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Finally, a solution to plastic pollution that’s not just recycling

News Feed
Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Israel Sebastian/Getty Images Countries are negotiating a new global treaty to drastically reduce the plastic waste that has been poisoning the world. Plastic recycling doesn’t work, no matter how diligently you wash out your peanut butter container. Only about 15 percent of plastic waste is collected for recycling worldwide, and of that, about half ends up discarded. That means just 9 percent of plastic waste is recycled. The rest — some 91 percent of all plastic waste — ends up in landfills, incinerators, or as trash in the environment. One report estimated that 11 million metric tons of plastic trash leaked into the ocean in 2016, and that number could triple by 2040 as the global population rises and lower-income countries develop. Plastic is now simply everywhere: at the deepest depths of the ocean, on the tallest mountains, in hundreds of species of wildlife, and even in human placentas. Bhushan Koyande/Hindustan Times via Getty Images A man walks on a plastic-covered shore in Mumbai, India, on May 31. It’s hard to imagine meaningful solutions to a problem of such epic proportions. Campaigns to ban things like plastic straws almost seem like a joke when compared to the staggering amounts of waste produced by everything else we use — including the plastic cups those straws go in. Now, however, there might actually be a reason to feel hopeful. Late last year, world leaders, scientists, and advocates started working on a global, legally binding treaty under the United Nations to end plastic waste. The second round of negotiations concluded last week in Paris with a plan to produce an initial draft of the deal. This treaty could be huge. Although it will take months of negotiating for any of the details to become clear, the agreement — set to be finalized by the end of 2024 — will require countries to do far more than just fix their recycling systems. Negotiators will discuss a menu of options including a cap on overall plastic production, bans on certain materials and products including many single-use plastics, and incentives to grow an industry around reusable items. This treaty could literally transform entire chunks of the global economy. As with any global deal, an ambitious agreement will face several roadblocks, some of which have already appeared. Certain countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the US, for example, are pushing for voluntary terms that would allow them to continue investing in their petrochemical industries (plastic is a petrochemical). Then again, the fact that global talks are happening at all is in itself a big deal and reveals a shift in the politics around waste. “There’s a true willingness to tackle this problem,” said Erin Simon, vice president and head of plastic waste at the World Wildlife Fund, a large environmental group. “We’ve never seen so much progress.” Here’s what a global plastic treaty could do, and why anti-waste advocates are so hopeful. Lan Zitao/VCG via Getty Images A worker at a PVC pipe factory in China’s Sichuan Province on November 30, 2022. The plastic treaty will target the root of the problem Even if recycling weren't such a failure, it wouldn’t put an end to plastic waste. Many items can’t be — or are not meant to be — recycled. There’s no real way to fix the plastic problem without simply producing less of it, said Nicky Davies, executive director of the Plastic Solutions Fund, a group that funds projects to end plastic pollution. “The first thing we need to do is turn off the tap,” Davies said. That’s why this treaty is so significant: By conception, the agreement is meant to focus on the design and production of plastics, not just on what happens to plastic items after we use them. In other words, the treaty targets the full life cycle of plastics. What does that mean in practice? The agreement could, for example, include an overall cap on plastic. This would be a global target for reducing the production of new, virgin plastic (which has no recycled content). Such a target could mandate that, by a certain year, total annual plastic production cannot exceed the amount of plastic produced in some baseline year. It’d be kind of like targets to slash fossil fuel production in order to curb climate change — but for plastic polymers. Bye-bye plastic takeout containers, probably Regardless of whether or not the treaty includes an explicit limit on plastic production, it will almost certainly contain bans or restrictions on some materials. Certain chemicals used in plastics are especially problematic and could be targeted by bans. Some flame retardants, for example, are linked to cancers and endocrine disruption; they can also make plastics hard to recycle. A number of other additives and materials are similarly dangerous to humans or ecosystems, or they make recycling difficult, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and various kinds of PFAS (the so-called forever chemicals). The treaty may also ban or restrict a whole bunch of common, problematic products — namely, packaging and other single-use items, such as cups and cutlery. These are an enormous part of the plastic problem, said Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law, an environmental advocacy group. Roughly 40 percent of all plastic waste comes from packaging alone, and nearly two-thirds of it is from plastics that have a lifespan of fewer than five years, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. “These are materials that come into people’s lives that are often unnoticed, and they have useful lives measured in minutes or moments or at best months,” Muffett told Vox. Getty Images A biker in Neihuang, China, carries balloons to sell during a bout of heavy smog. The most immediate bans or restrictions on single-use plastics, researchers say, should apply to products that are most likely to leak into the environment and cause harm and yet are relatively unnecessary. These include takeaway containers, chip bags, balloons, cotton swabs, disposable e-cigarettes, and tea bags. (A number of environmental organizations including WWF have lists of products that the treaty should prioritize.) Speaking of unnecessary: The treaty may also restrict the use of certain microplastics. These are plastic pieces that are under 5 millimeters in length, which are either deliberately put in some products like face wash or are emitted unintentionally by things like car tires and clothing. Scientists have found them everywhere they look including in our blood and lungs, water bottles, and Antarctic snow. Restricting these sorts of plastics isn’t a far-fetched idea. Several US states already ban some plastic bags, including New York and California. The US, Canada, the UK, and other countries, meanwhile, prohibit companies from selling shower gels and many other personal care products with plastic “microbeads” in them. And the EU — home to some of the world’s strictest plastic regulations — prohibits a wide number of single-use items from entering the market, including plastic cutlery and straws. Yet these bans are not global, they’re not always enforced, and they don’t go far enough, experts say. That’s where the treaty could help. Building out the “reuse economy” Plastic is widespread for a few obvious reasons. It’s lightweight, durable, and easily shaped, making it useful for a large number of applications. Plastic is also incredibly cheap (even if government subsidies help offset some of the costs). Should countries try to phase out single-use plastics, whether by a treaty or not, a key question is: What will replace it? In some cases, other materials like paper might be appropriate, although, of course, they can produce waste as well. A more sustainable solution, Davies said, is to build out what she calls the reuse economy: a system in which many single-use items, like plastic cups, are replaced by containers that are used over and over again. This model offers clear value where consumers buy and eat food in the same place, such as food courts, movie theaters, or music festivals. In a reuse economy, vendors would give customers a reusable cup, which they would then place in a bin before leaving the venue, not unlike how you return trays at some food courts. There’d be central facilities on site to clean the cups and make them available to the next customer. (That means dishwashing would have to become more widespread.) Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images A drain in Miami Beach, Florida, clogged with plastic waste. Transforming some other parts of the economy is more challenging, including the food delivery industry. Consider, however, that restaurants often use the same kinds of plastic food containers across large cities like New York. Imagine if those containers were meant to be truly reusable; instead of throwing them out or recycling them, consumers could return them (via some kind of bin, for example) to a central system that cleans the containers and restocks them at restaurants. Obviously, this would require major investments in infrastructure by governments, private funders, and companies — not to mention some changes in behavior among consumers — but there are plenty of examples of these sorts of reuse systems already working successfully. They’ve been around for decades. In Europe and parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, restaurants and other retailers commonly sell beer and soda in refillable glass containers. Customers will typically get a small deposit back when they return those items. (An organization called Upstream maintains a list of reuse policies in the US and abroad.) The treaty could help fuel this approach by mandating global targets related to reusing containers, some of which already exist at a country level (in France and elsewhere). For example, it could set a minimum percentage of drinks that must be sold in reusable containers. The treaty could also help set standards for what a good reusable system looks like and define what “reuse” actually means — considering that many plastic bags and other disposable items say they’re “reusable” even though most of us throw them out. Davies says the reuse economy is essential to fixing the plastic problem — as essential as renewable energy is for curbing climate change. “We actually need to build the reuse economy in the same way as we have built the renewable energy economy,” Davies said. Better recycling will help, but it’s only a small part of the solution The treaty won’t spell the end of recycling. Plenty of plastics aren’t easily cleaned or reused by other people, such as toothbrushes or plastics used in hospitals, so countries will still need recycling — but it requires major improvements. Some cities and countries lack sufficient, conveniently located recycling bins or facilities to process plastic. Even where that infrastructure does exist, recycling runs into all kinds of problems. Plastics in a bin of recyclables typically contain a slew of polymers, dyes, and other chemicals that don’t necessarily mix well together or, when combined, form low-quality plastic, according to a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, a research organization. Some of those chemicals can also make the recycling process itself unsafe for waste workers, Davies said. “Today’s plastic recycling system is failing us,” authors of the Pew report wrote. Beyond eliminating harmful chemicals in plastics, a key solution is to encourage or mandate that companies design for recycling from the beginning. That means phasing out dyes and other additives that make recycled plastic worth less, using fewer types of polymers that can contaminate recycling streams, and so on. Better labeling is important, too: You shouldn’t have to spend time Googling to figure out how to recycle something. To encourage recycling, cities, and countries can also build out what are called “deposit return systems,” or DRS. In these schemes, customers pay a deposit when they buy a drink in a to-go bottle and get it back if they return the container (you may have seen these return machines by the entrance of some grocery stores). The treaty could mandate that countries require DRS for certain kinds of plastic containers. Getty Images A customer places bottles in a recycling machine to receive her deposit in a grocery story in Slovakia. The treaty could also set a minimum percentage for the amount of recycled plastic in a given product. That would make recycled plastic more valuable and, in turn, encourage more recycling. Again, such targets are not unprecedented: The EU requires that, by 2025, PET plastic drink bottles are made with at least 25 percent recycled plastic. (Treaty negotiators will consider a wide range of other ideas, such as eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels, setting standards for landfilling plastic, including those pertaining to the health of workers, and weeding out misleading claims about compostable or biodegradable plastics.) What countries will fight about Treaty negotiations have only just begun, yet some issues are already a source of tension. Perhaps the biggest one is whether targets under the treaty should be globally mandated — and apply to all countries — or voluntary and set by each nation individually. A group of countries including all members of the EU, Japan, and Chile, known as the high ambition coalition, is pushing for global targets, whereas the US, Saudi Arabia, and other big plastic-producing nations are advocating for national voluntary targets. (Those voluntary targets would be similar to those under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which set the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to combat climate change.) “The number one thing I want is global rules,” said Simon of WWF. “Plastic pollution is so integrated into all of our lives, and through these massive world markets. If we continue to address it in a fragmented way, we will never be successful.” Mohd Samsul Mohd Said/Getty Images A blue plastic polymer inside a factory near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A number of other core issues will likely divide countries along similar lines, such as whether the treaty should cap virgin plastic production and what specific materials it should ban. Generally, major oil-producing nations and other petrochemical interests, such as chemical companies, like to talk up the benefits of recycling instead of taking steps to curb plastic production. Funding will almost certainly be a divisive issue, as well. There’s a common tension during negotiations for global environmental treaties between wealthy and poor nations. In this case, lower-income countries are likely to argue that they should pay less — or be paid — to implement the treaty because they’ve contributed relatively little to the problem of plastic waste (and in some cases suffer most from it). Could this treaty really work? Delegates from 175 countries finished up the last round of negotiations in Paris with a clear objective: To develop a draft of the plastic treaty before November, when they’ll meet again, in Nairobi, Kenya, for round three. The idea is to discuss the terms of the treaty in detail then, using the text (which they call a “zero draft”) as a starting point. While UN treaty processes are often confusing and bogged down by bureaucracy, they’re one of our best defenses against global crises. And plastic pollution is indeed a global crisis. It’s everywhere — in our forests, our mountains, our oceans, our wildlife, our bodies, our children’s bodies. At least 85 percent of all marine waste is plastic. Hundreds of chemicals in plastics pose potential risks to human health. It remains unclear whether negotiators will be able to craft an ambitious treaty. Then there will be questions about implementation. But the good news is that something similar has been done before, albeit on a smaller scale. In 1987, nearly 200 countries agreed to a global deal called the Montreal Protocol designed to phase out chemicals called CFCs that were found in all sorts of products, from aerosol cans to refrigerators, which had put a hole in Earth’s ozone layer. The treaty worked. Today, 99 percent of ozone-destroying chemicals have been phased out and the ozone hole is almost fully repaired. While the plastic problem is much bigger, global rules to phase out harmful materials can work. “This has been done before,” Muffett said. If world leaders take the problem of plastic pollution seriously, he said, “fundamental transformation is very, very possible.”

A fish stuck in a plastic can holder.
Israel Sebastian/Getty Images

Countries are negotiating a new global treaty to drastically reduce the plastic waste that has been poisoning the world.

Plastic recycling doesn’t work, no matter how diligently you wash out your peanut butter container. Only about 15 percent of plastic waste is collected for recycling worldwide, and of that, about half ends up discarded. That means just 9 percent of plastic waste is recycled.

The rest — some 91 percent of all plastic waste — ends up in landfills, incinerators, or as trash in the environment. One report estimated that 11 million metric tons of plastic trash leaked into the ocean in 2016, and that number could triple by 2040 as the global population rises and lower-income countries develop. Plastic is now simply everywhere: at the deepest depths of the ocean, on the tallest mountains, in hundreds of species of wildlife, and even in human placentas.

 Bhushan Koyande/Hindustan Times via Getty Images
A man walks on a plastic-covered shore in Mumbai, India, on May 31.

It’s hard to imagine meaningful solutions to a problem of such epic proportions. Campaigns to ban things like plastic straws almost seem like a joke when compared to the staggering amounts of waste produced by everything else we use — including the plastic cups those straws go in.

Now, however, there might actually be a reason to feel hopeful. Late last year, world leaders, scientists, and advocates started working on a global, legally binding treaty under the United Nations to end plastic waste. The second round of negotiations concluded last week in Paris with a plan to produce an initial draft of the deal.

This treaty could be huge. Although it will take months of negotiating for any of the details to become clear, the agreement — set to be finalized by the end of 2024 — will require countries to do far more than just fix their recycling systems. Negotiators will discuss a menu of options including a cap on overall plastic production, bans on certain materials and products including many single-use plastics, and incentives to grow an industry around reusable items. This treaty could literally transform entire chunks of the global economy.

As with any global deal, an ambitious agreement will face several roadblocks, some of which have already appeared. Certain countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the US, for example, are pushing for voluntary terms that would allow them to continue investing in their petrochemical industries (plastic is a petrochemical).

Then again, the fact that global talks are happening at all is in itself a big deal and reveals a shift in the politics around waste. “There’s a true willingness to tackle this problem,” said Erin Simon, vice president and head of plastic waste at the World Wildlife Fund, a large environmental group. “We’ve never seen so much progress.”

Here’s what a global plastic treaty could do, and why anti-waste advocates are so hopeful.

A worker holding a bundle of long PVC pipes. Lan Zitao/VCG via Getty Images
A worker at a PVC pipe factory in China’s Sichuan Province on November 30, 2022.

The plastic treaty will target the root of the problem

Even if recycling weren't such a failure, it wouldn’t put an end to plastic waste. Many items can’t be — or are not meant to be — recycled.

There’s no real way to fix the plastic problem without simply producing less of it, said Nicky Davies, executive director of the Plastic Solutions Fund, a group that funds projects to end plastic pollution. “The first thing we need to do is turn off the tap,” Davies said.

That’s why this treaty is so significant: By conception, the agreement is meant to focus on the design and production of plastics, not just on what happens to plastic items after we use them. In other words, the treaty targets the full life cycle of plastics.

What does that mean in practice? The agreement could, for example, include an overall cap on plastic. This would be a global target for reducing the production of new, virgin plastic (which has no recycled content).

Such a target could mandate that, by a certain year, total annual plastic production cannot exceed the amount of plastic produced in some baseline year. It’d be kind of like targets to slash fossil fuel production in order to curb climate change — but for plastic polymers.

Bye-bye plastic takeout containers, probably

Regardless of whether or not the treaty includes an explicit limit on plastic production, it will almost certainly contain bans or restrictions on some materials.

Certain chemicals used in plastics are especially problematic and could be targeted by bans. Some flame retardants, for example, are linked to cancers and endocrine disruption; they can also make plastics hard to recycle. A number of other additives and materials are similarly dangerous to humans or ecosystems, or they make recycling difficult, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and various kinds of PFAS (the so-called forever chemicals).

The treaty may also ban or restrict a whole bunch of common, problematic products — namely, packaging and other single-use items, such as cups and cutlery.

These are an enormous part of the plastic problem, said Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law, an environmental advocacy group. Roughly 40 percent of all plastic waste comes from packaging alone, and nearly two-thirds of it is from plastics that have a lifespan of fewer than five years, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

“These are materials that come into people’s lives that are often unnoticed, and they have useful lives measured in minutes or moments or at best months,” Muffett told Vox.

 Getty Images
A biker in Neihuang, China, carries balloons to sell during a bout of heavy smog.

The most immediate bans or restrictions on single-use plastics, researchers say, should apply to products that are most likely to leak into the environment and cause harm and yet are relatively unnecessary. These include takeaway containers, chip bags, balloons, cotton swabs, disposable e-cigarettes, and tea bags. (A number of environmental organizations including WWF have lists of products that the treaty should prioritize.)

Speaking of unnecessary: The treaty may also restrict the use of certain microplastics. These are plastic pieces that are under 5 millimeters in length, which are either deliberately put in some products like face wash or are emitted unintentionally by things like car tires and clothing. Scientists have found them everywhere they look including in our blood and lungs, water bottles, and Antarctic snow.

Restricting these sorts of plastics isn’t a far-fetched idea. Several US states already ban some plastic bags, including New York and California. The US, Canada, the UK, and other countries, meanwhile, prohibit companies from selling shower gels and many other personal care products with plastic “microbeads” in them. And the EU — home to some of the world’s strictest plastic regulations — prohibits a wide number of single-use items from entering the market, including plastic cutlery and straws.

Yet these bans are not global, they’re not always enforced, and they don’t go far enough, experts say. That’s where the treaty could help.

Building out the “reuse economy”

Plastic is widespread for a few obvious reasons. It’s lightweight, durable, and easily shaped, making it useful for a large number of applications. Plastic is also incredibly cheap (even if government subsidies help offset some of the costs).

Should countries try to phase out single-use plastics, whether by a treaty or not, a key question is: What will replace it? In some cases, other materials like paper might be appropriate, although, of course, they can produce waste as well.

A more sustainable solution, Davies said, is to build out what she calls the reuse economy: a system in which many single-use items, like plastic cups, are replaced by containers that are used over and over again.

This model offers clear value where consumers buy and eat food in the same place, such as food courts, movie theaters, or music festivals. In a reuse economy, vendors would give customers a reusable cup, which they would then place in a bin before leaving the venue, not unlike how you return trays at some food courts. There’d be central facilities on site to clean the cups and make them available to the next customer. (That means dishwashing would have to become more widespread.)

 Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
A drain in Miami Beach, Florida, clogged with plastic waste.

Transforming some other parts of the economy is more challenging, including the food delivery industry. Consider, however, that restaurants often use the same kinds of plastic food containers across large cities like New York. Imagine if those containers were meant to be truly reusable; instead of throwing them out or recycling them, consumers could return them (via some kind of bin, for example) to a central system that cleans the containers and restocks them at restaurants.

Obviously, this would require major investments in infrastructure by governments, private funders, and companies — not to mention some changes in behavior among consumers — but there are plenty of examples of these sorts of reuse systems already working successfully. They’ve been around for decades. In Europe and parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, restaurants and other retailers commonly sell beer and soda in refillable glass containers. Customers will typically get a small deposit back when they return those items. (An organization called Upstream maintains a list of reuse policies in the US and abroad.)

The treaty could help fuel this approach by mandating global targets related to reusing containers, some of which already exist at a country level (in France and elsewhere). For example, it could set a minimum percentage of drinks that must be sold in reusable containers. The treaty could also help set standards for what a good reusable system looks like and define what “reuse” actually means — considering that many plastic bags and other disposable items say they’re “reusable” even though most of us throw them out.

Davies says the reuse economy is essential to fixing the plastic problem — as essential as renewable energy is for curbing climate change. “We actually need to build the reuse economy in the same way as we have built the renewable energy economy,” Davies said.

Better recycling will help, but it’s only a small part of the solution

The treaty won’t spell the end of recycling. Plenty of plastics aren’t easily cleaned or reused by other people, such as toothbrushes or plastics used in hospitals, so countries will still need recycling — but it requires major improvements.

Some cities and countries lack sufficient, conveniently located recycling bins or facilities to process plastic. Even where that infrastructure does exist, recycling runs into all kinds of problems. Plastics in a bin of recyclables typically contain a slew of polymers, dyes, and other chemicals that don’t necessarily mix well together or, when combined, form low-quality plastic, according to a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, a research organization. Some of those chemicals can also make the recycling process itself unsafe for waste workers, Davies said.

“Today’s plastic recycling system is failing us,” authors of the Pew report wrote.

Beyond eliminating harmful chemicals in plastics, a key solution is to encourage or mandate that companies design for recycling from the beginning. That means phasing out dyes and other additives that make recycled plastic worth less, using fewer types of polymers that can contaminate recycling streams, and so on. Better labeling is important, too: You shouldn’t have to spend time Googling to figure out how to recycle something.

To encourage recycling, cities, and countries can also build out what are called “deposit return systems,” or DRS. In these schemes, customers pay a deposit when they buy a drink in a to-go bottle and get it back if they return the container (you may have seen these return machines by the entrance of some grocery stores). The treaty could mandate that countries require DRS for certain kinds of plastic containers.

 Getty Images
A customer places bottles in a recycling machine to receive her deposit in a grocery story in Slovakia.

The treaty could also set a minimum percentage for the amount of recycled plastic in a given product. That would make recycled plastic more valuable and, in turn, encourage more recycling. Again, such targets are not unprecedented: The EU requires that, by 2025, PET plastic drink bottles are made with at least 25 percent recycled plastic.

(Treaty negotiators will consider a wide range of other ideas, such as eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels, setting standards for landfilling plastic, including those pertaining to the health of workers, and weeding out misleading claims about compostable or biodegradable plastics.)

What countries will fight about

Treaty negotiations have only just begun, yet some issues are already a source of tension. Perhaps the biggest one is whether targets under the treaty should be globally mandated — and apply to all countries — or voluntary and set by each nation individually.

A group of countries including all members of the EU, Japan, and Chile, known as the high ambition coalition, is pushing for global targets, whereas the US, Saudi Arabia, and other big plastic-producing nations are advocating for national voluntary targets. (Those voluntary targets would be similar to those under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which set the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to combat climate change.)

“The number one thing I want is global rules,” said Simon of WWF. “Plastic pollution is so integrated into all of our lives, and through these massive world markets. If we continue to address it in a fragmented way, we will never be successful.”

 Mohd Samsul Mohd Said/Getty Images
A blue plastic polymer inside a factory near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

A number of other core issues will likely divide countries along similar lines, such as whether the treaty should cap virgin plastic production and what specific materials it should ban. Generally, major oil-producing nations and other petrochemical interests, such as chemical companies, like to talk up the benefits of recycling instead of taking steps to curb plastic production.

Funding will almost certainly be a divisive issue, as well. There’s a common tension during negotiations for global environmental treaties between wealthy and poor nations. In this case, lower-income countries are likely to argue that they should pay less — or be paid — to implement the treaty because they’ve contributed relatively little to the problem of plastic waste (and in some cases suffer most from it).

Could this treaty really work?

Delegates from 175 countries finished up the last round of negotiations in Paris with a clear objective: To develop a draft of the plastic treaty before November, when they’ll meet again, in Nairobi, Kenya, for round three. The idea is to discuss the terms of the treaty in detail then, using the text (which they call a “zero draft”) as a starting point.

While UN treaty processes are often confusing and bogged down by bureaucracy, they’re one of our best defenses against global crises. And plastic pollution is indeed a global crisis. It’s everywhere — in our forests, our mountains, our oceans, our wildlife, our bodies, our children’s bodies. At least 85 percent of all marine waste is plastic. Hundreds of chemicals in plastics pose potential risks to human health.

It remains unclear whether negotiators will be able to craft an ambitious treaty. Then there will be questions about implementation. But the good news is that something similar has been done before, albeit on a smaller scale.

In 1987, nearly 200 countries agreed to a global deal called the Montreal Protocol designed to phase out chemicals called CFCs that were found in all sorts of products, from aerosol cans to refrigerators, which had put a hole in Earth’s ozone layer. The treaty worked. Today, 99 percent of ozone-destroying chemicals have been phased out and the ozone hole is almost fully repaired.

While the plastic problem is much bigger, global rules to phase out harmful materials can work. “This has been done before,” Muffett said. If world leaders take the problem of plastic pollution seriously, he said, “fundamental transformation is very, very possible.”

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England declines EU's new water pollution standards

In a move that diverges from the European Union's latest environmental protections, England opts not to implement stricter regulations on water pollution from pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries.Helena Horton and Sandra Laville report for The Guardian.In short:The EU has updated its water treatment rules to include "polluter pays" principles, requiring industries to cover costs for chemical pollution cleanup.This update aims to significantly reduce micropollutants and nutrients in waterways, a measure England is not adopting.Northern Ireland and Scotland are moving towards adopting these or similar regulations, signaling a potential policy divergence within the UK.Key quote:"The UK must urgently mirror EU measures to make polluters pay to remedy the problems they cause, as well as to ban the use of harmful chemicals at source, before they harm our health and pollute our environment."— Chloe Alexander, senior campaigner at the CHEM TrustWhy this matters:Ingredients in medications and personal care products, often referred to as emerging contaminants, are increasingly detected in water bodies around the globe. These substances enter aquatic ecosystems through various pathways, including the discharge of treated and untreated sewage, runoff from agricultural lands and improper disposal of unused medications.A little bit of an anti-depressant makes wild guppies less active, camp out more under plants and freeze up for longer after something scares them, according to a 2017 study.

In a move that diverges from the European Union's latest environmental protections, England opts not to implement stricter regulations on water pollution from pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries.Helena Horton and Sandra Laville report for The Guardian.In short:The EU has updated its water treatment rules to include "polluter pays" principles, requiring industries to cover costs for chemical pollution cleanup.This update aims to significantly reduce micropollutants and nutrients in waterways, a measure England is not adopting.Northern Ireland and Scotland are moving towards adopting these or similar regulations, signaling a potential policy divergence within the UK.Key quote:"The UK must urgently mirror EU measures to make polluters pay to remedy the problems they cause, as well as to ban the use of harmful chemicals at source, before they harm our health and pollute our environment."— Chloe Alexander, senior campaigner at the CHEM TrustWhy this matters:Ingredients in medications and personal care products, often referred to as emerging contaminants, are increasingly detected in water bodies around the globe. These substances enter aquatic ecosystems through various pathways, including the discharge of treated and untreated sewage, runoff from agricultural lands and improper disposal of unused medications.A little bit of an anti-depressant makes wild guppies less active, camp out more under plants and freeze up for longer after something scares them, according to a 2017 study.

Industrial pollution is killing America’s Southern Deltas. Can they be saved?

North America’s largest Delta systems are among the most biodiverse places on Earth. But they also support a bustling and wealthy oil and gas industry.

The Mississippi River Delta and its smaller kin to the east, the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, are the largest systems of their kind in North America. Their floodplains, rivers, streams, and swamps stretch across the southeastern United States and support thousands of animal and plant species.  Collectively known as the Southern Deltas, they are among the most biodiverse places on earth.However, they are also critical economic centers that support the vast oil, gas, and chemical industries. A dizzying array of ships of all sizes can be seen traversing the busy waters of the lower Mississippi River, the end of what is essentially a superhighway between Minneapolis and the Gulf of Mexico. The Mobile-Tensaw delta, while smaller, is also a major regional hub of industry, allowing Mobile, Alabama’s port to become one of the fastest growing in the country.The delta’s industrial roles, which support hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs, are often at odds with those who want to protect their waters and the rich ecosystem they support.Can they co-exist? And what can be done to improve the health of the deltas?On World Water Day, Reckon spoke with Dr. Alex Kolker, a professor at Tulane University in New Orleans. He specializes in understanding how coastal systems of the Mississippi River Delta and along the Gulf Coast are impacted by climate change and human-caused pollution.Reckon: In this era of hyper-awareness about the environment and climate change, I was curious about the health of our two major delta systems. How are they doing?Dr. Kolker: Many deltas worldwide are retreating and losing land because of a vast array of human impacts, like climate change, sea level rise, and natural processes. The Mississippi River Delta in Louisiana is a prime example of that. Coastal Louisiana has lost about 2,000 square miles, or about 5,000 square kilometers worth of land, over the last 100 years. The ground under the Mississippi River Delta is sinking because so many canals were cut for oil and gas. It also doesn’t receive much restorative sediment from the Mississippi River because it’s behind levees, which is another big problem. Climate change is causing water levels to rise, preventing the protective wetlands in the deltas from doing their job.Can you explain the Mississippi Delta and why it has so much activity in its waters?[The Mississippi Delta] is an area where there were huge plantations, and a lot of people who live there today are descendants. Then there’s the Mississippi River Delta, which is the part that hits the Gulf of Mexico. When people like me talk about the Mississippi River Delta, they talk about the lower part of that system. Industrial facilities are in that general area, supporting oil and gas facilities south of Baton Rouge. You’ll see heavy shipping because that’s where the most intense parts of the petrochemical corridor are. About half of what moves up and down the lower Mississippi River is related to energy, oil, coal, gas, and heavy chemicals.As you mentioned, the Mississippi River Delta has a huge amount of industrial activity. At the same time, the Mobile Delta is surrounded by sources of pollution, from port activity to chemical plants upriver and a giant coal ash pond that feeds toxic chemicals into the groundwater. What’s the effect of pollution on people, our water and the precious ecosystems of the Southern Deltas?There are a lot of effects of chemical pollution in the Mississippi River Delta, in terms of chemistry in the water, but also the bigger impact on people’s health. These facilities produce a lot of air toxins–nitrogen oxide, volatile organic carbon, sulfur dioxide and other things that are harmful to people. They are respiratory hazards and carcinogens. That is a big concern for a lot of people in South Louisiana. That’s the stretch that people call “Cancer Alley.In terms of the water’s chemistry, there’s a large hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico that has lost much of its dissolved oxygen because of the nitrogen fertilizer that flows from farms upriver.It’s hard for fish and shellfish to breathe. Coal terminals are also along the lower Mississippi River, raising concerns that dust from those coal facilities could get into wetlands. They’re also building huge liquefied natural gas plants near wetlands in Louisiana, which is actually near a big coastal restoration project.Living in lower Alabama, I’ve spent a decent amount of time in the Mobile Delta and Mobile Bay. It’s quite disgusting, and I know from reading reports that much of the seagrass is dead, killed by pollution and a lack of sunlight. And I often wonder how effective our environmental laws, like the Clean Water Act of 1972, have been.I’m not a Clean Water Act specialist, but in the late 1960s and 70s, the Cuyahoga River around Cleveland would catch fire. That sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore, so I think these laws have had some effect, like reducing harmful chemicals in the water. Industry is now required to report pollutants. Whether the Clean Water Act has done enough is more of a policy question.You mentioned the importance of wetlands earlier. The Supreme Court decided they weren’t part of the Clean Water Act. What effect has that had on coastal communities?The previous interpretation of the Clean Water Act was that it could be used to prevent dredging, filling in, and other activities that would harm wetlands. Last year, the Supreme Court decided that wetlands don’t come under the Clean Water Act, significantly reducing the federal government’s ability to regulate them. That may be the most significant change to the delta ecosystems.Wetlands provide a lot of assets to coastal communities, including flood protection and habitat for many economically important species that people harvest, like crabs, shellfish, and fin fish Their lifecycles are tied to wetland marshes. And a lot of wading birds — herons and egrets and the like —  also call them home. Wetlands also buffer against storms and regulate water quality by filtering out harmful pollutants. These are big issues.What can we do to improve the situation of our Southern Deltas?There’s a lot that can be done. One thing that should be mentioned is that Louisiana has a significant plan to restore the Mississippi River Delta. It could involve taking sediment from onshore or offshore, putting it on the marshes, and partially diverting the flow of the Mississippi River. It’s a broad program that aims to spend about $1 billion annually for the next 50 years. About half of that is for restoration, and the rest is for coastal protection, which largely involves building levees. The idea is to reduce flooding impacts.Louisiana is doing it on a significant scale. It’s not going to be perfect by any means. If you look at the projections with climate change and sea level rise, the area will continue to lose land, and intense and damaging storms will continue. So, I don’t want to tell you it’s a panacea. However, the idea of combining storm, flood protection, and ecosystem restoration on a broad scale is something that other coastal communities should consider. If you look at the data, many of these plans will work if climate change is modest and stays at relatively moderate levels. But wetland restoration becomes very difficult if climate change accelerates and continues to accelerate.The data point is that if we want to save and preserve our southern deltas, we need to do something about climate change.

How the New E.P.A. Rules Affect Toyota and Their Hybrid Cars

The auto giant lobbied hard against tougher pollution rules. This week, the E.P.A.’s new rules proved favorable to hybrid technology, an area that Toyota dominates.

The breakfast at Toyota’s annual dealership gathering in Las Vegas last fall was an exclusive, invite-only affair, where attendees were told to cover their cellphone cameras with red stickers.Speaking was Stephen Ciccone, Toyota’s top lobbyist. He said the industry was facing an existential crisis — not because of the economy or fuel prices, but because of stronger tailpipe pollution limits being proposed in the United States. The rules were “bad for the country, bad for the consumer, and bad for the auto industry,” he said, according to a memo he later circulated among Toyota dealerships that was reviewed by The New York Times.“For more than two years, Toyota and our dealer partners have stood alone in the fight against unrealistic BEV mandates,” he wrote, using the acronym for battery-electric vehicles. “We have taken a lot of hits from environmental activists, the media, and some politicians. But we have not — and we will not — back down.”On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized tailpipe emissions rules that require car makers to meet tough new average emissions limits. The rules are some of the most significant aimed at fighting climate change in United States history.But the rules relaxed major elements of an earlier, more stringent proposal. In particular, the final regulations were favorable to hybrid cars, those that run both on gasoline and electricity — giving a bigger role to a market that Toyota dominates.Toyota, it appeared, had come out on top.Once a leader in clean cars, Toyota has cemented its role as the voice of caution against electrifying the auto industry too quickly, using its lobbying and public relations muscle to oppose a rapid shift that experts say is critical to fighting climate change.Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

Biden Administration Announces Rules Aimed at Phasing Out Gas Cars

The regulations would require automakers to produce more electric vehicles and hybrids by gradually tightening limits on tailpipe pollution.

The Biden administration on Wednesday issued one of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history, a rule designed to ensure that the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032.Nearly three years in the making, the new tailpipe pollution limits from the Environmental Protection Agency would transform the American automobile market. A record 1.2 million electric vehicles rolled off dealers’ lots last year, but they made up just 7.6 percent of total U.S. car sales, far from the 56 percent target under the new regulation. An additional 16 percent of new cars sold would be hybrids.Cars and other forms of transportation are, together, the largest single source of carbon emissions generated by the United States, pollution that is driving climate change and that helped to make 2023 the hottest year in recorded history. Electric vehicles are central to President Biden’s strategy to confront global warming, which calls for cutting the nation’s emissions in half by the end of this decade. But E.V.s have also become politicized and are becoming an issue in the 2024 presidential campaign.“Three years ago, I set an ambitious target: that half of all new cars and trucks sold in 2030 would be zero-emission,” said Mr. Biden in a statement. “Together, we’ve made historic progress. Hundreds of new expanded factories across the country. Hundreds of billions in private investment and thousands of good-paying union jobs. And we’ll meet my goal for 2030 and race forward in the years ahead.”The rule increasingly limits the amount of pollution allowed from tailpipes over time so that, by 2032, more than half the new cars sold in the United States would most likely be zero-emissions vehicles in order for carmakers to meet the standards.That would avoid more than seven billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions over the next 30 years, according to the E.P.A. That’s the equivalent of removing a year’s worth of all the greenhouse gases generated by the United States, the country that has historically pumped the most carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The regulation would provide nearly $100 billion in annual net benefits to society, according to the agency, including $13 billion of annual public health benefits thanks to improved air quality.Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

All but 7 Countries on Earth Have Air Pollution Above WHO Standard

New research found that fewer than 10 percent of countries and territories met World Health Organization guidelines for particulate matter pollution last year.

Only 10 countries and territories out of 134 achieved the World Health Organization’s standards for a pervasive form of air pollution last year, according to air quality data compiled by IQAir, a Swiss company.The pollution studied is called fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, because it refers to solid particles less than 2.5 micrometers in size: small enough to enter the bloodstream. PM2.5 is the deadliest form of air pollution, leading to millions of premature deaths each year.“Air pollution and climate change both have the same culprit, which is fossil fuels,” said Glory Dolphin Hammes, the CEO of IQAir’s North American division.The World Health Organization sets a guideline that people shouldn’t breathe more than 5 micrograms of fine particulate matter per cubic meter of air, on average, throughout a year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed tightening its standard from 12 to 9 micrograms per cubic meter.The few oases of clean air that meet World Health Organization guidelines are mostly islands, as well as Australia and the northern European countries of Finland and Estonia. Of the non-achievers, where the vast majority of the human population lives, the countries with the worst air quality were mostly in Asia and Africa.Where some of the dirtiest air is foundThe four most polluted countries in IQAir’s ranking for 2023 — Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Tajikistan — are in South and Central Asia.Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

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