NEWS / BLOGS
🌍 Big Oil and the Future of Plastic Production
A recent article from Atmos examines how major fossil fuel companies are increasingly investing in plastic production as part of their long term business strategies.
As global energy systems slowly transition toward renewable sources, demand for fuel is expected to shift. According to the report, plastics have become a significant growth area for oil and gas companies, providing a continued market for fossil fuel feedstocks. Industry investments in new petrochemical facilities and plastic manufacturing infrastructure reflect this trend.
The article highlights that global plastic production is projected to rise in the coming decades. While public attention often focuses on recycling and consumer behavior, researchers and policy experts note that production levels and corporate investment decisions play a central role in shaping the scale of plastic pollution.
The piece also discusses ongoing international negotiations and policy conversations aimed at addressing plastic waste, emphasizing that future outcomes may depend on how production is regulated alongside waste management.
As debates continue around climate policy, corporate responsibility, and sustainable materials, plastic remains a key intersection between fossil fuel economics and environmental impact.
Read more: https://atmos.earth/political-landscapes/big-oils-not-so-secret-weapon-for-world-domination-plastic/
Plastic waste in the United States keeps rising but it does not have to 🚮
A new report from The Pew Charitable Trusts shows that proven solutions can significantly reduce plastic pollution while lowering long term costs. Stronger policy, expanded reuse systems, and improved recycling infrastructure can shift the trajectory. 📊
This is not about future innovation. The tools already exist. What matters now is action. 💪🌎
Cleaner systems. Smarter design. Real accountability.
For more information: https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/white-papers/2026/02/10/new-report-shows-how-us-can-reduce-plastic-waste-pollution-and-costs
🌍 Big update in the fight against plastic pollution!
The United Nations has elected Ambassador Julio Cordano (Chile) as the new Chair of the global plastics treaty negotiations — a key step toward restarting stalled talks to create the world’s first legally binding agreement to end plastic pollution.
For too long, plastic has harmed our oceans, marine life, and communities around the world. With this new leadership, there’s renewed hope that countries can come together to tackle plastic pollution at its source and protect our blue planet for generations to come 🌊💙
👉 Dive deeper and learn more here: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/new-chair-elected-lead-negotiations-global-plastic-pollution-treaty
🦈 Even sharks aren’t immune to an acidifying ocean
As our oceans absorb more CO₂, seawater chemistry is changing — and new research shows those changes may be weakening sharks’ most iconic feature: their teeth. When shark teeth were exposed to future-projected pH levels, scientists observed cracks, holes, and structural weakening forming faster than expected. Over time, this damage could outpace sharks’ ability to replace their teeth, affecting how these apex predators hunt, feed, and survive.
In 2025, Ocean Grants highlighted ocean acidification as a critical ocean challenge, recognizing that its impacts extend far beyond corals and shell-forming species. This research is a powerful reminder that even the ocean’s fiercest hunters are vulnerable to a changing climate — and that addressing acidification is essential to protecting healthy, balanced marine ecosystems.
👉 Dive deeper and learn more about this issue:
https://evidencenetwork.ca/oceans-too-acidic-so-sharks-are-losing-their-most-lethal-weapon-their-teeth/
🌊 New Report Drop: Breaking the Plastic Wave 2025 🌍A new global assessment from The Pew Charitable Trusts just revealed what our plastic future could look like and why action is urgent.
🚨 If we do nothing:
• Plastic waste could reach 280 million metric tons per year by 2040.
• Production is expected to surge, overwhelming waste systems.
• Pollution, health risks, and climate impacts will intensify.
✨ But there is a solution:
A system-wide shift — reducing single-use plastics, scaling reuse, redesigning products, improving recycling, and choosing safer materials — could cut plastic pollution by up to 83% by 2040.
This report makes one thing clear:
🌱 Change is possible. But we have to act now.
At Ocean Grants, we’re committed to supporting organizations and innovators working toward a plastic-free future.
💙 Together, we can break the wave before it breaks us.
Read more: https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2025/12/breaking-the-plastic-wave-2025
🌍 COP30 Wraps After Overtime Talks — What It Means for Our Oceans
COP30 concluded after extended negotiations, resulting in an agreement that focuses on adaptation funding but does not include a global commitment to phase out fossil fuels.
While the deal supports communities preparing for climate impacts, scientists note that addressing emissions remains essential for protecting ocean health — from warming waters to acidification and habitat loss.
This year’s outcome highlights both progress and the continued need for stronger long-term action for our oceans and coastal communities.
👉 Read the full article here: www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/cop30-talks-grind-into-overtime-eu-objects-proposed-deal-2025-11-22/
or click the link in our bio!
🌊 ❌We Have Crossed a Red Line for Coral Reefs🪸
A new study reveals that warm water coral reefs have passed their climate tipping point, meaning large scale collapse is now likely unless immediate action is taken. Coral reefs are the heart of ocean ecosystems. They support marine life, protect coastlines, and provide food and livelihoods for millions of people. Losing them would impact both ocean health and human communities.
At Ocean Grants, we believe this moment calls for bold action:
• Supporting reef restoration and resilience research
• Encouraging sustainable practices that reduce pollution and overfishing
• Promoting stronger environmental policies that reduce emissions
This is not just about saving coral. It is about preserving the health of our oceans, protecting biodiversity, and ensuring a sustainable future for all!
👉 Join us in taking action before it is too late. Reefs cannot recover without us.
🔗 Read more: https://time.com/7325086/coral-reef-climate-tipping-point-crossed
🌐 Don’t forget to check out our 2025 Special Report on Ocean Acidification: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59d7e693a9db09b4b03d07d6/t/68d345cfeef287021d786039/1758676431461/Special+Report.pdf
brain samples contained seven to 30 times more tiny shards of plastic than kidneys and livers - an amount equal to an entire plastic spoon!
“It is unclear if, in life, these particles are fluid, entering and leaving the brain, or if they collect in neurological tissues and promote disease,” she said in an email. “Further research is needed to understand how the particles may be interacting with the cells and if this has a toxicological consequence.”
In fact, researchers did see signs that the body’s liver and kidneys may be capable of flushing some plastics from the body, Campen said. Whether that can happen in the brain, he said, is unknown.
See Full Article Here: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/03/health/plastics-inside-human-brain-wellness/index.html
See Full Study Here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03453-1
Great Pacific Garbage Patch
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in the ocean, seas, and other large bodies of water.
How Plastics Are Poisoning Us
They both release and attract toxic chemicals, and appear everywhere from human placentas to chasms thirty-six thousand feet beneath the sea. Will we ever be rid of them?
June 26, 2023
In 1863, when much of the United States was anguishing over the Civil War, an entrepreneur named Michael Phelan was fretting about billiard balls. At the time, the balls were made of ivory, preferably obtained from elephants from Ceylon—now Sri Lanka—whose tusks were thought to possess just the right density. Phelan, who owned a billiard hall and co-owned a billiard-table-manufacturing business, also wrote books about billiards and was a champion billiards player. Owing in good part to his efforts, the game had grown so popular that tusks from Ceylon—and, indeed, elephants more generally—were becoming scarce. He and a partner offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward to anyone who could come up with an ivory substitute.
See full article here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/03/book-reviews-plastic-waste
Plastic recycling a "failed concept," study says, with only 5% recycled in U.S. last year as production rises
OCTOBER 24, 2022 / 6:20 AM / AFP
Washington — Plastic recycling rates are declining even as production shoots up, according to a Greenpeace USA report out Monday that blasted industry claims of creating an efficient, circular economy as "fiction."
Titled "Circular Claims Fall Flat Again," the study found that of 51 million tons of plastic waste generated by U.S. households in 2021, only 2.4 million tons were recycled, or around five percent. After peaking in 2014 at 10 percent, the trend has been decreasing, especially since China stopped accepting the West's plastic waste in 2018.
Virgin production — of non-recycled plastic, that is — meanwhile is rapidly rising as the petrochemical industry expands, lowering costs.
See Full Article at Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/plastic-recycling-failed-concept-us-greenpeace-study-5-percent-recycled-production-up/
Microplastics found in human blood for first time
Exclusive: The discovery shows the particles can travel around the body and may lodge in organs
Microplastic pollution has been detected in human blood for the first time, with scientists finding the tiny particles in almost 80% of the people tested.
The discovery shows the particles can travel around the body and may lodge in organs. The impact on health is as yet unknown. But researchers are concerned as microplastics cause damage to human cells in the laboratory and air pollution particles are already known to enter the body and cause millions of early deaths a year.
Huge amounts of plastic waste are dumped in the environment and microplastics now contaminate the entire planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. People were already known to consume the tiny particles via food and water as well as breathing them in, and they have been found in the faeces of babies and adults.
The scientists analysed blood samples from 22 anonymous donors, all healthy adults and found plastic particles in 17. Half the samples contained PET plastic, which is commonly used in drinks bottles, while a third contained polystyrene, used for packaging food and other products. A quarter of the blood samples contained polyethylene, from which plastic carrier bags are made.
See Full Article at Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/24/microplastics-found-in-human-blood-for-first-time
Plastic pollution: Green light for 'historic' treaty
By Helen Briggs
Environment correspondent
The world is set to get a global treaty to tackle plastic pollution.
Nearly 200 countries have agreed to start negotiations on an international agreement to take action on the "plastic crisis".
UN members are tasked with developing an over-arching framework for reducing plastic waste across the world.
There is growing concern that discarded plastic is destroying habitats, harming wildlife and contaminating the food chain.
Supporters describe the move as one of the world's most ambitious environmental actions since the 1989 Montreal Protocol, which phased out ozone-depleting substances.
They say just as climate change has the Paris Agreement, plastic should have its own binding treaty, which sets the world on course for reducing plastic waste.
See Full Article at Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60590515
California officials approve plan to crack down on microplastics polluting the ocean
BY JAMES RAINEY STAFF WRITER
California aims to sharply limit the spiraling scourge of microplastics in the ocean, while urging more study of this threat to fish, marine mammals and potentially to humans, under a plan a state panel approved Wednesday.
The Ocean Protection Council voted to make California the first state to adopt a comprehensive plan to rein in the pollution, recommending everything from banning plastic-laden cigarette filters and polystyrene drinking cups to the construction of more green zones to filter plastics from stormwater before it spills into the sea.
The proposals in the report are only advisory, with approval from other agencies and the Legislature required to put many of the reforms into place. But the signaling of resolve from council members – including Controller Betty Yee and the heads of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection agencies – puts California in the vanguard of a worldwide push on the issue.
See Full Article at Source: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-23/california-approves-microplastics-ocean-plan
How the fossil fuel industry is pushing plastics on the world
We’re in the midst of an energy transition. Renewable power and electric vehicles are getting cheaper, the grid is getting greener, and oil and gas companies are getting nervous.
That’s why the fossil fuel giants are looking towards petrochemicals, and plastics in particular, as their next major growth market.
“Plastics is the Plan B for the fossil fuel industry,” said Judith Enck, Founder and President of the nonprofit advocacy group Beyond Plastics.
Plastics, which are made from fossil fuels, are set to drive nearly half of oil demand growth by midcentury, according to the International Energy Agency. That outpaces even hard-to-decarbonize sectors like aviation and shipping.
See full article at source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/29/how-the-fossil-fuel-industry-is-pushing-plastics-on-the-world-.html
HOW BAD ARE PLASTICS, REALLY?
Plastic production just keeps expanding, and now is becoming a driving cause of climate change.
January 3, 2022.
This is hardly the time to talk about plastics is what I think when Dad, hovering over the waste bin at a post-funeral potluck, waves me over, his gesture discreet but emphatic. He has retrieved from the trash a crystalline plastic cup, with fluted, rigid sides. “Polystyrene,” he grins, inverting the cup to reveal its resin code (a 6 stamped inside the recycling symbol). “But not my kind.”
Dad, back in the 1960s, had manufactured a more resilient variety of polystyrene for Union Carbide, one of the 20th century’s major plastics manufacturers, since acquired by Dow Chemical Company. Now, in the parish hall, I recognize he is seconds from crushing the cup. As if on cue, he closes his grip. Being a certain type of polystyrene—and this is his point—the cup splinters into a strange bloom of shards arrayed about the cup’s circular bottom.
No butadiene, I think. “No butadiene,” he says, which, on the production lines he ran, had been added to rubberize the resin, one among 10,000 helpmates that make plastics as we know them possible. Dad shuffles off to find the recycling bin, though he knows the cup has little chance for recovery and likely a long afterlife ahead. This is especially true for polystyrenes, of which there are multiple varieties; plastics, as the anthropologist Tridibesh Dey notes, are a chemically complex lot, designed for performance rather than reclamation.
Dad once believed that plastics could be reused indefinitely. I imagine that, maybe, he thought plastics, like their makers, deserved the chance to begin again. When Union Carbide downsized in the 1970s, Dad took severance and stayed home with my siblings until he could figure out what a life beyond plastics might look like. The answer, it turned out, was public administration: For a time, he ran my hometown’s recycling program. Recycling, though, never lived up to Dad’s ideal. Of all the plastics made over his lifetime, less than 10 percent has been effectively repurposed.
See full article at source: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/01/plastic-history-climate-change/621033/
Plastic Waste Makers Index
Executive Summary: Single-use plastics – the cheap plastic goods we use once and then throw away – epitomise the plastics crisis. Today, single-use plastics account for over a third of plastics produced every year, with 98 per cent manufactured from fossil fuels.
Unsurprisingly, single-use plastics also account for the majority of plastic thrown away the world over: more than 130 million metric tons in 2019 – almost all of which is burned, buried in landfill, or discarded directly into the environment.
The cost of single-use plastic waste is enormous. Of all the plastics, they are the most likely to end up in our ocean, where they account for almost all visible pollution, in the range of five to 13 million metric tons each year.1,2,3 Once there, single-use plastics eventually break down into tiny particles that impact wildlife health – and the ocean’s ability to store carbon.4 Single-use plastics contain chemical additives such as plasticisers that have been found in humans and are linked to a range of reproductive health problems.5 And if growth in single-use plastic production continues at current rates, they could account for five to 10 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.6
Despite these threats, the plastics industry has been allowed to operate with minimal regulation and transparency for decades. Government policies, where they exist, tend to focus on the vast number of companies that sell finished plastic products. Relatively little attention has been paid to the smaller number of businesses at the base of the supply chain that make “polymers” – the building blocks of all plastics – almost exclusively from fossil fuels.
See Full Article at Source: https://www.minderoo.org/plastic-waste-makers-index/findings/executive-summary/
The United States’ contribution of plastic waste to land and ocean
RESEARCH ARTICLE ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
The United States’ contribution of plastic waste to land and ocean
View ORCID ProfileKara Lavender Law1,*,
View ORCID ProfileNatalie Starr2,
View ORCID ProfileTheodore R. Siegler2,
View ORCID ProfileJenna R. Jambeck3,4,
View ORCID ProfileNicholas J. Mallos5 and
View ORCID ProfileGeorge H. Leonard5
Science Advances 30 Oct 2020:
Vol. 6, no. 44, eabd0288
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abd0288
Plastic waste affects environmental quality and ecosystem health. In 2010, an estimated 5 to 13 million metric tons (Mt) of plastic waste entered the ocean from both developing countries with insufficient solid waste infrastructure and high-income countries with very high waste generation. We demonstrate that, in 2016, the United States generated the largest amount of plastic waste of any country in the world (42.0 Mt). Between 0.14 and 0.41 Mt of this waste was illegally dumped in the United States, and 0.15 to 0.99 Mt was inadequately managed in countries that imported materials collected in the United States for recycling. Accounting for these contributions, the amount of plastic waste generated in the United States estimated to enter the coastal environment in 2016 was up to five times larger than that estimated for 2010, rendering the United States’ contribution among the highest in the world.
INTRODUCTION
Plastic waste contaminates all major ecosystems on the planet, with concern increasing about its potential impacts on wildlife and human health, as smaller and more widespread plastic particles are identified in both the natural (1–4) and built (5–7) environment. For decades, scientists have documented plastic debris in the ocean (8). Marine sources of ocean pollutants were addressed in the 1970s (9) and 1980s (10), before the focus turned to land as the purported, yet poorly substantiated, source of 80% of marine debris. In 2015, Jambeck et al. (11) used global solid waste management data compiled by the World Bank (12) to estimate the amount of inadequately managed plastic waste generated within 50 km of the coastline that entered the global ocean in 2010 [4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons (Mt)]. Since then, a nominal value of 8 Mt has been broadly adopted as a quantitative benchmark of the annual scale of ocean plastic pollution, spurring responses by nongovernmental organizations, policy-makers, and the plastics and consumer products industries. Stemming from this analysis, many remediation efforts have focused on countries in South and Southeast Asia (13–15).
However, high-income countries such as the United States and members of the European Union (EU-28) also had large plastic emissions to the ocean in 2010, according to Jambeck et al. (hereafter “2010 analysis”). Despite having robust waste management systems, the large coastal populations and very high per capita waste generation rates in these high-income countries together resulted in large amounts of mismanaged waste due only to litter (estimated 2% of waste generation) that is available to enter the ocean. According to the 2010 analysis, the U.S. coastal population generated the highest mass of plastic waste of any country (13.8 Mt, 112.9 million people), whereas coastal populations in EU-28 countries collectively produced even more plastic waste (14.8 Mt, 187.3 million people). The next highest country in coastal plastic waste generation was China (11.6 Mt per day, 262.9 million people).
See Full Article at Source: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/44/eabd0288
WASTE ONLY How the Plastics Industry Is Fighting to Keep Polluting the World
July 20 2019, 7:30 a.m.
THE STUDENTS AT Westmeade Elementary School worked hard on their dragon. And it paid off. The plastic bag receptacle that the kids painted green and outfitted with triangular white teeth and a “feed me” sign won the students from the Nashville suburb first place in a recycling box decorating contest. The idea, as Westmeade’s proud principal told a local TV news show, was to help the environment. But the real story behind the dragon — as with much of the escalating war over plastic waste — is more complicated.
The contest was sponsored by A Bag’s Life, a recycling promotion and education effort of the American Progressive Bag Alliance, a lobbying group that fights restrictions on plastic. That organization is part of the Plastics Industry Association, a trade group that includes Shell Polymers, LyondellBasell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron Phillips, DowDuPont, and Novolex — all of which profit hugely from the continued production of plastics. And even as A Bag’s Life was encouraging kids to spread the uplifting message of cleaning up plastic waste, its parent organization, the American Progressive Bag Alliance, was backing a state bill that would strip Tennesseans of their ability to address the plastics crisis. The legislation would make it illegal for local governments to ban or restrict bags and other single-use plastic products — one of the few things shown to actually reduce plastic waste.
View Full Article at Source: https://theintercept.com/2019/07/20/plastics-industry-plastic-recycling/
In rare show of solidarity, 14 key nations commit to protect oceans, BY LAURA PARKER
The world’s most far-reaching pact to protect and sustain ocean health offers hope that our seas’ dire problems might be solved.
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 4, 2020
WHEN THE HEADS of state of 14 nations sat down together in late 2018 to discuss the grim condition of the world’s oceans, there was no certainty that anything consequential would result. The leaders planned 14 gatherings, but met only twice before the pandemic upended their talks.
So when the group announced this week the world’s most far-reaching pact to protect and sustain ocean health, it signaled a bit more than a noteworthy achievement in a complicated time. The agreement, negotiated via the nuance-free tool of video conferencing, also offered hope of a renewed era of global accord on climate, where issues grounded in science might finally trump political posturing.
Overall, the 14 leaders agreed to sustainably manage 100 percent of the oceans under their national jurisdictions by 2025—an area of ocean roughly the size of Africa. Additionally, they vowed to set aside 30 percent of the seas as marine protected areas by 2030, in keeping with the United Nations’ campaign known as “30 by 30.” (Read more about 30 by 30 here.)
See Full Article at Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2020/12/in-rare-show-of-solidarity-14-key-nations-commit-to-protect-oceans/#close
