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Free Webinar Hosted by Beyond Plastics and Features Five Expert Panelists on Plastic Pollution, Environmental Justice, and Environmental Policy
Group Calls for National Packaging Reduction Bill, Environmental Justice Protections, Ban on Vinyl Chloride and Plastic Exports, Global Treaty Leadership, Moratorium on Plastics and Chemical Recycling Facilities, and More
106 environmental and community groups submitted a letter to U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, urging her to withdraw the federal agency’s $182.6 million loan guarantee for the International Recycling Group’s (IRG) proposed plastic waste facility in Erie, PA, and a steel mill in northwest IN. The IRG plant, according to the company’s permit applications, will take plastic waste from a 750-mile radius and send what it doesn’t mechanically recycle to northwest Indiana to be burned.
IN THE NEWS
The group Beyond Plastics on Wednesday expressed hope that the next U.S. president "is up for the challenge" of reversing course on the annual plastic pollution that is currently projected to nearly double by 2040, and released a 27-point agenda to guide the winner of the November election.
"The next president of the United States should use a combination of approaches to significantly reduce the production, use, transport, and disposal of plastics for the sake of public health and the environment," reads the list of proposed priorities. "These include directives issued to federal agencies and efforts to work with Congress to introduce and pass relevant federal legislation."
Contrary to popular belief, products made of “compostable” plastic won’t degrade in your home compost. Rather, they are products that can decompose in commercial composting facilities, which are rare in the U.S.
A new report from Beyond Plastics, an NGO, claims that very little of the bioplastics labeled as compostable can be composted by consumers. “Compostable” bioplastics can only be broken down in commercial compost facilities, but many of these won’t take compostable foodware and packaging because of concerns about microplastic and chemical contamination.
Melissa Valliant, communications director for the nonprofit advocacy group Beyond Plastics, said these findings are in some ways unsurprising. “Historically, goals from the largest consumer goods companies have served as pretty PR stunts that generate headlines and reassure the public,” she told Grist. She said As You Sow’s findings emphasize the need for government regulation — not just voluntary corporate commitments — to expedite companies’ progress.
Let’s not fall for another false solution offered by companies to maintain their profit margins. Let’s not allow chemical recycling to win with the same deceptive playbook used by Big Tobacco. We need real change now — and it can’t begin until companies are required by new laws to break their plastic habit and give consumers safe packaged products that don’t threaten the health of people or the planet.
So Charleston Waterkeeper joined with the Southern Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit law firm, and the Charleston-based Coastal Conservation League, to identify what they believed to be the source of the nurdles and then to take that company, Frontier Logistics, L.P., to federal court, in March 2020. A year later, the environmental advocates and Frontier reached a settlement that included $1 million to improve water quality in the Charleston Harbor watershed.
Of course, you’re not going to avoid microplastic consumption by shunning protein. According to Melissa Valliant, communications director for the nonprofit Beyond Plastics, microplastics have also been found in milk, fruits, vegetables, sugar, salt, honey—basically anything that’s been studied.
In 2020, the plastic supermarket bag was banned in New York. It is a member of the single-use-plastic family — items that release greenhouse gases when manufactured and, once used, can take years to break down in landfills. Many more single-use plastic products could go the way of the supermarket bag should state lawmakers approve the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act in early June.
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