Lego has unveiled its first bricks made from recycled plastic bottles and revealed that it hopes to include the pieces in sets within two years.
The Danish company, which takes its name from the Danish words for “leg godt”, meaning “play well”, makes billions of bricks a year, most of them from a plastic called ABS which gives them “clutch power”, helping them to grip together.
The prototype 4×2 bricks have been made from PET plastic from discarded bottles with additives to give them the strength of standard Lego parts, and are the result of three years of experiments with 250 variations of materials.
On average, every 1-litre plastic bottle used in the process provides enough material for 10 4×2 Lego bricks.
The process will be tested and developed further before the toymaker decides whether to move to the pilot production phase. The next part of testing is expected to take at least a year.
Lego has more than 150 people working on making its products more sustainable and said it would invest up to $400m (£286m) over three years in achieving that aim.
It has already announced plans to remove single-use plastic from boxes, and since 2018 has been producing parts from bio-polyethylene (bio-PE), made from sustainably sourced sugarcane. These parts are bendy pieces, such as trees, leaves and accessories for figurines.
It said the pigments used to dye bricks were not oil-based, but it was working to make them more sustainable.
Tim Brooks, vice-president for environmental responsibility at Lego Group, said the biggest challenge was “rethinking and innovating new materials that are as durable, strong and high quality as our existing bricks – and fit with Lego elements made over the past 60 years”.
He added: “We’re committed to playing our part in building a sustainable future for generations of children. We want our products to have a positive impact on the planet, not just with the play they inspire, but also with the materials we use. We still have a long way to go on our journey, but are pleased with the progress we’re making.”
Environmental campaigners welcomed the use of recycled plastics, but said it should not be the “default solution” to the plastics crisis.
Camilla Zerr, plastics campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “Children deserve to grow up in a world free of pointless plastic pollution, so initiatives where toys can be made using recycled plastics are promising, and others in the industry should follow suit.
“But it’s really important that recycling isn’t hailed as the default solution to the plastics crisis. Manufacturers must ensure toys are made to endure many years of use, so they can be handed down and reused from generation to generation.”
Zerr said the government could “take bolder strides” by setting laws on plastic pollution in its environment bill.
Eggs eaten by some of the world’s poorest people are being poisoned by plastic waste from rich countries like Canada and the U.S., new research has found.
A suite of harmful chemicals are added to plastic and food packaging to give them desirable traits, like grease resistance or flexibility. When they burn or break down, these chemicals contaminate the surrounding environment and animals living or feeding nearby.
Chickens can absorb the chemicals by drinking contaminated water or eating contaminated worms and insects. Eggs are particularly sensitive to containing toxic chemicals and are commonly consumed by people, according to the report produced by the International Pollutant Elimination Network (IPEN), a global coalition of environmental organizations.
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The problem is most acute for people in low- and middle-income countries at the receiving end of the multibillion-dollar global trade in plastic and electronic waste. According to the recent study, which was not peer-reviewed, people eating free-range eggs raised near 25 plastic waste dumps and recycling centres in 14 low- and middle-income countries are exposed to levels of toxic chemicals far beyond safe limits to human health.
“I’m really impressed,” said Max Liboiron, a professor of geography at Memorial University who specializes in plastic pollution. (Liboiron was not involved in the research.)
“These folk are looking at the mixing of plastic and e-waste in the actual conditions that the waste occurs, they’re looking at the way people actually eat eggs … and they’re looking at a range of chemicals (that) exist in the real world.”
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It’s a “really, really rare” approach, Liboiron explained, as most research into the toxicity of plastics only looks at a select few chemicals in a laboratory setting. That can make it difficult to assess the full impact plastic waste disposal and recycling have on human health and the environment. The problem is exacerbated by the chemicals’ tendency to change — and often become more toxic — when exposed to heat, light and other chemicals and metals.
“The chemical that goes into plastic isn’t necessarily the same chemical that comes out. It can change when you expose it to air, water, different pH, different salinities,” explained Imari Karega Walker, a PhD candidate at Duke University studying the environmental impact of plastic additives.
Those factors can create a suite of chemicals that fly under industry and government safety checks on new plastic products, yet pose a danger to the environment and human health, she said. The IPEN study looked at some of those compounds in its broad assessment of persistent organic pollutants, like carcinogenic dioxins and biphynols produced from burning plastic waste, for instance.
The study’s choice to assess recycling sites as well as open landfills is also important, Liboiron noted. For years, the global plastics industry has promoted recycling as a sustainable and safe way to dispose of harmful plastics. The findings point out that those promises may not be accurate.
Furthermore, they highlight the ongoing problems arising from rich countries’ waste exports to the developing world.
Eggs eaten by some of the world’s poorest people are being poisoned by plastic waste from rich countries like Canada and the U.S., new research by @ToxicsFree has found. #PlasticWaste
“A lot of our waste management systems rely on exports … the U.S., U.K., Europe (and Canada) don’t have a functional waste infrastructure,” Liboiron explained. “(We’re) implicated, because it’s quite literally our waste.”
Earlier this year, Canada officially entered into the Basel Convention’s plastic agreement, a global treaty restricting the international trade in plastic waste. However, critics have noted that in fall 2020, the federal government quietly signed an agreement with the U.S. to allow the free flow of plastic waste between the two countries.
Roughly 93 per cent of Canada’s plastic waste exports go to the U.S., according to data by the Basel Action Network (BAN), an environmental organization. Because the U.S. isn’t a signatory to the treaty, it can export Canadian plastic garbage to poorer countries.
Each month, about 25.7 million kilograms of plastic waste — mainly low-quality, unrecyclable plastic of uncertain origin — leaves U.S. shores for countries like Malaysia, Mexico and Vietnam, BAN reports. While countries have in recent years tried to stem some of the flow, which is technically illegal, many have had trouble stopping the import of trash from overseas.
In theory, if the receiving country has signed the Basel Convention — as 188 countries have — it can’t accept the waste without a bilateral agreement with the U.S. However, economic pressure and a lack of enforcement can make it nearly impossible to stem the flow, according to a December investigation into the issue.
“The whole thing can be understood as waste colonialism,” Liboiron said. “It’s our export of waste to other places, but the reason they import our waste is because of existing colonial legacies where we’ve taken out anything else of value already, and now their most viable choice is to import our (trash).”
Blister packs were a major innovation when they debuted, but it’s time to acknowledge that they’re hard for some people to open and that they create enormous amounts of waste. There has to be a better way.
When the blister pack was conceived in the 1960s, it revolutionized unit-dose drug administration by providing a cheap, light, tamper-proof barrier that preserved product integrity. But it was also a fine example of packaging design that facilitated user compliance. Through assigning the days of the week to each pill on the blister packs, a simple container became a handy memory aid for regular pill takers—a critical mechanism for those on the contraceptive pill where one missed day could result in an unplanned pregnancy. Moreover, the design deterred mass pill consumption in a way that pill bottles did not, providing an additional barrier for safety.
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But today, not much has changed. Some 12 million people older than 65 in the U.K. and 40 million in the U.S. take five pills per day to manage ailments, and their risk of overdosing or under-medicating is very real. Current packaging design, at the hands of the frail and near of sight, is not just impractical but potentially dangerous. And this danger doesn’t just relate to older individuals; it relates to the planet at large.
At the prime of health, we think nothing of popping a pill out of its blister. Sharp eyes and dexterous fingers make the simple act almost effortless. But what appears like second nature to the intermittent aspirin taker becomes a fiddly and frustrating task for those who are elderly and infirm struggling with shakes and arthritis. It is not democratically accessible.
Then there’s the sustainability issue. Blister packs comprise a multilayer of different materials: One to form a rigid structure, and the other to provide a pierceable membrane, making it a nightmare to recycle. Its very design requires the consumer to separate layers into mono-materials before they can be discarded into their respective recycling bins. If 12 million people in the U.K. are consuming, on average, five pills per day and the standard pill pack has around eight pills, that alone equates to approximately 2.7 billion pill packs tossed into landfills every year.
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Pill bottles meanwhile present a different yet equally frustrating set of problems. Child- and tamper-resistant safety caps with a depress-and-twist-off mechanism are as much of a deterrent for older adults as they are for the children they are designed to protect. Security seals at the neck of the bottle that show the cap intact are tiny and removable only by considerable force. Then there’s the dispensing issue, with a design that works against the forces of gravity that practically invites the contents to spill everywhere.
Senior patients have for too long fallen prey to unempathetic design. What can be done about it?
Rethinking accessibility
The problem requires lateral thinking. Perhaps the solution lies not in a redesign of medication packaging itself but in creating altogether new ways for the drugs to reach the patient.
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There has been some innovation in this space. PillPack, the online pharmacy acquired by Amazon in 2019 for $753 million, organizes medications into individual paper packets that are labeled with the date and time they should be taken and mailed to the patient. The dispenser box administers packs sequentially, making it clear if you’ve missed a day, while on the side of the box itself is an illustrated list of pills that allows you to cross-check that you’re taking the correct medication. However, fine print on the packets and on the box itself still leave the same challenges for people with visual and/or cognitive impairments. Inaccessibility has not been designed out.
And although the solution simplifies the management of complex drug plans, many issues have been raised around the compromising of product integrity in the name of convenience. A cursory glance of reviews shows that some patients have received incorrect medication or broken pills, highlighting how critically vulnerable the supply chain is to human error.
We might be able to forgive the odd erroneous or absent ingredient present in meal boxes we’re subscribed to and can still cook a meal with little consequence (give or take a slight variance in taste). But the same error in the dispensing of our prescription medications can have very grave consequences.
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Hero is another innovative example of technology revolutionizing medication management. Its at-home pill dispensers organize medication and prompt patients to take the correct pills at the right time. But the system requires manual loading, leading us to the same cumbersome interaction with pill and blister packs.
A circular system for drug administration
These innovations are a step in the right direction but in order to be truly inclusive, not least to the burgeoning population of elders, it’s critical that these design flaws are ironed out. The design solution could be a fully integrated system in which pre-organized units of drugs, prepared according to prescription, are encased in containers that can be delivered to the home and loaded directly, like a cartridge in a printer, into a child-proof drug-dispensing machine designed inclusively with physically, visually, and cognitively impaired users in mind.
The organizing and compliance features of a Hero or a PillPack could be counterbalanced by a system that is structurally durable, preserves product integrity, is considerate of transportation and supply chain issues, and limits plastic use.
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For example, a container molded from pressed medical-grade steel made compatible with an auto-dose appliance could feasibly store and dispense the correct medication at the right time while including safety features that do not rely on physical strength and dexterity to operate—rather, just adult-size hands. Structural design can be employed for simplified transportation, creating packs that are easily connectable, thus being economical on space. The containers themselves could be deconstructed with a specialist tool for cleaning, providing an additional barrier against tampering.
By looking holistically at the problem of accessibility and sustainability and redesigning its delivery and packaging infrastructure, the pharmaceutical industry will not only be able to manage costs better but also improve its user experience and lessen its considerable environmental footprint.
Tech innovation is not a panacea to a complex health and aging crisis. But human-centric, empathetic design can be optimized by technology to alleviate the user experience issues that degrade a senior adult’s quality of life.
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It’s amazing to think how a seemingly innocuous blister pack can compound our everyday life and even endanger it when we’re at our most vulnerable. Interacting with it can feel like an everyday petty humiliation—an object that goads us and mocks our disability. But imagine a better alternative having a positive transformative effect on our experience, going even as far as giving back some quality and meaning to life when these two most important freedoms start to evade us in old age.
Can drug packaging really do all that?
If it can worsen, even threaten, our lives, then why can’t it improve them? We have the capability and resources to make that vision a reality—and it all begins from that empathetic, person-centered space. In the face of these looming social time bombs, that work must begin now.
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Nick Dormon is managing director of brand design and innovation agency Echo.
At Target, you can buy compostable cutlery, cleaning products in glass bottles (easier to recycle than plastic), and shoes that can be sent back to the manufacturer to be recycled into new products—all examples of ways to avoid adding waste to landfills at the end of a product’s life. And in the future, the company hopes its customers don’t end up trashing anything they buy from a Target-owned brand. By 2040, Target aims for 100% of its own products to be designed for a circular future.
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That goal is part of a larger sustainability strategy by the retailer called Target Forward, which has three main objectives: to design and elevate sustainable brands, to eliminate waste, and to push for equity and opportunity across the company and in its communities nationwide. Within that plan, Target aims to be zero waste in its U.S. operations and net zero in terms of scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions by 2040, and increase its Black team member representation across the company by 20% by 2023. The Target Forward initiative builds on sustainability steps the company has already taken, such as committing to source 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and joining the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy Global Commitment.
Target’s goal for its own brand products—including Good & Gather, Up & Up, Room Essentials, and more—to be designed for circularity doesn’t necessarily mean “circularity” in the most rigorous sense. Not all those items will have a second life as something else you can buy, in the same way that you can send back your Target-purchased Okabashi shoes to be turned into something new. Instead, that goal is about creating products that are “more durable, easily repaired, or recyclable,” and using materials that are regenerative, recycled, or sourced sustainably. Amanda Nusz, Target’s senior vice president of corporate responsibility and president of the Target Foundation, points to current examples that serve as a foundation of that work, including the Universal Thread apparel line, which uses “more sustainably sourced” cotton and recycled polyester, and the Everspring cleaning line, which includes bio-based hand soaps and compostable cleaning wipes.
That effort will include some customer-education components as well, to inform shoppers about what to do with an item instead of tossing it in the trash. “A great example is packaging,” Nusz says. “What we think about is how to deliver packaging that is compostable, recyclable, or to just remove the packaging, and make sure that the guests understand by the label the packaging they ended up [with].” Shoppers can also bring things to Target stores to be recycled.
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When it comes to reducing waste, Nusz says Target already diverts 80% of its waste today, and its efforts like the Beyond the Bag initiative to “reinvent single-use plastic bags” will further reduce that waste. For its Target Forward sustainability strategy, the retail company worked with partners including Business for Social Responsibility and Brands for Good, and suppliers like Unilever and Lego.
The plastic balloons we use to mark some of the biggest milestones in our lives — births, deaths, graduations, homecomings, engagements, gender reveal parties — are ending up in the Great Lakes by the hundreds of thousands, according to an Ontario biologist who spent two weeks gathering trash.
Leanne Grieves is a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University in Hamilton who studies bird behaviour and communication. This summer, she’s been working at Birds Canada at Long Point on the north shore of Lake Erie.
“Lake Erie is beautiful and the shoreline is just stunning, especially if you’re on the Long Point peninsula,” she said. “It’s really a glorious place to be.”
What wasn’t so glorious, though, was the trash, which became such an eyesore for Grieves that she couldn’t help herself.
Hundreds of balloons along 7 km of beach
“There is just so much garbage washing up on shore,” she said. “After a couple of days driving up and down to our site, I just thought, ‘This is ridiculous. We have to start cleaning this up.'”
Leanne Grieves and Ryan Leys, a fellow biologist, stand in front of a pile of trash they collected over a seven-kilometre stretch of Lake Erie shoreline. The garbage bags are filled with helium balloons. (Submitted by Leanne Grieves)
So Grieves and fellow biologist Ryan Ley started going up and down the shore, picking up whatever trash they found. In just under two weeks, across seven kilometres of beach, the pair amassed about 380 helium balloons — and it wasn’t always easy.
Grieves is a postdoctoral fellow in animal behaviour and communication at McMaster University in Hamilton. (Leanne Grieves)
“Sometimes I had to wade out in my rubber boots to get balloons that hadn’t yet washed ashore,” Grieves said.
“Sometimes it would involve digging into the sand to extract balloons that had been buried and sometimes going up into the surrounding habitat to extract balloons from trees and shrubs.”
The mass release of balloons has been a traditional way to celebrate special events for decades, but the practice is becoming increasingly controversial as studies highlight the environmental consequences.
While the balloons do break down over time, they don’t dissolve completely, and the smaller plastic debris ends up in the environment, where animals can mistake it for food.
When ingested, the plastic provides no nutritional value and if the pieces are large enough, they can block or become lodged in the intestinal tracts of animals, slowly starving them to death.
Animals, such as birds and turtles, can also become ensnared in the strings and streamers that accompany balloons, drowning them or weighing them down so much that they’re unable to find food.
The Canadian Wildlife Federation suggests alternatives to releasing balloons, such as planting a tree or memorial garden, to honour a loved one.
On its website, the federation notes that balloons can travel long distances when carried by winds and currents, noting a report about a balloon released at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, that ended up in Los Angeles 8,500 kilometres away.
Shiny, metallic-looking mylar balloons, in particular, have been known to cause fires or blackouts when they become entangled in power lines.
Gender reveal, grad balloons common finds
Despite the dangers, people are still releasing plenty of balloons.
Grieves said she and Ley found plenty of pink and blue balloons released at trendy gender reveal parties, as well as graduation balloons coinciding with the end of the school year.
The shimmer of a helium balloon that washed up on the north shore of Lake Erie can be seen in the dull glow of sunset. (Submitted by Leanne Grieves)
“They say things like ‘Follow your dreams’ or ‘The adventure is just beginning,’ but it’s just this huge balloon trashing this beautiful landscape, so it’s a bit shocking to see that.”
One of the most striking finds that illustrates how a seemingly small and fleeting moment of celebration can have a lasting effect on the environment, according to Grieves, was a balloon from last Christmas.
“It was dated December 13, 2020 and it was in quite good shape, so these balloons really do stick around in the environment for months, if not, years.”
During her trash-finding work, Grieves documented everything, including taking pictures of each one before stuffing it into a trash bag and carefully noted the amount collected and where.
She also did a little math. Once she and Ley cleaned a section of beach, they returned the next day and counted every new balloon they found along that same stretch.
Based on her calculations, she estimates about 2 balloons wash up on every kilometre of Lake Erie’s 1,400-km shoreline each day.
The potential impact is ‘staggering’
“If you assume they wash up on the Lake Erie shoreline at an equal rate, it’s possible that 960,000 balloons wash up on the Lake Erie shoreline every year,” she said.
According to her own calculations, Grieves believes two balloons wash up on every kilometre of Lake Erie shoreline every day. (Leanne Grieves)
“Even if my estimate is off by 50 per cent, that’s half a million balloons that are washing up just on one of our Great Lakes. The potential impact of these balloons is staggering.”
She said given the sheer number of balloons Grieves found that seemed to cover the gamut, from Mother’s Day to welcoming the troops home, it shows how popular the practice of releasing balloons into the air is, despite the environmental consequences.
With the exception of a few Ontario communities passing their own bylaws banning the release of large numbers of helium balloons, there is no provincial or federal legislation regulating the practice.
A New Democrat-sponsored petition to the House of Commons is trying to gain enough signatures to ban the release of helium balloons, along with sky lanterns, making it punishable by levying a fine.
Grieves hopes by sharing her work, more people will understand the potential environmental consequences of releasing helium balloons.
“Balloon releases are an ongoing issue and you can’t just clean them up once, and we’ll continue to clean them until we stop releasing them.”
June 22 (UPI) — One-quarter of chemicals in plastics are “substances of potential concern,” according to an analysis published Tuesday by the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Of the roughly 10,500 chemicals in plastic, nearly 2,500, or 24%, are capable of accumulating in living organisms, including humans and animals, and are potentially toxic or cancer-causing, the data showed.
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In addition, more than half of these substances are not regulated in the United States, the European Union or Japan, where more than 900 of them are approved for use in food contact plastics, the researchers said.
“These substances are often toxic to aquatic life, cause cancer or damage specific organs,” study co-author Helene Wiesinger said in a press release.
“It is particularly striking that many of the questionable substances are barely regulated or are ambiguously described,” said Wiesinger, a doctoral student in ecological systems design at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, where the research was conducted.
Each year, more than 350 million tons of plastic are produced worldwide, and all of them contain a wide variety of chemicals that may pose a significant risk to people and the environment, according to Wiesinger and her colleagues.
These chemicals include additives, such as antioxidants and flame retardants as well as solvents and other substances used in production — and only a small proportion of these chemicals have been extensively studied, the researchers said.
Still, research suggests that plastic packaging is a main source of organic contamination in food, while phthalate plasticizers and brominated flame retardants are detectable in house dust and indoor air.
Exposure to these substances can have a negative impact on the health of consumers and workers and on ecosystems, while also affecting recycling processes and the safety and quality of recycled plastics.
For this study, the researchers compiled a comprehensive database of plastic monomers, additives and processing aids used in the production and processing of plastics and systematically categorized them on the basis of usage patterns and hazard potential.
They identified approximately 10,500 chemicals in plastic, including 2,489 used in packaging, 2,429 textiles and 2,109 that come in contact with food as part of packaging.
More than 500 of the chemicals are used in toys and medical devices, including 247 in masks.
Of the 10,500 substances identified, the researchers categorized 2,480 substances as substances of potential concern, they said.
Of these, 53% are not regulated in the United States, the European Union or Japan.
In addition, research is lacking for about 10% of the identified substances of potential concern.
The researchers were unable to categorize 4,100, or 39%, of the substances they identified due to a lack of “hazard classifications,” they said.
“Until now, research, industry and regulators have mainly concentrated on a limited number of dangerous chemicals known to be present in plastics,” Wiesinger said.
With the spread of COVID-19, every aspect of life has been affected and many re-examined. One of the most concerning things beyond the virus itself was the ability to adapt systems of production. Shortages of supplies, particularly hand sanitizers, toilet paper, and cleaning supplies such as Lysol, lasted for a long time. The food industry was among the top crucial industries that we relied on to maintain high standards in this difficult time.
How was food quality affected?
An increased number of recalls was a major concern for food production companies. The effects of COVID-19 meant employees were getting sick, training procedures had to be significantly changed, and businesses had even made decisions to improve their equipment to keep up with the rapidly-evolving industry. As the effects of the pandemic continued to spread, consumers and GFSI auditors grew cautious about how these businesses would balance the increased production demand with high quality standards.
The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) and its auditors saw a significant decrease in the number of audits being performed across the different certification programs. However, overall food production quality didn’t fall as far as they expected. This was partially due to the overwhelming need to keep clients in a declining economy, pay employees, and adapt to the still-evolving food industry. Instead of in-person audits, companies received assistance with virtual adaptations of GFSI certification programs, extensive paperwork, and virtual inspections when it was possible. These changes to the auditing process helped companies hold themselves to a similar standard as they did prior to the pandemic.
As the Pandemic Subsides
Changes in food production and the GFSI auditing process will likely remain in effect throughout the rest of 2021. An article by Dave Fusaro of FoodProcessing.com breaks down the approximate auditing process as we move into the second half of 2021. Due to physical restrictions set by the CDC and governments across the world, in-person audits halted in 2020. With vaccinations going around, those restrictions being reduced or lifted, and reports that indicate a decrease in overall COVID-19 cases, in-person audits should resume consistently soon. However, food production systems have settled into modifications as a result of the pandemic. This will affect the number, as well as the structure, of GFSI audits.
The election of President Joe Biden in early 2021 may also bring an unforeseen element to the food production industry. As his administration rolls out changes, the USDA and FDA are pushing a new initiative to focus on preventing issues with food safety versus their previous reactive strategy. GFSI audits are a large part of this and, even with nothing set in stone as of now, companies should still expect an increase in inspections.
Still Transitioning
From a consumer’s perspective, the food industry is still transitioning. From pre-COVID processes to partially-virtual adaptations and finding a balance of both as we look to the future, the main focus should still be maintaining the quality of food products. Previous shortages in sanitizing and essential items have made consumers wary of future shortages or a decrease in quality while we attempt to resume a pre-pandemic lifestyle. The USDA, FDA, production companies, and the GFSI, alongside its auditors, are working tirelessly to ensure that our global transition into a COVID-free society doesn’t decrease food production quality.
New rules on chemicals to be debated by the EU this week would allow most polymers to be used without further checks, according to a group of scientists.
Only about 6% out of about 200,000 polymers would require extensive safety checks under proposals being discussed as part of Europe’s Reach chemicals regulations.
This is too little, and would allow many common plastics to be used despite valid concerns about their possible future harms, according to a group of 19 scientists who have written to the European Commission.
The European Environmental Bureau, an NGO, says exceptions to the safety checks include polystyrenes, which have been linked to lung inflammation in rats; polyacrylamides used in the treatment of wastewater, adhesives and food packaging, which can degrade to the monomer acrylamide, a neurotoxin; polyesters used in textiles, which are sources of microplastics; and polyolefins, also a source of microplastics.
The commission said the proposals were at an early stage, and further discussion would take place on Tuesday. A spokesperson said: “This meeting will discuss some technical aspects of how to register polymers, but not yet discuss the final outcome of how polymers shall be registered, and there is no draft regulation available yet.
“We have seen the IPCP publication [the letter signed by 19 scientists] and we will, to the extent possible, take the concerns raised into consideration while advancing our proposal. As the commission proposal for the registration of polymers is not yet finalised, we cannot disclose further information or comment on the estimated number of polymers that need to be registered.”
Bethanie Carney Almroth, an associate professor of ecotoxicology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and a signatory to the letter, said: “The main goal of the [EU] process should be to ensure a high level or protection of people and environmental health. But our main concern is regarding the lack of data and lack of transparency. There is not enough data to ensure the safety of thousands of polymers in production, even if toxicity has not been demonstrated yet.”
She said regulators should abide by the precautionary principle, by which new substances should not be assumed to be harmless, but the onus should be on the producers to demonstrate that they are safe.
She added: “Plastic use is pervasive, and [the term] polymers goes beyond plastics to include many more types of products used in numerous applications throughout society. So the question of exposure is significant, and not negligible. There are studies indicating some polymers or their monomers/oligomers can cause negative impacts for human health, including hormone disruption and canerogenicity. There are data showing that these effects can occur in organisms in the environment.”
Ksenia Groh, another signatory, who is group leader of bioanalytics for Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, said: “Data about the risks of specific polymers are scarce to nonexistent. Up to now, a transparent, comprehensive data collection on the safety of all polymers has not been carried out. Absence of data does not equal absence of harm. It just means that we don’t know … It’s not the public, government, consumers or scientists who should provide this data, but the producer themselves.”
Dolores Romano, chemicals policy acting manager at the European Environmental Bureau, said the increasing pervasiveness of microplastics in the environment showed that polymers could now be finding their way into our bodies in ways that are more harmful than regulators have anticipated. She called on the European Commission to act.
Romano said: “Polymer pollution is out of control. We are exposed to it daily, as they are used in plastic, textiles, cleaning products and even cosmetics. We used to think of plastic pollution as bulky junk massing in the environment. Now we know that it breaks up into a vast cloud of micro- and nanoplastics contaminating the land, water and air, as well as showing up in our bodies. We know already that dozens of polymers are toxic, so officials must be allowed to check the safety of the rest.”
She accused the plastics industry of seeking to block more comprehensive rules from the EU. “Industry is hijacking a once-in-a-decade opportunity to probe polymers and share this information. We can’t afford to have them close our eyes to a growing problem for another decade.”
TOUGH, FLEXIBLE and cheap, plastic is essential to modern living. But, much like fossil fuels, the material’s convenience comes at a price. Humans make lots of the stuff, then throw it into the ocean. This is very inexpensive, but it is terrible for the environment and unsustainable for humanity. Now lawmakers are looking at a more aggressive response: taxing “virgin plastics” — that is, new material created from oil rather than from recycled stuff. This would be a rational response to a substantial need.
Scientists reckon that 8 million tons of plastic enters the ocean each year. Among the results is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an accumulation of microplastics, fishing gear, bags, shoes and other debris in the North Pacific Ocean. There is plenty of visible trash, but much of the waste weathers into tiny bits that circulate up and down the water column.
Marine animals feed in this plastic soup; they either die or become vectors for these microplastics to enter the food chain — at the top of which sit human beings. Microplastics also gunk up the water to the point that sunlight cannot reach plankton and other key ocean species. The effects are diverse and widespread; scientists warn that plastics are carrying invasive species across the planet.
The plastic problem gets worse every day. Researchers have discovered microplastics off California’s famous Monterey Bay; others have found that the amount of marine debris washing up on remote beaches increased by more than 10 times over the course of the 2010s. When lawmakers proposed an ocean cleanliness bill in 2019, they noted that, without change, the amount of plastic would outweigh the fish in the world’s oceans by 2050.
This might be a surprise to many consumers who dutifully fill their recycling bins every week. But only about 9 percent of plastic waste is recycled in the United States; the rest ends up burned, which produces greenhouse emissions, or thrown into a landfill. Low oil prices make new plastics cheap to produce, and recent changes in the recycling industry have made recycling operations even less viable.
Enter a group of House Democrats, who propose to levy a tax on virgin plastics in single-use products and to invest the proceeds into ocean conservation efforts. Staffers for Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), co-chair of the Senate Oceans Caucus, said that the senator is working on a virgin plastics tax proposal of his own. Activists in California aim to put such a tax up for a vote next year.
A virgin plastics tax would encourage businesses and consumers to substitute more environmentally friendly alternatives and boost the recycling industry without direct subsidies. Opponents object that the tax would be regressive — the same objections industry lodged against modest plastic bag and soda taxes. But the virgin plastics tax need not be punishingly high. And Wired’s Matt Simon points out that sufficient alternatives exist in many cases to limit the impact on consumers. Critics also argue that some alternative products, such as paper, might be heavier and cost more in greenhouse emissions to create and transport. Yet as the energy sector steadily decarbonizes, those greenhouse impacts will lessen; meanwhile, the ocean will continue filling with trash.
The overwhelming flow of plastic into the ocean requires an assertive and smart response. Taxing virgin plastics ticks both boxes.
Read more:
Ann Telnaes cartoon: Our (over)use of plastics
Marcus Eriksen: I thought I’d seen it all studying plastics. Then my team found 2,000 bags in a camel.
The Post’s View: Every human should be alarmed by the plastic crisis in our oceans
Their descendants persevered through slavery, the Civil War, and past racism. Now the Gullah/Geechee people of South Carolina face another threat: rising seas and the government actions it triggers.
