Microplastics are everywhere — but are they harmful?

via Nature.com

Dunzhu Li used to microwave his lunch each day in a plastic container. But Li, an environmental engineer, stopped when he and his colleagues made a disturbing discovery: plastic food containers shed huge numbers of tiny specks — called microplastics — into hot water. “We were shocked,” Li says. Kettles and baby bottles also shed microplastics, Li and other researchers, at Trinity College Dublin, reported last October1. If parents prepare baby formula by shaking it up in hot water inside a plastic bottle, their infant might end up swallowing more than one million microplastic particles each day, the team calculated.

What Li and other researchers don’t yet know is whether this is dangerous. Everyone eats and inhales sand and dust, and it’s not clear if an extra diet of plastic specks will harm us. “Most of what you ingest is going to pass straight through your gut and out the other end,” says Tamara Galloway, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Exeter, UK. “I think it is fair to say the potential risk might be high,” says Li, choosing his words carefully.

Read the full story here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01143-3

A high-altitude clean-up in Bolivia’s Valley of the Souls

via Reuters

In Bolivia’s Valley of the Souls, razor sharp rock formations pierce the blue sky above the nearby highland city of La Paz, from where urban sprawl over years has left the picturesque spot littered with plastic waste and construction rubble.

Now the rocky canyon is getting a clean up amid a wider push to spruce up the South American country’s scenic spots and waterways, with hundreds of volunteers, aided by heavy machinery, shifting over 15 tons of debris in the last week.

Read the full story here: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/high-altitude-clean-up-bolivias-valley-souls-2021-05-04/

Adding enzymes to bioplastics can make them disappear

via Popular Science

With so many different plastics entering the waterways that take hundreds of years to decompose, plastic pollution and microplastics are almost everywhere on the planet, from the air to the sea, in vast quantities. Compostable plastics, like corn-based plastic cups and straws, are sometimes touted as a viable solution, but without the infrastructure to properly turn them into compost, they can end up in a landfill

To keep our oceans from becoming even more plastic-filled, scientists are finding the keys to making plastics quickly decompose, and baking them into the plastic’s formula. Ting Xu, professor of materials science and engineering and chemistry at the University of California Berkeley, and her research group investigate biologically available solutions that will allow single-use plastic to biodegrade under easily attainable conditions. In a new study, they describe how they used an innovative polymer coating on enzymes that can be built-in to bioplastics to make them easier to compost at home. 

Read the full story here: https://www.popsci.com/story/environment/biodegradable-plastics-enzyme/

Single-use plastic bag ban begins in Delaware

via Delaware State News

DOVER — Customers in the checkout lines at grocery, retail and convenience stores throughout Delaware should be prepared for a new way of conducting business starting New Year’s Day.

That’s because consumers and some businesses in Delaware will no longer be able to use or distribute single-use plastic carryout bags at the point of sale.

Read the full story here: https://delawarestatenews.net/news/single-use-plastic-bag-ban-begins-in-delaware/

COVID-19 Lays Waste to Many US Recycling Programs

via Manufacturing Business Technology

Many items designated as reusable, communal or secondhand have been temporarily barred to minimize person-to-person exposure. This is producing higher volumes of waste.

Grocers, whether by state decree or on their own, have brought back single-use plastic bags. Even IKEA has suspended use of its signature yellow reusable in-store bags. Plastic industry lobbyists have also pushed to eliminate plastic bag bans altogether, claiming that reusable bags pose a public health risk.

Read the full story here: https://www.mbtmag.com/home/news/21138099/covid19-lays-waste-to-many-us-recycling-programs

COVID-19 is forcing us to rethink our plastic problem

via World Economic Forum

  • The global demand for PPE has caused a concurrent uptick in demand for single-use plastics.
  • As lockdowns are lifted, we may find our reliance on plastic has increased.
  • Companies and governments now have an even more urgent – and tricky – responsibility to transition to a circular economy.

Economic uncertainties and risks of a second wave of COVID-19 might impose significant limitations on waste services. With the pandemic contributing to increased plastic use in healthcare, and large volumes of waste being unfit for recycling due to potential biohazards, medical plastic waste could grow at an unprecedented scale. A similar situation might arise in the food industry and other services that had previously decided to temporally limit reusables. The disrupted waste management and recycling sector would also take some time to recover and would not be able to effectively handle massive volumes of post-pandemic plastic.

Read the full story here: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/covid-19-is-forcing-us-to-rethink-our-plastic-problem/

Draft US law seeks to make plastic industry responsible for waste

via Yahoo The proposed “Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act,” introduced by Democratic lawmakers, would be the most ambitious regulation the US plastics industry has ever seen.

It would require producers to collect and recycle their own waste, create a nationwide drink container refund scheme and phase out certain single-use plastic items.

Read the full story here: https://au.news.yahoo.com/draft-us-law-seeks-plastic-industry-responsible-waste-011137658–spt.html

Hard Rock Stadium To Eliminate 99.4% Of Single-Use Plastics By 2020

via Forbes

Tom Garfinkel remembers sitting in awe and disbelief as he watched the 60 Minutes special on plastic pollution. The vice chairman, president and CEO of the Miami Dolphins and Hard Rock Stadium was taken aback by the seemingly endless amount of plastic floating in the oceans, congregating at the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Each year approximately 8 million tons of plastic waste ends up in the world’s oceans, according to the United Nations. If trends continue, oceans could contain more plastic than fish by 2050.

Read the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellore/2019/11/18/hard-rock-stadium-to-eliminate-994-of-single-use-plastics-by-2020/#a60cb46e0e9e

“Mott Haven” Film Raises Awareness About Plastics Contaminating Our Oceans

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“I have been in the plastics recycling business for 30 years. The film we made, starring Robert Davi & Paul Wilson with Chuck Zito, Deborah Green and Brandi Porter, will help raise awareness to what many consider to be the #1 threat to the environment of our planet. “Mott Haven” is not a documentary but an entertaining and intense drama set in The South Bronx where the story’s protagonist is struggling to keep his life and his plastics recycling business afloat. His business, Bronx Recycling Company of Mott Haven is collecting much of the scrap plastic in New York City which otherwise might end up as pollution. We are all proud that we have created a film that is not only meaningful and exciting but also addresses a pressing environmental problem which affects all people, all over the world.” — Michael Domino, COO, Domino Plastics Company Inc.

www.motthavenfilm.com

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/planetorplastic/