Company A produces millions of plastic cola bottles a day. Water bottles too, and plastic wrap to hold a six-pack of these cola and water bottles together. Company A is told by consumer watchdogs and eco-organizations that enough is enough – the planet can’t hold cheap plastic waste any longer. Landfills can’t carry plastic; plastics are degrading our health and ecosystems badly, and what is consumed in a few minutes lasts hundreds and thousands of years in landfill, or at the bottom of the sea. See flip-flops in the Seychelles.

Company A decides to find a way a great solution and a way to rebrand its bad reputation and goes to companies like McKinsey to help them persuade governments and consumers that plastics aren’t so bad because they are being “recycled, you, know… chemically.” While it sounds good on paper, chemical recycling in plastics, says environmental watchdog group Gaia a terrible idea: “Our position isn’t that one is worse than the other, they’re both equally bad!”

GAIA (or the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives), based in Berkeley says “the Emperor has no clothes: chemical recycling has long been touted by industry as a miracle solution, but when one looks closely these claims simply do not hold up,” says Neil Tangri, Science and Policy Director at GAIA.

“Thanks to the rigorous efforts of the scientific community and thorough investigations by media and environmental groups, the tide is turning.”

Why is chemical recycling so bad?

We reached out to GAIA to understand the problem with plastics recycling today in the United States, and the world. Consider that 2 from the 5 worst companies are ExxonMobil and Dow, American companies. And Claire Arkin from GAIA clarifies, “What industry calls ‘chemical recycling’ is largely incineration of plastics, the “recycling” word is misleading,” she says. 

Arkin explains to Green Prophet: “The force at play here that is most dangerous is the fact that the plastics industry is ramping up plastic production exponentially in the coming years, which our planet simply cannot support without spiralling into climate catastrophe and exceeding planetary boundaries for toxic chemicals.

“Chemical recycling not only enables further plastic production, but it causes significant climate and toxic emissions.”

Is chemical recycling in plastics worse than producing new plastics? “We are definitely not saying that it’s worse than producing virgin plastic, but that one begets the other– industry is claiming that chemical “recycling” is a silver bullet solution to plastic waste, which enables them to continue with business-as-usual of ramping up plastic production,” Arkin tells Green Prophet.

“For example, the American Chemistry Council says it will invest over $4 billion in “advanced recycling.” Meanwhile, the ACC is also investing over 35 times that–$164 billion– in new infrastructure to make more plastic. It’s a bit of a bait and switch. What the world really needs is a significant decrease in virgin plastic production, not the promotion of these false technologies under the guise of “recycling.” 

Why chemical recycling in plastics is so bad

Recent independent investigations have found: 

• Processing 1kg of plastic using chemical “recycling” requires nearly 7x the amount of fossil fuels needed to make a kg of virgin plastic. Read about Exxon’s chemical recycling initiatives here.

• If a refinery turned waste into a fuel (what most “chemical recycling” facilities actually do) the air emissions would be so toxic that 1 out of 4 people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer. And what’s considered “bio” in biofuels is simply not true. It’s plastic.

• According to US government research, “chemical recycling” requires a significant amount of energy and emits greenhouse gasses and chemicals like benzene.

• According to Dow Chemical’s very own study, “chemical recycling” caused more climate emissions than landfilling or burning plastic. 

• Shell, Unilever, and Dow Chemical all have documented “chemical recycling” failures. 

The top 5 plastics producing companies in the world

According to the NGO, No Plastic Waste, there are 100 companies producing 90 per cent of all single-use plastic waste generated globally. You can get the whole list here. But who tops the list? America’s ExonMobil, Dow, and China’s Sinopec, Thailand’s Indorama Ventures, and Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Aramco. If your parents or grandparents work for these companies, it’s time to start a conversation.

Of approximately 300 polymer producers operating globally, this small fraction hold the fate of the world’s plastic crisis in their hands. Among these companies located in the region we report on in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Aramco, one of the world’s richest companies now building NEOM with billions of oil and plastics dollars. 

What’s happening globally to stop chemical recycling?

On May 12 an international meeting took place to handle guidelines for plastic waste. The Parties to the Basel Convention adopted most of the text of updated technical guidelines for environmentally-sound plastic waste management. Despite intensive lobbying from the petrochemicals industry in the four years of negotiations to recognize what they call  “chemical” or “advanced” “recycling,” as a solution to the plastics crisis,  all that was obtained in the guidelines was mostly lip service, reports GAIA.

Advanced chemical recycling, GAIA reiterates, create more hazardous waste and pollution, massive carbon emissions, and enable further exponential plastic production, breaching our planetary boundaries. The petrochemicals industry needs to be told this is nowhere near a silver bullet solution. Business models based on cheap plastics need to adapt. The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal was created to protect against abusive trade and mismanagement of hazardous waste.

Its technical guidelines are intended to assist Parties manage wastes in an environmentally-sound manner, taking all practical steps to protect human health and the environment. Virtually all of the guidelines text on chemical recycling was moved to an appendix after countries failed to find evidence that chemical recycling is environmentally sound.

The updated guidelines also include a new section on prevention, in a much-needed shift from the previous outdated version. “Four years of petrochemical industry lobbying and all they could get was half-baked, flimsy, bracketed, appended and fundamentally non-approved text on so-called ‘chemical recycling’. I say ‘so-called’ because it is really a mismatched bundle of dubious and dirty technologies marketed as a solution to justify continued overproduction of plastics,” says Sirine Rached, GAIA plastics policy coordinator. 

“But governments are finally awakening to the reality that these technologies are neither innovative nor safe, and that more toxic and carbon emissions are the last thing we need when it comes to dealing with plastic waste,” she added.   

Upcoming UN-endorsed plastics treaty negotiations will take place May 29 to June 2 in Paris, where industry groups like CEFLEX  (links to PDF and an industry group representing petrochemical majors like Dow, Chevron, and BASF), and the Plastics Industry Association and the US Chamber of Commerce have all provided written submissions endorsing chemical recycling.

Some governments around the world have even called for an outright ban on “chemical recycling” in the future plastics treaty, as referenced in an official document outlining options for future treaty obligations and control measures, prepared by the  United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Secretariat ahead of the Paris negotiations.

Gaia notes that “private consulting firms like McKinsey have continued to tout chemical “recycling” in reports [even highlighting opportunities!] provided to Member States to influence their decision-making, and there is reason to believe that such efforts will intensify in upcoming plastics treaty negotiations,” they write.“We’re not out of the woods yet,” said Tangri, “but the fact that chemical ‘recycling’ was relegated to an insignificant bracket in Geneva is a promising start.” 

More about GAIA

GAIA is a worldwide alliance of more than 1,000 grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations, and individuals in over 90 countries aiming to catalyze a global shift towards environmental justice by strengthening grassroots social movements that advance solutions to waste and pollution.

They envision a just, zero waste world built on respect for ecological limits and community rights, where people are free from the burden of toxic pollution, and resources are sustainably conserved, not burned or dumped. Consider jumping on board with them if you want to take action locally.

How you can act locally

• Endorse and visit Zero Waste shops that promote the circular economy.
• Avoid buying single use plastics and one-time use plastic products.
• Hold cities and governments responsible for plastic tax.
• Join eco groups and lobby alongside GAIA so the world has a better future.
• Have a talk with mom or dad or a family member who works with a plastics producer

The post The dirt on chemical recycling in plastics appeared first on Green Prophet.

One of the most jarring scenes I remember from my trip through Syria is the sea of plastic that rolled along the shore of a stretch of desert highway that linked Aleppo to Damascus. This was 20 years ago and the problem with plastic in the throwaway Middle East where boys want a plastic bag for a can of Red Bull is just getting worse. Let’s look to Dubai where the camels are dying from starvation. Their bellies full of plastics and ropes that starve them to death. 

A new scientific study showing that desert camels are dying from mistaking plastic bags for food has lead pioneering plastic pollution researchers and others to call for a radical shift in how we discuss the problem that’s harming life in all environments on Earth–on land, not just in the sea. 

One researcher covering the problem found 2000 plastic bags in the stomach of one camel.

Marcus Eriksen, the study’s lead author and co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute, is one of a handful of researchers to have personally sailed through all of the Earth’s five subtropical gyres,  where plastics accumulate. He has researched plastic pollution in the global oceans since 2008. This scourge, however, is far from limited to the “garbage patches,” he notes, but exists “in every body of water on the planet.” 

Furthermore, the study Eriksen and his team published, finding a 1% mortality rate among dromedary camels ingesting plastic outside of the city of Dubai–on top of similar deaths and suffering he and others have observed in animals from elephants to reindeer, plastic fragments found in farmland, even evidence that humans are ingesting plastic trash–has convinced him that we must begin to loudly sound a different alarm.

“As a civilization, we have to stop talking about plastic pollution as if it were confined to our oceans and start talking about global plastic pollution harming life everywhere,” Eriksen says. “We have a plastic pollution pandemic from the tops of mountains to the bottom of the sea. A limited view limits our ability to solve the problem.” 

Study co-author, Ulrich Wernery, director of the Central Veterinary Research Laboratory in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, has been observing plastic waste in over 300 camels in the desert region near Dubai since 2008, as published in the Journal of Arid Environments. He and Eriksen found tightly packed, suitcase-size masses of plastic bags, ropes and other litter trapped in the animals’ stomachs and digestive tracts. 

When ingesting this trash, the camels can feel a false sense of satiation and refuse to eat further, which leads to dehydration, malnourishment and death, they report. The indigestible materials also create gut blockages, ulcers and lacerations or deadly sepsis from abundant bacteria caught in the bags’ folds. 

Eriksen, director of science and innovation at 5 Gyres, found some of the animal remains in the desert himself, noting that bags are carried for miles by high winds. “We pulled one of these masses out of a camel skeleton that had over 2,000 bags in it. I cut this open and it was plastic bags through and through.”

Many countries have independently banned single-use plastic items, but Eriksen and the 5 Gyres Institute urge world leaders–including the Biden-Harris Administration, which has been silent on this growing crisis–to take bold, swift action by joining an international legally binding agreement to tackle plastic pollution under discussion this week at the UN Environmental Assembly (UNEA). The world’s top environmental decision-making body, UNEA notes that “the planet is in crisis and nature must be at the heart of global efforts to build back better” after the coronavirus pandemic. 

Oceanographer Charles J. Moore, credited with discovering and bringing the garbage patch concept to mainstream attention, echoes Eriksen’s call. 

“Today it is widely acknowledged that vagrant plastic waste is polluting oceans, rivers, soil, food, the water we consume, and even the air we breathe,” Moore says. “We have to wake up and accept that this problem is much bigger than we’ve previously imagined. It’s time to talk about this like the planetary emergency it is and take action.” 

Jane Patton, an environmental health policy advocate with the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), agrees. 

“This new study comes on the heels of others examining plastic in fish and birds and provides one more example of how the prevalence of plastic is having untold consequences on flora and fauna across the globe,” said Patton, CIEL senior campaigner. “Now we know this crisis is not just about human health, but the health of all beings. To confront the plastic crisis, it is critical that the world community adopt a new global agreement, addressing the entire plastic lifecycle.” 

The 5 Gyres Institute is inviting all to join their efforts to protect camels by signing a petition urging the Biden Administration to join the binding international treaty on plastic pollution under discussion at UNEA this week. 

The post Dubai’s dead plastic camels appeared first on Green Prophet.

Americans consume about 67 billion cans of beer every year. Factor in canned juices, teas, fizzy drinks, and a trend towards canned wines, amplify those figures globally, and the number of single-use plastic six-pack rings tossed into the world’s waste stream quadruples. Most of these end up in our oceans, posing a serious threat to waterways and the wildlife within.

“Our focus is reducing the marine debris in the ocean. We know we can’t take on the whole world’s plastic problem, but if we help spread the knowledge we’ve learned, that’s the fastest way to reduce it,” brewery president Chris Gove told SouthFlorida.com. “It is how we are reducing our carbon footprint, not just on working on cleanup but focusing upstream. We’re trying to educate the world that cleanups are good but they’re not going to stop the problem.”

The brewery makes the rings using leftover barley and wheat ribbons from the beer-making process. That grain is bound with biopolymer, a protein occurring in living organisms, and pressed into ring shapes which are 100 percent biodegradable and edible. Now, instead of getting entangled in – or choking on – the rings, marine life can safely eat them.

“We have to get rid of our waste every time we brew,” Gove said. “You start with a thousand pounds and after wetting it through the process, you end up with 3,000 pounds. It’s a cost to the brewery and a hassle, and we’ve been giving it to farmers for cattle. Now we have something better to do with it.”  The brewery produces about 45,000 pounds of spent grain per week, which is repurposed  by local farmers as compost or animal feed picked up by local farmers.

While the spent-grain compound isn’t an ideal meal for marine species, it’s not harmful. Gove compared it to candy for children, “It’s a comparison of a Lego to a Sour Patch Kid. It’s not giving them their 100% nutritional value, but they’re not going to the hospital.”

Saltwater Brewery developed the project with New York ad agency We Believers. They aspire to have the wider industry move towards eco-friendly packaging, and are now exploring how the idea might be expanded to other biodegradable products. The brewery also plans to sell the biopolymer technology blueprint so that other beverage companies can stop using plastic rings, too. Watch We Believers’ video on the project below:

”We’ve known for decades that our fondness for Ziploc bags, food wrappers and other plastics is hurting the environment — particularly sea life. But both consumers and businesses have proven largely unwilling to give up the convenience of single-use plastics. We’re now focused on the network and infrastructure to create a real company that can provide packaging solutions to different industries,” Gove said.

The switch to biodegradable rings was initially costly for Saltwater Brewery. Currently, consumers have to pay about 10 cents more per beer for the technology. But Gove says they haven’t gotten complaints, and in time, the brewery hopes to get the price of the eco-friendly rings below the cost of plastic ones. The cans, being aluminium, are 100% recyclable.

“Not only are they using up their own waste in a positive way, they’re helping save animals by feeding them instead of killing them with plastic particles,” said PETA spokesperson Laura Castada. “They’ve gotten good publicity and sales out of the deal, too. There is no downside to going environmentally friendly.”

Said Gove, “Our whole brewery is based on the ocean. Anything we can do to help out the ocean, we’re going to do.”

The post Florida beermaker’s edible packaging is saving lives appeared first on Green Prophet.

My youngest left Jordan for an American university this summer, leaving behind piles of unwanted stuff. Her old bedroom holds relics of a Middle East childhood, but I was shocked to see the imprint she also left in our kitchen. Um, maybe not so much her as me, since I do most of the household shopping. Witness cabinets full of things bought for kid parties over the years – plastic cups and utensils, coated paper plates, and a zillion plastic straws. How could I never have seen how duplicitous I’ve been?  Writing about the environment, while mindlessly contributing to its demise.

That pile of single-use plastic is in the recycling bin now. A struggle to part with the straws (they do make things taste better!) – but after watching a video of a straw embedded in a sea turtle’s nose, there was no other choice. (Viewer discretion advised.)

Like the turtle, this planet can’t digest plastic. Once made, it’s here forever, breaking down into increasingly smaller particles, but never completely degrading. Plastics in our oceans kill a million sea birds a year.  Sealife consume particles, which climb the food chain ladder, meaning we are eating chemical components of plastics, toxins which our bodies absorb.

Since we meet up with single use plastics every day, it is very much in our control to create change. Here are six simple ways to start:

1. Skip the straws – Little kids addicted to the so-fun tubes may whine, so invest in a “sippy cup” with built-in straws. Or start calling straws “babyish”, see how that parental psychology works. Pester your favorite drinks place to invest in biodegradable paper ones, or buy your own eco-straws and pop a few in your backpack to responsibly indulge in that guilty pleasure.

2. Plastic cutlery – Just say no. Channel your inner Girl/Boy Scout and toss a spork (fork/spoon widget) or splade (same, but with a knife function in the mix) into your backpack or desk drawer. Check out affordable versions at ReuseIt (link here). Or save some money, and just use trad cutlery, the weight of a few metal utensils won’t break your back.

3. Drinks in Plastic Bottles – Imagine one-fourth of the volume of any bottle you use filled with oil. That’s the amount of fossil fuel needed to make that flimsy container. Mind-blowing when you consider that – in the US alone – people use 1,500 plastic water bottles per second. Factor in plastic containers for juice, teas, and soda. It sends me looking for a bottle (plastic, of course) of aspirin. Turn to reusable bottles, or a collapsible, pocket-sized vessel like California-based Vapur’s Anti-Bottle (link here). 

4. Drinks in “paper” cups – perhaps not as bad as plastic bottles, and a step up the eco-scale from styrofoam, but the paper is often lined with non-biodegradable plastic, making the cups non-recyclable. So do like the Arabs, and Europeans, and Chinese, and sit down to enjoy that coffee or tea, using a real glass or ceramic cup. Who knew civility was so green?

5. Clear plastic wrap – go raid your mother’s cabinets, flea markets and garage sales for under-used Tupperware. Yes, it’s plastic, but the stuff was made with a lifetime guarantee good for decades of plastic-wrap surrogacy. Or buy modern versions of clickable-lid containers, just check that they’re PBA-free. They keep food fresher, and eliminate leaks.

6. All plastic bags – does this really need a mention? If you live in a nation where free-issue bags are still legal, load up on reusable market bags, tolerate the puzzled look on the check-out clerk’s face, and use them – all the time. Then take a page from my Swedish friends, and head over to Youtube where you can find easy instructions to make reusable produce bags from netting, fabric, even t-shirts. Then, buy yourself a few reusable sandwich bags and stop filling our landfills with single use plastic sandwich bags.

So start by clearing your cupboards, then take your best behavior on the road. It’s painless, and saving the planet feels good.

The post 6 simple, pain-free ways to ditch plastics appeared first on Green Prophet.