Author: Saqib Rahim
Four years ago, city officials in Palo Alto, California, posed what they thought was a straightforward question: Where did their recycling go? Concerned citizens had seen dire headlines about plastic dumping in Southeast Asia, and they wanted to know if their waste contributed.
Read MoreAuthor: Valerie Volcovici
Countries have begun to discuss a future global plastics treaty which would cut pollution, some hope entirely by 2040, at U.N. talks in Uruguay this week, with many states calling for curbs on plastic production as a way to reach that goal.
Read MoreAuthor: Matt Simon
This week in Uruguay, scientists, environmentalists, and government representatives—and, of course, lobbyists—are gathering to begin negotiations on a United Nations treaty on plastics. It’s only the start of talks, so we don’t know how they will shape up, but some of the bargaining chips on the table include production limits and phasing out particularly troublesome chemical components.
Read MoreAuthor: Tosin Thompson
Plastic is one of the fastest growing materials and production is on course to double, to more than one billion tonnes a year, by 2050. With that, will come more pollution. This week, delegates from more than 150 countries are expected to meet in Uruguay to begin negotiations for a historic global agreement to end plastic pollution.
Read MoreAuthor: Steve Fletcher
The world produces a vast amount of plastic. Global plastic production increased from 2 million metric tons in 1950 to 348 million metric tons in 2017. Yet much of this plastic is wasted: 86% of the world’s plastic waste in 2016 was either incinerated, sent to landfill or leaked into nature.
Read MoreAuthor: Meera Subramanian, Nature
On a warm windy day in early April, Jace Tunnell steps out of his car at Morgan’s Point, a spit of land that juts out into the Houston Ship Channel in Texas. Tunnell, a marine biologist and reserve director at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute, sets his watch and gets to work, walking along the high-tide line and picking up every plastic pellet he can see.
Read MoreAuthor: Dustin Godfrey
Burnaby firm Golden Trust Trading is being sued for millions of dollars by two separate shipping companies claiming it was responsible for docking fees in Thailand for plastic it had reportedly exported to the country.
Read MoreAuthor: Matthew Campbell, Bloomberg
About two years ago, Vinyou Jiaramankong learned his neighborhood was changing. Next to the 40-year-old’s neat house in the southern suburbs of Bangkok, a storage yard was being converted into a plastic recycling factory. Shielded by high walls that extended directly to the edge of Jiaramankong’s property, the facility would take in used plastic, melt it down, and run the resulting mixture through an extruder.
Read MoreAuthors: Chris Vedelago and James Dowling
Australia’s largest plastic bag recycling program has collapsed amid revelations hundreds of millions of bags and other soft plastic items dropped off by customers at Coles and Woolworths are being secretly stockpiled in warehouses and not recycled.
Read MoreAuthor: Amy Gibbons
British plastic waste is still being illegally dumped and burned abroad, contributing to “shocking” and “irreversible” impacts on human health and the environment, MPs have heard. A cross-party committee is calling for a blanket ban on UK plastic waste exports by 2027 after finding the “dirty trade” is leaving behind toxic traces on foreign soil linked to cancer, liver disease, skin lesions and abnormal foetus development.
Read MoreAuthor: U.K. Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has called for a ban on the export of all plastic waste from the UK by 2027 to reduce the country’s contribution to global plastic waste pollution. The ban should be part of a strategy to use less plastic, re-use more of it, and boost recycling, the committee said in a report – The price of plastic: ending the toll of plastic waste – which is published today (under embargo – attached above).
Read MoreAuthor: Gerald Stoiber, translated from German
Around 700 tons of plastic waste from Austria were illegally exported to Malaysia. For this, an ex-manager and the intermediary of the business have to answer in court. It was a report by the environmental organization Greenpeace that got the ball rolling.
Read MoreAuthor: Leslie Kaufman
“I’m, like, really freaking out.” It’s a late night in April, and Tom Szaky, the founder and chief executive officer of TerraCycle Inc., is on my video screen. His mussed shoulder-length hair is spilling over a zip-up hoodie. Unusually, he’s in supplicant mode.
Read MoreThree weeks have passed since the toxic aircraft carrier SÃO PAULO came back to Brazil after Turkey blocked its import and the Brazilian Environmental Agency IBAMA required its return. Yet, the vessel is still drifting more than 12 miles off the coast of the State of Pernambuco, while both the Brazilian Navy and IBAMA fail to demand and provide a safe haven to prevent potential harm to the marine environment. International and national NGOs[1] are calling for urgent action.
Read MoreAt the 15th Conference of Parties in Geneva this June, even as we celebrated bringing non-hazardous electronic waste within the scope of the Basel Convention's control procedures for the first time, we were unable to make progress to prevent very hazardous electronic wastes from being allowed to escape the Basel Control procedures if Parties follow Paragraph 32(b) of the Guidelines on the Transboundary Movement of e-waste adopted at COP12 on an "interim basis." Under that flawed section of the Guidelines, as long as an exporter claims their container loads of e-scrap are destined for repair, then all authorities can look the other way as Basel does not apply.
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