Category Archives: News

Study links in utero ‘forever chemical’ exposure to low sperm count and mobilityPFAS, now found in nearly all umbilical cord blood around the world, interfere with hormones crucial to testicle development A new peer-reviewed Danish study finds that a mother’s exposure to toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” during early pregnancy can lead to lower sperm count and quality later in her child’s life.PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – are known to disrupt hormones and fetal development, and future “reproductive capacity” is largely defined as testicles develop in utero during the first trimester of a pregnancy, said study co-author Sandra Søgaard Tøttenborg of the Copenhagen University Hospital.TopicsFertility problemsHealthPollutionPlasticsMen’s healthPregnancynewsReuse this content

SPLBy Matt McGrathEnvironment correspondentOne of the worst forms of plastic pollution may have met its match in the saliva of a humble worm.Spanish researchers say they’ve discovered chemicals in the wax worm’s drool that break down polyethylene, a tough and durable material.The researchers say that one hour’s exposure to the saliva degrades the plastic as much as years of weathering.They hope the breakthrough will lead to new natural approaches to deal with plastic pollution.They’ve discovered two enzymes in the liquid that can degrade polyethylene at room temperatures and believe it’s the first time that such an effective agent has been found in nature. King will not attend climate summit on Truss advicePoorer homes to get £1.5bn energy efficiency helpInvestment zones ‘unprecedented attack on nature’From the poles to the depths of the oceans, plastic is a major pollution issue across the whole world.Getty ImagesWhile efforts to reduce, recycle and reuse plastic are slowly making progress, there are few options when it comes to the very sturdy polyethylene (PE) material. It is one of the most widely used forms, comprising around 30% of production and is used for a wide range of materials including hard wearing items like pipes, flooring, and bottles but it’s also used for bags and food containers. This plastic is dense and is very slow to break down in nature as it is highly resistant to oxygen. Most attempts to degrade it require PE to be pre-treated with heat or UV light to incorporate oxygen into the polymer. Getty ImagesThe Spanish team first discovered that wax worms could break down the material in 2017, but in this new study they’ve worked out that the key elements are enzymes in the creature’s saliva. In their paper they show that this key step of getting oxygen into the polymer can be achieved within an hour of the plastic being exposed to the saliva of the larvae. “What we think is that the enzymes are capable of an accelerated version of the weathering of polyethylene,” said Dr Clemente Arias, a co-author from the Spanish National Research Council. “What we found was that the enzymes alone can oxidise plastic, which is the process that takes such a long time in the environment,” he told BBC News. The researchers are using saliva from the larvae of the greater wax moth, commonly known as wax worms. SPLThese creatures are a well known pest that attacks and destroys honeybee hives. They are also popular with anglers as a bait and as a food source for reptiles. The researchers say the larvae’s destructive abilities when it comes to beeswax may provide an explanation of their capacity for PE degradation. The scientists believe that what they’ve discovered so far provides a promising alternative approach to biological degradation and could lead to new solutions.”We imagine you could apply this new understanding to large plastic waste management facilities,” said Dr Federica Bertocchini, a co-author on the paper also from the Spanish National Research Council. “But you could also have a home-based kit which could help you degrade your own plastic.”There are still many questions to be answered, say the researchers, including whether the saliva is working on the polymer or on the additives that are used to strengthen this type of plastic. “We also want to know why a humble worm has these amazing enzymes, what’s the use of them in their daily life,” said Dr Arias. They want to now develop their work by carrying out bigger experiments.”The field of biodegradation is focused on bacteria and fungi, mostly bacteria, and on looking for enzymes,” said Dr Bertocchini.”Now we have some enzymes that work, so the idea is, well, let’s give it a try.”The study has been published in the journal, Nature Communications. Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmcgrathbbc.

New research suggests that plastic could contribute to ocean acidification, especially in highly polluted coastal areas, through the release of organic chemical compounds and carbon dioxide, both of which can lower the pH of seawater.The study found that sunlight enabled this process and that older, degraded plastics released a higher amount of dissolved organic carbon and did more to lower the pH of seawater.However, the findings of this study were conducted in a laboratory, so it’s unclear whether experiments conducted in estuaries or the open ocean would yield similar results, experts said. The trillions of pieces of plastic currently roving through the global ocean are known to be an assault on life. Turtles get tangled up in discarded plastic fishing nets. Whales open their mouths to eat and unwittingly fill their stomachs with shopping bags. Filter-feeding fish and other organisms gobble up tiny plastic particles, poisoning themselves with the plastic’s toxins and passing that toxicity along to any animal that consumes them.
And now, new research suggests that plastic pollution could be harming the ocean in an additional way: by contributing to its acidification.
Through a series of laboratory experiments, scientists from the Marine Sciences Institute in Barcelona, known as ICM-CSIC by its Spanish acronym, found that when plastic — especially aged, degraded plastic — interacts with sunlight, it releases a cocktail of chemicals, including organic acids, into the ocean. Organic acids are known to lower the pH of seawater, causing it to become more acidic. In addition, the sun’s degradation of plastic can lead to carbon dioxide (CO2) release, which can cause pH to plummet further.
In highly polluted parts of the ocean, such as coastal areas, plastic could contribute to a drop of up to 0.5 pH units, which is “comparable to the pH drop estimated in the worst anthropogenic emissions scenarios for the end of the 21st century,” says Cristina Romera-Castillo, a postdoctoral researcher at ICM-CSIC and lead author of the study documenting the findings.
Lead author of the study Cristina Romera-Castillo examines a sample of polluted ocean water. Image courtesy of Marc Gasser.
“The main factor producing the acidification is the greenhouse gas emissions that are dissolved in the ocean,” Romera-Castillo told Mongabay. “But I think it’s interesting to know that plastic is also contributing to the acidification.”
The world’s oceans absorb about 30% of humanity’s carbon emissions, which has resulted in a decrease in pH across the globe. Lowered pH obstructs the ability of marine organisms, such as corals, planktons, oysters and urchins, to build skeletons and shells out of calcium carbonate and to generally survive. The weakening of these calcifying organisms can impact other species that depend on them for food and habitat.
Like other climate change impacts, ocean acidification doesn’t occur uniformly across the world’s seas. But it’s estimated that, on average, the pH of surface waters has fallen by about 0.1 pH units. That may not sound like a lot, but scientists say this drop has already resulted in numerous and widespread changes across the global ocean. And things are set to get much worse if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.
Some scientists even warn that ocean acidification represents a planetary boundary since it could significantly disrupt the functioning of Earth’s natural operating systems. According to the planetary boundaries theory, Earth’s ability to support life as we know it could be threatened if humanity pushes ocean acidification past a certain threshold — a limit beyond which the planet cannot cope with the changes and stresses humans place on it. When the impacts of high levels of ocean acidification interact with other Earth systems and processes, the resulting destabilization could place human life at risk.
Scientists found that when plastic — especially aged, degraded plastic — interacts with sunlight, it releases a cocktail of chemicals, including organic acids, into the ocean. Image courtesy of Cristina Romera-Castillo.
While plastic pollution would not have nearly as much of an impact on ocean acidification as greenhouse emissions would, Romera-Castillo said it’s something to keep an eye on.
“There are many reasons why we should be concerned about plastic, and this is one more thing,” Romera-Castillo said. “This is not the only one or maybe not the worst, but it’s one more thing.”
Romera-Castillo and her coauthors conducted their lab experiments with new plastics, as well as aged plastic collected from Canary Island beaches. They placed the plastic waste inside glass bottles filled with seawater, and then exposed the bottles to ultraviolet light similar to the amounts occurring in sunlight. They found that the older plastic released a higher amount of dissolved organic carbon and did more to lower the pH of the seawater.
Right now, nearly 13 million metric tons of plastic reach the ocean each year, but this number could increase dramatically in the near future. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, plastic production could triple in the next 40 years, going from about 460 million metric tons in 2019 to 1.23 billion metric tons in 2060. More than likely, much of that plastic will end up in the natural environment, including the ocean. A UN plastics treaty which is currently in the works could potentially reduce those waste amounts.
Plastics, lumped in with roughly 350,000 other types of artificial chemicals in the global marketplace, are also categorized under another already breached planetary boundary. These so-called novel entities have become so pervasive as pollutants in the world — with new ones being engineered and introduced all the time — that they have violated the novel entity boundary’s critical threshold, with governments no longer able to keep up with evaluation or regulation of synthetic chemical risks.
Jason Hall-Spencer, a marine biologist and ocean acidification expert at the University of Plymouth, who was not involved in the new study, says the research shines a light on an important finding: that plastics do break down in seawater, releasing organic compounds and CO2 in the process.
“I think it’s important that people know about this phenomenon,” Hall-Spencer told Mongabay, “because what we’re often told is that plastics, once they get into the ocean, will last for millions of years, won’t break down or be there effectively forever.”
Right now, nearly 13 million metric tons of plastic reach the ocean each year, but this number could increase dramatically in the near future. Image by Naja Bertolt Jensen / Ocean Image Bank.
However, he questioned whether plastic would significantly contribute to acidification in the actual ocean. For instance, he suggested that waves and currents could mix the water and dissipate the impacts of plastic acidification. He also pointed out that ocean plastics are often encrusted with biological organisms that consume carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, which might also reduce the plastic’s contribution to acidification.
Furthermore, Hall-Spencer noted that a lot of ocean plastic ends up in places far from sunlight — like on the seafloor.
“It’s important that we know these plastics break down, and in doing so, they lower the pH,” he said. “But what’s needed as a next stage is verification that plastics in the ocean are lowering the pH.”
Stephen Widdicombe, a marine ecologist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory and co-chair of the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network, who was also not involved in the new study, said the findings are noteworthy since they indicate that plastic could be a potential driver of ocean acidification in coastal regions. But like Hall-Spencer, he said more research would need to be done to understand if these processes would happen outside the lab in real world situations and on a larger scale.
The study “does show us the importance of monitoring for multiple threats,” Widdicombe told Mongabay. “Often we get fixated on thinking, ‘Oh, we’ve got to go and monitor how much plastic there is there,’ or ‘We’ve got to go and monitor for ocean warming or deoxygenation,’ when really what we should be monitoring for is everything.”
Romera-Castillo said it would be much harder to conduct the same experiments in the ocean due to the multiple factors one has to consider, such as the respiration of microorganisms and the movement of the water. However, she said she and her team would like to try this in the future.
“This [study] is the first step,” she said. “Now, there are many questions opening up.”
Banner image: A coral reef in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. Lowered pH obstructs the ability of marine organisms, such as corals, planktons, oysters and urchins, to build skeletons and shells out of calcium carbonate and to generally survive. Image by Renata Romeo / Ocean Image Bank.
Citations:
Romera-Castillo, C., Lucas, A., Mallenco-Fornies, R., Briones-Rizo, M., Calvo, E., & Pelejero, C. (2023). Abiotic plastic leaching contributes to ocean acidification. Science of The Total Environment, 854, 158683. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158683
Persson, L., Carney Almroth, B. M., Collins, C. D., Cornell, S., De Wit, C. A., Diamond, M. L., … Hauschild, M. Z. (2022). Outside the safe operating space of the planetary boundary for novel entities. Environmental Science & Technology. doi:10.1021/acs.est.1c04158
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin III, F. S., Lambin, E., … Foley, J. (2009). Planetary boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity. Ecology and Society, 14(2). Retrieved from https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/
Elizabeth Claire Alberts is a staff writer for Mongabay. Follow her on Twitter @ECAlberts.
FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.

Chemicals, Coastal Ecosystems, Environment, Fish, Marine, Marine Biodiversity, Marine Conservation, Marine Crisis, Marine Ecosystems, Microplastics, Ocean Acidification, Ocean Crisis, Oceans, Plastic, Pollution, Research
Print

Lisbon sits at the mouth of the Tagus River where it flows into the Atlantic. This confluence of waters welcomed thousands of people in June, who gathered in the Portuguese capital’s Altice Arena for the second United Nations Ocean Conference.
“Sadly, we have taken the ocean for granted, and today we face what I would call an Ocean Emergency,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said at the opening of the conference, which aimed to mobilize science-based solutions to the crisis. “We must turn the tide. A healthy and productive ocean is vital to our shared future.”
Altice Arena. Photo: James Fahn, Earth Journalism Network
Human actions have burdened the ocean and its inhabitants with serious problems, including more acidic and hotter waters from emissions and global warming, which represent existential changes for many ocean-dwelling organisms. Meanwhile overfishing, pollution and industrial activities have depleted and damaged ocean ecosystems. Through these combined threats, we’ve robbed marine communities of their resilience at the very moment they need it most.
Could granting the ocean inalienable rights help turn all of that around — and protect people who depend on the ocean in the process?

Experts at the conference argued that a declaration of oceanic rights from the United Nations could recognize the ocean as a living entity that has its own inherent entitlements, such as those to life and health, along with the right to continue its vital natural cycles.
Ocean Biology Processing Group at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, public domain
Participants included representatives of the Earth Law Center, a Colorado-based nonprofit dedicated to the growing Rights of Nature movement. The organization has spent the past five years spearheading the concept of ocean rights.
In 2017 the center secured support from more than 70 nonprofit organizations in 32 countries for its Ocean Rights Initiative. That year, at the UN’s first ocean conference, then-executive director Darlene Lee explained that the initiative recommended “the United Nations governments, organizations and stakeholders, promote and adopt holistic and rights-based governance of the ocean, including incorporating the inherent rights of the ocean into law and policy.”
There’s historic precedent for establishing far-reaching rights principles through the United Nations. In 1948 the UN passed the groundbreaking Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrined certain rights and freedoms — such as liberty and equality — as basic entitlements of all people across the globe.
Although that declaration of human rights is not legally binding, Earth Law Center oceans campaign director Michelle Bender says it has served as a powerful tool for embedding human-rights principles in laws and policies, including international treaties, national constitutions, and legal codes around the world.
Similarly, this summer the General Assembly adopted a groundbreaking resolution declaring access to a clean and healthy environment as a universal human right. And in 2010 a resolution was passed on the human right to water and sanitation.
Activists hope to extend the notion to the ocean we all share.

The effort took a step forward at the UN Ocean Conference, where The Ocean Race — a round-the-world sailing contest that also advocates for a healthy ocean — organized a panel discussion where advocates could discuss ways to advance the declaration and raise awareness of its importance.
Speakers included Prime Minister Ulisses Correia de Silva of the Republic of Cabo Verde, Earth Law Center representative Callie Veelenturf, and Ocean Race chairman Richard Brisius.
Addressing a packed audience, speakers argued that establishing legal rights for the ocean could start a cascade of societal shifts in peoples’ attitudes toward, and understanding of, the ocean. They called on the public to urge their UN ambassadors to support ocean rights and get a declaration on the UN’s agenda.
Although these speeches were given in a dimly lit, hushed venue — one of two adjacent rooms where everyone had to listen through headphones so as not to disturb proceedings next door — the audience was enthusiastic. Many attendees clustered around the speakers as the event came to close, eager to hear more.

Experts and national leaders speaking at the panel, and those I talked to after the event, said the declaration would prioritize the ocean’s interests alongside those of people.
This is a fundamentally different approach from most of today’s ocean-related decision-making, which is typically “anthropocentric in nature,” says marine biologist Guillermo Ortuño Crespo, who attended the event. He’s not involved in the ocean rights initiative, but his research has involved scrutiny of management of the ocean. He says the current approach puts humanity at the center, valuing and protecting the marine environment based on the services it provides to people.
A wrecked fishing trawler believed to have been illegally fishing along the Skeleton coast of Namibia. (Photo by Pim GMX, CC BY-NC 2.0)
Crespo describes this anthropocentric paradigm as “a limited value system that psychologically removes us from nature.”
Other experts said a declaration of ocean rights could upend that value system by giving the ocean a voice. It would represent, in Bender’s words, “a fundamental shift in our relationship with the ocean.”
Granting the ocean legal rights would be a step toward “a more ecocentric value system,” Crespo says, “which is still upheld by innumerous coastal and Indigenous peoples across the ocean. These communities recognize the intrinsic right that the ocean and its many species and features have to exist and be protected.”

The UN panel didn’t occur in a vacuum — the Ocean Race is also in the middle of a series of summits, running through 2023, examining ocean rights as a solution to restoring ocean health. The organization has held summits since 2015 to bring together country leaders, industry figures, ocean experts and others to discuss critical marine issues.
Johan Strid, director of Ocean Race Summits, says the race has a “unique and neutral platform to host a dialogue and drive this discussion in a constructive way.”
The summits  and associated workshops, events and “action labs” are components of a strategic program that the Ocean Race, the Earth Law Center, the nonprofit organization Nature’s Rights and other partners ramped up earlier this year.
One major event took place in March in the Italian coastal city of Genova. There the partners started a consultation process to create a draft resolution. The consultation will “gather stakeholders from all backgrounds, regions and expertise to gain feedback on the process, partnership in outreach and raising awareness, as well as drafting of the principles themselves,” says Bender.
Moving forward, a series of workshops will allow consultation participants to analyze the  ideas discussed in the ocean rights summits. The workshops will then feed into a working group that will finalize the resolution.

The push for ocean rights resonates with other Rights of Nature efforts, but its scale is particularly ambitious.
“It would apply to the ocean as a whole, including in areas beyond national jurisdiction,” says Bender.
That’s an important distinction, as international waters — those beyond individual countries’ control — are currently “almost completely ungoverned and unprotected,” as the International Institute for Environment and Development highlighted in March. The United Nations is working to address this, with member countries negotiating a legally binding treaty on the conservation and use of the high seas under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Photo: Susanna Pershern/Submerged Resources Center (via National Park Service, public domain)
But conventional safeguards for the ocean often exist in silos, piecemeal and poorly enforced. Provisions such as Marine Protected Areas only shield selected parts of the ocean, while frameworks currently under discussion like the UN’s proposed plastic treaty tackle individual issues affecting the marine environment.
Bender commends all these efforts as “great steps forward,” but contends that we also need a whole-ocean approach.
This is essential, she argues, because every impact in the ocean is interconnected: Pollution that originates on land enters the ocean and affects the entire planet. A declaration of ocean rights would provide an opportunity to encompass all ocean governance issues and align related frameworks under one overarching umbrella.
Ocean rights would be based on principles that reconnect humans “to the systems that sustain us,” she says. The application of these principles could help to put the brakes on activities like deep-sea mining, and potentially have ramifications for related issues like CO2 emissions. Meanwhile, the standards it upholds could be systems-based. For example, recognizing humans as predators could result in efforts to guide fisheries management.

As discussions continue, organizers aim to have a draft resolution ready to present to the United Nations in September 2023.
Bender says deliberations so far have addressed principles such as intergenerational equity, connectivity and reciprocal responsibility.
Another principle in discussion boils down to “when in doubt, favor the ocean.”
This is similar to the in dubio pro natura standard adopted in Panama and elsewhere, which translates to “when in doubt, err on the side of nature.”
Strid says the resolution would be the starting point for a process within the United Nations itself, assuming the international body agrees on the concept in the first place. Even if that happens, he says, getting “all states in the world to agree on a matter takes time.” They hope that can be accomplished by 2030.
Strid accepts that the timeline is “highly ambitious,” but history shows it’s not impossible. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights took around two years from initial introduction to adoption.
The endeavor has some wind in its sails already, with committed support from the nations of Cabo Verde, the Seychelles and Panama, along with the city of Genova.
In the panel discussion, former Seychelles’ president Danny Faure argued that the support of nations like theirs — known as Big Ocean or Small Island Developing States — is important if ocean rights are to be achieved.
Strid agrees. “Small island states are significantly impacted by the issues concerning the ocean,” he says. Their participation, he adds, can raise awareness of these devastating effects.
Public support will also prove essential. The Ocean Race has launched a campaign called One Blue Voice through which people around the world can sign on to a petition that organizers will present to the United Nations.

Strid stresses that “we are in the early stages of the work.” As the process of shaping the resolution develops, they will focus efforts on gathering formal support from relevant organizations and policymakers.
Despite the immensity of the challenge ahead, both Bender and Strid say they remain hopeful.
“The nature of our sport is to overcome the impossible,” Strid says.
Bender, meanwhile, finds optimism in the successes of the rights of nature movement and the fact that ocean rights have been featured for the first time this year at the Blue Climate Summit and other events. She sees all this as essential momentum that will eventually achieve planetary support for nature and the people who rely on it.
“Humankind is a part of nature, and we cannot realize human rights without a healthy environment to support them,” she says.
This story was produced as part of the 2022 UN Ocean Conference Fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch).

Could Property Law Help Achieve ‘Rights of Nature’ for Wild Animals?

CHICAGO—Plastics executives embraced climate solutions at a major industry conference here last week and said they were betting on “advanced recycling” as a green response to the plastic waste problem, despite market headwinds and growing opposition from environmentalists.

But their version of climate solutions involves making and using more plastic products, and their push for advanced recycling—also known as chemical recycling—will require industry-friendly legislation and subsidies, company officials said at GPS + PEPP, the industry gathering put on by a Dow Jones Company, Chemical Market Analytics by OPIS. 

For too long, the plastics executives acknowledged, their industry has been a “linear” economy, in which plastic products are made from fossil fuels and then end up as litter or waste in landfills, waterways and incinerators. In the United States, less than 6 percent of plastic waste is recycled.

The alternative, they said, is a “circular” plastics economy that produces little or no waste once various plastic waste products are heated and treated with chemicals that turn them into fuels or new plastic feedstocks, although the processes for doing this are new and, so far, largely unproven.

“We are transforming from a linear to a circular economy,” said Nestor de Mattos, a vice president at Dow, the global chemical giant. “A smooth transition will be key to our success.” 

Keep Environmental Journalism AliveICN provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going.Donate Now

Episode 37September 21, 2022(Conversation Recorded on August 19, 2022.)On this episode, Professor of environmental chemistry Martin Scheringer joins Nate. Together, they discuss Scheringer’s most recent paper on PFAS – the ‘forever chemicals, their ubiquity in waterways all over the globe, and their numerous critical health effects.More broadly, they outline the risks and scenarios of plastic pollution to planetary futures – and what we might do about it. Is it possible to live in a (mostly) plastic free world, and do we really have any other option?About Martin ScheringerMartin Scheringer is a professor of environmental chemistry at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, and works in the research program on Environmental Chemistry and Modeling at RECETOX. He holds a diploma in chemistry from the Johannes-Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany, and a doctoral degree and a habilitation from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland.Show Notes & Links to Learn MorePDF Transcript00:37 – Martin’s works + info01:03 – PFAS02:14 – Outside the Safe Operating Space of a New Planetary Boundary for Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) – Martin’s newest paper03:07 – Plastic outweighs all animals on earth03:19 – Micro plastics04:13 – Health advisory levels for PFAS04:52 – PFAS Chemicals move with the water and outgas05:16 – All the products PFAS are used for + more 06:16 – Plastic containers last 700-800 years, and then once degraded last longer06:34 – PFAS never degrade into anything and will never go away08:30 – There are 5,000 chemicals of that type, and up to 300,000 chemicals on the market globally all with different properties and unknown health effects11:01 – ‘The solution to pollution is dilution’11:08 – The Graduate12:45 – Chemical Health Advisories by the EPA12:58 – These chemicals can lower immune response in babies 13:17 – Chemicals can lower sperm counts in men13:49 – Health effects of PFAS14:29 – Dupont teflon production facility releasing PFAS waste water into open waters15:42 – Dark Waters16:09 – Endocrine disrupting chemicals17:45 – Increase in non-communicable diseases over the last 15-20 years18:03 – Increasing climate effects shown19:22 – Endocrine disruptors on non-humans19:59 – The challenge of communicating science20:45 – Metabolic diseases potentially having origins from chemicals23:00 – Steep discount rates24:06 – Packaged food contains lots of these chemicals24:10 – Food Packaging Forum24:54 – We create 300 million tons of plastic each year, and half of that is single use plastic25:35 – The chemicals added into plastics25:53 – PVC, phthalates27:22 – All the products that come from a barrel of oil28:37 – Art Berman + TGS Episode29:09 – Plastic takes ~12% of oil production30:32 – Negatives of plastic alternatives33:11 – 500 billion fossil workers added per year33:35 – How did people used to live without plastic products?34:29 – Making glass thinner and lighter34:55 – Our supply chains are going to have to localize and regionalize35:45 – Nate’s story on The Great Simplification36:29 – Potential of small scale farms feeding everyone in the world36:40 – The centrality of fertilizers and pesticides37:50 – Petrochemicals in pharmaceuticals39:54 – RoundUp controversy – Patrick Moore willing to drink it and then refusing to41:05 – PCBs41:18 – PCB damage to whales, Orca found dead on beach with high level of PCBs42:08 – Mercury Biomagnification in fish43:06 – Average golden retriever in 1950s lived to 15 years old43:35 – Prevalence of cancer currently44:50 – List of diseases connected to PFOA   46:30 – Persistent chemicals47:37 – Environmental Justice and chemical pollutants48:46 – Persistence and Spatial range49:25 – Ocean acidification49:45 – Chemical stressor effects on animal populations and recent study: Impacts of endocrine disrupting chemicals on reproduction in wildlife and humans50:18 – Insect down by 50-70% in mass51:28 – Higher temperatures cause chemicals to outgas more easily51:51 – There is very minimal testing of chemicals before they are released as products56:45 – The New Car smell is phthalate, flame retardants, EDCs… 58:20 – Standing stock in the US grows at 2.5-2.8%/year1:01:27 – IPCC, IPCC biodiversity, IPCC for chemicals1:09:06 – Fridays for Future1:11:55 – Destruction of the Amazon

Environmental experts say there’s a strong possibility that a federal bill will be introduced in the U.S. that seeks to strengthen an industry known as “advanced recycling,” or “chemical recycling.”While proponents of advanced recycling tout it as a solution to the ever-growing plastic pollution issue, critics say that it’s not recycling at all, but a highly polluting incineration process that converts plastic into fuel.Experts say that current advanced recycling plants are able to operate with ease due to state laws that subject them to fewer regulations.Critics say the passing of a federal bill into law would substantially increase the number of advanced recycling plants across the U.S., allowing them to evade many environmental regulations while disproportionately polluting the air in low-income communities and communities of color. In April 2022, a Texas company unveiled a plan to transform a tiny Pennsylvania town into an industrial hub: it would invest $1.1 billion into building a manufacturing plant that will annually convert around 450,000 tons of plastic waste — an amount 40 times as heavy as the Eiffel Tower — into feedstock for new products, a process dubbed by the plastics industry as “advanced recycling,” though also known as “chemical recycling.”
In a press release, the company, Encina, says the facility will help the world transition toward a circular economy and achieve carbon neutrality. But critics say the company is simply burning plastic to make fuel and that these actions will endanger the environment and human health.
Encina has yet to open its new plant in Point Township, Pennsylvania, but there could be about eight other facilities currently operating across the U.S. that use so-called advanced recycling processes, according to a brief by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Environmental experts say the facilities operate under the guise of being recycling plants, when they’re really producing hazardous toxic waste, some of which is converted into fuel. Moreover, they say these facilities are able to evade a number of environmental regulations due to 20 state laws that define advanced recycling as a manufacturing process, rather than as a more strictly regulated waste disposal process.
Now, environmental experts say they anticipate an even greater problem: the possibility of a federal bill being introduced that, if passed into law, would strengthen the chemical recycling industry across the U.S.
Daniel Rosenberg, director of federal toxics policy at the NRDC, said the plastics and chemical industries would see the approval of a federal bill as the “holy grail.”
“Essentially, federal legislation similar to what has been passed in many of the states would apply nationwide, and would remove federal health protections,” Rosenberg told Mongabay in an email.
While no bill has yet been introduced at a federal level, Rosenberg said that the American Chemistry Council (ACC), an industry association based in Washington, D.C., that represents plastic manufacturers, has been saying “that they are going to introduce a bill,” and representatives from ACC have been “talking to Congressional offices about it.”
In response to these reports, a coalition of more than 200 organizations, including the NRDC, recently submitted a letter to the U.S. Congress, urging officials to reject any bill that would enable the plastics and chemical industries to forge ahead with advanced recycling.
“The last thing Congress should be doing is weakening regulations for toxic technologies,” Sarah Doll, national director of Safer States, an NGO that’s part of the coalition, said in a statement. “As a nation, we should be focusing on real solutions to the plastic crisis, like bending the curve down on the use of plastic and solutions like nontoxic reuse and refill systems.”
Activists say the very best way to curb the massive plastics pollution now escalating around the globe is to reduce plastics production, not to incinerate the waste, which can potentially cause air, ground and water pollution.
Environmental experts say there’s a strong possibility that a federal bill will be introduced in the U.S. that seeks to strengthen a petrochemical industry process known as “advanced recycling,” or “chemical recycling.” Image by Vivan Sachs/IBM via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).
What exactly is ‘advanced recycling’?
The world has a plastic problem. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that global society produces about 400 million metric tons of single-use plastic products and other plastic waste each year, and that less than 10% is recycled. In the U.S., the recycling rate is even worse — one study suggests that only 5% is truly recycled.
Plastic pollution has gotten so bad that scientists have suggested that we have crossed a planetary boundary for plastics and other chemicals entering the environment — meaning that we have transgressed a limit beyond which our Earth may not be able to cope with the environmental stress that humans inflict. This boundary crossing could destabilize Earth’s natural operating systems, especially when the unrestrained release of chemicals interacts with other Earth systems and processes. Ultimately, human survival could be at risk.
So what do we do with all of this plastic waste, much of which is polluting our oceans, waterways, land, and even the atmosphere? The chemical and plastics industry says a solution lies in “advanced recycling.”
America’s Plastic Makers, an association of plastic producers and fossil fuel companies that claims to seek the end of plastic pollution, says that “advanced recycling” is a sustainable process that “creates new top-quality plastics out of used plastics,” including 90% of “hard-to-recycle plastics.” Chemical recyling is described as a process of breaking down solid plastic into liquid or gas form through gasification (the heating of waste in a low-oxygen environment) or pyrolysis (the heating of waste without oxygen) to “remake plastics or products for other industries.”
America’s Plastic Makers argues that advanced recycling facilities do not emit more air pollution than facilities that produce cars or food, and that the process is “key to meeting circularity goals while keeping plastics out of landfills and our environment.”
Environmental experts view things very differently. First of all, they dispute the idea that advanced recycling is recycling at all, at least not in the traditional sense of turning an old plastic product into a new one. Instead, they say it’s a highly polluting, energy-intensive process that incinerates plastic waste, and in most cases, turns it into fuel, such as diesel and aviation fuel.
According to a Greenpeace report published in 2020, less than half of 50 surveyed recycling projects that were approved by the ACC — some of which are currently operational and some of which are yet to open — would be considered “credible plastic recycling projects,” while most of the rest turned plastic waste into fuel.
“Very little, if any, plastic is being recycled at the ‘chemical recycling’ facilities in the U.S.,” Rosenberg said. “These are plastic-to-fuel operations, which is not recycling. The industry is selling a fantasy of recycling plastic, but they are primarily making dirty aviation fuel.”
America’s Plastic Makers says that “advanced recycling” is a sustainable process that “creates new top-quality plastics out of used plastics,” but environmental experts say very little actual plastics recycling is taking place, with the polluting, energy-intensive, process used to skirt tougher waste disposal regulations, and so that the industry can receive subsidies. Image by Vivan Sachs/IBM via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).
‘Advanced recycling’ – Neither ‘advanced,’ nor ‘recycling’
Critics say that advanced recycling processes can produce toxic air pollutants that pose considerable health and safety risks for workers and local communities located near these facilities, many of which are low-income communities and communities of color.
Data collected by the Environmental Protection Agency indicated that a pyrolysis plant in Tigard, Oregon, produced nearly 500,000 pounds (227 metric tons) of hazardous waste in 2019, which was then burned to produce energy at plants located in six different U.S. communities. The main component of the waste was said to be benzene – a liquid hydrocarbon that has been identified as a carcinogen – as well as other dangerous elements like lead, cadmium and chromium.
The plastic-to-fuel process also has a “Goliath-sized carbon footprint,” according to a report published by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) in 2020. This is because it requires fossil fuel energy to burn solid plastic to create fuel; the burning process itself also releases greenhouse gases and other chemicals, the report says.
New research published by Zero Waste Europe (ZWE), a group of experts and organizations working to eliminate waste, found that greenhouse gas emissions from facilities that use pyrolysis were nine times higher than plants that conducted traditional, or mechanical, recycling.
Other parts of the plastic life cycle emit greenhouse gases — from the fracking of gases to plastic production and disposal. A report published last year by the NGO Beyond Plastic found that the plastics industry in the U.S. currently emits 232 million metric tons of greenhouse gases every year, the equivalent of 116.5 gigawatts of coal plants — and that plastics will release more greenhouse gas emissions than coal plants in the U.S. by 2030.
Joshua Baca, vice president of plastics at the ACC, said he believes the many criticisms of advanced recycling “represent a total lack of understanding [and a] purposeful misrepresentation of both advanced recycling processes and basic economics.”
“Advanced recycling converts used plastics into saleable feedstocks to remake into new plastics,” Baca told Mongabay in an emailed statement. “If all the plastics were incinerated as falsely alleged, there would be no products to sell or viable business models for the multiple advanced recycling companies across the globe.”
Baca also disputed the characterization of advanced recycling as incineration, arguing that pyrolysis and gasification units operate without combustion either in low oxygen or without oxygen.
“ACC will continue to engage lawmakers on the basic facts about advanced recycling, and we encourage public officials and journalists to critically review the false claims and self-cited publications perpetuating old myths,” he said.
A waste processing management facility and research center in Canada. Image by David Dodge/Green Energy Futures via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
Fewer regulations, easier operations
Rosenberg said most state laws encourage chemical recycling in three main ways: by reclassifying plastic waste as “feedstock” to avoid environmental laws targeting waste disposal processes; changing the definition of “recycling” to include chemical recycling and its products; and making chemical recycling facilities eligible for state subsidies and other financial incentives.
“Generally speaking, having fewer regulatory requirements and receiving tax-payer subsidies is likely to make operations easier, which is why the chemical industry is pursuing them aggressively,” he said in his email. “It is also a way of laying the groundwork for eliminating protections at the federal level.”
Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and former EPA regional administrator, told Mongabay that federal legislation would result in “more chemical recycling facilities created around the country,” and that many would likely end up in low-income communities and communities of color, which is where many current petrochemical facilities are located.
While it’s unclear how many new advanced recycling plants are planned for the U.S., Rosenberg said there are “new announcements almost weekly of plants that companies say they intend to build.”
Jessica Roff, a campaigner and policy advocate for GAIA, said a federal bill could also help advanced recycling facilities evade rules around incineration processes, which the EPA has been regulating for 30 years.
“If these plastic incinerators by another name can avoid being regulated as incinerators, they can escape Clean Air Act requirements altogether and their toxic pollution would be unfettered,” Roff told Mongabay in an email. “A federal law would also limit … community member rights, making it impossible for them to find out what toxic pollutants they’re being exposed to, let alone to stop them.”
In the letter sent to Congress by the coalition of groups, the authors say the concept of advanced recycling is a “dream come true” for chemical industry lobbyists.
“Having an eco-sounding way to make plastic waste vanish from sight helps the industry justify exponential growth in plastics production,” the authors write.
According to the OECD, plastic production could triple in the next 40 years — from about 460 million metric tons in 2019 to 1.23 billion metric tons in 2060 — in the absence of policies and action.
Environmental experts say the key to solving the plastic pollution issue is stopping plastic being produced in the first place. Earlier this year, 175 countries agreed to adopt a U.N. framework to fight plastic pollution by addressing the entire life cycle of plastic, including its production. But nations have yet to agree upon the details of the treaty, which may not be finalized until the end of next year.
“The answer to the plastic waste crisis is not to make more plastic, and then burn it, but to make less plastic,” Rosenberg said. “It is a very simple equation that does not yield a result pleasing to, or profitable for, the chemical industry. They are proposing an alternative ‘solution’ using funny math that will make things worse and benefit nobody but the industry itself.”
Banner image: Sorting through plastic in a plastic recycling plant. Image by ILO/M. Fossat via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Citations:
Milbrandt, A., Coney, K., Badgett, A., & Beckham, G. T. (2022). Quantification and evaluation of plastic waste in the United States. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 183, 106363. doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2022.106363
Möck, A., Bulach, W., & Betz, J. (2022). Climate impact of pyrolysis of waste plastic packaging in comparison with reuse and mechanical recycling. Retrieved from Zero Waste Europe and the Rethink Plastic alliance website: https://zerowasteeurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/zwe_2022_report_climat_impact__pyrolysis_plastic_packaging.pdf
Persson, L., Carney Almroth, B. M., Collins, C. D., Cornell, S., De Wit, C. A., Diamond, M. L., … Hauschild, M. Z. (2022). Outside the safe operating space of the planetary boundary for novel entities. Environmental Science & Technology. doi:10.1021/acs.est.1c04158
Schlegel, I. (2020). Deception by the numbers. Retrieved from Greenpeace website: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GP_Deception-by-the-Numbers-3.pdf
Vallette, J. (2021). The new coal: Plastics and climate change. Retrieved from Beyond Plastic website: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5eda91260bbb7e7a4bf528d8/t/616ef29221985319611a64e0/1634661022294/REPORT_The_New-Coal_Plastics_and_Climate-Change_10-21-2021.pdf
Elizabeth Claire Alberts is a staff writer for Mongabay. Follow her on Twitter @ECAlberts.
FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.

Air Pollution, Chemicals, Environment, environmental justice, Environmental Law, Environmental Policy, Environmental Politics, Industry, Law, Plastic, Pollution, Recycling, Waste
Print