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A worker carries used drink bottles and cans for recycling at a collection point in Brooklyn, New York. Three decades of recycling have so far failed to reduce what we throw away, especially plastics.

Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images

Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images

After recycling’s failure to appreciably reduce the amount of plastic the U.S. throws away, some states are taking a new approach, transferring the onus of recycling from consumers to product manufacturers. In the past 12 months, legislatures in Maine, Oregon and Colorado have passed “extended producer responsibility” laws on packaging. The legislation essentially forces producers of consumer goods — such as beverage-makers, shampoo companies and food corporations — to pay for the disposal of the packages and containers their products come in. The process is intended to nudge manufacturers to use more easily recyclable materials, compostable packaging or less packaging. Now, the New York legislature is deliberating two extended producer responsibility bills as its session nears its June 2 close. Lobbying by business and environmental groups has been particularly intense around details such as what recycling goals must be met and who sets them. Industry and environmentalists alike believe that when a state as big as New York adopts a law, it creates a template or standard that other states might adopt too.

“I’m exhausted,” said Judith Enck, founder and president of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics, who has been lobbying legislators on the issue. “If you have a state the size of New York get it wrong on extended producer responsibility, it would have a ripple effect on other states.” What would this approach look like? Extended producer responsibility — the ungainly name comes from a 1990 paper by Swedish academics Thomas Lindhqvist and Karl Lidgren — took root in Europe 30 years ago. Many U.S. states have such policies for e-waste and mattresses. But their adoption for packaging is fairly recent in the U.S., and those programs won’t be fully up and running for years. While each state’s legislation varies, the system generally works like this: Beverage companies, shampoo-makers, food manufacturers and other producers will keep track of how much of each sort of packaging they use. These producers will reimburse government recycling programs for handling the waste, either directly or through a consortium called a “producer responsibility organization.” Fees will be lower for companies that use easily recyclable, compostable or even reusable packaging, a mechanism that supporters say will provide incentives to adopt more sustainable practices. Recycling centers will use the money to cover their operating costs, expand outreach and education, and invest in new equipment.
“We think corporations will produce less virgin materials because they are charged by the amount they put out there, and certainly less eco-unfriendly materials,” said New York state Sen. Todd Kaminsky, a Democrat from Long Island who sponsored one of the bills pending in Albany.

Microplastics in sewage: a toxic combination that is poisoning our landGeorge MonbiotPolicy failure and lack of enforcement have left Britain’s waterways and farmland vulnerable to ‘forever chemicals’ We have recently woken up to a disgusting issue. Rather than investing properly in new sewage treatment works, water companies in the UK – since they were privatised in 1989 – have handed £72 bn in dividends to their shareholders. Our sewerage system is antiquated and undersized, and routinely bypassed altogether, as companies allow raw human excrement to pour directly into our rivers. They have reduced some of them to stinking, almost lifeless drains.This is what you get from years of policy failure and the near-collapse of monitoring and enforcement by successive governments. Untreated sewage not only loads our rivers with excessive nutrients, but it’s also the major source of the microplastics that now pollute them. It contains a wide range of other toxins, including PFASs: the “forever chemicals” that were the subject of the movie Dark Waters. This may explain the recent apparent decline in otter populations: after recovering from the organochlorine pesticides used in the 20th century, they are now being hit by new pollutants.Microplastics found deep in lungs of living people for first timeRead moreBut here’s a question scarcely anyone is asking: what happens when our sewerage system works as intended? What happens when the filth is filtered out and the water flowing out of sewage treatment plants is no longer hazardous to life? I stumbled across the answer while researching my book, Regenesis, and I’m still reeling from it. When the system works as it is meant to, it is likely to be just as harmful as it is when bypassed by unscrupulous water companies. It’s an astonishing and shocking story, but it has hardly been touched by the media.We are often told that the microplastics entering the sewage system, which come from tyre crumb washing off the roads, the synthetic clothes we wear and many other sources, are a wicked problem, almost impossible to solve. But a modern, well-run sewage treatment works removes 99% of these fibres from wastewater. So far, so good. But – and at this point you may wish to decide whether to laugh or cry – having screened them out of the water supply, the treatment companies then release them back into the wild. In the UK, of the sewage sludge screened out by treatment works, 87% is sent to farms. The microplastics so carefully removed from wastewater by the treatment process are then spread across the land in the sewage sludge the water companies sell to farmers as fertiliser.Then what happens to them? Some – perhaps most – wash off the soil and into the rivers: in other words, whether sewage is screened or not, the microplastics it contains end up in the same place. Others accumulate in the soil.It’s hard to decide which is worse. Experiments show how microplastics cascade through soil food webs, poisoning some of the animals that inhabit it. When they decompose into nanoparticles, they can be absorbed by soil fungi and accumulated by plants. We currently have no idea what the consequences of eating these contaminated crops might be.The testing of sewage sludge has not been updated since 1989, so there is no checking for plastic particles or most other synthetic chemicals. A study commissioned but then kept secret by the government found that the sewage sludge being spread on our farmland contains a remarkable cocktail of dangerous substances, including PFASs, benzo(a)pyrene (a group 1 carcinogen), dioxins, furans, PCBs and PAHs, all of which are persistent and potentially cumulative.Where did they come from? Because our waste streams are not separated and poorly regulated, anywhere and everywhere. The major source of PFASs in sewage is probably the building trade. “Forever chemicals” are found in paints, sealants and coatings, caulks, adhesives and roofing materials. Evidence sent to me by an industry insider suggests that regulators the world over turn a blind eye to liquid waste disposal on construction sites. Tools are washed and surfaces sprayed with water that’s then poured down the drain. Without regulation, contractors have no incentive to use technologies that ensure liquid waste is contained. Why go to this expense if your competitors don’t have to?Raw sewage ‘pumped into English bathing waters 25,000 times in 2021’Read moreCould this story get any worse? Oh yes. Microplastics are sometimes spread deliberately on the soil by farmers, to make it more friable. Across Europe, thousands of tonnes of plastic are also added to fertilisers, to prevent them from caking; or to delay the release of the nutrients they contain. Fertiliser pellets are coated with plastic films – polyurethane, polystyrene, PVC, polyacrylamide and other synthetic polymers­– some of which are known to be toxic and all of which disintegrate into microplastics. It is almost unbelievable that the deliberate contamination of agricultural soils with persistent and cumulative pollutants is both widespread and legal.This practice, as well as the spreading of contaminated sewage sludge, urgently needs to be stopped, before large tracts of farmland become unusable, and the damage to ecosystems, from soil to sea, irreversible. It’s tragic that the nutrients in sewage sludge can’t safely be used, but it seems to me that there’s no immediate solution, in our dysfunctional system, but to incinerate it. Only when toxic, accumulating chemicals are banned, waste streams separated and proper tests conducted will sewage be safe to spread.Right now we are poisoning the land and, in all likelihood, poisoning ourselves. It could turn out to be one of the most deadly issues of all. And hardly anyone knows.
George Monbiot will discuss his book Regenesis at a Guardian Live event on Monday 30 May. Book tickets in-person or online here

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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Amazon is facing vote from its shareholders and environmentalists this week over its use of plastic packaging.

Seattleites may have caught wind of the campaign around Amazon already, through billboards and yard signs featuring turtles caught in plastic. The message: stop using its flimsy plastic packaging that too easily ends up in marine ecosystems.Amazon began its annual investors meeting at 9 a.m. Wednesday. It was expected to advise shareholders to vote “no” on a resolution that would require the corporation to cut down plastic pollution. The resolution would require the company to take two steps it never has before on plastics. Those are: disclose how much plastic packaging it uses, and strategize how to move away from the thin, landfill bound packaging it uses now. The backers say there is hope for this to pass.

“In India, legislation was passed that required Amazon to move away from plastic packaging, and they’ve since done so,” says Sara Holzknecht with the group Oceana.Oceana has researched Amazon’s use of plastic packaging worldwide and is backing this resolution. They also helped run the public campaign that had Seattle homeowners placing yard signs with a plea to Amazon.Holzknecht says Amazon is one of the largest corporate users of flimsy plastics, which are hard (if not impossible) to recycle curbside. She says its partly a business case for the corporation. “Amazon, with its resources, is certainly an industry leader in a lot of ways and could be innovating away from plastics and away from paper mailers.” Again, she says, it has already made innovations in India when it was legally bound to.A report from Oceana estimates that up to 22 million pounds of Amazon’s plastic packaging ended up in marine ecosystems in 2019. Another way of putting it, says Holzknecht, is that in 2020 alone “the company used enough plastic to encircle our globe nearly 600 times in the form of plastic air pillows.”

Amazon executives argue the company is already committed to addressing plastic pollution. But, Amazon is lobbying shareholders to vote no.Amazon executives say, in a letter to investors, they share the concerns outlined in the resolution and are engaged in efforts to develop recycling infrastructure. In addition, the company says it plans to replace its mailing envelopes with a recyclable padded mailer by the end of this year in the U.S.The resolution, if passed, would require the company to strategize how it could reduce plastic use by at least one-third.

In India, the large mammals see trash in village dumps as a buffet, but researchers found they are inadvertently consuming packaging and utensils.Some Asian elephants are a little shy about their eating habits. They sneak into dumps near human settlements at the edges of their forest habitats and quickly gobble up garbage — plastic utensils, packaging and all. But their guilty pleasure for fast food is traveling with them — elephants are transporting plastic and other human garbage deep into forests in parts of India.“When they defecate, the plastic comes out of the dung and gets deposited in the forest,” said Gitanjali Katlam, an ecological researcher in India.While a lot of research has been conducted on the spread of plastics from human pollution into the world’s oceans and seas, considerably less is known about how such waste moves with wildlife on land. But elephants are important seed dispersers, and research published this month in the Journal for Nature Conservation shows that the same process that keeps ecosystems functioning might carry human-made pollutants into national parks and other wild areas. This plastic could have negative effects on the health of elephants and other species that have consumed the material once it has passed through the large mammals’ digestive systems.Dr. Katlam first noticed elephants feeding on garbage on trail cameras during her Ph.D. work at Jawaharlal Nehru University. She was studying which animals visited garbage dumps at the edge of villages in northern India. At the time, she and her colleagues also noticed plastic in the elephants’ dung. With the Nature Science Initiative, a nonprofit focused on ecological research in northern India, Dr. Katlam and her colleagues collected elephant dung in Uttarakhand state.The researchers found plastic in all of the dung near village dumps and in the forest near the town of Kotdwar. They walked only a mile or two into the forest in their search for dung, but the elephants probably carried the plastic much farther, Dr. Katlam said. Asian elephants take about 50 hours to pass food and can walk six miles to 12 miles in a day. In the case of Kotdwar, this is concerning because the town is only a few miles from a national park.“This adds evidence to the fact that plastic pollution is ubiquitous,” said Agustina Malizia, an independent researcher with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina who was not involved in this research but studied the effects of plastic on land ecosystems. She says the study is “extremely necessary,” as it might be one of the first reports of a very large land animal ingesting plastic.Plastic comprised 85 percent of the waste found in the elephant dung from Kotdwar. The bulk of this came from food containers and cutlery, followed by plastic bags and packaging. But the researchers also found glass, rubber, fabric and other waste. Dr. Katlam said the elephants were likely to have been seeking out containers and plastic bags because they still had leftover food inside. The utensils probably were eaten in the process.While trash passes through their digestive systems, the elephants may be ingesting chemicals like polystyrene, polyethylene, bisphenol A and phthalates. It is uncertain what damage these substances can cause, but Dr. Katlam worries that they may contribute to declines in elephant population numbers and survival rates.“It is known from other animals that their stomachs may get filled with plastics, causing mechanical damage,” said Carolina Monmany Garzia, who works with Dr. Malizia in Argentina and was not involved in Dr. Katlam’s study.Other animals may consume the plastic again once it is transported into the forest through the elephants’ dung. “It has a cascading effect,” Dr. Katlam said.Dr. Katlam said that governments in India should take steps to manage their solid waste to avoid these kinds of issues. But individuals can help, too, by separating their food waste from the containers so that plastic does not end up getting eaten so much by accident.“This is a very simple step, but a very important step,” she said.“We need to realize and understand how the overuse of plastics is affecting the environment and the organisms that inhabit them,” Dr. Mealizia said.

May 23, 2022 11:32 5 min read Visiting the Galápagos Islands — the Ecuadorian archipelago made famous by British geologist and naturalist Charles Darwin, and known for its giant tortoises — is no easy task. If the exorbitant airfares (an average of USD 400 for a round-trip from Guayaquil, Ecuador’s most populous city) do not deter visitors, the entry fees (USD 100 for most tourists aged over 12), multiple forms, and airport security might.  The Galápagos slap hefty fees on tourists as a way of financing biodiversity conservation services and controlling the influx of people to the ecologically-sensitive islands. Since 1998, the Galápagos have been run under a… Access all of The Brazilian Report Already a subscriber? Log In

Plastic particles smaller than 5mm (known as microplastics) are well-documented pollutants in ocean and freshwater habitats. The discovery of microplastics in the most remote rivers of the Himalayas and the deepest trenches of the Pacific Ocean has sparked widespread concern. But how much microplastic lies closer to home – buried in the soil where food is grown?

Our latest study estimated that between 31,000 and 42,000 tonnes of microplastics (or 86 trillion – 710 trillion microplastic particles) are spread on European farmland soils each year, mirroring the concentration of microplastics in ocean surface waters.

The cause is microplastic-laden fertilisers derived from sewage sludge diverted from wastewater treatment plants. These are commonly spread on farmland as a renewable source of fertiliser throughout European countries, in part due to EU directives that aim to promote a circular waste economy.

As well as creating a massive reservoir of environmental microplastics, this practice is effectively undoing the benefit of removing these particles from wastewater. Spreading microplastics onto farmland will eventually return them to natural watercourses, as rain washes water on the surface of soil into rivers, or it eventually infiltrates groundwater.

Microplastics filtered from sewage sludge at the wastewater treatment plant.
James Lofty, Author provided

Wastewater treatment plants remove solid contaminants (such as plastics and other large particles) from raw sewage and drain water using a series of settling tanks. This produces an effluent of clean water that can be released to the environment. The floating material and settled particles from these tanks are combined to form the sludge used as fertiliser.

We found that up to 650 million microplastic particles between 1mm and 5mm in size entered a wastewater treatment plant in south Wales, UK, every day. All of these particles were separated from the incoming sewage and diverted into the sludge rather than being released with the clean effluent. This demonstrates how effective default wastewater treatment can be for removing microplastics.

At this facility, each gram of sewage sludge contained up to 24 microplastic particles, which was roughly 1% of its weight. In Europe, an estimated 8 million to 10 million tonnes of sewage sludge is generated each year, with around 40% sent to farmland. The spreading of sewage sludge on agricultural soil is widely practised across Europe, owing to the nitrogen and phosphorus it offers crops.

UK farms also use sewage sludge as fertiliser. In our study, the UK had the highest amount of microplastic pollution within its soils across all European nations (followed by Spain, Portugal and Germany). Between 500 and 1,000 microplastic particles are applied to each square metre of agricultural land in the UK every year.

The relative microplastic burden on European farm soil from direct recycling of sewage sludge.
James Lofty, Author provided

A poisoned circular waste economy

At present, there are no adequate solutions to the release of microplastics into the environment from wastewater treatment plants.

Microplastics removed from wastewater are effectively transported to the land, where they reside until being returned to waterways. According to a study conducted in Ontario, Canada, 99% of microplastics in agricultural soil were transported away from where the sludge was initially applied.

Until then, they have the potential to harm life in the soil. As well as being easily consumed and absorbed by animals and plants, microplastics pose a serious threat to the soil ecosystem because they leach toxic chemicals and transport hazardous pathogens. Experiments have shown that the presence of microplastics can stunt earthworm growth and cause them to lose weight.

Microplastics can also change the acidity, water holding capacity and porosity of soil. This affects plant growth and performance by altering the way roots bury into the soil and take up nutrients.

There is currently no European legislation to limit the amount of microplastics embedded in sewage sludge used as fertiliser. Germany has set upper limits for impurities like glass and plastic, allowing up to 0.1% of wet fertiliser weight to constitute plastics larger than 2mm in size. According to the results from the wastewater treatment plant in south Wales, applying sewage sludge would be prohibited if similar legislation were in place in the UK.

For the time being, landowners are likely to continue recycling sewage sludge as sustainable fertiliser, despite the risk of contaminating soils and eventually rivers and the ocean with microplastics.