Category Archives: Land

Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Congrats to all the winners of the Covering Climate Now journalism awards 🎉!Exclusive: The ocean is a critical solution to climate change, groups tell BidenA coalition of 93 environmental groups, aquariums and outdoor recreation brands is urging the Biden administration to harness the power of the ocean to fight climate change, according to details shared exclusively with The Climate 202.The groups on Thursday will unveil a detailed blueprint of recommendations to inform the first-ever ocean climate action plan, which President Biden announced on World Oceans Day this month.“The ocean offers powerful solutions to address the climate crisis,” the blueprint says. “A successful ocean climate action plan will leverage both the mitigation and adaptation power of the ocean, coasts and Great Lakes and provide important opportunities for the administration to reach its climate and justice goals.”The groups that drafted the document include the Center for American Progress, League of Conservation Voters, Mystic Aquarium, Oceana, Ocean Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund.Spanning about 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, the ocean has absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat that greenhouse gas emissions have trapped in the atmosphere, threatening marine species and ecosystems.Yet the ocean has the power to provide one-fifth of the emissions reductions needed to meet the more ambitious goal of the Paris agreement: limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.The blueprint offers recommendations across 12 key policy areas, including:Expand responsibly sited offshore wind to meet Biden’s goal of generating 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.Promote green shipping and ports as part of the High-Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, which the United States announced plans to join at the United Nations climate summit in Scotland last fall.Protect “blue carbon” ecosystems such as mangroves, salt marshes, sea grasses, coral reefs and kelp forests, which can store more carbon per unit than forests on land.End illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.Reduce plastic pollution, cracking down on the 14 million tons of plastic that wind up in the ocean every year.Address ocean acidification that is harming many ocean species and contributing to mass coral bleaching.Enhance coastal resilience to protect communities from severe storms and rising seas.Evaluate the potential of ocean-based carbon dioxide removal.“A lot of times what people hear about the ocean is only bad news, like coral reefs and whales are in big trouble,” Miriam Goldstein, senior director for conservation policy at the Center for American Progress, told The Climate 202.“That is true,” she said. “But we want this blueprint to be a message of hope and action: We know what we need to do to make a better future for the ocean and humanity. And here are some actions that can get us there.”House Natural Resources Chair Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) praised the blueprint in a statement, saying the document “outlines the bold, meaningful steps we need to take now to ensure a sustainable future for our oceans and planet.”On World Oceans Day, Biden also announced that he would designate the Hudson Canyon about 100 miles from New York City a new national marine sanctuary. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will solicit public comment on the contours of the sanctuary from conservationists, the fishing industry and offshore energy developers, among others.Meanwhile, Biden tasked the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Council on Environmental Quality with crafting the ocean climate action plan as co-chairs of the Ocean Policy Committee.“In developing America’s first-ever Ocean Climate Action Plan, we will — based on ideas and input from across the country and the best available science — develop a blueprint for protecting America’s ocean resources from the impacts of climate change, and take advantage of the many climate solutions the ocean offers,” the office and council said in a joint statement. “This new report is welcome input and mirrors the clear scientific findings about the importance of the ocean as a solution to climate change.”On the HillExclusive: 175 House Democrats tell Biden to clinch deal on climate provisions in reconciliationA coalition of 175 House Democrats is urging President Biden to secure a deal on the climate investments in his budget reconciliation bill, which passed the House in November but has stalled in the Senate for months, according to a letter shared exclusively with The Climate 202.“We write to urge you to do everything in your power to reach a deal and sign into law as swiftly as possible a revised reconciliation package that includes the climate investments passed by the U.S. House of Representatives,” the Democrats wrote in the letter. “These investments were some of the many important provisions in that package, and we would support a deal that includes as much of the House-passed bill as possible.”The letter was organized by the leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, New Democrat Coalition and House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition. It was signed by 13 committee chairs.Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), New Democrat Coalition Chair Suzan DelBene (Wash.) and SEEC Co-Chairs Gerald E. Connolly (Va.), Paul Tonko (N.Y.) and Doris Matsui (Calif.) will hold a news conference on Capitol Hill today to amplify their message.The budget reconciliation package has stalled in the Senate since December amid opposition from Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has continued to meet with Manchin to discuss a possible deal, but Democrats have a narrow legislative window before the July Fourth holiday and the August recess.“The window to achieve a deal is rapidly closing,” the letter says, “and so time is of the essence.”House Republicans ask Biden to rethink solar tariff exemptionsReps. Robert E. Latta (R-Ohio) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, led a letter on Wednesday urging President Biden to undo his recent tariff exemptions for America’s solar industry amid an ongoing Commerce Department investigation into alleged dodging of tariffs by Chinese manufacturers.“Regardless of the outcome of the DOC investigation, the decision to waive tariffs sends a clear message to our foreign adversaries that our trade enforcement laws will not be upheld by your Administration,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.The Biden administration paused the tariffs this month in the hopes of getting hundreds of stalled solar projects back on track. Commerce’s probe carries the threat of retroactive tariffs, which left the industry fearing crushing costs.Pressure pointsBiden open to using Defense Production Act to boost gasoline outputPresident Biden is willing to use the Defense Production Act to bolster the nation’s supply of gasoline and lower costs at the pump, Ari Natter and Jenny Leonard of Bloomberg News report.“Already, the president has demonstrated his willingness to use that emergency power to lower costs for families,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a briefing Wednesday when asked about using the act to increase refinery capacity. “We’re saying that the president has used it before and he’s willing to do that again,” she added, referring to Biden’s recent moves to invoke the Cold-War era law to boost domestic solar power manufacturing and increase the supply of baby formula. Meanwhile on Wednesday morning, Biden urged the CEOs of some of the nation’s largest oil companies to increase production, warning the fossil fuel giants that he is considering invoking “emergency authorities” to boost refinery output, Ben Geman and Andrew Freedman report for Axios. “At a time of war — historically high refinery profit margins being passed directly onto American families are not acceptable,” Biden wrote in a letter sent to the heads of ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP America, Shell, Phillips 66, Marathon and Valero.In response, the American Petroleum Institute and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers wrote to Biden that “U.S. refineries are operating at or near maximum utilization.” The trade groups noted that U.S. refineries are running at 94 percent of capacity, adding that about half of U.S. refinery shutdowns have resulted from conversions to renewable fuel production.Agency alertToxic ‘forever chemicals’ more dangerous than once thought, EPA warnsThe Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced that a group of human-made chemicals found in products used daily by millions of Americans poses a greater risk to health than previously thought, The Washington Post’s Dino Grandoni reports. The chemicals, known as polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, have been found in drinking water, cosmetics, cookware and food packaging and are linked to infertility, thyroid issues and cancer. While the federal government does not regulate PFAS, EPA’s advisory is aimed at encouraging local officials and utilities to install water filters and take other measures to tackle the toxic chemicals, which can last for years without breaking down. The agency is already slated to propose rules for two of the most common PFAS this fall. And Radhika Fox, head of the EPA’s water office, told reporters during a Tuesday call that the agency is considering more sweeping measures to crack down on the entire category.In the atmosphereThanks for reading!

The moment may be at hand for Californians to turn the tide on a sea of plastic waste that environmentalists say is destroying life in the ocean, contaminating drinking water and stuffing state landfills.
Already qualified for the November ballot, the California Recycling and Plastic Pollution Reduction Act would force the petrochemical-based plastics industry to make all single-use plastic packaging and foodware items reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2030, while reducing production of them by 25%. 

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 Northern California recycling and waste management giant Recology Inc. put up $3.85 million to get the measure on the ballot. The Corn Refiners Association contributed $250,000 more. The Conservation Action Fund, supported by a half-million-dollar contribution from the Nature Conservancy, is bankrolling the ongoing campaign. And a who’s who of prominent environmental organizations in the state has lent lobbyists and message masters to lead the attack on plastic.
The measure’s supporters describe a frightening scenario of a world overwhelmed by plastic waste — food cups, clamshell containers, straws, bottle-cap sealants and dozens of other single-use items. Plastic trash, the advocates say, now floods the oceans with some 14 billion tons of waste a year that ravages fish and other sea life. On land, plastic refuse breaks down into microscopic particles that are being found pretty much everywhere.
“This isn’t just about marine life,” said Nick Lapis, a lobbyist for Californians Against Waste. “This is being ingested by humans, and we don’t know what the effects of that are. This year, research has come out that showed for the first time that there’s plastic in human blood and human lungs, and there was a study that tested the first bowel movement of newborns, and they had plastic in them. … Babies are literally being born with it in their bodies.”
*   *   *
Under the terms of the measure, the plastics industry — attached at the hip with the fossil fuels industry, a relationship now under investigation by the California attorney general — would be required to pay a one cent fee for each piece of single-use plastic such as a plastic lid, straw and cup sold.
Most of this money would go into a new California Plastic Pollution Reduction Fund that would “support local public works infrastructure and litter abatement activities, composting, recycling, reuse, and environmental restoration,” according to the initiative. The measure also bans polystyrene foam containers widely used in food services.
Opponents of the initiative say it would cost consumers and state and local governments billions of dollars and lead to tens of thousands of workers losing their jobs. They say that the initiative’s wording does allow producers to pass along costs to consumers, only that they can’t itemize it in a receipt or invoice. 

Opposition spokesman Michael Bustamante said the initiative will cost consumers $4.3 billion a year on the penny-per-plastic-item tax.

 The California Business Roundtable ($350,000) and the American Chemistry Council ($250,000) are the biggest funders of the opposition campaign, Stop the Tax on Working Families. The Dart Container Corp., of Mason, Michigan, has contributed $256,000 in a donation it made through the Business Roundtable. Dart produces polystyrene foam cups and other food service delivery products; in 2012, it acquired the highly visible Solo Cup franchise, famous to Pong players everywhere. The California Retailers Association, the California Manufacturers & Technology Association and the California Taxpayers Association have signed on with the Roundtable and the chemistry council as sponsors of the opposition committee.
Michael Bustamante, the opposition spokesman, said the initiative will cost consumers $4.3 billion a year on the penny-per-plastic-item tax, or $901 a year for a family of four. He says the state will pay an additional $4.1 billion for expanded recycling and related costs, and that the initiative will require another $500 million to replace “noncomplying materials,” for a total cost of $8.9 billion. Moreover, Bustamante said 40,000 workers will lose their jobs, more than half of whom are Latino.
Bustamante obtained the data from a report put out earlier this year by the Center for Jobs and the Economy, the California Business Roundtable’s research arm. The report, however, said that the initiative would only “affect” the jobs, not eliminate them. The report attributed the figures to 2019 state Employment Development Department data for California packaging employment. Among the 40,159 jobs that the report said would be affected, 7,327 of them are actually in the paperboard and paper bag industry.
In an interview, Bustamante said that “ambiguities” in the wording of the initiative might also expose cardboard, glass, paper and aluminum products to the requirements of the initiative, especially if those materials are intermixed with plastic products.
Bustamante also attacked the initiative’s foremost financial backer, Recology Inc., as “corrupt” and “rotten from the core.” He cited the company’s admission to wrongdoing in two long-running bribery cases that were resolved last year with the company paying $136 million in criminal penalties and rate reimbursements. Bustamante charged that Recology launched the initiative primarily as a result of a decision by the Chinese government in 2017 to stop recycling the world’s plastic waste, including the tonnage it had been importing from Recology.
“You know that these guys were shipping their plastics to China,” Bustamante said. “China was accepting them for free, but when China closed its doors in 2017 and said, ‘We’re not accepting any more,’ Recology needed to find a Plan B, and their Plan B was this initiative.”
An employee-owned company that has collected San Francisco’s trash since 1935, Recology now recycles more than 600 million pounds of materials every year along with some 1 billion pounds of compostable food scraps and yard waste in 127 communities in Northern California, Oregon, Washington state and Nevada. 

A Recology spokesman said that the plastics industry “has cynically and dishonestly tried to make Recology the focus” of the campaign “to divert attention away from what is truly at stake.”

 “We are not out to destroy the plastics industry, but we must embrace change,” former Recology CEO and President Michael Sangiacomo wrote in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed when the company launched the initiative drive in 2018.
Company spokesman Robert Reed, in a statement to Capital & Main, said that Recology has “long grappled with the challenges put out by plastic waste” and that it “proudly put up the seed money” for the initiative. Reed said that the plastics industry “has cynically and dishonestly tried to make Recology the focus” of the campaign “to divert attention away from what is truly at stake: voters’ interest in addressing the dangerous proliferation in our environment, our lands and seas, our flora and fauna, and our own bodies.” Reed asserted that the measure “earmarks no money — zero dollars — to Recology.”
Last Sept. 9 Recology admitted to fraud in a complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco. In a plea deal, the company agreed to pay $36 million in criminal penalties. Also last year, Recology on March 4 settled a case brought by the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office related to the bribery scheme and agreed to pay more than $100 million in rate reimbursements to the city’s residential customers.
According to court documents, the bribery scheme involved two Recology officials who delivered more than $1.1 million in payments to San Francisco’s former public works director, Mohammed Nuru, in exchange for rate increases going as far back as 2013.
Acting U.S. Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds said in a press release that the company is “committed to full cooperation” in the government’s ongoing investigation.
Despite the bad publicity out of San Francisco, initiative supporters have not backed away from Recology. Lapis, the lobbyist for Californians Against Waste, said it has been “a good partner” and called the industry attack on Recology, which is no longer involved in the campaign, “a miscalculation on who they think is driving the ship here.”
*   *   *
As for the opponents’ allegation that the initiative will cost consumers $4.3 billion, the measure’s supporters are using the figure to bash the plastics industry. They say that the number represents an admission on the industry’s part of the Mt. Everest-sized plastics problem, as well as an acknowledgment that producers have no intention of reducing the amount of nonrecyclable waste that they are pumping out.
At the rate of a penny a piece, the proponents say, the figure suggests the industry is producing and California consumers are throwing away some 430 billion pieces of single-use plastic a year.
“I think what the opposition here is saying with these inflated cost estimates and claims is that they are basically owning up to having no intention of changing their ways or taking responsibility for their products,” said Dr. Anja Brandon, the U.S. plastics policy analyst at the Ocean Conservancy. “They plan to continue business as usual while pushing costs on to consumers, which the ballot measure explicitly prohibits.”
Dart Container Corp. and the American Chemistry Council both promote reuse and recycling on their websites. Brooke Armour Spiegel, vice president of the California Business Roundtable, said in an interview, “The business community is not opposed to recycling and reducing plastic waste. In fact we strongly support it.” Nobody from either Dart or the chemistry council responded to requests for comments. (Dart’s chairman, Kenneth Dart, who is believed to be worth $6.6 billion as of 2013, renounced his U.S. citizenship in favor of Belize to avoid paying taxes, as did his brother, Dart Chief Executive Officer Robert C. Dart.) 

“The truth is: The vast majority of plastic cannot be recycled and the recycling rate has never surpassed 9%.”
~ California Attorney General Rob Bonta

 Brandon surmised that neither Dart nor the American Chemistry Council are serious about growing what environmentalists call the “circular economy” that other firms, especially those in corn refining, seem poised to pursue. She notes that the plastics industry is deeply connected to the oil industry and views the continued use of petroleum-based single-use plastic as a pathway to profits.
“They see the public’s growing awareness and frustration with single-use plastic pollution as [an] existential [threat] to their business,” Brandon said. “Because, ultimately, getting to a circular economy means not using fossil fuels anymore.”
In April, California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office served a subpoena on ExxonMobil, the first move in what he said will be an investigation into the petrochemical industry’s alleged misleading of the public about single-use plastic producers’ ability to recycle its products.
“Enough is enough,” Bonta said in a press release announcing the subpoena and the investigation. “For more than half a century, the plastics industry has engaged in an aggressive campaign to deceive the public, perpetuating a myth that recycling can solve the plastics crisis. The truth is: The vast majority of plastic cannot be recycled and the recycling rate has never surpassed 9%.”
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With polls showing state residents overwhelmingly concerned about plastic pollution and ready to do something about it, business groups have recently gone to the table to negotiate their possible legislative accession to a significant plastic waste reduction bill. Talks are underway in Sacramento among business groups, environmentalists and lawmakers, and they must reach an agreement, sources said, or the initiative will go to the voters.
State Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), the author of SB 54, a plastic source-reduction measure that has been pending since December 2020, is mediating the talks. Any likely deal would require the industry committing to and financially supporting a significant level of source reduction, a move to replace more plastics with compostable products and increasing the state’s plastics recycling rate to well beyond its current 9% level. In return, the business side wants more certainty regarding what the state’s recycling agency, CalRecycle, can and cannot order, the source said.
On June 14, 21 environmental groups sent a letter to Allen saying that they could not support a compromise proposal that made it into a bill that is now in print. They contended that the revised SB 54 takes away too much of CalRecycle’s authority to develop the initiative’s reduction and recycling programs and gives it to the producers “who have created the problem,” the letter said.
The initiative’s proposed polystyrene ban and its effect on Dart Container Corp. also has emerged as a major issue in the talks, another source said. Although Dart, the big-time polystyrene producer, is not directly participating in the negotiations, the company, besides its $256,000 contribution to defeat the initiative, has, since 2019, contributed $496,000 to 85 lawmakers in the Assembly who ultimately would have to approve any legislative deal, according to initiative proponents.
Neither side is predicting whether a legislative compromise can be achieved. In anticipation of the possibility that there will not be a deal, proponents announced on June 13 that they had retained one of the country’s leading Democratic campaign organizations, Bryson Gillette, to run the fall campaign, if there is one. June 30 is the deadline for the two sides to reach a deal if they want to remove the measure from the Nov. 8 ballot.    

 Copyright 2022 Capital & Main.
An earlier version of this story identified the California Recycling and Plastic Pollution Reduction Act by an alternative title, the California Plastic Waste Reduction Regulations Initiative.

A Newcastle dad has unveiled his new eco-friendly clothing business that aims to cut your carbon footprint. Launched by father-of-two Marc Bucci this weekend, Social Socks offers environmentally-friendly socks which, Marc hopes, will help reduce the impact of the clothing industry on the planet. Marc started the business after becoming worried that his daughters might …

Continue reading “Newcastle dad creates socks that cut your carbon footprint after fearing for daughters' future”

A TikTok video has gone viral of a beach in Guatemala completely overwhelmed with plastic garbage from water bottles and old shoes. @4ocean What if we told you this was what Guatemala’s coastlines look like right now… #plasticpollution #trash #ocean #beachcleanup #guatemala ♬ original sound – 4ocean The video posted by 4ocean has now been …

Continue reading “Viral video showing Guatemala coastline covered in plastic garbage”

When Brittany Goldwyn Merth ripped up the carpets in her Maryland home in March 2019 and laid down vinyl tile, she meticulously documented the process. Merth is a do-it-yourself influencer, part of a growing group of well-coiffed women who track their home improvement projects online through sleek videos and posts studded with affiliate links. To her 46,000 …

Continue reading “Toxic tiles”

KARACHI:

Sea turtles along the coast are facing a welter of anthropogenic threats, including habitat degradation, plastic pollution, and entanglement in fishing gears, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
As a result of the construction of huts along beaches in Karachi and Balochistan, major nesting grounds of sea turtles are adversely affected, the study said on the eve of World Sea Turtle Day.
Since 2000, World Sea Turtle Day is observed every year on June 16 to raise awareness about the dwindling population of sea turtles and their diminishing habitat.
According to Muhammad Moazzam Khan, the technical adviser to WWF-Pakistan, plastic waste, collapsing huts, and rubble pose a serious threat to nesting females and juveniles along Pakistan’s coastal areas.
In Pakistan, sea turtles are known to nest on a number of beaches, including Sandspit, Hawke’s Bay, and Cape Monz along the Sindh coast, as well as Taq (Ormara), Astola Island, Gwadar Headland, and Daran along the Balochistan coast.
Thousands of female turtles visit these beaches to nest and lay eggs.
Also read: WATCH: Wildlife team cradles green turtles babies from beach to sea in Karachi
To collect data on the entanglement of turtles, the WWF-Pakistan initiated a study in 2012, which revealed that 30,000 sea turtles were annually caught in tuna gillnet fisheries of the country.
This included roughly 25,500 Olive Ridley and 4,500 Green turtles in the offshore waters of Pakistan.
Entanglement in fishing nets is the most serious threat to marine turtles.
It was estimated that about 3 per cent of entangled turtles were dying due to drowning or mishandling onboard fishing vessels.
Protecting endangered species
To protect the endangered species, the organisation has trained some 100 “skippers and crew members” to safely release the entangled sea turtles and developed a modification in the operation of the gillnets.
This, the study said, has reduced the entanglement of sea turtles by 85 per cent.
Pollution is also another major threat to the sea turtle population in Pakistani waters. Popular beaches are littered with garbage, dominated by single-use and micro-plastics.
The study has also reported on the impact of diesel and petrol on the population of turtles, stating that exposure to these fuels results in deformation in hatchlings and so, poses a serious threat to their survival.
Government agencies have taken several steps in recent years for the protection of sea turtles along the coasts.
“Through the efforts of WWF-Pakistan, fisheries-related legislations of both maritime provinces have been amended and sea turtles, as well as freshwater turtles, are declared protected,” the study added.
According to Khan, the declaration of Astola Island as a marine protected area, actions taken by the wildlife departments of Sindh and Balochistan, as well as awareness programs initiated by non-governmental wildlife organisations, have collectively increased the turtle population along the coastal regions.
Also read: Turtle species face extinction threat due to illegal fuel trade
However, he added that there is a need to declare all turtle beaches along the coast of Sindh and Balochistan marine protected areas.
Rab Nawaz, the senior director of WWF-Pakistan’s Conservation Biodiversity, for his part, called for “better protection and conservation” of sea turtles in the country.
He said these unique and iconic animals have been in existence for more than 100 million years but are under “serious” threat.
Human activities such as the destruction of nesting sites and unplanned development, as well as climate change, are pushing turtles closer to extinction, which calls for immediate steps for their conservation, he stressed.
Major species
Experts believe that the country has lost 25-30 per cent of the nesting ground for Green turtles over the past decade.
Female turtles lay their eggs on beaches between October and February, and the eggs hatch in about 60 days.
Five species of marine turtles are reported from Pakistan, with Green turtles (Chelonia mydas) the most dominant one, while another important sea turtle is the Olive Ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea) which used to nest along the coast.
However, no nest of this turtle species has been reported since 2001, the study said.
The other three species, including loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta), hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata), and leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) are reported from Pakistan and only a few authentic records are made by WWF-Pakistan.
Although turtles are not commercially harvested for food, however, poaching of turtle eggs has been reported.
Turtle hatchlings are also illegally removed from their nests and sold in aquarium shops.
“Although the government takes action against poachers, this illegal trade still continues and needs to be curbed,” it concluded.

Bayou Dave, a modern-day Sisyphus, has spent the last dozen years ridding a trash-choked Houston waterway of plastic and Styrofoam. No matter how much Bayou Dave hunts, his quarry never goes away. He finds it each time he sets out on Buffalo Bayou, a slow moving river that wends through the country’s fourth largest city and out to its port. And so it was one recent sweltering morning when he and his longtime deckhand, Trey Dennis, headed on a small barge to a floating boom they’d set out on the water the day before.“Ah, isn’t that sweet,” said Bayou Dave, whose real name is David Rivers, as the boom swung into view.Cradled in the boom’s massive embrace was what they were looking for, and knew they’d find: a vast whorling jumble of trash.There was a toy airplane, a yellow football, a foam egg carton and a nail salon pink flip-flop. There were takeout containers, disposable dental picks and foam cups from 7-11 and Chick-fil-A. More than anything else, there was plastic — bottles that once held water, Coca-Cola, Gatorade, Sprite, Armor All multipurpose car cleaner and Fireball cinnamon whiskey.Mr. Rivers maneuvered the barge over to the island of garbage — as big as a tennis court, it represented a fraction of the trash that flows through the bayou each day — and he and Mr. Dennis got to work.More than 200 square miles of Houston’s sprawling urban streets drain into Buffalo Bayou and one of its tributaries, White Oak Bayou, with the runoff from every storm and rainfall carrying all manner of tossed and lost debris to the waters.Mr. Rivers and Mr. Dennis are among the handful of people who regularly intercept the garbage before it finds its way to the Gulf of Mexico.Using a jury-rigged suction device crafted with the help of duct tape, they haul the equivalent of about 250 full garbage bags out of the Bayou and its nearby waterways each week.Trey Dennis, Mr. Rivers’s deckhand, guided the suction device to suck up trash from the bayou and on to the craft.Michael Starghill Jr. for The New York TimesDowntown Houston seen from the bayou system on a recent morning.Michael Starghill Jr. for The New York TimesMaia Corbitt, president of Texans for Clean Water, described the pair as “our last line of defense” before the trash flows through two ecologically sensitive estuaries and into Galveston Bay. Robby Robinson, the field operations manager for Buffalo Bayou Partnership, the pair’s employer, described their work as “endless, thankless, no reward.”“You just gotta be a special person,” Mr. Robinson said.For Mr. Rivers, working on the Bayou is a calling. He’s been cleaning up its waterways pretty much every weekday for the past dozen years. Few people are more attuned to its inhabitants and its health.Earlier this year Mr. Rivers spotted, to his delight and relief, the first snakes he’s seen on the bayou since Hurricane Harvey wiped out much of its wildlife in 2017. He revels in the riotous colors that crowd the bayou’s banks each spring and fall, waxes rapturous about its assorted birds, rescues baby turtles from rafts of trash, and mourns the fish killed by periodic algal blooms.“It’s the whole ecosystem I’m concerned about,” said Mr. Rivers, 51. “The animals aren’t responsible for the pollution. But they’re directly affected by it.”Growing up in South Acres, a hard bitten Houston neighborhood, Mr. Rivers was a devotee of the nature show “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” and, later, “The Crocodile Hunter.”He worked a series of jobs — stocking shelves at Target, mending railroad tracks, working as a security guard, landscaper and cleaning up toxic spills after Hurricane Katrina — before getting hired to work on the bayou in 2010.A rotating cast served as deckhands on Bayou Dave’s barge until 2015, when Mr. Dennis came aboard. A former high school football player who grew up in Mississippi, Mr. Dennis adored the physicality of the job. “I’m saving the world one bottle, OK, by 16 bottles, at a time,” said Mr. Dennis, 30, who Mr. Rivers nicknamed Country Slim. “This is the best way for our children in the long run to stay healthy too.”Mr. Rivers said he’s been delighted and relieved to see the snakes slowly return to the river since Hurricane Harvey swept through in 2017.Michael Starghill Jr. for The New York TimesOpening the top hatch of the barge to reveal a brimming trash container.Michael Starghill Jr. for The New York TimesBuffalo Bayou is about 18,000 years old, and was saved from being artificially rerouted more than half a century ago, when environmentalists enlisted the help of George H.W. Bush, then a new congressman. In the 1980s, the nonprofit Buffalo Bayou Partnership was formed to maintain and create green spaces and hiking and biking trails along 10 miles of the roughly 52-mile bayou. About two decades later, a board member, Mike Garver, introduced a barge that suctioned up floating garbage, which Mr. Rivers later helped redesign after he became its captain.Mr. Rivers and Mr. Dennis have bayou trash retrieval down to an art.Their bayou-saving chariot is a 30-foot barge mottled with rust. A hardtop bimini shades its helm, a lone concession to human comfort, for the barge has no seats. A foot-wide vacuum hose rests on its bow, fastened with duct tape to another massive hose that feeds a containment area below deck.Understand the Latest News on Climate ChangeCard 1 of 5Great Salt Lake.

Microplastic pollution is usually associated with the ocean where it’s been widely studied, but new research shows those tiny particles can be found in the air as well, even in the Yukon. A team of researchers at Yukon University have been monitoring the amount of microplastics being deposited from the atmosphere into the air around Whitehorse over the past two years.To do this, they built metal containers, similar to fly traps, and filled them with ultra-purified water. When tiny particles fall out of the atmosphere and into the container, they get trapped in the water. The microplastic collectors, which conform to international standards of dust fallout collection, were placed in four locations around Whitehorse and swapped out monthly to get continuous data. Metal microplastic collectors containing ultra-purified water were placed in 4 locations around Whitehorse over the past couple of years and swapped out monthly to get continuous data. 

Photographs of plastitar at Playa Grande Beach, Tenerife in December 2021. Science of The Total Environment

Plastic pollution in the oceans. Microplastics. Oil spills. Each of these items is already a distinct crisis. But researchers in the Canary Islands have coined a term for a new type of pollution they are finding in their studies: plastitar. According to the scientists, plastitar is washing up around shores of islands and consists of tar balls, often found after oil spills, and microplastics.

An influential system overseen by retailers and clothing makers ranks petroleum-based synthetics like “vegan leather” as more environmentally sound than natural fibers.It’s soft. It’s vegan. It looks just like leather.It’s also made from fossil fuels.An explosion in the use of inexpensive, petroleum-based materials has transformed the fashion industry, aided by the successful rebranding of synthetic materials like plastic leather (once less flatteringly referred to as “pleather”) into hip alternatives like “vegan leather,” a marketing masterstroke meant to suggest environmental virtue.Underlying that effort has been an influential rating system assessing the environmental impact of all sorts of fabrics and materials. Named the Higg Index, the ratings system was introduced in 2011 by some of the world’s largest fashion brands and retailers, led by Walmart and Patagonia, to measure and ultimately help shrink the brands’ environmental footprints by cutting down on the water used to produce the clothes and shoes they sell, for example, or by reining in their use of harmful chemicals.But the Higg Index also strongly favors synthetic materials made from fossil fuels over natural ones like cotton, wool or leather. Now, those ratings are coming under fire from independent experts as well as representatives from natural-fiber industries who say the Higg Index is being used to portray the increasing use of synthetics use as environmentally desirable despite questions over synthetics’ environmental toll.“The index is justifying the choices fashion companies are making by portraying these synthetics as the most sustainable choice,” said Veronica Bates Kassatly, a fashion industry analyst and critic of the industry’s sustainability claims. “They’re saying: You can still shop till you drop, because everything is now so sustainably sourced.”The Sustainable Apparel Coalition, which runs the index and counts among its members almost 150 brands, including H&M and Nike, as well as retail giants like Amazon and Target, said the index uses data that is scientifically and externally reviewed.“This is years of work to compile and put together the best available most up-to-date data,” said Jeremy Lardeau, vice president of the Higg Index at the apparel coalition. “We’re not actively pushing for the synthetic numbers to be low. We’re just collecting the data in one place.”Spools of lycra fiber at an Invista research center in 2014. Jessica Kourkounis for The New York TimesCritics counter that some of the data underpinning the index comes from research that was funded by the synthetics industry that hasn’t been fully opened up to independent examination. Other studies incorporated into the Higg Index are sometimes relatively narrow in scope, raising questions about their broad, industrywide applicability.The index rates polyester as one of the world’s most sustainable fabrics, for example, using data on European polyester production provided by a plastics-industry group, although most of the world’s polyester is made in Asia, usually using a dirtier energy grid and under less stringent environmental rules. The Higg rating for elastane, also known as Lycra or spandex, draws on a study by what was at the time the world’s largest elastane producer, Invista, a subsidiary of the conglomerate Koch Industries. (Invista sold its Lycra business in 2019.)The Higg Index itself was born a decade or so ago amid a rising emphasis among consumers on sustainability, environmental and animal-welfare concerns. It coincided with advances in synthetic-based fabrics that were not only inexpensive but had new features that buyers craved, such as improved elasticity or improvements in the ability to wick away perspiration.Many of the garment brands that sit on the board of the group that oversees the index profit from two fashion megatrends that directly benefited from advances in synthetics like these: fast fashion and athleisure. The fast fashion giant H&M, for instance, displays what it calls Higg-based sustainability profiles alongside some of its products.“Higg’s members, a lot of them are fast fashion brands, and they all use mainly polyester. So it favors them to get polyester a better rating,” said Brett Mathews, chief editor of Apparel Insider, an industry-focused publication based in London. But the data used was “very poor,” he said, and “the net result is that the actual Higg score, which says this fiber is more sustainable than that one, is misleading to consumers.”The Sustainable Apparel Coalition said company data was accurate and comprehensive, and had been collected in line with industry standards. Any gap between European and Chinese polyester production would be small compared to other differences in producing the textiles, like the knitting or weaving process, it said.H&M, which sits on the coalition board, said the index was based on “standardized and verified third party information,” and that the tool was being “continuously developed and improved.” Walmart said the Higg was not the only tool it used to improve the sustainability of its apparel, and that it continued to assess the index’s capabilities. Invista did not respond to a request for comment.The Higg Index is on its way to becoming a de facto global standard. In Europe, policymakers this year are set to lay out rules on how brands must back up their environmental claims, and in New York, a bill seeks to hold fashion brands accountable for their role in climate change. Fashion-industry officials have said the Higg Index could be used as a benchmark in both.The fashion industry has long been under pressure to address the environmental effects of its products and practices. The industry is responsible for as much as 8 percent of the world’s emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide, the United Nations estimates, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.Polyester being spun in Thailand. The Higg Index rating for the textile is based on production data from Europe, but most polyester is made in Asia, usually using dirtier energy grids.Brent Lewin/BloombergNatural materials, like cotton, have their own environmental costs, of course. Cotton and silk cultivation is water-intensive and can involve heavy pesticide use. Leather can come from well-managed ranches, or it can be tied to activities that are extremely damaging to the environment. Last year, a New York Times investigation showed how leather from cattle linked to deforestation in the Amazon was making its way to the United States to be used in automobile seats.The production of polyester and other materials has tripled since 2000, to nearly 60 million tons a year, according to the Textile Exchange, an industry group. Silk and wool have declined over the same period, and cotton has risen more moderately. Producers of natural fibers say the Higg Index has portrayed that shift as positive for the environment based on questionable data. Silk’s unfavorable rating in the index, for example, draws on a 2014 study by Oxford-based researchers of 100 silk farmers who rely on irrigation in a single state in India.That study’s lead researcher, Miguel F. Astudillo, said he hadn’t known until recently that his work had been used by the Higg Index. He said his study of Indian silk, which is mostly used domestically, was not representative of global production. “If they read the article and the results, they’d know it’s a stretch to use it for assessing silk in general,” Dr. Astudillo said.The International Sericulture Commission, which represents 21 silk-producing countries, last year filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission accusing the Higg ratings of “creating considerable damage to the natural fiber industry” and calling on the index to carry out a broader study of global production practices.“They’re saying silk is 30 times worse than synthetic products. Can anyone really believe that?” said Dileep Kumar of the International Sericulture Commission.In 2020, leather-industry groups from around the world also called on the Sustainable Apparel Coalition to suspend its poor score for leather, which the industry said was based on “out-of-date, unrepresentative, inaccurate and incomplete data.”The rise of vegan leather, which is typically made from polyurethane, a type of plastic that has a more favorable Higg rating, has brought unintended consequences, industry officials say. Even as leather is replaced by synthetics, Americans are still eating lots of beef — which means the hides from those slaughtered cattle have nowhere to go. In 2020, a record 5 million hides, or about 15 percent of all available, went to landfills, according to the U.S. Hide, Skin and Leather Association, a Washington-based trade group.“They’re throwing the hides in the offal barrels out back,” said Ron Meek, a former meat processor who has been helping smaller plants weather the downturn in leather demand.Ron Meek, a former meat processor, said the Higg Index ranked leather poorly based on an incomplete picture of leather production.Neeta Satam for The New York TimesThis year, the sole representative of an environment group on the Sustainable Apparel Coalition board of directors resigned, citing the organization’s lack of progress on environmental and climate policies, and hasn’t been replaced.“Their approach has been shrouded in a lot of secrecy. It’s not a transparent system,” said the former board member, Linda Greer, who now advises China’s Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs. “This industry, maybe more so than any other sector, is very big on talk, very big on the next exciting thing — almost as if it’s a fashion show, the season’s latest.”In response to the complaints, the apparel coalition has de-emphasized direct comparisons across fabrics and said it is helping companies to make more sustainable choices within fabrics, and to come up with specific product-based scores that take into account factory practices and other variables. It also said it would welcome the submission of additional data from natural fiber industries.Still, some experts question whether the Higg accurately reflects other factors, like emissions of planet-warming methane from the fossil fuels that plastics are derived from, the amount of non-biodegradable plastic that ends up in landfills or incinerators, or the microplastics shed by fabrics that have now been detected by scientists in the world’s oceans.The apparel coalition said this was an issue it was seeking to incorporate once better data was available.In all, experts say, relying on studies with different parameters and assumptions is tricky. A 2019 report by the Research Institutes of Sweden concluded that differences between producers could be far larger than differences between fiber types.“The devil’s in the details,” said Sangwon Suh, an expert in life-cycle assessments at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California. “It’s difficult to make generalizations. Is the cotton rain-fed, or does it use irrigation or ground water? Are the petroleum-based synthetic materials being produced in countries with strict regulations?”For consumers, all these variables make it tough to generalize about whether natural or synthetic materials are the more environmentally friendly choice, or to assess claims made by clothing brands. Experts say one of the few sure ways to minimize environmental impact is simply to buy fewer, longer-lasting pieces.The Sustainable Apparel Coalition makes the Higg scores available to the public, but full access to the underlying data is limited to companies that pay a fee.Companies can also pay a fee to submit new data to the coalition and obtain company-specific scores.Last year, for example, the Higg Index said it had updated the rating for leather from JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker and one of the companies that the Times investigation last year found was sourcing cows linked to Amazon deforestation. The new JBS-specific assessment rates leather produced by JBS as among the world’s most sustainable.JBS said it had submitted a new study to correct the apparel coalition’s “misleading analyses” on leather. “JBS also intends to contribute to elevate the quality of technical information available on leather, benefiting the entire sector,” the company said.Gregory Norris, who teaches life-cycle assessment at the Harvard School of Public Health and who carried out a review of the Higg Index methodology in 2016, said many of the critics’ concerns were valid. But the index still represented “a very valuable body of work,” he said. “They could have waited, but to their credit, they dug in and they built something with today’s data,” he said.Still, there were improvements that could be made, he said. For example, industry data could be periodically verified with independent spot checks. “There’s data scarcity problem that really needs to be solved,” he said.