Ask someone for a fact about New Zealand and chances are they’ll likely say, “There are more sheep than people.” It’s true, with 30 million sheep to 4.4 million humans, so it is little wonder that wool production is a major source of export revenue, and national pride, for the country. But the industry is in serious decline. Total wool exports fell 30.2 percent to NZ$367 million ($251.3 million USD) in the year to January 2021, and with wool prices so low it can often cost farmers more to shear sheep than they can get for the wool once sold.
We’re not talking about luxury Merino wool here. That ultrafine fiber still commands a high price, but it makes up only 10 percent of New Zealand wool products. Some 80 percent of New Zealand wool is actually strong wool, a coarser natural fiber more typically used for carpets and rugs.
Changing tastes and the popularity of man-made fibers means there’s a surfeit of strong wool in New Zealand—an estimated 1 million tons is stored waiting for the prices to improve—but 26-year-old inventor Logan Williams, and his company Shear Edge, is hoping to make the most of this increasingly ignored material by chopping it up and using it to make boats, knives, fencing, and just about anything that’s currently made using plastic.
Photograph: Shear Edge
Williams has pioneered a method of adding processed strong wool to polymers, including bio-based PLA (polylactic acid), typically made from corn starch. The result is a material that not only uses less plastic but is lighter and stronger—and, crucially, this wooly plastic can be processed by existing plastic-forming machinery.
“Wool is composed of keratin protein,” explains Williams. “It’s actually one of the strongest natural materials on the planet, so when it gets infused with the polymer it makes it incredibly strong, but also lighter, so the more wool we can put into the polymer the lighter the products will be and less plastic will be needed.”
The pellets, made in Shear Edge’s Hamilton factory, south of Auckland on New Zealand’s North Island, can be used as a substitute for plastic manufacturing without having to invest in new machinery. “Our pellets can be universally applied to almost all forms of manufacturing, says Williams. “This includes injection molding, extrusion, rotational molding, and thermoforming. Our customers may only have to slightly change the temperature and torque of their existing machinery, and aside from visible fibers, it looks almost identical to the industry standard.”
Shear Edge’s wool composites have been tested by Scion Research (a New Zealand government-owned company that carries out scientific research for the benefit of the country) to international ISO and ASTM standards, and the results show that wool makes composites lighter and stiffer, with higher impact and tensile strength.
Shear Edge is currently producing 4 tons a day, and Williams hopes that by using strong wool, he can give farmers an income stream for a product that is often considered worthless, especially as they can use parts of the fleece such as bellies, side,s and pieces that would otherwise be thrown away. Currently the company’s formula replaces as much as 35 per cent of the typical base polymer without a reduction in performance. It’s also worth noting that, unlike a material such as glass fiber, it is 100 percent recyclable.
More recycled plastic, glass and paper will be used in everyday products — from trash bags to beer bottles — under a new law Gov. Phil Murphy signed Tuesday.
The law also prohibits the sale of polystyrene packing peanuts in New Jersey within two years — a move supporters say will help keep the easily blown pieces of lightweight plastic out of the litter stream.
“With this new law, more plastic will get recycled, more will get turned into consumer packaging, and less will end up in our oceans, waves, and beaches,” said John Weber, a regional manager for the environmental group Surfrider Foundation.
Plastic pollution has become an increasing problem in New Jersey. More than 80% of litter picked up by volunteers for Clean Ocean Action at annual beach cleanups from Cape May to Sandy Hook has been plastic in recent years.
Murphy previously signed a law that will ban or place constraints on disposable plastic products including drinking straws and carryout bags, as well as polystyrene cups, plates and takeout cartons and other food containers made of the material, often called Styrofoam.
But that law never targeted packing peanuts, whose shock absorption makes for effective shipping filler but whose light weight and inability to biodegrade make it an environmental problem.
Although some businesses and special recycling events accept packing peanuts, much of it ends up in a landfill or incinerator. Few if any New Jersey towns have curbside pickup for packing peanuts because they weigh so little, making them far less valuable as a recycled product, and take up so much room to transport.
The heart of the new law will require manufacturers to incorporate more recycled plastic, glass and paper into containers and bags.
Most plastic containers must have at least 10% to 15% recycled materials within two years. The percentages would increase over the years until such containers contain 50% recycled content.
Most glass containers would be required to contain at least 35% recycled material.
Paper carryout bags sold in New Jersey would be required to have 20% to 40% recycled material depending on their size.
A fiscal analysis by the Office of Legislative Services said the state Department of Environmental Protection would likely have to hire one employee at $80,000 a year to fulfill the requirements of the bill.
Scott Fallon has covered the COVID-19 pandemic since its onset in March 2020. To get unlimited access to the latest news about the pandemic’s impact on New Jersey, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Author: Charlotte Edmond, Senior Writer, Formative Content
Many plastics end up in the ocean, where they release greenhouse gases as they slowly break down.
Plastic incineration is a significant source of air pollution.
Establishing a circular economy is crucial to better management of plastics.
From bags caught in hedgerows to bottles bobbing in the ocean, the visible signs of our single-use plastic addiction are everywhere. We all know that plastic pollution is a big problem. But what is less talked about is exactly how plastic contributes to global warming.
From the way plastics effect marine environments to how they are disposed of, here’s how they are adding to the climate change problem.
Consumption of plastics is on the rise
Our appetite for plastics is fuelling growing demand for petrochemical products, the International Energy Agency says. Even as we try to curb fossil-fuel use in sectors such as transportation and heating, consumption of plastics will only increase, based on our current trajectory. The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) estimates that if trends continue, plastics will account for 20% of oil consumption by 2050. Plastic
What is the World Economic Forum doing about plastic pollution?
More than 90% of plastic is never recycled, and a whopping 8 million metric tons of plastic waste are dumped into the oceans annually. At this rate, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans by 2050.
The Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) is a collaboration between businesses, international donors, national and local governments, community groups and world-class experts seeking meaningful actions to beat plastic pollution.
In Ghana, for example, GPAP is working with technology giant SAP to create a group of more than 2,000 waste pickers and measuring the quantities and types of plastic that they collect. This data is then analysed alongside the prices that are paid throughout the value chain by buyers in Ghana and internationally.
It aims to show how businesses, communities and governments can redesign the global “take-make-dispose” economy as a circular one in which products and materials are redesigned, recovered and reused to reduce environmental impacts.
Getting rid of all this plastic also causes problems for the planet. Just 16% of plastics are recycled – the rest goes to landfill for incineration, or is just dumped.
Much of the plastic that doesn’t make it to the recycling plant ends up in our rivers and ocean. Not only is this a danger to the animals and plants whose habitats have become aquatic garbage patches, but it also poses a threat to the climate, as plastic releases greenhouse gases as it slowly breaks down. Sunlight and heat cause it to release methane and ethylene – and at increasing rate as the plastic breaks down into ever smaller pieces.
Numerous single-use plastic items are widespread in our oceans. Image: Statista
On top of this, research suggests that microplastics affect the ability of marine microorganisms to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. At least half of Earth’s oxygen comes from the ocean, mostly produced by plankton. These tiny organisms also capture carbon through photosynthesis, making our ocean a vitally important carbon sink. Microplastics affect the ability of these organisms to grow, reproduce and capture carbon. And by grazing on microplastics, these plankton could further accelerate the loss of ocean oxygen.
This means the pernicious effects of all this plastic on the marine environment are particularly concerning. A plastic-choked and warming ocean will create a negative feedback loop where plant and animal life suffer, less carbon dioxide is absorbed and our ability to rein in climate change is further hampered.
Plastic incineration is also a problem
Open burning of waste is common in many parts of the world and is a major source of air pollution. Burning plastics releases a cocktail of poisonous chemicals that damage the health of the planet and the people exposed to the polluted air. Black carbon is one such serious pollutant – it has a global warming potential up to 5,000 times greater than carbon dioxide.
In 2019, the CIEL estimated that production and incineration of plastic would add 850 million metric tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere – equivalent to 189 coal-fired power plants. By 2050 this could rise to 2.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year – or 615 coal plants’ worth.
A circular economy is a crucial part of the solution
Key to tackling the problem of plastic is establishing a circular economy. Plastic that can’t be eliminated from the system needs to be reusable, recyclable or compostable. This requires significant investment in collection and reprocessing infrastructure. sustainability
What is the World Economic Forum doing about the circular economy?
The World Economic Forum has created a series of initiatives to promote circularity.
1. Scale360° Playbook was designed to build lasting ecosystems for the circular economy and help solutions scale.
Its unique hub-based approach – launched this September – is designed to prioritize circular innovation while fostering communities that allow innovators from around the world to share ideas and solutions. Emerging innovators from around the world can connect and work together ideas and solutions through the UpLink, the Forum’s open innovation platform.
Discover how the Scale360° Playbook can drive circular innovation in your community.
2. A new Circular Cars Initiative (CCI) embodies an ambition for a more circular automotive industry. It represents a coalition of more than 60 automakers, suppliers, research institutions, NGOs and international organizations committed to realizing this near-term ambition.
CCI has recently released a new series of circularity “roadmaps”, developed in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), McKinsey & Co. and Accenture Strategy. These reports explain the specifics of this new circular transition.
3. The World Economic Forum’s Accelerating Digital Traceability for Sustainable Production initiative brings together manufacturers, suppliers, consumers and regulators to jointly establish solutions and provide a supporting ecosystem to increase supply chain visibility and accelerate sustainability and circularity across manufacturing and production sectors.
Compared with business-as-usual, a circular economy could cut the volume of plastics entering our oceans by 80% each year, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. It could also generate annual savings of $200 billion, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% and create 700,000 net additional jobs by 2040.
Inés Yábar is a sustainability activist and co-founder of Ensemble pour TECHO, an organization seeking to eradicate poverty in South America. She told the World Economic Forum how plastic has become ubiquitous where she lives in Peru. “Since we don’t have running water that you can just drink out of the tap, lots of people are still buying water bottles … people are still using plastic bags, although they’re technically banned.
“[It’s about] not just thinking about plastic in and of itself, but thinking about sustainable consumption and production as a whole, and what that means for our cities, what that means for transport.
“When we think about [plastic] as part of our global consumption model, then we realize that it’s not just about not consuming plastic, but it’s about changing the systems that are in place and making sure that we’re helping the companies, the citizens, the countries in the decisions that they’re making, so that they’re not just doing a small step at the time, but it’s really a holistic change that disrupts our current system.”
Calls are growing for nations to sign an historic global treaty to tackle plastic pollution at a UN Environment Assembly conference due to take place in Nairobi this Spring.
In a new report published this morning, the Environmental Investigation Agency urged officials attending the talks to develop an ambitious international agreement to crackdown on plastic pollution that covers the whole lifecycle of plastics, from production through to waste management.
Dubbed Connecting the Dots: Plastic pollution and the planetary emergency, the report argues that plastic pollution must be treated alongside biodiversity loss and climate change as a planetary emergency. Plastic pollution is set to triple by 2040, it notes, with the weight of plastic in the seas by that date estimated to be on track to exceed that of all the fish in the ocean.
“There is a deadly ticking clock counting swiftly down,” said EIA Ocean Campaigner Tom Gammage. “The damage done by rampant overproduction of virgin plastics and their lifecycle is irreversible – this is a threat to human civilisation and the planet’s basic ability to maintain a habitable environment.”
Discussions about a global pact to cut plastic pollution are expected to dominate the agenda of a UN Environment Assembly 5.2 (UNEA 5.2) conference in April.
While more than two thirds of UN member states have said they support a treaty on plastic pollution, it remains unclear whether any pact will target the production of plastics, an intervention that is like to face major pushback from oil and gas and chemicals firms, as well as countries that export plastic.
The EIA has warned that decision makers attending the conference should move away from a “reductionist litter focus” and instead adopt a full lifecycle approach that tackles all aspects of plastic pollution, from production through to product design and waste management.
The report is published on the same day that more than 70 companies signed an open letter calling for a treaty on plastic pollution that includes “both upstream and downstream policies”.
Among the signatories to the letter are Coca-Cola, Nestle, and PepsiCo, the consumer goods giants that have been identified as the world’s top plastic polluters for three years running by the Break Free From Plastic Campaign.
Other consumer goods brands and retailers to have signed the letter include Mars, P&G, Unilever, Mondelez International, Ikea, Walmart, and Danone, alongside a raft of financial institutions, such as Federated Hermes, BNP Paribas Asset Management, Armundi Asset Management, and Robeco.
“We are at a critical point in time to establish an ambitious UN treaty that fosters collaboration for systemic solutions and speeds up the transition to a circular economy globally,” the letter states. “UNEA 5.2 is the decisive, most auspicious moment to turn the tide on the global plastic pollution crisis. We cannot afford to miss it.”
Chemical pollution has passed safe limit for humanity, say scientists
Study calls for cap on production and release as pollution threatens global ecosystems upon which life depends
The cocktail of chemical pollution that pervades the planet now threatens the stability of global ecosystems upon which humanity depends, scientists have said.
Plastics are of particularly high concern, they said, along with 350,000 synthetic chemicals including pesticides, industrial compounds and antibiotics. Plastic pollution is now found from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans, and some toxic chemicals, such as PCBs, are long-lasting and widespread.
The study concludes that chemical pollution has crossed a “planetary boundary”, the point at which human-made changes to the Earth push it outside the stable environment of the last 10,000 years.
Chemical pollution threatens Earth’s systems by damaging the biological and physical processes that underpin all life. For example, pesticides wipe out many non-target insects, which are fundamental to all ecosystems and, therefore, to the provision of clean air, water and food.
“There has been a fiftyfold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950 and this is projected to triple again by 2050,” said Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, a PhD candidate and research assistant at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) who was part of the study team. “The pace that societies are producing and releasing new chemicals into the environment is not consistent with staying within a safe operating space for humanity.”
Dr Sarah Cornell, an associate professor and principal researcher at SRC, said: “For a long time, people have known that chemical pollution is a bad thing. But they haven’t been thinking about it at the global level. This work brings chemical pollution, especially plastics, into the story of how people are changing the planet.”
Some threats have been tackled to a larger extent, the scientists said, such as the CFC chemicals that destroy the ozone layer and its protection from damaging ultraviolet rays.
Determining whether chemical pollution has crossed a planetary boundary is complex because there is no pre-human baseline, unlike with the climate crisis and the pre-industrial level of CO2 in the atmosphere. There are also a huge number of chemical compounds registered for use – about 350,000 – and only a tiny fraction of these have been assessed for safety.
So the research used a combination of measurements to assess the situation. These included the rate of production of chemicals, which is rising rapidly, and their release into the environment, which is happening much faster than the ability of authorities to track or investigate the impacts.
The well-known negative effects of some chemicals, from the extraction of fossil fuels to produce them to their leaking into the environment, were also part of the assessment. The scientists acknowledged the data was limited in many areas, but said the weight of evidence pointed to a breach of the planetary boundary.
“There’s evidence that things are pointing in the wrong direction every step of the way,” said Prof Bethanie Carney Almroth at the University of Gothenburg who was part of the team. “For example, the total mass of plastics now exceeds the total mass of all living mammals. That to me is a pretty clear indication that we’ve crossed a boundary. We’re in trouble, but there are things we can do to reverse some of this.”
Villarrubia-Gómez said: “Shifting to a circular economy is really important. That means changing materials and products so they can be reused, not wasted.”
The researchers said stronger regulation was needed and in the future a fixed cap on chemical production and release, in the same way carbon targets aim to end greenhouse gas emissions. Their study was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology
Prof Sir Ian Boyd at the University of St Andrews, who was not part of the study, said: “The rise of the chemical burden in the environment is diffuse and insidious. Even if the toxic effects of individual chemicals can be hard to detect, this does not mean that the aggregate effect is likely to be insignificant.
“Regulation is not designed to detect or understand these effects. We are relatively blind to what is going on as a result. In this situation, where we have a low level of scientific certainty about effects, there is a need for a much more precautionary approach to new chemicals and to the amount being emitted to the environment.”
The chemical pollution planetary boundary is the fifth of nine that scientists say have been crossed, with the others being global heating, the destruction of wild habitats, loss of biodiversity and excessive nitrogen and phosphorus pollution.
The proposed pact would include cuts in plastic production, saying that a circular economy for plastics will ‘contribute to the efforts to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss, while bringing positive social and economic impacts’.
There are more than 70 signatories to the statement, including Walmart, Unilever and Nestle.
Later this year, world officials will meet at a United Nations Environment Assembly conference (UNEA 5.2) for negotiations on a treaty to tackle a plastic waste crisis that is choking landfills, despoiling oceans and killing wildlife.
The joint statement said: ‘“We are at a critical point in time to establish an ambitious UN treaty.
“UNEA 5.2 is the decisive, most auspicious moment to turn the tide on the global plastic pollution crisis. We cannot afford to miss it.”
It remains unclear whether any deal will focus on waste management and recycling or take tougher steps such as curbing new plastic production, a move that would likely face resistance from big oil and chemical firms and major plastic-producing countries like the US.
Less than 10% of all the plastic ever made has been recycled.
A Reuters investigation last year revealed that new recycling technologies touted by the plastics industry have struggled to combat the problem.
Meanwhile, production of plastic, which is derived from oil and gas, is projected to double within 20 years.
This is a key source of future revenue for energy companies, as demand for fossil fuels wanes with the rise of renewable energy and electric vehicles.
While scaling-up global recycling is critical to tackling plastic waste, these efforts will not prevent plastic pollution from continuing to skyrocket without constraints on production, a landmark 2020 study by Pew Charitable Trusts found.
Last year, a new study showed that plastic has a far worse carbon footprint than previously believed.
The problem is that plastic is often made in coal-based newly industrialised countries such as China, India, Indonesia and South Africa.
The energy and process heat for the production of plastics in these countries comes primarily from the combustion of coal.
The researchers say that the global carbon footprint of plastics has doubled since 1995, reaching 2 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) in 2015.
This represents more than 4.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and is more than previously thought.
Over the same period, the global health footprint of plastics from fine particulate air pollution has increased by 70%, causing approximately 2.2 million disability-adjusted life years
The researchers looked at the greenhouse gas emissions generated across the life cycle of plastics – from fossil resource extraction, to processing into product classes and use, through to end of life, including recycling, incineration and landfill.
The production phase of plastics is responsible for the vast majority – 96% – of the carbon footprint of plastics.
Livia Cabernard, a doctoral student at the Institute of Science, Technology and Policy (ISTP) at ETH Zurich, said: “So far, the simplistic assumption has been that the production of plastic requires roughly the same amount of fossil fuel as is contained in the raw materials in plastic — above all petroleum.”
“The plastics-related carbon footprint of China’s transport sector, Indonesia’s electronics industry and India’s construction industry has increased more than 50-fold since 1995.”
“Even in a worst-case scenario in which all plastics are incinerated, their production accounts for the lion’s share of total greenhouse gas and particulate matter emissions.”
Watch: Nigerian art installation finds beauty in plastic pollution
Unsure if something can actually be recycled? Putting it in your recycling bin anyway might be worse for the environment than just tossing it in the trash.
[Source Image: JakeOlimb/Getty Images]
By JESSICA HEIGES AND KATE O’NEILL 2 minute Read
Wishcycling is putting something in the recycling bin and hoping it will be recycled, even if there is little evidence to confirm this assumption.
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Hope is central to wishcycling. People may not be sure the system works, but they choose to believe that if they recycle an object, it will become a new product rather than being buried in a landfill, burned, or dumped.
The U.S. recycling industry was launched in the 1970s in response to public concern over litter and waste. The growth of recycling and collection programs changed consumers’ view of waste: It didn’t seem entirely bad if it could lead to the creation of new products via recycling.
Pro-recycling messaging from governments, corporations, and environmentalists promoted and reinforced recycling behavior. This was especially true for plastics that had resin identification codes inside a triangle of “chasing arrows,” indicating that the item was recyclable—even though that was usually far from the truth. In fact, only resins #1 (polyethylene terephthalate, or PET) and #2 (high-density polyethylene, or HDPE) are relatively easy to recycle and have viable markets. The others are hard to recycle, so some jurisdictions don’t even collect them.
The China scrap restrictions created enormous waste backups in the U.S., where governments had underinvested in recycling systems. Consumers saw that recycling was not as reliable or environmentally friendly as previously believed.
Contaminating the waste stream with material that is not actually recyclable makes the sorting process more costly because it requires extra labor. Wishcycling also damages sorting systems and equipment and depresses an already fragile trading market.
Huge waste management companies and small cities and towns have launched educational campaigns on this issue. Their mantra is “When in doubt, throw it out.” In other words, only place material that truly can be recycled in your bin. This message is hard for many environmentalists to hear, but it cuts costs for recyclers and local governments.
In Beverly Barkat’s quest to connect people with nature, she found that environmental waste could be a powerful medium.
JERUSALEM — When the Jerusalem artist Beverly Barkat began to create an artwork for the lobby of a building in the new World Trade Center complex overlooking ground zero in Lower Manhattan, she aimed to come up with something architecturally site specific and impactful, large enough to connect with the space but not so enormous as to disconnect from the observer.
Barkat had a stark message to convey. Years earlier, she said, she had been struck by an image of children scavenging on a once-beautiful beach awash in plastic waste.
“It stayed with me,” she said. “We are suffocating Earth.”
Barkat, 55, came back to her studio in Jerusalem and began experimenting, stuffing plastic waste in various types of clear containers, seeking a way to connect people with nature and the world that is not border-oriented, not unlike the vast, floating islands — or continents — of waste plastic that form in the oceans and circulate.
Barkat with her work in progress. She casts pieces of polluting plastic — sent to her by people around the world who heard about her mission — in epoxy resin.Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
Eventually she settled on a method of casting pieces of plastic waste in crystal-clear epoxy resin. Seen from the outside, the sphere has a sort of stained glass effect. “It went from looking like a scrunched-up plastic bag,” she said, “to something that looks like jewelry” or “something very, very expensive and precious.”
The resulting work in progress is “Earth Poetica,” an imposing sphere four meters in diameter, made up of metal-framed panels and an inner skeleton of bamboo segments filled with plastic. The outer surface of the globe, with its authentically proportioned continents and seas, glistens with breathtaking beauty.
But when it is viewed close-up from the inside, through a few panels that will be left open as peepholes, an ugly truth is revealed: Like the rough back of a carpet, the inner surface, which reveals the work, is a chaotic maelstrom of tufts and jagged fragments of plastic bags, bottles, fishing nets and consumer packaging.
We met at Barkat’s studio in downtown West Jerusalem over a three-week period as some of the final panels — a tip of North America, some last parts of Asia and the South Pole — were taking shape. One flank of her airy, double-story space is filled with bundles of plastic bags and other detritus.
Working over the past three years, she has accumulated plastic from around the world. Once the coronavirus outbreak curtailed international travel, people who had heard about the project began sending her their plastic waste from abroad. She collects discarded fishing nets from Jaffa and other spots along Israel’s Mediterranean coast.
Interior detail of “Earth Poetica,” which is a huge globe created out of plastic waste.Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
The color palette of plastic waste collected by the artist from different countries or sent to her by people interested in the project.Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
And the pandemic has only enhanced people’s understanding of the project. “People physically felt the concept of what I was talking about,” she said, since the virus, like plastic waste, does not respect borders.
She is by no means the first artist to work with plastic waste, and she said she had seen a lot of work by artists trying to tackle climate change and the environment. But it was important for her, she said, to create her own way of doing so.
“If I already know it, or someone else has done it, why do it?” said Barkat, who is petite and soft spoken. “If I surprise myself then I surprise other people.”
Alongside experimenting with how the materials behaved, Barkat researched her subject using globes, Google maps, NASA imagery and photos posted online. As the project evolved, it brought together many of the various mediums and disciplines that Barkat has incorporated in her journey as an artist.
The outer surface of the globe, with its authentically proportioned continents and seas, glistens. Its effect, which has been compared with Renaissance rose windows in cathedrals, carries an air of sacredness.Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
Born in Johannesburg to parents who were ceramists, she came to Jerusalem in 1976, at the age of 10, when her family took up a yearlong appointment at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. When the year was up, they decided to stay in Israel. (The original home of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, founded in 1906, is across the way from her current studio.)
“My mother tongue is sculpting in clay,” Barkat said. She went on to study jewelry design and ultimately married Nir Barkat, a childhood friend whom she began dating as a student. He went on to become the mayor of Jerusalem, and is now a front-runner to succeed Benjamin Netanyahu as a future head of the conservative Likud party, making Beverly Barkat the partner of a potential prime minister.
Before entering public life, her husband was a successful high-tech entrepreneur and traveled extensively. During those years she invested more time in raising their three daughters.
She veered into architectural projects, including bringing libraries into schools, and starting, at about the age of 40, embarked on three years of intensive study of drawing and painting with the Israeli master Israel Hershberg. Along the way, she learned glass-blowing in the Czech Republic.
The years her husband spent in Jerusalem on the city council and as mayor gave her the opportunity to develop her voice, all the time knowing, she said, “I have art as my anchor.”
Her husband “comes to the studio, he helps, he schleps, he climbs,” she said. “He is part of who I am as a person.” (When he was mayor, he inaugurated a garbage recycling plant in the city, citing it as a leader of a “green revolution” in the country.)
The artist making her work from fragments of plastic bags, bottles, fishing nets and consumer packaging.Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
Barkat researched her subject using atlas references, Google maps, NASA imagery and photos posted online.Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
Piecing together the South Pole for “Earth Poetica.”Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
Much of her past comes together in “Earth Poetica.” The bamboo element, inspired by a conversation in Taiwan, brings in nature and each segment is cast, or “painted,” as Barkat puts it, in a soy bean-based epoxy that she ships from Canada.
In a faithful depiction of reality, Barkat’s Pacific Ocean includes plastic garbage patches. Different shades and layers of blue and green create sea swirls and thermal changes. Much of Asia is a lush paradise. Slivers of white, turquoise and translucent plastic, some sharp, some feathery, form arctic icebergs, frozen snow caps and glaciers.
Here and there a logo from the plastic packaging peeps through — “Nature’s Wonders,” “100% Natural” — like ironic graffiti.
Barkat’s work has been exhibited in Israel, Italy, Taiwan, Japan and the United States, among other places. The Rome-based Nomas Foundation, an arts and research institute that examines contemporary art within the public sphere, is providing curatorial backing for “Earth Poetica.” The president and scientific director of the foundation, Raffaella Frascarelli, will run workshops with the artist while the work, which the foundation also calls the Biosphere Project, is being exhibited.
Frascarelli and Barkat first met in 2018 when Barkat was exhibiting a previous project, “After the Tribes,” in Rome.
Barkat hopes to break down the barriers between people and nature in a way that will change perceptions and perhaps habits.Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
In a telephone interview, Frascarelli described Barkat as humble and shy, yet driven by a powerful artistic language and inner desire to have a part in changing the world.
“From the individual point of view, the work is a physical process, almost a performance that has been going on for three years now,” Frascarelli said of “Earth Poetica,” a work she refers to in the female form because, she said, it is “profoundly feminine and regenerative.”
At a collective level, Frascarelli said, “Earth Poetica” could also be considered a kind of self-portrait of humanity encapsulating “the individual and collective material and spiritual challenges we are facing.”
Frascarelli noted that “Earth Poetica” bears a resemblance to the Renaissance rose windows often found in cathedrals, which lends the work an air of sacredness.
Before arriving at its permanent home in New York, about a year from now, “Earth Poetica” will be installed in the Israel Aquarium in Jerusalem for at least six months starting from early February. Dedicated to the conservation of Israel’s marine habitats, the Aquarium is building an educational program for children around the artwork. There are also plans for the installation to tour.
Once the artwork is installed, it will be possible for visitors to climb up and see it from above, peek inside or sit and contemplate it. Barkat’s hope is to break down the barriers between people and nature in a way that will change perceptions and perhaps habits.
With today’s information overload, she said, the brain easily forgets. “If you see something that physically moves you, that’s what your body remembers,” she said, describing the power of art. “You need to experience it physically.”
When Shanti Jourdan received her first bicycle delivery of laundry detergent, Epsom salt and olive oil from Re-Up Refill Shop in Oakland, she thought she had found the holy grail.
“I’ve been really into the idea of zero waste and reuse instead of recycle since I was a young teenager,” said Jourdan, 30, an Oakland yoga instructor and astrologer. She posted Instagram photos of the jugs and jars, neatly labeled with embossed black tape. “It felt like it was too good to be true.”
That was late 2020, the year Re-Up Refill Shop opened selling bulk products in reusuable containers out of a few shipping containers in West Oakland. The company has since expanded to a retail store in Rockridge, during a period when several similar businesses started around the Bay Area — all focused on avoiding single-use plastic.
Called zero-waste or refill stores, these shops specialize in products such as nontoxic glass cleaner and foaming organic hand soap that customers can pour into their own repurposed vessels. The variety of household cleaners and body products can eclipse that of the most dedicated co-op grocer.
Proponents say reducing or eliminating single-use plastic is vital to addressing ocean pollution and climate change — the latter because of the petroleum products, and their emissions, involved in making plastics. Though it has roots going back decades, the Bay Area zero-waste movement was starting to hit the mainstream before the pandemic. Cafes began proclaiming all-out bans on single-use cups, and tech companies announced they would serve employee meals in reusable containers rather than plastic clam shells.
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But that momentum was lost when the pandemic hit. Public health ordinances forbid the use of reusable cups and shopping bags as well as bulk-bin shopping at the grocery store. Customers responded to the uncertainty with a spike in online shopping.
According to waste management company Recology, packaging from increased restaurant takeout meals and online consumption during shelter-in-place helped increase San Francisco residential waste by 6% from May 2019 to May 2020. At retail giant Amazon, plastic waste increased 29% from 2019 to 2020, according to a report from the conservation group Oceana.
Once it became clear that surfaces were not the main vector for the coronavirus, however, owners of refill businesses say sales began to soar, perhaps as a reaction against the rise in plastic packaging.
“Having to sit with the total amount of plastic they were consuming kind of became overwhelming,” said Aubri Thompson of the skincare line the Rebrand, which sells facial cleansers and moisturizers in glass jars. When customers run out, they can order refills in aluminum containers, which are more recyclable. “In some ways COVID was a kind of a trigger.”
Thompson, who started the company in 2020, manufactures her products in Oakland and sells bulk versions at refill stores such as Resourcefill in Lafayette,Fillgood in Berkeley and Re-Up Refill Shop. There are now at least 10 such stores in the region. Most specialize in household goods and personal care products that are hard to find elsewhere, though some also carry bulk food products.
Many customers note that so many everyday products come in plastic, from washed lettuce greens to dish soap, yet very little of that plastic is recyclable. In the United States, the world’s biggest plastic consumer, only 8.7% of plastic is recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
“We’re trapped in the cycle of ‘wishcycling.’ People feel good about throwing their plastics into the recycling bin and thinking it has a second life,” said Matt Zimbalist, co-owner of Re-Up Refill Shop.
Legislation has sought to reduce the amount of plastic in circulation, including California’s 2014 ban on single-use shopping bags. Introduced in 2021, the federal Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act would prohibit certain types of single-use plastics that aren’t recyclable and require minimal recycled content for some plastic products. But such efforts have had limited impact.
For Joan Ayers, a turning point in her life was learning that China was no longer accepting plastic recycling from the U.S. in 2018 and that most of it was simply being sent to the landfill. In 2020, she started her business, Homebody Refill, by bringing bulk containers of hair, body, kitchen and laundry products to Petaluma and Santa Rosa farmers’ markets, where customers could dispense them into their own jars.
“I’m not an activist, but I like my individual voice being heard somehow,” she said. “I’m going to change my buying habits, and I’m going to try to help others do the same.”
Last year Ayers opened a retail store in Sebastopol. She buys products from companies such as Oakland’s Puretergent, which delivers its all-purpose cleaner, laundry detergent and dish soap in 5-gallon plastic carboys that it picks up to refill.
That’s an example of the circular economy, the idea that more of the world’s limited natural resources should be kept in use and reused rather than thrown away.
Mudlab, a cafe and store in Oakland, is an example of how the circular economy concept comes into play when customers purchase pint jars of pickles and preserves from Happy Girl Kitchen, a Monterey County company. They pay a $1 deposit that they get back when they return the jars, which Mudlab washes and uses in a cup rental program in the cafe, to avoid single-use cups.
Amanda Drexler, 24, who buys skin care products from the Rebrand and bulk foods and other products at Re-Up, said prices in the refill world are lower than the conventional market for some products, especially food, while others are comparable or higher.
For those who are interested in reducing plastic waste, she recommends starting with just one sector of your life, such as bringing empty shampoo bottles and refilling them in a refill shop. The bottles can be reused for years.
“Take it one step at a time,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be an overnight transformation.”
According to Tobacco Atlas, a partnership between the American Cancer Society and Vital Strategies, 5.7 trillion cigarettes are sold annually worldwide. That’s more than 15 billion butts every day, 65% of which are intentionally littered, according to Keep America Beautiful.
These inch-long, non-biodegradable filters, along with a cigarette’s tobacco, contain more than 7,000 chemicals, according to the 2014 U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Tobacco and Health. More than 50 of them are carcinogens. And a study by Imperial College London showed they contribute more than 1 million tons in microplastic waste every year. Research also shows those toxicants ultimately end up in our food and water supply, with negative impacts on human health and the environment.
Just having them on the ground is hazardous, according to Thomas Novotny, a medical epidemiologist and executive director of the Cigarette Butt Pollution Project.
“These filters act like a little teabag where chemicals ooze out,” Novotny said. “If they have the remnant tobacco on them, it’s even worse.”
When a cigarette butt leaches into the environment, it can kill. In a laboratory study, eight cigarette butts were soaked in approximately 8 ½ cups of water for 24 hours. Fish were placed in this leachate stock and by the fourth day, half of them had died.
On land, children and pets often pick up butts from the ground and ingest them. Poison Control received over 700 calls nationally involving cigarette butt ingestion over the last three years; nearly 90% of those incidents occurred in children less than 2 years old. Eating just one cigarette butt can be toxic to a child under 6 years old, according to Poison Control
These chemicals can seep into the ground, and contaminate the soil and groundwater. Heavy metals such as cadmium are hazardous and cannot be destroyed, but are absorbed readily by plants such as root and leafy vegetables.
“It’s a vicious circle, what we are doing to our environment every day,” said Ana Navas-Acien, an environmental health sciences professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “We are eating, breathing in and drinking toxic products, resulting in premature death and disease.”
The chemicals from cigarette butts can also accumulate in the bodies of animals, which means they can make their way through the entire food chain.
“Chemicals get leached out into an aquatic environment,” Novotny said. “Animals at the lower end of the food chain such as microorganisms are absorbed through filtration by a clam or an oyster. Then birds eat this, and it becomes food for some other animal, and maybe even us.”
Birds have been known to incorporate discarded filters in their nests. Novotny said this has two outcomes. One, the bird has fewer parasites or fleas because nicotine is a natural pesticide. Unfortunately, he said, the butts also cause DNA damage.
