Powerful art installation at Chennai beach reflects grim reality of marine pollution

The plastic waste was retrieved from the ocean at Chennai’s Besant Nagar Beach. (Credits : Twitter)It was revealed to mark the Mega Beach Clean-Up programme on May 21.The sad reality of marine pollution not only shows the extent of the problem in our environment but also serves as a stark reminder of the grave threat to our biodiversity. In an effort to promote awareness about the importance of keeping beaches clean and mitigating the influx of plastic into the ocean, authorities in Chennai took a proactive step. They established an art installation at Besant Nagar beach, constructed entirely from ocean plastic, resembling a colossal fish.IAS officer Supriya Sahu posted a video on Twitter and wrote: “We have put up this installation made with plastic waste retrieved from the ocean at Besant Nagar Beach in Chennai to mark the Mega Beach Clean-up programme organised today. It not only portrays the sad reality of pollution in our oceans but also raises an alarm about the serious threat to marine biodiversity.”We have put up this installation made with plastic waste retrieved from the ocean at Besant Nagar Beach in Chennai to mark the Mega Beach Clean up programme organised today. It not only portrays the sad reality of pollution in our oceans but also raises an alarm about the serious… pic.twitter.com/Vn0a7jhuGj— Supriya Sahu IAS (@supriyasahuias) May 21, 2023The art installation acted as a compelling symbol, shedding light on the critical importance of environmental conservation. It was established ahead of a countrywide beach clean-up campaign on May 21, coinciding with the first day of the third G20 Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group Meeting. This synchronized endeavor aimed to tackle the urgent problem of plastic pollution.Since the day the video was posted, it has amassed around 70 thousand views. Commenting on the video, a user from Nilgiris raised the concern about the place saying, “Dear Ma’am, can something similar be done in Nilgiris as well? Plastic waste strewn on the roadside, garbage bins lying overturned everywhere – certainly not a pleasant sight to see. I believe the authorities need to renew their vigour to keep Nilgiris plastic free.”Dear Ma’am, can something similar be done in Nilgiris as well? Plastic waste strewn on the road side, garbage bins lying overturned everywhere – certainly not a pleasant sight to see. I believe the authorities need to renew their vigour to keep Nilgiris plastic free!#Nilgiris— vivek (@hvivekw) May 21, 2023Another user agreed and commented: “Yes. We have beaches, mountains, rivers, lakes, waterfalls but nothing is clean everything is polluted. Only government cannot prevent this. People come forward to clean our environmental. Only public+private+people make this happen.”Yes.we have beaches, mountains, rivers,lakes, waterfalls but nothing is clean everything is polluted. Only government cannot prevent this.people come forward to clean our environmental.Only public+private+people make this happen.— Rahul (@rahul_space6) May 21, 2023“An Ocean Emergency has already been declared by the UN. It is about time India seriously invested in Inland fishery-with the multiple benefits of saving wetlands/ponds/lakes etc, increasing nutrition incomes ++. As a proactive bureaucrat, please take the lead Ms Sahu,” wrote another.top videosAn “Ocean Emergency “ has already been declared by the UN. It is about time India seriously invested in Inland fishery-with the multiple benefits of saving wetlands/ponds/lakes etc, increasing nutrition+incomes ++. As a proactive bureaucrat, please take the lead Ms Sahu.— Lalitha Kumaramangalam (@kumaramangalaml) May 21, 2023What do you think about this initiative?

About the AuthorBuzz StaffA team of writers at News18.com bring you stories on what’s creating the buzz on the Internet while exploring science, cricket, tech, gender, Bollywoo

Will EPA's PFAS rule spur other water regs?

EPA brandished its powers to regulate new drinking water contaminants earlier this year, but many question whether the agency will apply the same approach to other chemicals.
While substances linked to health risks from kidney disease to cancer have cropped up in drinking water systems for decades, the agency has not issued a drinking water standard for a new contaminant on its own initiative since 1996. Other drinking water regulations since then have been mandated by Congress.
But EPA in March took the dramatic step of escalating a crackdown on a handful of “forever chemicals,” with a proposal to regulate those notorious substances at very low levels.

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On the heels of that rare move, advocates remain largely skeptical of future drinking water regulatory developments and note impediments EPA faces in doing so.
“I am not sure that a single rulemaking in 27 years signals a huge sea change in EPA’s plans to regulate new contaminants,” said Erik Olson, a senior strategic director working on health issues for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Olson called EPA’s recent decision targeting PFAS “historic and welcome,” but noted the agency’s storied tendency to slow-walk drinking water actions.
Melanie Benesh, vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, shared similar sentiments even as she offered that some of the pacing is due to the structure of the Safe Drinking Water Act, or SDWA, which “does create this long process.”
Cost considerations can make it hard to act, as can monitoring requirements. But regulators also play a big role in setting the urgency level around a decision.
“EPA does not move very aggressively or very quickly on these contaminants,” Benesh said, while adding that the agency is taking per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances seriously. “It’s good they’re recognizing that they have that authority. But historically that certainly has not been the case.”
EPA did not respond to multiple inquiries relating to this story. But the agency’s recent move has offered ammunition for regulatory proponents, who say it underscores the power regulators have.
And that power can run deep. Of the broader PFAS family, EPA is seeking to regulate two cancer-linked chemicals, PFOA and PFOS, at the lowest levels a lab can measure: 4 parts per trillion. Another four compounds would be regulated as a mixture, with a hazard index calculation applied to determine the risks they pose.
That proposal has drawn cost concerns from water utilities and fury from the chemical industry. On the other end, many water policy watchers say sweeping regulatory actions can be essential for safeguarding public health and want to see the same urgency applied to chemicals beyond PFAS — even as they remain dubious that it will happen.
‘Hesitancy to regulate’
EPA’s record of hesitancy on drinking water contaminants is long established.
The bulk of U.S. water standards were set between 1986 and the late 1990s, with federal law requiring that EPA issue regulations for 83 contaminants by 1989, and subsequently for 25 new contaminants every three years after that period. But drinking water utilities struggled under that pace and Congress passed amendments to SDWA in 1996, shifting to a new system creating standards based on health implications and persistence.
In the time since, EPA has regulated some contaminants under SDWA — targeting uranium and certain disinfectants — but those moves have been pursuant to congressional mandates. Moreover, EPA’s water office has frequently been accused of having a close relationship with industry and of leaning toward a more conservative regulatory approach as a result.
“The hesitancy to regulate new drinking water contaminants is a combination of a complex and problematic statute and a lack of political will at EPA,” said Olson.
Some hurdles are also rooted in the reality of drinking water systems. Ronnie Levin, a former EPA staffer now at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, noted that there are “some very legitimate reasons” why the program can be restrained when it comes to contaminants.
“They cannot be innovative because they cannot have five minutes of disrupted service without cataclysmic effects,” she said, pointing to the crises that can occur when drinking water systems are impacted by external factors.
But that approach has met its match in PFAS.
Advocates and experts offered varying perspectives on why PFAS in particular prompted regulation, but underscored that the science around those chemicals is stark. Betsy Southerland, a former water office staffer, noted that the agency chose compounds for which they had conclusive data. “EPA selected those six PFAS because they all had final toxicity values,” she said.
But many also pointed to optics: PFAS are infamous, and regulators were under immense pressure to act.
“PFAS is in the news,” said Levin. “It’s familiar. Is it the worst? Maybe, maybe not. We certainly need to get a handle on it. Anywhere we start on this continuum is good.”
Lingering fights and cost concerns
While PFAS pushed regulators into action, other chemicals have invoked less urgency.
One particularly fraught compound is perchlorate, used in explosives and rocket fuel. That substance has polluted groundwater near military and contractor facilities, with testing finding it in water, soil or sediment in as many as 45 states. An endocrine disruptor, it is particularly threatening for fetal health. And the Obama-era EPA said in 2011 that perchlorate warranted limits, even as it slow-walked addressing the issue and eventually sparked a lawsuit from NRDC.
Under Trump, EPA revoked that determination, arguing it would require monitoring at 60,000 public water systems and that state and local officials were already taking action to address the issue. The Biden administration opted to continue with that approach, finding the contamination mostly limited to a few geographic areas.
Southerland noted that EPA monitors contaminants nationwide as it weighs whether they are widespread. Perchlorate, she said, “was a classic case in which Congressional representatives pushed for regulation … EPA and [the Food and Drug Administration] spent years studying it, and then EPA determined, not once but twice, that it did not occur in enough water systems nationwide to justify regulation.”
Change could nonetheless be coming: A judge ruled in May that EPA had no right to revoke its 2011 determination, although how the agency will proceed is unclear.
Another contaminant that has drawn ire repeatedly is hexavalent chromium, which achieved notoriety due to the activism of Erin Brockovich and is used in automotive supply chains. An October EPA draft toxicological review found it was likely to be carcinogenic in drinking water. But the chemical industry has strongly fought against limits even after a major spill in Michigan last summer.
Advocates assert that federal regulators have been too slow in addressing such pollutants. Drinking water utilities, however, have more complex views on the agency’s pace.
“It’s true that the process for evaluating and regulating new contaminants can seem long, and we think additional funding for public health research would help expedite the process,” said Greg Kail, a spokesperson for the American Water Works Association. “But it’s important to get these decisions right because we don’t want to spend consumers’ dollars addressing the wrong risks.”
Kail observed that the looming PFAS regulations would impact utilities differently, ranging from more reporting requirements to “large investments for new treatment or acquiring new water sources.” While AWWA has been supportive of some federal action to avoid confusion across states, he said, the trade group wants clarity around implications for its members.
For example, while EPA estimates the annual costs associated with its regulation will be $772 million annually, at least one North Carolina utility had already faced an estimated capital cost for its PFAS treatment of $43 million prior to the proposed rule.
“It’s critical that the public health benefits outweigh the cost of implementing the regulation,” Kail said.
Tom Dobbins, CEO of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, offered that ratepayers often foot the bill for removing pollution. That reality, he said, means that EPA needs to be pragmatic when it takes action.
“EPA’s science-backed regulation of contaminants is helpful to utilities because it is improving the quality of drinking water provided to the public,” Dobbins added. “EPA should craft new regulations in a way that minimizes burdens on the public while also protecting public health.”
Experts and utilities also worry that mistrust of tap water will point consumers toward bottled alternatives, particularly in underserved communities. That can raise their costs and also heighten their exposure to contaminants like microplastics.
To avoid that, water industry members pointed to other avenues EPA could use to crack down on contaminants before they ever enter drinking water, like the Toxic Substances Control Act, which regulators can use to take chemicals off the market.
“One of the most cost-effective ways to reduce health risks from contaminants is to prevent contamination in the first place,” said Dobbins.
Still, regulating some pollutants through SDWA could also have the benefit of capturing others. Benesh pointed to “co-benefits” that could come with installing filters often used for PFAS, like granular activated carbon and reverse osmosis systems. Those technologies could be put in place and pull out substances like pharmaceuticals and organic matter that could pose health hazards.
“The more you’re reducing those exposures, the greater the public health benefit is,” Benesh said.
What’s next?
While EPA’s history of inaction remains a sore subject, the crackdown on PFAS has sparked optimism.
“I will say that [current EPA leadership] have exhibited a stronger will to control PFAS and drinking water contaminants than their predecessors have for many years,” said NRDC’s Olson.
Even within the broader PFAS family of more than 10,000 compounds, however, future regulations remain an open question — although advocates agree those chemicals would be a more likely target due to ongoing national monitoring efforts.
If the agency does launch a broader campaign beyond PFAS, however, there could be a number of candidates. Some lawmakers have also pushed for a crackdown on microplastics, while a separate contender is 1,4-Dioxane, a compound used in products like shampoos and cleaning items. EPA considers the chemical to be a likely human carcinogen, and it is currently under TSCA assessment.
Also on the radar is lead, the neurotoxic heavy metal that has haunted cities like Flint, Mich. EPA plans to release a new draft of its lead and copper rule this fall, which could see stricter standards imposed. Utilities must currently take action after 10 percent of water samples exceed lead by 15 parts per billion, even though health experts agree that the only safe amount of lead exposure is none.
Water utilities say addressing lead is among their top focuses alongside PFAS. Kail of AWWA offered that the new rule will introduce a number of hurdles for water systems and that costs for lead service line replacement nationally could exceed $60 billion. Meeting the requirements of the rule will be “challenging, but achievable,” Kail added, while cautioning that further revisions from EPA will be closely analyzed by AWWA’s members.
Levin, the former EPA staffer, has spent much of her career focused on lead. She noted the long-term costs associated with exposure, which go beyond its implications for children and include cardiovascular and reproductive impacts in adults. A recent study co-authored by Levin found that EPA has dramatically undervalued the payoffs from cutting lead levels in drinking water, which would yield a minimum of $9 billion annually in benefits per that analysis.
“Those benefits are many times the costs,” Levin said, while adding that until officials underscore the benefits of a crackdown, it will be hard to justify the costs to the public.
Advocates said that regulators broadly should take a protective approach to all drinking water contaminants. “Drinking water is important,” underscored Benesh of EWG. “It should be clean, and it’s not as clean as most Americans assume it is.”
She noted that statutory challenges will remain a reality that the government has to work with. Ultimately, however, she said regulators have the power to take action, and they should do so.
“EPA needs to move more aggressively,” Benesh concluded.

How recycling centers could be making our plastics problem worse

Instead of helping to tackle the world’s staggering plastic waste problem, recycling may be exacerbating a concerning environmental problem: microplastic pollution.A recent peer-reviewed study that focused on a recycling facility in the United Kingdom suggests that anywhere between 6 to 13 percent of the plastic processed could end up being released into water or the air as microplastics — ubiquitous tiny particles smaller than five millimeters that have been found everywhere from Antarctic snow to inside human bodies.“This is such a big gap that nobody’s even considered, let alone actually really researched,” said Erina Brown, a plastics scientist who led the research while at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.The research adds to growing concerns that recycling isn’t as effective of a solution for the plastic pollution problem as many might think. Only a fraction of the plastic produced gets recycled: About 9 percent worldwide and about 5 to 6 percent in the United States, according to some recent estimates.The study was conducted at a single plastic recycling facility, but experts say its findings shouldn’t be taken lightly.“It’s a very credible study,” said Judith Enck, a former senior Environmental Protection Agency official under President Barack Obama who now heads the Beyond Plastics advocacy organization. She was not involved in the research. “It’s only one facility, but it raises troubling issues, and it should inspire environmental regulatory agencies to replicate the study at other plastic recycling facilities.”Why the recycling symbol could end up in the trash binHow does plastic recycling work?While there are many different types of plastic, many experts say only things made out of No. 1 and 2 are really recycled effectively in the United States. At recycling facilities, plastic waste is generally sorted, cleaned, chopped up or shredded into bits, melted down and remolded.It’s unsurprising that this process could produce microplastics, Enck said. “The way plastic recycling facilities operate, there’s a lot of mechanical friction and abrasion,” she said.Brown and other researchers analyzed the bits of plastic found in the wastewater generated by the unnamed facility. They estimated it could produce up to 6.5 million pounds of microplastic per year, or about 13 percent of the mass of the total amount of plastic the facility receives annually.The researchers also found high amounts of microplastic when they tested the air at the facility, Brown said.You’re probably recycling wrong. This quiz will help you sort it out.Will filters help?The study also looked at the facility’s wastewater after filters were installed. With filtration, the estimate of microplastics produced dropped to about 3 million pounds a year.Even with the use of filters at the plant, the researchers estimated that there were up to 75 billion plastic particles per meter cubed in the facility’s wastewater. A majority of the microscopic pieces were smaller than 10 micrometers, about the diameter of a human red blood cell, with more than 80 percent below five micrometers, Brown said.She noted that the recycling facility studied was “relatively state-of-the-art” and had elected to install filtration. “It’s really important to consider that so many facilities worldwide might not have any filtration,” she said. “They might have some, but it’s not regulated at all.”While effective filters could help, Brown and other experts said they aren’t the solution.“I don’t think we can filter our way out of this problem,” Enck said.More research and better regulationEnck and other plastics experts not involved in the research said it underscores the need to look into the issue more deeply.“The findings are certainly alarming enough that it’s worthy of far more investigation and understanding of how widespread of an issue this might be,” said Anja Brandon, associate director of U.S. plastics policy at Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit group.Unlike other ways microplastic can wind up in the environment, recycling facilities could be identifiable sources, Brandon said.“We know where the pollution is coming … and we could take measures to actually do something about it through permitting, through regulation, through all of those kind of rules we have available,” she said. “This is an area we could take action on, provided we learn a little bit more.”Many of the environmental permitting requirements in the United States are based on decades-old standards that should be updated to reflect with “the best available science,” she added.Kara Pochiro, a spokesperson for the Association of Plastic Recyclers, an international trade association, said recyclers are subject to national, state and local regulations, including environmental laws.“Every plastics recycling facility works closely with their local municipal plant, including sampling and third-party testing at mutually agreed upon intervals,” she said.The Environmental Protection Agency said it will review the study.Keep recyclingDespite the study’s findings, experts emphasized that the answer isn’t to stop recycling.“What this study does not tell us … is that we should stop recycling plastic,” Brandon said. “So long as we are continuing to use plastic, mechanical recycling is really the best end-of-life scenario for these materials to keep us from needing to produce more and more plastic.”Plastic waste that isn’t reused or recycled generally ends up in landfills or incinerated, Enck said. It’s important, she and other experts said, for people to continue to try reducing the amount of plastic they use.“This is not a major reason why we have such a significant problem with microplastics in the environment,” she said. “But it’s potentially part of it and there’s an irony to it because it involves recycling.”

Build houses out of used nappies, scientists urge

Used nappies should be used in housebuilding to save sand, scientists have said.Up to 8% of the sand in the concrete and mortar used to make a single-storey house could be replaced with shredded used nappies without significantly diminishing their strength, scientists from the University of Kitakyushu, Japan, have found.The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, said building regulations could be changed to allow this material to be used, and it would reduce the carbon footprint of the homes as well as finding a use for the otherwise non-recyclable waste.Disposable nappies are usually composed of wood pulp, cotton, viscose rayon and plastics such as polyester, polyethylene and polypropylene. Because they cannot usually be recycled, the majority are disposed of in landfill or by incineration.The lead author, Siswanti Zuraida, and colleagues prepared concrete and mortar samples by combining washed, dried, and shredded disposable nappy waste with cement, sand, gravel, and water, curing the samples for 28 days. They then tested six samples containing different proportions of waste to measure how much pressure they could withstand without breaking. They then calculated the maximum proportion of sand that could be replaced with disposable nappies in a range of building materials.The researchers found concrete made with nappies was as good as conventional materials. They said: “The research also demonstrated that the mechanical properties and microbial content of disposable diaper concrete, in specific compositions, are identical to conventional concrete. Adding 1% diaper to concrete enhances internal curing hydration and produces the most robust, durable material. In addition, a mixture of up to 5% disposable diapers with concrete had the maximum strength at 28 days compared to other percentages.”The scientists said it was unlikely the use of nappies in the mixture would have any negative effects on health, as sodium chloride could be used to sanitise them.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt also found that using waste to create homes had more ecological benefits than incinerating it. The study says: “Compared to other waste management methods such as incineration and co-firing, the recycling of disposable diapers as concrete components has more significant benefits regarding carbon emissions and eco-costs. As a result, the study intends to tackle the problem of housing provision by creating building materials from non-degradable waste, which is cost-effective while meeting building standards.”

EPA joins in seeking to ditch ‘deceptive’ recycling symbol

For decades, three arrows pointing in a triangular loop have been the iconic symbol for recycling, but that could change. The Environmental Protection Agency — along with thousands of environmentalists and individuals — are urging the Federal Trade Commission to drop the symbol from plastics that aren’t actually recyclable.Misleading labels and false claims about “green” products confuse the public about what can and cannot be recycled or composted, according to the EPA. Environmentalists are urging the FTC to update its Green Guides — designed to help marketers avoid misleading consumers with environmental claims — to combat the problem.“We want consumers to get the information that they need to protect human health and the environment,” said Jennie Romer, the deputy assistant administrator for pollution prevention from the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. “FTC’s Green Guides are really an essential tool to combat deceptive advertising and prevent pollution.”Here’s what you need to know:Why is this happening now?Since 2018, U.S. companies and local recyclers have grappled with a glut of low-value plastics after China effectively banned the import of plastics and other materials. With no markets for what they have collected, regional processing plants have been burdened with paying disposal costs for non-recyclable plastics, said Romer.“There’s really not a point in collecting and sorting material that then doesn’t have anywhere else to go and ends up going to landfills or to an incinerator,” said Romer, who wrote the EPA’s comment.Though the recycling landscape has changed, the FTC has not updated its Green Guides in response.To Romer, the Green Guides need to be updated to prevent greenwashing — misleading claims about environmental impacts — and ensure that consumer expectations are aligned with the ways products are marketed.Many environmentalists agree.Companies are “purposely misleading people” by labeling throwaway plastic packaging as recyclable, said John Hocevar, the oceans campaign director at Greenpeace US.“We have been seeing really widespread use of misleading labels by retailers and consumer goods companies implying that items and especially packaging are recyclable when they aren’t,” Hocevar said.What do the recycling codes mean?Salad trays, milk jugs, clear drink bottles and other household items all are stamped with the recycling symbols — circular arrows with a number in the middle. But what do the numbers really mean?The resin identification code was created to categorize different types of plastics in the late 1980s. The seven categories alert recycling facilities to the type of resin found in each object.According to Patrick Krieger, the vice president of sustainability for the Plastics Industry Association, the codes were originally placed on products so they were readily visible to people hand-sorting plastic.Are the labels misleading?Not all resin numbers are recyclable, according to environmental experts. But putting the number inside the recycling symbol has led consumers to believe that they are.Combining the recycling symbol with the resin identification code “does not accurately represent recyclability as many plastics (especially 3-7) do not have end markets and are not financially viable to recycle,” the EPA said to the FTC in its comment. The EPA stated that the pairing is “confusing” for consumers.Resin No. 1 and 2, like bottles and jugs, are the most readily and economically recycled resins in the United States, according to the EPA. Greenpeace US argues that No. 1 and 2 bottles and jugs are the only plastics that can legitimately be considered “recyclable.”“Just because there’s a recycling symbol on packaging doesn’t mean that you should put it in the recycling bin,” Hocevar said. Most single-use plastic isn’t recyclable at all. Even No. 1 and 2 plastics can only be recycled once before they ultimately end up in a landfill or incinerator.Recycling categories 3 to 7 undermine the efficiency of the recycling process and are costly to collect and sort, Hocevar said.“The problem is that if you put 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 in the bin, they are not going to be recycled and they have to be sorted and removed from the recycling stream,” Hocevar said.What does the plastics industry think?Krieger of the Plastics Industry Association doesn’t agree that labeling is misleading. Krieger said that claims that certain plastics shouldn’t be labeled recyclable aren’t true. According to Krieger, the industry has recycled more than 1 billion tons of Resin No. 3.“That’s a very common misconception [that] often is perpetuated by plastics critics who recognize that people love plastic,” Krieger told The Washington Post.Krieger says plastic critics are “muddying the waters” by creating confusion about what is recyclable to undercut confidence in plastic.How do U.S. recycling rates compare with other countries?In 2016, the United States generated more than 42 million metric tons of plastic, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. According to Greenpeace, only 5 percent of the plastic that the country produced was recycled in 2021.The global results are even more grim.About 23 percent of global plastic waste was either improperly disposed of, burned or leaked into the environment, the EPA cited in its comment to the FTC. Plastics make up between 70 to 80 percent of waste that ends up in the environment, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.What should people do instead?It’s challenging to walk into a supermarket without purchasing a bunch of single-use plastic, but people need to avoid it as much as possible, Hocevar said.People should shift their focus beyond viewing recycling as a solution to the plastic crisis, Hocevar said. Instead, people need to reduce the amount of plastic they buy, reuse and refill it.“We have to stop thinking of all this throwaway plastic as recyclable and treat it for what it is: a very problematic type of waste,” he said.Romer suggests paying close attention to the labels and purchase items in No. 1 and 2 containers that have the highest chance of being recycled into another item. Individually, people should bring their own bags, water bottles and cups to prevent pollution.When will federal officials issue a decision?So far, the FTC has received more than 7,000 comments suggesting updates to its Green Guides — including those from the EPA — since the review was announced in December. But it is unclear whether change will happen anytime soon.Mitchell J. Katz, a public affairs specialist at the FTC, said the agency does not discuss submissions received during the public comment period until all have been reviewed and evaluated.If you would like to submit a comment to the FTC about ways that the Green Guides could be updated, send your suggestions here.

UN agency provides path to 80 percent reduction in plastic waste. Recycling alone won’t cut it

As delegates prepare to meet for a second negotiation on a global treaty to curtail plastic pollution, a pair of new reports from the United Nations Environment Program offers a roadmap of potential solutions to cut plastic waste by 80 percent—but also reveal the complexity of the problem.

Another recent United Nations action blocked what the chemical and plastic industries sometimes call “chemical recycling” from being fully incorporated into important global technical guidelines for managing plastic waste, potentially minimizing the role of such processes in any future global plastics treaty.

Together, this flurry of activity precedes the next round of U.N. plastics treaty talks to be held in Paris May 29 to June 2 as part of fast-tracked negotiations scheduled to wrap up by the end of next year. Last year, 175 nations agreed to find a way to stop future plastic production from choking ocean and land ecosystems and to clean up legacy plastic pollution.

“The way societies produce, use and dispose of plastic is polluting our ecosystems, creating risks for human health and destabilizing our climate,” said Inger Andersen, United Nations Environment Program executive director, in a news conference on Tuesday held to release one of the two new reports, “Turning off the Tap: How the world can end plastic pollution and create a circular economy.”

And, she said, “we know that people in the poorest nations and communities are those that suffer the most.”

The UNEP’s recommendations for achieving an 80 percent reduction globally in plastic pollution by 2040 included:

Promoting more options for re-using plastic, including refillable bottles, bulk dispensers, deposit-return schemes and packaging take-back programs.

Financially incentivize and stabilize commercial markets to promote more recycling of plastic now, while also removing fossil fuels subsidies and enforcing new design guidelines to make plastic more easily recyclable.

Replace certain types of plastic packaging with other materials, including paper.

“We’re talking about a systemic change, a systems change,” said Sheila Aggarwal-Khan, director of the Industry and Economy Division at UNEP. “That means that you cannot solve just one part of the problem. You cannot simply say, ‘Well, let’s just recycle our way out of the plastic pollution crisis.’ Or you cannot simply say, ‘Let’s just simply do away with single-use plastics.’”

Economic costs of plastic pollution “are running in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually,” Andersen said at the briefing from UNEP headquarters in Nairobi. Plastic waste, she added, is “destroying infrastructure, impacting energy production and tourism revenue, clogging our drains and flooding our cities and potentially impacting human health through exposure to hazardous chemicals.”

The starting point for change, she added, “is to eliminate unnecessary and problematic plastics,” and then to “systemically” change how plastics are made, used and recycled.

UN Officials: Solutions are Within Reach

As the U.N. delegates pack their bags for Paris, countries, industries and environmental groups have already been staking out their positions. The Biden administration’s opening position, dubbed “low ambition” by its critics, calls for individual national action plans as opposed to strong global mandates and does not seek enforceable cuts in plastics manufacturing, even though reducing plastic production was a key recommendation of the landmark 2021 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report on the devastating impacts of plastic pollution.

Instead, the U.S. proposal touts the benefits of plastics and calls for improved management of plastic waste such as re-use, recycling and redesigning plastics.

The European Union and a “high ambition” coalition of countries led by Norway and Rwanda are seeking global targets to reduce the production of plastics and phasing out risky chemical additives, such as endocrine disruptors like phthalates, which are used to make plastics pliable and are a threat to human health. They are seeking to end all plastic pollution by 2040.

In its Turning off the Tap report, the U.N. advocated for a circular plastics economy. 

“Circularity” has become something of a buzzword touted by industry, governments and some environmental groups, but with no widely accepted definition, to suggest products are repeatedly made from waste without tapping new natural resources. The U.N. report described circularity as a “zero-pollution plastics economy” that “eliminates unnecessary production and consumption, avoids negative impacts on ecosystems and human health, keeps products and materials in the economy and safely collects and disposes of waste that cannot be economically processed.”

UNEP noted that the world produces 430 million metric tons of plastics each year, of which over two-thirds are short-lived products that soon become waste, and a growing amount, or 139 million metric tons in 2021, after a single use. Plastic production is set to triple by 2060 under a “business-as-usual” scenario.

Solutions are within reach, but they will require nations to agree to work together to “transform the plastics economy,” according to the report. Even with such transformation, “a significant volume of plastics cannot be made circular in the next 10 to 20 years and will require disposal solutions to prevent pollution.”

But tackling the problem could save trillions of dollars in costs from the damage plastics cause to health, climate and marine ecosystems, the report found, while creating a net increase of 700,000 jobs by 2040, mostly in low-income countries.

Chemicals in Plastics Threaten Health, Environment

In a report dated May 3, “Chemicals in Plastics,” UNEP focused on the more than 13,000 chemicals associated with plastic products and manufacturing, noting that only about half of them have been screened for properties that would make them hazardous to people or the environment. At least 3,200 of the 7,000 screened chemicals have been identified as potentially of concern, according to the report. 

Those chemicals include some that persist for extended lengths of time and accumulate in the environment, where they can wreak havoc on wildlife or people. They include polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and some, like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which have been dubbed “forever chemicals.”

Many are used, emitted and released throughout the plastic lifecycle, from the extraction of oil and gas and the production of polymers and chemicals to the manufacturing, use and end-of-life management of plastics, according to the U.N. report. 

This graphic shows the pathways for human and ecosystem exposure to chemicals that are in plastics. It’s from “Chemicals in Plastics,” a May 2023 report by the United Nations Environment Program. Credit: UNEP and Secretariat of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions.

“These chemicals have been found to be associated with a wide range of acute, chronic, or multi-generational toxic effects, including specific target organ toxicity, various types of cancer, genetic mutations, reproductive toxicity, developmental toxicity, endocrine disruption and ecotoxicity,” the report concluded.

The varied chemical nature of plastic also makes it harder to recycle; less than 10 percent is now recycled worldwide.

Among that report’s recommendations were to “reduce plastic production and consumption, starting with non-essential plastics,” and “design and manufacture plastics that are free of chemicals of concern.”

UN Officials See Need to Boost Recycling, But Problems Persist

The American Chemistry Council, a leading lobbying group for plastics manufacturers, declined to comment on the U.N. reports.

But the chemical and plastics industries have, through marketing, advertising and lobbying campaigns, promoted the concept of advanced or chemical recycling and what they call “a more circular economy,” that reduces the need to tap virgin fossil fuels to make its products.

The U.N. report released Tuesday puts an emphasis on mechanical recycling, where waste plastics are typically collected, sorted, chopped, heated and molded into new plastic products. That’s even though mechanical recycling carries certain environmental risks, including, according to new research, the production of microplastics.

Inside Climate News on Tuesday reported on new research in the United Kingdom published in the Journal of Hazardous Material Advances. It found that all the chopping, shredding and washing of plastic at a recycling facility turned as much as six to 13 percent of the incoming waste into microplastics—tiny, toxic particles that are an emerging and ubiquitous environmental health concern for the planet and people.

“Mechanical recycling is probably the best that we have,” said Steven Stone, deputy director of the Industry and Economy Division for UNEP.  “Even if it’s not perfect, we can certainly improve the technology on mechanical recycling. And importantly, by improving the design of plastic products and improving what goes into the products in the first place, that can also help increase the efficiency of mechanical recycling.”

He said that standards for both the design of plastics and the operations of recycling facilities will be needed.

In the press conference, U.N. officials also described chemical recycling, a type of “advanced” recycling, as not really ready for prime time, and a less desirable option than mechanical recycling.

In January, U.S. government researchers found two prominent “advanced” technologies—pyrolysis and gasification—should not even be considered technologies that are “closed-loop,” another term for the circular economy. Pyrolysis and gasification require large amounts of energy and emit significant pollutants and greenhouse gases to turn discarded plastics into oil or fuel, or other chemical feedstocks, synthetic gases and a carbon char waste product.

“There is a huge carbon footprint on chemical recycling,” Andersen said, adding that “a good number of the chemical recycling (operations) today actually don’t recycle.” Instead, she said, companies are turning waste plastic into “very dirty fuels that can be burned off. And that is obviously not the way we want to go with climate change.”

She also said “there is a justice dimension” with chemical recycling; the plants tend to be located near the poorest people “and those who have the least voice in society.”

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The world can cut plastic pollution by 80% by 2040, the UN says

CNN
 — 

Countries could slash plastic pollution by 80% in less than two decades, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme.

Plastic pollution is a scourge that affects every part of the world, from the Arctic, to the oceans and the air we breathe.

It’s even changing ecosystems. Scientists recently found rocks made from plastic on a remote Brazilian island, and there is now so much plastic swirling in parts of the Pacific Ocean that communities of coastal creatures are thriving on it, thousands of miles from their home.

The last few decades have seen plastic production levels soar, especially single-use plastic, and waste management systems have not kept pace. The world generated 139 million metric tons of single use plastic waste in 2021.

Global production of plastic is set to triple by 2060 if no action is taken.

HANDOUT EDITORIAL USE ONLY/NO SALES
Mandatory Credit: Photo by The Ocean Cleanup Handout/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (9474204a)
An undated handout photo made available by The Ocean Cleanup on 23 March 2018 shows abandoned nets, ropes and other plastic garbage being pulled out of the ocean at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), located between halfway between Hawaii and California, USA. According to research by a team of scientists with The Ocean Cleanup Foundation, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean is now estimated to contain around 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic weighing 80,000 tons, sixteen times more than previously estimated.
Great Pacific Garbage Patch found to have sixteen times more plastic than previously estimated, At Sea, — – 23 Mar 2018

Handout/The Ocean Cleanup/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now so huge and permanent that a coastal ecosystem is thriving on it, scientists say 

UNEP’s report aims to offer a roadmap to governments and businesses to dramatically cut levels of plastic pollution. It focuses on three main strategies: reuse, recycling and alternative materials.

Reusing plastics would have the greatest impact, according to the report, which recommends promoting options such as refillable bottles, deposit programs to incentivize people to return plastic products and packaging take-back programs. This would be the most “powerful market shift,” reducing plastic pollution by 30% by 2040, the report said.

Scaling up recycling levels could reduce plastic pollution by a further 20%, according to the report. Only around 9% of plastics are recycled globally each year, with the rest ending up in landfill or incinerated.

The report also recommends discontinuing the fossil fuel subsidies that help make new plastic products cheaper, which disincentivizes recycling and the use of alternative materials. Fossil fuels are the raw ingredient for almost all plastics.

The use of appropriate alternative materials for single-use products, such as wrappers and sachets – including switching to compostable materials that more easily break down – could reduce plastic pollution by 17%, the report found.

People collecting plastic waste at Dandora dumpsite, in Nairobi, Kenya.

Simone Boccaccio/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

“The way we produce, use and dispose of plastics is polluting ecosystems, creating risks for human health and destabilizing the climate,” said Inger Andersen, UNEP Executive Director, in a statement.

“This UNEP report lays out a roadmap to dramatically reduce these risks through adopting a circular approach that keeps plastics out of ecosystems, out of our bodies and in the economy.”

The report estimates the investment needed for the changes it recommends will cost around $65 billion a year, but says this amount is far outweighed by the costs of doing nothing. Moving to an economy where plastic is reused and recycled could bring $3.25 trillion in savings by 2040, according to the report, by avoiding the negative impacts of plastic, including those on climate, health, air and water.

Cutting plastics by 80% would save 0.5 billion tons of planet-warming carbon pollution a year, the report estimated. It could also create 700,000 new jobs, mostly in developing countries.

Even with all these shifts, however, the world will still have to manage around 100 million metric tons of plastic waste from short-lived products by 2040, according to the report. That’s equivalent in weight to almost 5 million shipping containers – spread end to end, these could reach from New York City to Sydney, Australia and back again.

Tackling this will require stricter standards for non-recyclable waste and increasing the responsibility of manufacturers for the impacts of their plastic products, according to the report.

The report comes as countries prepare for a second round of negotiations in Paris later this month aimed at agreeing a world-first international plastics treaty, which would address the whole life of plastics from production to disposal. Whether the treaty will include curbs on plastic manufacturing remains a sticking point.

The plastic crisis finally gets emergency status

The problem is massive, demoralizing, and ostensibly impossible to fix. But today the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is dropping an urgent report on the extraordinary environmental and human costs of plastic pollution, along with a road map for the world to take action. With several strategies working in concert—like production cuts and more reuse of plastic products—the report finds that humanity might reduce that pollution 80 percent by 2040. The road map lands just weeks ahead of the second round of negotiations for an international treaty on plastics, which scientists and antipollution groups are hoping results in a significant cap on production.View moreThe report emphasizes the devastating price of our civilization’s addiction to plastic, “particularly when it comes to human health costs of plastics—so endocrine disruption, cognitive impairments, cancers,” says Steven Stone, deputy director of the Industry and Economy Division at the UNEP and a lead author of the report. “When you take those along with the cleanup costs of plastic pollution, you get in the range of $300 billion to $600 billion a year. This report is a message of hope—we are not doomed to incurring all of these costs.” In fact, the report notes, with action on plastic pollution, we might avoid $4.5 trillion in costs by 2040.
This road map builds on another alarming report the UNEP released earlier this month, which found that of the 13,000 known chemicals associated with plastics and their production, at least 3,200 have one or more hazardous properties of concern. Ten groups of these chemicals are of major concern, such as PFAS and phthalates. Of particular toxicity are a wide range of chemicals in plastics with endocrine-disrupting properties, which short-circuit the hormone system even in very low doses, leading to obesity, cancer, and other diseases. “There are these costs that are going to manifest in human health, in environmental destruction, in marine litter pollution,” Stone says. “Those are costs that fall on everyone. But the consumer of plastic doesn’t take pay for it, neither does the producer. So that’s a massive market failure.”
Plastic is, at the end of the day, a highly toxic material that’s infiltrated every aspect of our daily lives. The goal above all others should be to stop manufacturing so much of the stuff, so the new road map calls for eliminating unnecessary plastics, like the single-use variety.  But the challenge is that plastic remains absurdly cheap to produce—its many external costs be damned.
“This road map is headed in the right direction but must go much further to curb new plastics production,” says Dianna Cohen, CEO and cofounder of Plastic Pollution Coalition. “We are glad to see an emphasis on reduction and reuse, which are key elements of solutions to plastic pollution, as these actions can most rapidly help us diminish plastic production. Missing in the report is requiring industrial/corporate entities that produce material items to stop making more toxic fossil-fuel plastic, full stop.”
In addition to reducing production, the report argues, the world must improve recycling systems, which alone could reduce plastic pollution 20 percent by 2040. But recycling in its current form is problematic for a number of reasons. For one, the recycling rate in the United States is now just 5 percent of plastic waste. The US and other developed nations have long shipped millions upon millions of pounds of the plastic waste they can’t profitably recycle to developing countries, where bottles and bags and wrappers are often burned in open pits or escape into the environment. 
A core issue is that over the years, plastic products have gotten much more complicated and therefore much less recyclable: Nowadays, food pouches might have layers of different polymers, or a product might be half plastic, half paper. “By agreeing and then imposing design rules that allow, for instance, a limited number of polymers or a limited number of chemical additives that play well within the system, that already improves heavily the economics of recycling,” says Llorenç Milà i Canals, head of secretariat of the Life Cycle Initiative at the UNEP and lead coordinator of the report. “That makes recycling much more profitable because it will take much less to bring those materials back into the economy.”
However, even recycling that’s done properly comes at a huge environmental cost: A study published earlier this month found that a single facility might emit 3 million pounds of microplastic a year in its wastewater, which flows into the environment. The upside, at least, is that the facility would have released 6.5 million pounds of microplastic had it not installed filters, so there’s at least a way to mitigate that pollution. But these tiny particles have now corrupted the entirety of the planet, including a broad range of organisms. And generally speaking, as plastics production is increasing exponentially, microplastic pollution is increasing in lockstep. 
In that sense, then, recycling is making the plastic pollution problem worse. “Plastic was not designed to be recycled, and recycling it only reintroduces toxic chemicals and microplastics into the environment and our bodies,” says Cohen. “The [UNEP] report’s authors even go so far to acknowledge that even if it is achievable, a circular economy of plastics would be decades in the making, and even under the best scenario, following the road map as outlined would lead to approximately 136 million metric tons of plastic flowing into landfills, incinerators, and the environment to cause pollution in the year 2040. That is an enormous—and unacceptable—amount of plastic.”
Really, recycling allows the plastics industry to keep making all the plastic it wants, under the guise of sustainability. “If you had an overflowing bathtub, you wouldn’t just run for the mop first—you turn off the tap,” says Jacqueline Savitz, chief policy officer for the conservation nonprofit Oceana, who wasn’t involved in the report. “Recycling is the mop.”
Another strategy highlighted in the new report is “extended producer responsibility,” in which manufacturers don’t just make the stuff and wipe their hands of it. The plastics industry has long promoted recycling (even though it has known that the current system doesn’t work) because it makes you, the “careless” consumer, responsible for pollution. Extended producer responsibility puts the burden back on the industry, forcing producers to, say, implement systems to take bottles back and reuse them.
Additionally, the new report notes, countries might impose a tax on plastic, which would make it more expensive for manufacturers to churn out virgin plastic. Governments would then use that money to fund recycling programs and other mitigation measures to reduce plastic pollution. “The costs that are externalized to society are actually put up front,” says Stone. “And then recycled materials are much more competitive with the virgin materials. That will be a tremendous benefit for keeping plastics in play longer.”
Another way to keep plastics in circulation is to encourage reuse. So instead of having to recycle a single-use water bottle, ideally people would have their own reusable bottles to fill over and over. Instead of buying shampoo in a plastic bottle each time, people might visit refill stores. Combined, such reuse initiatives could reduce plastic pollution by 30 percent, the new report finds. “It does require systems and investment, but it has the potential to be a big economic opportunity,” says Savitz, of Oceana. “New companies could start out small but could end up being sort of the Amazon of reuse.”
Finally, the report calls for a “careful replacement” of certain plastic products—using paper or compostable materials instead, for instance. “Careful” meaning we wouldn’t want to widely deploy some sort of plastic alternative that ends up being just as toxic. This is already a problem, as plastics producers swap out known toxic chemicals, like bisphenol A (aka BPA), for similar chemicals that may be just as toxic, if not more so—a “regrettable substitution,” as scientists call it.
The good news, at least, is that plastic pollution is finally being elevated to emergency status in the international community. “The fact that there is consensus that this is an issue by all countries, to me means we have a tremendous opportunity,” says Stone. “It’s our job to get the science out there so that people can see the numbers and understand what the stakes are right now. Because plastics pollution is a time bomb, essentially, and we need to deal with it now.”

The world can cut plastic pollution by 80% by 2040, the UN says

CNN
 — 

Countries could slash plastic pollution by 80% in less than two decades, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme.

Plastic pollution is a scourge that affects every part of the world, from the Arctic, to the oceans and the air we breathe.

It’s even changing ecosystems. Scientists recently found rocks made from plastic on a remote Brazilian island, and there is now so much plastic swirling in parts of the Pacific Ocean that communities of coastal creatures are thriving on it, thousands of miles from their home.

The last few decades have seen plastic production levels soar, especially single-use plastic, and waste management systems have not kept pace. The world generated 139 million metric tons of single use plastic waste in 2021.

Global production of plastic is set to triple by 2060 if no action is taken.

UNEP’s report aims to offer a roadmap to governments and businesses to dramatically cut levels of plastic pollution. It focuses on three main strategies: reuse, recycling and alternative materials.

Reusing plastics would have the greatest impact, according to the report, which recommends promoting options such as refillable bottles, deposit programs to incentivize people to return plastic products and packaging take-back programs. This would be the most “powerful market shift,” reducing plastic pollution by 30% by 2040, the report said.

Scaling up recycling levels could reduce plastic pollution by a further 20%, according to the report. Only around 9% of plastics are recycled globally each year, with the rest ending up in landfill or incinerated.

The report also recommends discontinuing the fossil fuel subsidies that help make new plastic products cheaper, which disincentivizes recycling and the use of alternative materials. Fossil fuels are the raw ingredient for almost all plastics.

The use of appropriate alternative materials for single-use products, such as wrappers and sachets – including switching to compostable materials that more easily break down – could reduce plastic pollution by 17%, the report found.

“The way we produce, use and dispose of plastics is polluting ecosystems, creating risks for human health and destabilizing the climate,” said Inger Andersen, UNEP Executive Director, in a statement.

“This UNEP report lays out a roadmap to dramatically reduce these risks through adopting a circular approach that keeps plastics out of ecosystems, out of our bodies and in the economy.”

The report estimates the investment needed for the changes it recommends will cost around $65 billion a year, but says this amount is far outweighed by the costs of doing nothing. Moving to an economy where plastic is reused and recycled could bring $3.25 trillion in savings by 2040, according to the report, by avoiding the negative impacts of plastic, including those on climate, health, air and water.

Cutting plastics by 80% would save 0.5 billion tons of planet-warming carbon pollution a year, the report estimated. It could also create 700,000 new jobs, mostly in developing countries.

Even with all these shifts, however, the world will still have to manage around 100 million metric tons of plastic waste from short-lived products by 2040, according to the report. That’s equivalent in weight to almost 5 million shipping containers – spread end to end, these could reach from New York City to Sydney, Australia and back again.

Tackling this will require stricter standards for non-recyclable waste and increasing the responsibility of manufacturers for the impacts of their plastic products, according to the report.

The report comes as countries prepare for a second round of negotiations in Paris later this month aimed at agreeing a world-first international plastics treaty, which would address the whole life of plastics from production to disposal. Whether the treaty will include curbs on plastic manufacturing remains a sticking point.

Who said recycling was green? It makes microplastics by the ton

Research out of Scotland suggests that the chopping, shredding and washing of plastic in recycling facilities may turn as much as six to 13 percent of incoming waste into microplastics—tiny, toxic particles that are an emerging and ubiquitous environmental health concern for the planet and people.

A team of four researchers measured and analyzed microplastics in wastewater before and after filters were installed at an anonymous recycling plant in the United Kingdom. The study, one of the first of its kind, was published in the May issue of in the peer-reviewed Journal of Hazardous Material Advances.

If the team’s calculations are ultimately found to be representative of the recycling industry as a whole, the scale of microplastics created during recycling processes would be shocking—perhaps as much as 400,000 tons per year in the United States alone, or the equivalent of about 29,000 dump trucks of microplastics. The study suggests that rather than helping to solve plastics’ contribution to what the United Nations has described as a triple planetary crisis of pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss, recycling could be exacerbating the problem by creating an even more vexing conundrum.

Other scientists are finding microplastics in human blood, human placentas and in virtually all corners of the planet, and the United Nations has warned that chemicals in microplastics are associated with serious health impacts including changes to human genetics, brain development and reproduction.

The paper was published as United Nations delegates prepare to hold their second meeting to negotiate a potential global plastics treaty later this month in Paris, with one potential outcome being more plastics recycling as the chemical and plastics industry presses governments to keep plastic in the global economy.

“It seems quite backward to me,” said plastics researcher Erena Brown, who led the research while she was a graduate student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. “With plastic recycling, we have designed and initiated it in order to start protecting our environment. I think this study has shown that we have ended up creating a different if potentially slightly worse problem.”

The recycling plant allowed researchers to measure microplastics in wastewater before and after the plant installed filters, which Brown said definitely helped to reduce microplastics.

But even with filters, the study found that the mechanical recycling process that produced plastic pellets to make new plastic products could still allow as much as 75 billion particles of microplastics in a cubic meter of the plant’s wastewater.

In all, they calculated the plant would annually release as much as 3 million pounds of microplastics with filtration, and up to 6.5 million pounds without filtration. 

The study measured microplastics down to a size of 1.6 microns, which Brown said was smaller than two other similar studies that the researchers found. Still, she said, with the widespread prevalence of even smaller micro and nano plastics, smaller than the study’s size limit, the researchers believe their findings underestimate the problem.

“We assume that there are many, many, many particles in sizes smaller than this,” she said.

The researchers also detected microplastics in the air at the recycling facility and suggested that such air emissions should be the focus of additional research since breathing microplastics is a risk to lung health.

Recycling Could Create a ‘Ridiculous’ Amount of Microplastics

The plastics and packaging industries have pushed recycling and consumer responsibility for decades. But plastics are made with thousands of chemicals including additives designed to give them special properties including clarity, strength, color and flexibility. Many of those chemicals are toxic, and increasingly, scientists and environmental advocates have been warning that the complicated chemical nature of so many different types of plastic is what has helped make them so difficult to recycle.

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

In the United States, the recycling rate could be less than 6 percent, according to a 2022 report by the environmental groups Beyond Plastics and The Last Beach Cleanup.

Kara Pochiro, a spokesperson for the Association of Plastic Recyclers, a trade group representing the recycling industry, said “recycling is an industrial process regulated like any other industrial process in the U.S. Recyclers must conform with national, state, and local regulations regarding all aspects of the business including environmental laws.”

However, Brown said she’s not aware of any requirements anywhere that recyclers must track or limit the number or amount of microplastics in their wastewater effluent. And in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency does not specifically regulate microplastic discharges from wastewater treatment plants, wastewater experts said this week. 

The EPA did not respond to a request for comment.

Environmental advocates expressed alarm at the research findings.

The research suggests that recycling plants in the United States could be “creating ridiculous amounts of microplastics,” said Jan Dell, a chemical engineer who has worked as a consultant to the oil and gas industry and founded The Last Beach Cleanup, the nonprofit that fights plastic pollution and waste.

Dell said the study highlights a problem she said she has “been yelling about for years,” what she calls the “material waste rate” for plastic recycling, “but no one pays attention.” Her own calculations based on industry data she cited in her group’s report last year with Beyond Plastics estimated a 30 percent material loss for recycling PET plastic bottles, commonly used by beverage companies. “To make 100 bottles out of recycled plastic, 143 bottles have to be collected and processed,” she said.

The Association of Plastic Recyclers estimates there are more than 100 post-consumer plastic recycling operations in the United States and Canada. Many are likely sending their wastewater to municipal wastewater treatment facilities.

Generally, treatment plants are supposed to comply with rules that limit solid particles in their effluent. So regulations would capture some, but not all, microplastics—and what gets through would be the smaller and more dangerous particles, Dell said.

Microplastics captured in treatment end up in a plant’s biosolid byproduct, or sewage sludge, which is often spread on land as a fertilizer, allowing microplastics to contaminate the soil and wash into waterways during rain, according to a March report produced by the Minderoo-Monoco Commission on Human Health, a body of scientists assembled by the Australian-based Minderoo Foundation, and published in the Annals of Global Health, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

In fact, more microplastics are estimated to enter the soil from the use of wastewater sludge for agricultural purposes each year than microplastics entering the ocean or freshwater sediments, the commission study found. 

“The presence of (microplastics) in sewage sludge poses a threat to soil health and productivity and could cause harm to soil-dwelling biota,” the Minderoo-Monoco group found.

“Microplastic has to go somewhere,” Dell said. “It doesn’t disappear.”

Study Adds to UN Plastics Debate

California is at the forefront of microplastics regulatory investigations and potential actions, and is weighing options to limit microplastics in water bodies, said Shelley Walther, an environmental scientist at the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts. She’s also leading a task force on microplastics with the Water Environment Federation, an industry group for wastewater professionals.

A 2016 study in Los Angeles found that wastewater treatment designed to collect “suspended solids” are more than 99 percent effective at capturing microplastics, she said. But she also said that the study did not include the smallest of the particles.

Walther said that among the challenges of curbing microplastics is that they are hard to measure. “There’s still not a lot of great technology,” Walther said.

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