most recent EPA data available and last year’s plastic-waste exports, the new report estimates that Americans recycled 5 to 6 percent of their plastics, down from the 8.7 percent in 2018. But the real figure could be even lower, it added, given factors such as the plastic waste collected for recycling that is “sent to cement kilns and burned.”

“The plastics industry must stop lying to the public about plastics recycling. It does not work, it never will work, and no amount of false advertising will change that,” said Judith Enck, who heads Beyond Plastics and served as a regional EPA administrator during the Obama administration. “Instead, we need consumer brand companies and governments to adopt policies that reduce the production, usage and disposal of plastics.”

Though plastics use fell in the early days of the pandemic, consumption has surged along with economic activity. Meanwhile, plastic waste exports — which the authors said are counted toward recycling numbers without proof — have plummeted in the wake of import bans by countries such as China and Turkey.

Plastics production in on track to unleash more emissions than coal-fired power plants by the end of the decade, research has found, with the industry emitting at least 232 million tons of greenhouse gases each year.

Millions of tons of plastic end up in the oceans each year, ensnaring turtles and other wildlife. Even Mount Everest has not escaped microplastics pollution. The United States contributes most to this deluge, according to a National Academy of Sciences study, generating about 287 pounds of plastics per person.

Postcards from the town in Japan that’s aims to produce zero waste — and is nearly there

At the current rate of emissions, the world will burn through its remaining “carbon budget” by 2030 — putting the ambitious goal of keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) irrevocably out of reach, according to the latest report from the U.N. Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change.

In an emailed statement, the EPA told The Washington Post it is “aware of the report and will review the data.” The agency said it expects to update its “Facts and Figures about Materials, Waste and Recycling” webpage later this year.

According to the United States’ first national recycling strategy, the EPA is aiming to achieve a 50 percent recycling rate by 2030. Some critics faulted that strategy for not taking aim at current levels of plastics production.

The nation’s plastic recycling rate peaked at 9.5 percent in 2014, according to EPA data, “although that number also counted U.S. exported material as recycled when it was largely burned or dumped,” the report states.

High recycling rates for other materials such as post-consumer paper, cardboard and metal “prove that recycling can be an effective way to reclaim valuable natural material resources,” the report said. “The problem lies not with the concept or process of recycling but with the material itself — it is plastic recycling that has always failed.”

Plastics, the vast majority of which are made from fossil fuels, can take hundreds of years to decompose. Rather than fully degrade, plastic breaks down into smaller pieces called “microplastics.” Over the course of a lifetime, individuals on average unknowingly consume more than 44 pounds of microplastics.

Globally, only 9 percent of plastic is recycled, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) first Global Plastics Outlook, which was published in February. Fifty percent ends up in landfills, 19 percent is incinerated, and 22 percent is “mismanaged” and ends up in uncontrolled dump sites, is burned in open pits or ends up as litter.

“Despite the stark failure of plastics recycling, the plastics, packaging, and products industries have waged a decades-long misinformation campaign to perpetuate the myth that plastic is recyclable,” the report states.

In late April, California Attorney General Rob Bonta opened an investigation into fossil fuel and petrochemical industries’ role in “causing and exacerbating the global plastics pollution crisis.” Bonta’s office issued a subpoena to ExxonMobil, one of the world’s biggest oil companies, seeking information into its efforts to mislead consumers about the efficacy of plastics recycling.

Not a single plastic service item “has even been recyclable” by the legal definition outlined by the Federal Trade Commission “green guides,” the report found, including the polypropylene cups and lids touted by Starbucks.

In March, the United Nations adopted a first-of-its-kind, legally binding treaty to “end plastic pollution.” The details of the treaty will be hashed out by 2024.

US is recycling just 5% of its plastic waste, studies show

US is recycling just 5% of its plastic waste, studies show

According to the Last Beach Cleanup and Beyond Plastics report, about 85% of plastic ends up in landfills with 10% incinerated

Most of the recyclable plastic ends up in landfills, according to a new report.

When most people toss a plastic bottle or cup into the recycling bin, they assume that means the plastic is recycled – but a new report lays bare how rarely that actually happens.

According to the Last Beach Cleanup and Beyond Plastics, the organization behind the report released on Wednesday, the recycling rate for post-consumer plastic was just 5% to 6% in 2021.

Why are American national parks filled with plastic? | Jonathan B Jarvis and Christy Leavitt
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The Department of Energy also released a research paper this week, which analyzed data from 2019, and came to the same number: only 5% of plastics are being recycled. The researchers on that report wrote that landfilled plastic waste in the United States has been on the rise for many reasons, including “low recycling rates, population growth, consumer preference for single-use plastics, and low disposal fees in certain parts of the country”, according to a press release.

The problem has also been exacerbated by shifts in the global recycling market, including China’s 2017 ban on most US plastic exports. Countries such as China used to accept ships full of plastic waste from the US, says Jan Dell, founder of the Last Beach Cleanup, but without that option, more plastic is ending up thrown away, since few US facilities have the capacity to recycle it.

“The rate of plastic recycling in the US has never been about 4% to 5% ever,” she says. “We don’t have factories to do it. It’s also very water intensive, so we’re not going to build more plastic recycling facilities in the US.”

Around 85% of plastics end up in landfills, and the remaining 10% are incinerated, according to Dell’s research. And even when plastics are recycled, about a third of the material from a PET plastic bottle is discarded in the process.

The Last Beach Cleanup and Beyond Plastics’s report also revealed that while plastic recycling is on the decline, the generation of plastic waste per person in the US has increased by 263% since 1980, from 60 pounds a person to 218 pounds a person, according to the report.

Plastics stand out as egregiously wasteful in the world of recycling: paper is recycled at 66%, according to the American Forest and Products Association, while the figure for aluminum cans is about 50.4%, according to the EPA.

“We can’t stay in the single use plastic nightmare scenario that we are right now,” says Dell. “There’s no way to sort our way out of this without reducing waste to start with.”

Dell says that solutions exist to replace single-use plastics – for example, fiber-based food trays that can be composted or recycled. She says Nestle has replaced plastic with paper on candy in the UK – something they’re calling “paperification”. And of course, reusing and refilling bottles rather than tossing them after use also helps.

She adds that the plastic producers have really been deceptive in slapping the triangular “chasing arrows” shape on the bottom of products and misleading people into thinking they are recyclable, when in fact the symbol does not guarantee that. “They have co-opted America’s love of recycling and the thought that we are doing something good for the environment, when they knew all along it wasn’t recycling,” she says. “They leveraged the heartstrings of consumers and said this stuff was recyclable.”

Bans on single-use plastic items such as bags, food containers and utensils are increasingly popular, with versions adopted in places including the European Union, the state of California, and Los Angeles. But such rules need to go further, the report says. “Proven solutions that will reduce US plastic waste and pollution already exist and can be swiftly enacted. The success of single-use plastic bans, water refilling stations, and reusable food and dish ware can be extended nationwide.”

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Group urges swift passage of ocean law

‘SEABED FULL OF GARBAGE’:
Greenpeace members filled a tank with garbage that volunteers collected from a beach during a single day of beach cleanup in Keelung

  • By Jason Pan / Staff reporter

Greenpeace members yesterday brought a truckload of marine trash to a rally outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei as they urged government officials and lawmakers to approve a draft ocean conservation law without further delay.

The environmentalists set up a large display tank and filled it with garbage to illustrate the level of pollution at most of the nation’s beaches and nearshore waters.

“This is one truckload of marine trash picked up during a single day of beach cleanup activity last year at a ‘protected marine area’ near Keelung,” Greenpeace Taiwan “Project Ocean” director Tommy Chung (鍾孟勳) said.

Photo: CNA

“We did not see any fish or signs of marine life” during offshore dives to collect debris, Chung said. “Only the seabed full of garbage.”

“Taiwan has clearly reached a crisis point in coastal pollution and the death of the marine environment,” Chung said.

He addressed reporters while standing in front of the tank filled with plastic waste, bottles, cartons, polystyrene foam, fishing gear and nets, ropes, fabric, rubber slippers, plastic sheets, household items, trash bags and other scraps.

Greenpeace has partnered with other civil society groups to press the government into enacting more comprehensive laws to protect the marine environment.

They have also collaborated with experts to write the articles of the draft ocean conservation law, which went through it first reading in the legislature two years ago, Chung said.

“However, the bill has been stalled in the Executive Yuan, as it needs to undergo full consultation by expert committees and public hearing,” he said.

“Deliberations have not progressed at the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee, whose approval is required for the bill to go through a second reading,” he added.

Chung and other group members urged lawmakers to spur the Executive Yuan into action and give priority to the bill on the committee’s agenda in the coming weeks.

This way, the bill could be expedited through its second and third readings, and enacted into law during this legislative session, they said.

“Our ocean is in crisis and the fish are dying out. Please, we must approve the ‘ocean conservation’ bill now,” Chung said.

Greenpeace communications officer Moffy Chen (陳瓊妤) said lobbying by advocates has resulted in Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators Chang Hung-lu (張宏陸) and Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) demanding that the Executive Yuan facilitate the process.

New Power Party (NPP) Chairwoman Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) and NPP Legislator Claire Wang (王婉諭) are the other two lawmakers who have provided help, Moffy Chen said.

They promised to expedite the bill’s deliberation and see it through its third reading in the legislature, Chen said.

Citing Greenpeace reports, she said that the populations of 20 fish species in Taiwan’s offshore areas have dwindled by 90 percent from 30 years ago, based on the amount of catch.

Overall catch has declined by more than 50 percent, which represents a monetary loss of NT$27.9 billion (US$945 million at current exchange rate), she said, citing government agency figures.

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Sea turtles severely compromised by human-made pollution in the ocean

Cape Town – There has been an outpouring of support for the Two Oceans Aquarium (TOA) Education Foundation’s sea turtle rehabilitation programme.

This after the foundation called for Capetonians to assist with the rescue of sea turtle hatchlings that were washing up on Western Cape beaches during the current sea turtle hatchling stranding season.

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The foundation’s update on the sea turtle hatchling stranding season showed that the rehabilitation programme received 124 hatchlings of which 121 were loggerheads and three were leatherbacks.

However, only 102 turtles were currently in care as some had passed away and some were still in critical care undergoing treatment before they were able to join the other hatchlings.

TOA communications manager Renée Leeuwner said some of the sea turtles were already so badly compromised due to injury, hypothermia and dehydration that by the time they arrived at the rehab centre they were unfortunately too far gone.

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“Many of them have also ingested plastic, which causes their death as it travels through their digestive systems and causes extensive damage,” Leeuwner said.

Leeuwner said the number of pieces of plastic being retrieved from these turtles indicated the turtles were being severely compromised by human-made pollution in the ocean.

Talitha Noble, conservation manager for the Two Oceans Aquarium Education Foundation, said: “When the hatchlings first come in they fit in the palm of your hand and they often come in extremely dehydrated and injured but with some love, care, food and medical attention they often recover really well.”

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After being rescued, Noble said the turtles first entered their ICU for two weeks and were then moved to the general ward hospital area where they got fed regularly and received whatever medical attention they needed.

Then, over the course of six to nine months, they grew until they were healthy enough to be released back into the ocean to contribute towards their population size.

Leeuwner said this year had been very busy compared with last year. They have had more than 100 turtles brought in since mid-March and expected even more turtles to arrive by mid-winter. She encouraged people to keep a lookout for sea turtles washing ashore on Western Cape beaches.

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Two Oceans Aquarium (TOA) Education Foundation’s Turtle Rehabilitation Programme at the V&A Aquarium has received an outpouring of support. Picture: Armand Hough/African News Agency (ANA)

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