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THE TRAIN THAT DERAILED NEAR THE Ohio-Pennsylvania border in February 2023 was hauling mixed frozen vegetables. It was hauling malt liquor and semolina flour as well as chemicals used to make plastics. Chemicals like vinyl chloride monomer. Think of vinyl chloride like metaphorical railcars. When coupled end-on-end-on-end, they make up the long-haul train that is polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic, which the manifest suggests other cars on the actual ill-fated train were also carrying.
PVC is garden hoses. Is water pipes. Is shower curtains. Is siding and decking and flooring and toys. It is medical tubing and IV bags. And for the audiophiles among you, it is records, also called vinyl, even when sometimes pressed from polystyrene.
Vinyl chloride is a carcinogen. Burning vinyl chloride, like burning PVC plastic, creates the conditions to form even more potent chemicals called dioxins.
Multiple companies make PVC plastics. The PVC on the derailed train was carried in cars tagged ROIX, which in railroad speak means the cars were owned by a company called Shintech. Shintech—“the world’s largest producer of PVC”—is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Japanese firm, Shin-Etsu. In the U.S., it operates PVC plants in Freeport, Texas, and in Addis and Plaquemine, Louisiana.
Multiple companies make vinyl chloride. Norfolk Southern was carrying vinyl chloride in at least two cars traceable (the car ID, OCPX) to OxyVinyls, a division of OxyChem, which is a division of Occidental Petroleum. OxyVinyl’s vinyl chloride plant is in Deer Park, Texas, near the Houston Ship Channel, where a tornado ripped through earlier this year, knocking the plant temporarily offline.
Sometimes vinyl chloride and PVC factories cluster together, says Jim Vallette of Material Research, who has mapped the industry. For example, the companies Olin and Dow each supply vinyl chloride to Shintech’s neighboring Louisiana and Texas PVC plants, Vallette told me.
Other times, the railroad is how vinyl chloride is ferried to distant PVC plants, and then how finished PVC gets to its molders and fabricators.

IT IS UNCLEAR WHAT EXACT ROUTE the East Palestine train was traveling.
Chemical engineers, like train engineers, also speak of routes—the different pathways by which hydrocarbons can be coaxed toward the same destination.
There are multiple routes to making vinyl chloride.
All routes require chlorine.
Chlorine is bleach. Is white linens and white paper. Is disinfectant. Is the WWI-era war gas racing across the fields at Ypres before sinking down into the trenches and the lungs of unsuspecting soldiers.
No other industry uses more chlorine than PVC.
Chlorine is made from brine, which is to say salt, from which the chlorine must be split.

PVC is garden hoses. Is water pipes. Is shower curtains. Is siding and decking and flooring and toys. It is medical tubing and IV bags.

Historically, mercury figured prominently in this process.
Then asbestos.
Now the chlorine industry is pivoting toward using membranes manufactured from a chemical in the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) family. PFAS is a group of at least 12,000 substances; the better studied of the group have been associated with a number of health effects, including cancers.
Asbestos is a carcinogen with its own signature cancer: mesothelioma.
Mercury is a heavy metal and, in the form of methylmercury, it is teratogenic (meaning it causes birth defects, notably on the developing brain and nervous system, my colleague at the Science and Environmental Health Network, Dr. Ted Schettler, reminded me). It is also a neurotoxicant and a global pollutant, so much so that its industrial use falls under a United Nations treaty: the Minamata Convention on Mercury.
The convention is named for a town and a bay on an island in the south of Japan.
It, too, has a signature disease—Minamata disease—though some who live with it have stated they would rather it be called what it is, which is severe industrial methylmercury poisoning.
The community of Minamata is more readily associated with mercury than with what the mercury was used to make, which are (among other endpoints) the chemicals used to make vinyl chloride and vinyl.
One hundred and forty nations convened in Japan in 2013 to adopt the Minamata Convention. Fifty nations had to sign for it to go into effect.
Japan didn’t ratify the convention until February 2016.
The East Palestine train derailment followed seven years later. Almost to the day.
I haven’t yet explained the different routes to vinyl chloride.
Early process patents were filed in 1912, writes the late historian Morris Kaufman, who began studying the history of PVC production at Imperial College London in the 1960s. German attempts to scale production didn’t yield a commercially viable product, so thirteen years later, the patents were allowed to lapse. A handful of companies picked up the research and development, making PVC’s origins international, diffuse, and difficult to neatly trace, said Kaufman.
In the U.S., Union Carbide, since bought by Dow (which merged with DuPont, reshuffled itself, and reemerged as “the new” Dow), began producing vinyl chloride in 1929 at a petrochemical complex—at the time something entirely new under the sun—along the Kanawha River, a tributary of the Ohio, which is a tributary of the Mississippi, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico.
PVC production commenced the following year in 1930, though it took a while for the plastic to catch on. Union Carbide set up along the Kanawha to take advantage of Appalachian natural gas, which the company had been a front-runner in exploiting. There was already a WWI-era chlorine plant next door.
Scientific research on vinyl chloride toxicity followed immediately thereafter, with papers appearing in the literature in the 1930s, too.
Another route begins from petroleum, which historically is how vinyl chloride has been made along the U.S. Gulf Coast.
A third route to vinyl chloride instead starts from coal.

The East Palestine disaster makes plain just how many communities are enveloped by plastics and have experienced both routine releases and environmental disasters linked to its production. 

BEGINNING IN 1932, THIS IS HOW THE COMPANY that is now Japan’s Chisso Corporation opted to make vinyl chloride at Minamata. The company made carbide from the limestone found just north of town and the coalfields of northern Kyushu. From carbide to acetylene, and acetylene via a mercury catalyst to acetaldehyde, and onward to vinyl chloride and also, in a separate process, to a plasticizer called dioctyl phthalate (DOP for short), which also is used to soften PVC as well as other plastics.
The company also began routing its mercury-laden wastes into Minamata Bay that same year.
The mercury poisoned the water, which poisoned the fish, which poisoned the fisherfolk and their families who ate it. The last in line to be poisoned were the babies born from wombs poisoned with mercury.
“I had a vision of myself trying to swallow Japanese capitalism,” writes Michiko Ishimure, a writer from Minamata often compared to Rachel Carson.
Since the 1960s, she published—to much acclaim—genre-spanning “nonfictional novels” about the disaster. The first volume she titled Kugai jōdo (Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow). For decades, she advocated for the people of Minamata, though “year after year withered and fell off neatly,” she wrote, “like dead leaves or the brain cells of the victims of mercury poisoning.”
The witnessing, the writing, wore on her: all “these highly significant historical moments stuck in my throat.” It is suspected Ishimure suffered nerve damage from mercury as well.
Though officials recognized the first cases of Minamata disease in 1956, it wasn’t until 1968 that the Japanese government went on the record, admitting “that the cause for the disease was the methylmercury from the Chisso factory,” said Timothy George, professor emeritus of history at the University of Rhode Island and author of the book, Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan.
Chisso already had ceased using mercury in their acetaldehyde process earlier that year.
“The company itself never officially acknowledged responsibility until it lost, in 1973, a lawsuit brought by the patients that ordered it to pay the largest settlement in Japanese legal history up to that time,” he added.
Other court cases followed.
As did, eventually, the Minamata Convention, which includes provisions to phase out the global use of mercury in chlorine, vinyl chloride, and acetaldehyde production.

Read more from Rebecca about our plastic legacy here.

“Incredibly,” says Vallette, “the mercury-acetylene route is still used (and expanding) in the Uyghur region” of northwestern China, where PVC plastics are made using the forced labor of the Uyghur people, many of whom are Muslim.
The U.S. passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and now U.S. Customs and Border Protection is banning the import of vinyl flooring from plastics made at these factories.
Still, they “are probably the most polluting plastics plants in the world,” he says. “The PVC plants [there] release more than 50 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, and are continuing to use and release massive amounts of mercury.”
Despite the Minamata Convention.
Says Vallette: these PVC plants “deserve a lot more attention.”

IN 2022, THE UNITED NATIONS GATHERED the global community, this time in Nairobi, Kenya, where overwhelming international support began negotiations toward a legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. The Minamata Convention was held up as a model.
Negotiations opened last fall in Uruguay. They will convene again in Paris this May.
At issue is whether nations will adopt measures to address plastics’ upstream toxic use (in addition to the accumulation of downstream waste).
Plastics experts—myself among them—have called for the treaty to cap production of nonessential plastics; to uphold human rights, including the right to a safe work and home environment; and to push the industry toward safer, more transparent, and less chemically complicated production. Meaning: what to do about mercury, asbestos, PFAS, and the thousands of other already known toxics used in plastics production, and also what to do about monomers like vinyl chloride and plastics like PVC and incidental byproducts like dioxins ought to be on the table.
But the dialogue more often focuses on plastics as a waste problem. If the treaty adopts this narrowed understanding about why so many plastics are problematic, then what has happened in Minamata or East Palestine, then what is happening in China and plastics corridors the world over, won’t seem relevant to a broad instrument that also could be designed to prevent future disasters, future long emergencies in communities living along plastics’ production, transport, and handling routes.
Plastics is a system held up by toxics. By chemicals exemplified by vinyl chloride monomer. As well as by processes that make the intermediates that make the monomers that make the plastics. That system is laid bare when trains linking nodes in plastics’ vast petrochemical network ignite or are, as also happened in Ohio, intentionally burned.
The East Palestine disaster makes plain just how many communities are enveloped by plastics and have experienced both routine releases and environmental disasters linked to its production. When it comes to environmental history, says George, “there is no such thing as the history of just one little place. Every place is connected to every other.”
Regardless of what route the train arrived in East Palestine, in a way it had passed through all the places where vinyl chloride ever has shaped lives and livelihoods. Places I haven’t yet mentioned like, Illiopolis, Illinois, where a PVC plant exploded. Or plants across Italy or in Louisville, Kentucky, where vinyl workers died from angiosarcoma. And in Belgium or Romania, where those who’d climbed down into the vats to clean them were forced into early retirement with fingers too disfigured to function by the rare bone-reabsorbing disease acroosteolysis. Places like Morrisonville and Reveilletown and Mossville, Louisiana, predominantly Black communities, polluted, but ultimately displaced by vinyl production despite communities organizing to protect them.
Places like Minamata.
Read Sandra Steingraber’s account of another PVC disaster here.

“CAN MINAMATA EVER TRULY BE OVER?” writes George. “So many ‘final and complete’ solutions have all turned out to be so incomplete.”
The documentary filmmaker Kazuo Hara says that for the people of Minamata, “the story is far from over.” His documentary, Minamata Mandala, released in 2020, took well over a decade to film. It centers on the story of the people of Minamata, some of whom continue to travel around the globe as kataribe, storytellers. The film is six hours long.
Also in 2020, a major motion picture, called Minamata and based more or less on historical events, premiered in Berlin. It stars Johnny Depp as U.S. photojournalist W. Eugene Smith, who in the 1970s, at the behest of the Minamata community, and alongside Aileen Smith (portrayed by Minami), made pictures for Life magazine to help them make their case. The film’s 2022 U.S. release, however, was overshadowed by Depp’s involvement in a high-profile case of his own. To the detriment of the people living out the long legacy of mercury—and vinyls—in Minamata and beyond.
While searching for the details about Chisso’s production methods, I stumbled on news of the film, and also of its soundtrack, written by the celebrated Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, who has won two Golden Globes, an Oscar, and a Grammy, and passed away from cancer while I was working on this essay.
I’ve been listening to the Minamata soundtrack on repeat as I write; the writing taking on (uncharacteristically for me) a steadiness, like wheels on rails, paragraph after paragraph. It is somber, profound, transporting, a reflection of the scale of the industrial disaster and decades of care work and community activism that also is Minamata.
Recently, the soundtrack was released, I’m not kidding, on vinyl.

The author wishes to thank Timothy George, Bethanie Carney Almroth, Patricia Villarrubia-Gomez, Jim Vallette, and Ted Schettler for their expert research and advice in preparing/reviewing this essay. Additional bibliographic resources have been posted to the author’s website: www.rebecca-altman.com.

Just ahead of this year’s Super Bowl in February, the City of Phoenix, Arizona, published a peculiar press release touting its strategy for waste diversion. Thanks to its relationship with Direct Pack Incorporated, a multinational company that makes and recycles plastic, the city said it would be able to send much of its plastic waste to Mexico for recycling.

“[T]he City of Phoenix stands ready to achieve its goal of hosting the greenest Super Bowl events yet,” the announcement from Phoenix’s public works department said.

The city was referring to a forthcoming Direct Pack facility for recycling plastic items called PET thermoforms — clamshells, berry containers, salad boxes, egg cartons, and similarly shaped containers made from polyethylene terephthalate, one of the seven main kinds of plastic. Direct Pack already has a recycling facility in Guadalajara that it says can recycle tens of thousands of tons of PET thermoforms each year, and it’s been constructing a new one in Mexicali, Mexico, just across the border from California. 

The facility is great news for plastic companies based in the U.S., where industry publications say PET thermoform recycling has remained “a struggle.” These companies face growing scrutiny over skyrocketing plastic pollution, and they have spent decades trying to convince the public that recycling is the answer. Direct Pack says on its website that it can give PET thermoforms new life again and again, turning plastic containers like those thrown away at the Phoenix Super Bowl into a “valuable infinite resource.” 

But environmental advocates in Mexico are less excited about the idea of processing more of what they see as garbage from abroad. “The U.S. shouldn’t send this waste to Mexico,” said Marisa Jacott, director of the Mexican nonprofit Fronteras Comunes. “We have less money, less infrastructure.” Rather than engaging in what she called “waste colonialism,” she urged U.S. companies to stop producing so much plastic in the first place and to stop promoting recycling as a cure-all to the plastic waste crisis. 

Direct Pack’s Mexicali facility is part of a larger plan from the U.S. plastics industry to improve recycling infrastructure for the 1.6 billion pounds of PET thermoforms that the U.S. and Canada produce every year. Unlike the PET bottles used for bottled water, soda, and fruit juice, which are among the easiest plastic products to recycle, PET thermoforms are accepted by just 11 percent of the U.S.’s material recovery facilities, or MRFs — the plants where mixed materials from recycling bins like paper, aluminum, and plastic are sorted into bales for further processing. And even that doesn’t mean that those thermoforms will ultimately be turned into new products; most recyclers are unwilling to buy and reprocess PET thermoforms because it costs more to sort, wash, and recycle them than to make new plastics.

The main North American trade group for PET container recyclers lists only one facility in the U.S. that will accept PET-only bales of plastic for reprocessing. The president of another industry group, the Association of Plastic Recyclers, said last year that PET thermoforms were a low-volume commodity that weren’t worth the costs of sorting and storage.

Given such a bleak landscape, Ornela Garelli, an oceans and plastic campaigner for the nonprofit Greenpeace Mexico, said the promise of thermoform recycling is a “greenwashing strategy” from the plastics industry — a way to justify the continued production of plastics. She said it’s time to stop making so many thermoforms in the first place, not hold out hope that more recycling infrastructure will ever be able to keep up with a growing glut of plastic waste.

Still, U.S. plastic makers are doubling down. A U.S.-based nonprofit called The Recycling Partnership — funded and overseen by plastic and packaging companies, including Coca-Cola and Exxon Mobil — said it plans to fund a number of PET recycling efforts this year, beginning with a first round of grants announced in early January for three companies focused on PET reclamation. 

One of these companies is Direct Pack, whose headquarters are in Azusa, California, just outside Los Angeles. But rather than building out PET thermoform recycling infrastructure stateside, The Recycling Partnership’s grant is being used to help Direct Pack build a new PET recycling facility in Mexicali, set to begin operating this spring. According to The Recycling Partnership, the plant will source thermoforms from across the U.S., process them into a plastic feedstock called “flake,” and send them across the street to an existing Direct Pack thermoform production plant, where they will be converted into new packaging.

Strawberries packed in plastic clamshells.
Getty Images

Andrew Jolin, Direct Pack’s director of sustainability, told Grist that “the whole process is environmentally sound,” adding that the company has been “embraced by the local community with our competitive pay scale and benefits.” He said concerns about the recyclability of PET thermoforms are “disinformation” propagated by Greenpeace and that Direct Pack plans to open a similar recycling plant in North Carolina by the end of the year.

Critics, however, have raised legal and ethical objections. Jim Puckett, founder and executive director of the U.S.-based nonprofit Basel Action Network, told Grist it was “disgusting” that the City of Phoenix and the companies represented by The Recycling Partnership were touting the Mexicali facility. “Of course it’s wonderful for them, they get to sweep their garbage across the border,” he said.

Puckett said the Mexicali facility could run afoul of an international agreement called the Basel Convention, which regulates the international plastic waste trade. Although the U.S. hasn’t ratified the agreement, Mexico has — meaning it’s illegal for Mexico to import plastic waste from the U.S. unless it’s “almost free from contamination and other types of waste” and “destined for recycling in an environmentally sound manner,” rather than incinerated or dumped. Bales of PET that contain more than 2 percent other types of plastic, paper, metal, food, or other materials are generally regulated under the Basel Convention as “hazardous waste” and are banned from U.S.-Mexico trade.

“It’s really difficult to achieve that level of cleanliness,” Puckett said. In California, MRFs are unable to sort bales of PET beyond an average of about 10 percent contamination — and that’s when they include PET bottles. There’s virtually no data on contamination in thermoform-only bales — since most recyclers in the U.S. won’t buy PET thermoforms, they’re typically not sorted into bales on their own.

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Craig Snedden, Direct Pack’s president, said the company does not check PET bales before they’re exported from the U.S. to the company’s Guadalajara facility, but he’s confident that they contain less than 2 percent contamination, based on data on the weight of PET collected compared to the weight of all the nonrecyclable materials Direct Pack sends to a landfill. Adam Gendell, The Recycling Partnership’s director of materials advancement, said the most common types of contamination are from food, which “doesn’t sink anybody’s ship” or “cause deleterious effects to the natural environment.” 

In response to a detailed list of questions, a spokesperson for the City of Phoenix referred Grist to Direct Pack and highlighted its goal of achieving “zero waste” by 2050.

Environmental groups have also raised concerns that PET thermoform recycling could divert millions of gallons of water from residential use in Mexicali, which was declared to be in a state of emergency drought last summer. Multiple washes are required to remove sticky glues and labels from PET thermoforms, making them significantly more water-intensive to recycle than bottles.

Jolin said the Mexicali facility would “not use a lot of fresh water” — about 800 gallons per day. He said it’s more environmentally friendly to recycle PET thermoforms than to make packages out of other materials like paper, because doing so requires more trees to be harvested. (The U.S. recycling rate for cardboard is greater than 90 percent, compared to 5 percent for plastic.)

Garelli, with Greenpeace Mexico, said supporting a PET thermoform recycling plant in Mexico allows Direct Pack and its funders through The Recycling Partnership to skirt labor regulations that are tougher in the U.S. The minimum wage in Mexicali is about $17 per day — $2.12 an hour, based on an eight-hour workday — compared to $15.50 an hour in California.

“Instead of forcing their own companies to make the transition toward reusability, they are sending all their plastic waste to countries where there are more flexible laws,” she said. “They can pay low salaries to the workers.”

Federal data compiled by the Basel Action Network shows that U.S. plastic waste exports to Latin America have grown by some 90 million pounds per year since 2017, when China stopped accepting it with its “National Sword” policy. “It is not fair for countries — not only Mexico but other Latin American countries — to keep receiving this waste from the U.S.,” Garelli said. 

Editor’s note: Greenpeace is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

The Oregon Senate on Monday passed a bill that would ban prepared food venders from using foam containers, which take centuries to decompose. 
Senate Bill 543 banning polystyrene takeout containers, also called Styrofoam, a trademarked name, passed  20-9, with bipartisan support. It now goes to the House. 
“Polystyrene is a threat to the health of our communities and our land,” said Sen. Janeen Sollman, D-Hillsboro, a chief sponsor of the bill. “This is a step towards a more sustainable and mindful approach to consumption and a commitment to preserving the health, beauty, and diversity of Oregon for generations to come.”
Polystyrene is a petroleum-based plastic and was commercially produced starting in the 1930s. The nonbiodegradable material has been in the crosshairs of environmentalists for decades. In 1986, the Environmental Protection Agency declared the polystyrene manufacturing process the fifth largest source of hazardous waste. 
They are also a source of litter, and the foam can break down into tiny pieces, posing a hazard to wildlife and polluting waterways.
In areas where the containers are banned, vendors can use other options such as paper cups and cardboard food containers.
The measure, if passed, would go into effect in 2025 and apply to a variety of prepared food vendors, including restaurants, delis and food trucks and carts. Food vendors would face a fine of up to $100 a day for violations. 
The nine senators opposed to the measure included eight Republicans and Sen. Brian Boquist, I-Dallas. 
Sen. Art Robinson, R-Cave Junction, said the bill is another example of a restriction on businesses. 
“Here we go again,” Robinson said in a statement explaining his vote. “Another small requirement. We are now deciding what disposable containers restaurants may use.”
Local ordinances banning polystyrene foam foodware products have passed in Oregon cities, including Portland, Ashland, Eugene, Florence, Lincoln City, Medford, Milwaukie, Newport and Silverton.
Other states have passed laws limiting polystyrene, including Washington, Colorado,  Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Virginia.

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Fashion wastelands in Africa and the Atacama Desert
A project called Dead White Man’s Clothes, after the name given to clothing exports from the West to Ghana, shows grimly the problem of fashion waste exports.
[embedded content]
The UK is the biggest exporter to Ghana. In fact, the UK produces the most clothing waste in Europe. And we’re the second largest used clothing exporter in the world, after the US.
Traders and tailors in Accra’s Kantamanto market work hard to repurpose and sell the clothing that arrives on their shores.
The upcycling and reuse culture in Accra is a great example of what a more sustainable and circular fashion industry could look like.
But the sheer volume – and poorly constructed fast fashion items that aren’t made to last – means a lot of it is impossible to use and upcycle.
So it ends up in landfills, wrapped around the ropes of fishing boats near Accra, and strewn across beaches.

Solomon Noi, the city’s head of waste management, reckons that 40% of the used clothing coming through Accra’s port ends up as garbage. A landfill that was supposed to have a lifespan of 25 years filled up in three.https://t.co/TenL37Mkjm via @BW
— Valérie Boiten (@Valerie_Boiten) November 9, 2022

And Ghana isn’t the only country facing these massive problems. A recent investigation revealed that Europe is dumping 37 million pieces of plastic clothing on Kenya, too.
A 2022 Greenpeace report found massive fashion waste exports pouring into Kenya and Tanzania. In 2019 alone, 185,000 tonnes of second-hand clothes were imported into Kenya. In East Africa this second hand fashion is called “Mitumba”, a Kiswahili word meaning bale or bundle, because it is typically sold to retailers in bales.
30–40% of Mitumba imported to Kenya is of such bad quality that it cannot be sold anymore, meaning in 2019, Kenya had to deal with 150–200 tonnes of fashion and textile waste per day.
And there’s also the Atacama Desert, where piles of clothing waste were documented in 2021:
[embedded content]
This is all very embarrassing for the fashion industry. They make too much – and they know it.
But what happens when clothing doesn’t even make it into the hands of buyers? Some of this brand-new, unworn clothing also ends up in places like Ghana.
A lot of it is sent to be burned.
The industry literally burns its own clothes
A lot of unsold stock from companies – knowingly producing far too much to drive prices down – is probably incinerated. But it’s an industry secret how much brand new fashion gets burned.
Burberry shocked the world by accidentally leaking details of its £26-million bonfire of luxury goods in 2018. So it’s no wonder the whole industry has doubled down on hiding their practices.
Why don’t these companies recycle these surplus clothes?
Recycling textiles can be difficult and expensive. Take a look at any clothing label – fibres are often so mixed up, they’ll never be separated and reused in any useful way.  And again, with such large volumes, made with massive amounts of cheap materials, wastage in factories is also high.
Greenpeace’s investigative journalists from Unearthed found that garment waste from Nike, Ralph Lauren, Next, and other leading brands were burned to fuel brick kilns in Cambodia.
[embedded content]
Because so much fashion is made from essentially plastic, burning it can be extremely toxic to health. The investigation found that black, choking smoke and noxious fumes exposed bonded workers to toxic chemicals – leading to coughs, colds, flus, nose bleeds and lung inflammation.
Usually such kilns would be fuelled by wood. But fashion waste is so plentiful (thanks to supplies being cheaper in larger quantites) that several hundred tons are being burned in Cambodia every day.

Bottled water is one of the world’s most popular beverages, and its industry is making the most of it. Since the millennium, the world has advanced significantly towards the goal of safe water for all. In 2020, 74 per cent of humanity had access to safe water. This is 10 per cent more than two decades ago. But that still leaves two billion people without access to safe drinking water.

Meanwhile, bottled water corporations exploit surface water and aquifers — typically at very low cost — and sell it for 150 to 1,000 times more than the same unit of municipal tap water. The price is often justified by offering the product as an absolute safe alternative to tap water. But bottled water is not immune to all contamination, considering that it rarely faces the rigorous public health and environmental regulations that public utility tap water does.

In our recently published study, which studied 109 countries, it was concluded that the highly profitable and fast-growing bottled water industry is masking the failure of public systems to supply reliable drinking water for all.

The industry can undermine progress of safe-water projects, mostly in low- and middle-income countries, by distracting development efforts and redirecting attention to a less reliable, less affordable option.

Bottled water industry can disrupt SDGs

The fast-growing bottled water industry also impacts the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in many ways.

The rising sales of global bottled water is contributing to plastic pollution on land and in the oceans.
(Shutterstock)

The latest UN University report revealed that the annual sales of the global bottled water market is expected to double to US$500 billion worldwide this decade. This can increase stress in water-depleted areas while contributing to plastic pollution on land and in the oceans.

Growing faster than any other in the food category worldwide, the bottled water market is biggest in the Global South, with the Asia-Pacific, Africa and Latin American and Caribbean regions accounting for 60 per cent of all sales.

But no region is on track to achieve universal access to safe water services, which is one of the SDG 2030 targets. In fact, the industry’s greatest impact seems to be its potential to stunt the progress of nations’ goals to provide its residents with equitable access to affordable drinking water.

Impact on vulnerable nations

In the Global North, bottled water is often perceived to be healthier and tastier than tap water. It is, therefore, more a luxury good than a necessity. Meanwhile, in the Global South, it is the lack or absence of reliable public water supply and water management infrastructure that drives bottled water markets.

Therefore, in many low- and middle-income countries, particularly in the Asia Pacific, rising consumption of bottled water can be seen as a proxy indicator of decades of governments’ failure to deliver on commitments to safe public water systems.

The rising consumption of bottled water in some countries can be seen as a proxy indicator of decades of governments’ failure to deliver on commitments to safe public water systems.
(Shutterstock)

This further widens the global disparity between the billions of people who lack access to reliable water services and the others that enjoy water as a luxury.

In 2016, the annual financing required to achieve a safe drinking water supply throughout the world was estimated to cost US$114 billion, which amounts to less than half of today’s roughly US$270 billion global annual bottled water sales.

Regulating the bottled-water industry

Last year, the World Health Organization estimated that the current rate of progress needs to quadruple to meet the SDGs 2030 target. But this is a colossal challenge considering the competing financial priorities and the prevailing business-as-usual attitude in the water sector.

As the bottled water market grows, it is more important than ever to strengthen legislation that regulates the industry and its water quality standards. Such legislation can impact bottled water quality control, groundwater exploitation, land use, plastic waste management, carbon emissions, finance and transparency obligations, to mention a few.

Our report argues that, with global progress toward this target so far off-track, expansion of the bottled water market essentially works against making headway, or at least slows it down, adversely affecting investments and long-term public water infrastructure.

Some high-level initiatives, like an alliance of Global Investors for Sustainable Development, aim to scale up finance for the SDGs, including water-related ones.

Such initiatives offer the bottled water sector an opportunity to become an active player in this process and help accelerate progress toward reliable water supply, particularly in the Global South.

There’s a common thread linking many of the high-profile chemical spills that have made headlines across the country lately: the oil and gas industry. Philadelphia residents were on high alert after the Trinseo latex plant 20 miles from the city released at least 8,100 gallons of acrylic polymers into a tributary for the Delaware River on March 24. Those acrylic polymers were made up of compounds known as butyl acrylate, ethyl acrylate, and methyl methacrylate; all are produced from fossil fuels.
Last month, East Palestine, Ohio, faced a Norfolk Southern train derailment with highly volatile toxic chemicals, including butyl acrylate and vinyl chloride — which is also derived from oil. On March 28, 10 barges, including one containing 1,400 metric tons of methanol — yup, you guessed it, made from oil or gas — broke loose in the Ohio River in Kentucky.
Many other incidents don’t make national news: The Guardian reported that the US has averaged a chemical accident every two days so far in 2023. Every year, there’s an average of 202 accidental chemical releases at facilities, according to EPA data.
This adds up to a major threat to water quality. “In the US, chemical exposure probably is the biggest threat to water quality, particularly drinking water quality, whether that is direct chemical exposure from facilities like what happened in Philadelphia or chemical exposure from products,” said Joel Tickner, who is a professor of public health at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and leads the nonprofit Green Chemistry & Commerce Council.
All these events are usually lumped together in the vague category of a chemical spill, but it’s important to get more specific than that. Petrochemicals — as this class of compounds are known — are ubiquitous today, used to make some form of the plastic found in detergents, cosmetics, clothing, packaging, and more. (The Trinseo plant near Philadelphia, for instance, was basically making paint.)
There’s a reason plastics and petrochemicals are in nearly everything. They’re dirt cheap — and useful. The industry has become extremely efficient at converting fossil fuels into sets of materials that are lighter in weight and pliable, making them as adaptable for medical equipment as they are for lip balm, nail polish, clothing, and single-use coffee cups.
But the adaptability comes at a cost. These chemicals can conceivably be produced and transported safely — at least on paper. But the volume of accidents shows how often they aren’t. In 2022, according to federal data, there were more than 20,000 recorded times hazardous materials caused injury, accidents, or death while in transit. “It’s a very risky chain every step of the way,” said Judith Enck, a former regional EPA administrator and president of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics.
Those risks aren’t going away anytime soon. Petrochemical production in the US is booming, derived from the larger boom in US oil and gas supply. And the industry’s broadening footprint means more communities are coming in direct contact with carcinogens and endocrine-disruptors that affect humans and animals in ways scientists still don’t fully understand. Most of the time, people aren’t coming into contact with petrochemicals through train derailments, but in more mundane ways.
From fossil fuels to plastics: The full life cycle of petrochemicals takes a dangerous toll
The final form of plastic you buy at the store may be relatively harmless, but the building blocks it’s made up of are often hazardous to human and animal health. “Oil and gas is the basis of most of our chemistry,” Tickner said. “We built most of our modern chemistry on these seven fairly toxic, challenging chemicals and then you essentially iterate off of those.”
Those seven basic chemicals are methanol, ethylene, propylene, butadiene, benzene, toluene, and xylene, and they can pose a variety of risks. Benzene, for instance, is a known carcinogen. Eventually, benzene may be transformed into something as benign as food packaging, but “that plastic that you have bought has a history somewhere else,” Tickner said. The manufacturing “might go back to a community in Louisiana that is highly exposed to benzene or ethylene oxide or some other material.”
There are more than 11,000 facilities that store, use, or handle hazardous materials in the US, according to the Government Accountability Office. But they tend to be concentrated in a few parts of the country, often in or near communities of color. Louisiana, the Ohio River Valley, and Texas have all seen expansion of petrochemical plants. The map below from Oil and Gas Watch shows the zoomed-out landscape for proposed and operating petrochemical facilities (yellow dots) and their pipelines (yellow lines) across the US:

A map maintained by the Envronmental Integrity Project shows operating petrochemical plants throughout the US. Oil Watch, Environmental Integrity Project

It’s cheap oil and gas that has helped fuel the rise in chemicals manufacturing. Traditionally, most plastics have come from imported petroleum, but fracking and expanded drilling have given rise to a domestic petrochemicals industry. The 2010s were a decade of historically low natural gas prices, and the cheap fuel made plastics an even more attractive proposition.
These chemicals are produced in a variety of ways, but today the biggest proposed expansion in the US is in ethane cracker plants. These are facilities that use high heat capable of breaking (or “cracking”) the bonds in natural gas’s methane to produce ethane. That ethane is then used to create a huge array of plastics.
One of the products that come from cracking ethylene is vinyl chloride, the same chemical that the derailed train carried in East Palestine. It’s transported as a chilled liquid, but when exposed to the outdoors it becomes a highly explosive gas. The risk of an uncontrolled explosion led responders in East Palestine to vent the vinyl chloride and burn it, producing a black cloud of smoke over the town of 4,700. Residents now worry that the fallout from the smoke will lead to contaminated groundwater in the years to come.
Carnegie Mellon professor of green chemistry Terry Collins noted that the steady rise in petrochemicals nationwide is making it increasingly difficult to keep drinking water safe. Some plastics and petrochemicals mimic hormone molecules found in our bodies and can therefore interrupt growth and development, especially in children. “We’ve got this going on galore,” Collins said.
Everyday exposure to petrochemicals production is a reality for many
As the East Palestine incident highlighted, there’s no completely foolproof way to process and transport these highly flammable and corrosive chemicals. Trains can derail, and pipelines can rupture.
But controlled burns, like the one in East Palestine, happen regularly at petrochemicals plants.
Rachel Meyer, an Ohio River Valley field coordinator for the environmental advocacy group Moms Clean Air Force, has seen just how common it is for a facility to flare its chemicals to avoid any fires or explosions. She lives at the center of fracking operations and petrochemical plants in southwestern Pennsylvania. She is 20 miles from the Norfolk Southern derailment but also a few miles from a giant new plastics plant, Shell’s Monaca facility in Beaver County, Pennsylvania.

A flare from Shell’s petrochemical plant in Monaca Pennsylvania lit up the night sky shortly after midnight on January 7, 2023, a period when the plant was experiencing equipment malfunctions. Shell has already exceeded its annual state permit for volatile organic chemicals in less than six months of operation. Andie Grey, Eyes on Shell

The giant Shell Monaca plant is less than six months old and, last month, the plant responded to malfunctioning equipment by flaring gas to avoid explosion. “It was so bright at nighttime,” Meyer said. “It was this reddish orange color. And I could see that on clouds all the way out where I am.” Residents have seen that glow from 17 miles away.
Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog environmental group, notes the facility has already had 14 records of violations and 34 malfunctions from its construction and operating phase, and the plant already exceeded its annual limits for smog-forming air pollutants within its first few months of operation.
The Shell Monaca plant is one of the largest ethane plants yet to open in the US. Smaller incidents tend to be self-reported by companies, often with a lag time so residents don’t immediately know the reason why the air may smell or there’s an orange nighttime sky.
There are many paths to protecting the public from petrochemicals’ harms. Of course, more work can be done to prevent accidents and promote train safety, while also taking risk management seriously. But safety also starts with rethinking our petrochemicals reliance entirely.
Train derailments, routine flaring, and equipment failures show a far darker side than the oil and gas industry usually lets on. From the industry’s view, plastics and petrochemicals will ensure demand for oil and gas for decades, even as the US transitions away from gasoline-powered transportation.
All these incidents showcase how the impacts from plastics seep into our lives long before they’re tossed into the trash.

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Doing right by the planet can make you happier, healthier, and—yes—wealthier. Outside’s Head of Sustainability, Kristin Hostetter, explores small lifestyle tweaks that can make a big impact. Write to her at [email protected].
Confession: I love bougie lettuce. You know, the stuff that comes in plastic clamshell packaging, costs about 20 cents per leaf, and always has the words “organic” and “baby” on the label. I’d eat a pile with every meal if I could, dressed in a squeeze of lemon and a little olive oil.
But the packaging kills me. I feel pangs of guilt every time I toss one in my grocery cart, knowing that I’m supporting a company who uses plastic packaging and that plastic recycling rates in the U.S. are only around six percent.
Guilty pleasure: The convenience and taste of these pre-washed greens are hard to resist. (Photo: Kristin Hostetter)

Oftentimes, though, to make up for my fancy lettuce habit, I choose more humble, naked greens–like the bland head of red leaf or green leaf lettuce or a head of cabbage dressed up with some chopped herbs or kale.
It got me thinking about all the choices I make in the grocery store and the packaging of every item I place on the check-out conveyor belt. As someone who’s trying to live more sustainably, should I buy my ancho chili powder in a plastic bottle or a glass one?
Like most things in the world, the devil is in the details.
“Less packaging is always better for the planet,” says Cory Connors, host of Sustainable Packaging Podcast. “By choosing products that are package-free or sustainably packaged, you’re voting with your wallet and telling companies that you won’t buy stuff that’s excessively or irresponsibly packaged.”
But it’s over-simplistic to think that all packaging is evil. “There’s nothing sustainable about rotten or damaged food,” says Connors. “If a company has to package something in a multilayered plastic container in order to get it to the consumer in an edible state, that’s more sustainable than not using packaging if it results in rotten, unusable food.”
“We can all be part of the solution when it comes to sustainable packaging,” says Connors. “The key, says Connors, is to only buy products that are packaged in material that you are certain that you can recycle in your community or, better yet, that you re-use indefinitely, like glass jars. Confirm with your local material recycling facility (also known as a MRF, which rhymes with surf) what is actually getting recycled. Then share what you know in your community.”
Connors is encouraged by systemic shifts he’s seeing, like more stores adopting drop-off recycling centers and communities expanding recycling services to accommodate things like soft plastics and textiles.
In the average grocery store today, we’re faced with choices on literally every shelf, so Connors and I took a virtual stroll, aisle by aisle, to talk about the most sustainable choices we can make at the grocery store.
Fresh and Refrigerated Stuff
1. In the produce department, skip the plastic produce bags. Just wash those fruits and veggies.
2. Buy loose carrots, potatoes, and onions, rather than the pre-bagged options.
3. Choose cardboard egg cartons, not plastic or styrofoam. You can put them in the recycle bin or repurpose them as seed starters for the garden or DIY fire starters with melted candle scraps and sawdust or dryer lint. Egg cartons also make a great substitute for packing peanuts or you can tear them up and add them to the compost heap.
An easy choice: Not only is cardboard the better for the planet than plastic or styrofoam, it protects eggs better, too, as you’ll see in this highly scientific experiment. (Photo: Kristin Hostetter)
4. If you’re stopping by the deli counter, bring your own containers, and skip the plastic bags and cups. “It takes guts to bring your own packaging into a typical store,” says Connors. I can attest to this. Most deli workers raise their eyebrows when I ask them to put the sliced provolone in my silicone bag, but they do it. “Ten years ago people, it was radical to bring your own reusable grocery bags to the store,” says Connors. “But now it’s commonplace, thanks to bag bans and bag taxes. Maybe the same will be true for deli bags and containers in the future.”
It might feel weird to BYO containers to the deli or meat counter, but if we start doing it, some day it could become as commonplace as bringing your own reusable shopping bags. (Photos: Kristin Hostetter)
5. If you’re buying a cut of meat that is sold both at the butcher counter and in prepackaged portions, opt for the former. You can use the strategy listed above—bring your own re-usable containers. Note that if your purchase comes wrapped in butcher paper with a plastic coating, that won’t be recyclable. Be brave! If someone questions you, take the opportunity to tell them that you’re trying to avoid single-use plastic packaging.
6. Avoid black plastic (often found in the prepackaged meat department) trays at all costs. They are not recyclable. Anywhere. Putting it in your bin is wishcycling.
Dry goods
7. If your store has a bulk aisle, shop there for staples like rice, grains, nuts, and pasta. Bring your own containers!
8. “When we think about things like spices, sauces, and condiments, whatever container you will wash and reuse when it’s empty has the lower carbon footprint,” says Connors. “If you reuse glass bottles, for instance, that’s the best choice. If you don’t plan on reusing the container, just be sure that whatever you buy is recyclable where you live.”
9. Kick the bottled water habit. Just do it. In the U.S., we’re fortunate to have perfectly drinkable tap water just about everywhere. Invest in a good water bottle and refill it often.
10. Wean yourself off plastic wrap. I was hooked for many years, but I kicked the habit when I realized that my roll of plastic is nice to have, but not a need. Now, when I really need to wrap something, I opt for tin foil, which is recyclable as long as it’s clean. Just collect it in a ball until you have one that’s about three inches in diameter so it will get sorted properly in the recycling center and not fall through the cracks of the machinery.
11. Instead of liquid or plastic pod-encased dishwasher soap, buy the powder in cardboard boxes (Cascade is a classic, old school option that works great). “All liquid cleaners are 90 percent water,” says Connors. “Buying water-based products for use in a room that produces water (like the kitchen, bathroom, or laundry room) is pretty silly. Especially because there are so many powdered and concentrated cleaners available today. And the carbon footprint of concentrates is so much lower, because it requires less packaging and is lighter and smaller to ship and transport.”
12. Order laundry strips or pressed powder tablets to avoid the pods (they’re wrapped in plastic that becomes microplastic when it dissolves) and the big plastic jugs. I love Tru Earth. The strips work great, smell nice (unscented is also an option), and take up a fraction of the space in my laundry room.
13. Skip the dryer sheets (which are made from single-use plastic in the form of polyester) and opt for dryer balls. They last for more than 1,000 loads, so you’ll save money, too. I use Tru Earth Wool Dryer Balls and love them.
14. Stop wasting money on zipperlock bags. Even if you wash and reuse them, eventually they give out. Not so with my new favorite bags by Joie. I love these supple silicone pouches, which come in a variety of sizes, are easy to clean, easy to seal (some silicone bags are stiff and fussy) and freezer safe.
Personal Care
15. Skip the plastic shampoo bottles and discover the wonder of shampoo bars. They do a fantastic job and last forever as long as you don’t let them sit in a puddle of water. They’re great for travel, too, which means you can reject the little plastic bottles in your hotel room.
Shampoo and conditioner bars are a fabulous alternative to plastic bottles. They cost about 12 bucks each, last for several months, and ship in sustainable packaging. (Photo: Kristin Hostetter)
16. And say goodbye to plastic conditioner bottles full of watered down product, too. After trying a slew of conditioner bars that leave my long hair feeling dry, waxy, and tangly, I finally found one by Dip that kicks ass.
One last thing: If you’re frustrated by the excessive plastic packaging at your local grocery, write a letter and tell them so! I used this handy template from nonprofit Beyond Plastics, and about a week later received a phone call from the store manager. We had a meaningful discussion, and while he defended the need to package bulk-bought spinach in clamshell plastic packaging, he listened, and conceded that there are some items in the store that could do with less packaging, and promised to look into it.
Kristin Hostetter is the Head of Sustainability at Outside Interactive, Inc. and the resident sustainability columnist on Outside Online.

Inscribed in any chunk of Antarctic snow, Crispin Halsall will tell you, is a story about how humans have treated the planet. Over the years, each round of precipitation at the South Pole has brought down the atmospheric detritus of the day: pollen; volcanic ash; and of particular interest to Halsall, human pollution. Antarctic pollution can originate as far away as the northern hemisphere, with volatile chemicals floating in the wind to arrive at the South Pole in a matter of days. “Those layers of snow become an environmental record of contamination, going back decades,” says Halsall, who is a chemist at Lancaster University in the UK. The world’s icy landscapes also foretell our environmental future. As icebergs and glaciers melt, pollutants trapped inside are released back into seas, waterways, and the air. Melting ice can unleash harmful molecules that damage ecosystems, deplete the ozone layer, or mess with the weather. And due to rising global temperatures, more and more of the world’s frozen landscapes are thawing. In the Alps and the Himalayas, “we are seeing the rerelease of old contaminants that have been locked up in ice for many decades,” says Halsall. It’s vital to know what’s being emitted.But interpreting what’s trapped in Antarctic snow is more complicated than previously thought. Researchers have discovered that the frozen water at Earth’s poles—contrary to conventional wisdom—is a hotbed of chemical reactions. What’s trapped within may transform over time.For a long time, scientists assumed the opposite: that frozen pollutants remain inert. “Most of the time, if you freeze something or make something colder, it slows things down,” says chemist Amanda Grannas of Villanova University in the US. Molecules move slower in solid ice and snow compared to liquid water, which means they collide less, leading to fewer opportunities to participate in chemical reactions. It’s why freezing raw meat keeps it from spoiling. It’s also why the bodies of several woolly mammoths, some 30,000 years old, have emerged preserved from frozen ground as it thaws.But in laboratory experiments, scientists have found that many pollutants—illuminated using bright light simulating the sun—break down faster in ice than in liquid water. In 2020, a team at the University of California, Davis observed that guaiacol, a molecule found in woodsmoke and consequently in bacon and whiskey, broke down into smaller compounds faster in ice than in liquid water. In 2022, they saw that the same applied to dimethoxybenzene, another molecule produced in smoke. This February, Halsall and his colleagues found that pollutants in car exhaust fumes—known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons—also degraded faster in ice than in water.Researchers attribute this flurry of chemical activity in ice to a phenomenon known as the “freeze concentration effect.” As water cools to form ice, its constituent molecules line up in hexagonal crystals. “The stuff dissolved in the water gets forced out of that ice crystal structure,” says Grannas. “To the naked eye, it looks like a frozen ice cube. But microscopically, there’s these little pockets of liquid where the other chemicals get concentrated. The reactants have been shoved into this tiny volume together, and that makes the chemistry go a lot faster.”Ultraviolet light, found in sunshine, then triggers that chemical breakdown in the concentrated pollutants. Without it, the compounds remain relatively inert, like the food in your freezer. But under UV illumination, “by and large, we see faster rates of decay in ice than we do in water,” says Halsall. These accelerated decay rates may play out more noticeably in ice at the poles, where “you can have 24 hours of sunlight at certain portions of the year,” says Grannas. “That drives a lot of chemistry.”Microplastics, fragments of plastic less than 5 millimeters long, also break down faster in ice than in water. Chemists at Central South University in China found that over 48 days, microplastic beads less than a thousandth of a millimeter in diameter deteriorated in ice to the extent they would over 33 years in the Yangtze River. “Microplastics take hundreds of years, if not thousands, to break down,” Chen Tian of Central South University in China told WIRED, in Chinese. “We didn’t have that long, so we studied just the first step of degradation. But we think that the entire degradation process should be faster in ice.”Plastic waste is the most common form of marine debris—around 10 million tons of plastic ends up in the ocean every year, much of which breaks down into microplastics—so ice at the poles may be churning through the stuff. This might be good news, as it could help scientists figure out methods to break microplastics down faster, Tian and her colleagues point out in their paper. But by breaking microplastic down into ever smaller pieces, ice may also be making it an ever more pervasive pollutant. The smaller plastic fragments get, the deeper into organisms they penetrate. Microscopic plastic particles have been found in the brains of fish, causing brain damage.For Halsall, whose research aims to track human activity in Antarctic ice, the degradation of pollutants makes life more difficult. He’s particularly interested in perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. These “forever chemicals” persist in the environment and are found in nonstick pans, engine oils, and all sorts of consumer products. In 2017, Halsall’s collaborators cut into the Antarctic to extract a 10-meter-long cylinder of packed snow that had accumulated since 1958. Specimens like this reveal climate and human activity, much as tree rings do in more temperate latitudes. The deeper the snow sample, the further back in time you go.Many chemical companies pivoted away from using “longer-chain” PFAS around the year 2000. In the snow deposited that year and after, Halsall’s team found less of that pollutant and more of its replacement compounds, “shorter-chain” PFAS. “We can spot in that snow core when industry changed,” says Halsall. But to accurately understand what was being used when, Halsall also needs to consider how much pollutants have degraded, as this may help explain differences in the chemicals found at various depths. These ice-borne reactions have impacts for the rest of us too. As glaciers at the poles melt, the sunlight-processed pollutants are released into the environment. “You might think, ‘We’re degrading a pollutant. That’s a good thing,’” says Grannas. “In some cases it is. But we’ve found, for some pollutants, the products they turn into can actually be more toxic than the original.” For example, Grannas and her colleagues found that the chemical aldrin, historically used in pesticides, could transform more readily into the even more toxic chemical dieldrin in ice. (Farmers also widely used dieldrin in pesticides in the 20th century, and the use of both chemicals is banned in most countries.)On a more optimistic note, Grannas says that studying how ice degrades pollutants will help researchers evaluate new substances. “We’re introducing new chemicals into our agricultural systems, pharmaceutical products, and daily use—laundry detergents and fragrances and personal products,” says Grannas. “We want to understand up front what will happen if we use this on a massive scale and emit it into the environment.” Some of those pollutants will end up frozen in glaciers or at the poles, and tracking the evolution of chemicals in ice gives researchers a more accurate sense of their potential environmental impact. At Earth’s poles, the inside of an ice cube is a tumultuous place.

My lawn is a disaster. To be honest, it’s not really a lawn at all. Any green is mostly moss, the rest is mud. More no man’s land than bowling green. The reasons for this are: small London garden (I know I am lucky to have one); not a lot of sun (stolen by the neighbour’s overhanging apple tree); two footballing boys (even though, now banned for life, they have to go to the park). And possibly also inexpertise on the part of the groundsman, though he has tried – I’ve turfed, and seeded, aerated, watered, fed, scarified, sung to it. I’m about ready to give up.There is an obvious solution: artificial grass. Beautifully, uniformly verdant all year round, low maintenance, no mowing required, no mower required, no watering, no mud. I might even let the boys back on to it. Or not.I’m not alone in thinking of faking it. A survey last year by Aviva found that 10% of UK homeowners with outside space had replaced at least some of their garden’s natural lawn with artificial grass, and a further 29% plan to or would consider making the swap. During the pandemic, when everyone was thinking about the outdoors, searches for “artificial grass” jumped 185% from May 2019 to 2020, according to Google Trends.My own search finds dozens of firms offering artificial grass, seducing me with pictures of lawns that look like the green baize of snooker tables. And promises – no mud, no sweat, no tears. And no guilt either – here’s one that says it’s “better for the environment” – because you don’t have to water, mow or fertilise. Well, that’s a relief, though we’ll return to this later.I might miss the smell of summer: freshly cut grass. What, I don’t have to? I can brush in artificial grass cleaner with that very fragrance? Happy days. Soon I have a quote for supply and installation, 40 sq metres of a mid-range product: £2,900 plus VAT. Ouch. But you can just buy the stuff for as little as £7 a sq metre – how hard can it be to DIY?Artificial grass was invented by James M Faria and Robert T Wright at Monsanto and first installed on a recreation area of a school in Providence Rhode Island in 1964. It hit the headlines a couple of years later when it was laid in the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, and became known as AstroTurf.Artificial turf for sport, now produced under different brand names by other companies, has become increasingly controversial, most seriously after being potentially linked to the deaths of six professional baseball players in Philadelphia, who had the same rare form of cancer. It often uses rubber granules from recycled tyres, which can contain heavy metals, benzene and other carcinogens. Artificial grass for domestic use and landscaping, which began to be a thing in the 1990s, is normally made from polypropylene or nylon (polyamide) and doesn’t often contain rubber granules. The global artificial turf market (including sports use and domestic use) grew 8.4% in the past year to $4.87 bn (£3.95bn) and is expected to reach $6.83 bn (£5.6bn) in 2027. No wonder so many companies want to put plastic over your garden.Before I take the plunge, I ask Guardian readers to share their experiences of artificial lawns. Some are positive. Several, including Don in Fife and Wayne in Worcester, mention their dogs digging up the old grass. And Alex in Surrey’s greyhounds used to bring mud into the house. Not any more. As well as dogs, children come up. “It’s been wonderful, and the grandchildren love it,” says Charles in Berkshire. And when it comes to croquet, in-house knowledge of the small bumps and inconsistencies in the surface allows them “to win against all comers”. Home advantage – I like it.Phil in Weston-super-Mare did it for his son to play football on – just a little bit in the goalmouth, “so it didn’t become a mud bath”. It was the same for Genevieve in Kent: her kids turned the garden into a quagmire, so they put down fake grass. “It was the most successful thing – they just played football all the time. It was brilliant to have a party on too – people put their fags out on it and it was fine. I think it would survive nuclear Armageddon.”This was a while back, in the 00s, when her family were pioneers of artificial grass. They’ve moved house since then: “We wouldn’t get artificial grass now.” Not just because the kids have grown up. “Because of all the reasons we now know we shouldn’t have it.”‘I can’t stand plastic grass!” bellows the naturalist Iolo Williams, who presents the BBC’s Springwatch, speaking from his home in mid-Wales. “It is hugely damaging to the environment on several levels. First of all it takes away the natural habitat from a whole host of species, notably invertebrates like earthworms, valuable in their own right but also a valuable food source for all kinds of birds and mammals.”Last year’s WWF Living Planet Report found that globally, wildlife populations have plunged by 69% over the past 50 years, with the UK one of the most nature-depleted countries in Europe. This is not the time to be destroying natural habitats and breaking up food chains.“If you want to see blackbirds and song thrushes, you’ve got to have grass full of invertebrates,” says Williams. “People are lamenting the decline of a lot of these birds, but if you stick down plastic grass, what do you expect? You reap what you sow. I would love to see plastic grass banned once and for all. It makes me very angry. I absolutely detest it.”Lynne Marcus, co-chair of the Society of Garden Designers, also underlines the fact that artificial lawns are no-go zones for wildlife. “People may say butterflies or bees can land around it, on the strips of soil we have with a few plants, but it’s like if you put a motorway down the middle of a forest. The animals can’t get from one side to the other to procreate.”With support from the Royal Horticultural Society and the Landscape Institute, the society has launched a campaign on this issue. It wants people to say no to fake grass. The charge sheet is a long one: artificial lawns destroy natural habitats and soil; they contribute to carbon emissions during manufacture and transport, whereas real grass absorbs CO2; they overheat in the summer and contribute to urban heat islands; they cause flooding as they absorb less than 50% of the rain that falls on them; they pollute waterways, as over time the plastic breaks down into microplastics, which is washed into our drainage and discharged into rivers and the sea; they are neither biodegradable nor recyclable, and after their life cycle (typically up to about 15 years) they go into landfill where they will continue to pollute.In short, they are an environmental nightmare, green in colour only. “Every time you put one down, you’re saying: ‘I know we’re all worried about climate change, but guess what, I’m going to contribute to it,’” says Marcus, before adding that she doesn’t want to blame people. “It’s about public engagement with the issue, informing and educating.”She rejects any idea that they are maintenance-free, explaining that over time they accumulate a buildup of excrement and urine from birds, mice, foxes, cats and dogs, and have to be regularly cleaned and disinfected.“You can’t get a plastic bag, yet you can cover your garden in plastic,” says Marcus. “It seems to me there should be something illegal about that.” And she thinks that in years to come we’ll look back at it in the same way as we now look back at driving without seatbelts or smoking next to babies. “Oh my God, can you believe it, we used to lay plastic lawns!”The tide does seem to be turning. The Chelsea Flower show banned fake grass last year. Ed Horne of the RHS, which runs the event, said: “Fake grass is just not in line with our ethos and views on plastic. We recommend using real grass because of its environmental benefits, which include supporting wildlife, mitigating flooding and cooling the environment.” The housing secretary Michael Gove plans to prevent developers from laying fake grass in new housing schemes.The mood is reflected in some more of our reader responses. In Somerset, JP put down a plastic lawn because it was a tiny patch and grass wouldn’t grow. “Within months it started stinking of urine due to the dog toileting on it. About six months ago we’d had enough and I ripped it out. I regret the waste of plastic. We now have a sedum lawn, which loves poor soil and is fantastic for pollinators. I wish we’d done that all along.”In South Ayrshire, Dennis inherited a plastic lawn when they moved to their place. “It was filthy, and had faded to a light insipid green.” So they removed it, and the gravel underneath, imported topsoil and compost, and planted butterfly- and bee-friendly shrubs and flowers. “Our garden, lifeless before, is now full of life.”Barbara Samitier, a French garden designer working in London, thinks that the need for a perfect green lawn may be a peculiarly British thing. “You can’t imagine a garden without it. I think it belongs to the kind of imagery maybe from cricket, Wimbledon, this green and pleasant land. It’s what people in this country have been raised to see as nature.”There are alternatives that aren’t plastic, even if you have a small, north-facing city garden and children. “You can do a little woodland, make it more a sort of exploratory playground. A family garden doesn’t need to be about an expanse of lawn – there are different ways to engage children outdoors.”Even if you have a lawn, it doesn’t have to look like Centre Court on the opening day of Wimbledon. “If I look at a perfect lawn, it doesn’t make me feel relaxed,” says Samitier. “I’m thinking it uses a lot of water, requires a lot of cutting, also chemicals to keep it weed-free and to keep it going in spite of the changes in weather. Whereas if I look at a less perfect lawn with maybe some long grass, areas that haven’t been mown, I know there is a lot of life in there, insects and pollinators. For me, that looks a lot more beautiful.”It’s about accepting the seasons. “It doesn’t have to be perfect all the time, so in the winter it gets muddy, in the summer it’s dry but that’s fine: it comes back when it rains. I think in England a lot of gardens are about ego and controlling, making everything do exactly what you want, the grass needs to be perfect and all of this. But now we see the beauty of letting go a bit and accepting we don’t have to control everything.”Artificial grass makes Samitier’s heart sink. “Don’t do it! You’ll regret it,” she warns me.But it’s OK, because I’m already moving away from plasticking over my scruffy little urban patch and trying to see it in a new light. Not mud and mess, but life and beauty … well, let’s not carried away. Not no man’s land, though, nor no beast’s land. There is birdsong. And right on cue, almost as if it was paid, a dunnock shuffles on to my not-lawn and starts hopping around, hunting for breakfast.

Light, buoyant and cheap, polystyrene foam is commonly used for docks, buoys, pontoons at marinas and other water activities throughout Canada. But the plastic, oil-based product is causing a wave of pollution in oceans and waters across the country, says B.C. NDP MP Rachel Blaney. The federal government needs to ban the use of expanded polystyrene (ESP) and extruded polystyrene (XP), commonly known as Styrofoam, in floating structures in both freshwater and saltwater, said Blaney, the MP for North Island-Powell River.Get daily news from Canada’s National ObserverPolystyrene foam never breaks down, but degrades into thousands of small puffed plastic fragments that travel long distances and are extremely hazardous to aquatic environments, she said. “It’s just so harmful to our beaches, fish in the ocean and to wildlife on the shores,” Blaney said, adding polystyrene foam is a top complaint from communities in her riding involved in coastal cleanups. “As it breaks into those smaller and smaller microbeads, it’s absolutely impossible to clean up,” she said. “It’s crazy to think in this country that we’re putting foam into the water purposefully — we shouldn’t be doing that.” What people are reading B.C. NDP MP Rachel Blaney has tabled a motion to ban polystyrene foams when building aquatic infrastructure to prevent a tide of plastic pollution. Photo submitted Blaney has tabled a motion to ban the use of polystyrene foams to build floating structures and phase out their use in existing ones and has partnered with ocean conservation groups, including Surfrider Canada, on a letter-writing campaign supporting the ban. The federal government included Styrofoam takeout containers when it launched the phaseout of six single-use plastic items in December, Blaney noted. Polystyrene foam is a #plastic blight on beaches and waterways and is harmful to birds, fish and other marine creatures, says #NDP MP Rachel Blaney, who’s tabled a motion for the federal government to ban its use in floating structures. “But there’s just so much more that they could do,” she said, adding it’s not just a coastal issue. “It’s everywhere. Communities across Canada that are inland are having their lakes, rivers and waterways being polluted.” After Blaney submitted a petition to Parliament in the summer calling for a ban, the federal government said it wasn’t looking at prohibiting polystyrene foam in marine ecosystems. However, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault noted Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) had new regulations obliging shellfish growers to encase any foam floats in hard plastic shells.Blaney said while the government doesn’t see the need for further action, coastal communities do. “We see the need,” she said. “I see it all the time in my constituency on the beaches and in the water, so that doesn’t work for me.”Banning foam floats a ‘no-brainer’Even if community volunteers remove large chunks of polystyrene foam from beaches, the most destructive microplastic puffs remain. Photo by Quadra Island Beach Clean Dream TeamBanning the use of polystyrene foam in aquatic infrastructure is a quick and relatively easy way to make a positive impact on marine ecosystems, said Peter Ross, senior scientist and director of water pollution at the Raincoast Conservation Foundation.“It’s an easy fix, especially when there are alternative materials available. It should be a no-brainer,” Ross said. The degradation of foam, either over time or set loose by stormy weather, is a chronic source of pollution and causes harm to animals that feed along the shore or on the surface of the water, like birds, fish, turtles and even marine mammals feeding or coming up for air, he said. This can lead to starvation or blockages that can eventually kill an animal, he said. “These microplastics float, which is a little bit different than many other plastics,” he said. “When you’ve got these tiny white things floating around, many, many species are going to mistake them for food.” And if the plastic foam beads are “biofouled” — darkened and covered with algae, bacteria, plankton or other organic matter after being in the water for an extended period of time — it’s going to mimic food to an even greater degree, Ross added. “Then it really starts to resemble, and even taste, like natural food,” he said. “It really brings up the risk of surreptitious consumption by some poor creature that thinks it’s actually something nutritious.” Stopping the flow of plastics before they enter waterways and oceans is the most effective way to tackle the scope of the problem, Ross said, adding technology and cleanups can’t keep pace with the amount of pollution entering the ocean. Foam pollution demoralizing for cleanup volunteers Members of B.C.’s Clean Coast, Clean Waters beach cleanup in the Discovery Islands collect polystyrene foam for transport. Photo courtesy Spirit of the West AdventuresQuadra Island resident Nevil Hand, who organizes regular beach cleanups in his community, agreed. Large or small, cleaning up foam is especially difficult, said the retired firefighter who organizes the Quadra Island Beach Clean Dream Team. In November, community volunteers cleaned up the island’s beaches, and within a month, winter storms had erased any sign the teams had been there, he said. “This winter, it seemed like an entire marina exploded to the south of us,” he said. “We’ve got big pieces of dock flotation here this year in amounts we’ve never seen before.” Clean team volunteers, now holding a spring cleanup contest, have been stacking up foam debris at beach trailheads for pick up, Hand said, adding it’s unsettling to see how much there is. “Foam is so fragile. It’s disgusting the way it breaks up so easily along our shores,” he said. Some volunteers just found a 12-foot-long piece of foam that they hope will dry out in the coming weeks so they can remove it. “The problem is we can only really deal with the bigger pieces,” he said. “Even then, when we’re handling it, it’s breaking up in our hands and we’re making even more of a mess.” It’s demoralizing because the small pieces are the most destructive to the environment, he added. “That’s what the birds and the fish are going to ingest and [it] will harm our wildlife with stomach poisonings and who knows what.” The environmental costs are high because people and marine industries want to continue using cheap materials, Hand said. “We don’t want to see it used in the marine environment. It just doesn’t belong here.” Rochelle Baker / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer