Microplastics can pick up pollution in their travels and pose an even greater threat to human health, according to a new study.
In the ocean, for example, toxic compounds can hitch a ride on plastic and make the material 10 times more toxic than it would normally be, according to the research published earlier this year in Chemosphere.
Although the dangers of both microplastics and harmful compounds have been studied individually, few researchers have look at their combined effect. This study is also unique in that the researchers tested these polluted plastic particles on human cells—most previous research has focused on the impacts on marine life.
Microplastics are tiny plastic particles formed when larger pieces of plastic degrade over time—and they are ubiquitous, found everywhere from Mount Everest to the Mariana Trench. They can act as magnets for environmental pollution, transforming them into potentially toxic particles, Andrey Rubin, a Ph.D. Student at Tel Aviv University and first author of the study, told EHN.
The microplastics can then funnel these compounds into the bodies of marine organisms, which studies have shown can lead to neurotoxicity, an altered immune response, a reduced growth rate, and death. From there, the tainted microplastics can continue to make their way up the food chain, inadvertently exposing humans.
Rubin and co-author Ines Zuker, a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Tel Aviv University, tested what would happen when human cells found along the intestinal tract were exposed to a pollution-plastic mixture containing one type of microplastic known as microbeads and triclosan, an antimicrobial ingredient that was banned in the U.S. in 2016, primarily due to health concerns.
Triclosan, formerly found in mouthwash and hand sanitizer, is an endocrine disruptor that has also been linked to an increase in allergies in children. Even so, “it still exists in some products,” explained Rubin. “A year ago, we saw triclosan in a toothpaste, which is sold here in Israel.”
Rubin and Zucker found that, alone, the microbeads weren’t toxic to human cells. Neither was triclosan.
When combined, however, the two were “very toxic toward the cells,” said Rubin—the effect was an order of magnitude greater than the sum of its parts.
Outside the lab, the cells the researchers used in their investigation are the same ones that act as a barrier between the inside and outside of the body. The plastic mixture “can get into our bloodstream,” explained Rubin, where the accumulated compounds will likely be released.
Next, they hope to investigate how the mixture’s toxicity changes when different plastics or pollutants are used.
Controlled environments in a laboratory make it difficult to say how applicable these findings are in the real world, Tan Amelia, a Ph.D. student at University of Malaysia, Terengganu who was not involved with the study, told EHN. Conditions in the lab don’t perfectly represent environment, and findings from microplastics research is often hard to replicate due to a lack of standardized methods.
But Amelia said the study should spur more awareness of a global problem.
“Papers like those of Rubin and co-workers’ could help spread awareness regarding the severity of microplastics, which indirectly encourages the reduction of microplastics manufacturing and consumption,” she said.
Karen Gdula lives in the house she grew up in, a modest home on a pretty street in rural western Pennsylvania. Ivy Lane, in her view, is someplace special. “There’s a warmth and a caring,” she said. “We look out for each other.” The street never needed those bonds more than on September 10, 2018.
Retired and newly married, Gdula was asleep when, just before 5 a.m., an explosion shook her home. The roar was so loud that some of her neighbors thought it was a plane crash. But when she and her husband saw a fireball stretching above the tops of the towering pine trees across the street, they knew exactly what had happened.
The Revolution Pipeline, running right behind Ivy Lane in Center Township, about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, had come into service only days before, carrying gas from the fracking wells that are everywhere in the region. No one was hurt, but the explosion flattened a home three doors down from Gdula’s and toppled six giant electrical transmission towers.
Now, Revolution is back in service, and another pipeline has come to Ivy Lane, too. It’s called Line N, and it feeds gas to the vast, $6 billion petrochemical plant Shell is building five miles away in Monaca, right on the Ohio River. That plant, called an “ethane cracker,” will soon turn ethane — a byproduct of fracking — into 1.6 million tons of raw plastic a year.
The Ohio River Valley is wrestling with whether to tie its fortunes to another toxic, boom-and-bust industry.
Five years ago, the flood of ethane coming from the Ohio River Valley’s fracking wells got the plastic industry — petrochemical firms that are often subsidiaries of big fossil fuel producers — dreaming about a new generation of massive plants in the region. Companies envisioned building as many as four more ethane crackers like Shell’s in Appalachia, and state and local officials from both parties embraced the idea.
That vision is now foundering. Obstacles including global overproduction of plastic, local opposition to pipelines that feed such facilities, and public concern about the tidal wave of waste choking oceans and landscapes mean that even the region’s second proposed ethane cracker may never materialize. Additional plants look even less likely. The question mark over the industry’s once-grand hopes for Appalachia reflects larger doubts about its plans for dramatically increasing worldwide plastic production.
Driving oil and gas companies’ plastic production ambitions is the understanding that action on climate change may soon reduce demand for their fuels. Plastic is central to their hopes of keeping profits flowing, so they’ve been pouring money into building new plants and expanding old ones, on track to double 2016 global plastic production levels by 2036. Fracking has made the United States a major player in this international buildout. The American Chemistry Council, an industry association, says companies are investing more than $200 billion in U.S. chemical projects using fracked ingredients. Most of that growth has happened on the Gulf Coast, the country’s long-standing petrochemical hub.
Karen Gdula in her Center Township home, where she grew up. The walls are adorned with photos of her ancestors. Jeff Swensen for Yale Environment 360
The Ohio River Valley — desperate for economic revival after the steep decline of its coal and steel industries — was supposed to be the site of the next big push. Like many in the region, Gdula has complicated feelings about petrochemicals. She spent much of her career at a company that designed equipment for oil and gas workers, so she was not someone predisposed to distrust the industry. But after the explosion, she was dismayed to realize that much of its infrastructure was feeding plastic plants. And not just locally: Pennsylvanian ethane flows by pipeline to the Gulf Coast and Canada, and to a port near Philadelphia where it is shipped to European plastic producers.
Gdula is resigned to living with the industry, but she wants politicians and regulators to better safeguard residents’ well-being. In the wake of the explosion, she’s concluded that when Pennsylvania makes decisions about new projects, “jobs will aways trump everything. I hope safety is a close second.”
Her outlook reflects the push and pull of big promises and nagging fears as a region that was once one of America’s great industrial corridors wrestles with whether to tie its fortunes to another toxic, boom-and-bust industry like coal or fracking. And because plastic production has a hefty climate footprint — along with its more visible impact on waste — the consequences of what happens in Appalachia will stretch far beyond the region’s depressed downtowns, winding creeks, and peaceful hollows.
The Ivy Lane blast highlighted the safety concerns around Pennsylvania’s thousands of miles of pipelines. Revolution’s owner was charged with nine counts of environmental crimes and agreed to $2 million in fines and upgrade costs. Separately, the U.S. pipeline safety agency issued a warning to Shell over missing padding — a safety concern — on part of the Falcon pipeline, which will carry ethane to its plant. The company says the line is safe and the issue was isolated. Opponents believe it highlights a much wider problem — regulators’ coziness with oil and gas interests, whose projects they approve too readily and fail to adequately police.
The U.S. plastic industry’s greenhouse gas emissions equal those from 116 coal-fired power plants.
The explosion also offered a glimpse of the many tentacles of plastic production’s health and environmental effects, which extend far beyond the plants’ direct impacts. “It’s the whole network, the whole big spider web of this chemical plant being built around us,” said Terrie Baumgardner, of the Pennsylvania Clean Air Council.
By creating a market for ethane, plastic production drives more fracking, with the well-documented health and climate dangers it poses. One study found that the $23 billion toll of air pollution from fracking in the region — including between 1,200 and 4,600 premature deaths over 12 years — outweighed the economic gains, which researchers put at $21 billion. A plant the size of Shell’s needs more than 1,000 fracking wells to supply it with ethane, Duquesne University’s Center for Environmental Research estimates.
And the plants pose their own dangers. “Cracking” ethane’s molecules to turn it into ethylene — which is then processed into polyethylene, the world’s most widely used plastic — can emit benzene, toluene, and formaldehyde, which are linked to leukemia, nervous system damage, and respiratory problems, respectively. Shell’s facility will also create pollutants including sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, which increase risks of cancer, heart problems, and other ailments. The company declined an interview request, but has said the plant complies with all regulations.
Karen Gdula shows a photo of the burning remnants of her neighbor’s house following the 2018 explosion of the Revolution Pipeline. Jeff Swensen for Yale Environment 360
Plastic production’s climate impact is sizable, too. With its energy-hungry cracking plants — Shell’s Monaca facility is allowed to emit as much carbon dioxide annually as about 430,000 cars — and the methane-leaking pipelines that feed them, the U.S. plastic industry’s greenhouse gas emissions equal those from 116 coal-fired power plants, estimates Beyond Plastic, an advocacy group. Domestically, that footprint is expected to exceed coal’s by 2030, the group predicts. Globally, plastic would be the world’s fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter if it were a country, Beyond Plastic says. If output grows as planned, plastic would use more than 10 percent of the emissions allowable if warming is to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius, says the Center for International Environmental Law.
In the river towns of western Pennsylvania, southeastern Ohio, and West Virginia, many see petrochemicals as a lifeline that will not only provide good jobs and tax revenue, but help spark broader growth. Especially after the pandemic exposed the vulnerability of global supply chains, supporters say the plastic produced by Shell — and perhaps eventually other producers — will attract manufacturers to turn it into goods and packaging.
Embracing such hopes, Pennsylvania gave Shell a tax break valued at $1.6 billion, one of the largest in state history. The company’s decision to build “put Beaver County back on the map,” said Jack Manning, a county commissioner. “That plant gave more people hope than any other single thing” in decades. Early in the pandemic, plant construction workers’ spending at local shops and restaurants “really helped us survive,” and he predicted such indirect economic benefits would continue.
While 8,000 workers are building the plastics plant, there will only be 600 permanent jobs once it opens.
Others have doubts. The Ohio River Valley Institute, a liberal research group, says Beaver County’s growth lags the rest of the state despite the huge construction project.
Six miles from Shell’s site, Mayor Dwan Walker runs Aliquippa, once a storied steel-making town, from a bare-bones City Hall on a street lined with empty storefronts. With tattooed arms and a red Aliquippa polo shirt, he’s ready to welcome just about anything that will bring back jobs and revenue. But he sees Shell’s plant as a mixed blessing. “The good news is the cracker plant’s coming. Guess what the bad news is — the cracker plant’s coming,” he says. “There’s a lot of questions I have.”
While 8,000 workers are building the plant, there will only be 600 permanent jobs once it opens. So far, many workers are from out of state. Walker sees license plates from all over the country, just as he did during fracking’s boom years, when oil and gas workers came from as far as Texas and Oklahoma to take good-paying jobs.
Aliquippa is one of the few racially diverse towns in a largely white area, and a lot of obstacles stand between its residents, many of them Black, and permanent jobs with Shell, Walker said. Many don’t own cars, and few have the training to work in an ethane cracker. At the company’s community meetings, “they kept talking about diversity,” the mayor recalled. “Explain to me what that looks like.” One thing he wants to know: “Do I see people saying, ‘Here’s a voucher for a taxi or an Uber’” to get residents without cars to community colleges or other training sites?
Aliquippa Mayor Dwan Walker. Jeff Swensen for Yale Environment 360
Walker understands the risks of petrochemicals — the Gulf Coast plastic-making corridor is nicknamed “Cancer Alley” because of the industry’s toxic footprint. On the other hand, when Shell set up a construction staging area in Aliquippa, the town got an influx of tax income. And while there may not be many residents employed in the plant, Walker is among those who believes it will attract other companies. His town has docks on the Ohio River and plenty of industrial land waiting for the right manufacturer. “This is a city that’s been on its knees. It’s been crawling for a while, and now we’re starting to walk,” he said. “And pretty soon, we’re gonna run.”
Like Gdula, Walker is ambivalent about the industry. Would he prefer to have seen different opportunities for his constituents? “Yes and no,” he says. It wasn’t up to him, but now his job is to make sure those in charge don’t forget Aliquippa.
Belmont County, Ohio has similar hopes. It’s a little over an hour’s drive downriver from Shell’s site, along a stretch of the Ohio lined with the rusting skeletons of abandoned factories. There’s gentle beauty too, in the rolling green hills thick with springtime blossom and birdsong. Tucked inside the elbow of one of the river’s sharpest bends, a grassy field where a towering coal-fired power station once stood is empty now, its fate unclear since the Thai petrochemical conglomerate PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC) lost its investment partner for the $10 billion ethane cracker it hopes to build there.
Dan Williamson, a PTTGC spokesman, said such projects often have long gestation times, and that the pandemic’s disruptions had created additional delays. The company is looking for a new partner and remains optimistic it will eventually build. The plant would employ about 500 people, he said, and require thousands of construction workers to erect.
The plastic industry’s long-standing assumption that demand tracks economic growth may no longer hold.
For now, Belmont County is in limbo. The petrochemical industry’s global building spree — including a wave of new plants in China — appears to have gone too far, at least for now. “We’re entering into a period of overcapacity,” said Nathan Schaffer, vice president for petrochemicals at the consulting group Wood Mackenzie. “Supply has outpaced demand” and will take a few years to catch up, he said.
Measures to reduce plastic waste may complicate that equation. The European Union, Canada, and more than 30 African nations are among locales banning some single-use items. There’s a push to use more recycled material and plans for a global plastic pollution treaty. So the plastic industry’s long-standing assumption that demand tracks economic growth may no longer hold, said Anne Keller, an expert in natural gas liquid and petrochemical feedstocks at Midstream Energy Group, a Texas-based consultancy.
Because of the mix of ingredients available in Appalachia, much of the region’s plastic output would likely go to single-use items such as bags and packaging, making producers particularly vulnerable to pollution concerns, Keller said. The Australian Minderoo Foundation ranked PTTGC as the world’s 19th largest producer of plastic for throwaway items, finding it made the material for 1.5 percent of all single-use plastics globally. Williamson, the company spokesman, said it takes environmental concerns seriously, and sees ocean plastic pollution as a crisis.
A pipeline under construction along Fork Ridge, about 10 miles outside Moundsville, West Virginia. Jeff Swensen for Yale Environment 360
Opposition to new pipelines is another obstacle, Keller said. Just a few years ago, fracking companies saw the proposed new crackers as an enticing way to monetize ethane they needed to get rid of. “That’s changed,” she said. Now pushback against new pipelines — Mountain Valley, in West Virginia and Virginia, is the latest to run into trouble — threatens to limit the flow of methane leaving the region to be sold for heating and power. If it does, the difficulty of reaching markets will constrain new drilling, tightening the supply of ethane on which the plastic dreams were built. Five years ago, few “would have ever thought that it would literally have become impossible to build a pipeline out of this region,” Keller said. But there’s been so much opposition “that that’s really become a question mark.”
It’s too soon to know whether the Ukraine war, and Europe’s scramble to replace Russian gas, might upend that political dynamic, providing justification for new pipelines to carry fuel for liquefaction and export. Barring that, for PTTGC “it’s simple economics,” Keller said. Uncertainty around ethane supplies means building “looks a lot riskier than it did a few years ago.” Meanwhile, inflation is driving up construction costs, Schaffer said. All told, it means new Appalachian plants, in his view, are “probably off the table for now.”
Greg Kozera, a spokesman for Shale Crescent USA, which advocates for petrochemical development in the region, disagrees. The disruptions of the pandemic and war make the case for Appalachian plastic production stronger than ever, he argues. “We can’t depend on a global supply chain,” he said. “Companies are looking for regional suppliers.”
With plans for a $10 billion ethane cracker plant, a local official says, “we saw the potential and what it meant for the township.”
He added that eliminating international shipping costs means U.S. manufacturers using Appalachian plastic can compete with Asia on price, even if U.S. labor costs are higher. “We’re going to see the crackers, I’m convinced of that,” Kozera said.
Ed Good hopes he’s right. A trustee of Mead Township, which includes Dilles Bottom, home to PTTGC’s site, he worked 35 years at the R.E. Burger coal power plant, which closed in 2011; PTTGC knocked it down after acquiring the land. When the plant laid off staff in the 1990s, a federal program helped workers retrain, or go back to school, recalled Good, a longtime union official. There’s little such help available now, and with state cuts to local government support, towns are on their own too. “When Burger shut down I lost half my budget,” he said. “We don’t pave as many roads as we used to.”
When PTTGC expressed interest, “we saw the potential and what it meant for the township, what it meant for the community, schools.” Eventually, the company agreed it would pay the township $2 million upon a decision to build, and $500,000 annually afterwards. Nearby Shadyside secured a pledge of $38 million for a new school complex if the plant goes ahead.
Just across the Ohio, in Moundsville, West Virginia, Amanda and Eric Petrucci are waiting anxiously for word on the project too. The home where they’re raising their four children sits on a woodsy hilltop with a view that takes in the river and the low green mountains that run beside it. But they can also see flames licking up from a gas processing plant, and a nearby meadow is a Superfund site, contaminated by decades of chemical production.
Moundsville, West Virgina. Jeff Swensen for Yale Environment 360
Whenever there’s been activity there — cleanup work or soil removal — “it always leads to somebody being sick” in the family, Eric Petrucci said. As a toddler, their now-teenage son developed a rare, but temporary, blood disorder. Two neighbors got brain tumors, and another suffered kidney failure. “Every house has had somebody die of cancer,” Amanda Petrucci said. Eric Petrucci developed severe lung problems that took years to clear.
When the gas plant opened, their home’s water turned black, and Amanda Petrucci started getting tics and migraines. She has wanted to move away for years, but her husband, whose parents built their home, feels deeply rooted in the area. An ethane cracker about two miles away would end that debate, forcing them to leave, they say. And if PTTGC builds, an associated project — underground caverns to store ethane next to the river — will likely proceed too. “I’m constantly worried about it,” Amanda Petrucci said.
State representative Sara Innamorato, a Pittsburgh Democrat who is among a small minority of Pennsylvania lawmakers opposing petrochemical expansion, thinks Appalachia can do better than to entangle itself further with fossil fuels and their byproducts. Shell’s tax break could have financed more sustainable development, she said: “That’s $1.6 billion less we have to put into Main Street businesses, or technical and career colleges, or to allow for a small business that’s operating here to expand,” or help factories upgrade to reduce emissions.
Oil and gas companies’ political donations have stymied development of any alternative plan, she believes. There’s plenty of room “to think creatively about the future of energy, the future of jobs, and the future of other industries.” The challenge, Innamorato said, “is just getting people to see it doesn’t need to be this way. There can be another vision.”
Karen Gdula lives in the house she grew up in, a modest home on a pretty street in rural western Pennsylvania. Ivy Lane, in her view, is someplace special. “There’s a warmth and a caring,” she said. “We look out for each other.” The street never needed those bonds more than on September 10, 2018.
Retired and newly married, Gdula was asleep when, just before 5 a.m., an explosion shook her home. The roar was so loud that some of her neighbors thought it was a plane crash. But when she and her husband saw a fireball stretching above the tops of the towering pine trees across the street, they knew exactly what had happened.
The Revolution Pipeline, running right behind Ivy Lane in Center Township, about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, had come into service only days before, carrying gas from the fracking wells that are everywhere in the region. No one was hurt, but the explosion flattened a home three doors down from Gdula’s and toppled six giant electrical transmission towers.
Now, Revolution is back in service, and another pipeline has come to Ivy Lane, too. It’s called Line N, and it feeds gas to the vast, $6 billion petrochemical plant Shell is building five miles away in Monaca, right on the Ohio River. That plant, called an “ethane cracker,” will soon turn ethane — a byproduct of fracking — into 1.6 million tons of raw plastic a year.
The Ohio River Valley is wrestling with whether to tie its fortunes to another toxic, boom-and-bust industry.
Five years ago, the flood of ethane coming from the Ohio River Valley’s fracking wells got the plastic industry — petrochemical firms that are often subsidiaries of big fossil fuel producers — dreaming about a new generation of massive plants in the region. Companies envisioned building as many as four more ethane crackers like Shell’s in Appalachia, and state and local officials from both parties embraced the idea.
That vision is now foundering. Obstacles including global overproduction of plastic, local opposition to pipelines that feed such facilities, and public concern about the tidal wave of waste choking oceans and landscapes mean that even the region’s second proposed ethane cracker may never materialize. Additional plants look even less likely. The question mark over the industry’s once-grand hopes for Appalachia reflects larger doubts about its plans for dramatically increasing worldwide plastic production.
Driving oil and gas companies’ plastic production ambitions is the understanding that action on climate change may soon reduce demand for their fuels. Plastic is central to their hopes of keeping profits flowing, so they’ve been pouring money into building new plants and expanding old ones, on track to double 2016 global plastic production levels by 2036. Fracking has made the United States a major player in this international buildout. The American Chemistry Council, an industry association, says companies are investing more than $200 billion in U.S. chemical projects using fracked ingredients. Most of that growth has happened on the Gulf Coast, the country’s long-standing petrochemical hub.
Karen Gdula in her Center Township home, where she grew up. The walls are adorned with photos of her ancestors. Jeff Swensen for Yale Environment 360
The Ohio River Valley — desperate for economic revival after the steep decline of its coal and steel industries — was supposed to be the site of the next big push. Like many in the region, Gdula has complicated feelings about petrochemicals. She spent much of her career at a company that designed equipment for oil and gas workers, so she was not someone predisposed to distrust the industry. But after the explosion, she was dismayed to realize that much of its infrastructure was feeding plastic plants. And not just locally: Pennsylvanian ethane flows by pipeline to the Gulf Coast and Canada, and to a port near Philadelphia where it is shipped to European plastic producers.
Gdula is resigned to living with the industry, but she wants politicians and regulators to better safeguard residents’ well-being. In the wake of the explosion, she’s concluded that when Pennsylvania makes decisions about new projects, “jobs will aways trump everything. I hope safety is a close second.”
Her outlook reflects the push and pull of big promises and nagging fears as a region that was once one of America’s great industrial corridors wrestles with whether to tie its fortunes to another toxic, boom-and-bust industry like coal or fracking. And because plastic production has a hefty climate footprint — along with its more visible impact on waste — the consequences of what happens in Appalachia will stretch far beyond the region’s depressed downtowns, winding creeks, and peaceful hollows.
The Ivy Lane blast highlighted the safety concerns around Pennsylvania’s thousands of miles of pipelines. Revolution’s owner was charged with nine counts of environmental crimes and agreed to $2 million in fines and upgrade costs. Separately, the U.S. pipeline safety agency issued a warning to Shell over missing padding — a safety concern — on part of the Falcon pipeline, which will carry ethane to its plant. The company says the line is safe and the issue was isolated. Opponents believe it highlights a much wider problem — regulators’ coziness with oil and gas interests, whose projects they approve too readily and fail to adequately police.
The U.S. plastic industry’s greenhouse gas emissions equal those from 116 coal-fired power plants.
The explosion also offered a glimpse of the many tentacles of plastic production’s health and environmental effects, which extend far beyond the plants’ direct impacts. “It’s the whole network, the whole big spider web of this chemical plant being built around us,” said Terrie Baumgardner, of the Pennsylvania Clean Air Council.
By creating a market for ethane, plastic production drives more fracking, with the well-documented health and climate dangers it poses. One study found that the $23 billion toll of air pollution from fracking in the region — including between 1,200 and 4,600 premature deaths over 12 years — outweighed the economic gains, which researchers put at $21 billion. A plant the size of Shell’s needs more than 1,000 fracking wells to supply it with ethane, Duquesne University’s Center for Environmental Research estimates.
And the plants pose their own dangers. “Cracking” ethane’s molecules to turn it into ethylene — which is then processed into polyethylene, the world’s most widely used plastic — can emit benzene, toluene, and formaldehyde, which are linked to leukemia, nervous system damage, and respiratory problems, respectively. Shell’s facility will also create pollutants including sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, which increase risks of cancer, heart problems, and other ailments. The company declined an interview request, but has said the plant complies with all regulations.
Karen Gdula shows a photo of the burning remnants of her neighbor’s house following the 2018 explosion of the Revolution Pipeline. Jeff Swensen for Yale Environment 360
Plastic production’s climate impact is sizable, too. With its energy-hungry cracking plants — Shell’s Monaca facility is allowed to emit as much carbon dioxide annually as about 430,000 cars — and the methane-leaking pipelines that feed them, the U.S. plastic industry’s greenhouse gas emissions equal those from 116 coal-fired power plants, estimates Beyond Plastic, an advocacy group. Domestically, that footprint is expected to exceed coal’s by 2030, the group predicts. Globally, plastic would be the world’s fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter if it were a country, Beyond Plastic says. If output grows as planned, plastic would use more than 10 percent of the emissions allowable if warming is to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius, says the Center for International Environmental Law.
In the river towns of western Pennsylvania, southeastern Ohio, and West Virginia, many see petrochemicals as a lifeline that will not only provide good jobs and tax revenue, but help spark broader growth. Especially after the pandemic exposed the vulnerability of global supply chains, supporters say the plastic produced by Shell — and perhaps eventually other producers — will attract manufacturers to turn it into goods and packaging.
Embracing such hopes, Pennsylvania gave Shell a tax break valued at $1.6 billion, one of the largest in state history. The company’s decision to build “put Beaver County back on the map,” said Jack Manning, a county commissioner. “That plant gave more people hope than any other single thing” in decades. Early in the pandemic, plant construction workers’ spending at local shops and restaurants “really helped us survive,” and he predicted such indirect economic benefits would continue.
While 8,000 workers are building the plastics plant, there will only be 600 permanent jobs once it opens.
Others have doubts. The Ohio River Valley Institute, a liberal research group, says Beaver County’s growth lags the rest of the state despite the huge construction project.
Six miles from Shell’s site, Mayor Dwan Walker runs Aliquippa, once a storied steel-making town, from a bare-bones City Hall on a street lined with empty storefronts. With tattooed arms and a red Aliquippa polo shirt, he’s ready to welcome just about anything that will bring back jobs and revenue. But he sees Shell’s plant as a mixed blessing. “The good news is the cracker plant’s coming. Guess what the bad news is — the cracker plant’s coming,” he says. “There’s a lot of questions I have.”
While 8,000 workers are building the plant, there will only be 600 permanent jobs once it opens. So far, many workers are from out of state. Walker sees license plates from all over the country, just as he did during fracking’s boom years, when oil and gas workers came from as far as Texas and Oklahoma to take good-paying jobs.
Aliquippa is one of the few racially diverse towns in a largely white area, and a lot of obstacles stand between its residents, many of them Black, and permanent jobs with Shell, Walker said. Many don’t own cars, and few have the training to work in an ethane cracker. At the company’s community meetings, “they kept talking about diversity,” the mayor recalled. “Explain to me what that looks like.” One thing he wants to know: “Do I see people saying, ‘Here’s a voucher for a taxi or an Uber’” to get residents without cars to community colleges or other training sites?
Aliquippa Mayor Dwan Walker. Jeff Swensen for Yale Environment 360
Walker understands the risks of petrochemicals — the Gulf Coast plastic-making corridor is nicknamed “Cancer Alley” because of the industry’s toxic footprint. On the other hand, when Shell set up a construction staging area in Aliquippa, the town got an influx of tax income. And while there may not be many residents employed in the plant, Walker is among those who believes it will attract other companies. His town has docks on the Ohio River and plenty of industrial land waiting for the right manufacturer. “This is a city that’s been on its knees. It’s been crawling for a while, and now we’re starting to walk,” he said. “And pretty soon, we’re gonna run.”
Like Gdula, Walker is ambivalent about the industry. Would he prefer to have seen different opportunities for his constituents? “Yes and no,” he says. It wasn’t up to him, but now his job is to make sure those in charge don’t forget Aliquippa.
Belmont County, Ohio has similar hopes. It’s a little over an hour’s drive downriver from Shell’s site, along a stretch of the Ohio lined with the rusting skeletons of abandoned factories. There’s gentle beauty too, in the rolling green hills thick with springtime blossom and birdsong. Tucked inside the elbow of one of the river’s sharpest bends, a grassy field where a towering coal-fired power station once stood is empty now, its fate unclear since the Thai petrochemical conglomerate PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC) lost its investment partner for the $10 billion ethane cracker it hopes to build there.
Dan Williamson, a PTTGC spokesman, said such projects often have long gestation times, and that the pandemic’s disruptions had created additional delays. The company is looking for a new partner and remains optimistic it will eventually build. The plant would employ about 500 people, he said, and require thousands of construction workers to erect.
The plastic industry’s long-standing assumption that demand tracks economic growth may no longer hold.
For now, Belmont County is in limbo. The petrochemical industry’s global building spree — including a wave of new plants in China — appears to have gone too far, at least for now. “We’re entering into a period of overcapacity,” said Nathan Schaffer, vice president for petrochemicals at the consulting group Wood Mackenzie. “Supply has outpaced demand” and will take a few years to catch up, he said.
Measures to reduce plastic waste may complicate that equation. The European Union, Canada, and more than 30 African nations are among locales banning some single-use items. There’s a push to use more recycled material and plans for a global plastic pollution treaty. So the plastic industry’s long-standing assumption that demand tracks economic growth may no longer hold, said Anne Keller, an expert in natural gas liquid and petrochemical feedstocks at Midstream Energy Group, a Texas-based consultancy.
Because of the mix of ingredients available in Appalachia, much of the region’s plastic output would likely go to single-use items such as bags and packaging, making producers particularly vulnerable to pollution concerns, Keller said. The Australian Minderoo Foundation ranked PTTGC as the world’s 19th largest producer of plastic for throwaway items, finding it made the material for 1.5 percent of all single-use plastics globally. Williamson, the company spokesman, said it takes environmental concerns seriously, and sees ocean plastic pollution as a crisis.
A pipeline under construction along Fork Ridge, about 10 miles outside Moundsville, West Virginia. Jeff Swensen for Yale Environment 360
Opposition to new pipelines is another obstacle, Keller said. Just a few years ago, fracking companies saw the proposed new crackers as an enticing way to monetize ethane they needed to get rid of. “That’s changed,” she said. Now pushback against new pipelines — Mountain Valley, in West Virginia and Virginia, is the latest to run into trouble — threatens to limit the flow of methane leaving the region to be sold for heating and power. If it does, the difficulty of reaching markets will constrain new drilling, tightening the supply of ethane on which the plastic dreams were built. Five years ago, few “would have ever thought that it would literally have become impossible to build a pipeline out of this region,” Keller said. But there’s been so much opposition “that that’s really become a question mark.”
It’s too soon to know whether the Ukraine war, and Europe’s scramble to replace Russian gas, might upend that political dynamic, providing justification for new pipelines to carry fuel for liquefaction and export. Barring that, for PTTGC “it’s simple economics,” Keller said. Uncertainty around ethane supplies means building “looks a lot riskier than it did a few years ago.” Meanwhile, inflation is driving up construction costs, Schaffer said. All told, it means new Appalachian plants, in his view, are “probably off the table for now.”
Greg Kozera, a spokesman for Shale Crescent USA, which advocates for petrochemical development in the region, disagrees. The disruptions of the pandemic and war make the case for Appalachian plastic production stronger than ever, he argues. “We can’t depend on a global supply chain,” he said. “Companies are looking for regional suppliers.”
With plans for a $10 billion ethane cracker plant, a local official says, “we saw the potential and what it meant for the township.”
He added that eliminating international shipping costs means U.S. manufacturers using Appalachian plastic can compete with Asia on price, even if U.S. labor costs are higher. “We’re going to see the crackers, I’m convinced of that,” Kozera said.
Ed Good hopes he’s right. A trustee of Mead Township, which includes Dilles Bottom, home to PTTGC’s site, he worked 35 years at the R.E. Burger coal power plant, which closed in 2011; PTTGC knocked it down after acquiring the land. When the plant laid off staff in the 1990s, a federal program helped workers retrain, or go back to school, recalled Good, a longtime union official. There’s little such help available now, and with state cuts to local government support, towns are on their own too. “When Burger shut down I lost half my budget,” he said. “We don’t pave as many roads as we used to.”
When PTTGC expressed interest, “we saw the potential and what it meant for the township, what it meant for the community, schools.” Eventually, the company agreed it would pay the township $2 million upon a decision to build, and $500,000 annually afterwards. Nearby Shadyside secured a pledge of $38 million for a new school complex if the plant goes ahead.
Just across the Ohio, in Moundsville, West Virginia, Amanda and Eric Petrucci are waiting anxiously for word on the project too. The home where they’re raising their four children sits on a woodsy hilltop with a view that takes in the river and the low green mountains that run beside it. But they can also see flames licking up from a gas processing plant, and a nearby meadow is a Superfund site, contaminated by decades of chemical production.
Moundsville, West Virgina. Jeff Swensen for Yale Environment 360
Whenever there’s been activity there — cleanup work or soil removal — “it always leads to somebody being sick” in the family, Eric Petrucci said. As a toddler, their now-teenage son developed a rare, but temporary, blood disorder. Two neighbors got brain tumors, and another suffered kidney failure. “Every house has had somebody die of cancer,” Amanda Petrucci said. Eric Petrucci developed severe lung problems that took years to clear.
When the gas plant opened, their home’s water turned black, and Amanda Petrucci started getting tics and migraines. She has wanted to move away for years, but her husband, whose parents built their home, feels deeply rooted in the area. An ethane cracker about two miles away would end that debate, forcing them to leave, they say. And if PTTGC builds, an associated project — underground caverns to store ethane next to the river — will likely proceed too. “I’m constantly worried about it,” Amanda Petrucci said.
State representative Sara Innamorato, a Pittsburgh Democrat who is among a small minority of Pennsylvania lawmakers opposing petrochemical expansion, thinks Appalachia can do better than to entangle itself further with fossil fuels and their byproducts. Shell’s tax break could have financed more sustainable development, she said: “That’s $1.6 billion less we have to put into Main Street businesses, or technical and career colleges, or to allow for a small business that’s operating here to expand,” or help factories upgrade to reduce emissions.
Oil and gas companies’ political donations have stymied development of any alternative plan, she believes. There’s plenty of room “to think creatively about the future of energy, the future of jobs, and the future of other industries.” The challenge, Innamorato said, “is just getting people to see it doesn’t need to be this way. There can be another vision.”
Free wooden bellyboard hire scheme aims to cut plastic pollution
Surf Wood for Good aims to tackle waste caused by polystyrene bodyboards by lending beachgoers UK-made wooden boards
A new initiative is offering free bellyboard hire across England, Wales and Northern Ireland to discourage the use of polluting plastic boards.
Surf Wood for Good aims to tackle the waste caused by polystyrene bodyboards, which are usually imported and single-use, by lending beachgoers British-made wooden boards.
The environmentally friendly alternatives will be available to borrow free of charge from stockists in 24 coastal sites until October, including in Bournemouth, Cornwall and Grimsby.
It is estimated that more than 16,000 polystyrene bodyboards are left on UK beaches each year, according to environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy.
The low-quality boards are said to last as little as a few hours before they are often discarded across seafronts, and can release thousands of tiny polystyrene balls into the coastal ecosystem.
Jamie Johnstone, founder of Surf Wood for Good, was prompted to act after seeing the volume of broken polystyrene bodyboards left at his local beach in Newquay daily last summer.
“We hope that the scheme will inspire people to think about what they are riding in the waves and promote a positive change away from disposable plastic in general,” Johnstone said.
“I love the idea that each board handed out represents the potential for a cheap alternative to be saved from landfill.”
Environmental charity Surfers Against Sewage added: “Plastic pollution is a huge issue, with 8m pieces of plastic entering the ocean every single day. Not only is Surf Wood For Good kinder to our planet, it provides endless fun in the water, where you can use the board over and over again.”
Last year, a ban on sales of single-use bodyboard sales was introduced in North Devon to eliminate waste.
Free wooden bellyboard hire scheme aims to cut plastic pollution
Surf Wood for Good aims to tackle waste caused by polystyrene bodyboards by lending beachgoers UK-made wooden boards
A new initiative is offering free bellyboard hire across England, Wales and Northern Ireland to discourage the use of polluting plastic boards.
Surf Wood for Good aims to tackle the waste caused by polystyrene bodyboards, which are usually imported and single-use, by lending beachgoers British-made wooden boards.
The environmentally friendly alternatives will be available to borrow free of charge from stockists in 24 coastal sites until October, including in Bournemouth, Cornwall and Grimsby.
It is estimated that more than 16,000 polystyrene bodyboards are left on UK beaches each year, according to environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy.
The low-quality boards are said to last as little as a few hours before they are often discarded across seafronts, and can release thousands of tiny polystyrene balls into the coastal ecosystem.
Jamie Johnstone, founder of Surf Wood for Good, was prompted to act after seeing the volume of broken polystyrene bodyboards left at his local beach in Newquay daily last summer.
“We hope that the scheme will inspire people to think about what they are riding in the waves and promote a positive change away from disposable plastic in general,” Johnstone said.
“I love the idea that each board handed out represents the potential for a cheap alternative to be saved from landfill.”
Environmental charity Surfers Against Sewage added: “Plastic pollution is a huge issue, with 8m pieces of plastic entering the ocean every single day. Not only is Surf Wood For Good kinder to our planet, it provides endless fun in the water, where you can use the board over and over again.”
Last year, a ban on sales of single-use bodyboard sales was introduced in North Devon to eliminate waste.
A new industrial precinct in Darwin Harbour could cause “significant adverse impacts to human health”, according to an environmental report released by the Northern Territory government.
Key points:
The environmental report identified potential risks to threatened species and the health of Palmerston residents
The NT government says planning is underway to help protect the environment from its proposed industrial works
The Deputy Prime Minister did not give a timeline for the delivery of $1.5 billion of federal funding in port infrastructure to support the new precinct
The NT government is spearheading plans to develop a manufacturing and minerals precinct in Middle Arm, south of Darwin.
The federal budget promised $1.5 billion for a new wharf and offloading facility in the area, however the funding has not been allocated over the forward estimates period.
The NT government said the precinct would also include carbon capture and storage technologies, as well as hydrogen and mineral exports, deeming it a low emissions precinct that will create 20,000 jobs.
The potential threat to human health was flagged in a risk assessment the government was required to submit under the environmental approvals process, which noted its proximity to residential Palmerston and ranked the risk as “uncertain”.
But environmental advocates have labelled the report an “incredibly concerning” warning.
“You’re talking about ammonia, methanol, hydrogen and gas liquids processing in Middle Arm, which is actually a petroleum refinery,” Jason Fowler from the Environment Centre NT said.
“This is all occurring within three kilometres of the suburb of Palmerston.
“If you look anywhere around the globe, you’re not finding massive petrochemical refineries right next to suburbia.”
Mr Fowler says the development could pose a risk to human health.(ABC News: Nicholas Hynes)
‘Significant impacts to marine water’
The report to the NT Environmental Protection Authority also warned threatened species as well as migratory shorebirds and habitat could be impacted, with about 1,500 hectares of land proposed to be cleared for the precinct.
“Significant impacts to marine water and sediment quality” in the harbour, as well as to marine ecosystems could result from dredging and shipping operations, it said.
In response to the report, the Northern Territory and federal governments have committed to partnering on a detailed assessment of the precinct to identify and protect environmentally significant areas.
“Environmental considerations are paramount in the development of the Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct,” NT Environment Minister Eva Lalwer said.
“Baseline investigations are underway, including identifying plant and animal biodiversity, marine environmental values, and air and water quality to inform detailed planning for the precinct.”
The proposed location in Middle Arm is close to two existing LNG processing facilities run by Santos and INPEX.(ABC News: Michael Donnelly)
Timeline is locked in, Joyce says
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce was in Darwin on Tuesday, where the Coalition is targeting two federal seats, spruiking his government’s commitment to developing the Middle Arm precinct.
He said the area would invite $16 billion in private investment and linked the spending to national security.
“Our vision is to make Darwin an even bigger and stronger city,” he told ABC Radio Darwin this morning.
But asked yesterday if the investment would effectively fund a second port to bypass the one leased to Chinese-owned firm for 99 years, Mr Joyce said: “I’m not going to talk about anything but what we’re doing here”.
Mr Joyce says investment in Darwin port facilities would bolster national security. (ABC News: Xavier Martin)
He also did not provide a specific timeline for when the money would be spent, but insisted “the timeline is locked in”.
Mr Joyce insisted the proposal would not be put to a business case or feasibility study, despite a media release at the time of the announcement saying the funding was “conditional pending completed business cases demonstrating value for money and sufficient public benefit for investment”.
His office has not yet responded to a request for clarification.
Free wooden bellyboard hire scheme aims to cut plastic pollution
Surf Wood for Good aims to tackle waste caused by polystyrene bodyboards by lending beachgoers UK-made wooden boards
A new initiative is offering free bellyboard hire across England, Wales and Northern Ireland to discourage the use of polluting plastic boards.
Surf Wood for Good aims to tackle the waste caused by polystyrene bodyboards, which are usually imported and single-use, by lending beachgoers British-made wooden boards.
The environmentally friendly alternatives will be available to borrow free of charge from stockists in 24 coastal sites until October, including in Bournemouth, Cornwall and Grimsby.
It is estimated that more than 16,000 polystyrene bodyboards are left on UK beaches each year, according to environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy.
The low-quality boards are said to last as little as a few hours before they are often discarded across seafronts, and can release thousands of tiny polystyrene balls into the coastal ecosystem.
Jamie Johnstone, founder of Surf Wood for Good, was prompted to act after seeing the volume of broken polystyrene bodyboards left at his local beach in Newquay daily last summer.
“We hope that the scheme will inspire people to think about what they are riding in the waves and promote a positive change away from disposable plastic in general,” Johnstone said.
“I love the idea that each board handed out represents the potential for a cheap alternative to be saved from landfill.”
Environmental charity Surfers Against Sewage added: “Plastic pollution is a huge issue, with 8m pieces of plastic entering the ocean every single day. Not only is Surf Wood For Good kinder to our planet, it provides endless fun in the water, where you can use the board over and over again.”
Last year, a ban on sales of single-use bodyboard sales was introduced in North Devon to eliminate waste.
Here’s a secret about single-use foodware: brands and manufacturers don’t have to tell what’s in it, and in some cases, they don’t even know.
This presents a challenge for safety-conscious consumers of takeout containers, disposable cups, and similar materials who are hoping to avoid chemicals like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), bisphenols, phthalates, and other less high-profile compounds.
But the nonprofit organizations Clean Production Action, based in Massachusetts, and Center for Environmental Health, based in California, both advocates of chemical safety in consumer products, believe they have a solution: the first-ever independent, third-party chemical screening and certification program for disposable foodware. Private consumers and institutional buyers can use the program to inform purchasing decisions.
Launched last November, the GreenScreen Certified Standard for Food Service Ware is a subset of the larger GreenScreen brand, operated by Clean Production Action since 2007. The brand also includes certifications for firefighting foams, textiles, furniture, fabrics, cleaners, and degreasers.
Manufacturers of single-use foodware seeking certification can apply at one of three levels, with increasingly fewer chemicals allowed and individual chemicals assessed with stricter criteria at each level. Even at the lowest level, Silver, full disclosure to GreenScreen of all intentionally added ingredients is required, and more than 2,000 chemicals of concern are prohibited. These include endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as bisphenols, phthalates, parabens, and organotin compounds; chemical classes including PFAS, organohalogens, and polycyclic aromatic amines; compounds of cadmium, hexavalent chromium, lead, and mercury; and antimicrobials and nanomaterials.
Certified foodware must also undergo product-level testing at an approved lab for a variety of chemicals and classes including fluorine, an indicator of PFAS. There is mounting evidence that many products are unintentionally contaminated with PFAS during manufacturing, even if the chemicals are not meant to go into the product.
These standards are more stringent than those enforced by any government agency or regulatory body in the world—but they still keep consumers in the dark as to which chemicals are actually being used.
Industry secrecy
GreenScreen’s track record and name recognition likely helped it succeed in launching a third-party foodware certification program where other attempts have stalled. An ongoing effort to ban PFAS in food packaging in Washington, for example, was delayed in 2020 when the state was unable to obtain details from brands and manufacturers about what they were using instead of PFAS, Clean Production Action Executive Director Mark Rossi told EHN. These chemicals impart grease and water resistance to porous materials like paper and molded fiber in foodware; if eliminated, other chemicals must be used in their place, or the entire product must be redesigned.
This raises the possibility of manufacturers employing so-called regrettable substitutes—alternative chemicals that turn out to be similarly harmful, most famously illustrated by the replacement of bisphenol A (BPA) with BPS, BPF, and other endocrine-disrupting bisphenols in many products.
Knowing that a given product is PFAS-free may not be enough, but moving from there to a surer assurance of safety can be stymied by secrecy from raw material suppliers, Rossi said. “The company that puts their brand name on that product often doesn’t know what is being used as the alternative to PFAS,” he said. “They don’t know the alternative chemistries because, oftentimes, the [supplier] will claim it’s proprietary.”
The workaround offered by GreenScreen is a non-disclosure agreement with suppliers in exchange for complete accounting of intentionally added chemicals down to the parts per million level. If a raw-material supplier is unwilling to be fully transparent with GreenScreen about the original formulation, then the final product cannot be certified.
This impulse for privacy within the industry is so strong, in fact, that rollout of the new certification program was delayed for nearly a year by difficulties in gaining access to proprietary information, Rossi said. Clean Production Action and the Center for Environmental Health held off on formally launching the program until they were able to successfully usher a couple initialproducts all the way through the certification process.
Certified products
The program is still in its early stages, but to date two materials have been certified. One is a line of molded-fiber plates, bowls, and clamshell packages certified Silver, from a company called Eco-Products that sells both business-to-business and direct to consumers. Eco-Products plans to add the GreenScreen logo to its packaging to advertise the certification, Director of Marketing Nicole Tariku told EHN.
The other is a raw material: plastic beads from a company called NatureWorks made of plant-derived polylactic acid (PLA) that are used in the production of single-use plastics. These are certified Platinum, the program’s highest level, but any final product using the beads, such as a clear-plastic cup or a PLA-lined paper plate, will need to be screened and certified separately.
Jane Muncke, managing director of the Zurich, Switzerland-based Food Packaging Forum, a nonprofit organization that performs and communicates science about food packaging and health, provided input for the new program during its development. “It’s good to raise awareness for hazardous chemicals in food-contact materials, and the certification helps with this,” she said.
Muncke commends GreenScreen for excluding recycled paper, which is often loaded with harmful chemicals despite its appearance as a sustainable choice.
But she is concerned by the program’s allowance of up to 100 parts per million for some unintentionally added chemicals, even at the Platinum level. “That is way too high in my opinion,” she said.
Confidentiality about chemical replacements
After declining to bare all for Washington state’s program, Minneapolis-based NatureWorks worked with GreenScreen once the offer of a non-disclosure agreement was on the table, said lead applications engineer Nicole Whiteman. “The information needed in order to go through that toxicology evaluation required revealing a lot of confidential business information,” she told EHN. “A lot of the very minute ingredients, such as the catalyst for bringing together the polymerization, are closely held trade secrets, or confidential information to a company. And the beauty [with GreenScreen] is that we can have a fairly standard confidentiality agreement with the toxicology firm.”
NatureWorks can now market its plastic beads to consumer-facing manufacturers of disposable food-service products as certified safe according to the strictest standards available anywhere.
And even at the Silver level, the Eco-Products certification could serve the company well as it competes in the expanding global market for PFAS-free molded-fiber foodware, and as consumer and regulatory awareness of the issue continues to grow.
Tariku says GreenScreen’s assurances of privacy were key to the company’s ability to participate. When pressed by EHNto comment on the nature of its new formulation, even in general terms, she replied, “We can’t discuss details of the alternative material. That’s one reason why Eco-Products sought third-party certification through GreenScreen: to protect our innovative process while also being as transparent as feasible about the material.”
The environmental beat can be a real downer and we often focus on the problems—but there are signs of progress in our fight against climate change and pollution.
From renewable projects to plastic treaties, here are some dashes of hope for our planet.
Changing energy winds
More than a decade ago the North American environmental movement threw much of its limited clout against a single project. The Keystone XL pipeline would expedite delivery of oil from Canada’s tarsands to U.S. refineries along the Gulf Coast and make Canada a petro-state.
Enter an army of writers, hellraisers, tribes, farmers, and lawyers who objected to the path, if not the very idea, of Keystone XL. President Biden finally stuck a fork in the project by revoking a crucial permit on his first day in office
Other oil and gas pipeline projects saw similar citizen uprisings. Expansion of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) from North Dakota’s shale fields to southern Illinois prompted massive protests and allegations of violence perpetrated by police and DAPL-hired security guards. Plans for a pipeline from Alberta to Canada’s east coast were abandoned. Fuel pipeline proposals fell in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and elsewhere.
The nonprofit Investigate West recently looked at the billion-dollar potential for wind and solar jobs on tribal lands throughout the Western U.S.
In March, a U.S. government lease sale for offshore wind rights shattered records and expectations, drawing $4.37 billion in winning bids. Two major oil companies, European-based Total and Shell, were among the top bidders. U.S.-based oil giants were much less enthusiastic.
The Yellowstone’s of the sea
Last year Australia added to a global trend by declaring two massive new marine parks in the Indian Ocean. Surrounding the Cocos and Christmas Islands, the parks curtail commercial activities from other nations. Previous parks and reserves have been set by multiple nations in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans as well as the Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica.
Beacon of hope
The Empire State Building now runs completely on windpower (Not exactly. The realty trust that owns the building still buys its juice from the conventional grid, but it then buys the same amount from Green Mountain Energy’s clean energy program.)
Solar … in West Virginia?
Of course, the decline of Big Coal in the U.S. is at best a mixed bag without some economic hope in coal country. Last week in West Virginia, developers unveiled plans for the largest solar farm in the state in a sprawling former coalfield.
Ocean plastics
It’s an issue where despair prevails, but even here we can see a glimmer. In March, a United Nations conference mandated the creation of a global treaty on plastics pollution.
And more glimmers of hope
There are more issues—both problems and solutions—identified by scientists, activists, and others and brought to light by journalists like my colleagues here at EHN. Political challenges like environmental justice dot the global landscape, while environmental health phenomena break out of the lab and into our lives.
The environmental beat can be a real downer and we often focus on the problems—but there are signs of progress in our fight against climate change and pollution.
From renewable projects to plastic treaties, here are some dashes of hope for our planet.
Changing energy winds
More than a decade ago the North American environmental movement threw much of its limited clout against a single project. The Keystone XL pipeline would expedite delivery of oil from Canada’s tarsands to U.S. refineries along the Gulf Coast and make Canada a petro-state.
Enter an army of writers, hellraisers, tribes, farmers, and lawyers who objected to the path, if not the very idea, of Keystone XL. President Biden finally stuck a fork in the project by revoking a crucial permit on his first day in office
Other oil and gas pipeline projects saw similar citizen uprisings. Expansion of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) from North Dakota’s shale fields to southern Illinois prompted massive protests and allegations of violence perpetrated by police and DAPL-hired security guards. Plans for a pipeline from Alberta to Canada’s east coast were abandoned. Fuel pipeline proposals fell in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and elsewhere.
The nonprofit Investigate West recently looked at the billion-dollar potential for wind and solar jobs on tribal lands throughout the Western U.S.
In March, a U.S. government lease sale for offshore wind rights shattered records and expectations, drawing $4.37 billion in winning bids. Two major oil companies, European-based Total and Shell, were among the top bidders. U.S.-based oil giants were much less enthusiastic.
The Yellowstone’s of the sea
Last year Australia added to a global trend by declaring two massive new marine parks in the Indian Ocean. Surrounding the Cocos and Christmas Islands, the parks curtail commercial activities from other nations. Previous parks and reserves have been set by multiple nations in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans as well as the Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica.
Beacon of hope
The Empire State Building now runs completely on windpower (Not exactly. The realty trust that owns the building still buys its juice from the conventional grid, but it then buys the same amount from Green Mountain Energy’s clean energy program.)
Solar … in West Virginia?
Of course, the decline of Big Coal in the U.S. is at best a mixed bag without some economic hope in coal country. Last week in West Virginia, developers unveiled plans for the largest solar farm in the state in a sprawling former coalfield.
Ocean plastics
It’s an issue where despair prevails, but even here we can see a glimmer. In March, a United Nations conference mandated the creation of a global treaty on plastics pollution.
And more glimmers of hope
There are more issues—both problems and solutions—identified by scientists, activists, and others and brought to light by journalists like my colleagues here at EHN. Political challenges like environmental justice dot the global landscape, while environmental health phenomena break out of the lab and into our lives.
