Listen to the article
6 min

Dive Brief:

• A1 Organics, Colorado’s largest composter, is changing its accepted materials list to be more restrictive. The goal is to reduce the growing amount — currently 10% — of material it receives that is too contaminated to effectively process while maintaining final compost product quality standards. 
• Only food scraps and yard and plant trimmings will be accepted starting April 1. Traditionally accepted fiber materials like paper towels and coffee filters no longer will be accepted, and neither will packaging or service ware — even if it is labeled “compostable.” The only food and yard scrap collection bags that will be allowed are three gallon versions certified by the Compost Manufacturing Alliance.
• Nonprofit recycler Eco-Cycle is among the organics haulers and municipalities that are working with A1 Organics to educate customers about which items to put in curbside compost bins to prevent contaminated loads from being sent to landfill.

Dive Insight:

As curbside organics programs have expanded across the U.S., so too has contamination. Bits of glass, plastic and metal are commonly cited contaminants. A1 Organics says that these fragments in the final compost product affect resale quality, and contaminated compost can’t be sold to certified organic farmers. And debate grows over whether or not compostable packaging does, in fact, break down or if it is a contaminant.

“Contamination is a serious problem,” said Rhodes Yepsen, executive director at the Biodegradable Products Institute, via email. “It’s about keeping the wrong items out of compost bins like glass and conventional plastics, all of which BPI supports through its labeling requirements, consumer testing, and a national public policy program.”

Last summer, A1 Organics began inspecting all incoming truckloads and rejecting those with unacceptable levels of contamination. It said in last week’s material change announcement that contaminants can’t effectively be removed from a mixed load, so the presence of contamination requires the entire load to be rejected.

Colorado nonprofit recycler Eco-Cycle cautioned in a newsletter last week that haulers who see unacceptable items in customers’ curbside carts may choose to not collect them. “We share your concern with this strict new standard. We also fully support it as a means for A1 Organics to create a high-quality compost product made from clean compost materials,” it stated.

More organics program operators are questioning the viability of continuing to collect commonly accepted fiber and “compostable” products. The University of Wisconsin-Madison had a composting program since 2009 that was canceled in 2021. The organics processing equipment for years struggled with non-organic items, as well as paper items that slowed down the system. And in 2019, Oregon composter Rexius stopped accepting compostable packaging due to its inability to effectively handle the resulting contamination.

Although one objective of compostable packaging is to reduce contamination from other types of packaging in compost, A1 Organics says not all of these items break down fully or as quickly as needed — even those labeled as “certified” compostable. The company’s material change announcement states that traditional certification standards “measure compostability based on laboratory conditions, not actual field conditions. Meaning some ‘compostable’ items don’t fully compost with our technology.”

BPI provides third-party certification for compostable products, and Yepsen says the product certification is sound. 

“BPI certified products have been used successfully in composting programs across North America for decades, breaking down completely, boosting food scrap diversion rates, and even reducing contamination,” he said. “The US Composting Council has resources for composters to navigate the decision to accept compostable products, looking at operating conditions, equipment, market needs, economics, etc., but the science of compostability and validity of BPI’s certification are not in question.”

Organics companies and municipalities are investing in new processing equipment to produce a cleaner compost product. Phoenix Public Works installed a “depackager” at its composting facility last fall to separate food and beverages from their packaging, which eliminates manual sorting. And Teton County Integrated Solid Waste and Recycling in Wyoming recently received $300,000 in grants to pilot an air knife density separator, which separates small, light, unpickable items like stickers.

The cities of Boulder and Denver are helping to spread the word to residents about the changes to the region’s composting programs. Last fall, Denver voters approved an ordinance that expands the city’s composting program and requires that apartment complexes and a variety of food waste-producing businesses begin offering composting options. Last year, an extended producer responsibility law for packaging passed in Colorado; it included clauses related to composting, including clarifying funding to support contamination reduction in composting and to support the processing of compostable packaging.

Interested in more packaging news? Packaging Dive is launching March 27. Sign up today.

Skip to content

Customers who shop at Whole Foods are getting their groceries with a side order of plastic, a new report has found.

After early progress in removing single-use plastic from its stores, Whole Foods’ efforts to move away from the material have lagged, according to a report published on Thursday morning by the nonprofits PIRG and Environment America.

“Whole Foods was a pioneer in the movement to reduce plastic waste and shift toward sustainable packaging,” the authors wrote.

“But when it comes to plastics, its environmentally friendly rhetoric is no longer followed through in practice.”

The last several years have seen rising concerns over the health impacts of plastic particles in food and the environmental impacts of the growing surge of single-use plastic packaging.

Those concerns have particular salience against the backdrop of the East Palestine trainwreck last month that led to the release of a toxic chemical used to make plastic, highlighting the risks posed by the production of the material.

The Austin-based grocery chain has built itself into a national brand by cultivating an image as a high-end purveyor of healthy, sustainable foods — and as a perceived refuge from the health and environmental concerns that haunt the American food system.

One key element of that push was a bid to rid the store of single-use plastics — a campaign that began with the elimination of single-use plastic bags at checkout and plastic straws at the deli.

But in recent years, the company has backslid, according to reports from other environmental nonprofits. In 2020, the advocacy group As You Sow gave the company an ‘F’ for its plastic packaging policies — ranking it below many companies which boast a far less sustainable public image.

For example, As You Sow ranked Whole Foods’ single-use plastic policies below those of Walmart, McDonalds, Kroger, Taco Bell and Clorox.

In an ironic counterpoint to the store’s image, Whole Foods’ nearest peers in the As You Sow report were factory farming giants Tyson, Hormel, and Smithfield — precisely the sort of corporations that Whole Foods has long defined itself in opposition to. 

The Environment America and PIRG report found that many of the chain’s stores offered no plastic-free packaging alternatives for a wide variety of 365 items.

“At most Whole Foods stores we visited, a customer would be hard pressed to find Whole Foods branded products in packaging that doesn’t contain at least some plastics,” the report found. 

For some products, like milk, spaghetti and yogurt and packaged bread, it ranges from difficult to impossible at most stores to find an option that doesn’t include plastic, the report found.

Others, like rice, deli cheese, bakery bread, and produce, were sometimes available in non-plastic packaging if customers search for them — but the report found even at stores that offered these options, plastic remained the easy default. 

For some of these products, plastic could be easily eliminated, the report authors argued. For example, many Whole Foods-branded pastas come and easily recycled cardboard containers — which feature an ornamental plastic window to allow shoppers to gaze upon their pasta.

“There is simply no need for it, as the percentage of the same products sold in boxes without plastic windows prove,” the authors wrote.

Similarly, only about a third of stores offered a non-plastic option in either the bulk section or the produce section — two areas where customers encounter products and unpackaged form.

“It’s time for [Whole Foods] to step up and start leading the field once again,” the authors wrote.

The Hill has reached out to Whole Foods for comment.

Tags

---

Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

A previously unknown disease in seabirds caused by the ingestion of plastic has been found on Lord Howe Island by scientists from the United Kingdom and Australia.

Named plasticosis, the newly classified disease is caused by plastic that repeatedly injures soft tissue and leads to the formation of extensive scar tissue in a bird’s stomach.

Impacted scar tissue does not operate like healthy tissue and can impact organ structure and function.

The discovery was made by a cross-disciplinary team that included scientists from the UK’s Natural History Museum and Australian institutions, which collaborated as part of a global team under the banner of Adrift Lab and classified the disease.

Adrift Lab researcher Hayley Charlton-Howard said it raised concern about plastic ingestion in other species, including humans.

Plastic ingested in oceanic food

Flesh-footed shearwater birds on Lord Howe Island off New South Wales regularly consume plastics, with scientists surmising plastic ingestion starts at hatching.

The plastics were ingested when collecting mainly oceanic food, such a squid.

“If you can imagine a piece of plastic on the beach, it’s quite sharp and brittle,” Ms Charlton-Howard said.

“That’s going to cause a lot of injury within the stomach.”

Damage to digestive glands could also occur and limit the seabirds’ ability to digest and absorb nutrients.

First for study of wild animals

It is the first time a plastic-related illness had been named in wild animals that were feeding on the rubbish in the wild, rather than in laboratory conditions.

It followed a decade of seabird studies, with a sudden increase in scar tissue observed in recent years.

Ms Charlton-Howard said no significant link had been found between fibrosis (tissue thickening and scarring) and the consumption of naturally occurring abrasive debris, such as pumice stone.

“If eating pumice was causing the damage we’re seeing, it likely wouldn’t have evolved as such a robust behaviour across different bird taxa.”

Scientists did not know if the condition was fatal as the birds studied were euthanised due to “incredibly poor health”.

“We’d love to know if this scar tissue is present in other organs,” Ms Charlton-Howard said.

“And basic questions like, if the condition is fatal. We don’t know if birds can survive from this.”

Implications for other species

Beyond shearwaters, the study could have implications for other species ingesting plastics.

A global study commissioned by the World Wide Fund for Nature in 2019 found on average that humans consumed as much as five grams of plastic a week.

Ms Charlton-Howard said microplastics had also been found in human breast milk and human placentas.

“In terms of plasticosis, these birds are ingesting high quantities of large plastic pieces, in comparison to humans where a lot of the plastic [humans] are ingesting is tiny, microscopic fragments.

“We may not see the overall condition of plasticosis in humans, but we may see really localised cases of injury and inflammation and scar tissue formation within our tissues.”

Ms Charlton-Howard reiterated it was a new field of research where further research was required, but the classification of plasticosis was an important step towards quantifying how plastic was affecting health.

“Plastics have really unique pathological properties that natural items, even if they are similarly abrasive, just don’t seem to have,” Ms Charlton-Howard said.

“There are over a thousand marine species known to ingest plastic.

“Here at the Adrift Lab we want to push for further research, awareness and action on the plastic pollution crisis.”

LUZIRA, Uganda (AP) — Flowering plants rise as if by magic from Lake Victoria onto a wooden boat, giving it a leafy ambiance that enchants many visitors.

The initial attraction becomes more compelling when tourists to Uganda learn that the greenery emerges from an innovative recycling project which uses thousands of dirt-encrusted plastic bottles to anchor the boat.

Former tour guide James Kateeba started building the boat in 2017 in response to the tons of plastic waste he saw in the lake after heavy rains. He realized the vessel could serve as an example of a sustainable business on the shores of Lake Victoria: a floating restaurant and bar that could be unmoored to drift for pleasure.

Many who come to relax here in Luzira, a lakeside suburb of Uganda’s capital, Kampala, know nothing of the boat’s backstory. Kateeba insists it’s first and foremost “a conservation effort,” one man’s attempt to protect one of Africa’s great lakes from degradation.

Lake Victoria is the world’s second-largest freshwater lake and spans three countries. Yet it is plagued by runoff waste and other pollution, sand mining and a decline in water levels due in part to climate change.

Layers of plastic waste float near some beaches during the rainy season, a visible sign of the pollution that’s a worry for fishing communities heavily dependent on the lake.

“The fact that we had a problem of pollution as a country … I decided to design something out of the ordinary,” Kateeba said, surveying the lake horizon tinged with a green substance that indicates contaminants from a nearby brewery.

He started by asking fishermen from nearby landing sites to collect plastic bottles for a small fee. He received more than 10 tons of bottles within six months. Batches were tied up in fishing nets and daubed with solid dirt, creating the firm bases upon which the boat is moored and that are also fertile ground for climbing tropical plants.

Today, the boat, marketed as the Floating Island, can comfortably serve 100 visitors at a time, Kateeba said.

“This is morning glory,” he said proudly, caressing a vibrant flowering vine one recent afternoon as he prepared to unmoor the boat for the enjoyment of his customers. Elsewhere on the boat, a group of TikToking teenagers danced. Upstairs, a carpenter was building a new wooden sun deck.

Jaro Matusiewicz, a businessman visiting from Greece, said he had “never seen a place like this,” praising the boat’s “accommodative” atmosphere as he dug into fish and chips.

“This is a very good idea,” he said. “If he’s collecting the bottles and using them, it’s fantastic! … You are not only cleaning the environment but also providing something unique, very unique.”

A similar project was launched in 2018 on the beaches of Kenya, where a small boat, known as the Flipflopi, was built entirely from recycled plastic that once littered sandy shores and towns along the Indian Ocean.

In 2021 the Flipflopi went on a voyage on Lake Victoria “to raise awareness of the pollution plaguing the region’s most critical freshwater ecosystem, ” according to the United Nations Environment Programme.

Kateeba said he hopes his boat is exemplary.

“I am sure, with some bit of experience that we gain from this, we should be able to encourage other people to design things,” he said. “Other methods, not necessarily this type … of trying to deal with plastic pollution on Lake Victoria.”

___

Follow AP’s coverage of climate and environment issues: https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

Doing right by the planet can make you happier, healthier, and—yes—wealthier. Outside’s Head of Sustainability, Kristin Hostetter, explores small lifestyle tweaks that can make a big impact. Write to her at [email protected].

I’m standing in front of my recycling bin holding an empty cardboard carton of organic milk. I want to recycle it. Part of the reason I bought this milk, which was about a buck more than the stuff in the plastic jug, is that for several years now I’ve been waging a war against plastic in both my personal and professional life.

Cardboard is one of the most recyclable materials in the world. But a little voice inside my head is nagging, “What about that plastic coating on the inside? Does it matter? It’s still mostly cardboard…right?”

I hope for the best, drop it in the bin, and just like that, I’ve “wishcycled.”

Turns out, my cardboard milk container is not recyclable here in northern Vermont, despite the carton’s How2Recycle label advice. But if I saved it and brought it to my mom’s house in Massachusetts, I could throw it in her bin. (Want to know if you can curbside-recycle cardboard milk and juice containers? Plug your address in here.)

Wishcycling is when you put something in the recycle bin because you want to recycle it. You hope it will get turned into some shiny new object. But you don’t really know if it will and so you decide to let someone else down the line figure it out for you.

Your intentions are good, but you’re actually creating a huge pain in the ass for recycling facilities.

Wishcycling Versus Reality

“Wishcycling adds financial, labor, and environmental burdens throughout every recycling system around the world,” says Michele Morris, director of marketing and communications of the Chittendon Solid Waste District in Vermont, which owns the recycling facility near my home in Stowe, Vermont. “A worker will have to manually pull that thing off the conveyor belt and send it to the landfill, when you could have made that choice and avoided all those impacts throughout the process.” Morris says she sees some wild items come through the facility: shoes, bicycle tires, garden hoses, styrofoam coolers, plastic toys, and even the odd bowling ball or two.

The antidote to wishcycling is pretty simple: Don’t make assumptions and take the time to learn which items are recyclable in your area. I googled “town dump Stowe Vermont”  and found this page which has a tab spelling out what I can recycle where I live.

There’s no magic Google phrase for all locales, though. If you live in a city, say Chicago, try “recycling Chicago.” Within a few clicks you’ll find what you need. If you have specific questions not answered there, find the contact page and pick up the phone. “What’s accepted in your area depends on how far you are from processors and how much recycling your community generates, among other factors,” says Morris. “All these can vary not just regionally, but even within one state.” Some examples of things that can vary region by region: different types of plastics, and yes, those milk cartons.

“People love to say that recycling is broken,” says Stefanie Valenti, editorial director of Waste360. “It’s not, but it is disjointed. The infrastructure hasn’t evolved along with all the different types of materials, mainly plastics, that have come out. The waste management industry is investing lots of money in improving its logistics, but it’s a slow process.”

The whole concept of recycling is based on economics. Recycling was a $2.9 billion business in 2020 and like all markets, it’s based on supply and demand. There’s big demand for certain types of materials, like cardboard Amazon boxes and plastic Miracle Whip jars. But for some materials—like milk cartons—there are fewer processors who can break down the multi-layered material and therefore less of a recycling market for it.

“When in doubt, give a shout or throw it out,” says Morris. “Learn the rules where you live and have faith that those rules are designed to capture the most important and impactful materials while keeping out the undesirable stuff. If you’re not sure, trash it.”

I think back to the thousands of recycling blunders I’ve made over the years: the unused plastic cutlery from Yum Yum Thai, the Scotch tape dispensers, the chipped pint glasses. (Yes, all of those things are no-no’s according to “the container rule,” below.)

But according to Morris, we shouldn’t sweat the small stuff. If we all focused on what she calls “The Big Five” most common recycling mistakes, it would be a huge win for the recycling world and the planet.

The Big Five Curbside Recycling Mistakes

Plastic Bags

Filmy plastic (aka “soft film”) of any kind, including zipper-locks, bubble wrap, plastic padded Amazon envelopes, garbage bags, wrap from toilet paper, and bread bags, don’t work in any single-stream recycling system.

Why it’s a problem: Soft film jams machinery. Workers have to hit the kill switch on the whole operation and manually pull it out of the system. It can also tangle up with other valuable recyclables and then the whole mess gets landfilled rather than sold and repurposed. And if you bag perfectly good recyclables, like plastic water bottles and paper, the whole bag will get landfilled because workers don’t have the bandwidth to unbag and sort them.

The solution: Many grocery stores across the country accept soft film and recycle it properly. Find a local market by entering your zip code here.

Un-Rinsed Containers

Why it’s a problem: Two reasons: Old peanut butter and congealed sauce from your General Tso chicken degrades the value of the material you’re recycling (which defeats the whole purpose). And it can also pose health and safety risks to human workers who have to handle the nastiness and deal with the rats and wasps that get attracted to the facility.

The solution: Give your stuff a quick rinse (no need for soap or elbow grease) to remove the majority of the gunk. Or better yet, save water and give your pet another reason to love you. Dogs and cats do a very good job of licking food containers clean.

Rigid Plastic

Single-stream recycling is designed to take rigid, single-use plastic containers from food, drinks, and nonhazardous cleaning materials like shampoo and laundry soap. But don’t assume all plastic is single-stream recyclable. On most plastic, you can find a number inside a triangle of chasing arrows or letters next to it (like PET or HDPE). The numbers and letters, called Resin Identification Codes (or RICs) indicate the type of plastic, but they were never designed for consumer education. “They were created for end-market recyclers and processors to ensure consistency within each bale of materials,” says Morris.

Morris suggests ignoring the numbers and instead getting familiar with your local recycling rules. She says a good general approach is using the container rule, which simply means single-use rigid plastic containers only, like water, soda, and salad dressing bottles, salad containers, and shampoo bottles. The system isn’t designed to take durable plastic items like storage bins, flip-flops, pens, toys, sunglasses, or hampers because items need to be sorted and baled with like products. The recycler can’t collect enough pens, for instance, to create a marketable 35,000-pound load for them to sell. “On the other hand, we know that the overwhelming majority of containers we get will be the types of plastics we want—the types we can sell to processors to be turned into new raw materials.”

Why it’s a problem: While almost anything is technically recyclable, in real world terms there are a bunch of factors at play. First, Morris says, you need to have enough homogenous material (supply) to make it worthwhile from a labor, cost, and space perspective for the facility to collect. Next, you need a recycler willing and able to sort and bale that material. Then you need a marketer to collect the bales and sell it to processors. And finally, you need a processor willing to buy the material (demand) at a cost that sufficiently pays everyone along the supply chain for their labor and transportation and still nets a profit for them. “That’s why we target the common items. We know there is supply and we know there is demand,” she says.

The solution: Ask yourself, “Is this a single-use container?” If yes, bin it, regardless of the numbers or letters inside the arrows. If not, trash it. And try to avoid buying anything plastic if you can.

Scrap Metal 

The container rule applies here, too. Only empty metal food, drink, and nonhazardous cleaning materials containers belong in your bin, like drink, soup, and olive oil cans.

Why it’s a problem: Other metal objects like silverware, bottle caps, metal jar lids, blades from safety razors, and wire hangers can be extremely dangerous for workers and damage recycling machinery.

The solution: Save those items and find a local scrap metal recycler (just Google it!). Metal has value—you might even make a few bucks.

Batteries

Batteries—especially lithium ions—are huge no-nos for curbside recycling and have caused a remarkable number of fires at recycling facilities, landfills, transfer stations, and even during transport.

Why it’s a problem: Batteries are extremely sensitive to heat and friction. And, trust me, there’s a whole lot of friction going on at recycling centers. Think: complex mazes of converter belts, metal teeth, grinding gears, vibrating steel mesh, and high-powered magnets and vacuums.)

The solution: Save them in a box and ask your town or local recycling center for the nearest drop-off.

Kristin Hostetter is the Head of Sustainability at Outside Interactive, Inc. and the resident sustainability columnist on Outside Online.