Since the start of the 2020s, humanity has faced worldwide calamity after worldwide calamity, all of them raising questions about our survival as a species. The COVID-19 pandemic has already claimed millions of lives and not yet finished its rampage. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has raised the specter of nuclear holocaust, which many assumed has subsided with the end of the Cold War. Even as these problems worsen, climate change continues to quietly creep along in the background, overheating the planet for future generations.

Yet what if, on top of all these things, there is an even more dystopian crisis in the offing — one in which humans are no longer able to reproduce without artificial help because we have filled the environment with chemicals that have altered our bodies?

Scientists believe this is not only possible, it is likely to happen within our lifetimes.

Understanding why involves three statistics: First, that a human male who has fewer than 15 million sperm per milliliter is considered infertile; second, that in the 1970s sperm counts in Western countries (where there is available data) showed an average of 99 million sperm per milliliter; and third, that this number had dropped to 47 million sperm per milliliter by 2011. Scientists agree that plastic pollution is a likely culprit.

The trailblazer here has been Dr. Shanna Swan, a professor of environmental medicine and public health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, whose most famous book has a conveniently self-explanatory title: “Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race.”

The main culprit is believed to be chemicals within everyday plastics known as endocrine disruptors. These chemicals, including a range of phthalates and bisphenols, are literally inescapable. They can be found in the dishware, food cans and containers from which you eat your food, and in the water bottles and other plastic receptacles from which you drink. They are in virtually all of your commonly used household electronics, your eyeglass lenses, your furniture and even on any commercial receipts that come from a thermal printer. Because endocrine disruptors are in pesticides, they have also entered the foods that we eat thanks to the agriculture industry. Even without pesticides, though, we would still wind up eating these endocrine disruptors. Microplastics — that is, plastic particles which are five millimeters or less across or in length — have entirely covered the planet. Animals accidentally eat microplastics all the time and plants regularly absorb them through their roots. Humans themselves ingest the rough equivalent of a credit card’s worth of plastic each week.

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“First society needs to identify and agree we have a very serious problem; this takes time like climate change,” Bjorn Beeler, international coordination at IPEN — International Pollutants Elimination Network — told Salon by email. “Scientists knew in the 1970s/80s climate change was coming due to [greenhouse gas] emissions, and now we are discussing adaptation and climate crisis 40+ years later (late). So to curb the threat, we need to define the problem, then turn off the toxic chemical tap.”

Even if that happens, however, there is so much plastic everywhere that humanity simply cannot escape at least some of the consequences from this constant exposure. Swan told Salon by email that federally funded assisted reproduction technology — something currently provided in only one country, Israel — will help in making sure that people impacted by this pollution can still have children.

“Disadvantaged communities are more highly exposed to risky chemicals and they are more affected (on average) by the same level of exposure,” Swan wrote to Salon. “So, it’s a ‘triple whammy’ for these communities.”

John Hocevar, the Oceans Campaign Director for Greenpeace USA, explained to Salon by email that “reduced sperm counts and other reproductive ailments disproportionately impact low income communities and people of color. Poor communities are more likely to be located closest to incinerators and landfills, as well as refineries. Access to expensive treatments to compensate for reproductive health issues are not equitable today, and even with an optimistic view of the US political landscape it is clear that this problem is not going to go away any time soon.”

Not surprisingly, the plastic industry and others that rely on these chemicals dispute that the endocrine disruptors are responsible for the drop in sperm counts. As Beeler pointed out, they will provide alternate data just like industries do when they dispute the validity of climate science. Hocevar added that plastic companies also have an advantage because plastics are so pervasive that “it is difficult to design controls where plastic can be excluded as a factor. The plastic industry uses this terrible situation to try to claim that we don’t have enough evidence to be sure that these chemicals are dangerous.”

And, to be clear, there are other factors that no doubt contribute to fertility issues for both men and women: Obesity, smoking, binge drinking, stress. Still, the science about endocrine disruptors is clear.

“Chemicals in plastic (phthalates, bisphenols and others) as well as pesticides, lead and other environmental exposures are linked to impaired reproduction including sperm count and quality,” Swan told Salon. “Some, like phthalates and BPA, have a short half-life in the body (4-6 hours), so it is possible to reduce the body’s exposure if we can stop using products containing these.” At the same time, society will have to exercise collective will and make sure that the most vulnerable among us are not left behind.

“Low-income communities can’t afford to ‘buy their way out’ of the problem by purchasing organic, unprocessed foods, safer cosmetics etc. (which are more expensive),” Swan explained. “But the ‘mass infertility scenario’ is a threat to everyone (not just the disadvantaged).”

Read more on plastic pollution:

Carbon dioxide gets a lot of attention. But we also need to talk about methane.

[Photo: courtesy AirCarbon]

LET’S FACE IT. YOU CAN’T escape plastic waste. Grocery bags tumbling across parking lots or caught on a nearby bush, beverage bottles lying in street culverts or scattered on the beach, plastic cups, discarded plastic knives and forks, packaging materials, food takeout wrapping — one, or more, or all are likely to be encountered in any 24-hour period of our daily lives.

Plastic waste is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to let your eyes gloss over it as an expected, all-too-familiar part of the landscape.

Most of that waste winds up in our waterways.

About 80% of plastic in the oceans is estimated to come from land-based sources, according to National Geo- graphic. A study by the World Economic Forum estimates that by 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans.

A plastic bag is used for an average of 12 minutes, but it can last in the environment for several hundred years. Plastic waste has been found in Antarctic ice and the deepest part of the ocean. Researchers found a plastic bag in the Marianna Trench in the Pacific, 36,000 feet deep.

The problem is global, but the actions needed to fight it filter down to the national, state and local level. Mainly, the actions need to come from new government policy that holds the corporations that make the plastic and the manufacturers that use it accountable for the pollution it causes, scientists and environmentalists say.

“Plastics are extremely cheap to produce and incredibly durable,” said Jennifer Jones, associate professor of environmental studies and director of the Center for Environment and Society at Florida Gulf Coast University. “That means we’re creating a ton of something that never really goes away. Every piece of plastic we’ve ever made still exists and the plastics industry has convinced us this is OK because we recycle. The truth is, recycling isn’t going to save us. With plastic production set to triple by 2050, only stopping plastic production will.”

The rising tide of plastic waste doesn’t bode well for Florida, with its $90 billion tourism economy largely focused on the lure of white sand beaches, warm waters, tropical sunshine and all the recreation that goes along with it. Florida is surrounded on three sides by water, with 8,436 miles of coastline. It’s a big coast, which means the threat caused by plastic pollution is disastrous.

Add in 55,000 miles of rivers and streams, plus lakes, estuaries and wetlands and the problem is amplified.

Ecotourists hope to see frolicking dolphins, maybe a glimpse of a sea turtle or a tiny hatchling scurrying toward the sea, the nose of a gentle manatee breaking the water’s surface, wading birds feasting on fish and other marine morsels, nesting shorebirds.

Plastic bags, plastic bottles, plastic cups and plastic wrappings are not part of the idyllic scenario. These are the single-use plastics that are the main culprits — cheap plastic goods that are used once and thrown away.

Damage done

Scientists estimate that 15 million metric tons of plastic wash into the oceans every year. That equates to about two garbage trucks’ worth of plastic entering the oceans every minute.

Once it gets washed into waterways, it causes at least $13 billion annually in damage to marine ecosystems and about $2 billion in losses for tourism (just looking at the Asia-Pacific area and Europe), The World Economic Forum study said. “In addition to direct economic costs, there are potential adverse impacts on human livelihoods and health, food chains and other essential economic and societal systems.”

Florida put an estimated 7,000 tons of plastic waste into its marine environments in 2020, according to a study done for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. That’s not counting the amount collected in thousands of cleanups held by environmental and civic organizations.

The impact of plastic waste on marine life is clear.

A 2020 study by Oceana, a nonprofit ocean advocacy group founded by Pew Charitable Trusts and other foundations, attempted to compile for the first time the available data on plastic ingestion and entanglements in marine mammals and sea turtles in U.S. waters. The study, titled “Choked, Strangled, Drowned: The Plastics Crisis Unfolding in Our Oceans,” surveyed dozens of government agencies and organizations. The study found that sea turtles, manatees and other marine life off the coast of Florida made up 55% of the animals who were injured or killed by plastic pollution.

“I think Florida is kind of unique,” because of its long coastline, said Kimberly Warner, study co-author and senior scientist at Oceana. “So many endangered, threatened species call Florida home.”

When marine animals encounter plastic they may ingest it inadvertently or mistake it for food. They can get entangled in it. Their intestines can be lacerated. They can drown or choke to death. The plastic in their stomachs can make them feel so full that they stop feeding and die of starvation. If plastic waste twists around a fin or other extremity, the need for amputation can result.

In the Oceana study, Brandon Bassett, a biologist at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said that roughly one in 10 manatee carcasses contains some sort of marine debris. He recounted one particular case of a manatee that died after ingesting a large amount of plastic waste.

“Imagine a ball of plastic bags in the stomach, about the size of a cantaloupe, and then a bunch of plastic bags that were wrapped and almost like a rope that was about 3 feet long,” Mr. Bassett said.

“On the other end of that was another ball of even more plastic bags that was maybe about half the size of a cantaloupe, and that was in the intestine. That whole mass ended up killing the animal. Stuff like that can lead to not only death, but significant and unnecessary suffering.”

The FWC provided all its datasets to Oceana for the study, said Jenn ifer McGee, FWC marine debris coordinator. She handles marine debris from plastics to derelict vessels to discarded monofilament fishing line, deadly to birds and other animals.

She noted a study on the FWC website in which researchers went over 6,500 manatee necropsy reports over 20 years (1993-2012) and found more than 11% of the animals that died either ingested or showed evidence of entanglement in marine debris.

Nearly 100% of sea turtles they see have also ingested plastic, she said. FWC has been working with partner agencies, environmental groups and their own marine planning team to compile data and put together the state Marine Debris Reduction Plan.

Ninety percent of seabirds eat plastic and 100% will be consuming it by 2050, a study published in 2015 in the National Academy of Sciences by lead researcher Chris Wilcox and others found.

Shorebirds are also impacted by plastic waste, said Holley Short, shorebird program manager for Audubon Florida.

“Unfortunately, I see plastic waste frequently at our nesting bird sites,” she said. The number of photos she receives from her volunteers showing birds interacting with plastic waste is “overwhelming,” Ms. Short said.

“I primarily see this trash on public beaches,” she said. So the birds nesting on these beaches and trying to raise chicks not only have to deal with human activity, but the trash they leave behind, she said.

Plastic is not biodegradable. It lasts for hundreds of years. But it does break down into tiny microscopic pieces, no more than 5 millimeters long, called microplastics. They are eaten by fish and other marine life and eventually make their way up the food chain to us.

A World Wildlife Federation analysis assessing plastic ingestion from nature to people points to a study by the University of Newcastle in Australia, which estimates the average person may be ingesting about 5 grams of plastic every week. That’s a credit card’s worth of microplastics.

Climate change nexus

Plastic was first introduced in the early 1950s.

More than 98% of plastic is made from fossil fuels, a product of the oil and gas industry.

As of 2019, 4% to 8% of global oil consumption is linked to plastics, according to the World Economic Forum. If this persists, by 2050, plastics will account for 20% of oil consumption.

There is an important nexus between the plastic waste crisis and the climate change crisis, said Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University

He was a panelist at a Feb. 16 webinar called “Don’t Look Down: How Misinformation & Science Denial Obscures the Global Plastics and Climate Crisis,” The webinar was held by the Plastic Pollution Coalition, a global alliance working toward a world free of plastic pollution. Mann’s work has provided inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in the satirical film “Don’t Look Up,” the coalition says.

“We have these common villains when it comes to the global plastic pollution problem and the climate problem, the climate crisis,” Mr. Mann said. “In both cases we are dealing with decades-long disinformation campaigns by the petrochemical industry and fossil fuel industry aimed at discrediting the science, fooling the public and diverting attention away from the need for real policy solutions” he said.

Instead, they try to deflect responsibility for plastic pollution to the actions of the individual consumer, he and other scientists say.

As a prime example of the deflection, they point to the Keep American Beautiful campaign, also created in the early 1950s, with founding members including The Coca-Cola Company, Pepsico, Philip Morris, the Dixie Cup Company and Anheuser-Bush, among others from the beverage and packaging industries.

They wanted to defeat the bottle bills that were coming up in various states, a policy solution that would actually do something meaningful about the problem, Mr. Mann said. But it would hurt their bottom line, as they would be forced to process the returned bottles and cans. Instead they engaged in a massive campaign “aimed at convincing us that we didn’t need policies, we didn’t need bottle bills, we just needed to be better individuals,” Mr. Mann said. “It was on us.”

The campaign produced an iconic Public Service Announcement that became commonly known as the “Crying

Indian” commercial. Mann remembers seeing it at age 6 or 7 when it first aired in 1971 on the second anniversary of Earth Day. “I grew up watching that commercial,” Mr. Mann said.

The commercial depicts a Native American silently paddling a canoe past factories spewing smoke and winding up on a shore full of litter and debris. Someone throws more trash at his feet from a passing car. The Native American faces the camera with a tear rolling down his cheek. A narrator’s voice intones:

“Some people have a deep, abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country. And some people don’t.”

“People start pollution. People can stop it.”

The Native American was actually an Italian American named Espera de Corti, the son of Italian immigrants. He became an actor and took the name “Iron Eyes Cody,” becoming famous portraying Native Americans in numerous films and advocating off-screen for Native American causes.

The ad was incredibly effective, Mr. Mann said.

When industry pushes off environmental responsibility on the consumer, “it’s traditionally known as ‘greenwashing,’” said Ms. Jones, the FGCU professor.

The tactic is familiar, said Ms. Warner, co-author of the Oceana study. “It’s clearly been shown over the years that a tactic the plastic industry uses is to tell us we need to recycle more, do it better. It’s the consumer’s fault for littering.”

A 2018 article in Scientific American written by biologist Matt Wilkin puts things a little more bluntly.

“In fact, the greatest success of Keep America Beautiful has been to shift the onus of environmental responsibility onto the public while simultaneously becoming a trusted name in the environmental movement,” he wrote. “This psychological misdirect has built public support for a legal framework that punishes individual litterers with hefty fines or jail time, while imposing almost no responsibility on plastic manufacturers for the numerous environmental, economic and health hazards imposed by their products.”

Plastics producers

In 2021, the Minderoo Foundation of Australia published “The Plastic Waste Makers Index,” which identified the 100 companies that produce the five primary polymers that generate the vast majority of single-use plastic waste globally.

The top three were ExxonMobil, Sinopec, which is a Chinese-owned company, and Dow.

Also in 2021, #breakfreefromplastic, another global movement, released its fourth annual global brand audit on the top plastic-polluting corporations of 2021. The audits were conducted by 11,184 volunteers in 45 countries. The top five are: The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Unilever, Nestlé and Procter & Gamble.

Growing up, we were always taught that recycling is the answer. In the case of plastic waste, it isn’t. Or that is, it isn’t enough. Of course, you should always recycle all you can.

But the real problem is the lack of regulatory policy-making by our leaders and years of deflection by polluters more interested in bottom lines than keeping plastic bags off the bottom of the sea, scientists and environmentalists say.

There is a growing realization that we can’t recycle all this plastic waste. We lack enough recycling infrastructure or capacity to handle higher quantities that are being produced faster, as well as a growing variety of plastics. The cost of recycling is not economically profitable, while “virgin” plastic is readily available.

What can’t be recycled in existing plants and sold to a vendor may be put into landfills or burned. In 2018, the U.S. only recycled about 2% of its municipal plastic waste in its domestic facilities and burned six times that amount, according to the Plastic Pollution Coalition.

Nearly all Florida counties recycle, to varying degrees of success. In a sense, they’re doing the best with what they have.

“In our county, everything placed in recycling bins gets recycled,” said Brian Elkins, recycling business manager for the Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County.

Doug Whitehead, director of Lee County Solid Waste, said: “Lee County, with the help of private recyclers, has the means to recycle plastics in our waste stream. We are focused on proper reuse and recycling of the material and ending littering. When residents use our systems, the material is recycled.”

However, that doesn’t always happen. If the plastic in the recycling bin is contaminated (containing food or liquid residue) or has a type of plastic the county can’t handle, it won’t get recycled. The whole bin could be dumped out. Then the plastic could be landfilled or incinerated.

Plastic bags are also not recycled. They will get tangled in the recycling machinery and jam it up, Mr. Elkins said. Big Box stores, like Target, Publix, Walmart, will take the bags returned to their stores to their headquarters or warehouses, recycle and sell them on their own, he said.

Items that are recyclable will be taken to the county’s recycling facility, sorted in categories, crushed into bins, put on trailers and sold on the open market, Mr. Elkins said.

The “leftover” plastic, in both Palm Beach and Lee County, will be burned in their respective Waste-to-Energy facilities. This amounts to many thousand tons.

People try to make recycling an industry when recycling is not profitable, Ms. Jones said. If people get angry because they find out their curbside recycling is being burned or landfilled, that’s actually good, she said. It will cause them to speak up, get involved and push for more answers.

Policy lagging

The answer is making politicians set new policy to make manufacturers responsible, she said.

However, Florida has been a state “that does not respond to the need to control plastics,” Ms. Warner said.

Florida does not have a statewide law to regulate single-use plastic. But the state does have a preemption law that prohibits municipalities from banning or regulating plastic waste on their own. Florida is one of 19 states that has a pre-emption law when it comes to plastics. It’s known as “a ban on bans.”

Bills are proposed every year in the State Legislature to repeal these laws, but they never pass, including those proposed in 2022.The issue stems from a law that legislators passed in 2008 prohibiting local governments from passing plastic regulations in the state until the state DEP created recommendations and they were adopted by the Legislature, or the state rescinds the order. The law covered auxiliary containers, wrappings and disposable plastic bags. The state DEP did a retail plastic bags study in 2010 that looked at the problem and made recommendations. Nothing happened. The law laid dormant for 11 years.

In the interim, several municipalities tried to pass their own laws banning plastics, or some form of them. One example was the Town of Palm Beach in Palm Beach County, according to the study.

In June 2019 the council adopted an ordinance to prohibit the use of expanded polystyrene containers and single use carry out plastic bags within the city.

Weeks later the town received a letter from the Florida Retail Federation and Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association requesting the Town to repeal their ordinance, citing the ban. The town repealed their ordinance, then adopted a resolution to encourage the Legislature to approve any measure to repeal the preemption law.

In 2021 the Everglades Coalition sent a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis, copied to legislative and state environmental officials, noting the impact of plastic pollution and asking for the law to be repealed.

Also In 2021, the legislature passed another bill calling for an update to the 2010 study to be completed and sent to the Legislature by Dec. 31, 2021. This was done.

The study, prepared by Timothy G. Townsend, lead investigator and University of Florida professor, and others, conducted five different surveys, one each for local governments, residents, retailers, manufacturers, and recycling facilities. The majority responded that regulation is needed. Among resident and local government stakeholders, 82% and 90%, respectively, of respondents reported a willingness to support additional waste reduction, reuse and recycling through increased fees

This is also the study that showed an estimated 7,000 tons of plastic waste went into Florida’s marine environment in 2020.

Plastic Free Florida, a movement to take action on plastics and foam locally and empower residents to achieve policy victories in their own communities through legislation, is watching this closely.

Lawmakers need to convert their thinking more in the direction residents want, Ms. Warner said.

There is a note of hope globally. On March 2, 175 nations at the United Nations Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya signed an agreement to work on language for a global treaty that would tackle the proliferation of plastic waste and aim to regulate plastic production. The treaty language, which would be legally binding, is expected to be completed in 2024.

Federally, there is also a possibility for action.

The Break Free From Pollution Act was introduced in Congress in February 2020, according to the Surfrider Foundation, which helped lay the groundwork for the bill.

The bill was then reintroduced in March 2021. As of February, the 2022 version has 124 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives and 14 in the Senate.

A partial list of what the bill would accomplish:

¦ Require producers of packaging, containers and food-service products to design, manage and finance waste and recycling programs.

¦ Launch a nationwide beverage container refund program to bolster recycling rates.

¦ Ban certain single-use plastic products that are not recyclable.

¦ Ban single-use plastic carryout bags and place a fee on the distribution of the remaining carryout bags, which has proven successful at the state level.

“The U.S. produces more plastic waste than any other country,” Ms. Warner said. It makes much more sense to make less waste in the first place rather than turn off the tap as it gets into environment, she said. “I do hope for strong action at some point.” ¦

In the KNOW

HOW TO HELP

» Use reusable bags as much a possible when doing grocery or other shopping. Or ask for paper instead of plastic. For to-go items, ask for a paper box or a sheet of aluminum foil instead of a Styrofoam to-go container.

» Check what you can and cannot put in your recycling bin by contacting your city or county waste division/department. Make sure the items are clean and dry. Food or liquid residue is considered contamination and may result in those items or the whole bin having to be trashed instead of recycled.

» Not all plastic is accepted for recycling just because it’s plastic and/or has the chasing arrows logo (e.g. plastic straws and cutlery are not recyclable).

» Participate in local cleanups.

» Make your voice heard. Email, call or write a letter to your state representative and state senator asking them to repeal the plastic waste pre-emption law. To find them: www.myfloridahouse.gov/ www.flsenate.gov/senators/find

» Ask your city council and county commission to pass a resolution strongly encouraging the state legislature to repeal the pre-emption law.

» Email the governor at GovernorRon. Desantis@eog.myflorida.com

» Spread the word on social media.

From Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

» Report all entangled marine wildlife to the 24-hour FWC Wildlife Alert Hotline: 888- 404-3922.

» If you hook a bird, do not cut your line! Reel. Remove. Release. Do not discard monofilament fishing line. For more information, visit MyFWC.com/Unhook.

» Report Marine Debris Dumping U.S. Coast Guard National Response Center Hotline: 800-424-8802. To report marine debris in South Florida, call 1-866-770-7335.

As part of Monaco Ocean Week, the Ramoge Agreement presented an awareness-raising video on the impact of marine litter, entitled “Frisson dans les abysses” (Chills in the depths)  »

The images are startling. Plastic waste, as far as the eye can see, in the heart of the Monaco canyon, 30km off the Principality’s coast. The images were shot in 2018, but are practically unchanged, four years later.

The Ramoge Agreement is an intergovernmental cooperation agreement between the French, Italian and Monegasque States for the preservation of the marine environment signed in 1976. The organisation wanted to highlight once again the seriousness of plastic pollution for our oceans by unveiling this shocking video, which shows exploration campaigns carried out in the underwater canyons.

Images captured by a remote-controlled robot more than 2,000 metres down.

The images, captured by a remote-controlled robot (ROV) off Monaco, show the impressive amount of plastic waste accumulated at depths of over 2,000 metres. Waste from the land, dumped in the countryside, carried by rivers to the sea, then by the current to the Monaco canyon.

SEE ALSO: COP26: Prince Albert II calls for a real commitment to the protection of the oceans

As Monaco Ocean Week, a unifying event about ocean preservation, is being held in the Principality since Monday, this video could well feature in the different conferences planned throughout the week.

A host of cutting-edge plastics processing technologies, known collectively as ‘chemical recycling,’ are releasing large quantities of toxic and hazardous substances into the environment. But the majority — while making fuel and chemicals — are producing no recycled plastic, according to a recent report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

With over 240 million metric tons of new plastics generated every year, a growing global mountain of plastic waste now threatens to destabilize Earth’s operating system,  potentially closing the habitable window of climate and biogeochemical conditions that human civilizations have relied upon for survival over the past 12,000 years.

The United States is one of the world’s top plastic producers, but less than 9% of what it makes is currently recycled, mostly through the established process of mechanical sorting and shredding. Plastic industry representatives claim that so-called cutting edge ‘chemical recycling’ or ‘advanced recycling’ technologies, which use heat or solvents to convert waste plastic into fuels or chemical feedstocks, are the best recycling solution. But environmental groups, including NRDC, have raised concerns over the greenhouse gas emissions and toxic pollution generated by these processes.

Chemical recycling creating pollution?

The NRDC investigation collated publicly available data in the summer of 2021 from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) databases and state environmental permits for chemical recycling facilities across the United States. They identified eight sites that were either already operating or expected to become operational in the near future.

EPA records revealed that several of these recycling facilities were disposing of large amounts of hazardous waste, containing chemicals such as benzene — a known carcinogen — as well as lead, cadmium and chromium. State-level environmental permits for six facilities allow for the release of hazardous air pollutants, including chemicals that can cause cancer or birth defects.

“The facilities were releasing or permitted to release a variety of hazardous air pollutants,” said NRDC Senior Scientist and report author Veena Singla. “That’s certainly of concern for the communities in direct proximity.” Those communities, the report found, were disproportionally low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. About 380,000 people live within 3 miles of the eight facilities and may be impacted by their toxic emissions.

Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, a not-for-profit project based at Bennington College in Vermont, and a former EPA regional administrator, described NRDC’s investigation as “invaluable,” adding that, “every elected official who’s thinking about supporting [chemical recycling] facilities should read the report first.”

However, Plastics Industry Association Vice President of Government Affairs Matt Seaholm, accused the NRDC report of utilizing “cherry-picked examples, incomplete data, and unsubstantiated claims.” He said that “Attacks on advanced recycling technologies tend to follow the same pattern: ignoring the advancements and investments from many different companies, making unrealistic calls to end plastics production, and ignoring industry positions on waste-to-fuel recovery. NRDC’s report is no different.”

Singla invited the industry to provide substantiation for Seaholm’s claims: ”If they are aware of additional data on more facilities, or for these facilities, we’d be very happy to look and do an updated analysis.” She noted that the investigation included all publicly accessible data available at the time of analysis.

The American Chemical Council and the World Plastics Council did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment.

Plastic-to-fuel conversion: Greenwashing incineration?

Chemical recycling is being marketed as an alternative to mechanical recycling that can meet the growing demand for recycled plastic and reduce the volume of waste being incinerated or ending up in landfills. However, chemical plastic-to-plastic recycling projects have been besieged by problems as they attempt to scale-up from promising laboratory studies into commercially viable enterprises, and five out of eight facilities identified in the NRDC report were instead converting waste plastics into combustible fuel.

“Producing fuel from plastic is not a circular process,” said NRDC’s Singla. Based on the data their investigation obtained, “this is not a solution for a circular, non-toxic materials cycle for plastic.”

Technologies such as pyrolysis and gasification degrade plastics in high-temperature chambers, often in low-oxygen conditions, to produce a liquid or gas that can be further processed into fuel or chemicals. Although the industry claims these processes can be used to generate new plastic, the NRDC report found no evidence that this is happening in practice. And since the low-grade fuels and chemical waste produced are ultimately burned, critics argue these techniques are simply multi-step incineration processes, generating greenhouse gas emissions and hazardous waste without alleviating consumer demand for virgin plastics.

Despite these concerns, pressure is mounting on politicians and policymakers to classify chemical recycling — including plastic-to-fuel processes — as a manufacturing technology and not solid-waste incineration. Sixteen U.S. states have already passed  recycling legislation that redefines chemical recycling facilities as manufacturers, exempting them from stricter reporting requirements imposed on solid waste recyclers, and similar bills have been advanced in other states including New York.

“That’s really concerning,” commented Singla. “There’s already a lack of transparency and reclassifying [of chemical recycling facilities] would narrow that further,” she said.

The EPA is currently evaluating how to regulate pyrolysis and gasification technologies under the Clean Air Act, with industry lobbyists fiercely campaigning to prevent these high-temperature degradation techniques from being classed as incineration.

Could chemical recycling hurt global efforts to curb plastic pollution?

Chemical recycling is coming under the global spotlight just as the world comes together to acknowledge and address the plastic crisis. In early March, 175 countries agreed on a UN framework to fight global plastic pollution from cradle-to-grave, reigniting optimism among campaigners. However, environmentalists warn that flexibility in the framework over how individual nations meet recycling targets could leave the door open for exploitation by industry lobbyists seeking policy incentives and regulatory exemptions for plastic-to-fuel techniques.

Some experts say that chemical recycling, and particularly technologies that generate combustible fuel rather than new plastics, are not the plastic-waste solutions the world is so desperately seeking. “I was really disappointed with what we found [in our report], because the plastic waste crisis is so visible and so imminent and I wanted there to be some additional solutions. Unfortunately this isn’t it,” Singla concluded.

Chemical recycling is “a public relations attempt used by the petrochemical industry to try to hold back actual solutions to the growing plastic pollution problem,” said Enck. She encouraged state lawmakers in the U.S. to introduce legislation prohibiting chemical recycling facilities, extending producer responsibility to discourage unnecessary plastic packaging, and incentivizing plastic bottle return programs.

Citation:

Singla (2022) Recycling Lies: “Chemical Recycling” of Plastic Is Just Greenwashing Incineration (Issue Brief).

Banner image: Plastic waste being dumped in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. Plastics production exploded after World War II, and its pollution of water, land and air is now a global crisis. Image by Ted Auch/FracTracker Alliance.

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