NEWS / BLOGS
Microplastics revealed in the placentas of unborn babies, by Damian Carrington Environment editor
Health impact is unknown but scientists say particles may cause long-term damage to foetuses
Microplastic particles have been revealed in the placentas of unborn babies for the first time, which the researchers said was “a matter of great concern”.
The health impact of microplastics in the body is as yet unknown. But the scientists said they could carry chemicals that could cause long-term damage or upset the foetus’s developing immune system. The particles are likely to have been consumed or breathed in by the mothers.
The particles were found in the placentas from four healthy women who had normal pregnancies and births. Microplastics were detected on both the foetal and maternal sides of the placenta and in the membrane within which the foetus develops.
A dozen plastic particles were found. Only about 4% of each placenta was analysed, however, suggesting the total number of microplastics was much higher. All the particles analysed were plastics that had been dyed blue, red, orange or pink and may have originally come from packaging, paints or cosmetics and personal care products.
The microplastics were mostly 10 microns in size (0.01mm), meaning they are small enough to be carried in the bloodstream. The particles may have entered the babies’ bodies, but the researchers were unable to assess this.
See Full Article at Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/22/microplastics-revealed-in-placentas-unborn-babies
Big Oil’s hopes are pinned on plastics. It won’t end well.
The industry’s only real source of growth probably won’t grow much.
The fossil fuel industry has not been doing well lately. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, growth in global demand had slowed to 1 percent annually. Now, lockdowns and distancing to stop the spread of the coronavirus have decimated the industry. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently released projections of rapid short-term decline in global demand, to the tune of 9 percent for oil, 8 percent for coal, and 5 percent for gas.
Depending on how long and severe the economic crisis proves to be, it will take years for demand to recover. Indeed, with electric vehicles cutting into oil demand by the end of the decade, it may never fully recover. Industry analysts like Carbon Tracker’s Kingsmill Bond are speculating that 2019 may turn out to be the peak of fossil fuel demand, and historically, in other industries, a peak in demand “tends to mark the beginning of a period of low prices and poor returns,” says Bond.
But the industry has a response to this dire forecast, and it can be summarized in one word: plastics.
See Full Article at Source: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21419505/oil-gas-price-plastics-peak-climate-change
Special Report: Plastic pandemic - COVID-19 trashed the recycling dream, by Joe Brock
(Reuters) - The coronavirus pandemic has sparked a rush for plastic.
From Wuhan to New York, demand for face shields, gloves, takeaway food containers and bubble wrap for online shopping has surged. Since most of that cannot be recycled, so has the waste.
But there is another consequence. The pandemic has intensified a price war between recycled and new plastic, made by the oil industry. It’s a war recyclers worldwide are losing, price data and interviews with more than two dozen businesses across five continents show.
“I really see a lot of people struggling,” Steve Wong, CEO of Hong-Kong based Fukutomi Recycling and chairman of the China Scrap Plastics Association told Reuters in an interview. “They don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.”
The reason: Nearly every piece of plastic begins life as a fossil fuel. The economic slowdown has punctured demand for oil. In turn, that has cut the price of new plastic.
See full article at source: https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-plastic-recycling-spe/special-report-plastic-pandemic-covid-19-trashed-the-recycling-dream-idUSKBN26Q1LO
Groundbreaking Study Exposes United States as Top Plastic Polluter 11 • 09 • 2020
Written by Jennie Romer and Lily Iserson
In 2016, the U.S. generated 42 million metric tons of plastic waste, more than any other country in the world. This startling number is one of the key takeaways from a recent study in Science Advances, The United States’ contribution of plastic waste to land and ocean, by Law et. al. The study analyzes not only generation but also the impact of where America’s plastic waste ends up. Researchers found that in 2016, the amount of plastic waste generated in the U.S. estimated to enter the coastal environment — either illegally dumped in the U.S. or collected in the U.S. for recycling and exported to countries where it was inadequately managed — was among the highest in the world.
This flips on its head the plastics industry’s talking points, and even the U.S. EPA’s talking points, that blame Asian countries for plastic pollution overall. The numbers in the new report run counter to that accusation. In reality, the U.S. adds to the waste management problems of countries like India, Malaysia, and Indonesia because we unload our waste onto their lack of sustainable infrastructure.
“Without waste management infrastructure improvements,” a related research group wrote in a 2015 study, “the quantity of plastic waste entering the ocean from land is predicted to increase by an order of magnitude by 2025.” The new report expands this previous inquiry by focusing on the relationship between plastic pollution and inadequate waste management.
See Full Article at Source: https://www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog/entry/groundbreaking-study-exposes-united-states-as-top-plastic-polluter?utm_medium=email&utm_source=getresponse&utm_content=BFFP+Newsletter%3A+It%E2%80%99s+time+Whole+Foods+eliminates+single-use+plastic%2C+South+Korea%E2%80%99s+plastic+waste+surge+%26+Emergency+legal+action+to+block+Ineos%21&utm_campaign=Breakfreefromplastic+Membership+Master+List
How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled
September 11, 20205:00 AM ET
Laura Leebrick, a manager at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon, is standing on the end of its landfill watching an avalanche of plastic trash pour out of a semitrailer: containers, bags, packaging, strawberry containers, yogurt cups.
None of this plastic will be turned into new plastic things. All of it is buried.
"To me that felt like it was a betrayal of the public trust," she said. "I had been lying to people ... unwittingly."
Rogue, like most recycling companies, had been sending plastic trash to China, but when China shut its doors two years ago, Leebrick scoured the U.S. for buyers. She could find only someone who wanted white milk jugs. She sends the soda bottles to the state.
But when Leebrick tried to tell people the truth about burying all the other plastic, she says people didn't want to hear it.
See Full Article at Source: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled
More Bad News For Oil & Gas: Plastic Recycling Targeted By University of Delaware
July 20th, 2020 by Tina Casey
Just in time for Plastic Free July, earlier this month the US Department of Energy earmarked $11.6 million for a new high-impact R&D effort called the Center for Plastics Innovation. The taxpayer dollars will support new transformative plastic recycling technology, which would be a giant step up from good old fashioned shredding and melting. Group hug for taxpayers! If all goes according to plan, CPI’s work will lead to a high value, high efficiency plastic recycling stream that will undercut the use of virgin oil and gas in the chemical industry.
A Transformative Era For Plastic Recycling
There are some signs that legacy oil and gas giants are planning ahead for a transformative plastic recycling scenario. For example, last year Royal Dutch Shell announced a pyrolysis-based method that produces chemical building blocks for new products from old plastic.
The big question is, who will be the next global leader in the transformative plastic recycling era of tomorrow, and it appears that the Department of Energy is determined not to let grass grow under the feet of the USA.
The new Plastic Innovation Center will be based at the University of Delaware, which has a head start in the chemistry field thanks in part to a long running relationship with the firm DuPont.
That’s a good thing, because CPI has its work cut out for it.
“Worldwide, more than 350 million tons of plastics were produced in 2018 alone. Only 12% of this plastic waste is reused or recycled, according to an industry report. Current recycling strategies fall far short in recovering material that is as high in quality as the material you started with — a major hurdle the CPI will be working to overcome,” the University of Delaware explained in a press release last week.
See Full Article at Source: https://cleantechnica.com/2020/07/20/more-bad-news-for-oil-gas-plastic-recycling-targeted-by-university-of-delaware/
The insanity of plastic recycling
BY ALEX TRUELOVE, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 06/23/20 02:30 PM EDT
It has been said that insanity can be defined as “doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” Yet here we are, after decades of failures and broken promises, convinced that we’ll recycle our way out of the plastic pollution crisis.
This misguided approach was in full view on Wednesday, June 17, when the Senate Environment and Public Works committee gathered to discuss the topic of recycling, and, in particular, recycling plastic. Witnesses representing consumer brands and plastic initiatives promoted the same, tired narrative: With more time and more money, we can capture the mystical value of a material that has been discarded ever since it was created. We can recycle the non-recyclable.
Recycling as a concept is wonderful. It works for materials like glass and aluminum that retain value over time. Your glass bottle can be easily reused or re-molded into another glass bottle within days, ad infinitum.
Plastic, however, doesn’t retain value and therefore cannot participate in the same circular economy of infinite reuse. Most plastic items — bags, foam containers, straws and lids — are simply the beginning and end of the line. They have no aftermarket, nowhere to go. Best case, your plastic bottle is converted into a lower-value product, maybe a carpet, only to be replaced by another bottle made from virgin plastic. The carpet, of course, will eventually become trash after its value is exhausted. Best case, landfill. Worst case — ask a sea turtle, or any of the hundreds of marine creatures that have ingested or died from our plastic pollution.
See full article at source: https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/504091-the-insanity-of-plastic-recycling
'More masks than jellyfish': coronavirus waste ends up in ocean
A glut of discarded single-use masks and gloves is washing up on shorelines and littering the seabed
Conservationists have warned that the coronavirus pandemic could spark a surge in ocean pollution – adding to a glut of plastic waste that already threatens marine life – after finding disposable masks floating like jellyfish and waterlogged latex gloves scattered across seabeds.
The French non-profit Opération Mer Propre, whose activities include regularly picking up litter along the Côte d’Azur, began sounding the alarm late last month.
Divers had found what Joffrey Peltier of the organisation described as “Covid waste” – dozens of gloves, masks and bottles of hand sanitiser beneath the waves of the Mediterranean, mixed in with the usual litter of disposable cups and aluminium cans.
The quantities of masks and gloves found were far from enormous, said Peltier. But he worried that the discovery hinted at a new kind of pollution, one set to become ubiquitous after millions around the world turned to single-use plastics to combat the coronavirus. “It’s the promise of pollution to come if nothing is done,” said Peltier.
See full article at source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/08/more-masks-than-jellyfish-coronavirus-waste-ends-up-in-ocean
Plastic Rain Is the New Acid Rain
Researchers find that over 1,000 metric tons of microplastic fall on 11 protected areas in the US annually, equivalent to over 120 million plastic water bottles.
06.11.2020 02:00 PM
HOOF IT THROUGH the national parks of the western United States—Joshua Tree, the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon—and breathe deep the pristine air. These are unspoiled lands, collectively a great American conservation story. Yet an invisible menace is actually blowing through the air and falling via raindrops: Microplastic particles, tiny chunks (by definition, less than 5 millimeters long) of fragmented plastic bottles and microfibers that fray from clothes, all pollutants that get caught up in Earth’s atmospheric systems and deposited in the wilderness.
Writing today in the journal Science, researchers report a startling discovery: After collecting rainwater and air samples for 14 months, they calculated that over 1,000 metric tons of microplastic particles fall into 11 protected areas in the western US each year. That’s the equivalent of over 120 million plastic water bottles. “We just did that for the area of protected areas in the West, which is only 6 percent of the total US area,” says lead author Janice Brahney, an environmental scientist at Utah State University. “The number was just so large, it's shocking.”
It further confirms an increasingly hellish scenario: Microplastics are blowing all over the world, landing in supposedly pure habitats, like the Arctic and the remote French Pyrenees. They’re flowing into the oceans via wastewater and tainting deep-sea ecosystems, and they’re even ejecting out of the water and blowing onto land in sea breezes. And now in the American West, and presumably across the rest of the world given that these are fundamental atmospheric processes, they are falling in the form of plastic rain—the new acid rain.
Plastic rain could prove to be a more insidious problem than acid rain, which is a consequence of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions. By deploying scrubbers in power plants to control the former, and catalytic converters in cars to control the latter, the US and other countries have over the last several decades cut down on the acidification problem. But microplastic has already corrupted even the most remote environments, and there’s no way to scrub water or land or air of the particles—the stuff is absolutely everywhere, and it’s not like there’s a plastic magnet we can drag through the oceans. What makes plastic so useful—its hardiness—is what also makes it an alarming pollutant: Plastic never really goes away, instead breaking into ever smaller bits that infiltrate ever smaller corners of the planet. Even worse, plastic waste is expected to skyrocket from 260 million tons a year to 460 million tons by 2030, according to the consultancy McKinsey. More people joining the middle class in economically-developing countries means more consumerism and more plastic packaging.
See full article at source: https://www.wired.com/story/plastic-rain-is-the-new-acid-rain/
Plastic Bottle Made From Plants Degrades in Just One Year
May. 18, 2020 01:00PM EST
While some are trying to clean up the plastic pollution in the oceans, and others are removing it from beaches, one company is looking to end the need for plastic bottles that last hundreds of years and are rarely recycled. A Dutch company is looking to fight the plastic crisis with a plant-based alternative that degrades in one year, as The Guardian reported.
Avantium, a biochemical company in the Netherlands, is fundraising for a new project that will turn sustainably grown crops into a plant-based plastic. The technology has gained the attention of beer maker Carlsberg, beverage giant Coca-Cola and Danone. All three companies have signaled that they plant to use Avantium's technology in the future, according to Ubergizmo.
Carlsberg, for example, hopes to sell its pilsner in a cardboard bottle lined with an inner layer of plant plastic, according to The Guardian. Avantium posted a picture of Carlsberg's paper bottle on Instagram.
"It is a milestone in the development of high-value applications such as specialty bottles," said Marcel Lubben, Avantium's Managing Director, as LADbible reported. "The Paper Bottle shows how we, together with partners, can use innovation to help shape packaging for a circular and sustainable future."
See Full Article at Source: https://www.ecowatch.com/plastic-bottle-plants-sustainability-2646025779.html?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3
Coronavirus is causing a flurry of plastic waste. Campaigners fear it may be permanent
By Rob Picheta, CNN
Updated 6:17 AM ET, Mon May 4, 2020
London (CNN)All of the defining images of the coronavirus pandemic seem to feature one thing: plastic.
Surgical masks, gloves, protective equipment, body bags -- the Covid-19 crisis has spurred a rapid expansion in the production of desperately-needed plastic products, with governments racing to boost their stockpiles and regular citizens clamoring for their share of supplies.
Such production is necessary. But all that plastic ends up somewhere -- and environmental campaigners fear it is just the tip of a looming iceberg, with the pandemic causing a number of serious challenges to their efforts to reduce plastic pollution.
From people discarding plastic gloves and masks in cities across the world to important regulations on the use of plastic being scrapped, rolled back or delayed, the problem has taken a back seat during one of the most significant public health crises of modern times.
The implications of those trends could spell years of trouble for our already polluted oceans.
"We know that plastic pollution is a global problem -- it existed before the pandemic," Nick Mallos of US-based NGO Ocean Conservancy tells CNN. "(But) we've seen a lot of industry efforts to roll back some of the great progress that's been made.
"We need to be quite cautious about where we go, post-pandemic," Mallos adds.
See full article at source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/world/coronavirus-plastic-waste-pollution-intl/index.html
‘A huge step forward.’ Mutant enzyme could vastly improve recycling of plastic bottles By Robert F. ServiceApr. 8, 2020 , 5:45 PM
Recycling isn’t as guilt-free as it seems. Only about 30% of the plastic that goes into soda bottles gets turned into new plastic, and it often ends up as a lower strength version. Now, researchers report they’ve engineered an enzyme that can convert 90% of that same plastic back to its pristine starting materials. Work is underway to scale up the technology and open a demonstration plant next year.
“This is a huge step forward,” says John McGeehan, who directs the center for enzyme innovation at the University of Portsmouth and who was not involved with the work.
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is one of the world’s most commonly used plastics, with some 70 million tons produced annually. PET bottles are already recycled in many places. But the current approach has problems. For starters, recycling companies typically end up with a broad mix of different colors of the plastic. They then use high temperatures to melt those down, producing a gray or black plastic starting material that few companies want to use to package their products.
See full article at source: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/huge-step-forward-mutant-enzyme-could-vastly-improve-recycling-plastic-bottles#
The Plastics Industry Is Trying to Cash In on the Covid-19 Pandemic
Dharna Noor
The covid-19 pandemic is forcing many of us to change our best-intentioned behaviors. We’re withholding physical affection, even when our loved ones are in distress. We’re not patronizing our favorite bars, even though they’re struggling to stay afloat.
In some places, people are also using single-use plastic bags, despite the years-long effort to phase out disposable plastic materials. All over the country, officials are grappling with concerns that reusable bags often go unwashed and can therefore easily spread covid-19. But even though these concerns are unfounded, the fossil fuel industry has latched onto them to push policy that benefits it and locks us into a cycle of using more wasteful plastic.
View Full Article Here: https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-plastics-industry-is-trying-to-cash-in-on-the-covid-1842494328
Plastic Wars: Industry Spent Millions Selling Recycling — To Sell More Plastic
March 31, 20208:00 AM ET
LAURA SULLIVAN
Editor's note: NPR will be publishing stories from this investigative series in the weeks ahead, even as we focus our current coverage on the coronavirus pandemic. But here's a look at some of our key findings. You can watch the full documentary film from this investigation on the PBS series Frontline.
For decades, Americans have been sorting their trash believing that most plastic could be recycled. But the truth is, the vast majority of all plastic produced can't be or won't be recycled. In 40 years, less than 10% of plastic has ever been recycled.
In a joint investigation, NPR and the PBS series Frontline found that oil and gas companies — the makers of plastic — have known that all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite.
See Full Article at Source: https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/822597631/plastic-wars-three-takeaways-from-the-fight-over-the-future-of-plastics
Op-Ed: More than 90% of U.S. plastic waste is never recycled. Here’s how we can change that
By TOM UDALL AND ALAN LOWENTHAL
FEB. 21, 2020
3:01 AM
More than a third of Americans recycle every day. They want to believe that the plastic bottles, containers and packaging they use will be turned into new products — instead of being sent to landfills and incinerators or polluting our planet.
But that belief is an illusion. Eight of the 10 most commonly polluted plastic items, which includes utensils and food wrappers, are not recyclable in America’s municipal recycling system. Over 90% of U.S. plastic waste is never recycled. And so every year, about 32 million tons of plastic are landfilled or incinerated. That doesn’t count the amount that directly litters our environment or that we ship to developing countries to handle.
The reality is that we cannot recycle our way out of this crisis using the system we have in place. The heart of the problem lies in the simple fact that big corporations are producing plastic such as packaging, bags and foam that end up being unrecyclable. Once these plastic products are used, no businesses want to buy the scraps to recycle them. They end up as eternal plastic waste instead.
Read Full Article at Source: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-02-21/plastic-waste-never-recycled-u-s
Energy Department partners with chemical group to keep plastic waste out of oceans
by Josh Siegel
February 03, 2020 09:00 AM
The Department of Energy is partnering with the American Chemistry Council to develop technologies to recycle plastic and keep waste out of rivers, oceans, and landfills.
The Energy Department will sign a memorandum of understanding on Monday afternoon with the chemical industry's trade group that enables them to collaborate on a number of projects.
These include creating technologies that collect plastic more easily once it has entered waterways, producing new plastics that are recyclable by design, and developing technologies that upcycle waste chemicals from plastic into other commercial products.
For example, the Energy Department cited the possibility of reclaiming material contained in the plastic of a water bottle and selling that to automakers for use in building vehicles.
“Through this partnership with the American Chemistry Council, the Department of Energy is furthering its mission to spur American innovation and leadership in energy efficient recycling technologies and the manufacture of new plastics that are recyclable by design to reduce plastic waste in our rivers, oceans, and landfills," said Mark W. Menezes, the Energy Department’s undersecretary of energy.
See full Article at Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/energy-department-partners-with-chemical-group-to-keep-plastic-waste-out-of-oceans
Oceans Are Warming Faster Than Predicted
Earth’s seas are absorbing excess heat 40 percent faster than previous estimates
By Chelsea Harvey, E&E News on January 11, 2019
Up to 90 percent of the warming caused by human carbon emissions is absorbed by the world’s oceans, scientists estimate. And researchers increasingly agree that the oceans are warming faster than previously thought.
Multiple studies in the past few years have found that previous estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may be too low. A new review of the research, published yesterday in Science, concludes that “multiple lines of evidence from four independent groups thus now suggest a stronger observed [ocean heat content] warming.”
See Full Article at Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/oceans-are-warming-faster-than-predicted/
Footprint Introduces the Compostable, Reusable Eco Cooler Bringing Sustainable Tailgating to Super Bowl LIVE presented by Verizon
GILBERT, Ariz., Jan. 30, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Footprint, the technology innovation company addressing the growing consumer demand for sustainable food packaging materials, introduced today a greener solution for sustainable active lifestyles.
The multi-use Footprint Eco Cooler, debuted at the Super Bowl LIVE Environmental Village in Bayfront Park, Miami, marks another company product innovation eliminating the Styrofoam™ cooler. The Eco Cooler can be composted or recycled at its end-of-use, and is the latest Footprint packaging design solution to offer an environmentally-friendly alternative to disposable plastic products.
The Eco Cooler has a twenty-four, 12-oz-can capacity, keeps ice frozen for up to 12 hours, and will hold water for five days without leaking. Unlike other alternatives, Footprint's cooler can be reused again and again once allowed a short drying period. Its clever design includes drink holders and a smartphone stand that turns the cooler into a natural stereo amplifier. Made in North America from durable paper fiber, the cooler is completely free of toxic PFAS chemicals, is fully compostable and provides a 100 percent reduction in plastic.
See Full Article at Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/footprint-introduces-compostable-reusable-eco-145500741.html
Another major hotel chain is getting rid of travel-sized toiletries
By Jordan Valinsky, CNN Business
Updated 11:30 AM ET, Wed January 22, 2020
New York (CNN Business)Accor Hotels is the latest global hotel chain to eliminate travel-sized toiletries from its rooms.
The company, which owns 40 brands including Ibis, Novotel, the Fairmont and Mondrian, announced Wednesday that it's removing individual tubes of shampoo, conditioner and bath gel from its 340,000 guest rooms. It's part of Accor's broader environmental campaign that includes getting rid of all single-use plastic items at its 5,000 properties.
Accor (ACCYY) is replacing the plastic toiletries with either wall dispensers or glass, bulk-sized toiletries by the end of the year. The chain is also replacing a number of common hotel items usually made from plastic, including keycards, laundry bags and cups, with materials made from "relevant alternatives," according to the statement. That change take place across all of its hotels in 2022.
More than 200 million single-use plastic items are used annually at Accor's hotels. The company said in a press release that the changes are part of an effort that focuses on "reducing environmental impacts and strengthening efforts to combat plastic pollution of the world's oceans and other natural environments."
See Full Article Here: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/22/business/accor-hotels-toiletries-plastic-usage/index.html?utm_source=CNN+Five+Things&utm_campaign=4834dfd728-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_01_23_01_49&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6da287d761-4834dfd728-95237933
Malaysia has sent back tons of plastic waste to rich countries, saying it won't be their 'garbage dump'
By Rob Picheta, CNN
Updated 11:04 AM ET, Mon January 20, 2020
(CNN) Malaysia has sent back 150 shipping containers of plastic waste to rich countries including the United States, United Kingdom, France and Canada, insisting it won't be the "garbage dump" of the world.
The country has been inundated with shipments of illegal plastic waste since 2018, when China cracked down on a large recycling industry.
Malaysia subsequently emerged as a major target of illegal waste trafficking, but its government has attempted to tackle the reputation and has returned shipments of waste in the past.
On Monday the country's environment minister, Yeo Bee Yin, said she ordered 3,737 metric tons of trash to be returned to 13 countries.
Of the 150 containers, 43 were sent back to France and 42 to the UK, while the US will receive 17 and Canada 11.
See Full Article at Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/20/asia/malaysia-plastic-waste-return-scli-intl/index.html