Author: Omar Jimenez, Bonney Kapp, Sara Smart, Brenda Goodman, Michelle Krupa and Holly Yan, CNN

Richmond, Indiana — CNN — The raging fire shooting toxic smoke from an eastern Indiana recycling plant has forced thousands of people to evacuate and countless more to wonder what the impacts might be to their health and environment. Plastics were among the items that started burning Tuesday at the Richmond plant. And the thick, black column of smoke that rose from the site is “definitely toxic,” Indiana State Fire Marshal Steve Jones said. “There is a host of different chemicals that plastics give off when they’re on fire, and it’s concerning,” Jones said Tuesday evening. He said the fire will likely burn for days.

Author: Arleigh Rodgers

RICHMOND, Ind. (AP) — A major industrial fire fueled by tons of scrap plastics in an Indiana city was close to being extinguished Thursday after burning for more than 48 hours, though an evacuation order for people living near the disaster remained in place, authorities said. Richmond officials also disclosed more details about the city’s dealings with a man who was operating the business where the fire occured. They said Seth Smith was barred from accepting more plastics for resale, following a 2020 cleanup order, but he was allowed to keep selling a vast collection still on hand.

Author: Eric Ralls

Since the dawn of the plastic era in the 1950s, humanity has manufactured a staggering 8.3 billion tons of plastic, with an additional 380 million tons produced annually. Despite recycling efforts, only 9% of this plastic is repurposed, leaving the remainder to infiltrate our environment.  Plastic pollution has pervaded every corner of the earth, from the deepest ocean trenches to the peak of Mount Everest, and alarmingly, it has made its way into the tissues of humans and other organisms.

Author: James Bruggers

The dense black smoke from a fire at a plastics recycler in Richmond, Indiana, that began Tuesday afternoon and continued burning on Wednesday, forcing the evacuation of 2,000 nearby residents, was  dramatic, but far from an isolated incident in the world of facilities that store or recycle vast quantities of plastic waste. There are hundreds of such fires in the United States and Canada every year and most of them never make the news, said Richard Meier, a private fire investigator in Florida who worked 24 years as a mechanical engineer in manufacturing, including in plastics companies.

Author: Charlotte Elton

Rome will send 900 tonnes of rubbish to Amsterdam every week starting this month. The Italian capital is drowning in trash. The city’s four million residents produce more household waste than it can dispose of. Starting from mid-April, a special-purpose train will transport some of this rubbish 1,700 km north to Amsterdam for incineration.

Author: Sharon Lerner

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is facing a lawsuit filed by a community group and questions from a US senator over the agency’s approval of fuels made from discarded plastic under a program it touted as “climate-friendly”. The new scrutiny is in response to an earlier investigation by ProPublica and the Guardian that revealed the EPA approved the new chemicals even though its own scientists calculated that pollution from production of one of the plastic-based fuels was so toxic that one in four people exposed to it over their lifetime would be expected to develop cancer. That risk is 250,000 times greater than the level usually considered acceptable by the EPA division that approves new chemicals, and it’s higher than the lifetime risk of cancer for current smokers.

Author: Graham Readfearn

New stockpiles of soft plastics from the failed REDcycle recycling scheme have been uncovered as the work to develop an alternative program continues. The program was wound up in November 2022 after it emerged that plastics consumers had returned to supermarkets to be recycled were instead put into storage. In a joint statement, Coles and Woolworths said REDcycle – which has since gone into liquidation – had been “stockpiling soft plastics without our knowledge”.

Author: Haley Rischar

Environmental groups have petitioned for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to require companies to disclose the chemicals discharged from waste incinerators and plants that transform plastic waste into fuel, Reuters reports.   Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Energy Justice Network filed the petition with the agency April 3, claiming that chemical emissions from 400 incineration, gasification and pyrolysis, or advanced recycling, facilities are not required to be reported to the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI).

Author: Kirstin Linnenkoper

Installed capacity for plastic recycling in Europe increased by 17% in 2021 compared to the previous year, according to Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE). The figure totalled 11.3 million tonnes thanks to more than 730 recycling facilities. A PRE report says processing of flexible PP & PE, PET and rigid PP & PE accounts for the largest proportion of the overall capacity in EU27+3, representing nearly 80%. Individually, the materials account for 28%, 26% and 25%. Germany, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, and France have the biggest installed capacities, representing 67% of the market. Meanwhile, notable growth is being witnessed in Poland and the Netherlands. Investment in plastics recycling was estimated at EUR 1.75 billion in 2021.

Authors: Anna Scheld & David Lombeida

On the outskirts of Istanbul, a boy in a mustard yellow jacket is standing in a huge tin garbage can. He rummages, pulls out empty plastic canisters and bottles. Throws them in his cart with the other plastic he has already collected. Can is twelve. His father left the family, his mother is chronically ill. He collects plastic to take to a recycling plant to make some money.

Author: Joseph Winters

Just ahead of this year’s Super Bowl in February, the City of Phoenix, Arizona, published a peculiar press release touting its strategy for waste diversion. Thanks to its relationship with Direct Pack Incorporated, a multinational company that makes and recycles plastic, the city said it would be able to send much of its plastic waste to Mexico for recycling. “[T]he City of Phoenix stands ready to achieve its goal of hosting the greenest Super Bowl events yet,” the announcement from Phoenix’s public works department said.

Author: Megan Quinn

The impact of plastics in the environment took center stage at a Senate subcommittee hearing Thursday where lawmakers clashed over the future of plastics production and recycling. A panel of scientists testified during a Senate meeting of the Subcommittee on Chemical Safety, Waste Management, Environmental Justice, and Regulatory Oversight. It was the first in a series of six meetings Sen. Jeff Merkley, D- Oregon, said are necessary to get lawmakers on the same page about how to handle urgent plastic pollution issues affecting air, water and human health.

Author: Brian Taylor

A Norway-based shipping and freight analysis company says long-term container shipping rates are declining globally, though the level of decline has leveled out in March compared with several prior months. In a recent presentation, Norway-based Xeneta says its global container shipping pricing index (XSI) continued its downward trend in March, though at a slower pace than in previous months, adding that the XSI hit its all-time high as recently as August of last year and has declined 24 percent subsequently. Xeneta says the smaller month-on-month decline in March may be more tied to there having been only a few contracts signed during the month rather than an increase in leverage for shipping lines.

Author: Carolyn Fortuna

Since plastics were invented in 1835, they have played an indispensable role in our society due to their low cost, good formability, strength, durability, and lightweight. The cost effective production and versatility of plastics make them critical materials for numerous applications such as packaging, construction, auto parts, electronics, and school supplies. However, plastics can take anywhere from 20 to 500 years to decompose, depending on the material’s structure and environmental factors such as sunlight exposure.

Author: Nick O’Malley

The report in this newspaper that Australia stands no chance of reaching its goal of recycling 70 per cent of its plastic waste by 2025 is at once depressing and predictable. Most of our single-use plastics cannot be recycled into a useful product at a reasonable cost. As voters and consumers we keep pretending it can, because we like plastic. It is cheap and useful.