Category Archives: Plastic Pollution Articles & News

At the moment, most swimwear that doesn’t end up in landfill is downcycled to create products for other industries, such as insulation or carpet underlay. The goal, though, is to create a fully circular system that would allow swimwear to be recycled over and over again – which is why Stay Wild has created a new fully circular prototype in a bid to achieve this. “We’ve created a mono-composition garment [using recycled nylon] with no elastane, using a knitting programme to build stretch into the garment,” the brand’s co-founder Natalie Glaze explains. “It can then be recycled infinitely.”The problem? The cost of the technology needed to create the fully circular swimsuit, which means that Stay Wild hasn’t been able to launch it commercially yet. It’s an issue when it comes to new innovations in the industry more generally, too, particularly when it comes to recycling. “We need solutions to scale,” Riley says. “The focus in this area needs to be on supporting innovators to scale up their processes for accepting textile waste.”There also needs to be further innovation to help brands move away from non-biodegradable synthetics. Kintra, a new fully biodegradable polyester that’s derived from corn, is a material that we’re likely to see a lot more of in the future. “Fibres that are made from renewable sources rather than fossil fuels and that biodegrade, thus not contributing to microplastic pollution, are the way forward,” Rissanen comments.In the meantime, opting for a swimsuit that’s made using recycled or natural materials, and biodegradable elastane where possible, is the best solution out there. “It’s about trying to think, ‘How can I have the least impact possible?’” Glaze concludes. “If you buy a better quality piece, it’s going to last you longer – so buy fewer pieces and buy better.”The Sustainable Swimwear For A Feel-Good SummerGallery48 PhotosBy Alice Cary, Emily Chan and Laura HawkinsView Gallery

By Samantha Wohlfeil / InvestigateWest

On an overcast Saturday in Seattle, a group of volunteers combs a small section of the beach at Golden Gardens Park for trash. With 5-gallon buckets in hand, they slowly fan out and search a roughly rectangular zone marked by cones, passing over the same spots several times from the grass to the waterline as they look for even the tiniest things that don’t belong there.

Unlike several other Earth Day weekend cleanups going on farther down the beach, this group has been given special instructions that will help them categorize and log everything they find, from food scraps and toys to tiny pieces of foil and, of course, many types of plastic. 

A reporting project by InvestigateWest examining one of the most problematic pollutants of the 21st century: plastic. This series was funded in part by the Sustainable Path Foundation.

From large pieces, such as bottles, cups and even a Smurf action figure, to tiny microplastics — fragments, films, fibers or foams less than 5 mm long — plastic is one of the most common pollutants this group will find, mirroring what cleanup crews regularly see across the country. 

Recently, international attention has homed in on the problem, which is only growing worse as plastic doesn’t decompose but degrades into smaller pieces that will remain in the environment for thousands of years. Single-use plastics will be phased out of national parks by 2032 after an announcement in June from the Biden administration, and by the end of 2024, the United Nations plans to have a legally binding plan to end plastic pollution globally. 

But groups like this cleanup crew are helping answer a more basic question: Where is this stuff coming from? 

These volunteers are following the “Escaped Trash Assessment Protocol,” which was developed in Washington state from 2018 to 2021 and is now being used by volunteer groups around the country with guidance from the Environmental Protection Agency. The idea is to provide standardized data to state and local regulators so they can better attack sources of pollution.

“We’re doing the same thing at different sites all around the state to see: what does litter look like here versus near a highway versus an alley versus another beach?” explains Heather Trim, executive director of Zero Waste Washington, an organization that helped develop the protocol. Using geographic pins on her phone, she marks the location of the cones around the perimeter of the cleanup area, which will enable her to map it later. “The data they’re going to collect is going to be apples to apples” between the sites.

Gillian Flippo, Stewardship Coordinator at Puget Soundkeeper, provides instructions for volunteers before the Escaped Trash Assessment Protocol (ETAP) at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle on April 23, 2022. (Dan DeLong/InvestigateWest)

Even though the City of Seattle already cleaned this beach of large debris hours before people started arriving at the popular park, the 20 or so volunteers working with Puget Soundkeeper end up filling buckets with trash.

Volunteers Valerie Chu and David Corrado sit on the grass to sort the material into trays after helping gather litter from the beach. Other volunteers take the trays to tables set up under a canopy to be divided even more specifically into plastic containers with detailed labels.

Is the trash from camping? Is it from fishing gear? Is it a household item? Is it dog waste? There’s a quart-sized container for basically any item you could find, with dozens of possible categories. Some of the youngest volunteers then help count the number of items in each container, weigh the trash from that category, and dictate their findings to the recordkeeper.

As expected, plastic is one of the most common substances across the categories.

Chu, who works in toxicology in the Seattle area and regularly volunteers with Puget Soundkeeper, says she’s keenly aware of the issues plastic can pose in the environment. 

“When it comes to microplastics, a lot of times contaminants [attach] onto these microfibers from clothing,” Chu explains. “When it comes to all those contaminants, there’s very little research to show what makes things more toxic.”

Essentially, chemicals that already pollute the environment, such as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and flame retardants, can glom onto the plastic and convert into other more toxic substances, she says. But little is known about the impacts those combinations may have on people, wildlife and the environment. 

While the fibers the volunteers find on the beach are mostly too large to be categorized as microplastics, some of these materials could ultimately break down to that size. 

Joseph Lopez of Seattle and other volunteers collected marine trash at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle. (Dan DeLong/InvestigateWest)

And although groups like this conduct cleanups around the country every day, they are starting to direct their attention away from the end life of plastic to focus on the beginning. If anything is going to change, they say, plastic production and packaging choices around the world need to shift.

“It would be good for more people to know about the beginning of life of plastic and the role that these large corporations have in it,” says Gillian Flippo, the stewardship coordinator for Puget Soundkeeper, who helps run cleanups and citizen science projects throughout the year. “This data will be going toward larger scale change, the bigger picture, and hopefully that’ll potentially inform some policy.”

People should be focusing on “turning off this plastic tap,” she says.

The reality of how pervasive plastic pollution has become around the world is staggering.

Whether testing guts or muscle tissue in the lab from a fish, a crustacean, a mammal or a person, scientists have found plastic inside essentially all living things. 

Plastic pollution has been found even in the most pristine areas, including the deepest part of the ocean and the most isolated mountaintops.

Marine debris and plastic bags found along rivers are visible reminders that plastic is in the waters we rely on, but it’s also most likely coming out of your water tap at home. Highway litter is an obvious sign the land is contaminated with plastic, and now ice and snow samples at remote locations on the planet, including in the Arctic, have been shown to contain plastic, suggesting it’s traveling through the very air we breathe. 

As researchers and citizen scientists point out, this isn’t just a problem created by plastic straws and beverage bottles. It’s not just single-use plastic bags, or plastic cutlery, or the increasing amount of plastic film being used to keep our fruits, vegetables and other foods fresh.

Anna Bachmann, Healthy Watersheds Program Manager at Puget Soundkeeper, sorts marine trash collected at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle. (Dan DeLong/InvestigateWest)

Microplastics have been found in beer, honey, broccoli, meat, fish — people and living creatures everywhere are unavoidably consuming the stuff.

But panic campaigns on foods to avoid would be ineffective. 

“What we’re trying to understand is, where is the plastic coming from?” says Professor Elise Granek, an expert in coastal marine ecology at Portland State University, who leads the Applied Coastal Ecology lab there. “Without a handle on where it’s coming from, it’s really hard to make recommendations for management and policy.”

Luckily, with a rising interest in microplastics research over the last decade, scientists are starting to understand the sources and what can be done to stop them.

URBAN MOSS, TIRE PARTICLES AND MICROFIBERS

Granek (along with colleagues at other universities and her students) has helped advance our understanding of plastic pollution.

In a project with Oregon Public Broadcasting, one of her students helped the public radio station sample rivers around the Portland area, including tests near their headwaters in fairly remote areas. They tested sites on the Willamette, Rogue and Deschutes rivers.

“We found microplastics everywhere,” Granek says. 

The amount of plastic found was lowest in the most remote areas and higher near urban centers.

“It makes sense that there was a correlation with population density, but nowhere was pristine,” Granek says.

Plenty of research has focused on the microplastics found in the guts of fish and seafood, to better understand how that may be taken up through their digestion process. But in another project, Granek and others looked at fillets from common fish found at markets. Microplastics were found in the tissue that people actually eat, she says.

Professor Elise Granek, an expert in coastal marine ecology at Portland State University, leads the Applied Coastal Ecology lab there. (Samantha Wohlfeil/InvestigateWest)

“What’s happening is, we actually find fairly long fibers even in the muscle tissue of the organisms,” Granek says. “Those long fibers are very, very thin, on the order of 20 microns in width, but they can be a millimeter in length.”

But that doesn’t mean she wants to dissuade people from eating seafood, which is a great source of healthy protein. 

“It’s not like you should avoid this, because you’re getting [microplastics] from other sources,” as well, Granek says.

This summer, her lab will use a grid system to study parts of Portland. By looking for tiny plastics deposited in moss, which is abundant throughout the city, they’ll try to get a sense of some of the hot spots for plastic pollution. 

Plastic particles that wear off tires are one of the most common sources of that pollution. So, the researchers expect highways and freeways to be a big source.

“We think the recycling center in north Portland is probably a source, because some gets dropped or weathered,” Granek says. “We know a number of studies have found dryer vents release microfibers … so we’re wondering if laundry facilities are higher sources.”

The most common type of microplastic found anywhere is the microfiber. They commonly shed off of plastic clothing such as polyester and nylon during the wash cycle, and while wastewater treatment plants may capture about 90 percent of those fibers, about 10 percent still escape into effluent. Even more of those microfibers may end up in the environment if biosolids captured at the treatment plant are used in agricultural fertilizing practices.

Those same microfibers are also released into the air through dryer vents. Using dryers at residential homes in Idaho and Vermont, researchers took bright pink blankets, got them wet and placed them in the dryer on low for an hour. They found the hot pink fibers in surface snow samples up to 30 feet away from the vents, with more than a thousand fibers found in some of the test spots. 

Think about what that means for how many microfibers Portland or Seattle put out into the environment, Granek says. There are likely millions released into the environment every single day.

One solution governments are considering is requiring special filters on dryers to capture most of those microfibers at the source. Though the fibers may end up in landfills when those filters are disposed of and replaced, at least they won’t be released into the air. 

Associate Professor Susanne Brander, left, is helping lead cutting-edge research on microplastics found in marine life and other wildlife at Oregon State University’s brand new microplastics lab in Newport, Oregon. (Karl Maasdam/InvestigateWest)

IN THE LAB

About two-and-a-half hours southwest of Portland, other groundbreaking microplastics research is underway at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, located in Newport on the Oregon Coast. 

In early May, Associate Professor Susanne Brander walks through the university’s brand new microplastics lab completed during the pandemic. Brander teaches in the Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Sciences and Environmental and Molecular Toxicology departments, and helps mentor students whose work touches on plastic research in diverse ways. 

With her for this May tour is a team of graduate students who will spend this summer researching microplastics in tiny shrimp, bioluminescent fish, animal waste and more.

The team collaborates with government agencies and universities around the country, as they have a special piece of equipment to identify the type of plastic each tiny particle is made of.

While many labs have had FTIR (Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy) machines for years, this lab has a micro-FTIR that can analyze micro- and nanoplastics mere microns in length. (A micron is just 1/25,000 of an inch, or one-millionth of a meter.)

Sara Hutton, a third-year doctoral candidate at Oregon State University, uses a microscope to look at fish embryos that have been exposed to microplastics. (Karl Maasdam/InvestigateWest)

In the lab’s clean room, where special hoods and HEPA filters keep the area clear of as many background contaminants as possible, lab technician Emily Pedersen puts a plastic sample under what looks like a microscope. The micro-FTIR passes infrared radiation through the particles and takes several scans as a computer creates a wavelength showing how much light was absorbed or reflected. 

“It reads the wavelengths that are coming back and compares it to a known library,” Pedersen says, noting that many labs helped create the library by scanning known substances into the system. “So, that’s just PETE (polyethylene terephthalate), which is a regular water bottle or packaging.”

For this demonstration, she already knew the material came from a water bottle, but when the team is running tests on various microplastics found in animal samples, the machine is key to understanding what’s there. It also helps sort out natural fibers and organic material from man-made substances.

“If you’re pulling a bunch of different fibers from a fish gut, it’s really hard to tell if they’re synthetic or not unless you chemically analyze them,” Brander says.

Brander notes that in the freezer they have samples of otter scat from Alaska they’ve been asked to test. Another student at the school has sand dune core samples waiting to be tested. Granek may send samples here as well. 

In another lab on the satellite campus, first-year graduate student Olivia Boisen shows off frozen samples of myctophids that she plans to test. Also known as lanternfish, the small creatures serve as a major food source for other fish, and they are commonly picked up by accident when research teams are out collecting salmon and other sea creatures for testing. 

Lanternfish have been preserved in museums over several decades, offering the unique opportunity to look at plastic contamination in wildlife over time. (Karl Maasdam/InvestigateWest)

As she holds up a jar of the sardine-sized fish, they flash silver as the light catches the organs that enable them to bioluminesce deep underwater. While they spend their days about a kilometer deep, at night they rise close to the surface to eat, Boisen says. 

“This huge number of fish are doing this every night, and then they migrate back down to live out their days down there,” Boisen says. “So they’re probably this microplastic pump from the surface to midwater, which is really important to study.”

Because of their unique abundance, and the fact that many museums have preserved lanternfish in jars of ethanol over several decades, Boisen will get to see if she can track the rise in plastic production and pollution over time. 

The first fully synthetic plastic was bakelite, which was first made in 1907 and soon grew popular for making phones, radios, car parts and jewelry. But it wasn’t until the 1950s and ’60s that plastic production started to take off. In recent years, production has continued to grow on an exponential scale, as the cheap material is used in more products than ever before. 

Boisen theorizes that she may be able to see lower levels of plastics in the myctophids captured and preserved in the 1960s compared to those caught fresh for her this year. Those caught this year were preserved using far stricter quality control measures to avoid contamination, yet they may still have higher levels of plastic in them.

Also working with Brander are Sara Hutton, a third-year doctoral candidate, and Felix Biefel, a visiting doctoral student from Germany.

Felix Biefel, a visiting doctoral student from Germany, works with mysid shrimp raised in Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center to study how their behavior is impacted after microplastic exposure. (Karl Maasdam/InvestigateWest)

Hutton, who works in the Environmental and Molecular Toxicology Department at OSU, is studying gene expression in silverside fish that are being raised and exposed to microplastics in the lab.

Biefel is working with tiny mysid shrimp raised in the lab to study how their behavior is impacted after microplastic exposure. He’ll expose them to light and dark, as well as different temperatures. 

“The nice thing about using behavior is it can be an indicator of neurotoxicity,” Hutton explains. “We’re interested in how it affects their brain. If the organism developed differently, it’s going to affect its behavior.”

Exposure experiments are essential to better understand what it means when researchers find microplastics in various species, Brander says.

“It’s great to go out and find microplastics,” Brander says. “But the only way to know if it’s dangerous is if we have lab experiments.”

Sara Hutton, a third-year doctoral candidate at Oregon State University, transfers tiny mysid shrimp into a container to show how their behavior can be studied in the lab. (Karl Maasdam/InvestigateWest)

CONNECTING THE DOTS

Shortly before the pandemic, Brander helped co-found the Pacific Northwest Consortium on Plastics. With about 250 members, including people in research, at government agencies, at nonprofits and other organizations, a strong network now helps share information as more becomes clear about plastic pollution.

With so many people at different types of organizations, it may be easier to connect the dots as people start to talk about policy changes and potential solutions.

“[In] the microplastics field, I think we’re at the point where we know that things like textiles and tire particles are a bigger problem than we thought,” Brander says. “Even as recently as a few years ago, the focus was on straws and cups, and single-use products, which we know are still really problematic and things we find all over our beaches.”

But the plastics being found in sediments and organisms are often microfibers, she says.

“That gives us an idea,” she says, “of what sources we need to go after.”

Already, some states are targeting upstream sources such as packaging by requiring producers to pay for the end-life recycling of their products. Through what’s called extended producer responsibility, companies that choose to sell their product in, say, plastic bottles, would have to pay for the collection and recycling of those bottles in some places that have already passed such a policy. On June 30 of this year, California took a giant step in that direction, passing what’s considered the strongest law in the nation to phase out single-use plastics and packaging waste.

Similarly, the data from the citizen science of the “Escaped Trash Assessment Protocol” may guide decision-making.

The protocol was developed after Margaret McCauley, the Trash-Free Waters coordinator for the EPA’s Pacific Northwest region, and a colleague realized the information so many groups voluntarily submitted to them wasn’t comparable.

“We both were looking at the data that people were collecting and attempting to share with us under the Clean Water Act and [Resource Conservation and Recovery Act],” McCauley says. “It was lots of smart people doing lots of things that didn’t connect with each other.”

Some groups might count individual cigarette butts, while others might simply report the number of trash bags. But how big were the trash bags? And how does a wet pair of jeans compare to a single cigarette butt, McCauley asks.

The protocol (which got its wordier name due to disagreements over the term “litter”) enables standardized measurements that can then be used by those in power to enforce things like stormwater permits, McCauley says.

Permits and other legally binding mechanisms can apply pressure to reduce pollution. The pricier the cleanup, the better the likelihood people will look to upstream solutions.

Granek, the Portland State researcher, says to truly address the issue, the focus cannot remain on consumer habits and a bottom-up approach. Instead, she says a top-down focus is likely needed, with policies directed at those creating plastics in the first place.

“I think one of the things we’re realizing is that we can all do a better job of our household practices, but really the need for upstream changes is really important,” Granek says. 

People may choose to buy fewer fast-fashion clothing items made largely from plastic, for instance, but the real impact will come from the top, she says. 

Less than 10 percent of plastic that goes into recycling bins worldwide is recycled.

“Some industries will take voluntary action and that’s important,” Brander says. “Some individuals will take voluntary action and that’s important. But I think there also has to be regulation.”

Whether it’s requiring special dryer filters or redesigning tires, it’s possible to address some of the sources directly.

And addressing plastic is important, because even though the science may still be out on whether all that plastic negatively impacts human health, we already know it impacts animals, causing cell damage and affecting reproduction and growth, she says.

“It is in our bodies,” Granek says. “There are enough studies that do find effects on animals that it would be a little surprising if animals were affected, but humans weren’t.”

FEATURED IMAGE: Volunteer Deborah Woolley of Seattle collects marine trash in an area designated for the Escaped Trash Assessment Protocol (ETAP) at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle. (Dan DeLong/InvestigateWest)

InvestigateWest (invw.org) is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Visit invw.org/newsletters to sign up for weekly updates. This story was made possible with support from the Sustainable Path Foundation.

Tackling the tide of plastic pollution will require using less of it, and recycling it more. But the material has become an inescapable part of modern life, so another way researchers are dealing with its downsides are to make plastics that are tough enough for use yet degradable in nature.The latest effort comes from a team at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. They have made a plastic from non-edible plant parts that breaks down into harmless sugars in the environment. The plastic has properties very close to conventional plastics that make it promising for food and beverage packaging: it is strong, resists high temperatures, and blocks gases like oxygen that can damage food.Commercial bioplastics today are typically made from sugars derived from corn starch or sugar cane. But their properties don’t compete head-to-head with fossil fuel-based plastics. Besides being expensive, bioplastics cannot withstand high temperatures, be stretched and drawn into different forms, and act as a good barrier to gases. They are also often just as difficult as conventional plastics to break down in nature.In 2016, the EPFL researchers discovered a way to make valuable molecules for plastics and biofuels from the woody, inedible parts of plants. Their work focuses on lignin, a long chain-like molecule found in plant cell walls that gives plants their rigidity. Lignin is the second-most abundant natural material on earth, but is a waste product of agriculture and the paper industry. The EPFL team had found that adding formaldehyde, a common chemical, could turn lignin into useful molecules.The new work published in Nature Chemistry takes that work forward. This time, they used glyoxylic acid instead of formaldehyde to turn lignin into key building blocks of plastics. They were able to convert up to 25 percent of the weight of agricultural waste into plastics.The process is simple and scalable, and uses an inexpensive mineral acid as the catalyst, the researchers write. And glyoxylic acid is an inexpensive industrially available chemical.Tests in the laboratory showed that the plastic can withstand temperatures as high as 100°C like conventional plastic. It also has similar strength and stiffness. Plus, the team could draw it into packaging film, fibers that can be spun into fabric, and filaments for 3D printing.The material could be chemically recycled just like fossil-based plastics. And if it reaches the environment, it eventually degrades back into its constituent sugars in room-temperature water. While the plastic is a promising contender for an inexpensive, sustainable plastic, “in-depth toxicological and biodegradation tests are still required before this polymer’s environmental fate is fully understood,” they write.Source: Manker, L.P., Dick, G.R., Demongeot, A. et al. Sustainable polyesters via direct functionalization of lignocellulosic sugars. Nat. Chem. 2022.Image: A 3D-printed “leaf” made with the new bioplastic by Alain Herzog (EPFL)

THERE are calls for supermarkets in Scotland to stop the sale of artificial grass.

The trustee of a Scottish rewilding charity has called their sale “extremely detrimental” to the country’s biodiversity.

Alan Hepburn, a trustee of Scotland: The Big Picture, posted a picture to Twitter which criticised a Tesco store in Musselburgh for selling artificial grass for only £24. So far, it has garnered over 19,000 likes.

He calls on the supermarket chain to stop selling the artificial turf on environmental grounds, particularly in light of the heatwave hitting the UK.

He said: “Personally, I can think of very few situations where using plastic grass can be justified.

“It is extraordinarily detrimental to our native wildlife, from birds and mammals to invertebrates.

“The soil below, if there is any, is pointlessly damaged and inaccessible to all the many creatures that depend on it.

“This product also doesn’t have the cooling effect of grass or other plant cover.

“If natural grass is not possible, there are many other ways to cover the ground that can be attractive, climate friendly, good for nature, and low maintenance.”

No @Tesco just no pic.twitter.com/PbQzJMPklP
— Rewild Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (@RewildScotland) June 2, 2022

Experts have found that artificial turf can heat up to potentially dangerous levels in hot weather, presenting a hazard for people and their pets.

A children’s playground surfaced with artificial grass in Sydney, Australia reportedly reached 93.7C in 2020.

Megan Kirton, project officer for Scottish environmental charity Fidra, pointed to the use of artificial grass on sports pitches as a cautionary tale for their use domestically.

She said: “Building, using, and maintaining plastic sports pitches are contributing to the plastic pollution and climate crisis.

“Artificial pitches in dense urban environments can increase surrounding temperatures by 4 degrees Celsius.

“In a society where climate change is creating rising temperatures, and plastic pollution threatens wildlife, many communities may now favour natural grass pitches.

“Playing sports should not be adding more problems for our environment and wildlife.”

Artificial grass is made of petroleum-based products, meaning its manufacture contributes towards rising fossil fuel emissions.

According to Fidra, thousands of tonnes of microplastic granules make their way into the environment each year due to the use of artificial turf.

Earlier this year Tesco said that it had removed 1 and a half billion pieces of plastic from its packaging products through methods such as replacing plastic straws with paper ones.

Tesco has been approached for comment.

In the now-viral clip, people can be seen standing on the beach amid plastic being littered around. Amidst all the dirt, many are still seen clicking selfies while others standing and enjoying the breeze

Almroth added ‘impacts of plastic pollution are large enough to enough to affect crucial functions of planet Earth and its systems.’ Image Courtesy: iStock/Tunatura

A video showing a panoramic view of plastic being littered on Mumbai’s Mahim beach has left social media in shock. Despite several warnings, awareness campaigns, advisory posts and regulations, people in the city haven’t got rid of their habit of throwing garbage in the sea. And the video is the proof!
The clip was shared by a Twitter profile named Mumbaimatterz, who pointed out the return gift from the Arabian Sea to its people. “#Beaches in #Mumbai now Open. Citizens throng Mahim beach to have a look at the #ReturnGift from ArabianSea.” The post also features two hashtags – Plastic Pollution and Mumbai Rains.
Watch the video here:
https://twitter.com/mumbaimatterz/status/1548277355939917825
In the now-viral clip, people can be seen standing on the beach amid plastic being littered around. Amidst all the dirt, many are still seen clicking selfies while others standing and enjoying the breeze.
Since being shared on 16 July, the video has amassed over 76,000 views and its increasing. It also has attracted tons of comments, where social media users have expressed anger and irritation over the same.
A user wrote, “Oh God! It seems all will die but plastic will only survive on this planet earth”. While, another commented that “we should do our bit as our citizens to keep the beach clean!”
Check few of the reactions here:
https://twitter.com/JayeshShilpa/status/1548522799249358855
https://twitter.com/shane5114/status/1548281807602589696
https://twitter.com/pillaigkp/status/1548333904461185024
https://twitter.com/mathews_rolland/status/1548335231454679043
There were many users who demanded strict rules to be made against plastic pollution in the city while others asked for a hefty fine to be slapped on those breaking the rules.
A day after the post gained traction, the official account of Ward-GN of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation shared a follow-up on Mumbaimatterz’s post. It showed how concerned authorities conducted a clean-up drive and cleared the dirt that was gathered on the popular beach. They shared before and after images of the Mahim beach.
Check the post here:
https://twitter.com/mybmcWardGN/status/1548537645776584704
What do you think of this video?
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Scientists have warned of a catastrophic loss of life in our oceans

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.dct-cta__image-wrap,.dct-cta–subscribe .dct-cta__content{float:none;width:auto}@media only screen and (min-width:768px){.dct-cta–subscribe .dct-cta__content{-webkit-box-flex:0;-ms-flex:0 1 50%;flex:0 1 50%}.dct-cta–subscribe–contained .dct-cta__flex{-ms-flex-flow:column nowrap;flex-flow:column nowrap;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center}.dct-cta–subscribe–contained .dct-cta__image-wrap{margin-bottom:1em}}@media only screen and (min-width:768px){.dct-cta__image-wrap{-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center}}}@supports ((display:-ms-grid) or (display:grid)){.dct-cta__grid{display:-ms-grid;display:grid}.dct-cta__grid:after{display:none}.dct-cta–signup .dct-cta__label,.dct-cta–signup .dct-cta__btn{float:none;width:auto}.dct-cta–signup .dct-cta__grid{-ms-grid-columns:1fr minmax(100px,auto);grid-template-columns:1fr minmax(100px,auto);grid-gap:.5rem .5rem}}Scientists have discovered a catastrophic loss of life in our oceans, we can reveal.
An Edinburgh-based research team fears plankton, the tiny organisms that sustain life in our seas, has all but been wiped out after spending two years collecting water samples from the Atlantic.
The landmark research blames chemical pollution from plastics, farm fertilisers and pharmaceuticals in the water. Previously, it was thought the amount of plankton had halved since the 1940s, but the evidence gathered by the Scots suggest 90% has now vanished.
The scientists warn there are only a few years left before the consequences become catastrophically clear when fish, whales and dolphins become extinct, with grave implications for the planet. In the report, the researchers from the Global Oceanic Environmental Survey Foundation (Goes) state: “An environmental catastrophe is unfolding. We believe humanity could adapt to global warming and extreme weather changes. It is our view that humanity will not survive the extinction of most marine plants and animals.”

Scientists warn the loss of life-sustaining plankton, above, will risk extinction of life in the world’s oceans (Pic: Shutterstock / Choksawatdikorn)

The findings have prompted calls for urgent action on a number of fronts as observers warn the promises of Cop26 to ease the climate crisis have, so far, amounted to little.

Fiona Nicholls, an oceans campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said: “Our oceans can be our allies in fighting climate change, but there is simply no time to waste.”
Goes – based at Edinburgh University’s Roslin Innovation Centre in Midlothian – has been collecting samples from the Atlantic and the Caribbean from its yacht, Copepod. Setting out from Scotland, it sailed along French and Portuguese coasts before crossing the Atlantic. The yacht is currently moored in Cartagena, Colombia, before setting sail for Panama this week.
In addition to their own samples, the Goes researchers have provided monitoring equipment to other sailing boat crews so that they can perform the same trawls and report back with their results.
The team, led by marine biologist and former Scottish Government adviser Dr Howard Dryden, has compiled and analysed information from 13 vessels and more than 500 data points.
Now they have alerted the scientific community to their findings and are appealing for the troubling implications to be understood and acted upon before it is too late.

Read more:

Plankton is made up of the billions of marine creatures and plants that drift in the currents of oceans and seas. The category covers a huge variety of species, many of them microscopic. However, they are fundamental to life on Earth as they form the bottom rung of the food chain. Plankton is consumed by the krill which are fed on by the fish that, in turn, provide nutrition for terrestrial animals including billions of humans.
Numerous types also perform a vital role in regulating climate change by helping oceans absorb carbon dioxide and giving off the chemical dimethyl sulphide, which assists in creating clouds.

But plankton needs the right conditions to thrive, including water that is slightly alkaline. However, the oceans are slowly turning more acidic.
An overload of CO2, along with a deluge of lethal manmade chemicals in cosmetics, plastics, sunscreen, drugs and fertilisers, is inundating the marine environment. This brew is proving toxic to underwater life and once the water reaches a tipping point of acidity, vast amounts of plankton will simply dissolve.
Every year, 18 million tons of heavy oil fuel is spilt into the seas by the shipping industry and breaks up into tiny particles that are toxic to plankton.
Citing previous studies, Goes researchers had been expecting to discover 20 such microscopic specks per litre of Atlantic water – but actually counted between 100 and 1,000.
They expected to find up to five visible pieces of plankton in every 10 litres of water – but found an average of less than one. The discovery suggests that plankton faces complete wipe-out sooner than was expected.
Environmentalist finds beauty, great people and millions of pieces of plastic on 7000 mile coastal adventure

The Goes report concludes: “If we destroy plankton, the planet will become more humid, accelerate climate change, and with no clouds it will also become arid and wind velocities will be extreme.
“Yes, of course, we need to continue to reduce CO2 emissions but even if we were carbon-neutral, it will not stop ocean acidification – it will not stop the loss of all the seals, whales, marine birds, fish and food supply for two billion people.

“CO2 reduction won’t even stop climate change; indeed, we will have catastrophic climate change because we have not fixed the primary root cause – the destruction of nature by toxic chemicals and substances such as plastic.
“We have two choices. We can choose to wake up, understand and address the real issue or choose the game-over button for humanity come 2050.”
From his ongoing mission in Colombia, Dryden – who addressed the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow last year – told The Sunday Post: “Based on our observations, plankton numbers have already crashed and are now at the levels that I predicted would not happen for another quarter of a century.
“Given that plankton is the life-support system for the planet and humanity cannot survive without it, the result is disturbing. It will be gone in around 25 years. Our results confirmed a 90% reduction in primary productivity in the Atlantic. Effectively, the Atlantic Ocean is now pretty much dead.
“We surveyed the Caribbean from St Lucia to Grenada. Now the only fish available in restaurants there is imported farmed Atlantic salmon.
“It had been reported that 50% of the coral was gone; our observations were that the coral is 100% gone in many locations and 90% gone in all locations.”

A humpback whale dives in the Atlantic Ocean off Iceland (Pic: Shutterstock / Rui Duarte)

Dryden says the first step for survival is for us all to truly understand the peril our species is in – and then do our bit in saving nature so it can save us.
And everyone – from families, farmers and financiers to scientists and supermarkets, ministers and multinationals – has a part to play.

He explained: “We cannot stop climate change by simply reducing CO2 emissions. However, we can clean up our pollution to give us clean air and clear rivers and bring life back to the oceans. We could potentially live with climate change, but we will not survive the destruction of nature. If we can bring back nature, though, we also solve climate change.”
He said that during the pandemic, because of the lack of tourism, ecosystems had started to recover. Fish have returned and coral reefs have recovered.
Dryden added: “People cause pollution, and in most of the world there is no effluent treatment. Covid has shown us that if we eliminate pollution then ecosystems have high capacity to spring back.”
Calum Duncan, head of Scottish conservation at the Marine Conservation Society, said: “There are multiple drivers for ocean decline, including climate change, pollution, overfishing and unsustainable development.
“We need to tackle the climate and nature emergencies together by transforming both our land and sea use toward a truly sustainable and circular model.
“That includes turning off the tap on all damaging pollutants, both atmospheric and waterborne, and suitably protecting all of our ocean. However, with less than 1% of our seas under high levels of protection, we have a long way to go.”
‘We are an island nation and must lead the battle to save our seas’: Scientist and documentary maker Ella Al-Shamahi’s clarion call after examining death of whale on Scots coast

Earlier this month, at the UN Ocean Conference in Portugal, 150 nations signed a declaration emphasising the importance of conserving the seas. But campaigners say concrete action is now needed at next month’s IGC5 summit in New York, at which negotiators will try to hammer out the wording of a treaty to protect global waters.
Nicholls warned: “If a treaty is not finalised next month, it will be almost impossible to reverse the damage to the world’s oceans.”
Scientist: Scotland has already polluted most of our coast and killed most of our fish

© SYSTEM
Dr Howard Dryden

Scotland has inflicted terrible damage on its seas, according to the research team’s leader.
Dr Howard Dryden said: “Scotland has already wiped out most of its fish, deep-water coral and polluted most of the coast. Trawling has destroyed seagrass, the loss of which is equivalent to the UK aviation carbon budget. The marine mammals in Scotland are among the most toxic on the planet.

“Scotland could set an example to the rest of the world and declare the country a non-toxic environment. Currently, we have a combined storm water and sewer system, so when it rains the municipal treatment systems are by-passed.
“This means we may only be treating as little as a quarter of our waste water.”
The marine biologist added: “We will not stop making plastic but the new forms should be non-toxic and biodegradable.
“We need to turn to regenerative agriculture. We have already wiped out 80% of all insects and 100% will be gone in 20 years, then agriculture collapses because there is no pollination.”
A 2020 report found that, every year, 200 million pieces of macroplastics are flushed into the seas around Scotland through its rivers. A further 24.7 billion specks of microplastics also contaminate coastal waters with nearly half of it settling beneath the waves, where it enters the marine food chain.
State-owned Scottish Water is responsible for sewage treatment but admits it cannot monitor or treat all the pollutants in waste water.
Between 2016 and 2021, the equivalent of 47,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools full of untouched waste were discharged into Scotland’s rivers and seas via a network of 3,700 overflow pipes.

So-called tertiary treatment can get rid of more than 90% of the toxins – but is not always fitted. Some of the partially treated sludge is used as farm manure, meaning the pollutants find their way back into the food chain.
In addition, around 150,000 tons of artificial fertilisers are tipped on to Scotland’s fields each year. However, their overuse degrades soils and the excess washes into rivers, eventually adding to ocean acidification.
Regenerative agriculture looks to avoid fertilisers and the pesticides that are devastating bee numbers.
Farmers are finding they can increase their profits by cultivating healthy soils.
Scottish Water has tertiary treatment at 139 waste water treatment plants. But it claimed it could not afford to retrofit the technology across the board and questioned the ecological benefits: “The challenge of protecting our rivers, coastal waters and oceans is one we share with communities.
“Everyone can play a crucial role in preventing sewer blockages, flooding and the risk of debris reaching the marine environment by ensuring they do not flush items containing plastic such as wet wipes down toilets, or dispose of cooking fat down drains.”
Nathan Critchlow-Watton, head of water and planning at the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, said that since 2010, £686 million had been spent on upgrading waste water treatment works and sewer outfalls.

The Scottish Government said: “This year we will publish our refreshed Marine Litter Strategy with an action plan to further reduce sources including macro and microplastics. We also provide financial support to farmers, to help minimise the environmental impact on water quality.”

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This story is part of a collaboration between DeSmog, the Investigative Reporting Workshop, and Public Health Watch. This story was updated July 15, 2022.

The flares started last December, an event Errol Summerlin, a former legal-aid lawyer, and his neighbors had been bracing for since 2017. After the flames, nipping at the night sky like lashes from a heavenly monster, came the odor, a gnarled concoction of steamed laundry, and burned tires.

Thus did the Saudi royal family mark the expansion of its far-flung petrochemical empire to San Patricio County, Texas, a once-rural stretch of flatlands across Nueces Bay from Corpus Christi. It arrived in the form of Gulf Coast Growth Ventures, or GCGV, a plant that sprawls over 16 acres between the towns of Portland and Gregory. The complex contains a circuit board of pipes and steel tanks that cough out steam, flames, and toxic substances as it creates the building blocks for plastic from natural gas liquids.

The plant is the first joint venture in the Americas between Saudi Basic Industries Corp., or SABIC, a chemical manufacturing giant tied to one of the world’s richest royal families, and Exxon Mobil, America’s biggest energy company. Exxon Mobil built its wealth on drilling for and refining oil, SABIC by making petrochemicals. As climate concerns lead to a slow but steady decline in the demand for oil, the companies’ collaboration represents a shift by the fossil fuel industry. Rather than transforming the fossilized remains of organisms into gasoline and other motor fuels, the Texas plant breaks apart the molecular structure of oil, through a process called cracking, which turns it into the primary ingredient for car seats, single-use plastic bags, plastic coffee cups, and much more.

“It became apparent to me that the fossil-fuel industry is moving toward plastic because they’re losing market share in transportation and energy generation,” said Judith Enck, a former regional administrator with the United States Environmental Protection Agency who now leads the advocacy group Beyond Plastics and teaches at Bennington College.

One primary player in this shift is the House of Saud, the royal family that has ruled since 1902 and named Saudi Arabia in 1932. The family has moved to diversify its economy and the products that come from its vast reserves of oil. The costs and consequences of this diversification ripple far beyond Riyadh, to Texas’ San Patricio County and communities abutting other SABIC facilities in the U.S.

SABIC is a $40 billion company that manufactures chemicals, fertilizers, and plastics and is owned by Aramco, the world’s largest oil company. In May, Aramco became the world’s most valuable company — generating tens of billions of dollars in profits yearly to the Saudi royal family and its kingdom.

How the Saudi royals leveraged their way into American plastic is an indicator of the blurring between state and family that has long characterized the kingdom.

In January 2016, Mohammed bin Salman, then the deputy crown prince, announced that Aramco would be open for the first time in history to an initial public offering, or IPO; 5 percent of its shares would be made available on international financial markets. But in 2018, in a rare rebuke to his son and now his designated heir, King Salman reversed the crown prince’s plans. The king was wary, it was reported at the time, of opening the kingdom’s economic flagship to the transparency and scrutiny required of publicly traded companies. Efforts in motion by some of the world’s largest financiers, eager to profit from what was claimed to be a trillion-dollar asset, were stopped in their tracks.

Aramco pivoted from the thwarted IPO and announced its intention to purchase a 70 percent interest in SABIC, already a major global producer of plastics and petrochemicals, for $69 billion. SABIC was owned at the time by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, or PIF, whose board chairman is the crown prince. The deal would shift funds from one royal-controlled arm of the government, Aramco, to another, the PIF. Karen Young, an analyst at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., has characterized the fund as “the crown prince’s parallel Saudi state.”

By the end of 2019, Aramco would go through with a far more limited IPO, in which 1.5 percent of its shares were made available for purchase only on the Saudi stock market, the Tadawul, which has less rigorous disclosure standards than other international exchanges. That IPO plowed almost $30 billion into Aramco. Thus the crown prince and the royal family profited on both sides of the deal: Almost $70 billion was channeled into the PIF, of which the crown prince is board chairman; and new investments worth billions were channeled into Aramco, of which 98 percent of the shares are owned by the government of Saudi Arabia.

Aramco, the company sitting on the world’s second-largest pool of oil reserves, took majority control of SABIC, one of the world’s top five petrochemical companies, in June 2020. After the deal was completed, a company news release stated that the transaction “enhances Aramco’s presence in the global petrochemicals industry, a sector expected to record the fastest growth in oil demand in the years ahead.” Indeed, the International Energy Agency predicts that by 2030 petrochemicals will account for more than a third of the growth in world oil demand, and for almost 50 percent of demand by 2050.

A tower flare lights the sky at the Gulf Coast Growth Ventures plant in San Patricio County. Julie Dermansky

The GCGV facility in San Patricio County is called an ethane steam cracker because it heats light hydrocarbons such as ethane and propane to as much as 1,560 degrees Fahrenheit, a process of intense compression and decomposition that “cracks” apart the molecules to create ethylene. Ethylene is converted into polyethylene, a basic ingredient of tiny plastic pellets known as nurdles. Nurdles are molded and reheated into a variety of shapes to create products, such as plastic bags and beverage containers. After what is often a single use, these non-biodegradable products can clog waterways; drift on ocean currents, entangling marine mammals and birds; and accumulate in landfills.

Even before the Texas complex opened, SABIC owned seven manufacturing plants in five U.S. states. SABIC facilities in Indiana, New York, Illinois, and Alabama reported leaks of chemicals associated with cancer, fetal mutations and respiratory ailments, according to the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory, also known as TRI. In Ottawa, Illinois, for example, according to the TRI, between 2016 and 2020, a SABIC facility producing plastic resins released an average of 120,512 pounds of styrene each of those five years. Styrene is classified as a possible human carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC, and can cause problems such as memory loss, confusion and slowed reflexes, even at low levels.

Last September, the New York State Office of Emergency Management was forced to grapple for days with a plume of styrene vapor leaking from a train car at the SABIC Innovative Chemicals facility in Selkirk. The plant makes, among other things, the plastic additive bisphenol-A, or BPA, a neurotoxin and an endocrine disruptor that can contribute to declining sperm counts in men. After an investigation, the agency levied a $322,400 fine in April against the company for the leak.

In Mount Vernon, in southern Indiana, the SABIC Innovative Plastics facility released an average of 22,690 pounds of ethylbenzene each year between 2016 and 2020. Ethylbenzene is used in the production of styrene and can cause nose and throat irritation and damage to the inner ear. IARC defines it as a possible human carcinogen. The same facility was cited by the EPA for corroded valves and pipes, from which leaked BPA and phosgene, developed as a nerve gas during World War I and now used as an ingredient in the manufacturing of pesticides and plastics. 

Altogether, between 2016 and 2020 the company’s facilities in the U.S. were among the top emitters of at least seven toxic substances documented by the TRI. Those substances include BPA and 1,3-butadiene, a byproduct of plastic resin production classified as a known human carcinogen by IARC.

Over the last decade, SABIC has paid over $1 million in fines for violating EPA and Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations for toxic releases at its facilities in Selkirk, Mount Vernon and Burkville, Alabama.

Susan Richardson, a SABIC spokeswoman, said in an email that the company “is committed to protecting and improving the environment in which we operate. As part of this effort, we adhere to the EPA’s TRI reporting requirements and submit the required data to the EPA. As a company we value and are committed to safety.”

In Texas, since the end of December, the GCGV plant has reported eight “emission events,” defined by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ, as “unscheduled” and “unauthorized” releases of air contaminants. One event lasted for 24 hours, another for 74, another for more than 300. The most recent was on June 16, when the facility reported releasing 478 pounds of nitrogen oxides, a potential contributor to respiratory disease. On May 3, it released 572 pounds of benzene, a known carcinogen.

Horses graze near a wind farm that is next to the Gulf Coast Growth Ventures petrochemical plant in San Patricio County. Julie Dermansky

Richardson referred questions about the events to a spokesperson for Exxon Mobil, the day-to-day operator of the facility. The spokesperson, Julie King, said in an email that Exxon Mobil “is continuously optimizing our processes to minimize emissions, enhance energy efficiency and maintain the highest standards for environmental care. We operate under a stringent state and federal regulatory system, and report emissions to the EPA and TCEQ in a consistent and timely manner in accordance with all applicable laws, regulations and permits.”

Eight emission events in six months, according to Neal Carman, a former Texas air pollution investigator who now works for the Sierra Club, doesn’t bode well for those who live near the plant. “When you’re breathing this stuff,” he said, “it’s microscopic, less than 2.5 microns in diameter, very tiny. It can fly through your nose, right into your lungs” and “into the most sensitive part of your lung tissue, the alveolar sacs.”

The reported events, he emphasized, were in addition to emissions allowed under a permit issued to GCGV by the TCEQ. That permit states, for example, that 5,944.74 pounds of volatile organic compounds may be released by the facility hourly. Volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, include benzene and 1,3-butadiene, as well as toluene, a chemical that can lead to liver and kidney damage and can harm the fetus of a pregnant woman exposed to it.

“The people who live in these frontline communities face a cocktail of pollutants due to their proximity to the facility,” said Dr. Philip Landrigan, a professor of biology and director of the Global Public Health Program and Global Pollution Observatory at Boston College. “People who live near a chemical or plastic plant are not just exposed to one chemical in isolation. If a person is exposed to two or three carcinogens at the same time, the aggregate risk is at least as great as the sum of the individual risks.”

Plastic is toxic at every stage of its life cycle, from the volatile compounds used in its creation to its disposal. Many of these synthetic substances are, in the words of one study, “difficult or impossible for nature to assimilate” and degrade the environment. At least 2,400 of the chemicals commonly used in the manufacturing of plastic, according to a study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, are considered “substances of potential concern” by the European Union’s chemical governing body because of their toxicity, persistence in the environment or capacity for accumulating in humans’ and animals’ bodies. At least 35 have earned the EU’s highest levels of concern due to their status as “very persistent and very bioaccumulative”; hundreds more substances commonly used in plastic production have not been studied.

Plastic producers are also potent greenhouse-gas emitters: The more than 30 ethane crackers in the U.S. — of which GCGV is the largest — together released 70 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2020, according to Beyond Plastics. That amounts to the annual emissions of at least 35 average-sized coal-fired power plants.

While greenhouse gases do their destructive work in the atmosphere, plastic does its damage on Earth. Remnants can be found in the tissues of humans. Nurdles can be found bobbing on ocean currents, clogging the bayous in Texas and Louisiana and polluting almost every beach on the planet. Along the Texas Gulf Coast, a volunteer group embarks on regular “nurdle patrols” to pick up the pellets littering the coastline.

A worker examines piles of pre-production plastic pellets, or nurdles, spilled from railroad cars in the industrial town of Vernon, California, just outside a plastic manufacturing plant. Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Nor is the toxicity spread evenly. Pollution from plastic production in the U.S. is highly concentrated: Just 18 communities, mostly along the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, absorb the bulk of the contamination, according to a study conducted last year by Bennington College researchers associated with Beyond Plastics. People who live within three miles of these facilities, they found, “earn 28 percent less than the average U.S. household and are 67 percent more likely to be people of color.”

A study by the Environmental Integrity Project revealed that even in the case of clear violations in Texas communities, the TCEQ rarely enforces emission limits. Less than 3 percent of excess pollution violations — collectively responsible for 500 million pounds of illegal air pollutants — resulted in penalties between 2011 and 2016, the group found.

The permitting process for petrochemical facilities offers a glimpse into the amounts of pollution that are legally, and routinely, allowed in places like San Patricio County. Jane Patton, a New Orleans-based organizer with the Center for International Environmental Law, an organization that uses litigation to force compliance with environmental laws, characterizes the regulatory bodies in Texas and Louisiana as little more than rubber stamps for the oil and gas industry. Polluters, she said, “tell the state regulators who issue permits what they’re going to emit, and then they go about emitting it.” 

In May 2021, the TCEQ issued a permit to GCGV. The permit includes a 15-page list of maximum allowable emission rates for chemicals and gases that the company is allowed to release. The plant can legally release hundreds of pounds an hour of substances like nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, 1,3-butadiene and benzene, from various vents and flares. “The permit allows a huge amount of pollution in this plant,” said the Sierra Club’s Carman. “These are not vitamins and minerals we’re talking about. These are all toxics.”

Errol Summerlin, co-founder of the Coastal Alliance to Protect Our Environment, or CAPE, who testified at public hearings opposing the project, says that on some days, he can hear “the grumble of the factory.” On clear nights, he says, he can see the flares burning, releasing a gas cocktail of carbon monoxide and methane.

Errol Summerlin, a former legal-aid lawyer and San Patricio County resident, testified at public hearings against the building of the Gulf Coast Growth Ventures plant.  Julie Dermansky

A resident of Portland, Texas, who lives within a few blocks of the plant, said he  can smell its discharges from inside his house. He worries about “the stuff you can’t smell, the particulate matter that gets absorbed into your bloodstream.” The resident requested anonymity because he may need to take advantage of a new Exxon Mobil-sponsored program to buy the homes of those who can’t coexist with the plant. Some neighbors have already taken the money and left. 

“There are some Third World countries that have better regulations than we do here in Texas,” said Elida Castillo, program director for Chispa Texas, an affiliate of the League of Conservation Voters. She lives in Taft, which abuts the rail line that delivers trainloads of nurdles from the GCGV plant to the port of Houston. Neighborhood Witness, a group she co-founded, is a coalition of organizations that encourages people living near petrochemical plants to monitor and report unauthorized emissions.

The TCEQ did not install any air monitors in the area, according to spokeswoman Victoria Cann. She said in an email that the agency relies on three monitoring stations supported by GCGV and Cheniere Energy, which operates a liquefied natural gas export facility in the area. The monitors are administered by the University of Texas at Austin. “We do not own, operate or maintain the data in these monitors,” Cann said.

The monitors do not offer real-time readouts of emission events, said Jennifer Hilliard, an architect who lives in Ingleside, a city on the coast about nine miles from the GCGV facility, and who volunteers with the Ingleside on the Bay Coastal Watch Association, or IBCWA, a nonprofit environmental group. Rather, she said, they aggregate the data every two days, which means they could miss individual releases that could be potentially harmful to residents.

To fill the gap, a citizen-science initiative was launched by two local nonprofits, CAPE and the IBCWA. “We’re forced to do this ourselves because the [TCEQ] has refused to do it,” said Patrick Nye, president of the IBCWA.

The groups hired Jackson Seymore, who is on a Ph.D. track in atmospheric chemistry at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi. He set up a half-dozen monitors in Portland, Gregory and other locations near the GCGV facility, which started delivering data in mid-May. By early June, the monitors registered a three-hour spike in ozone levels, which, if sustained over time, Nye said, would exceed federal guidelines. Ozone is an ingredient in smog and a respiratory irritant.

The ability to monitor in real time is critical, Hilliard said. Unlike the three monitors sponsored by the companies, the community’s monitors can cross-reference events as they’re happening. “If someone smells something strange or we see an unusual flaring, we can correlate that with the prevailing winds and the monitoring data,” she said.

But the community faces a challenge with its improvised monitors: The sensors they could afford — about $5,000 each — are not nearly sophisticated enough to meet the legal requirements for EPA or TCEQ enforcement. Those monitors can cost 10 times as much, Seymore said. The community groups hope their data can persuade the EPA or the state to install high-quality monitors in the area, now being populated with petrochemical facilities. “In realistic terms, there’s not going to be a magic bullet to solve the community’s fight with the industry,” Seymore said. “But our monitors could be the burglar alarm to get larger interests involved.”

In May, the two groups, along with five other Texas-based environmental nonprofits, submitted comments on the TCEQ’s Annual Monitoring Network Plan, which must be filed with the EPA each year. They demanded more substantive government monitoring of the substances that could present a danger to their health, and accused the TCEQ of doing the “bare minimum” to ensure compliance with federal law. “The Coastal Bend region of South Texas is experiencing rapid petrochemical industrial expansion that threatens both air and water quality in residential areas along Corpus Christi Bay,” the filing reads. “This expansion is affecting the city of Corpus Christi and several smaller Texas cities and towns whose citizens may not be aware of the impact of these plants on their health and the environment. … [W]e are concerned that TCEQ is not taking a holistic and equitable view of the state” in the plan, “leaving many communities who lie in the path of this unprecedented petrochemical expansion unmonitored or under-monitored.”

Cheniere Energy has been expanding in San Patricio County, where it operates a liquefied natural gas terminal a few miles east of the Gulf Coast Growth Ventures plant. Julie Dermansky

It angers Castillo that Exxon Mobil and SABIC — two of the world’s richest companies — received major tax abatements, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, from San Patricio County as an inducement to establish the GCGV facility.

In 2017, before construction began, the San Patricio County Commissioners Court agreed to give SABIC and Exxon Mobil a three-year window in which they would be exempted from all county taxes. In years four through 10 of the agreement, they will pay 30 percent of what would otherwise have been assessed.

Gary Moore, a county commissioner whose precinct includes the GCGV plant, said that when SABIC and Exxon Mobil first approached the county, “They wanted discounts all the way through history.” The commissioners court insisted on a 10-year limit for the tax breaks. “I didn’t want to let these big guys run all over us,” Moore said.

The companies relented. The area, with easy access to rail lines and the nearby port in Corpus Christi, was well suited to their plans for an ethane cracker. The county is divided roughly evenly between whites and Latinos, with a median family income of about $56,000 in 2020 — 17 percent below the U.S. median.

Now that the plant is up and running, Moore said, “There’s real cooperation. They’re real community-minded.” GCGV, he said, funded a water-treatment facility in Gregory and contributed to cleaning up a nearby bird sanctuary. Asked about pollution from the plant, he said, “If the TCEQ isn’t upset about it, I’m not going to worry about it.”

In a separate agreement with the Gregory-Portland Independent School District, SABIC received an abatement deal that guaranteed the company a reduced property tax for the first 10 years of the project that would max out at a $30 million valuation, although the facility itself is valued at more than half a billion dollars. Exxon Mobil signed a separate and similar deal with the county.

Gregory-Portland ISD superintendent Michelle Cavazos wrote in a statement that the agreement “was financially beneficial for our school district and its taxpayers in a situation when we knew the company would heavily impact our tax base (with or without an agreement).” Because of residents’ “concern for environmental changes in our local area,” GCGV agreed to install two air monitors on school district property, Cavazos wrote, and established a community advisory panel, on which she sits.

Spokespeople for Exxon Mobil, and SABIC did not respond to questions about the tax abatements.

Castillo is still angry about the deals. “They’ve got billions of dollars,” she said. “That’s nothing like the average person has here.”

Elida Castillo co-founded a group called Neighborhood Witness, a coalition of organizations that encourages people living near petrochemical plants to monitor and report unauthorized emissions. Julie Dermansky

Construction of the GCGV plant, composed of 30,000 metric tons of modules built in China and Mexico, involved a partner – the China State Shipbuilding Corp., or CSSC – sanctioned in an executive order by President Biden last year for its ties to the People’s Liberation Army. The order, issued just after the biggest modules arrived in Texas, prohibited U.S. persons from buying securities issued by CSSC and 45 other entities to “ensure that U.S. investments are not supporting Chinese companies that undermine the security or values of the United States and our allies.” 

Security watches an event celebrating the renaming of the street outside the Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to Jamal Khashoggi Way on June 15, 2022 in Washington, DC. Nathan Howard / Getty Images

Biden promised a similarly hard line against Saudi Arabia while running for president, when he suggested during a debate in November 2019 that he would make the nation’s leaders “pay the price” for their role in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden said there was “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia.”

Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, had criticized Crown Prince Mohammed for his repressive human-rights policies in several Post op-eds.

Khashoggi  was beheaded and dismembered at  the Saudi embassy in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018. 

In June 2019, Agnes Callamard, a United Nations human rights investigator, announced the results of her inquiry into the Khashoggi murder and asserted that it had been carried out by Saudi agents at the direction of the crown prince. It “is inconceivable,” she concluded, “that an operation of this scale could be implemented without the crown prince being aware, at a minimum, that some sort of mission of a criminal nature, directed at Mr. Khashoggi, was being launched.”

When candidate Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” the following November, the royal family was already expanding its U.S. footprint. Its fossil-fuel legacy now stretches from the Ghawar oil fields in Saudi Arabia to the Coastal Bend of Texas and beyond.

Biden is to meet with the crown prince Friday in the Saudi port city of Jeddah to discuss increasing oil exports to offset the impacts of the war in Ukraine, and, as he put it in a Post op-ed, “to strengthen a strategic partnership going forward that’s based on mutual interests and responsibilities, while also holding true to fundamental American values.” The public health and climate fallout from the Saudis’ big bet on plastics does not appear to be on the agenda. 

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Elida Castillo as a community organizer with Chicanos por la Causa. In fact, she is the program director for Chispa Texas, an affiliate of the League of Conservation Voters. 

Castillo said she does not find nurdles on her lawn or in surrounding neighborhoods, as was reported.

Material Research L3C contributed to this story, which was co-published with DeSmog, the Investigative Reporting Workshop and Grist.   

Adjacent to the Hudson River, along the west side of Manhattan, are some of the world’s most valuable commercial and residential properties: townhouses and mixed-use developments like Hudson Yards and much-loved public spaces like Hudson River Park and the Hudson River Greenway, which unite city residents and visitors with the river. But those civic and private investments often end at the water’s edge. Just offshore lie neglected and largely dysfunctional shallow water habitats.

The Hudson River Foundation, where I serve as president, has long sought to address the myriad problems plaguing this vital waterway. Despite substantial progress over the past 40 years, the river continues to carry the burden of polychlorinated biphenyl compounds, or PCBs, that were frequently dumped into it during the 20th century and are likely carcinogenic to humans. Meanwhile, newer toxic chemicals like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — known as PFAS and nicknamed “forever chemicals” due to their environmental persistence — are a rising concern. Scientists are finding microplastics throughout the river’s watershed, and combined sewer overflows can render the water unsafe to fish or swim in. The living oyster reefs and seagrass beds that once sustained diverse communities of animals and plants are almost entirely gone. The productive shallows that used to provide refuge for crabs and fish — and buffer the shoreline from storm surges and flooding — have been ravaged by the effects of industrial pollution, development, and wastewater discharge. At a time when the world is facing the ever-growing reality of climate change, much of Manhattan’s natural protections have been lost, leaving behind silt, sand, and mud.

It has become clear to us — and to the many scientists we work with — that the issues facing the Hudson are as complex and intertwined as the species that make it home. Fully functioning shallow water environments like those that once were part of the Hudson River and New York Harbor can reduce damages from storm-driven waves and flooding, and increase resilience to climate change. The vital habitat they provide to the river’s wildlife supports recreation that improves quality of life, and can provide economic and cultural benefits to New York City residents. More generally, healthy coastal ecosystems have been shown to have economic value and enhance people’s connections to nature. Because of that interconnectedness, we’ve come to realize that the challenge of enhancing and restoring these ecosystem features in the Hudson demands a new kind of science — one that is interdisciplinary and nimble enough to inform decisions that are made on short time frames.

The Hudson is not unique in this respect. Environmental problems facing coastal cities are human problems. The more frequent hurricanes that threaten the Gulf Coast, rising sea levels that could place many cities in India, Thailand, and Vietnam under water, and the intense storm surges that have become more common in Manhattan and along the eastern United States — these are more than environmental or oceanographic concerns. They are anthropological, sociological, economic, and cultural. They are about equity and accessibility. And they require concerted efforts to integrate the natural, physical, and social sciences, with their different “ways of knowing” and their different forms of data and analysis.

Take, for example, a $5.5 billion project proposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that would deepen shipping lanes in the New York-New Jersey Harbor in order to accommodate the next generation of cargo vessels. The project would remove millions of pounds of rocks and sediment from the channels that wind through the Narrows and the Kill Van Kull to the major New Jersey and New York shipping terminals. Much of the dredged material produced in the deepening project will be clean, and the USACE is actively considering what beneficial uses could be realized. Could that clean rock be relocated a bit further up the Hudson? And if so, could it form a foundation upon which a renewed natural community and ecosystem could thrive on the west side of Manhattan?

The productive shallows that used to provide refuge for crabs and fish — and buffer the shoreline from storm surges and flooding — have been ravaged by the effects of industrial pollution, development, and waste water discharge.

To begin to understand how beneficial this hard substrate could be, the Hudson River Foundation asked a group of scientists — biologists with expertise in oysters and fish, an engineer who studies hydrodynamics and river restoration, and an expert in urban sustainability and resilience — to consider what would happen if the soft, muddy bottom was replaced with those rocks. Working together, the group refined a conceptual tool, a deceptively simple diagram, showing the relationships and feedbacks that would occur. Their diagram showed that as clean rock became colonized with oysters and other organisms, it would create a habitat for more mobile bottom dwellers like crabs and juvenile fish. The enhanced habitat would also modify sediment accretion, attenuate waves, and over time attract coastal wildlife.

These links extended well beyond ecological relationships. The group of scientists determined that these natural communities and shallow water enhancements also benefit human communities. A healthy shallow water ecosystem creates opportunities for fishing and boating and improves the aesthetics of this busy shoreline. In doing so, it provides economic and cultural benefits to New York City residents: It’s nicer to look out at a shoreline teeming with wildlife than a muddy wasteland.

Everything about this equation seems simple. Adding rocks to the shallows isn’t the most complicated maneuver, and the team’s diagnostic model isn’t a complex equation. But the impact of this kind of thinking is vital. An interdisciplinary, team-based approach not only can enumerate the ecological and social value of a deceptively simple action like placing rocks in the shallows; it can also add a compelling rationale for decision makers to support comprehensive approaches to large scale environmental projects.

If we’re going to succeed at problems like adapting to climate change, protecting clean water supplies, and preserving biodiversity, we all need to think differently, work collaboratively, and commit to learning as we go.

Whenever we alter an environment — above or below the waterline — we impact the humans, animals, fish, and flora on either side. The success of an intervention depends in great part on the information and analyses that inform the decision making. Yes, this calls for data about things like flooding, fisheries, and water quality. But it also calls for economic and social data that can provide insights about human communities and what they care about. Crucially, if these data and analyses are to fully illuminate an action’s potential benefits and tradeoffs, they can’t remain siloed by discipline. Solutions to environmental problems demand that we merge and build on the accomplishments of discipline-specific research in new ways that transcend the boundaries we have historically drawn between the “natural” and “human” worlds.

To achieve these changes, both researchers and funders have to think about their work differently. Researchers have to find common purpose and learn to work with colleagues who understand the world in different ways. Reviewers and funders have to incentivize these collaborations and be willing to fund risky, unconventional projects, especially in the realm of climate and the environment. With this funding must come support to help researchers from disparate disciplines learn how to work together effectively. Interdisciplinary collaboration calls for team members to do more than just listen to each other; it requires intentional processes designed to help each team member understand languages and norms used in fields outside of their own, and it calls for the group to work collectively to develop a shared language and approach that can provide insightful and actionable information.

The collaborative work being done to restore the Hudson River is just a start. If we’re going to succeed at problems like adapting to climate change, protecting clean water supplies, and preserving biodiversity, we all need to think differently, work collaboratively, and commit to learning as we go. Our knowledge, history, beliefs, culture, and social and economic structures will help to shape and define the big environmental challenges we will face in the coming decades. To give ourselves the best chance of solving those problems, we must be willing to look at them, together, in new ways.

Jonathan Kramer, Ph.D., is a marine and environmental scientist whose recent work has focused on catalyzing interdisciplinary team-based socio-environmental research. He is currently the president of the Hudson River Foundation, based in New York City.

Look down. You may not see the soil beneath your feet as teeming with life, but it is.
Better scientific tools are helping us understand that dirt isn’t just dirt. Life in the soil includes microbes like bacteria and fungi; invertebrates such as earthworms and nematodes; plant roots; and even mammals like gophers and badgers who spend part of their time below ground.
It’s commonly said that a quarter of all the planet’s biodiversity lives in the soil, but that’s likely a vast understatement. Many species that reside there, particularly microorganisms such as viruses, bacteria, fungi and protists, aren’t yet known to science.
“Published literature has only just begun to unravel the complexity of soil biological systems,” a 2020 study by researchers from University of Reading found. “We barely know what is there, let alone their breadth of functional roles, niche partitioning and interaction between these organisms.”
But what scientists do know is that healthy and biodiverse soil communities support a wide variety of functions that sustain life on Earth. That includes nutrient cycling, food production, carbon storage and water filtration.
What happens belowground supports life aboveground. And not surprisingly, if that underground biodiversity is threatened, so are the important functions that soil performs.
“When soil organisms begin to disappear, ecosystems will soon start to underperform, potentially hindering their vital functions for humankind,” wrote researchers in a 2020 Science study.

Pesticides being sprayed at the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge in Calif. Photo: Don McCullough (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Unfortunately there’s evidence that soil biodiversity is decreasing today — how badly is still a matter researchers are working to determine. By just one metric, studies found that 60–70% of soils in the European Union are now unhealthy.
The threats there — and across the world — are numerous.
The Reading University researchers narrowed them down to five main areas:

Human exploitation, including intensive agriculture, pesticides, fertilizers and genetically modified organisms.
Land-use change like deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and soil sealing.
Soil degradation from compaction, erosion, and loss of nutrients.
Climate change, which influences temperature and moisture.
The growing threat from plastic pollution.

“Land changes [like intensive agriculture] are right up there with climate change,” says Diana H. Wall, a biology professor at Colorado State University and director of the School of Global Environmental Sustainability. “Because what we’re doing is tearing up the soil. And that’s the habitat for all these species.”
When we lose biodiversity in the soil it leads to a decrease in the soil’s ability to withstand disturbances — that could cause a loss of important functions and even more biodiversity.

Much like new molecular tools have helped researchers understand the microbiome in people’s guts, scientists can now also learn much more about the tiny organisms living in the soil, says Wall. But while research about soil biodiversity is growing, there are still significant knowledge gaps.
A 2020 study on “blind spots” in global soil biodiversity and ecosystem function found that most research focused on a single sampling event and didn’t study how soil changed in the same area over time, which the authors say is “essential for assessing trends in key taxa and functions, and their vulnerability to global change.”
The research has also been geographically unbalanced, they found. Temperate areas, which include broadleaved mixed forests and the Mediterranean, have received more study than many tropical areas, tundra or flooded grasslands.
This is not a new problem: Another study revealed that we lack historical information on soil biodiversity that would make it possible to understand baselines on previous land cover and local drivers of biodiversity. Without understanding past conditions, it’s not clear how things are changing or why.
Knowledge gaps aren’t just limited to science, either. When it comes to policy, national and international bodies lack systematic ways to monitor and protect soil biodiversity.
“At the global scale, soil biodiversity is still a blind spot: most Parties of the Convention on Biodiversity neither protect soils nor their biodiversity explicitly,” found a study published in April in Biological Conservation.
CIAT researchers are collecting data on soil erosion as part of the Africa Rising Initiative. Photo: 2015CIAT/Georgina Smith (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Efforts to better study and protect soil biodiversity have begun to ramp up.
One is the Soil Biodiversity Observation Network (Soil BON), co-led by Wall, which is a coordinated global project to monitor soil biodiversity and ecosystem function to help inform policy.
Wall also leads the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative, a volunteer scientific network of
more than 4,000 researchers who are studying the vulnerability of belowground biodiversity. The group recently sent a letter to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity urging action to protect soil biodiversity.
“Knowledge of the importance of the vast diversity of fauna and flora that inhabit soil and sustain all life aboveground should be recognized and included in global policies for the protection, restoration, and promotion of biodiversity,” the group wrote.
Europe isn’t waiting for the U.N. to take action.
The Farm to Fork Strategy, part of the European Green New Deal, calls for better soil protection, including cutting pesticide use in half by 2030. The European Union also launched the Zero Pollution Action Plan for Air, Water and Soil that aims to improve soil quality. And the EU could push further action with a planned Soil Health Law in 2023.
And while soil health demands more big government efforts, there are a lot of changes at the local level and by industries that could help.
In urban areas, pavement that has sealed off soil can be removed and replaced by vegetation. The construction of green roofs and gardens rich in plant diversity can aid soil biodiversity, too.
Farmers, Wall says, have also expressed increasing interest in soil regeneration and carbon sequestration. “There are definitely things that you can do to return the organic matter to the soil,” she says. “What we want is good cover for soil so it doesn’t blow away or wash away. And we also want to make sure that we’re not just cutting vegetation down to bare ground.”
Scandinavian Green Roof Institute. Photo: International Sustainable Solutions (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Society also needs to be mindful of the chemicals that we use in our homes, farms and cities, she says: “Pollution in soil is very bad for the organisms that live in the soil, and it’s bad for any that may have a pupating cycle in the soil.”
Soil biodiversity can recover after industrial or agricultural sites are taken out of production, but it may happen slowly and require specialized restoration efforts. In those cases, “microbial transplants together with seeding of target plant species might help speed up these processes,” suggests a 2019 study co-authored by Wall. “Even small changes, which often come at little monetary cost, may increase soil biodiversity and ecosystem services.”
And an even smaller change is also important — getting people to notice and appreciate the role healthy soil plays in our lives and why it’s so vital we protect it.
“Something that we really ought to realize is that soil isn’t forever,” Wall says. “Soils are vulnerable, and we know that worldwide. Pay attention to the life beneath your feet — it’s fragile.”

Why It’s Time to Include Fungi in Global Conservation Goals

Workers removed garbage from Brazil’s Negro River in June following rains that raised water levels. Some governments are implementing laws tackling plastic pollution.

Edmar Barros/Associated Press

A few states and some countries are passing laws to combat plastic waste.
California is the fourth US state that will make companies pay for packaging waste.
Canada and India have banned the production and import of certain single-use plastic products. 

Listen to The Refresh: Insider’s real-time news podcast.

The first half of 2022 has seen a wave of new policies cracking down on plastic pollution in the US and countries like Canada and India. In recent weeks, California became the fourth state that will force companies to pay for cleaning up packaging waste, while Canada and India have banned the production and import of certain single-use plastic products. Advocates say the momentum feels like a turning point in the global fight to eliminate the eight million metric tons of plastic waste that flows into oceans each year. According to the United Nations, this is the equivalent of dumping a garbage truck every minute. The vast majority of plastic never gets recycled and ends up in landfills, in incinerators, or as litter on land and in waterways. The US is the world’s largest contributor to the problem despite representing less than 5% of the global population.”The public is increasingly making the connection between plastic and so many other issues, which is expanding the coalition of groups and individuals who care deeply about this,” Anja Brandon, a US plastics-policy analyst at the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy, said. “That, in turn, is expanding the number of policymakers who recognize plastic pollution as critically important.” 

Brandon said those connections include how plastic is made from the fossil fuels that drive the climate crisis. Local governments in the US often build plastic-manufacturing plants, landfills, and incinerators in marginalized communities, which then disproportionately expose these communities to pollution. Researchers are also discovering tiny particles of plastic — known as microplastics — in human blood and stool, raising questions about potential health effects.The sustainability push has led some big brands and plastic makers to promise to make more recyclable or compostable packaging and to channel money toward local infrastructure so producers can get their materials back and reuse them. “We’re investing in new technology to make sure the percent of recycled content in packaging increases and designing things to be lighter,” Jen Ronk, the senior sustainability manager at Dow North America Packaging & Specialty Plastics, said. The company also pledged to spend more than $1 billion on efforts to manage plastic waste. Here’s a rundown of the latest action: 

CaliforniaOn June 30, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the most aggressive restrictions on plastic in the country into law. By 2032, producers must use 25% less plastic in packaging for items like shampoo, food containers, and cups. Ocean Conservancy estimates that this provision alone will reduce plastic production by 23 million tons, or 26 times the weight of the Golden Gate Bridge. By the same date, at least 65% of plastic must be recycled, a major jump from the less than 15% that is recycled today. “We know that to reduce the plastic-pollution crisis, we have to make less in the first place and reuse more through a circular economy,” Brandon said, adding that the California law is the first to address both sides of that equation. 

Plastic makers will pay $5 billion into a state fund to mitigate the environmental and health impacts of pollution from their products, as well. The industry will pay for collecting, sorting, and recycling waste through a fee on packaging, which will shift the burden away from taxpayers who now fund municipal-waste management. That policy, known as extended-producer responsibility, has picked up steam over the last year as Maine, Oregon, and most recently Colorado, passed similar legislation.  Colorado In June, the state passed its own extended-producer responsibility law that slaps a fee on packaging such as bottles, food wrappers, and cardboard to help fund recycling and keep waste out of landfills. Colorado’s statewide recycling rate for all materials is 15%, less than half the national average of 32%. The law itself doesn’t set mandatory recycling targets, but brands and packaging makers have to develop some for 2030 after they form a nonprofit to run the new recycling program.

The law got rare public endorsements from big business, including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Walmart. They joined forces with environmental groups like Recycle Colorado, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Sierra Club. CanadaOn June 22, the government announced it would ban companies from making and importing certain single-use plastics by the end of the year as part of a sweeping effort to fight pollution and the climate crisis.Most plastic grocery bags, silverware, and straws fall under the ban, with a few exceptions for medical needs. According to the government, Canadians throw away more than 3 million tons of plastic waste every year and the country only recycles about 9% of it. 

“Companies don’t make Canada-specific packaging or US-state specific packaging,” Brandon said. “They are trying to maximize efficiency in a globalized supply chain, so these policies will have far-reaching ripple effects.”India On July 1, India’s government announced a ban on single-use plastics covering 19 items that are most likely to wind up as litter, such as straws, cups, and some disposable bags. The ban makes it illegal to make or import these products.According to the Associated Press, thousands of other plastic items aren’t covered, though the federal government has set recycling targets for manufacturers.  According to its federal pollution watchdog, India generated more than 4.1 million metric tons of plastic waste in 2020. 

This decade the country is also trying to reduce the amount of greenhouse-gas emissions per unit of gross domestic product — known as carbon intensity — by 45%. Curbing plastic manufacturing can help India meet that target, said advocates of the ban.

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