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Companies aim to release more treated oilfield wastewater into rivers and streams

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Monday, April 29, 2024

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. This story is published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here. These days the Pecos River barely fills its dry, sandy bed where it crosses West Texas, but the river could be poised to flow again — with treated oilfield wastewater. Companies are racing to figure out what to do with the tremendous volume of noxious water that comes up from underground during oil and gas drilling in the Permian Basin, but a growing cohort of companies say they’ve developed a means to purify that fluid and release it in the Pecos and other watersheds. “This is new ground for all of us and we know it's got to be done the right way,” said Robert Crain, executive vice president of Texas Pacific Water Resources, a company seeking to discharge treated water. “We’re not the only folks that are chasing this.” For decades, oil drillers have injected their wastewater, known as “produced water,” back underground for disposal. But an intensifying spate of earthquakes tied to produced water injection wells in recent years has prompted the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates drilling and injection, to tighten restrictions on injection disposal, spurring a search for alternatives. After two years of studies, the company is applying for a state permit to discharge up 840,000 gallons per day of treated oilfield wastewater into a tributary of Salt Creek, which feeds into the Pecos River. That volume won’t turn the Pecos into a roaring river but it could open doors for larger projects that could transform the river. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality issued a permit for a company to discharge produced water in Atascosa County, southeast of San Antonio in the Eagle Ford Shale basin, earlier this year and is reviewing another application near Eagle Pass. A second company has also applied to discharge into the Pecos River watershed. But scientists and environmental advocates have raised questions about the impacts of introducing this new waste stream into rivers. Federal regulations for these discharges are limited, delegating individual states to oversee their environmental and health impacts. Now responsibility lies with TCEQ to set requirements for these new discharges and the myriad pollutants found in produced water. Everything from naturally occurring radioactive material, to dozens of toxic drilling lubricants, to “forever chemicals” known as PFAS have been detected in produced water. Existing water quality standards do not cover many of these constituents, leaving regulators to evaluate the risk of these discharges with limited toxicity data. Texas joins states like Pennsylvania and Wyoming that are among the few that have permitted produced water discharges. Pollution problems related to produced water discharges have been documented in both states. In neighboring New Mexico, regulators have decided to wait for more scientific study before issuing permits for discharges. When it comes to produced water reuse, some companies are putting in serious effort to do it safely, said Ira Yates, founder of Friends of the Pecos and heir to a West Texas oil fortune. But he worries that if the gates are opened on discharges, other startups won’t be as thoughtful. “All people are really trying to do is get rid of their water so they can pump more oil,” said Yates. “Let’s make sure that, as they develop their plans, they keep the best interest of the river in mind and not just some nebulous idea that it's a place to dump water anytime you want to.” A TCEQ spokesperson, Richard Richter, said the agency’s water quality standards “comply with state and federal water quality rules” and are “protective of surface water quality, human health, and the environment.” He said the agency will set limits on specific pollutants in produced water and that these limits could include both pollutants that are currently regulated and those that are not. Texas ramps up discharge permit program Produced water is typically injected underground through thousands of disposal wells around the state. But restrictions have been tightened on disposal wells since they have been linked to earthquakes in West Texas. Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said last year that disposal capacity in the Permian Basin “is becoming an issue.” The company had to reduce deep injection by 75 percent in one of the seismic areas, according to the Permian Basin Petroleum Association magazine. Oil and gas producers recycle a small portion of produced water. Treating the water, which can be ten times saltier than seawater and is often laced with leftover fracking chemicals, has been uneconomical so far, especially compared with the low cost of injection disposal. An oil drilling operation on the banks of the Red Bluff Reservoir on May 27, 2020. Credit: Justin Hamel for Inside Climate News West of the 98th Meridian, a north-south line that roughly divides the arid West from the water-rich East, the Environmental Protection Agency delegates authority to states to permit discharges of produced water into bodies of water. EPA numerical standards for produced water discharges only cover oil and grease, leaving states to determine what other constituents to regulate. These discharges must be beneficial to wildlife or agriculture, according to EPA regulations. Among Western states, Wyoming has authorized such discharges for over two decades. Colorado’s Water Quality Control Division has issued 14 permits to discharge produced water into surface water. California does not permit discharges into rivers but has permitted select discharges into waterways that only flow part of the year, according to the State Water Board’s Division of Water Quality. New Mexico is yet to approve discharges of produced water. In the East, Pennsylvania authorized discharges of treated produced water from central wastewater treatment plants into rivers. However, Pennsylvania State University researchers later found elevated levels of salt and radioactive chemicals likely linked to the Marcellus Shale formation in sediments downstream of the discharges. TCEQ’s Richter said the agency received four permit applications to discharge produced water during 2023 and 2024. Texas Pacific Water Resources and NGL Water Solutions Permian both applied for permits in the Pecos River watershed of the Permian Basin. Another two applications are in the Eagle Ford Shale. In Atascosa County, TCEQ granted Dorchester Operating Company a permit to discharge treated oil and gas wastewater into three unnamed tributaries that feed into the Lower Atascosa River. TCEQ is currently reviewing a permit application from CMR Energy to discharge up to 653,000 gallons per day of treated oil and gas wastewater east of Eagle Pass into Comanche Creek and its tributaries, which flow into the Nueces River. The discharge is expected to contain chloride, petroleum hydrocarbons and naturally occurring radioactive materials, according to TCEQ records. For discharges east of the 98th Meridian, TCEQ first had to obtain authorization from the EPA to create a permit program, as previously reported in Inside Climate News. TCEQ issued the first of these permits to Baywater Operating in Harris County, according to Richter. Baywater’s permit was terminated in March 2024 because the company was no longer discharging. Texas has site-specific water quality standards for segments of different waterways, including the Pecos, Richter said. This means TCEQ permits different levels of pollutants depending on the conditions of that specific river. Amy Hardberger, a professor of water law and policy at Texas Tech University, said more research and review is needed to determine appropriate uses of produced water. “The Clean Water Act never contemplated this water going into rivers and streams,” she said. In a forthcoming paper, Hardberger points out that many of the constituents in produced water are difficult or costly to test for and do not have established EPA toxicity standards. These are numerical values measuring the risk presented by exposure to a chemical or contaminant. She compares the EPA’s list of standards for public water supplies, which includes exposure guidelines for approximately 90 contaminants, with the over 1,100 chemicals that have been found in produced water. And she warned that the science on public safety shouldn’t be rushed to find a quick fix for produced water disposal. “What's driving the train on this is not water shortage and the potential of an additional water supply,” she said. “What is really driving the change is they are running out of disposal opportunities.” The EPA did not respond to questions for this story. Two permits pending in the Pecos watershed The Pecos River runs from the mountains of Northern New Mexico into the arid scrubland of West Texas and eventually joins the Rio Grande. The river passes through areas of intensive oil and gas drilling and has also been plagued by salinity problems. Texas Pacific Water Resources’ permit application states that discharges will be beneficial for aquatic species downstream of the discharges into Salt Creek. The creek is home to the Pecos pupfish, a threatened species in Texas that only lives in a few locations in the watershed. Crain said Texas Pacific Water Resources has developed a process to treat the wastewater up to discharge standards cost-effectively. The technology remains undisclosed while patents are pending, he said, but is already used in the nuclear and commercial food products sectors. He said the company collaborated with research groups in several states to identify contaminants in produced water and develop means to test for their presence. The company ran a greenhouse study growing various grasses with its treated water and has sent them to a lab to check for accumulation of toxins. Crain said the company has “gone beyond what's currently regulated” to test samples for compounds that have been identified in produced water. Those results were included in the company’s application to TCEQ. The testing found constituents including Radium-226 and Radium-228, types of naturally occurring radioactive material, and benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene and xylene, which are elements found in crude oil and gas production. There were also detectable amounts of some PFAS chemicals in the samples. A methane gas flare burns four miles from Red Bluff Reservoir on Feb. 24, 2020. Credit: Justin Hamel for Inside Climate News Adrianne Lopez, the company’s research and development manager, said that the company will reduce constituents including Radium-226 and Radium-228 to the TCEQ-recommended level. They are also working with researchers at New Mexico State University to conduct human health risk assessments and whole effluent toxicity testing to determine safe levels. Now it is TCEQ’s turn, based on this data, to set standards for the quality of the water to be discharged. NGL Water Solutions Permian applied to discharge up to 16.9 million gallons per day of treated produced water near the Red Bluff Reservoir on the Pecos River in Reeves County. The company is a subsidiary of Tulsa-based NGL Energy Partners. Discharged water will include trace amounts of organics, ammonia, volatile organic compounds and total dissolved solids, according to a TCEQ public notice. An NGL representative declined to comment for this story, saying that permitting details were still being determined with TCEQ. The agency administratively approved the permit and is now completing technical review. NGL has an existing discharge program in Wyoming’s Anticline Basin. According to the company website, NGL discharges nearly 11,000 barrels per day or four million barrels per year in Wyoming. Produced water discharges in Wyoming have recently come under scrutiny. The state environmental regulator reported that several sections of streams where produced water is discharged are polluted to the point they no longer support aquatic life. Last year regulators issued a violation to Dallas-based Aethon Energy Operating for exceeding permitted levels of sulfide, barium and radium in its discharges, according to the news outlet WyoFile. Texas Backs Produced Water ReuseOfficials in Texas have identified produced water reuse as a core strategy to address forecasted regional water shortages. A billion-dollar water fund passed last year provides money for projects that bring new water supplies to the state. According to state Sen. Charles Perry, eligible strategies include seawater desalination, groundwater desalination, inter-state agreements and produced water reuse. Money from the new water fund should “be used solely to finance the development and acquisition of new water supply,” Perry wrote in a letter to the Texas Water Development Board. “This means water supply that is truly a new input into the state water cycle.” Texas lawmakers also passed a bill in 2021 creating the Texas Produced Water Consortium, which brings together academic, industry and non-profit representatives to research the issue. A 2023 bill provided additional funding for the consortium to start pilot projects for produced water reuse. The consortium, based at Texas Tech University, is preparing a report for the state legislature in the fall with updates on research into produced water and pilot projects. A representative of the consortium said its Standards Committee is compiling a database of water quality guidelines from multiple states, which includes hundreds of constituents that could be in produced water. While there is still a long way to go, Ira Yates, of Friends of the Pecos, said he’s “very optimistic” that discharges could be beneficial for the Pecos River in the future. “But I’m also very concerned,” he said, “that the people talking about putting the water back in the Pecos do not understand the hydrology and the river issues.” Disclosure: The Permian Basin Petroleum Association and Texas Tech University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. Tickets are on sale now for the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival, happening in downtown Austin Sept. 5-7. Get your TribFest tickets before May 1 and save big!

Texas regulators are issuing permits to discharge large volumes of treated “produced water” into some waterways. Questions remain about the toxic pollutants found in the wastewater.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

This story is published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here.

These days the Pecos River barely fills its dry, sandy bed where it crosses West Texas, but the river could be poised to flow again — with treated oilfield wastewater.

Companies are racing to figure out what to do with the tremendous volume of noxious water that comes up from underground during oil and gas drilling in the Permian Basin, but a growing cohort of companies say they’ve developed a means to purify that fluid and release it in the Pecos and other watersheds.

“This is new ground for all of us and we know it's got to be done the right way,” said Robert Crain, executive vice president of Texas Pacific Water Resources, a company seeking to discharge treated water. “We’re not the only folks that are chasing this.”

For decades, oil drillers have injected their wastewater, known as “produced water,” back underground for disposal. But an intensifying spate of earthquakes tied to produced water injection wells in recent years has prompted the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates drilling and injection, to tighten restrictions on injection disposal, spurring a search for alternatives.

After two years of studies, the company is applying for a state permit to discharge up 840,000 gallons per day of treated oilfield wastewater into a tributary of Salt Creek, which feeds into the Pecos River. That volume won’t turn the Pecos into a roaring river but it could open doors for larger projects that could transform the river.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality issued a permit for a company to discharge produced water in Atascosa County, southeast of San Antonio in the Eagle Ford Shale basin, earlier this year and is reviewing another application near Eagle Pass. A second company has also applied to discharge into the Pecos River watershed.

But scientists and environmental advocates have raised questions about the impacts of introducing this new waste stream into rivers. Federal regulations for these discharges are limited, delegating individual states to oversee their environmental and health impacts. Now responsibility lies with TCEQ to set requirements for these new discharges and the myriad pollutants found in produced water.

Everything from naturally occurring radioactive material, to dozens of toxic drilling lubricants, to “forever chemicals” known as PFAS have been detected in produced water. Existing water quality standards do not cover many of these constituents, leaving regulators to evaluate the risk of these discharges with limited toxicity data.

Texas joins states like Pennsylvania and Wyoming that are among the few that have permitted produced water discharges. Pollution problems related to produced water discharges have been documented in both states. In neighboring New Mexico, regulators have decided to wait for more scientific study before issuing permits for discharges.

When it comes to produced water reuse, some companies are putting in serious effort to do it safely, said Ira Yates, founder of Friends of the Pecos and heir to a West Texas oil fortune. But he worries that if the gates are opened on discharges, other startups won’t be as thoughtful.

“All people are really trying to do is get rid of their water so they can pump more oil,” said Yates. “Let’s make sure that, as they develop their plans, they keep the best interest of the river in mind and not just some nebulous idea that it's a place to dump water anytime you want to.”

A TCEQ spokesperson, Richard Richter, said the agency’s water quality standards “comply with state and federal water quality rules” and are “protective of surface water quality, human health, and the environment.” He said the agency will set limits on specific pollutants in produced water and that these limits could include both pollutants that are currently regulated and those that are not.

Texas ramps up discharge permit program

Produced water is typically injected underground through thousands of disposal wells around the state. But restrictions have been tightened on disposal wells since they have been linked to earthquakes in West Texas. Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said last year that disposal capacity in the Permian Basin “is becoming an issue.” The company had to reduce deep injection by 75 percent in one of the seismic areas, according to the Permian Basin Petroleum Association magazine.

Oil and gas producers recycle a small portion of produced water. Treating the water, which can be ten times saltier than seawater and is often laced with leftover fracking chemicals, has been uneconomical so far, especially compared with the low cost of injection disposal.

An oil drilling operation on the banks of the Red Bluff Reservoir on May 27, 2020. Credit: Justin Hamel for Inside Climate News

West of the 98th Meridian, a north-south line that roughly divides the arid West from the water-rich East, the Environmental Protection Agency delegates authority to states to permit discharges of produced water into bodies of water. EPA numerical standards for produced water discharges only cover oil and grease, leaving states to determine what other constituents to regulate.

These discharges must be beneficial to wildlife or agriculture, according to EPA regulations. Among Western states, Wyoming has authorized such discharges for over two decades. Colorado’s Water Quality Control Division has issued 14 permits to discharge produced water into surface water. California does not permit discharges into rivers but has permitted select discharges into waterways that only flow part of the year, according to the State Water Board’s Division of Water Quality. New Mexico is yet to approve discharges of produced water.

In the East, Pennsylvania authorized discharges of treated produced water from central wastewater treatment plants into rivers. However, Pennsylvania State University researchers later found elevated levels of salt and radioactive chemicals likely linked to the Marcellus Shale formation in sediments downstream of the discharges.

TCEQ’s Richter said the agency received four permit applications to discharge produced water during 2023 and 2024. Texas Pacific Water Resources and NGL Water Solutions Permian both applied for permits in the Pecos River watershed of the Permian Basin.

Another two applications are in the Eagle Ford Shale. In Atascosa County, TCEQ granted Dorchester Operating Company a permit to discharge treated oil and gas wastewater into three unnamed tributaries that feed into the Lower Atascosa River. TCEQ is currently reviewing a permit application from CMR Energy to discharge up to 653,000 gallons per day of treated oil and gas wastewater east of Eagle Pass into Comanche Creek and its tributaries, which flow into the Nueces River. The discharge is expected to contain chloride, petroleum hydrocarbons and naturally occurring radioactive materials, according to TCEQ records.

For discharges east of the 98th Meridian, TCEQ first had to obtain authorization from the EPA to create a permit program, as previously reported in Inside Climate News. TCEQ issued the first of these permits to Baywater Operating in Harris County, according to Richter. Baywater’s permit was terminated in March 2024 because the company was no longer discharging.

Texas has site-specific water quality standards for segments of different waterways, including the Pecos, Richter said. This means TCEQ permits different levels of pollutants depending on the conditions of that specific river.

Amy Hardberger, a professor of water law and policy at Texas Tech University, said more research and review is needed to determine appropriate uses of produced water. “The Clean Water Act never contemplated this water going into rivers and streams,” she said.

In a forthcoming paper, Hardberger points out that many of the constituents in produced water are difficult or costly to test for and do not have established EPA toxicity standards. These are numerical values measuring the risk presented by exposure to a chemical or contaminant. She compares the EPA’s list of standards for public water supplies, which includes exposure guidelines for approximately 90 contaminants, with the over 1,100 chemicals that have been found in produced water.

And she warned that the science on public safety shouldn’t be rushed to find a quick fix for produced water disposal.

“What's driving the train on this is not water shortage and the potential of an additional water supply,” she said. “What is really driving the change is they are running out of disposal opportunities.”

The EPA did not respond to questions for this story.

Two permits pending in the Pecos watershed

The Pecos River runs from the mountains of Northern New Mexico into the arid scrubland of West Texas and eventually joins the Rio Grande. The river passes through areas of intensive oil and gas drilling and has also been plagued by salinity problems.

Texas Pacific Water Resources’ permit application states that discharges will be beneficial for aquatic species downstream of the discharges into Salt Creek. The creek is home to the Pecos pupfish, a threatened species in Texas that only lives in a few locations in the watershed.

Crain said Texas Pacific Water Resources has developed a process to treat the wastewater up to discharge standards cost-effectively. The technology remains undisclosed while patents are pending, he said, but is already used in the nuclear and commercial food products sectors.

He said the company collaborated with research groups in several states to identify contaminants in produced water and develop means to test for their presence. The company ran a greenhouse study growing various grasses with its treated water and has sent them to a lab to check for accumulation of toxins.

Crain said the company has “gone beyond what's currently regulated” to test samples for compounds that have been identified in produced water. Those results were included in the company’s application to TCEQ. The testing found constituents including Radium-226 and Radium-228, types of naturally occurring radioactive material, and benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene and xylene, which are elements found in crude oil and gas production. There were also detectable amounts of some PFAS chemicals in the samples.

A methane gas flare burns four miles from Red Bluff Reservoir on Feb. 24, 2020. Credit: Justin Hamel for Inside Climate News

Adrianne Lopez, the company’s research and development manager, said that the company will reduce constituents including Radium-226 and Radium-228 to the TCEQ-recommended level. They are also working with researchers at New Mexico State University to conduct human health risk assessments and whole effluent toxicity testing to determine safe levels.

Now it is TCEQ’s turn, based on this data, to set standards for the quality of the water to be discharged.

NGL Water Solutions Permian applied to discharge up to 16.9 million gallons per day of treated produced water near the Red Bluff Reservoir on the Pecos River in Reeves County. The company is a subsidiary of Tulsa-based NGL Energy Partners.

Discharged water will include trace amounts of organics, ammonia, volatile organic compounds and total dissolved solids, according to a TCEQ public notice. An NGL representative declined to comment for this story, saying that permitting details were still being determined with TCEQ. The agency administratively approved the permit and is now completing technical review.

NGL has an existing discharge program in Wyoming’s Anticline Basin. According to the company website, NGL discharges nearly 11,000 barrels per day or four million barrels per year in Wyoming.

Produced water discharges in Wyoming have recently come under scrutiny. The state environmental regulator reported that several sections of streams where produced water is discharged are polluted to the point they no longer support aquatic life. Last year regulators issued a violation to Dallas-based Aethon Energy Operating for exceeding permitted levels of sulfide, barium and radium in its discharges, according to the news outlet WyoFile.

Texas Backs Produced Water ReuseOfficials in Texas have identified produced water reuse as a core strategy to address forecasted regional water shortages. A billion-dollar water fund passed last year provides money for projects that bring new water supplies to the state.

According to state Sen. Charles Perry, eligible strategies include seawater desalination, groundwater desalination, inter-state agreements and produced water reuse.

Money from the new water fund should “be used solely to finance the development and acquisition of new water supply,” Perry wrote in a letter to the Texas Water Development Board. “This means water supply that is truly a new input into the state water cycle.”

Texas lawmakers also passed a bill in 2021 creating the Texas Produced Water Consortium, which brings together academic, industry and non-profit representatives to research the issue. A 2023 bill provided additional funding for the consortium to start pilot projects for produced water reuse.

The consortium, based at Texas Tech University, is preparing a report for the state legislature in the fall with updates on research into produced water and pilot projects. A representative of the consortium said its Standards Committee is compiling a database of water quality guidelines from multiple states, which includes hundreds of constituents that could be in produced water.

While there is still a long way to go, Ira Yates, of Friends of the Pecos, said he’s “very optimistic” that discharges could be beneficial for the Pecos River in the future.

“But I’m also very concerned,” he said, “that the people talking about putting the water back in the Pecos do not understand the hydrology and the river issues.”

Disclosure: The Permian Basin Petroleum Association and Texas Tech University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Tickets are on sale now for the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival, happening in downtown Austin Sept. 5-7. Get your TribFest tickets before May 1 and save big!

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A global supply chain built for speed is leaving behind waste, toxins, and a trail of environmental wreckage.

The Atacama desert in Chile is one of the most beautiful and forbidding places on Earth, so dry that it’s sometimes used by scientists to test run Mars missions. Most years the area sees less than half a centimeter of rain, but this past September unusually heavy precipitation brought forth a desert bloom, blanketing the ground with delicate purple flowers that disappeared as quickly as they’d appeared. It was a rare treat for locals used to grimmer ornamentation: Since 2001, colorful mountains of used clothing have been the main feature growing across the Atacama. By the time the largest mound was set on fire in 2022, it contained some 100,000 tons of discarded fabric, roughly the weight of an aircraft carrier. Today, piles like it continue to grow. This fashion graveyard has become so large that some outlets have dubbed it the “great fashion garbage patch.” It owes its growth to the nearby duty-free port of Iquique, where Chile imports all manner of international goods without customs or taxes — including heaps of used clothing from the United States, Europe, and Asia. While the best items are resold to international markets, overwhelming volumes of cheap fast-fashion pieces don’t make the cut. Instead, they are dumped in the desert — an open secret that the government largely ignores. The burnings, whether they’re intended to destroy the evidence or make more space, fill nearby towns with smoky, unhealthy air. Women sort through used clothes amid the tons that are discarded in the Atacama desert, in 2021 in Alto Hospicio, Iquique, Chile. Martin Bernetti / AFP via Getty Images Activists have been fighting against this desert dumping for years, documenting the burnings and suing both the federal and local governments to stop it. But the real blame for Chile’s mess lies beyond the country’s borders. From the moment these garments are spun from fibers to the time of their undignified disposal, they are part of a vast global pollution machine — one that has grown massively as the world economy has globalized and factories have begun pumping out ever-cheaper, ever-faster styles to customers half a world away. This new hyper-vast, hyper-fast-fashion system is phenomenally destructive. Today, the clothing trade generates some 170 billion garments a year — roughly half of which wind up being thrown out within that year, and almost all of which despoil the world’s land, air, and seas. In the process, it generates as much as 10 percent of all planet-warming emissions, making it the second-largest industrial polluter, while also holding the distinction of being the world’s second-largest consumer and polluter of water. When all its many offenses are cataloged and counted, fashion is the third-most-polluting industry on the planet, after energy and food. Things weren’t always this bad. While fashion has long left trails of environmental devastation in its wake — just ask the poor snowy egret, sacrificed by the thousands to decorate a generation of women’s hats — it was kept in relative check, even as globalization ramped up, by a 1974 trade agreement known as the Multi Fibre Arrangement. This agreement allowed nations to regulate the number of textile and clothing imports allowed into their countries, thereby protecting domestic production. But its expiration on January 1, 2005, essentially heralded fashion’s NAFTA moment. Low-cost goods from countries such as China and Bangladesh began flooding the United States and the European Union, which undercut domestic production in developing countries by saturating those markets with used clothing. The loosening of the century-old de minimis loophole in 2016, which allowed packages under $800 to enter the United States without tariffs, allowed Shein and Temu, the notorious Chinese e-commerce giants, to grow exponentially. Some observers of the fashion industry have speculated that it might be on the cusp of a reckoning. The elimination of the de minimis exemption, together with Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, has sent shock waves through the industry, rattling U.S. consumers — and with them, major brands like Shein and Temu. Both have already begun to compensate for the drop in U.S. sales by redirecting their efforts toward Europe and Australia while moving their operations to other countries. Other companies, meanwhile, have simply begun offsetting their losses by trimming their sustainability efforts, raising serious fears of an even faster race to the bottom. All of which raises the questions: How did we get into this situation? And, more important, how do we get out? The typical fast-fashion jeans are worn only seven times before being tossed, giving the garment a carbon footprint that is more than 10 times higher per wear than traditional denim. Olga Pankova / Getty Images Step 1: A dirty, bloated underbelly To understand how our garments got so noxious, it helps to go back to the beginning: to how our clothes become clothes in the first place. Take any item of attire — from Lululemon athleisure leggings to the summer of 2024’s viral Uniqlo baby tee; from the swankiest gowns to the most nondescript knockoff jeans — and the story is almost always the same: Most clothes start their lives deep in the ground, either as seeds of cotton or in the nearly 342 million barrels of crude oil that go into the making of synthetic fabrics every year. Most of the problems start with one of these two origin stories. Today, synthetic fibers make up nearly 70 percent of all textile production. Polyester has become particularly ubiquitous across styles and brands, whether those brands are fast-fashion behemoths or rarefied luxury houses. Its soft, stretchy nature can mimic traditional textiles or be engineered into modern, high-performance meshes. Its low cost — just half the price of cotton in some instances — makes it an attractive option for brands and suppliers looking to snag profits while offering lower prices to customers. But beneath its malleable folds lies a nasty business. Commercialized by the chemical giant DuPont in the mid-1900s, the process of making polyester involves superheating two petroleum-based chemicals — ethylene glycol (also used in antifreeze) and terephthalic acid (commonly used in plastic bottles) — and extruding the mixture through tiny holes to form yarn. In 2015, this process was estimated to produce as much annual carbon pollution as 180 coal-fired power plants. As the resulting polyfabrics are woven, washed, treated, and sewn into garments, they continually shed plastic microfibers. Meanwhile, plant-based fibers like linen and cotton, which currently make up a quarter of global textile production, come with their own complications. Compared to other major crops, cotton is considered resource-intensive, earning a reputation among environmental organizations, such as the World Wildlife Fund and the Environmental Justice Foundation, as particularly thirsty, based on the amount of water it consumes, and dirty, based on the quantity of chemical pesticides used to grow it. The cotton fiber needed to manufacture a classic jeans-and-tee outfit requires roughly 500 gallons of irrigation water (and an additional 1,500 gallons of rainwater) to grow. And while cotton takes up a little less than 3 percent of all farmable land, its production accounts for some 5 percent of all pesticide sales and 10 percent of insecticide sales. Other, less common fashion fabrics, such as viscose (made from the pulp of more than 100 million trees per year), come with their own environmental trade-offs — a 2023 report found that nearly a third of those trees came from old-growth or endangered forests. Over the past decade, blended fabrics that mix various types of synthetic fibers and organic ones have become increasingly common, creating an engineering headache for recycling initiatives and spreading plastic’s presence ever further. The environmental impact of your jacket Higher impact: Quilted jackets stuffed with down — generally goose feathers — have been standard-issue for the last century. But polyester fill has begun to dominate the market, and manufacturers have relied on a toxic group of chemicals known as PFAS to waterproof the jackets. These “forever chemicals” don’t degrade naturally, and they have infiltrated drinking water, farmland, and the human body. Down carries its own baggage: It often involves plucking feathers from birds while they’re still alive. Lower impact: Brands have begun developing alternatives to PFAS in anticipation of bans that went into effect in 2025 in California and New York. Patagonia and Vaude have phased out PFAS use entirely, while Gore-Tex, Fjällräven, and Sympatex all offer PFAS-free options. Patagonia, Houdini, and Cotopaxi have also revamped their process for making synthetic fill to use recycled and plant-based materials and produce less emissions. The environmental impact of your T-shirt Higher impact: Growing, weaving, dyeing, and manufacturing cotton into a T-shirt can require more than 700 gallons of water — enough for a single person to drink for 900 days. Cotton cultivation also requires heavy chemical use; some estimates indicate the crop accounts for roughly 16 percent of all insecticides sold worldwide. Lower impact: Hemp-jersey blends can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of a T-shirt. Hemp has low water needs, requiring as much as 90 percent less water than cotton. And because the plant sequesters a lot of CO2 as it grows, its overall carbon footprint is significantly lower than that of other fibers. Step 2: Toxic textiles Once the requisite materials have been grown, harvested, or extracted from DuPont’s primordial ooze, they’re turned into fabric, bleached, and dyed. This is an enormously toxic process that’s estimated to be responsible for 20 percent of water pollution worldwide. Pesticides used to grow cotton are flushed into waterways, along with bleach and the heavy metals — such as cadmium, chromium, lead, and arsenic — found in dye. The World Bank has identified at least 72 toxic chemicals involved in the standard industrial dyeing process, and once those chemicals make their way into aquifers, the knock-on effects are dire. Dark sludge from clothing factories fills nearby lakes and streams, blocking the light needed for photosynthesis and destroying aquatic ecosystems. Even rinsing synthetic fabrics sends microplastics racing down the drain, and experts estimate that about half a million metric tons of microplastics make their way into the oceans each year — equivalent to the weight of 50 Eiffel Towers. Some of this contaminated water is then reused to irrigate local crops, causing health problems for the surrounding community, reducing crop yields, and harming biodiversity. The Citarum River, in West Java, Indonesia, is a toxic testament to this process — the transformation of raw fabric into the pretty hues and bright patterns that make our wardrobes pop. Once a pristine waterway that flowed past cozy farming villages and bustling cities, it became a dumping site for hundreds of textile mills in the 1980s. As more and more arose along its banks, they spilled their waste directly into the river and its tributaries, staining them blue, red, yellow, and black and saturating them with mercury, lead, chromium, and other chemicals. For years, people who live near the river have reported skin rashes and intestinal problems along with more serious conditions like renal failure and tumors — and while the Indonesian government vowed in 2018 to make the river’s waters clean enough to drink by 2025, that deadline has come and almost gone. The river remains one of the most polluted in the world. Piles of rags sorted by color await recycling in a textile factory in Valencia Province, Spain. Only 1 percent of used clothes are recycled and used to manufacture new clothes. Jose A. Bernat Bacete / Getty Images Step 3: How fast is too fast? Once the clothes have been manufactured and are ready to be shipped, fashion can generally be sorted into several buckets: fast, faster, and ultra-fast. More traditional brands like Levi’s, Gap, and Nike will design a collection of apparel in advance of a season and then commission the production of their garments to factories in other countries, thus starting the clothing’s journey along a lengthy supply chain. According to McKinsey, the lag time between design and sale can be as little as 12 weeks. Fast-fashion brands like Zara, H&M, and Forever 21 move through “microseasons” still more quickly, releasing dozens of collections per year. And ultra-fast-fashion brands like Shein, Temu, and Cider can design, manufacture, and ship a new garment in a matter of days. All this speed means different kinds of waste, depending on which bucket a garment falls into. To know exactly how much of each garment to make, traditional and fast-fashion retailers try to predict demand. But because each individual blouse, skirt, and jacket requires its own bespoke assembly line, factories incentivize retailers to buy in bulk, which lowers the brand’s cost per item and helps the supplier stay efficient. It’s a tricky balance, but with profits and savings in mind, the default is to order too much. If you’re curious about which brands might be overstocking offenders, keep an eye out for frequent sales or steep discounts. In 2022, the apparel giant Asos was left with over $1 billion of unsold stock after sales dropped from the previous year. It struck a deal with a resale company to sell its remaining stock at a heavy discount. In the same year, Gap Inc. — which owns brands including Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta — went on a discounting marathon, with multiple sales events in a row to trim down its warehouse bloat. Luxury fashion brands, which are known for destroying their excess merchandise to maintain their products’ exclusivity and value, are also responsible for the largest Black Friday discounts, with up to 46 percent of stock marked down in previous years. Available statistics suggest that this global surplus could amount to anywhere between 8 billion and 60 billion garments a year, as reported in The Guardian. And that’s not including the textiles that never get turned into clothing. The destiny of all that material varies: Some of it is sold at a discount or recycled, but much of it winds up in landfills or incinerated. A discarded shoe floats in the waters off Okinawa, Japan, in June. The footwear industry accounts for about 1.4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — more than half that of the airline industry. D3_plus D.Naruse @ Japan / Getty Images Paradoxically, the new ultra-fast-fashion models embraced by brands like Shein are “more efficient,” according to Valérie Moatti, a former professor of fashion supply-chain management and strategy. Shein, for instance, claims to make only 100 to 200 copies of each garment, with unsold inventory in the single digits — thanks, largely, to its data-forward business model, which leverages predictive AI algorithms to identify “microtrends” in fashion. Yet that efficiency creates its own problems. In 2023, Shein nudged out Zara for the title of biggest polluter in fast fashion. Shein’s e-commerce model, while speedy, relies on small-package air shipment, which is highly carbon-intensive, instead of the bulk ocean shipping typically used by fashion brands. With up to 10,000 new items released for sale on its site every day, Shein has flooded the U.S. postal system with as many as 900,000 packages a day. This air shipping accounts for up to 38 percent of Shein’s emissions, which nearly doubled between 2022 and 2023 to 16 million metric tons of CO2. By contrast, Inditex, which owns Zara and uses primarily sea and road shipping, reported that it released a little over 2 million metric tons of CO2 transporting its products in the same year. The environmental impact of your jeans Higher impact: New denim jeans, traditionally made mostly of cotton, carry many of the same environmental burdens as a cotton T-shirt. In recent years, elastic textures made from synthetic blends have added microplastics to the denim equation. Washing a single pair of jeans can release up to 56,000 microfibers into wastewater systems. They spread from there into the environment. Lower impact: Buying secondhand jeans can cut carbon costs by 90 percent, while cold-washing and and line-drying may reduce the carbon cost by 70 percent compared with machine-washing. Extending the lifespan of your garments by just nine months can reduce their carbon, water, and waste footprints by 20 percent. The environmental impact of your leggings Higher impact: Most exercise leggings are synthetic, generally made up of roughly 85 percent polyester and 15 percent Lycra (commonly known as spandex). This means they’re a fossil fuel product and will shed microplastics when washed or worn. Lower impact: Since 2019, the production of activewear made from recycled polyester has increased by 80 percent. Buying from brands like Puma, Patagonia, and Adidas that use recycled polyester may help curb the carbon cost of your outfit. To prevent your clothes from shedding microfibers, the company Guppyfriend offers an eco-friendly washing bag. Step 4: From closet to landfill Once the spoils of someone’s latest shopping spree have found a home in their closet, they likely won’t remain there for long. In 2024, researchers found that the average fast-fashion pair of jeans is worn only seven times, giving them a carbon footprint 11 times higher per wear than traditional denim pants. A typical pair of jeans is kept, on average, for four years before being tossed. Even when clothes are donated, they often end up burned or in a landfill, where they belch greenhouse gases, like methane, as they decay. Anything made with synthetic fibers, like stretchy “denim,” see-through mesh, and athletic wear, sheds plastic microfibers into soil and waterways. And while California and New York have banned the toxic forever chemicals known as PFAS in apparel and textiles, decades of their use in waterproofing outdoor wear means that our discarded rain jackets are leaching the pollutants too. “In the United States, we consume the most apparel in the world, and so we are also the largest exporters and waste creators of fashion,” said Rachel Kibbe, who leads American Circular Textiles, a coalition that lobbies for fashion policies that are “sustainable, profitable, and resilient” in the U.S. “It’s a missed opportunity to recapture resources that we’ve already put a lot of time, labor, energy, water, and chemicals into.” Kibbe’s organization is at the forefront of the emerging movement around “circularity,” a term that refers to a closed-loop supply chain that continually repurposes clothing. Touted by international nonprofits, major brands, and advocates alike, the word has become the de facto slogan for those promoting clothing recycling. For Kibbe, circularity means extending the life of the materials as long as possible. Last year, her coalition provided technical feedback on a California bill that requires manufacturers to manage the recycling and reuse of their textiles. The law, passed in September 2024, mirrors a flurry of similar fast-fashion waste regulations in the European Union. But turning old rags into new garments poses a steep technical challenge. While features like zippers and buttons create their own difficulties for recycling clothes into new fabrics, the bigger issue is the industry’s growing reliance on blended fabrics — an intricate mix of synthetic and natural fibers that are difficult to pull back apart. Although the technology exists to separate these fibers for reuse, it remains in its early stages and is costly to scale. In 2024, Renewcell, a textile-recycling company that partnered with major brands like H&M and Levi’s, went bankrupt. The environmental impact of your leather boots Higher impact: The leather used in shoes and handbags depends on cattle ranching, which is the primary driver of deforestation in the Amazon. Many vegan-leather options consist of synthesized plastics, which come with a heavy chemical burden. Soles are often made of synthetic rubber, a fossil fuel product that produces three to six tons of CO2 per ton of polymer material. Meanwhile, natural rubber has caused the deforestation of more than 4 million hectares of tropical forests over the past three decades. Lower impact: There’s a limited number of sustainability-minded shoe brands. Experts say that the most sustainable option for buying leather are stores that use local small-scale suppliers or source the hide as a byproduct from fair-trade farmers. In the future, other alternatives may be made from fungi. In 2023, the biotech start up MycoWorks announced the successful production of the world’s first commercial-scale mycelium biomaterial, which has 80 percent lower emissions than cow leather. The environmental impact of your running shoes Higher impact: A single running shoe contains as many as 65 discrete parts that require 360 processing steps to assemble, which is often done using coal-powered machines. On average, making a pair of shoes emits the equivalent of 30 pounds of carbon dioxide, over two-thirds of which come from the manufacturing process. Lower impact: Companies like Allbirds are producing new types of biofoam materials made from sugarcane and a bioplastic made with methane waste. In 2023, Allbirds introduced its MO.Onshot sneaker, a “net-zero carbon shoe.” Other companies, like Saye, are also using alternative biomaterials, such as plant-based leathers made from cactus, corn, and bamboo yarn. The circularity movement isn’t an isolated phenomenon. As the outrage over fashion’s many environmental faux pas has grown, so have the efforts to force the industry to mend its ways — through protests, the rise of a robust secondhand clothing market, and textile recycling regulations in the European Union and California. And the industry, ever image-conscious, has started to listen. Many historic offenders like Shein, H&M, and Burberry have set voluntary sustainability goals, including using recycled fabrics, reducing freshwater use, limiting packaging, and cutting emissions. But these efforts have often been slow and stuttering — more greenwashing than greening. And even at their most rigorous, they have come up against a problem that goes to the very heart of the modern fashion industry: speed. At the same time that brands have begun ramping up their sustainability efforts, many have also begun speeding up their production cycle, churning out ever more clothes at ever faster rates. The result is a fundamental incongruity: an industry hurtling forward at breakneck speed, even as it tries to change course. Or as Kristy Caylor, who has founded several sustainable apparel brands, including the clothing-recycling startup Trashie, observed: “We all know people who are doing a much better job, but overall, we’re still in the speedy cycle. If we’re still consuming at a rapid rate and the materials are better, but we’re still throwing it all out, have we really done a better job?” Lynda Grose, a designer and professor of design and critical studies at California College for the Arts, agrees that it’s too easy right now to produce new clothes. Even ethical fashion brands produce a great deal of waste. “I would say that the entire industry adopts fast-fashion tactics,” Grose said. “I don’t want fast fashion to be used as a scapegoat — the whole industry needs a magnifying glass.” A selection of used clothes hang on racks in a secondhand shop. Each year, roughly 700,000 tons of used clothing from the U.S. ends up in foreign markets in countries such as Ghana, Kenya, Pakistan, and Chile. Triocean / Getty Images The industry, which remains largely unregulated, also can’t really be trusted to police itself. To slow the warp-speed pace of modern fashion requires more than ad hoc efforts by individual brands. Tariffs, waste quotas, and taxes on waste could all cut down on the fashion industry’s seemingly intractable garbage issues. And a handful of places are already trying. In 2024, the European Union introduced rules banning large companies from destroying unsold textiles and footwear, while France recently approved legislation that imposes a mix of taxes, advertising bans, and sustainability standards on fast-fashion giants. And while some brands might bristle, many of these efforts — such as incentivizing clothing repair and recycling — could benefit the companies as well as the consumer. For Lilah Horwitz, the director of content and marketing at Eileen Fisher Renew, which saves and repurposes old Eileen Fisher clothing, sustainability is about taking responsibility for the full life cycle of the clothes, even after they pass into the consumer’s hands. “We will take them back, no matter the condition, and we’re going to spend years trying to figure out what is the best thing to do with them,” she said. The catch is that “you have to make a good product the first time. You make something that hopefully lasts, and then you build the infrastructure and the systems to keep it lasting.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What your cheap clothes cost the planet on Dec 15, 2025.

Waste

Activism

Chemicals

The Guardian view on waste: the festive season is a good time to think about rubbish | Editorial

Weak regulation is to blame for disastrous failures in relation to pollution. But there are solutions if people get behind themA study suggesting that as many as 168m light-up Christmas ornaments and similar items could be thrown out in a single year, in the UK, is concerning if not surprising in light of longstanding challenges around recycling rates and waste reduction. Even if the actual figure is lower, there is no question that battery-powered and electrical toys, lights and gifts are proliferating as never before. Despite a great deal of commentary aimed at dialling down consumption over the festive season, especially surplus packaging and rubbish, strings of disposable lights and flashing figures have gained in popularity. Homes, front gardens and shopping streets grow sparklier by the year.Batteries and electrical devices present particular difficulties when it comes to disposal, because they cause fires. But they are just one part of a more general problem of excessive waste – and weak regulatory oversight. British plastic waste exports rose by 5% in 2024 to nearly 600,000 tonnes. A new report on plastics from the Pew Charitable Trusts warns that global production is expected to rise by 52% by 2040 – to 680m tonnes – outstripping the capacity of waste management systems around the world. Continue reading...

A study suggesting that as many as 168m light-up Christmas ornaments and similar items could be thrown out in a single year, in the UK, is concerning if not surprising in light of longstanding challenges around recycling rates and waste reduction. Even if the actual figure is lower, there is no question that battery-powered and electrical toys, lights and gifts are proliferating as never before. Despite a great deal of commentary aimed at dialling down consumption over the festive season, especially surplus packaging and rubbish, strings of disposable lights and flashing figures have gained in popularity. Homes, front gardens and shopping streets grow sparklier by the year.Batteries and electrical devices present particular difficulties when it comes to disposal, because they cause fires. But they are just one part of a more general problem of excessive waste – and weak regulatory oversight. British plastic waste exports rose by 5% in 2024 to nearly 600,000 tonnes. A new report on plastics from the Pew Charitable Trusts warns that global production is expected to rise by 52% by 2040 – to 680m tonnes – outstripping the capacity of waste management systems around the world.Some retailers in the UK and elsewhere have cut down on packaging. There is a booming online trade in secondhand clothes. But the biggest recent rows about waste in the UK have been about sewage, not consumer goods. An overhaul of water industry regulation is meant to sort this out, following a review in the summer. There is still a high likelihood that the worst-performing company, Thames Water, could collapse into special administration.But Ofwat is not the only regulator to face criticism for its performance in relation to pollution and waste. The Environment Agency is under growing fire as the problem of illegal rubbish dumping has moved from being a local issue in a handful of locations to a national one.In October, the House of Lords environment committee called for the government to urgently review its approach to this “critically under-prioritised” problem. An illegal dump at Hoad’s Wood in Kent is being cleaned up at a cost of £15m. But six similar sites in England are known to the Environment Agency. Campaigners believe that the situation is in danger of spiralling if enforcement efforts are not rapidly scaled up.Discarded strings of battery-powered fairy lights might seem insignificant in the context of vast heaps of toxic waste, or the 3.6m hours of raw sewage spills for which the water industry in England was responsible last year. But environmental organisations are right to draw attention to the role of consumers as well as industry. The Environment Agency ought to have been empowered in the context of the climate crisis – not undermined and underfunded as it was under the Tories. But individuals can make a difference when it comes to waste, both in their decisions about what to buy, keep and get rid of – and in their political opinions and choices.Another report, published by the consultancy Hybrid Economics last month, said the UK could end its reliance on plastic waste exports, and create 5,400 new jobs, if it invested in up to 15 new recycling facilities. The lights on buildings and trees are cheering in the run-up to holidays, but we shouldn’t ignore what happens when they are turned off.

Waste

Pollution

Crisis

UK and Europe’s hidden landfills at risk of leaking toxic waste into water supplies

Exclusive: Rising flood risks driven by climate change could release chemicals from ageing sites – posing threats to ecosystems‘I kept smelling a horrible nasty smell’: the risks of England’s old dumping groundsThousands of landfills across the UK and Europe sit in floodplains, posing a potential threat to drinking water and conservation areas if toxic waste is released into rivers, soils and ecosystems, it can be revealed.The findings are the result of the first continent-wide mapping of landfills, conducted by the Guardian, Watershed Investigations and Investigate Europe.Disclaimer: This dataset may contain duplicate records. Duplicates can arise from multiple data sources, repeated entries, or variations in data collection processes. While efforts have been made to identify and reduce duplication, some records may remain. Continue reading...

Thousands of landfills across the UK and Europe sit in floodplains, posing a potential threat to drinking water and conservation areas if toxic waste is released into rivers, soils and ecosystems, it can be revealed.The findings are the result of the first continent-wide mapping of landfills, conducted by the Guardian, Watershed Investigations and Investigate Europe.Patrick Byrne, of Liverpool John Moores University, said: “With increasing frequency and magnitudes of floods and erosion from climate change, there’s a greater risk of these wastes washing into our environment.“This includes physical waste like plastics and building materials, but also toxic metals and chemicals such as Pfas [‘forever chemicals’] and PCBs [polychlorinated biphenyls].”Kate Spencer, professor of environmental geochemistry at Queen Mary University, said: “We’ve identified wide-ranging wastes at an eroding coastal landfill [in Tilbury] including what looked like hospital blood bags, and we are talking about tens of thousands of sites that if they aren’t lined and are at flood risk, then there’s multiple ways for it to get into groundwater, surface water and the food chain.”Across the EU there are estimated to be up to 500,000 landfills. Roughly 90% of them, including 22,000 sites in the UK, predate pollution control regulations such as landfill linings to prevent leaching. Modern landfills which are well managed are likely to pose a low risk.More than 61,000 landfills have been identified across Europe, with 28% located in areas vulnerable to flooding. Modelling indicates the true number of flood‑risk sites could be as high as 140,000. This mapping effort, based on requests for landfill data from 10 countries and supplemented with open-source information, highlights a deeper issue: EU institutions lack centralised landfill records, while data from individual member states remains fragmented, inconsistent and often inaccessible.“We have inadequate records, differences in ways of categorising these sites and that makes it really difficult to deal with,” said Spencer.“It’s the worst possible scenario. Most landfills will be fine, but you only need a small number of sites which contain very toxic chemicals to be a problem. We just don’t know which ones.”More than half of the mapped landfills are in areas where groundwater fails to meet chemical quality standards, suggesting the landfills may in some cases have contributed to the contamination.The EU landfill directive, adopted in 1999, banned unlined landfills and created strict waste acceptance criteria. But before this there were few or no pollution containment measures.Many older sites across the UK and Europe were built before modern protections. Photograph: Ashley Cooper/Global Warming Images/Alamy“There could be many other sources of pollution, such as farming and industry, but one of the main ways chemicals migrate away from landfills is through groundwater,” said Byrne.Byrne found leachate leaking from the historic landfill at Newgate nature reserve in Wilmslow, Cheshire, into a small stream. His tests found toxic Pfas “forever chemicals” at 20 times the acceptable levels for drinking water. In Greece, tests found levels of Pfas many times above drinking water standards, as well as mercury and cadmium leaching into the Nedontas river from the former Maratholaka landfill site in the Taygetos mountains, which are visited by thousands of hikers every year. The local mayor of Kalamata says the site has ceased to operate since June 2023 and that “there is currently no evidence or data to substantiate any environmental impact from the operation of the site”.Some of these waters could be sources of drinking water and analysis found almost 10,000 landfills in drinking water zones in France, the UK, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy. More than 4,000 of these are historic landfills in England and Wales and are therefore unlikely to have pollution controls. It was not possible to confirm whether landfills in Europe predated regulations or not.“We don’t and won’t know how much risk to human health and our drinking water there is until you can identify where all the landfills are, what is in them, whether they’re leaching and if treatment processes are filtering them out” said Byrne.A spokesperson for the European Commission said that “under the drinking water directive the quality of the water has to be ensured ‘at the tap’ in the whole EU. The directive includes several parameters to be monitored and the corresponding limit values have to be complied with. In case of exceedances of these limit values, member states must ensure that the necessary remedial action is taken.”In the UK, water companies undertake risk assessments and monitoring of their public water abstractions under regulatory guidelines.Landfills that are most visibly at risk of exposure are those along the coast. The analysis found 335 landfills in coastal erosion zones in England, Wales and France, and 258 landfills across Europe within 200 metres of the coast, which could be at risk of erosion or exposure from storm surges.“This is the tip of the iceberg,” said Spencer, who is helping the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to rank the most high-risk landfills out of 1,200 identified priority sites in England and Wales. She tested two eroding landfills on the coast and found Lynemouth in the north-east released elevated concentrations of arsenic, and Lyme Regis in the south-west discharged high levels of lead, both of which could cause ecological harm.“We now need to understand the potential risks of climate change and associated pollution release at all our historic landfill sites, not just the coastal ones,” she said, adding that money will be needed to tackle these sites.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotion“Essentially we are all living on a garbage dump,” said Spencer, who explained that about 80% of the British population lives within 2km of known landfill sites, and disproportionately in the most deprived parts of the country.A report from the UK’s Health Security Agency last year concluded that living close to a well-managed municipal active or closed landfill site does not pose a significant risk to human health, although the picture for historic sites is less clear due to the lack of data.Wildlife may also be at risk, as more than 2,000 European landfills are in protected conservation areas.“We know plastics are accumulating in wildlife, humans and environments and there’s emerging evidence of negative health impacts,” said Byrne.“A key thing with chemical pollution is where the chemical leachate goes. We have important wetlands around these areas, so if the leachate goes there it could accumulate in wildlife.”Illegal waste dumping is also a significant problem, which Europol has identified as one of Europe’s fastest-growing areas of organised crime. In February, Croatian authorities arrested 13 people suspected of illegally dumping at least 35,000 tonnes of waste from Italy, Slovenia and Germany in Croatia, generating a profit of at least €4m for the criminals.In England, Environment Agency data shows 137 open investigations into illegal dumps, involving more than 1m cubic metres of material.In the Campania region of southern Italy, illegal toxic waste dumping by the mafia has been blamed for the increased death and disease rates in the area.In England and Wales, at the current pace of use our remaining landfill capacity could run out in about 2050. New sites often face environmental concerns and public opposition.An Environment Agency spokesperson said: “Our job is to protect people and the environment, and we are working closely with the landfill industry, water companies and across government to better understand the impacts from Pfas chemicals in landfills.“Environment Agency teams are undertaking a multi-year programme to improve evidence about the sources of Pfas pollution in England. Alongside this, we are also running further studies to investigate the potential contribution of Pfas in landfill leachate to a limited number of sewage works.”A Defra spokesperson said: “We want to prevent waste from occurring in the first place, but where waste occurs, we need to manage it in the most appropriate way.“We are committed to reducing the amount of waste being sent to landfill, supported through our collection and packaging reforms. Alongside this, the forthcoming circular economy growth plan will outline measures to drive greater reuse and recycling, safeguarding the value of our resources and preventing the nation’s waste going to landfill.” Disclaimer: This dataset may contain duplicate records. Duplicates can arise from multiple data sources, repeated entries, or variations in data collection processes. While efforts have been made to identify and reduce duplication, some records may remain.

Waste

Water

Climate

UK can create 5,400 jobs if it stops plastic waste exports, report finds

Campaigners say closure of loophole making it cheaper to export rather than recycle will boost circular economyThe UK could end its reliance on exporting plastic waste by 2030 to support the creation of 5,400 new jobs and take responsibility for the environmental impact of its waste, according to research.The report said up to 15 new recycling facilities could be built by the end of the decade, attracting more than £800m of private investment. The increase in capacity would help generate almost £900m of economic value every year, providing at least £100m in new tax revenues annually. Continue reading...

The UK could end its reliance on exporting plastic waste by 2030 to support the creation of 5,400 new jobs and take responsibility for the environmental impact of its waste, according to research.The report said up to 15 new recycling facilities could be built by the end of the decade, attracting more than £800m of private investment. The increase in capacity would help generate almost £900m of economic value every year; providing at least £100m of new tax revenues annually.The report by Hybrid Economics comes as Britain’s plastic exports rose by 5% in 2024 to nearly 600,000 tonnes of waste.Exporting plastic creates environmental problems for many countries that receive it, as they do not have the ability to recycle it. It also, the report argues, removes valuable feedstock for a British recycling industry.Campaigners want the loophole that makes it cheaper to export plastic waste rather than recycle it in the UK, closed.Exports have soared in the first part of this year to Indonesia in particular – a country struggling with an environmental crisis from plastic pollution – amounting to more than 24,000 tonnes.The report said that by exporting the unprocessed plastic waste it produces, the UK is evading its responsibility to deal with its own waste and was denying itself an economic opportunity.The Guardian revealed last month that, in the past two years, 21 plastic recycling and processing factories across the UK have shut down owing to the scale of exports, the cheap price of virgin plastic and an influx of cheap products from Asia.Neville Hill, partner at Hybrid Economics, which produced the report, said the UK was only using half of its potential for recycling plastic waste. He said: “Ending exports of unprocessed plastic packaging waste by 2030 would allow the UK to take control of its environmental responsibilities and seize a clear economic opportunity.“Our analysis shows the sector can expand significantly with no call on public funds, provided government sets the right framework.”The way payments are made up at present incentivises the export of plastic waste, rather than encouraging businesses to keep it in the UK to be recycled.James McLeary, the managing director of Biffa Polymers, which commissioned the report, said the company had recycled 10bn plastic HDPE milk bottles in the last 20 years. He described this as a circular economy success story.“The lesson is simple. When the right conditions are in place, UK recycling grows, investment follows and the environmental and economic benefits build year after year. The UK can replicate that success across all plastic packaging and take responsibility for processing its own waste onshore.”The report is calling for an increase in the plastic packaging tax, which is imposed on producers who fail to include at least 30% of recycled plastic in their products, to 50% and a total phasing out of exports of unprocessed plastic packaging waste.

Waste

Business

Government

‘We’ve got to find answers’: Corby families affected by cancer searching for truth about toxic waste sites

Alison Gaffney believes her son’s rare leukaemia was caused by dumped toxic waste from the town’s steelworksAlison Gaffney and Andy Hinde received the devastating news that their 17-month-old son, Fraser, had a rare type of leukaemia in 2018.Two years of gruelling treatment followed, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy, before a stem cell transplant. Fraser, then aged three, made a “miraculous recovery” from the surgery, before doctors declared the cancer in remission. Continue reading...

Alison Gaffney and Andy Hinde received the devastating news that their 17-month-old son, Fraser, had a rare type of leukaemia in 2018.Two years of gruelling treatment followed, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy, before a stem cell transplant. Fraser, then aged three, made a “miraculous recovery” from the surgery, before doctors declared the cancer in remission.It was at this point, as Fraser started to recover and grow stronger, that Gaffney, 36, began to look for answers. She could not stop thinking about comments made by hospital staff at the time of her son’s diagnosis. “It keeps us up at night wondering how Fraser got his cancer,” a consultant had told her.Fraser started to recover after two years of gruelling treatment and a stem cell transplant. At this point, Gaffney began looking for answers. Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The GuardianThe botched disposal of millions of tonnes of contaminated waste after the closure of Europe’s largest steelworks in Corby, Northamptonshire, in 1979 had “always been a known thing”, said Gaffney. A 2009 civil case linked the council’s negligent clean-up of the site to a string of birth defects in local children in the 1980s and 1990s. It was later dramatised in the 2025 Netflix series Toxic Town.Increasingly, Gaffney started to link the case to her own. “[Fraser’s cancer is] not genetic,” she said. “So what are the reasons? … It’s got to be down to the town. All these kids [with] cancer.“Everybody in this town knows somebody who’s got a child [with] cancer. That’s not normal.”Gaffney and Hinde started to connect with other families in Corby with similar stories to theirs – including some of Gaffney’s former classmates at Brooke Weston Academy – and the group began compiling detailed records on those affected. They now lead a campaign representing about 130 families with cases of childhood cancer dating back to 1988.The group has been calling on the local authority to investigate any links between cases of childhood cancer in Corby and the decommissioning of the plant. At the end of this month, public health officials are set to publish their analysis of whether the town has had a disproportionate number of cases of childhood cancer for its population of 70,000.“All we want is to try and protect future people so they do not have to endure the pain that we’ve been through,” said Gaffney.Fraser, his brother, Archer, and their parents. Gaffney and Hinde started connecting with other families in Corby with similar stories to theirs and the group began compiling detailed records on those affected. Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The GuardianThe judgment in the 2009 civil claim accepted that, between 1983 and 1997, millions of tonnes of contaminated materials from the steel plant were transported “almost invariably” from the south of Corby to Deene Quarry in the north – with “large quantities” of toxic waste carried and dropped on public roads and “substantial quantities” of dust created by the reclamation.However, it also cited reports from the Environment Agency in 1997 that found stockpiles of contaminated material that had been left at Deene Quarry were later removed in “large quantities”.Gaffney believes waste was not only dumped at the Deene Quarry site but in other parts of the town. On Thursday, she welcomed a “major step forward” after North Northamptonshire council said it would test land that could be contaminated and investigate where toxic waste was dumped.Gaffney said council staff admitted in the meeting that they did not know where the sites of contaminated waste could be. “They said: ‘We don’t know where these sites are. We have no documentation, we have nothing on it.’”In a statement to the Guardian, North Northamptonshire council said the information they had seen from that time “says that the waste was disposed of in Deene Quarry, a former landfill site on the outskirts of Corby”, but added: “People have recently raised concerns on potential areas of contaminated land where they believe waste could also have been historically disposed of.“We are thoroughly reviewing historic records to see if there is any information which suggests that disposal could have taken place elsewhere. This work will take time.”A play area in a housing development that was built after the steelworks closed down. Gaffney believes toxic waste from the steelworks was dumped at sites other than Deene Quarry. Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The GuardianGaffney said the transparent nature of the meeting with the council shocked them. “Local authorities don’t normally hold their hands up and take this on but we’re really proud of them for doing so and saying they want to protect their people, like we do.”The council’s announcement was also welcomed by Tonia Shalgosky, a pastoral lead at a primary school, whose nine-year-old daughter, Bella, was diagnosed with blood cancer in June this year.“I had to shave my nine-year-old daughter’s head because her hair was falling out from the drugs she had to take to kill her cancer. So actually it’s in our interest, it’s in Bella’s interest [for the council] to share that information,” she said.“There are so many people in the town that have been diagnosed with childhood cancer and I just feel it’s too much to ignore – it needs looking at it. This can’t be normal.”Meg Lyons, 31, who works in sales and now lives in London, said families deserved “complete and utter truth and transparency” from the council.Lyons’s 11-year-old sister, Eve, died on 24 June 2017 after being diagnosed with a rare bone cancer at the age of nine. Eve, who fundraised for Stand Up To Cancer, was “one of the most lovable, funniest and kindest” people, Lyons said.Her mother remembers the impact of the closure of the steel plant on the town, Lyons said. “She said you couldn’t put your hand in front of your face because [of] the red ash.”Meg Lyons’s sister, Eve, died in June 2017 after being diagnosed with a rare bone cancer at the age of nine. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian“This has been going on since I’ve probably been about three years old. It’s an excessive amount of time and it is negligence toward the people of Corby.”Lyons’s cousin, Maggie Mahon, was one of several families involved in the 2009 claim against the then Corby council after her baby was born with clubfoot. Her husband, Derek, was one of the lorry drivers involved in removing waste from the steelworks. Their story was depicted in the Toxic Town series, and showed Maggie beating the dust from her husband’s jeans.Gaffney said the campaign group has been approached by whistleblowers who were involved in the dumping of waste in the town.One of those involved in the waste removal was Gaffney’s father. “He drove the lorry and dumped [the waste in a] pond,” she said. “At the time, everyone had lost their jobs so everyone took on any job that you could.”“He wasn’t even licensed to drive a lorry. He said: ‘Me and the other guys weren’t licensed but they had us drive these big lorries through the town, just dumping it,’” she said.Gaffney says the campaign group has been approached by whistleblowers who were involved in the dumping of waste in the town. Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The GuardianThe lawyer involved in the 2009 civil claim, Des Collins, is now representing Gaffney and other cancer families. He said only a statutory public inquiry would ensure the full truth is uncovered.“Environmental testing, in order to rule out causation, is a highly complex process requiring stringent parameters and oversight to allow for reliance on its findings,” he said.“No matter how genuine the council’s new approach, I am compelled to point out that, in my experience, only a statutory public inquiry has the capability both to reassure the public that the full truth has been uncovered and to set out the lessons to be learned.”In a statement the leader of the council, Martin Griffiths, said the meeting with Gaffney and Hinde “marked the start of the parties’ commitment to work together in an open, positive and constructive way for the benefit of Corby residents”.The council said it was committed to full transparency and would set up a working group, which will include Gaffney, to examine public health and contamination issues in Corby.Gaffney is hopeful testing on land in Corby will begin once the group has been established. “Now, every family that comes through, I’m listening to their stories and it’s so hard. If anything, it just gives us that further fight,” she said.“Each time it just chips away and then makes your fight stronger, because you’re thinking: ‘We’ve got to find answers for these children.’”

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Cardboard Scavengers

The documentary explores scavenging practices in Laredo, Texas, focusing on the informal transborder recycling on the U.S.-Mexico border. The focus is on a married couple who are cartoneros (cardboard scavengers). Chole and Jose cross the border daily to collect cardboard and then transport it into Mexico to sell. The film depicts the ongoing interdependence of the economies of Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo. It introduces audiences to two people who depend on scavenging practices that help both countries' economies and recycling efforts.

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Companies aim to release more treated oilfield wastewater into rivers and streams

Two permits pending in the Pecos watershed

Related News

What your cheap clothes cost the planet

The Guardian view on waste: the festive season is a good time to think about rubbish | Editorial

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UK can create 5,400 jobs if it stops plastic waste exports, report finds

‘We’ve got to find answers’: Corby families affected by cancer searching for truth about toxic waste sites

Suggested Viewing

Kingdom of Waste

El País de la Eterna Primavera (Land of the Eternal Spring)

Keeper of the Creek

Wastewater: A Tale of Two Cities

Cardboard Scavengers

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