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The more plastic companies make, the more they pollute

A new study, drawing on five years of data collected across 84 countries, proves what seems self-evident.

The more plastic a company makes, the more pollution it creates. That seemingly obvious, yet previously unproven, point, is the main takeaway from a first-of-its-kind study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. Researchers from a dozen universities around the world found that, for every 1 percent increase in the amount of plastic a company uses, there is an associated 1 percent increase in its contribution to global plastic litter. In other words, if Coca-Cola is producing one-tenth of the world’s plastic, the research predicts that the beverage behemoth is responsible for about a tenth of the identifiable plastic litter on beaches or in parks, rivers, and other ecosystems. That finding “shook me up a lot, I was really distraught,” said Win Cowger, a researcher at the Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research and the study’s lead author. It suggests that companies’ loudly proclaimed efforts to reduce their plastic footprint “aren’t doing much at all” and that more is needed to make them scale down the amount of plastic they produce. Significantly, it supports calls from delegates to the United Nations global plastics treaty — which is undergoing its fourth round of discussions in Ottawa, Canada, through Tuesday — to restrict production as a primary means to “end plastic pollution.” “What the data is saying is that if the status quo doesn’t change in a huge way — if social norms around the rapid consumption and production of new materials don’t change — we won’t see what we want,” Cowger told Grist. Read Next Petrochemical companies have known for 40 years that plastics recycling wouldn’t work Joseph Winters That plastic production should be correlated with plastic pollution is intuitive, but until now there has been little quantitative research to prove it — especially on a company-by-company basis. Perhaps the most significant related research in this area appeared in a 2020 paper published in Environmental Science and Technology showing that overall marine plastic pollution was growing alongside global plastic production. Other research since then has documented the rapidly expanding “plastic smog” in the world’s oceans and forecasted a surge in plastic production over the next several decades. The Sciences Advances article draws on more than 1,500 “brand audits” coordinated between 2018 and 2022 by Break Free From Plastic, a coalition of more than 3,000 environmental organizations. Volunteers across 84 countries collected more than 1.8 million pieces of plastic waste and counted the number of items contributed by specific companies.  About half of the litter that volunteers collected couldn’t be tied to a specific company, either because it never had a logo or because its branding had faded or worn off. Among the rest, a small handful of companies — mostly in the food and beverage sector — turned up most often. The top polluters were Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Danone, Altria — the parent company of Philip Morris USA — and Philip Morris International (which is a separate company that sells many of the same products). More than 1 in 10 of the pieces came from Coca-Cola, the top polluter by a significant margin. Overall, just 56 companies were responsible for half of the plastic bearing identifiable branding. The researchers plotted each company’s contribution to plastic pollution against its contribution to global plastic production (defined by mass, rather than the number of items). The result was the tidy, one-to-one relationship between production and pollution that caused Cowger so much distress. Log-log linear regressions and point plot for the relationship between the percent of global plastic mass produced by companies (x axis) and the mean percent of the total branded plastic found in the audit events (y axis). Courtesy of Win Cowger Many of the top polluters identified in the study have made voluntary commitments to address their outsize plastic footprint. Coca-Cola, for example, says it aims to reduce its use of “virgin plastic derived from nonrenewable sources” by 3 million metric tons over the next five years, and to sell a quarter of its beverages in reusable or refillable containers by 2030. By that date the company also aims to collect and recycle a bottle or can for each one it sells. Pepsi has a similar target to reduce virgin plastic use to 20 percent below a 2018 baseline by the end of the decade. Nestlé says it had reduced virgin plastic use by 10.5 percent as of 2022, and plans to achieve further reductions by 2025. In response to Grist’s request for comment, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola listed several of the company’s targets to reduce plastic packaging, increased recycled content, and scale up reusable alternatives. “We care about the impact of every drink we sell and are committed to growing our business in the right way,” the spokesperson said. Four of the other top polluting companies did not respond to a request for comment. It’s worth noting that many of the companies’ plans involve replacing virgin plastic with recycled material. This does not necessarily address the problem outlined in the Science Advances study, since plastic products are no less likely to become litter just because they’re made of recycled content. There’s also a limit to the number of times plastic can be recycled — experts say just two or three times — before it must be sent to a landfill or an incinerator. Many plastic items cannot be recycled at all. Richard Thompson, a professor of marine biology at the University of Plymouth in the U.K., commended the researchers for making “a very useful contribution to our understanding about the link between production and pollution.” He said the findings could shape regulations to make companies financially responsible for plastic waste — based on the specific amount they contribute to the environment. The findings could also inform this week’s negotiations for the U.N. global plastics treaty, where delegates are continuing to spar over whether and how to restrict production. According to Cowger, if the treaty really aims to “end plastic pollution” — as it states in its mandate — then negotiators will need to think beyond voluntary measures and regulate big producers.  “It’s not going to be Coca-Cola or some other big company saying, ‘I’m gonna reduce my plastic by 2030, you’ll see,’” Cowger told Grist. “It’s gonna be a country that says, ‘If you don’t reduce by 2030, you’re going to get hit with a huge fine.’”  This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The more plastic companies make, the more they pollute on Apr 24, 2024.

The children affected by Aliso Canyon’s historic gas leak are voting age. They want California to ban fracking

Many of the Southern California children that were affected by the Aliso Canyon gas leak are now registering to vote for the first time and are looking for election candidates to back an outright ban on fracking.

Earth Day Op-Ed Contest Winner: First Place More than 70 high school students across California submitted opinion pieces to CalMatters’ second annual Earth Day contest. The 2024 contest theme was “What solution should Californians running for office support to help address climate change?” Guest Commentary written by Emma Kavcioglu Emma Kavcioglu is a junior at Granada Hills Charter High School in Los Angeles. She is the opinion editor for her school’s journalism program, the Plaid Press. As I walked out of my third grade classroom on Oct. 23, 2015, I was immediately hit with a potent, suffocating smell. I instantly recognized it: gasoline. Less than a mile away from my home, a faulty well at SoCalGas’ Aliso Canyon storage facility had caused the largest methane leak in U.S. history, releasing more than 100,000 metric tons of the potent greenhouse gas. It lasted over 100 days.  Roughly 8,300 families were forced to abandon their homes, mine being one of them. My school was completely relocated to a different campus, and my family moved into my grandmother’s home.  The worst part? People in my community suffered from heart issues, pneumonia and epilepsy because of these methane emissions. I felt the brunt of the pain when I ended up hospitalized with gastrointestinal issues for weeks after the leak.  Aliso Canyon is a major producer of hydraulically fractured gas. Also known as fracking, it’s a process that uses pressurized water to create cracks in shale rock to release oil and natural gas. While fracking wasn’t the cause of the leak, allowing it so close to residential communities increases the probability of dangerous methane exposure – like what happened at Aliso Canyon.    Despite this, SoCalGas downplayed their negligence and labeled the leak as an inconvenience, rather than a genuine health risk that devastated communities. Like so many other corporations, SoCalGas got a slap on the wrist from the government. They agreed to a $4 million settlement and reopened the plant a few years later. That’s not surprising given how much oil and gas companies spend to convince government officials to support their businesses. In 2021 alone, these industries spent $55.6 million on lobbying to sway votes on environmental policy. In California last year, the Western States Petroleum Association and Chevron spent a combined $15.3 million, the most of any lobbying group. Given the environmental, health and safety implications, we need to support candidates in California who rally behind legislation to ban fracking.  On the environmental level, fracking-produced methane heats up the planet 80 times more than an equal amount of carbon dioxide over a 20-year span. Fracking sites also cause earthquakes – the Journal of Seismological Research identified 730 sites where fracking activity caused earthquakes over the past 150 years. When experts are predicting a major earthquake will strike California before 2032, fracking increases the likelihood and magnitude of future tremors.  Despite what cynics and special interests say, banning fracking is possible, but anti-fracking legislation continues to be shot down in the state Legislature. Gov. Gavin Newsom is partly to blame because he has never fully supported an outright ban – he’s only halted new permits.  More importantly, fracking poses an inherent danger, and for voters this should be nonnegotiable. The fracking process intrinsically releases radon, a radioactive gas that causes 21,000 lung cancer deaths a year. There is no way to hydraulically frack without releasing radon, which is why it is so important for candidates to support a complete ban, rather than slow reforms like California has adopted.  It’s 2024, and many of the children that were affected by the Aliso Canyon gas leak are now registering to vote for the first time. For candidates to win our votes in upcoming elections, they need to prove that they are willing to fight dangerous oil and gas companies so that what happened in my community will never happen to another. That starts with a statewide ban on fracking. 

Our appliances are more efficient than ever. Why doesn’t it feel like it?

Rachel Victoria Hillis for Vox You actually can use less energy and have more convenience in your home. Are you ready to defend the honor of your dishwasher? Are you prepared to fight for your stove? Are you stockpiling light bulbs? Because according to many Republicans, your kitchen, your laundry room, your bathroom, and more are now battlefronts in the Biden administration’s “war on appliances.” “First it was gas stoves and then it was water heaters and now it’s icemakers,” Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) said on the floor of the House last year. “Overreaching, burdensome regulations from the Energy Department, like those on gas stoves, ceiling fans, and refrigerators, force our job creators to play defense and take time away from their core mission,” said Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX), who chairs the House Committee on Small Business. In the past year, House Republicans introduced bills to limit the government’s ability to set new efficiency standards and block a ban on gas stoves. Fox News even made a custom splash screen for its ongoing conflict coverage. Where is this coming from? The Department of Energy does set efficiency standards for more than 60 categories of appliances ranging from home ceiling fans to commercial vending machines. It has also been raising the bar for things like stoves and refrigerators in recent months as part of a suite of new, climate-friendly regulations (the agency also said claims that it was banning gas stoves are “absurd”). But a war? Of all the things that get people worked up, it is a bit surprising at first glance that home appliances and fixtures can get people so heated. But it makes sense: These are the devices and products we encounter every day. They make a direct impact on our lives, saving us time and effort when they work well — and causing grief and frustration when they don’t. And when the government gets involved, suddenly laundry day has political stakes. At the same time, appliances and fixtures are a direct way individuals encounter policies to address climate change. Our domestic tools contribute to a significant share of world energy use. Residential appliances account for about 15 percent of global electricity demand, and that doesn’t include furnaces and air conditioners, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The energy intensity — the amount of energy used per device — has grown on average by more than 10 percent between 2000 and 2018 in the 31 IEA member countries. And globally, that need is growing as more parts of the world seek out essential functions like cooling and conveniences like cleaning. In the US, about half of household energy use on average goes toward heating and cooling while roughly a quarter powers things like microwaves, televisions, and personal electronics. The average US family also uses 300 gallons of water per day at home, more than half through bathroom fixtures like toilets, faucets, and showerheads. But the flip side is that small improvements in electricity and water consumption across home appliances can add up to big benefits for the environment. Doing more with less is one of the most important and cheapest tactics for limiting climate change, but it’s easily overlooked. Energy efficiency across the economy — not just in appliances, but in vehicles, factories, and grid infrastructure — could get the US halfway to its climate goals by 2050, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit research group. But the pace has to speed up. The IEA estimates that in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, the rate of energy efficiency improvement must triple this decade compared to the rate over the past 20 years. So it makes sense that having appliances use less water and electricity is a key plank in the White House’s strategy to limit global warming through the Inflation Reduction Act, including up to $8.8 billion in rebates to help families buy more efficient appliances. There are lasting benefits for buyers too: Efficiency also saves money, for businesses, governments, and individuals. Since 1980, the energy intensity of the US economy has been cut in half because of increasing efficiency, delivering more than $2,000 in savings per person. The Energy Department said the regulations it announced last year will save Americans $652 million per year when they go into effect. “At the end of the day, something that’s more energy efficient is more efficient for your wallet,” said Shanika Whitehurst, associate director for product sustainability, research, and testing at Consumer Reports. So on paper, the case for more efficiency is compelling. Yet in practice, it can be a tough sell, especially when manufacturers overpromise and underdeliver. There are definite trade-offs in some cases, and some new machines have indeed been letdowns, which is why some people are reluctant to let go of their old showerheads, toilets, and stoves. That’s what makes it so personal. It’s one thing to impose tougher pollution limits on a power plant miles away, but if your dishwasher takes longer than you’d like or the compressor in your fridge breaks down, it can feel like quite the intrusion. Is it then possible to live in a more comfortable, cost-effective home that’s also better for the environment? Yes, but it requires thinking carefully about priorities and sorting out what’s an upgrade and what’s just another thing that can break. In a world where lots of things are getting worse, we’re living in a Golden Age of efficiency The products we encounter like clothes and electronics have generally become more affordable over time, but in many cases quality has declined as the companies that make them look to cut costs and turn around new product lines. However, appliances and home fixtures have become measurably better in key metrics as technologies have advanced and regulations have tightened. The LED light bulb, for example, uses 90 percent less electricity and lasts 25 times longer than the incandescent bulbs that reigned for a century prior. The size of the average washing machine tub has increased by almost 50 percent since the 1980s, yet the machines use a quarter of the electricity and water per cycle. Heat pumps are more than four times as efficient as gas heaters. In the 1970s, refrigerators used 75 percent more electricity to cool 20 percent less storage space than those in showrooms today. The US government has been advancing its efficiency goals through mandatory regulations, which affect every product on the market, as well as voluntary certifications, like the Energy Star program launched by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1992 to highlight top performers. For instance, a new dishwasher with an Energy Star certification uses half the energy of washing dishes by hand and saves 8,400 gallons of water per year. Many of these appliances are also doing their jobs better. More efficient clothes washers tend to be better at cleaning and less damaging to apparel. That has helped drive down costs too. “We also find that much of the price index decline can be attributed to standards-induced innovation,” wrote the authors of a 2019 study on the impact of efficiency standards published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. “What we’ve seen over time is that as products have gotten more efficient, product performance has generally stayed the same or improved as manufacturers continue to offer new features to consumers,” said Joanna Mauer, deputy director at the Appliance Standards Awareness Project. Take air conditioners, for example. “The vast majority of Energy Star-certified room air conditioner models now feature a variable speed compressor, which means they are not only much more efficient, but much quieter,” EPA spokesperson Remmington Belford said in an email. The program recently raised its benchmarks so ACs with the Energy Star label are up to 35 percent more efficient than those without the certification. “This means Energy Star models for sale this summer will provide double or triple the energy and cost savings from Energy Star room air conditioners that were available last summer,” Belford said. As technology advances, these devices are poised to consume even less electricity and water. There are trade-offs, however Changing how devices use electricity and water does require changing how they work, and that’s where some homeowners and apartment dwellers have run into trouble. Tim Carll, owner and head technician of Presidential Appliance Repair in Northern Virginia, noted that the new generation of appliances has become more affordable, making them more common, but that in his experience, washing machines, refrigerators, and stoves break down more often, don’t last as long, and are often more complicated to repair because of all the electronics needed to optimize energy and water use. Older devices were much simpler, using mechanical timers and switches that were more durable as well as easier to diagnose and repair. “I don’t know that I’ve ever heard someone say, ‘Oh God, I just love this new energy-efficient appliance that I got,’” Carll said. “It’s usually like, ‘This washer doesn’t use enough water, some of my clothes come out, and they’re not even wet’ or ‘My dishwasher runs for three or four hours now.’” Add to that features like touchscreen interfaces on refrigerators or Bluetooth connectivity in stoves and you have more things that can go wrong. It isn’t uncommon to see devices that once lasted 20 to 30 years start to break down in less than 10 due to these small problems rather than something catastrophic. “It’s all these breaks throughout the years. I think in the first 10 years it’s pretty normal to have at least three repairs on almost any appliance you buy. At $200 or $300 minimum for repair, you’re putting several hundred dollars into a machine in the lifespan of it.” And when new efficiency regulations go into effect, appliance repair technicians start getting ready for more repair calls. Carll said he’s part of a closed Facebook group where repair pros chat (the question you have to answer to join: “What appliances use 220VAC and what is the part number for the most popular dryer belt ever?”), and whenever someone posts an article about new efficiency standards, the replies are filled with eye-rolling emojis as they anticipate more breakdowns in newer devices. “From our professional standpoint, most of us just look at it like [appliances] are going to get worse,” Carll said. For owners, there’s also often a learning and expectation curve. Using less water and electricity often means machine cycles take longer, but it also means they need a lot less detergent to do their work. Many users often add too much to high-efficiency washing machines and dishwashers, which can clog ports and impair cleaning performance. They might not realize that they don’t need to pre-rinse their dishes, or that garments will come out just as clean in cooler water. With electric stoves, manufacturers are trying to counter decades of advertising that extolled the virtues of cooking with gas. “From 2008 to 2013, I owned and operated an appliance retail store, and I can’t count the number of times a customer would purchase a high-efficiency washing machine only to return a week later to complain that the drum would not fill to the top with water,” Dustin Steward, global industry director in the appliances, HVAC and lighting group at UL Solutions, which tests and certifies products for safety and performance, said in an email. “They were skeptical that their clothes could be cleaned with such a small amount of water.” Users are also demanding more from their devices. It’s not enough for a refrigerator to cool your food; it must also dispense water and ice, defrost itself, and not make too much noise. Price is another factor. Appliances have generally fallen in price over the decades, and efficiency regulations are part of why. The IEA notes that countries with energy efficiency regulations generally see the average prices of appliances fall 2 to 3 percent per year. But the laws of supply and demand are at work too. The supply chain snarls during the Covid-19 pandemic caused major appliance prices to spike and made it harder to find more affordable machines. Higher-end refrigerators and washing machines often use less water and power, but it takes longer for those savings to offset the higher upfront costs. Yet because of their shorter lifecycles, people can end up paying more over time for cheaper appliances. As for the benefits, people can easily see how clean their clothes get or how long a wash cycle lasts. It’s harder to pick up on the benefits of efficiency. A more fuel-efficient car flexes every time you fill up its gas tank or juice up its battery, but the dividends from fans and lights that use less power are buried in your monthly bills. More efficient appliances can also have a rebound effect. If an AC is cheaper to run, you might run it longer or at a higher setting. Devices like refrigerators and washers have grown in size too, eating into their performance gains. Manufacturers also appear to be cutting corners, not due to efficiency, but competition and a business strategy that favors replacement over repair. So the calculation behind the decision to switch to a newer, leaner device isn’t always straightforward. How to smooth the transition to a more comfortable, efficient home It’s normal for newer technologies to hit some bumps on the road to widespread adoption and that goes for devices trying to hit new efficiency goalposts. Still, few homeowners scout appliance showrooms with their electricity and water bills as the highest priority. “Most people do not buy technology for technology’s sake; they are looking to solve a problem,” Steward said. “Thinking about reducing energy, saving water, or minimizing gas usage may or may not be a priority in every household.” But there are good options out there that deliver more convenience and comfort at a lower cost to the climate. One strategy is to look for devices that deliver the most measurable benefits over their lifetime, often labeled on a sticker on showroom models. Look for more durable materials, a robust warranty, and simpler interfaces. There are also tools to help sort the worst and best performers, like Consumer Reports’ recently updated appliance reliability guide, ranking brands in different categories based on their testing and surveys. Often, the more feature-packed device isn’t the better one over the long term. The Energy Department, for instance, advises consumers to pick refrigerators with fewer doors and the freezer on top, and to not necessarily spring for the biggest model in the budget. Efficiency and comfort in the home aren’t just about machines either. Better insulation, improved door seals, adequate ventilation, and sufficient plumbing bring out the best in appliances and make homes more livable, efficient, and better for the environment. But it’s also important to be realistic about what we can accomplish just with what we buy for our kitchens, bedrooms, and bathrooms. Even the most efficient appliance still needs energy, and the sources of that energy need to zero out their greenhouse gas emissions. “There’s a lot of reports on the decarbonization of the home and full electrification in the home, [but] we have to get these electrical grids right,” Whitehurst said. Particularly with the shift away from gas appliances toward those that run on electricity, there are mounting demands on power networks. It will take careful planning to ensure there’s enough power and policies to make sure the new capacity doesn’t make climate change any worse. It’s only when all these parts fit together that we’ll stay at a comfortable temperature on our home planet.

Data centers want clean electricity. Can Georgia Power deliver it?

Last week, Georgia Power won regulatory approval to fast-track construction of 1.4 gigawatts of fossil-fueled power plants and to contract for nearly a gigawatt more power from coal- and fossil-gas-fired power plants owned by other utilities. The reason? Fear that skyrocketing power demand from power-hungry data…

Last week, Georgia Power won regulatory approval to fast-track construction of 1.4 gigawatts of fossil-fueled power plants and to contract for nearly a gigawatt more power from coal- and fossil-gas-fired power plants owned by other utilities. The reason? Fear that skyrocketing power demand from power-hungry data centers and factories soon to be built in Georgia could overwhelm its grid unless it expands new generation as quickly as possible. The plan has drawn the ire of environmental groups and consumer advocates, who say that choosing fossil-fueled power over cleaner alternatives will worsen climate change and increase electricity rates for customers. But it has also sparked concern from some of the same big companies planning the data center and factory expansions that Georgia Power says will cause its looming power crunch. That’s the message that Priya Barua, director of market and policy innovation for the Clean Energy Buyers Association (CEBA) — a trade group that includes major data center operators with aggressive clean energy goals, such as Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft — delivered to Georgia Power in deliberations over the proposed plan earlier this year. CEBA is concerned that ​“some of the new load Georgia Power is forecasting may not materialize if Georgia Power increases the carbon intensity of its resource mix,” Barua stated in February testimony to the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC), ​“since many of the customers bringing new load have clean energy targets” and want to locate in regions with cleaner energy options. If CEBA members choose to build data centers or factories elsewhere in search of cleaner electricity supplies, that could undercut the whole premise of the utility’s rush to build more fossil-fueled power plants — and drive up costs and emissions for existing Georgia Power customers, she warned. In the end, CEBA supported the stipulated agreement that Georgia Power and Georgia PSC staff reached last week — largely because the utility included a last-minute promise to create a program for companies to contract for solar and wind power, batteries to store clean power, and other carbon-free resources. Many other utilities across the country offer this kind of program, but it’s ​“a first for customers of Georgia Power,” Barua told Canary Media in an interview last week. Georgia Power made a number of other commitments to expand clean energy options in last week’s agreement. These include calling on third-party developers to propose thousands of megawatts of solar, wind, and battery projects over the coming years and creating programs that will support commercial and residential customers who want to install solar and batteries on their businesses and homes. Now the big question is whether Georgia Power will follow through on these alternatives to fossil power as it takes on longer-term planning for what it expects will be even greater demand growth from big commercial and industrial customers through 2035. As of now, the utility is ​“willing to work with us” on these cleaner options, Barua said. ​“We’re holding them to that for the 2025 IRP.” Georgia Power’s 2025 IRP and the bigger battle to come across the Southeast Barua was referring to Georgia Power’s next integrated resource plan, or IRP. That’s the master plan that utilities revise every two or three years to detail how much new generation capacity they anticipate needing over the coming 10 to 15 years and what mix of energy resources they will use to supply it. The plan approved last week, which was proposed in October and rushed through regulatory review, covers only the next three years. The load growth forecasted for the next decade — and the infrastructure that will need to be built to meet it — is roughly three to five times as much as what that plan contends with. Georgia Power will publish a draft of its 2025 IRP next January. That’s the ​“elephant in the room” in terms of how dirty or clean the utility’s future resource mix may end up becoming, said Simon Mahan, executive director of the Southern Renewable Energy Association. ​“Looking a decade out is what 2025 will be a fight about.” That same fight will be playing out across the Southeast over utility plans that could commit the region to a major expansion of fossil-gas-fueled power over the next 10 years or so in response to rising demand from data centers, factories, and the electrification of vehicles and buildings. Duke Energy, one of the country’s biggest utilities, is seeking to build nearly 9 gigawatts of fossil-gas plants to serve North Carolina and South Carolina customers through 2032, nearly triple what it planned back in 2022. The federal power entity Tennessee Valley Authority is expected to propose a plan sometime soon for up to 6.6 gigawatts of new gas-fired power plants to replace closing coal plants and meet rising electricity demand through the end of the decade. Environmental and consumer groups say that the Southeast is already falling behind on decarbonizing its power generation at a pace needed to meet the country’s Paris Agreement commitments and to combat climate change. Any new gas plants in the region threaten to put those goals further out of reach, they warn, by displacing the opportunity for cleaner resources to fill the gaps. As of 2023, Georgia Power generated 48 percent of its power from fossil gas, 23 percent from nuclear power, 15 percent from coal, 2 percent from hydropower, and 7 percent from other renewables. Its 2023 IRP update noted that it plans to add about 10 gigawatts of new renewable resources by 2035, nearly double the 6 gigawatts it planned back in 2022. But those estimates could change when Georgia Power releases its 2025 IRP proposal early next year. Between the unveiling of the new IRP and a final decision expected next summer, clean power advocates plan to push Georgia Power and regulators to make good on the clean-power promises set out in last week’s agreement. “We’d like to use this as an opportunity to have something more concrete in the next full IRP,” Barua said, ​“so we aren’t in this position again with utilities where they aren’t really considering solutions [to rising power demand] beyond peaker plants.” The critique of Georgia Power’s approach to solar and batteries  When it comes to the fine print in last week’s agreement, Southeast environmental groups are less sanguine than CEBA is. They especially object to the way that the Georgia PSC’s decision allows the utility to fast-track more fossil-fueled generation than batteries and solar. The agreement permits Georgia Power to build only 500 megawatts of batteries in the next three years and procure another 500 megawatts of energy storage from independent power developers. What’s more, the agreement stripped out the relatively small amount of solar — 200 megawatts — that Georgia Power had proposed. In a statement last week, the nonprofit Southern Alliance for Clean Energy blasted both Georgia Power and the Georgia PSC, calling the agreement a giveaway to the utility, which can expect to earn a healthy rate of return on the fossil-fueled power plants it was authorized to build, and saying it does ​“little to protect ratepayers and even less to advance clean energy like solar and wind.” “Frankly, most of the utility plans are backward-looking,” Bryan Jacob, the alliance’s solar program director and Georgia liaison, said in an interview last week. ​“They’re the same type of centralized generation resources that our parents and grandparents had and don’t look at alternative ways to meet this new load growth with a new set of technologies.” In particular, Georgia Power has so far largely given short shrift to the potential for solar power and batteries to serve as an alternative to gas-fired power plants, he said — even though the economics favor the cleaner option. Subscribe to receive Canary's latest news Across the Southeastern U.S., utilities are experiencing growing peaks in electricity demand, especially during cold winter mornings and hot summer evenings, when customers’ heating and cooling needs outstrip supply. Gas-fired power plants that can be ramped up quickly to meet these peaks in grid demand are the go-to resource for utilities. But solar power stored in batteries can also do the job — not only without emitting carbon and other pollution, but also at a cost that’s often cheaper than building and fueling gas-fired power plants over their lifetimes.

California communities are fighting the last battery recycling plant in the West — and its toxic legacy

Lead battery recycling is a crucial but dirty business. As a plant outside Los Angeles seeks to renew its operating permit, the community pushes back.

This story is being co-published with Public Health Watch. West of the Rockies, just one lead battery recycler remains in the United States. If your car battery conks out in downtown Seattle or the Sonoran desert, it will probably be hauled to Ecobat, a lead smelter half an hour east of downtown Los Angeles. Ecobat’s facility in City of Industry melts down 600 tons of batteries and scrap every day.  A conveyor belt takes the batteries to a hammer mill where they’re cracked open and slammed into pieces. Then a furnace blasts them with 1,000 degrees of heat. The resulting ingots or “pigs” of lead then ride on, to become batteries once again.   Nationally, about 130 million car batteries meet this fate each year. Fewer than a dozen smelters do this work in the U.S. No other consumer product in the country closes its recycling loop so completely.  But the crucial business of smelting lead is also a very dirty one. Lead is a neurotoxin; no known levels of it are safe. People who breathe airborne particles of lead or accidentally put it in their mouths — especially children — can suffer nerve disorders and developmental problems. The smelting process itself can create a cancer risk. In addition to lead, it can send arsenic, hexavalent chromium, formaldehyde and other chemicals into the air.  Read Next Ghosts of Polluters Past Yvette Cabrera California has some of the tightest toxic regulations and strictest air pollution rules for smelters in the country. But some residents of the suburban neighborhoods around Ecobat don’t trust the system to protect them.  Tens of thousands of people live in the bedroom communities of Hacienda Heights, La Puente, and Avocado Heights, including some just hundreds of feet from the edge of the company’s property. Uncertainty, both about the safety of Ecobat’s operation going forward and the legacy of lead it has left behind, weighs heavily on them. For decades, thousands of pounds of lead poured out of the smelter’s stacks. Soil testing has revealed high levels of lead on some properties over the years, but hasn’t led to a full investigation. Although pollution controls have squashed airborne lead to a fraction of its historical highs, Ecobat — known until recently as Quemetco — has amassed nearly $3 million in regulatory penalties since 2020.  The facility is operating under a permit that expired almost nine years ago. The Department of Toxic Substances Control, or DTSC, which oversees California’s hazardous waste laws, has sent back the company’s application for renewal three times. Once the filing is complete, DTSC will release a draft permit to the public for comment.  But the release date keeps shifting — from February, to March, to April, and as of this week, May.  In the meantime, long-brewing disputes among residents, the company, and regulators are again erupting into public view. Laws don’t mean much, say neighborhood advocates, if nobody enforces them.  “The regulators, they back down,” said Rebecca Overmyer-Velázquez, a coordinator with the Clean Air Coalition of North Whittier & Avocado Heights. “That’s really our biggest problem.”  Rebecca Overmeyer Vasquez, facilitator for the Clean Air Coalition of North Whittier and Avocado Heights, photographed at Whittier College. Chava Sanchez In recent months, the dispute has taken on more of an edge. Younger activists impatient with the lack of progress are leading their own inquiry into soil contamination. Ecobat is suing the state over decisions related to the facility. Court filings and lawyers’ threats showcase a bitter and growing divide on questions of public health, responsible product management, and environmental safety.  “What they’ve really been denying the community is the ability to really call the question, should this facility, based on its past operation, receive a renewal of its hazardous waste permit?” said Angela Johnson Meszaros, an attorney at Earthjustice, which represents the Clean Air Coalition. “The community’s position is no. And I think that they have the receipts for why the answer is no.” Ecobat did not make anyone available for an interview. In a written response to questions, Dan Kramer, a spokesman, said the company is “continuously committed” to protecting public health. “Ecobat’s number one priority is safety — for our employees, their families, and the people living and working in the communities surrounding our facility.” At issue are not only how California protects public health going forward but also what regulators are willing to do about the past.  The Clean Air Coalition’s Overmyer-Velázquez wants her neighborhood to avoid what happened when another lead smelter closed south of downtown Los Angeles. Exide Technologies may have contaminated as many as 10,000 homes in predominantly Latino, working-class neighborhoods. When it abruptly shut down after 90 years, lawmakers and regulators vowed that Exide would pay to clean up neighborhood-level soil contamination. But in 2020 a bankruptcy court allowed the company to abandon the property, and the cleanup remains incomplete. The cost is ballooning, and so far Californians are paying for it.  Overmyer-Velázquez wants the Ecobat facility shut down, or moved away from densely populated Los Angeles County.   “This place has clearly demonstrated it cannot be a good neighbor,” she said.  DTSC has not responded to Public Health Watch’s questions, which were first sent to the agency on March 1, or to follow-up questions sent April 11. Reporting is based in part on the public record and statements DTSC officials have made at hearings and meetings. Half a century ago, after the Cuyahoga River burned in Ohio and as New York’s Love Canal raised national alarms about toxic waste, the Golden State was ahead of the game. California was vocal about the need to limit hazardous waste, to handle it safely, and to keep it local, rather than shipping it somewhere else, where laws are weaker. The state set stringent controls on storage and processing and began requiring permits for facilities. The company then called Quemetco filed for its first operating permit — a temporary one — in 1980.  But some of California’s management plans never materialized; some oversight, starved for staffing and funding, fell to shreds. It took 25 years for regulators to grant Quemetco a full hazardous waste permit.  Early on, environmental officials flagged reasons for concern about the lead smelter. State and federal regulators issued an order and a consent decree in 1987 because of the facility’s releases of hazardous waste into soil and water. An assessment from that time found “high potential for air releases of particulates concerning lead.”  Just a few blocks away from the Facility lies the resedential community of Hacienda Heights. Chava Sanchez It wasn’t illegal back then for Quemetco to send pollution straight into nearby San Jose Creek, or to dump battery waste into the dirt on a corner of the property without any formal containment. In 1987 alone, according to the federal Toxics Release Inventory, Quemetco reported that it had released nearly 4 tons of airborne lead from its stacks. That was okay, too.  By the 1990s, however, the science about lead was piling up, finding that the health hazards of even low levels of exposure were problematic, especially for children.  In the bedroom communities around Quemetco, neighbors took notice. At a public meeting in 1996, they asked why the permitting process was taking so long.   DTSC’s Phil Chandler, a soil geologist who was working on the facility’s permit at the time, answered the crowd. He explained that the delay was understandable.  “There was an awful lot of firms, like Quemetco, they came in the door, and said, ‘We want a permit.’ And they came all at once,” Chandler told residents back then. “So that’s been a problem.” More people began raising questions about lead-related health impacts.  Jeanie Thiessen, a special education teacher at a public school in the area, wanted her students to be tested for lead exposure. “Many exhibit signs of neuropsychological problems, cognitive impairments, become easily agitated, and have generally arrested development,” she wrote in a DTSC questionnaire. “Surely it is not normal to have so many children with learning disabilities come from so small an area.”  “I grew up with a lot of those kids,” said Duncan McKee, a longtime critic of the facility who lives in Avocado Heights. He says those worries were common. Looking back, he added, “I think at that point [regulators] started taking it a bit more seriously. Maybe.” When DTSC finally granted Quemetco a permit in 2005, it didn’t end the communities’ concerns about health and safety.  In Los Angeles, lead smelters are overseen by the South Coast Air Quality Management District. It requires large polluters to submit health hazard assessments that calculate potential cancer risks stemming from their emissions. Quemetco’s assessment in 2000 revealed that it had the highest calculated cancer burden in Los Angeles County, not only because of lead, but also because of other carcinogens involved in the process: arsenic, benzene and 1, 3 butadiene. That health hazard assessment led to tighter pollution controls at the smelter. In 2008, Quemetco installed an advanced air system called a wet electrostatic precipitator, or WESP. Before the scrubber was installed, the additional cancer risk from the facility for people in the surrounding area was 33 in 1 million, well above the threshold at which polluters are required to cut emissions and notify the public. In the company’s next assessment, that risk had dropped to 4 in 1 million.  A Green Steam billows out of the Ecobat Facility. Chava Sanchez Today, emissions from the company, now known as Ecobat, are well within South Coast’s smelter-specific lead limit. But regulatory problems at the facility remain stubbornly frequent.  South Coast has written Ecobat up for violations 20 times since 2005. Just four years ago, the agency issued a relatively rare $600,000 fine for failing to meet federal and state-level standards. In a press release, South Coast noted that because of lead exceedances, the facility had to temporarily reduce operations.  During DTSC’s most recent 10-year compliance period for the smelter, 2012-2022, Ecobat accrued 19 violations of the most serious type. On one visit, for example, regulators found cracks in the floor of a battery storage area, where acid, lead, and arsenic could leak. In some cases, according to the state’s online records repository, the facility was out of compliance or violations had been in dispute for years. The state’s lawyers filed a civil complaint based on some of these violations and later settled it for $2.3 million. Ecobat paid half the money to the state and half to nonprofits that promote school health and knowledge of local environmental issues.  In its written response to Public Health Watch, the company characterized “nearly all” of the violations as “technical disagreements between Ecobat and DTSC over environmental monitoring systems in place at the facility.”  “None of the alleged violations involved allegations that Ecobat had improperly handled or released hazardous waste or caused any environmental impacts to the community,” said Kramer.  On its website, Ecobat emphasizes that it “has invested close to $50 million installing and maintaining new pollution control equipment and monitoring devices.” That includes the WESP, which Kramer said “was not necessary to meet Ecobat’s risk reduction obligations or any other regulatory mandates.” Instead, Kramer said, the installation of that scrubber was voluntary, and at significant expense to the company.  Questions remain about where and whether the soil may be contaminated in neighborhoods around Ecobat; how much of the pollution in the soil can be attributed to the smelter; and what, if anything, the company can be forced to clean up.  The facility itself reported to the federal government that its stacks ejected thousands of pounds of lead particulate into air each year through most of the eighties, and hundreds of pounds of airborne lead annually for another couple of decades after that.  Roger Miksad, president and executive director of the Battery Council International, a trade association, argues that it’s often hard to identify the source of lead in an urban environment. The 60 freeway is nearby, for example: gasoline once was leaded, and some brake pads for cars are made with lead. Older paints also contain the toxin.  “The number of other sites, be it from lead paint or anything else, I’m sure are innumerable,” Miksad said. “It’s not [Ecobat’s] responsibility to clean up someone’s underlying mess just because they happen to use the same chemical.”   Angela Johnson Meszaros a lawyer from Earth Justice sits for a portrait in Pasadena’s Central Park. Chava Sanchez But to the community and its advocates, tracing the lead is a matter of common sense. “If you have a range of metals coming out of your stack, and if you have them going into the air, it just falls to the ground,” says Earthjustice’s Johnson Meszaros. “It has to; it’s just basic physics.”  Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that in areas where there are multiple potential sources of lead, screening for further action would begin where the toxin was found at 100 parts per million in soil. California’s screening level is more aggressive: 80 parts per million.   When DTSC sampled more than 50 sites within a mile of Ecobat in the 1990s, it found lead well above both those levels. At one house, lead was measured at 660 parts per million; at another property, sampling found 1,100 parts per million. But nothing more happened until 2016, when DTSC ordered Quemetco to test soils beyond its fenceline for the first time. The company’s sampling revealed lead exceeding 80 parts per million in soil at most, if not all, of the residential properties visited. The state ordered the company to do more follow-up work, this time testing along lines radiating outward from the facility. Sampling found lead in some areas, but DTSC did not respond to questions about the findings and hasn’t publicly ordered the company to take further action.  At Los Angeles County’s other lead smelter, the now-shuttered Exide plant in Vernon, soil sampling found high levels of contamination in residential areas as far as 1.7 miles away. But in 2022 a federal district judge determined that DTSC had failed to prove Exide’s pollution could have caused that contamination.  A DTSC Work Notice of an Annual Sampling posted on the outside fence of the Ecobat Facility next to cautionary signage. Chava Sanchez That outcome may embolden Ecobat to push back against potential legal and financial responsibility beyond the fenceline.  Air dispersion studies conducted by state scientists have indicated that historical emissions may have extended as far as 1.6 miles from the smelter. But the company maintains that “the evidence collected to date does not indicate that Ecobat’s facility has had an adverse effect on its neighbors.”  The lack of conclusive evidence about neighborhood level-contamination has motivated younger residents to start their own investigation.  Avocado Heights is a tight-knit community almost surrounded by City of Industry. But this unincorporated piece of the San Gabriel Valley is kind of an emotional opposite to Quemetco’s industrial-zoned hometown.  A grid along and across three blocks each way lines up neatly with ranch-style homes. Behind one peachy-pink house, Elena Brown-Vazquez and her brother Sam keep horses, goats, chickens and other animals. Benjamin and Damian Herrera residents of Avocado Heights ride their horses through the neighborhood, just a few blocks from Ecobats Lead Smelter. Chava Sanchez With dusty equestrian trails, Avocado Heights is a working-class neighborhood whose rhythm is informed by charrería culture: most people here have ties to Mexico, to places like Zacatecas or Jalisco, horse-loving country.  That was the draw for the Brown-Vasquez siblings, who moved here in 2020 to deepen their connection with their Mexican culture. Informal food vendors like mariscos carts came by during the pandemic. The open space allowed people to play music and grill and be near each other outside, safely. They found a sense of community.  But not long after arriving, the siblings received notice of a public meeting about the lead smelter. Elena saw kids running around yards, riding horses, and playing in the dirt, and she worried for herself and her neighbors.  Ecobat and DTSC “talk about doing due diligence and doing your job, but they’re not really even doing a good job of engaging the community,” she said.  Nayellie Diaz, a longtime La Puente resident and Sam Brown-Vasquez’s partner, nodded. She, Elena and Sam are among those who call themselves Avocado Heights Vaquer@s, who act “in defense of land, air, & water.” One of the group’s goals is to raise awareness about the pollution coming from the smelter in order to stop it.  “The problem for us on some level is, there’s uncertainty,” Sam said. He’s concerned about how much lead remains in soil, and where it came from. “The reality is right now, we could tell definitively if the lead that’s in the community is coming from [Ecobat],” he added. “But they won’t do that.”  Samuel Brown-Vazquez advocates for his neighborhood and the ranching lifestyle as a founder of Avocado Heights Vaquer@s. Molly Peterson Last year, DTSC held a public workshop to explain its recent multimillion-dollar order against Ecobat, which included no funding to investigate soil contamination.  “We want more data,” Elena said.  At that meeting, Sam and Elena met Karen Valladares, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in environmental and occupational health at the University of California, Irvine, and Daniel Talamontes, a doctoral student in environmental studies at Claremont Graduate University.  Elena, a teacher, is working with the young researchers to gather soil samples from homes close to Ecobat. Talamontes describes the grant-funded work as “guerilla science.” A lab at the University of Southern California is testing the samples and the team members will interpret them.     “We are skilled enough, and knowledgeable, and we don’t trust [DTSC’s and Ecobat’s] methodology,” Talamontes said. So far, Valladares and Talamontes said the overwhelming majority of soil samples have shown levels of lead above 80 parts per million, which echoes the earlier company-funded testing. She said a sizable chunk of the new samples are between 200 and 400 parts per million. The presence of arsenic in the soil, along with lead, suggests a source other than motor vehicles or paint, she said. It points to the smelter. “There are natural levels of arsenic in the soil, but they’re very low,” Valladares said. “To have anything higher than that, it’s not the leaded gasoline. It’s coming from somewhere.” Public Health Watch sent DTSC questions about soil testing and the regulatory process but has received no response.  At a meeting last fall, DTSC’s then-deputy director Todd Sax acknowledged that state regulators have “independent authority” to order Ecobat to do additional work right now — but he emphasized that they needed “sufficient evidence” to do so.  “Because that’s potentially a legal situation…we have to make absolutely certain that the data that we have would stand up in court because it may come to that,” Sax said, responding to a question about why soil testing takes so long.  “So we are being extra careful and thorough with our analyses and with the development of plans to make sure that whatever we do, it’s going to be scientifically defensible, it’s going to be right and it’s going to stick.” Sax no longer works at DTSC and has taken a job at the California Air Resources Board.  As the permit process for Ecobat’s smelter drags on, the company’s lawyers have been busy.  Ecobat has filed two lawsuits involving California’s newly constituted Board of Environmental Safety, conceived by the state legislature to improve accountability at the DTSC. The board can hear public appeals to permits, as it did last year when the Clean Air Coalition challenged a limited permit the DTSC gave Ecobat for equipment the company installed without prior approval. The board sided with the neighborhood group. Ecobat has filed a civil complaint in Los Angeles County Superior Court against the board and the DTSC to appeal that decision. It’s also suing for public records related to that case in Sacramento County Superior Court.  A more aggressive tone — and strategy — is evident in these recent filings. In one, Ecobat’s lawyers called the neighborhood activists’ conduct at the appeal meeting in November “extreme by any measure,” saying the Clean Air Coalition, or CAC, “made a circus of the meeting.” Ecobat spokesman Kramer pointed to one moment, more than five hours into the six-hour meeting, where board members admonished someone for making obscene gestures not visible on a YouTube recording of the event. “It led the board into error,” the lawyers wrote.   The coalition, Ecobat’s lawyer wrote, “has blindly opposed Ecobat’s efforts to obtain regulatory approvals as part of a broader ‘delay strategy.’” Neighbors of the facility counter that the delay is the company’s fault. Since the company first submitted its permit renewal application in 2015, regulators have sent it back for corrections three times. Only recently did the DTSC deem the application complete.  Ecobat also has sent a letter to Earthjustice’s Johnson Meszaros, to “notify” her that it considered the coalition’s public testimony and Instagram comments about the company to be false and potentially defamatory.  “Ecobat has been exceptionally patient but CAC’s conduct is extreme by any measure,” the letter said. In Ecobat’s written response to Public Health Watch, Kramer said unfounded statements “can generate unfounded alarm in communities.” Johnson Meszaros considers the letter a kind of harassment, meant to limit public participation in decisions about the smelter. “This is something you see — oil companies have been using defamation against folks for a while now,” she said. “I think what they are telling us is they are prepared to sue community volunteers to break their will.” DTSC and the Board of Environmental Safety did not comment on the litigation.  “Permit renewals are not a right,” Johnson Meszaros said. “They’re earned from your past behavior choices.”  Only China has more cars on the road than the U.S. As long as Americans drive gas-fueled cars, lead acid batteries aren’t going anywhere, according to environmental historian Jay Turner.  “We’ve created a world that we co-inhabit with this lead and we can’t walk away from that,” said Turner, whose book “Charged” explores the value of batteries in a clean energy transition. Now that we’ve brought lead into the manmade environment, Turner said, there’s an obligation to handle it safely.  Used car batteries at a local shop, ready to be recycled. Chava Sanchez Doing that is more expensive in the U.S., where pollution controls are relatively tight, according to Perry Gottesfeld, an expert at the nonprofit OK International.  Just over a decade ago, a multinational conglomerate, Johnson Controls, built a new battery smelter in Florence, South Carolina. The $150 million facility was open for just under a decade and in that time it was fined by state regulators nine times. Johnson Controls spun off its battery division, which became a new company called Clarios. When the plant was shuttered in 2021, Clarios said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it was 25% cheaper to recycle batteries at its plants in Mexico. Gottesfeld said the U.S. doesn’t do enough to stop such offshoring. “You’re supposed to handle your own hazardous waste unless you have the inability to do so,”  he said.  All of that puts more pressure on California, which has acknowledged its own outsourcing of hazardous waste — and which has 35 million registered vehicles on its roads.  It also presses down on the communities around the Ecobat facility. Avocado Heights resident Elena Brown-Vasquez has heard the argument before: California needs to clean up after itself. Battery recycling plants just south of the border are known to make workers sick. “We all get that a lot, we do,” she said.  But residents say they’re pushing back because their own health is in jeopardy, too.  They worry that if DTSC renews Ecobat’s permit, the South Coast Air Quality Management District could allow the company to boost daily production by 25%. Ecobat has been seeking to expand for years, but local advocates have been pushing back longer.  An early skeptic was Lilian Avery, who moved to Hedgepath Avenue in Hacienda Heights in 1956. Back then, she said during a 1996 DTSC public meeting, her neighbor was “an Armstrong rose garden; acres and acres of roses.” And then the smelter came in.  “I have had concern about Quemetco all these years,” Avery is quoted as saying in a transcript of the meeting. “They are trying hard to be good neighbors, but they have chosen the wrong plot.” Public Health Watch is a nonprofit investigative news organization that covers weaknesses and injustices in the nation’s health systems and policies, exposes inequities and highlights solutions. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline California communities are fighting the last battery recycling plant in the West — and its toxic legacy on Apr 22, 2024.