#plastics pollution

Excerpt from this story from EcoWatch:

The top plastic polluters of 2020 have been announced, and Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestlé top the list for the third year in a row.

In a new report demanding corporate responsibility for plastic pollution, Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) named the repeat offenders and called them out for what appeared to be negligible progress in curbing the amount of plastic trash they produce despite corporate claims otherwise.

"The title of Top Global Polluters describes the parent companies whose brands were recorded polluting the most places around the world with the greatest amount of plastic waste," the report's executive summary noted. "Our 2020 Top Global Polluters remain remarkably consistent with our previous brand audit reports, demonstrating that the same corporations are continuing to pollute the most places with the most single-use plastic."

Plastic pollution is one of the leading environmental problems of the modern-day. Plastics do not disintegrate or disappear, but instead break up into microplastics that get consumed by the tiniest organisms. These toxins bioaccumulate and move their way up the food chain and into our air, food and water.

"The world's top polluting corporations claim to be working hard to solve plastic pollution, but instead they are continuing to pump out harmful single-use plastic packaging," Emma Priestland, Break Free From Plastic's global campaign coordinator, told The Guardian.

Excerpt from this press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:

The Center for Biological Diversity sued the Environmental Protection Agency and federal wildlife agencies today over their approval of a Clean Water Act general permit covering stormwater discharges for thousands of industrial facilities across the country.

Today’s lawsuit faults the federal permit’s failure to protect the aquatic environment, public health, endangered and threatened species, and critical habitat from plastic and other forms of pollution discharged through industrial stormwater.

“This permit lets industrial polluters keep releasing plastic and other pollutants into our waterways,” said Julie Teel Simmonds, an attorney in the Center’s Oceans program. “Rather that protecting wildlife and public health, the EPA just copied and pasted from its 2015 permit and ignored our recommendations. We’re suing to force federal officials to consider mounting evidence that plastics facilities harm essential habitats and frontline communities.”

The permit covers stormwater discharges to U.S. waters from industrial facilities in 30 categories, including chemical and allied products manufacturing, rubber and miscellaneous plastic products, and many others.

Plastic production, transport and use in industrial facilities results in the loss of trillions of plastic pellets to the environment every year. These plastic pellets are often spilled in outdoor areas, picked up in stormwater runoff and discharged to surface waters. Once in the environment, plastic pellets are persistent and can be transported long distances from their source in flowing surface waters such as streams, rivers and oceans.

Excerpt from this story from DeSmog Blog:

When I arrived on Sunday, August 9, scores of tiny plastic pellets lined the sandy bank of the Mississippi River downstream from New Orleans, Louisiana, where they glistened in the sun, not far from a War of 1812 battlefield. These precursors of everyday plastic products, also known as nurdles, spilled from a shipping container that fell off a cargo ship at a port in New Orleans the previous Sunday, August 2.

After seeing photographs by New Orleans artist Michael Pajon published on NOLA.com, I went to see if a cleanup of the spilled plastic was underway. A week after the spill, I saw no signs of a cleanup when I arrived in the early afternoon, but I did watch a group of tourists disembark from a riverboat that docked along the plastic-covered riverbank. By most accounts, the translucent plastic pellets are considered pollution, but government bureaucracy and regulatory technicalities are making accountability for removing these bits of plastic from the river’s banks and waters surprisingly challenging.

Excerpt from this Mongabay/EcoWatch story:

It had rained all morning across Jakarta on the first Tuesday in February. The rivers in the Indonesian capital quickly filled up, carrying all kinds of debris toward the Java Sea. In one of the city's largest waterways, a Dutch-made device was trapping some of the trash to prevent it from washing out into the ocean.

The Interceptor 001 had been shipped to Jakarta in early 2019 by its inventor, the Rotterdam, Netherlands-based nonprofit organization The Ocean Cleanup (TOC). The prototype has been on a trial run since May 2019 near the mouth of the Cengkareng drain, which connects the city's notoriously garbage-laden Angke River to the Java Sea.

Jakarta's prototype is the first generation of a device that TOC aims to deploy in 1,000 of the world's most polluted rivers in just five years. The organization estimates these waterways are responsible for carrying 80 percent of ocean trash out to sea, with the remaining 20 percent of marine trash coming from around 30,000 other rivers.

There are two Interceptors currently installed, the second on the Klang River in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. According to Chris Worp, TOC's managing director, the group plans to deploy another Interceptor to the Rio Ozama in the Dominican Republic this month, and a fourth to southern Vietnam.

Donors from all over the world have invested millions of dollars in TOC to help the organization accomplish what it says are "ambitious" and "novel" solutions to the scourge of oceangoing trash. But the process has not been smooth. Mongabay visited the prototype in Jakarta in February and found issues with the device. Now, TOC is facing allegations that it copied the design of another successful river cleanup device patented more than a decade ago.

This story from the New York Times:

Diplomats at a United Nations conference in Busan, South Korea, failed to reach agreement on the world’s first treaty to tackle plastic pollution on Sunday. They said they would reconvene in future months to try again.

At what was supposed to be the final round of talks, nations struggled to bridge wide differences that remained over critical issues, including whether the treaty should include limits on plastics production itself.

Some of the world’s largest producers of petroleum had vehemently opposed any measure that would restrict plastic production. The vast majority of the world’s plastic is made from petroleum.

Representatives from those countries argued, instead, that the treaty should stay focused on improving recycling and waste management.

Delegates gathered at the conference also remained far apart on the need to phase out some of the harmful chemicals used in plastic, as well as who should bear the costs of implementing the treaty.

Juliet Kabera, a delegate for Rwanda, which had led the push for a wide-ranging treaty, said a “small number” of countries had remained “unsupportive of the measures necessary to drive real change.”

“Rwanda cannot accept a toothless treaty,” Ms. Kabera said.

Saudi Arabia, which joined Russia, Kuwait and other oil-producing countries to oppose plastic production curbs, said nations needed to consider other approaches.

“If we address plastic pollution, there should be no problem with producing plastics,” said Abdulrahman Al Gwaiz, a Saudi delegate. “The problem is pollution itself, not plastics.”

Environmental groups urged nations to adopt an ambitious, legally binding treaty. Earlier in the weeklong negotiations, protesters in Busan rallied around a model of a sperm whale stuffed with plastic waste, displaying slogans like “Courage not compromise.”

The world produces nearly a half-billion tons of plastic each year, more than twice the amount produced two decades ago. Images of plastic trash on coastlines and river banks prompted calls for a global treaty to address the problem of plastic waste.

"UN Environment Programme @UNEP #INC5 talks to end plastic pollution have begun in Busan 🇰🇷

The world has made it clear: no more plastic on our shores, bodies or environment.

It’s time for a #PlasticsTreaty.

The global plastics treaty being negotiated this month in Ottawa epitomizes how people’s relationship with these valuable yet problematic materials is changing for the better. If it can be agreed on this year — as I hope it will — this treaty could end plastic pollution and lead to healthier societies. It could reduce the world’s reliance on fossil fuels and short-lived products. And it could lower people’s and nature’s exposures to hazardous chemicals and nano- and microplastics released by the 460 million tonnes of plastic produced globally each year (see go.nature.com/4auwzap).

These negotiations also mark a shift in public attitudes towards plastics — from enabling modernity to being a hallmark of the Anthropocene. These materials contribute to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. And research — including my own — shows that plastics damage the health of both ecosystems and humans, by disrupting hormones, for example (see go.nature.com/4cqt8pj).

The widespread support for the treaty is also striking. It comes from not only researchers, but also the public, civil society and businesses — “all the stars are aligned”, as one of my colleagues says. Swayed by scientists’ warnings and emboldened by public opinion, policymakers are willing to embark on this journey to end plastic pollution.