Every year, an unknown but potentially large amount of plastic waste continues to be traded in the form of “refuse-derived fuel,” or RDF, ground-up packaging and industrial plastic waste that gets mixed with scrap wood and paper in order to be burned for energy. Environmental groups say these exports perpetuate “waste colonialism” and jeopardize public health, since burning plastic emits hazardous pollutants and greenhouse gases that warm the planet. 

Many advocates would like to see the RDF loophole closed as a first step toward discouraging the development of new RDF facilities worldwide. They were disappointed that, at this spring’s biannual meeting of the Basel Convention — the 1989 treaty that regulates the transboundary movement of hazardous waste — RDF went largely unaddressed. “It’s just frustrating to witness all these crazy, profit-protecting negotiators,” said Yuyun Ismawati, co-founder of the Indonesian anti-pollution nonprofit Nexus3. “If we are going to deal with plastic waste through RDF, then … everybody must be willing to learn more about what’s in it.”

RDF is a catch-all term for several different products, sometimes made with special equipment at material recovery facilities — the centers that, in the U.S., receive and sort mixed household waste for further processing. ASTM International, an American standard-setting organization, lists several types of RDF depending on what it’s made of and what it’s formed into — coarse particles no larger than a fingernail, for example, or larger briquettes. Some RDF is made by shredding waste into a loose “fluff.”

Although RDF contains roughly 50 percent paper, cardboard, wood, and other plant material, the rest is plastic, including human-made textiles and synthetic rubber. It’s this plastic content that makes RDF so combustible — after all, plastics are just reconstituted fossil fuels. According to technical guidelines from the Basel Convention secretariat, RDF contains about two-thirds the energy of coal by weight. 

One of the main users of RDF is the cement industry, which can burn it alongside traditional fossil fuels to power its energy-intensive kilns. Álvaro Lorenz, global sustainability director for the multinational cement company Votorantim Cimentos, said RDF has gained popularity as cities, states and provinces, and countries struggle to deal with the 353 million metric tons of plastic waste produced each year — 91 percent of which is never recycled. Some of these jurisdictions have implemented policies discouraging trash from being sent to landfills. Instead, it gets sent to cement kilns like his. “Governments are promoting actions to reduce the amount of materials being sent to landfills, and we are one solution,” he said.

Lorenz said RDF makes his company more sustainable by contributing to a “circular economy.” In theory, using RDF instead of coal or natural gas reduces emissions and advances companies’ environmental targets. According to David Araujo, North America engineered fuels program manager for the waste management and utility company Veolia, RDF produced by his company’s factory in Louisiana, Missouri, allows cement company clients in the Midwest to avoid 1.06 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions with every ton of RDF burned. The ash produced from burning RDF can also be used as a raw material in cement production, he added, displacing virgin material use.

RDF is also attractive because it is less price-volatile than the fossil fuels that cement production would otherwise depend on. In one analysis of Indonesian RDF production from last year, researchers found that each metric ton of RDF can save cement kiln operators about $77 in fuel and electricity costs.

Lorenz said that the high temperatures inside cement kilns “completely burn 100 percent” of any hazardous chemicals that may be contained in RDF’s plastic fraction. But this is contested by environmental advocates who worry about insufficiently regulated toxic air emissions similar to those produced by traditional waste incinerators — especially in poor countries with less robust environmental regulations and enforcement capacity. Dioxins, for example, are released by both cement kilns and other waste incinerators, and are linked to immune and nervous system impairment. Burning plastic can also release heavy metals that are associated with respiratory and neurological disorders. A 2019 systematic review of the health impacts of waste incineration found that people living and working near waste incinerators had higher levels of dioxins, lead, and arsenic in their bodies, and that they often had a higher risk of some types of cancer such as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

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Joseph Winters

“Before they convert it into fuel, the chemicals are still locked inside the [plastic] packaging,” said Ismawati. “But once you burn it, … you spray out everything.” She said some of her friends living near an RDF facility in Indonesia have gotten cancer, and at least one has died from it.

Lorenz and Araujo both said their companies are subject to, and comply with, applicable environmental regulations in the countries where they operate. 

Lee Bell, a science and policy adviser for the International Pollutants Elimination Network — a network of environmental and public health experts and nonprofits — also criticized the idea that burning RDF causes fewer greenhouse gas emissions than burning traditional fossil fuels. He said this notion fails to consider the “petrochemical origin” of plastic waste: Plastics cause greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of their life cycle, and, as a strategy for dealing with plastic waste, research suggests that incineration releases more climate pollution than other waste management strategies. In a landfill, where plastic lasts hundreds of years with little degradation, the nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law has estimated greenhouse gas emissions at about 132 pounds per metric ton. That rises to about 1,980 pounds of emissions per metric ton when plastic is incinerated.

Bell said he’s concerned about the apparent growth of the RDF industry worldwide, though there is little reliable data about how much of the stuff is produced and traded between countries each year. Part of the problem is the “harmonized system” of export codes administrated by the World Customs Organization, which represents more than 170 customs bodies around the world. The organization doesn’t have a specific code for RDF and instead lumps it with any of several other categories  — ”household waste,” for example — when it’s traded internationally. Only the U.K. seems to provide transparent reporting of its RDF exports. In the first three months of 2025 it reported sending about 440,000 metric tons abroad, most of which was received by Scandinavian countries.

Nearly all of the world’s largest cement companies already use RDF in at least some of their facilities. According to one market research firm, the market for RDF was worth about $5 billion in 2023, and it’s expected to grow to $10.2 billion by 2032. Other firms have forecast a bright outlook for the RDF industry in the Middle East and Africa, and one analysis from last year said that Asia is “realizing tremendous potential as a growth market for RDF” as governments seek new ways to manage their waste. Within the past year, new plans to use RDF in cement kilns have been announced in Peshawar, Pakistan; Hoa Binh, Vietnam; Adana, Turkey; and across Nigeria, just to name a few places.  

Araujo, with Veolia, said his company’s RDF program “has grown exponentially” over the past several years, “and we recently invested millions of dollars to upgrade equipment to keep pace with demand.” A separate spokesperson said Veolia does not send RDF across international borders, and a spokesperson for Votorantim Cimentos said the company always sources RDF locally.

Dorothy Otieno, a program officer at the Nairobi-based Centre for Environment Justice and Development, said investment in RDF infrastructure could create a perverse incentive for the world to create more plastic — and for developing countries to import it — just to ensure that facility operators earn a return on their investment. “Will this create an avenue for the importation of RDFs and other fossil fuel-based plastics?” she asked. “These are the kinds of questions that we are going to need to ask ourselves.”

At this year’s Basel Convention conference in May and June, the International Pollutants Elimination Network called for negotiators to put RDF into the same regulatory bucket as other forms of mixed plastic — potentially by classifying it as hazardous waste. Doing so would prohibit rich countries from exporting RDF to poor ones, and make its trade between developing countries contingent on the receiving country giving “prior informed consent.”

Negotiators fell short of that vision. Instead, they requested that stakeholders — such as RDF companies and environmental groups — submit plastic waste-related comments to the secretariat of the Basel Convention, for discussion at a working group meeting next year. Bell described this as “kicking the cans down the road.” 

“This is disappointing,” he added. “We appear to be on the brink of an explosion in the trade of RDF.”

The next Basel Convention meeting isn’t until 2027. But in the meantime, countries are free to create their own legislation restricting the export of RDF. Australia did this in 2022 when, following pressure from environmental groups, it amended its rules for plastic waste exports. The country now requires companies to obtain a hazardous waste permit in order to send a type of RDF called “process engineered fuel” abroad. Although RDF exports to rich countries like Japan continue, the new requirements effectively ended the legal export of RDF from Australia to poorer countries in Southeast Asia.

Ultimately, Ismawati said countries need to focus on reducing plastic production to levels that can be managed domestically — without any type of incineration. “Every country needs to treat waste in their own country,” Ismawati said. “Do not export it under the label of a ‘circular economy.’”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This fuel is 50% plastic — and it’s slipping through a loophole in international waste law on Jul 15, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

Finally. This week the "worst ultra-billionaire on earth," higher than any of his SpaceX rockets ever got, lurched to the end of his rampage through humane governance, leaving in his feckless, malignant wake unparalleled devastation - agencies ravaged, services gutted, a multitude of jobs and the expertise behind them lost, 300,000 people around the world, two-thirds children - 103 an hour - consigned to early death. "We’ll miss you,” said no one ever. Fuck that guy.

Musk's reign of terror as a moronically named "Special Government Employee" - did he get stickers? - heading a made-up "Department of Breaking Shit You Don’t Understand" officially, suitably wrapped up in a surreal farewell scene at a gaudily tricked-out Oval Office where, still grovelling, he declared the once-somber, now-trashy landmark site "finally has the majesty it deserves." Sporting a black eye, black "Dogefather" tshirt and wildly hallucinatory air, he thanked his dark overlord for "the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending" while his dementia-ridden boss praised him as "a friend and adviser," with coincidentally deep pockets, whose "service to America is without comparison in modern history," which you can take alotta different ways. "This isn't the end of DOGE, it's more the beginning," said Musk. "It's a way of life," also of needless, barbaric, untimely death.

Trump nodded along sagely before babbling, "Elon gave an incredible service," which isn't a thing. "He’s done a lot of things," he added helpfully. "He's a very good person." He's also perhaps the most despised person on the planet, except maybe for Bibi, which is why Trump evidently cut him loose well before mid-terms. "We have to get a lot of votes," he blurted at one point. "We can't be cutting - we need a lot of support." Of course now so does Musk's floundering business empire, probably because in his private and public efforts he applied the same toxic move-fast-and-break-things attributes - ignorance, arrogance, entitlement, carelessness, a sociopathic lack of empathy his addled mind deems "weakness" - with the same disastrous effects. It's thus unsurprising his short brutal tenure at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has met with "deservedly vicious reviews."

"Elon Musk's Legacy Is Disease, Starvation and Death," declared The New York Times. "Go, Elon, and Never Darken Our Doors Again," intoned the appalled American Prospect, which noted, "It's hard to think of any other unelected official who has done so much harm (in) such a short period of time." They went on, "Musk is one of the most malevolent people ever to hold a position of influence in American politics. His actions, without exaggeration, have devastated the health and security of American society and directly caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people all over the world, with millions more to follow given the course that he has set." The Daily Show's Leslie Jones offered a more succinct and profane, but similarly themed take on the catastrophic debris left behind by the pernicious likes of Musk et al: "I can't believe America may be ended by these fucking loser incels."

Many skeptics warn Musk's much-touted departure is in fact a "fake retreat," with his "mess of half-realized plans" and over-stated, badly executed "achievements" simply taken up by an army of about 50 young, unvetted DOGE tech bros and flunkies who like their boss don't know how things work, aren't interested in learning and don't care how many people they hurt. Embedded by executive order in agencies across the government and digging in "like an autonomous termite machine," they're just as intent on mining data, cutting services, greenlighting corporate abuses and otherwise wreaking havoc. "Musk's departure obscures but does not actually change the continuity of DOGE's staff and mission to destroy everything that protects the public from the depredations of the most rapacious oligarchs," said one oversight expert "DOGE is still hungry. We've still got to feed the fucking dog."

Of course Musk failed to achieve anything close to his blithe goal of cutting $2 trillion from an allegedly bloated budget. in what experts call "arson of a public asset," estimates of his actual savings by cutting from all the wrong places range from $100 billion to $2 billion, one-thirty-fifth of 1% of the federal budget, "otherwise known as budget dust." Either way, his cuts to vital, profitable agencies like the IRS and National Parks will simultaneously cost taxpayers about $135 billion in lost revenue and rehiring/ re-training costs. A(nother) rich white guy with zero accountability, Musk played the victim, whining about "the banal evil of bureaucracy" and becoming "a bogeyman"; he declined to mention the obscene $170 billion more he's raked in after attacking offices investigating his dodgy businesses, scoring $38 billion in government contracts, and pressing countries to buy Starlink.

Meanwhile, he did incalculable damage. At home, he destroyed thousands of jobs, billions in contracts, mountains of institutional knowledge, especially in science, health care, childhood cancer research. He hobbled Social Security, the National Weather Service, disease mitigation, veterans' services, homelessness programs, the U.S. Institute of Peace, now plagued with rats and roaches. He did the Seig Heil, CPAC Chainsaw, fake savings tracker, White House Tesla mini-mall, cheesehead trying to buy a judge, what-five-things-did-you-do-this-week claptrap. He did lots of drugs - ecstasy, mushrooms, LSD, cocaine, Ambien, Adderall, so much ketamine he's now reportedly incontinent. He famously brought his 5-yrear-old son to the Oval office, where X wiped oblivious boogers on the Resolute Desk, an apt, gross, sublime metaphor for what his heedless father has left us all with.

He also killed many, many people, aka "pioneered new methods of increasing death tolls in emerging markets." Of his multiple crimes and acts of malfeasance, Musk's mindless shuttering of USAid, and the carnage it swiftly caused, is by far the worst. Even the backstory is repulsive: His infamous February post, defining a vile legacy, bragging, "We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper." He could have “gone to some great parties," smirked the white supremacist ghoul, but instead he shredded a global agency that has fed and cared for millions of poor, sick, starving, marginalized people, especially children, around the world, particularly in Africa, thus abruptly cutting off almost 85% of live-saving funding because he breezily denounced it as "a radical-left political psy-op” - MAGA-ese for keeping alive thousands of at-risk babies starving, caught in war-torn countries, born with HIV.

Just one example: Simply halting PEPFAR, a landmark, George W. Bush-era program that has saved over 26 million lives by giving mothers a "miracle" anti-HIV drug that costs less than 12 cents a day, has already killed an estimated 54,500 adults and 5,800 children; about 1,500 babies have been born HIV-positive every day since January 21, and many more will follow. Fact-aversive MAGA denies this: Marco Rubio just told Congress, "No children are dying on my watch...No one has died because of USAid" - a claim called "ludicrous" by many critics. They include Nicholas Kristof, who wrote of one victim of hundreds of thousands. Evan Anzoo was an orphan born with H.I.V. in South Sudan who America kept alive with antiretroviral HIV drugs for five years; soon after a too-rich, blitzed-out, witless white supremacist blocked access to his medication, Evan died of an opportunistic infection.

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald said of Tom and Daisy, "They were careless people...They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness...and let other people clean up the mess they had made." Now erratic Space Nazi Musk, "a poisonous human being" and "an evil piece of garbage," is purportedly, partly moving on while food rots in warehouses in hungry countries around the world and once-manageable diseases rage out of control. "In government," says one bitter advocate, "it’s much easier to tear things down than it is to build things up." Still, at DOGE, "tasked with getting rid of unnecessary bullshit within the government," things are looking up. "We’ve been searching everywhere to find bloated, unnecessary, overrated, overpaid, unwanted, heinous waste to get rid of," reports The Shovel: "Turns out he was running the place." And truly, fuck that guy.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

Eighty years after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the Second World War, the threat of nuclear fallout remains.

Last Monday, the UN Human Rights Council issued a formal communication to the Japanese government regarding serious concerns raised by Pacific communities about the dumping of 1.3 million metric tonnes of treated Fukushima nuclear wastewater into the ocean over 30 years.

The council warned that the release could pose major environmental and human rights risks.

• WATCH: Te Aniwaniwa Paterson’s video report

Te Ao Māori News spoke with Mari Inoue, a NYC-based lawyer originally from Japan and co-founder of the volunteer-led group The Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World.

Recently, at the UN, they called for global awareness, not only about atomic bomb victims but also of the Fukushima wastewater release, and nuclear energy’s links to environmental destruction and human rights abuses.

Formed a year after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the group takes its name from the original Manhattan Project — the secret Second World War  US military programme that raced to develop the first atomic bomb before Nazi Germany.

A pivotal moment in that project was the Trinity Test on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico — the first successful detonation of an atomic bomb. One month later, nuclear weapons were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated 110,000 to 210,000 people.

Seeking recognition and justice
Although 80 years have passed, victims of these events continue to seek recognition and justice. The disarmament group hopes for stronger global unity around the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and more support for victims of nuclear exposure.

The anti-nuclear activists supported the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which seeks to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Their advocacy took place during the third and final preparatory committee for the 2026 NPT review conference, where a consensus report with recommendations from past sessions will be presented.

Inoue’s group called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to declare Japan’s dumping policy unsafe, and believes Japan and its G7 and EU allies should be condemned for supporting it.

Nuclear energy for the green transition?
Amid calls to move away from fossil fuels, some argue that nuclear power could supply the zero-emission energy needed to combat climate change.

Inoue rejects this, saying that despite not emitting greenhouse gases like fossil fuels, nuclear energy still harms the environment.

She said there was environmental harm at all processes in the nuclear supply chain.

Beginning with uranium mining, predominantly contaminating indigenous lands and water sources, with studies showing those communities face increased cancer rates, sickness, and infant mortality. And other studies have shown increased health issues for residents near nuclear reactors.

“Nuclear energy is not peaceful and it‘s not a solution to the climate crisis,” Inoue stressed. “Nuclear energy cannot function without exploiting peoples, their lands, and their resources.”

She also pointed out thermal pollution, where water heated during the nuclear plant cooling process is discharged into waterways, contributing to rising ocean temperatures.

Inoue added, “During the regular operation, [nuclear power plants] release radioactive isotopes into the environment — for example tritium.”

She referenced nuclear expert Dr Arjun Makhijani, who has studied the dangers of tritium in how it crosses the placenta, impacting embryos and foetuses with risks of birth defects, miscarriages, and other problems.

Increased tensions and world forum uniting global voices
When asked about the AUKUS security pact, Inoue expressed concern that it would worsen tensions in the Pacific. She criticised the use of a loophole that allowed nuclear-powered submarines in a nuclear-weapon-free zone, even though the nuclear fuel could still be repurposed for weapons.

In October, Inoue will co-organise the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima, with 2024 Nobel Peace Prize winner Nihon Hidankyo as one of the promoting organisations.

The forum will feature people from Indigenous communities impacted by nuclear testing in the US and the Marshall Islands, uranium mining in Africa, and fisheries affected by nuclear pollution.

Republished from Te Ao Māori News with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Eighty years after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the Second World War, the threat of nuclear fallout remains.

Last Monday, the UN Human Rights Council issued a formal communication to the Japanese government regarding serious concerns raised by Pacific communities about the dumping of 1.3 million metric tonnes of treated Fukushima nuclear wastewater into the ocean over 30 years.

The council warned that the release could pose major environmental and human rights risks.

• WATCH: Te Aniwaniwa Paterson’s video report

Te Ao Māori News spoke with Mari Inoue, a NYC-based lawyer originally from Japan and co-founder of the volunteer-led group The Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World.

Recently, at the UN, they called for global awareness, not only about atomic bomb victims but also of the Fukushima wastewater release, and nuclear energy’s links to environmental destruction and human rights abuses.

Formed a year after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the group takes its name from the original Manhattan Project — the secret Second World War  US military programme that raced to develop the first atomic bomb before Nazi Germany.

A pivotal moment in that project was the Trinity Test on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico — the first successful detonation of an atomic bomb. One month later, nuclear weapons were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated 110,000 to 210,000 people.

Seeking recognition and justice
Although 80 years have passed, victims of these events continue to seek recognition and justice. The disarmament group hopes for stronger global unity around the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and more support for victims of nuclear exposure.

The anti-nuclear activists supported the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which seeks to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Their advocacy took place during the third and final preparatory committee for the 2026 NPT review conference, where a consensus report with recommendations from past sessions will be presented.

Inoue’s group called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to declare Japan’s dumping policy unsafe, and believes Japan and its G7 and EU allies should be condemned for supporting it.

Nuclear energy for the green transition?
Amid calls to move away from fossil fuels, some argue that nuclear power could supply the zero-emission energy needed to combat climate change.

Inoue rejects this, saying that despite not emitting greenhouse gases like fossil fuels, nuclear energy still harms the environment.

She said there was environmental harm at all processes in the nuclear supply chain.

Beginning with uranium mining, predominantly contaminating indigenous lands and water sources, with studies showing those communities face increased cancer rates, sickness, and infant mortality. And other studies have shown increased health issues for residents near nuclear reactors.

“Nuclear energy is not peaceful and it‘s not a solution to the climate crisis,” Inoue stressed. “Nuclear energy cannot function without exploiting peoples, their lands, and their resources.”

She also pointed out thermal pollution, where water heated during the nuclear plant cooling process is discharged into waterways, contributing to rising ocean temperatures.

Inoue added, “During the regular operation, [nuclear power plants] release radioactive isotopes into the environment — for example tritium.”

She referenced nuclear expert Dr Arjun Makhijani, who has studied the dangers of tritium in how it crosses the placenta, impacting embryos and foetuses with risks of birth defects, miscarriages, and other problems.

Increased tensions and world forum uniting global voices
When asked about the AUKUS security pact, Inoue expressed concern that it would worsen tensions in the Pacific. She criticised the use of a loophole that allowed nuclear-powered submarines in a nuclear-weapon-free zone, even though the nuclear fuel could still be repurposed for weapons.

In October, Inoue will co-organise the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima, with 2024 Nobel Peace Prize winner Nihon Hidankyo as one of the promoting organisations.

The forum will feature people from Indigenous communities impacted by nuclear testing in the US and the Marshall Islands, uranium mining in Africa, and fisheries affected by nuclear pollution.

Republished from Te Ao Māori News with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Eighty years after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the Second World War, the threat of nuclear fallout remains.

Last Monday, the UN Human Rights Council issued a formal communication to the Japanese government regarding serious concerns raised by Pacific communities about the dumping of 1.3 million metric tonnes of treated Fukushima nuclear wastewater into the ocean over 30 years.

The council warned that the release could pose major environmental and human rights risks.

• WATCH: Te Aniwaniwa Paterson’s video report

Te Ao Māori News spoke with Mari Inoue, a NYC-based lawyer originally from Japan and co-founder of the volunteer-led group The Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World.

Recently, at the UN, they called for global awareness, not only about atomic bomb victims but also of the Fukushima wastewater release, and nuclear energy’s links to environmental destruction and human rights abuses.

Formed a year after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the group takes its name from the original Manhattan Project — the secret Second World War  US military programme that raced to develop the first atomic bomb before Nazi Germany.

A pivotal moment in that project was the Trinity Test on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico — the first successful detonation of an atomic bomb. One month later, nuclear weapons were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated 110,000 to 210,000 people.

Seeking recognition and justice
Although 80 years have passed, victims of these events continue to seek recognition and justice. The disarmament group hopes for stronger global unity around the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and more support for victims of nuclear exposure.

The anti-nuclear activists supported the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which seeks to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Their advocacy took place during the third and final preparatory committee for the 2026 NPT review conference, where a consensus report with recommendations from past sessions will be presented.

Inoue’s group called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to declare Japan’s dumping policy unsafe, and believes Japan and its G7 and EU allies should be condemned for supporting it.

Nuclear energy for the green transition?
Amid calls to move away from fossil fuels, some argue that nuclear power could supply the zero-emission energy needed to combat climate change.

Inoue rejects this, saying that despite not emitting greenhouse gases like fossil fuels, nuclear energy still harms the environment.

She said there was environmental harm at all processes in the nuclear supply chain.

Beginning with uranium mining, predominantly contaminating indigenous lands and water sources, with studies showing those communities face increased cancer rates, sickness, and infant mortality. And other studies have shown increased health issues for residents near nuclear reactors.

“Nuclear energy is not peaceful and it‘s not a solution to the climate crisis,” Inoue stressed. “Nuclear energy cannot function without exploiting peoples, their lands, and their resources.”

She also pointed out thermal pollution, where water heated during the nuclear plant cooling process is discharged into waterways, contributing to rising ocean temperatures.

Inoue added, “During the regular operation, [nuclear power plants] release radioactive isotopes into the environment — for example tritium.”

She referenced nuclear expert Dr Arjun Makhijani, who has studied the dangers of tritium in how it crosses the placenta, impacting embryos and foetuses with risks of birth defects, miscarriages, and other problems.

Increased tensions and world forum uniting global voices
When asked about the AUKUS security pact, Inoue expressed concern that it would worsen tensions in the Pacific. She criticised the use of a loophole that allowed nuclear-powered submarines in a nuclear-weapon-free zone, even though the nuclear fuel could still be repurposed for weapons.

In October, Inoue will co-organise the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima, with 2024 Nobel Peace Prize winner Nihon Hidankyo as one of the promoting organisations.

The forum will feature people from Indigenous communities impacted by nuclear testing in the US and the Marshall Islands, uranium mining in Africa, and fisheries affected by nuclear pollution.

Republished from Te Ao Māori News with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

“Composting, for me, is a lot about community,” said Kilpatrick Kotner. “It’s about connecting people to food and soil, and it’s about learning and being engaged in the process, and meeting your neighbors, and treating this thing that many people think of as a waste as a resource to be cherished and handled with care and turned into something beautiful that we can then reuse to grow more food.” 

She now leads a program at Groundwork RI, a nonprofit in Providence, Rhode Island, that does just that. 

Every day, her team of three bikes throughout the city, collecting food scraps from hundreds of households, which are then brought to a community garden. There, they mix pounds of nitrogen-rich food scraps otherwise destined for landfills with carbon-rich materials, such as dry leaves and wood shavings, while sifting out pieces of plastic and even the occasional fork. In doing so, Kilpatrick Kotner is creating a menu and a habitat for the microbes that prompt the decomposition process, transforming the waste into a spongy source of life for the soil. The compost is then made available to those enrolled in the subscription-based service to use in home gardens, yards, or urban farms. 

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The U.S. wastes over one-third of its food supply, which contributes considerably to global greenhouse gas emissions, primarily as a result of the methane that is released when food decomposes in landfills. A decade ago, the Obama administration set a national target to cut the nation’s food waste in half by 2030. Many observers expected the first Trump administration to ignore that goal because of the implicit climate focus, so it came as a surprise when Trump doubled down on the benchmark. 

Not only did Trump officials participate in the 2018 U.S. Food Waste Summit, but his first administration also launched the first interagency agreement to reduce food loss and waste. That involved formal commitments to the 50 percent food waste reduction goal from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and the Food and Drug Administration. 

Without any federal enforcement mechanism, though, that ambitious goal has remained out of reach. Americans still waste about 300 pounds of food per person each year, roughly as much food as they did almost a decade ago. Trump’s reasoning, anyway, had more to do with protecting economic gains — food waste costs the U.S. hundreds of billions every year — than climate benefits. 

In 2023, the EPA launched the Community Change Grants Program, a congressionally authorized program to support community-based organizations addressing environmental justice challenges, which funneled in about $2 billion of funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. In December, Groundwork RI was 1 of 9 organizations included in an $18.7 million community change grant awarded to the Rhode Island Food Policy Council. A portion of the three-year funding stream was intended to provide the nonprofit with the resources needed to expand its collection service to neighboring cities, build a bigger compost hub, renovate their greenhouse with its pay-what-you-can farmstand, and add composting bin systems to more local community gardens. It also would have made it possible for Kilpatrick Kotner’s team to launch a free food-scrap collection pilot with the city of Providence.

Now, in his second term, President Trump has made no secret of the fact that his administration is working to unravel climate action and justice-oriented programs across the government — and make it harder for state initiatives to pick up the slack. 

Last Thursday, after months of the Trump funding freeze uncertainty, the partners involved in the Rhode Island food-waste project learned that the $18 million grant was terminated. The EPA’s official notice, shared with Grist, informed the grantees that their project was “no longer consistent” with the federal agency’s funding priorities and therefore nullified “effective immediately.” 

Zealan Hoover, a former senior adviser to President Joe Biden’s EPA Administrator Michael Regan, doesn’t believe that Trump is specifically targeting food-waste initiatives, but rather environmental justice programs in their entirety. 

“It’s clear to me, from the terminations that have been going out, from the statements that have been made, in court filings, and to the press, that EPA is in the process of sending termination notices to every grantee in the Office of Environmental Justice,” said Hoover, who led the agency’s implementation of the bipartisan infrastructure law. 

He noted that he believes the move to be “unlawful” as the IRA funding was allocated by Congress.

“As with any change in administration, EPA has been reviewing all of its grant programs and awarded grants to ensure each is an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars and to understand how those programs align with administration priorities,” an EPA spokesperson told Grist. “Maybe the Biden-Harris administration shouldn’t have forced their radical agenda of wasteful DEI programs and ‘environmental justice’ preferencing on the EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment.” The spokesperson did not respond to Grist’s request for clarification about the agency’s legal authority to cancel the congressionally authorized community change grant.

Michelle Roos, executive director at the Environmental Protection Network, which is a national volunteer network of former EPA staffers, told Grist that around 400 grantees have now had their contracts terminated. The number of grants targeted was first released by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works at the end of March. A recently filed court document revealed the EPA is planning to terminate 781 grants in total. 

According to Hoover, in prior administrations, it was “exceedingly rare” for the EPA to terminate grants. “This is a huge break from precedent that is pulling the rug out from underneath local communities,” he said.

Nessa Richman, executive director of the Rhode Island Food Policy Council, also questions how the administration can end the $18 million community change grant. The lead-up to the project took more than a year to develop and had garnered support from several state departments and the Department of the Navy. “It is a sinking feeling,” said Richman, “that this opportunity that we, and our partners, had worked so hard for, and that our state was so ready for, is slipping away.” 

The money was set to create 27 new local jobs, provide food scrap pickup for more than 15,000 households, build 37 food scrap drop-off locations across Rhode Island, and develop nine compost processing facilities, including a larger-scale one on land owned by the naval station. What’s more, it would have launched a local supply chain for redirecting excess food from institutions like schools and restaurants to food-insecure community members instead of landfills. And it would have made Groundwork RI’s pickup collection model freely accessible to the community members they serve — not just to help fight food waste, but to also learn how to take better care of the soil as they grow their own food.

“It’s easier for folks who have a little bit of disposable income to buy that countertop composting food scrap collector, or that 5-gallon bucket, and buy a service that comes and picks up their food waste at their door. It’s easier for them than for people who are working three jobs to make ends meet to take the time to separate out that food waste,” said Richman. “The loss of the funding, in a real way, doesn’t just slow down the reduction of the food waste, but it further establishes a divide.”

Richman estimates that at the end of the three years, the project would have diverted over 11,000 tons of food waste from landfill, which in turn would have prevented more than 15,000 metric tons of emissions.

Hours after she read the notification of their grant termination, Richman met an old colleague at a local coffee shop in Rhode Island’s East Greenwich. It had been many years since they’d seen each other, and the two sat together, catching up until the shop closed. 

As they talked for a while longer in the parking lot, Richman watched in frustration as one of the coffee shop’s employees carried two bags of perfectly edible pastries and threw them in the dumpster.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline An $18M grant would have drastically reduced food waste. Then the EPA cut it. on May 9, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Workers who issue licenses and permits for the city of Dallas fought back in 2024 when officials moved them into a building that failed to meet the very same safety requirements they enforce at dozens of other office towers.

The workers, including members of the United Steelworkers (USW), organized a rally, secured the city council’s intervention, and leveraged media coverage to highlight the fire risks, 140 code violations, and other hazards that the 11-story building at 7800 N. Stemmons Freeway posed to them and the public they serve.

Within a few weeks, the city surrendered to the mounting outrage and closed the building that workers called the “lemon on Stemmons.”

“It was an accident waiting to happen,” recalled Lou Luckhardt, former president of USW Local 9487, noting the union empowered workers to expose the city’s foolish purchase of a money pit and callous disregard for public safety.

It’s the kind of security that Americans are rapidly losing as anti-worker extremists at all levels of government cut union jobs, attack organized labor, and target the labor rights of the dedicated public servants who keep the nation running.

Elon Musk, the billionaire who attached himself like a tick to the Trump administration, continues his mad efforts to decimate the federal government and deprive Americans of the basic services they need.

His ignorant meddling eviscerated the Education Department, denying the nation’s most vulnerable citizens the support they need to build productive lives. He unleashed devastating cuts to veterans’ services, turning the government against America’s heroes, and he pushed the nation’s Social Security system to the brink of collapse, putting the benefits of tens of millions of retirees at risk.

Now, the administration wants to kill collective bargaining rights and union protections for hundreds of thousands of workers across the federal government, summarily stripping them of the voice they need to protect themselves and serve the taxpayers. By silencing workers, the government opens the door to waste, fraud, and abuse.

“If you have no checks and balances in an administration, people take advantage of that,” pointed out Luckhardt, noting union workers know their jobs better than anyone else and hold management accountable on the taxpayers’ behalf.

“They’re dedicated to their jobs because they love public service work,” he said of the federal workers targeted by Musk.

“They’re skilled in their special areas. Many of them are military veterans. These are very organized folks,” added Luckhardt, financial secretary-treasurer of the Dallas AFL-CIO Council, comprising about 40 unions representing workers in the public and private sectors.

As if sandbagging unionized federal workers isn’t despicable enough, some states recently ramped up their own assaults on union members who serve as educators, firefighters, corrections officers, and road workers, as well as in many other positions.

Despite widespread criticism, anti-worker lawmakers and the right-wing governor in Utah just deprived essential public workers of a basic right. They rushed through legislation banning collective bargaining for emergency responders and other public servants, depriving these workers of a voice they need to safeguard themselves and the public.

In Florida, a state that enacted legislation in 2023 stripping union representation from thousands of government workers, right-wing lawmakers now hope to compound the harm by making it more difficult for public servants to join unions in the future.

And in Michigan, the speaker of the state House—Republican Matt Hall—refuses to transmit to Governor Gretchen Whitmer a series of pro-worker bills passed last session. While state law requires the bills be passed to Whitmer for her signature, they instead remain in limbo, with thousands of public-sector workers denied the retirement security and health care they earned.

Hall’s game-playing represents an unprovoked slap in the face to workers who put the public first, even at the risk of their own lives, noted Rob Rosekrans, vice president of USW Local 15157, which represents about 100 union members who work for Bay County in the east-central part of the state.

During his three-decade-long career at a county detention center, Rosekrans has been bitten twice by young offenders, one time so severely that he needed a month to recover. Another offender hit him in the stomach with a metal pan.

On one of his worst nights on the job, he took a call from a woman inquiring about the whereabouts of her husband. Rosekrans later learned that the 71-year-old man, a part-time driver for juvenile court, had been strangled and left for dead by a teen he was transporting back to Bay County after a psychiatric evaluation.

Because he got into scrapes growing up, Rosekrans decided to dedicate his life to helping other troubled young people through difficult times.

He even had the satisfaction of working for a time alongside a counselor who helped him. Today, former offenders sometimes approach Rosekrans in stores or on the street to say: “You made a difference.”

“That’s what makes it worth it,” said Rosekrans, who deserves the public’s gratitude, not pushback from ingrates like Hall.

Republicans in Michigan and other states watch Musk’s scorched-earth campaign against federal workers and then feel compelled to replicate the lunacy, he said, noting the attacks just serve to hollow out communities and contribute to a growing underclass of disadvantaged Americans.

“We are tax-paying citizens of your community,” said Rosekrans, citing the many other contributions of unionized public-sector workers. “We are the Little League baseball coaches. We are the PTA members. We give back.”

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

The post Why Sandbagging Public Servants Invites Waste, Fraud, and Abuse appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by David McCall.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

One thing I’ve learned over more than three decades of work as an investigative editor and reporter: There’s plenty of waste, fraud and abuse in government agencies. The problem is finding it. Some things that look suspicious at first glance make sense when you understand how a system really works. And that understanding doesn’t come easily.

If you hope to identify serious shortcomings in an agency, ones that add up to many millions or even billions of dollars, you have to immerse yourself in the intricacies of, say, how Medicare pays for prescription drugs. Steeping yourself in such minutiae is inevitably a trial-and-error process in which insights emerge only after journeys down multiple initially promising avenues that lead to dead ends.

That really helps explain some of the well-publicized stumbles of Elon Musk and the team of cybercommandos at the Department of Government Efficiency who have taken a chainsaw approach to spending based on cursory examinations of federal government records. To give but one recent example: No, Social Security is not paying large sums of money to people who are over 150 years old. That finding, trumpeted by Musk, turned out to be a glitch in the Social Security Administration’s recordkeeping, not evidence of massive fraud by a zombie army of superseniors.

Despite the way it is sometimes depicted in movies and television, the work of investigative reporting moves slowly, with hours of boredom punctuated by moments of exhilaration that, sometimes, are undone by further research. It may look like the Internal Revenue Service is spending an outsize amount of money on hiring sophisticated auditors to handle complex returns. But as we pointed out recently, cutting those salaries will likely end up costing the government money in lost tax revenue.

I’ve never seen things work out as smoothly as they did in the pilot episode of the HBO series “The Newsroom,” in which a producer figures out in just a few hours the key corporate and government missteps that contributed to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The producer cracks the case because he has a friend who happens to both be sitting in BP’s control room and willing to relay newsworthy information in real time. I had my own front-row seat to how that very story was actually covered, and it took ProPublica reporters many months to puzzle out what was revealed in just minutes in the episode.

Because perfectly placed acquaintances and random invites to classified Signal chats are rare in real life, ProPublica relies on a more straightforward playbook for finding WFA (waste, fraud and abuse). It bears little resemblance to the approach deployed by Team DOGE against agencies like the Social Security Administration or U.S. Agency for International Development. Pro tip for chainsaw-wielders: You can almost never understand what’s happening inside a complex organization from your initial pass through records and documents.

Rather, that pass raises more questions than it answers about how and why an agency spends staggering sums of taxpayer money. To find the real answers, we look for the people who are most likely to know where the bodies are buried. Sometimes, that search turns up whistleblowers eager to tell us something scandalous. More often, we find sources who help us understand the real day-to-day work of an agency.

Another standard step in the search for WFA is a dive into reports by an agency’s inspector general or the General Accountability Office, an arm of Congress with deep expertise in examining federal agencies. The inspectors are independent, and their reports can be a rich source of reporting avenues to pursue. President Donald Trump complicated any prospects DOGE had of using this knowledge by firing 17 inspectors general who were responsible for some of the biggest budgets in the federal government, including the Pentagon and Social Security Administration.

As for the GAO, the head of the organization told Congress that his analysts have had little contact with DOGE. Gene Dodaro, the comptroller general, said the GAO has a list of reforms that could save the federal government $200 billion without laying off massive numbers of federal workers. Dodaro said staff cuts were an inefficient way to cut the budget since payroll costs are less than 10% of total spending.

One thing we often try to do when investigating possible government waste or malfeasance is obtain massive databases. DOGE seems to have chosen that route as its main means of finding savings, and it can work.

We are of course hampered by not having the president’s imprimatur. Our requests are shuffled off to Freedom of Information Act officers and come back months later, if we’re lucky.

Still, we have found some fascinating things buried in government records.

Years ago, we persuaded the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to release the names of the doctors prescribing drugs through the massive Medicare program that provides medications to seniors. It took us a while to understand what we were looking at, a process that was helped along by interviews with experts inside and outside of government.

Sorting through the tables and tables of data, we noticed that some doctors seemed to be writing impossibly large numbers of prescriptions. One Florida doctor had seemingly signed off on more than $4 million in medications, up from $282,000 the previous year. No one from Medicare had called to ask her about that; she only stumbled upon the fraud years later because of a mishap with the mail. (Two workers in her clinic later pleaded guilty to federal health care fraud and identity theft.) As we looked through the list of the most prolific prescribers, we confirmed that this type of prescription fraud was widespread. Medicare was not checking its own records for signs of abuse, missing chances to catch doctors or others who were robbing the government.

It was the quintessential case of WFA, combining at once waste, fraud, abuse and, yes, massive government inefficiency.

Things don’t always go as smoothly. Reporters often receive startling tips or notice surprising numbers in records and then learn there are perfectly clear explanations for what appeared shocking at first glance

The former head of U.S. Agency for Global Media, Amanda Bennett, described a recent instance of this phenomenon. The USAGM is responsible for overseas broadcasts like the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Bennett resigned from her post soon after Trump was inaugurated.

Kari Lake, a reporter-turned-politician who Trump named as a special adviser to the agency, posted a video soon after arriving in which she pronounced herself “horrified” by the USAGM’s “shiny, brand-new beautiful skyscraper building that is costing you, the taxpayer, a fortune.”

Lake tweeted that the new building was absurdly luxurious, with Italian marble, leather furnishings and even a few waterfalls.

But as Bennett pointed out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Lake’s account of WFA was far from complete.

Bennett said her agency was told in December 2020 that it would have to leave its FDR-era building by 2028. Bennett and her team began looking for a new office at precisely the right moment — commercial landlords in D.C. and elsewhere were essentially giving away downtown offices. The deal the agency negotiated included three years of free rent and $27 million in cash incentives from the building’s owner that could be used to upgrade the agency’s aging equipment. The furniture and Italian marble were donated by the previous tenant, a law firm, saving the government an additional $10 million. The annual rent for USAGM dropped from nearly $24 million to less than $16 million a year. Bennett said she left Lake a memo detailing the savings, which she estimated as $150 million over the life of the lease.

Lake nonetheless put out a press release that excoriated the agency for “obscene over-spending including a nearly quarter-of-a-billion-dollar lease for a Pennsylvania Avenue high-rise.”

“Waste, fraud, and abuse run rampant in this agency,” Lake wrote, asserting that USAGM had been penetrated by “spies, terrorist sympathizers and/or supporters” and that it had engaged in “eye popping self-dealing.”

She declared the agency “not salvageable” and announced a plan to end its operations immediately. Days later, a federal district court judge in Washington, D.C., temporarily blocked that action. The case is pending.

If we were reporting out a story about possible excessive spending at the USAGM, I’m sure we would have found Lake’s allegations about its purportedly lavish quarters intriguing. But if we came across Bennett’s memo and it stood up to scrutiny, I would have spiked the story. Or maybe turned it into a piece about using misinformation to justify massive cuts at an agency that Trump has openly disparaged.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Stephen Engelberg.

The lunch spot’s seasonal menus are planned at least three months in advance, said Andrew Torrens, Dig’s director of supply, meaning the avo smash has been in the works for a while. However, if the United States decides to escalate a global trade war next month, Dig will have to come up with a backup plan fast.

“If avocado prices explode, what’s our backup? How do we pivot?” said Torrens on a recent phone call. 

Since his inauguration in January, President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada — creating confusion for restaurant owners, food distributors, grocers, and consumers who rely on the United States’ neighbor to the south for fruits and vegetables year-round. On February 1, the president signed an executive order levying a 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico. However, he has twice pushed back the start date; earlier this month, he paused tariffs on most goods coming in from Mexico and Canada until April 2. What will actually happen on that date — which Trump has dubbed “Liberation Day” — is still largely unclear.

A tariff on goods from Mexico, the single largest supplier of horticultural imports to the U.S., would almost certainly mean higher prices at the grocery store. It could also, according to experts, increase food waste along the supply chain.

Dig sources most of its avocados from Mexico, where the warm climate is ideal for growing these fruits. This is common — in fact, about 90 percent of avocados consumed in the U.S. come from Mexico, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “We rely on imports, from Mexico in particular, on things like fresh fruit and vegetables in order to meet year-round consumer demand,” said David Ortega, a professor focused on agricultural economics and policy at Michigan State University. Tariffs have the potential to send those prices soaring by raising the cost of production. But the lack of clarity around U.S. trade relations is already impacting operations in the food and beverage industry.

“There’s so much uncertainty, you don’t know how to operate your business and you don’t know how to plan for it,” said Torrens. “If you knew what the new reality was, you’d adapt to it.”

Other food chains are reeling from the Trump administration’s policies. In an annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the salad chain Sweetgreen listed “international trade barriers” as one factor that could spike the cost of ingredients like avocados; it also mentioned the threat of mass deportation of undocumented workers as a supply chain disruption. Asked about tariffs, Scott Boatwright, the CEO of the Mexican-inspired burrito giant Chipotle, told reporters that the company would not pass on higher costs to the customer. “​​It is our intent as we sit here today to absorb those costs,” Boatwright told NBC Nightly News on March 2, just days before Trump announced a one-month pause in tariffs for goods covered by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, the trade agreement he negotiated during his first term. 

Much has been written and said about the economic impacts of tariffs. One lesser-known side effect — which could also have environmental consequences — is the potential for more food loss and waste. This can happen at various points along the food supply chain, from the farm to the U.S.-Mexico border to grocery store shelves. “I think tariffs are a bit of a supply chain disruption,” not unlike the ones felt during the pandemic, said Brenna Ellison, professor of agribusiness management at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The trouble stems from the fact that fruit and vegetables are highly perishable. 

“If we’re having trouble getting them in the country because it costs more, if that creates more hesitation among U.S. buyers to get those products into the country, the clock is ticking really fast,” said Ellison. Items that normally would make their way to U.S. consumers will “go to waste quickly unless we can find some alternate use for them.”

Food loss and waste are measured by looking at how much edible food grown for human consumption doesn’t end up feeding people — whether that’s at the harvesting and processing stage or further along the way to the consumer, like in stores or kitchens. When organic matter, like fruits and vegetables, is thrown out, it often winds up in landfills — where it emits methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as it rots. In the U.S., a majority of wasted food — about 60 percent — goes to landfills, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA also found that every year, 55 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents are emitted from food waste in landfills. 

During the pandemic, there were reports of farmers leaving food to rot in the fields, as restaurants shut down and growers lost access to their regular customers. Ellison states this could happen again, if tariffs raise the price of agricultural goods to the point that growers are not confident they’ll be able to sell as much product as they’re used to and recoup the cost of harvesting. 

But she noted that it does not necessarily mean those crops are sent to a landfill. “In some cases, depending on the crop, it can be tilled back into the soil,” sending plant nutrients back to the earth, said Ellison.

However, more waste can happen further along the supply chain — on the way to market or in grocery stores. If tariffs lead to delays in processing at the border, that could lead to more produce spoiling before or as it meets the consumer, said Ortega. He also mentioned that when the Trump administration first announced tariffs, “a lot of importers started to do what we call ‘front-loading’; they started to get as much product over the border in an effort to beat the tariff.”

Ordering fresh produce in excess means you have to sell it. Multiple Whole Foods Market stores in New York City in mid-March had a promotion on Mexican produce, including avocados and mangos. Whole Foods did not respond to a request for comment about whether the sale was related to tariff announcements. United Natural Foods Inc. — the importer for Whole Foods — had no comment, said Kristin Jimenez, the corporation’s vice president of corporate communications.

When food is left on grocery store shelves, it can also lead to food waste, said Ellison at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. That can happen when retailers over-order produce and can’t sell all of it — or when prices go up and “people just can’t afford” to buy it, Ellison added. 

There’s also a chance that consumers could end up seeing more limited availability of goods as retailers try to switch up their sourcing to avoid tariffs.

While Trump campaigned on lowering the cost of goods at the grocery store, a 25 percent tariff on goods from Mexico could make basics like fruits and vegetables even more expensive. That has hunger relief organizations worried, too. 

“We’re obviously concerned that anytime there’s a potential disruption in the supply chain, particularly with fruits and vegetables, it could impact our ability to feed those in need,” said Jen Cox, the chief development officer at Food Forward, a food rescue operation focused on redistributing fresh produce to food banks, after-school programs, and more. She added that tariffs could exacerbate an already challenging cost-of-living situation for many people in the U.S., leading to an increase in hunger. 

The U.S. set a goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030 — we’re nowhere near that. Should tariffs drive an increase in food sent to landfills, it will be one of multiple knock-on effects that trade barriers will have on consumers. “It’s sort of a conflation of all of these situations,” said Cox. Those compounding crises — economic, social, and environmental — mean that organizations like hers could have their hands full in the coming months, working to fill the gaps that “America First” trade policies will likely create. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Tariffs won’t just hit your wallet. They could also increase food waste. on Mar 28, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

The lunch spot’s seasonal menus are planned at least three months in advance, said Andrew Torrens, Dig’s director of supply, meaning the avo smash has been in the works for a while. However, if the United States decides to escalate a global trade war next month, Dig will have to come up with a backup plan fast.

“If avocado prices explode, what’s our backup? How do we pivot?” said Torrens on a recent phone call. 

Since his inauguration in January, President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada — creating confusion for restaurant owners, food distributors, grocers, and consumers who rely on the United States’ neighbor to the south for fruits and vegetables year-round. On February 1, the president signed an executive order levying a 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico. However, he has twice pushed back the start date; earlier this month, he paused tariffs on most goods coming in from Mexico and Canada until April 2. What will actually happen on that date — which Trump has dubbed “Liberation Day” — is still largely unclear.

A tariff on goods from Mexico, the single largest supplier of horticultural imports to the U.S., would almost certainly mean higher prices at the grocery store. It could also, according to experts, increase food waste along the supply chain.

Dig sources most of its avocados from Mexico, where the warm climate is ideal for growing these fruits. This is common — in fact, about 90 percent of avocados consumed in the U.S. come from Mexico, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “We rely on imports, from Mexico in particular, on things like fresh fruit and vegetables in order to meet year-round consumer demand,” said David Ortega, a professor focused on agricultural economics and policy at Michigan State University. Tariffs have the potential to send those prices soaring by raising the cost of production. But the lack of clarity around U.S. trade relations is already impacting operations in the food and beverage industry.

“There’s so much uncertainty, you don’t know how to operate your business and you don’t know how to plan for it,” said Torrens. “If you knew what the new reality was, you’d adapt to it.”

Other food chains are reeling from the Trump administration’s policies. In an annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the salad chain Sweetgreen listed “international trade barriers” as one factor that could spike the cost of ingredients like avocados; it also mentioned the threat of mass deportation of undocumented workers as a supply chain disruption. Asked about tariffs, Scott Boatwright, the CEO of the Mexican-inspired burrito giant Chipotle, told reporters that the company would not pass on higher costs to the customer. “​​It is our intent as we sit here today to absorb those costs,” Boatwright told NBC Nightly News on March 2, just days before Trump announced a one-month pause in tariffs for goods covered by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, the trade agreement he negotiated during his first term. 

Much has been written and said about the economic impacts of tariffs. One lesser-known side effect — which could also have environmental consequences — is the potential for more food loss and waste. This can happen at various points along the food supply chain, from the farm to the U.S.-Mexico border to grocery store shelves. “I think tariffs are a bit of a supply chain disruption,” not unlike the ones felt during the pandemic, said Brenna Ellison, professor of agribusiness management at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The trouble stems from the fact that fruit and vegetables are highly perishable. 

“If we’re having trouble getting them in the country because it costs more, if that creates more hesitation among U.S. buyers to get those products into the country, the clock is ticking really fast,” said Ellison. Items that normally would make their way to U.S. consumers will “go to waste quickly unless we can find some alternate use for them.”

Food loss and waste are measured by looking at how much edible food grown for human consumption doesn’t end up feeding people — whether that’s at the harvesting and processing stage or further along the way to the consumer, like in stores or kitchens. When organic matter, like fruits and vegetables, is thrown out, it often winds up in landfills — where it emits methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as it rots. In the U.S., a majority of wasted food — about 60 percent — goes to landfills, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA also found that every year, 55 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents are emitted from food waste in landfills. 

During the pandemic, there were reports of farmers leaving food to rot in the fields, as restaurants shut down and growers lost access to their regular customers. Ellison states this could happen again, if tariffs raise the price of agricultural goods to the point that growers are not confident they’ll be able to sell as much product as they’re used to and recoup the cost of harvesting. 

But she noted that it does not necessarily mean those crops are sent to a landfill. “In some cases, depending on the crop, it can be tilled back into the soil,” sending plant nutrients back to the earth, said Ellison.

However, more waste can happen further along the supply chain — on the way to market or in grocery stores. If tariffs lead to delays in processing at the border, that could lead to more produce spoiling before or as it meets the consumer, said Ortega. He also mentioned that when the Trump administration first announced tariffs, “a lot of importers started to do what we call ‘front-loading’; they started to get as much product over the border in an effort to beat the tariff.”

Ordering fresh produce in excess means you have to sell it. Multiple Whole Foods Market stores in New York City in mid-March had a promotion on Mexican produce, including avocados and mangos. Whole Foods did not respond to a request for comment about whether the sale was related to tariff announcements. United Natural Foods Inc. — the importer for Whole Foods — had no comment, said Kristin Jimenez, the corporation’s vice president of corporate communications.

When food is left on grocery store shelves, it can also lead to food waste, said Ellison at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. That can happen when retailers over-order produce and can’t sell all of it — or when prices go up and “people just can’t afford” to buy it, Ellison added. 

There’s also a chance that consumers could end up seeing more limited availability of goods as retailers try to switch up their sourcing to avoid tariffs.

While Trump campaigned on lowering the cost of goods at the grocery store, a 25 percent tariff on goods from Mexico could make basics like fruits and vegetables even more expensive. That has hunger relief organizations worried, too. 

“We’re obviously concerned that anytime there’s a potential disruption in the supply chain, particularly with fruits and vegetables, it could impact our ability to feed those in need,” said Jen Cox, the chief development officer at Food Forward, a food rescue operation focused on redistributing fresh produce to food banks, after-school programs, and more. She added that tariffs could exacerbate an already challenging cost-of-living situation for many people in the U.S., leading to an increase in hunger. 

The U.S. set a goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030 — we’re nowhere near that. Should tariffs drive an increase in food sent to landfills, it will be one of multiple knock-on effects that trade barriers will have on consumers. “It’s sort of a conflation of all of these situations,” said Cox. Those compounding crises — economic, social, and environmental — mean that organizations like hers could have their hands full in the coming months, working to fill the gaps that “America First” trade policies will likely create. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Tariffs won’t just hit your wallet. They could also increase food waste. on Mar 28, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

When World War II ended and the reserve force ceased operations in 1947, the U.S. approached the Indigenous Yupik people of Alaska with another ask: Could the Air Force set up “listening posts” on the island of Sivuqaq, also known as St. Lawrence Island, to help with the intelligence gathering needed to win the Cold War?  

Viola Waghiyi, who is Yupik from Sivuqaq, said the answer was a resounding yes. 

“Our grandfathers and fathers volunteered for the Alaska territorial guard,” she said. “We were very patriotic.” 

But that trust was abused, Waghiyi said. The U.S. military eventually abandoned its Air Force and Army bases, leaving the land polluted with toxic chemicals such as fuel, mercury, and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, that are known as “forever chemicals” because they persist so long in the environment. The contamination was largely due to spilled and leaking fuel from storage tanks and pipes, both above ground and below ground. More chemical waste came from electrical transformers, abandoned metals and 55-gallon drums. 

Now, Waghiyi is the environmental health and justice program director at the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, an organization dedicated to limiting the effects of toxic substances on Alaska’s residents and environment. Last week, the organization filed a complaint to the United Nations special rapporteur on toxics and human rights, in partnership with the U.C. Berkeley Environmental Law Clinic. 

Their complaint calls for the United Nations to investigate how military waste on Sivuqaq continues to violate the rights of the people who live there, such as the right to a clean and healthy environment and Indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior, and informed consent to what happens on their land. 

“By exposing the Yupik people of Sivuqaq to polluted drinking water sources, air, and soil, and by contaminating local native foods; by causing pervasive human exposure to hazardous chemicals through multiple routes; by toxifying the broader ecosystem; and by not cleaning up contamination sufficiently to protect human health and the environment, the U.S. Air Force and Army Corps of Engineers violated human rights long recognized in international law,” the complaint says. 

This submission from Alaska is part of a larger, global effort to raise awareness of military toxic waste by the United Nations. The U.N. special rapporteur on toxics and human rights is collecting public input on military activities and toxic waste until April 1. The information collected will be used in a report presented to the U.N. General Assembly in October. 

The two shuttered bases in Sivuqaq, Alaska, are now classified as “formerly used defense,” or FUD, sites, overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and more than $130 million has been spent to remove the contamination. John Budnick, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Alaska, said the cleanup is considered complete but that the agency is reviewing the site every five years “to ensure the selected remedies continue to be protective of human health and the environment.” 

“We have completed the work at Northeast Cape, but additional follow-up actions may result from the monitoring phase of the Formerly Used Defense Sites Program,” he said. The last site visit occurred last July and an updated review report is expected to be released this summer.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, similarly concluded in 2013 that an additional EPA cleanup wouldn’t significantly differ from what the Army Corps of Engineers is doing and declined to place the sites on the EPA’s list of hazardous waste cleanup priorities.

A 2022 study found that so far, federal cleanup efforts have been inadequate. “High levels of persistent organic pollutants and toxic metals continue to leach from the Northeast Cape FUD site despite large-scale remediation that occurred in the early 2000s,” the authors concluded. 

The persisting pollution has garnered the attention of Alaska’s state Dept. of Environmental Conservation which oversees the cleanup of contaminated sites. Stephanie Buss, contaminated sites program manager at the agency, said her office has asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to do additional cleanup at Northeast Cape.

“These active contaminated sites have not met closure requirements,” she said. The second former base, Gambell, was classified as completed but still lacks land use controls, she noted. 

“DEC takes community health concerns seriously and will continue to provide oversight of the conditions at its active sites in accordance with the state’s regulatory framework to ensure an appropriate response that protects human health and welfare,” Buss said.

That same 2022 study found that 89 percent of the fish around the Northeast Cape base contained mercury exceeding the levels the EPA deemed appropriate for people who rely on subsistence fishing. “All fish sampled near the FUD site exceeded the EPA’s PCB guidelines for cancer risk for unrestricted human consumption,” the researchers further found. Waghiyi said the contamination displaced 130 people, and has left her friends and family with a lasting legacy of illness. 

“It’s not a matter of if we’ll get cancer, but when,” Waghiyi said. Her father died of cancer. Her mother had a stillborn child. Waghiyi herself is a cancer survivor and has had three miscarriages. 

“We feel that they have turned their back on us,” Waghiyi said of the U.S. military. “We wanted our lands to be turned back in the same condition when they turned over.” 

The U.S. military has a long history of contaminating lands and waters through military training and battles sites, including on Indigenous lands. Citizens of the Navajo Nation in Arizona and  Yakama Nation in Washington continue to raise concerns about the ongoing effects of military nuclear testing on their lands and health. In the Marshall Islands, fishing around certain atolls is discouraged due to high rates of toxicity due to nuclear testing and other military training. On Guam, chemicals from an active Air Force base have contaminated parts of the islandʻs sole-source aquifer that serves 70% of the population. Last year, a federal report found that climate change threatens to unearth even more U.S. military nuclear waste in both the Marshall Islands and Greenland. 

In 2021, the Navy in Hawaiʻi poisoned 90,000 people when jet fuel leached from aging, massive underground storage tanks into the drinking water supply after the Navy ignored years of warning to upgrade the tanks or remove the fuel. The federal government spent hundreds of millions of dollars to remove unexploded ordnance from the island of Kahoʻolawe, a former bombing range in Hawaiʻi, but the island is still considered dangerous to walk on because of the risk of more ordnance unearthing due to extensive erosion. 

The complaint filed last week by the Alaska Community Action on Toxics calls for the United Nations to write to U.S. federal and state agencies and call upon them to honor a 1951 agreement between the U.S. government and the Sivuqaq Yupik people that prohibited polluting the land. 

The agreement said that the Sivuqaq Tribes would allow the Air Force to construct surveillance sites to spy on the Soviet Union, but they had four conditions, including allowing Indigenous peoples to continue to hunt, fish and trap where desired and preventing outsiders from killing their game. Finally, the agreement said that “any refuse or garbage will not be dumped in streams or near the beach within the proposed area.” 

“The import of the agreement was clear: The military must not despoil the island; must protect the resources critical to Indigenous Yupik inhabitants’ sustenance; and must leave the island in the condition they found it, which ensured their health and well-being,” the Alaska Community Action on Toxics wrote in their complaint. 

“This is a burden we didn’t create,” Waghiyi said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Alaska Natives want the US military to clean up its toxic waste on Mar 19, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Anita Hofschneider.

During the Muslim holy month — a time of spiritual rejuvenation through increased prayer and daylight fasting — masjids may serve hundreds of visitors for iftar, the sunset meal that marks the breaking of the fast. Some also serve a meal in the predawn hours, suhoor, before congregants start their fast. 

That all can add up to a lot of trash, though. At mosques in Atlanta and elsewhere, it’s not uncommon to find garbage cans packed to the top by the end of the night, with some plates and plastic water bottles still half full. 

“It’s just not acceptable for us,” says Nina. “My family is conscious of water and food conservation. We eat leftovers — we are not wasting or being snooty about wasting.” 

She’s not the only one concerned about the problem. This year, more than two dozen Atlanta-area masjids or Islamic groups are planning environmentally friendly “zero-waste iftars,” aiming to cut down on the amount of discarded food, disposable plates, and water bottles. Food waste is a global and national dilemma — in the U.S., almost 40 percent of the food supply ends up in the landfill. But the trash generated during the holy month directly conflicts with a religious mandate to not be wasteful, says Marium Masud, who attends Marietta’s Masjid Al Furqan West Cobb Islamic Center: “We are called to be stewards of the Earth. There is a saying from the Prophet Muhammad that all of the Earth is a masjid. So it’s up to us to keep it clean, just like we keep our masjids clean.”

Masud is part of a “green team” of 17 volunteers that Al Furqan established to help tackle the problem. This past year, Al Furqan’s green team focused on one thing: banning plastic water bottles. In the past, the masjid threw away nearly 300 plastic bottles every night — but this year, hardly any. To prepare for Ramadan, the team added water filling stations, brought in reusable five-gallon water bottles, and had their Cub Scout packs sell recycled aluminum bottles to community members for $10 each. They also accepted donations to give out water bottles for free to anyone who couldn’t afford them. 

On March 19, Al Furqan — where 200 to 250 people come for iftars each weeknight — will host its first “zero-waste iftar” in partnership with Georgia Interfaith Power and Light, or GIPL, a nonprofit that works with religious groups on environmental justice. The organization provides training, workshops, and grants for reusable or compostable plates and cutlery. At the end of the iftar dinner, GIPL also covers the cost of sending the excess to the Atlanta nonprofit CHaRM, which composts food waste and processes hard-to-recycle items.

Al Furqan’s zero-waste iftar is just one of 24 zero-waste iftars planned across Atlanta-area Islamic centers this Ramadan. At least 15 now have dedicated green teams. That’s a big increase from 2023, when there was only one masjid with a GIPL-certified green team: Roswell Community Masjid, or RCM. RCM, which hosts weekly zero-waste iftar dinners every Saturday, signed a contract with Atlanta-based Goodr in mid-January to handle its composting and provide food waste recovery services year-round.

Monitoring trash

At Masjid Fatimah in Stone Mountain, Mohammed Ata Ur Rasheed helps direct trash traffic during Ramadan. He sits in a folding chair for hours each night telling male congregants where to put the recycling, trash, and compost. About 150 people attend their iftar dinners each night. 

“People waste so much food. There are half-eaten plates. Sometimes the entire plate. And because they don’t want me to see what they’re throwing away, they take another plate to cover it,” Rasheed says. “I see you! Sometimes I tell them, when you’re grabbing food, get a smaller portion. The food is there. I collected a lot of bread the past two days because people didn’t like it and were trying to throw it away.” (Some local masjids like Masjid Fatimah are working to reduce food waste by having volunteers portion out plates before handing them out to attendees — who tend to pile food on their own plates after fasting all day long.)

Reducing waste isn’t just aligned with religious principles — there’s also a financial incentive. Rasheed estimates that his masjid has saved nearly $1,000 so far because it has not needed to call Gwinnett County to pick up excess trash: Instead of five bags every night, there is now only one. 

Masjid Fatimah still provides congregants with plastic water bottles. But this year, it’s cutting down on the volume of its recycling by placing permanent markers with instructions on neon-green poster boards near the free bottles. “I put up a message and every day I remind people: Label your bottle, put your initial,” says Rasheed, calling this his personal pilot project. When they’re done drinking, he reminds people to remove the caps from their bottles and crush them so they’ll take up less space in the trash. 

At the end of the night, he sorts through the compost bin and trash to bring home what he can to add to his compost pile and feed his four chickens and red wiggler worms. Rasheed, who grew up gardening in Hyderabad, India, spends two hours a day working with his beehives and tending to his backyard permaculture setup after he returns home from his job as a biologist at the CDC; his garden provides hundreds of pounds of produce each year for his family of four. At the masjid, he shows other gardeners how to use the pizza boxes left over from Ramadan iftars to create easy garden plots and reduce time spent pulling weeds. He says more congregants are following his example and bringing scraps home to feed their backyard chickens as well. 

‘Khalifas’ of the earth, or green teams

Ayesha Abid is the program coordinator for Georgia Interfaith Power and Light. Informally, she calls herself the Muslim organizer for the nonprofit, and has been working to increase the number of Muslim organizations embracing recycling and reducing energy use and waste since she joined in 2023. “It’s hard to say for sure, since we are in the Bible Belt and we have more churches, but we have about 150 green teams [statewide],” Abid says, explaining that this includes teams across all religious houses of worship. “If there are about 100 masjids and 15 have green teams, I don’t think that’s a bad representation.”

Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam in East Atlanta is composting for the first time this year, and received a grant from GIPL for its zero-waste iftar.  The masjid, which opened in 1958, is the largest and oldest Islamic community center in metro Atlanta. 

“It isn’t that expensive to do composting,” Abid says. “What’s expensive is manpower or volunteers. The biggest thing I was hearing was ‘I don’t have volunteers to take it to CHaRM.’ There was a woman at [Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam] who just took six to eight bags of compost/recyclable waste in her van. You need community members willing to step up to do that. I think the women in the community are uplifting this the most.”

Abid says East Cobb Islamic Center, Al Furqan West Cobb Islamic Center, and Roswell Community Masjid have all called to eliminate single-use plastic bottles and encourage people to bring their own tupperware to take home food so it isn’t thrown out.  

“I grew up in Georgia and going to masjids, my most significant memory of Ramadan is seeing aunties forget which water bottle is theirs and getting a new one and letting entire bottles of water go to waste,” Abid says. “Volunteers are tired after fasting all day and don’t have energy to empty it into gardens. Muslims are supposed to be ‘khalifas’ [stewards] of the Earth, especially during Ramadan, and I could never make sense of the waste. This disconnect has always stood out to me. A lot of people question it but don’t care about it. But we’re working to fix that.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A greener Ramadan: How Atlanta-area mosques are cutting food waste during the Muslim holy month on Mar 16, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tasnim Shamma, 285 South.

The Center for Biological Diversity filed the challenge on February 19 in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals under the Clean Air Act. The advocacy group says the federal agency has prohibited the use of phosphogypsum, a radioactive, carcinogenic, and toxic waste generated by the fertilizer industry, in road construction since 1992, citing an “unacceptable level of risk to public health.”

The legal challenge is centered on a road project proposed at the New Wales facility of Mosaic Fertilizer, a subsidiary of The Mosaic Company, some 40 miles east of Tampa. The EPA approved the project in December 2024, noting the authorization applied only to the single project and included conditions meant to ensure the project would remain within the scope of the application. But Ragan Whitlock, Florida staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, feared the project could lead to more roadways built with the toxic waste.

“Part of what makes this process so alarming, it’s not just a one-off science experiment,” he said. “It’s being billed as the intermediate step between laboratory testing and full-scale implementation of the idea. So our concern is that whatever methodology is used for this project will be used for national approval down the road.”

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Phosphogypsum contains radium, which as it decays forms radon gas. Both radium and radon are radioactive and can cause cancer. Normally, phosphogypsum is disposed of in engineered piles called stacks to limit public exposure to emissions of radon. The stacks can be expanded as they reach capacity or closed, which involves draining and capping. More than 1 billion tons of the waste is stored in stacks in Florida, with the fertilizer industry adding some 40 million tons every year, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

Mosaic aims to construct a test road near its Florida stack with four sections, each made with varying mixtures of phosphogypsum. The waste would be used in the road base, which would be paved over with asphalt. University of Florida researchers would be involved in the study.

Most of the comments the EPA received in response to the proposal opposed the use of phosphogypsum in road construction in general and criticized the current methods for managing the waste, but the federal agency said these comments were outside the scope of its review. The agency declined to comment on pending litigation.

“The review found that Mosaic’s risk assessment is technically acceptable, and that the potential radiological risks from the proposed project meet the regulatory requirements,” the EPA stated in the Federal Register dated December 23, 2024. “The project is at least as protective of public health as maintaining the phosphogypsum in a stack.”

Mosaic has faced scrutiny in the past after a pond at its Piney Point site leaked and threatened to collapse in 2021, forcing the release of 215 million gallons of contaminated water into Tampa Bay. Mosaic did not respond to a request for comment on the new litigation.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Plan to build a road with radioactive waste in Florida prompts legal challenge against the EPA on Mar 1, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Amy Green, Inside Climate News.

But by the late 18th century, this precarious equilibrium began to unravel. The forces of privatization and industrialization swept through England, as Enclosure Acts transformed common lands into private property, barring access for the poor. In 1788, the landmark court case Steel v. Houghton shattered the custom of gleaning as a right, reclassifying it as trespass. Mechanization soon followed, with threshing machines and combine harvesters leaving less behind for gleaners to collect. By the mid-19th century, gleaning had faded into memory, a relic of premodern agrarian life overtaken by the relentless march of progress.

And yet, Millet’s scene depicting the work of gathering what others have left behind is playing out once again — not as a relic, but as a response to the crises of food waste and poverty. In a potato field in Cornwall, England, volunteers sift through wooden crates, separating the good from the bruised, while others cut kale, filling sacks with leaves destined for community kitchens.

“We’re feeding quite a lot — about 10,000 people a week,” said Holly Whitelaw, the founder of Gleaning Cornwall. “It might just be a couple of bits of vegetables, but it’s something healthy.” The operation, run with the help of over 400 volunteers, relies on a patchwork of coordination via the online messaging platform WhatsApp, donated storage spaces, and sheer determination. Yet, Whitelaw notes, it’s far from enough: “Big funding is needed to really do this properly. The need is increasing.”

At a time when 3.3 million metric tons of food are wasted annually on U.K. farms, the environmental and social costs of inaction are staggering. Rotting food releases methane, a greenhouse gas that is far more potent than carbon dioxide, and the resources used to grow that food — water, energy, and land — are wasted along with it. Tristram Stuart, the historian and activist who co-founded the Gleaning Network in 2011, of which Gleaning Cornwall is a part, envisioned the practice as a way to challenge British food waste at its source. Today, from Kent to Birmingham, gleaning groups are not just picking up produce but picking apart the unsustainable norms that allow waste to persist in the first place.

The impact of this waste goes far beyond the visible rot in fields. Globally, nearly a third of all food produced is never eaten, and in the U.K., unharvested crops contribute an estimated 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually — 11 percent of the country’s agricultural emissions. Across the Atlantic, the problem plays out on an even larger scale. Laurie Beyranevand, the director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law and Graduate School in the U.S., highlights the strain on natural resources caused by overproduction.

“Here in the States, we’ve got mega farms out West using precious water resources during droughts to grow food that never makes it into the supply chain,” she said. “People say, ‘Oh, it’ll get tilled back into the soil,’ but that doesn’t account for the resources wasted in the process — pesticides, labor, energy — all of it has environmental costs.”

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Across the U.K., gleaning has become a critical tool in the fight against food waste and poverty. Groups like the Sussex Gleaning Network organize teams to collect everything from carrots to cauliflowers, redistributing the rescued food to food banks and community projects like FareShare Sussex, which takes good-quality surplus food and provides it to people in need. The Gleaning Network as a whole has collaborated with over 60 farmers and 3,000 volunteers to save more than 500 metric tons of fruits and vegetables, ensuring that surplus produce is delivered quickly and safely to those who need it most.

For Phil Holtam, the regional programs manager of Feedback Global, an organization that pushes for a more sustainable food system, the process begins long before harvest day. “We recruit a team of volunteers and hire a van in advance,” he explained. “On the day, we meet at the farm around 10 a.m., go over health and safety, and then get to work.” Once the produce is picked, it’s rushed to cold storage facilities to preserve its freshness. “Gleaning volunteers can pick more in a day than a kitchen can process in a week,” Holtam added, underscoring the scale of both the problem and the solution. For the volunteers in the fields, the work is urgent. And for the families they serve, it’s a lifeline.

Food waste starts at the very source: the farm. Up to 16 percent of a crop can be wasted due to factors completely out of a farmer’s control. “Supermarkets reject produce for being too wonky, too small, or the wrong color,” said Sussex-based Holtam. “Then there’s unpredictable weather, labor shortages — it’s endless.” What’s left in the fields — potatoes, kale, courgettes (zucchini), soft fruit — represents a staggering waste of resources and an urgent environmental crisis.

The solutions offered by gleaning are both practical and symbolic. Gleaners rescue food that would otherwise contribute to methane emissions in landfills or decompose in fields. They work with farmers to ensure that what can’t be sold is turned into a resource for the community. “We’ve worked with everything from soft fruit to salad greens, clearing beds and keeping crops out of the compost heap,” said Holtam. “It’s about turning potential waste into community resources.”

Yet, for all its impact, gleaning is still a stopgap measure. As Beyranevand points out, the root problem is systemic. “Farmers are forced to overgrow to meet strict supermarket contracts, only to see tons of perfectly good food rejected because it doesn’t meet cosmetic standards.” The solution lies, she said, in creating secondary markets for surplus produce and reducing the overproduction that forces farmers to rely on donations to move their crops.

Until that systemic shift occurs, the gleaners persist — crouching in fields, filling crates with overlooked crops, and salvaging what they can. Every potato pulled from the ground, every courgette packed into a crate, every small effort, is a quiet victory.

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While the idea is simple — rescue food that would otherwise go to waste — that work takes different forms around the world. In the U.K., organizations like Gleaning Network UK run structured operations, coordinating volunteers to collect surplus crops from farms and deliver them to food banks. In the U.S., gleaning is often smaller scale, led by grassroots groups and church volunteers.

“It’s very much driven by philanthropy, and the groups are often disconnected,” said Beyranevand, who has worked with several gleaning organizations in the country. Without a centralized system, efforts rely on personal relationships with farmers and ad hoc coordination, making the process inconsistent and resource-dependent.

Legal and cultural differences also shape these approaches. In the U.K., farmers generally welcome gleaners, while in the U.S., stricter property laws and liability concerns create barriers. “Farmers worry about what happens if someone gets injured,” Beyranevand explained. Although some states have introduced protections, these laws are inconsistent, and food safety concerns add further complexity. Maryland, for example, has enacted specific laws to protect farmers from liability when they allow gleaners onto their land, providing a model for how legislation can encourage participation while addressing farmers’ concerns.

Despite its promise, gleaning alone cannot fix systemic issues of food waste and insecurity. Beyranevand calls it a reactive solution, dependent on surplus or rejected crops. “Ultimately, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we didn’t need gleaning at all?” she asked. Some organizations, like Boston Area Gleaners in the U.S., are exploring proactive approaches, such as acquiring farmland to grow crops specifically for food banks. But scaling such initiatives requires significant investment and structural support.

Still, gleaning is about more than just rescuing food — it’s about rediscovering the value of what we’ve overlooked. For Kelly LeBlanc, vice president of nutrition programming at Oldways, a nonprofit that inspires people to embrace the healthy and sustainable joys of the old ways of eating, the significance goes beyond food itself. “We’re starting to recognize that diets better for people are better for the planet as well,” she said. “The simple act of turning discarded crops into nourishment bridges so many divides — between nutrition and sustainability, between waste and renewal.”

Perhaps that’s gleaning’s greatest gift: its ability to remind us that even in a world of abundance, there is beauty in what’s left behind. Jean-François Millet’s painting The Gleaners immortalized this truth nearly two centuries ago, and today, it’s no less poignant.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Gleaning: The ancient practice fighting modern food waste on Jan 24, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Natasha Khullar Relph.

In September 2015, the U.S. set an ambitious target of reducing its food loss and waste by 50 percent. The idea was to reduce the amount of food that ends up in landfills, where it emits greenhouse gases as it decomposes, a major factor contributing to climate change.

Researchers at UC Davis looked at state policies across the country and estimated how much food waste each state was likely reducing in 2022. They found that, without more work being done at the federal level, no state is on track to achieve the national waste reduction goal. 

Researchers calculated that, even when taking reduction measures into account, the U.S. still generates about 328 lbs of food waste per person annually — which is also how much waste was being generated per person in 2016, shortly after the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the waste-cutting goal. 

These figures indicate that even our best strategies for eliminating waste aren’t enough to meet our goals, said Sarah Kakadellis, lead author of the study published in Nature this month.

In order to assess how the U.S. is doing to meet its food waste reduction goals, Kakadellis and her team used both publicly available data (from ReFED, a nonprofit that monitors food waste in the U.S.) and estimates based on the current policy landscape. 

The study’s findings were “not surprising” given the absence of federal policy governing food waste, said Lori Leonard, chair of the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. “People are trying to do what they can at state and municipal levels,” she said. “But we really need national leadership on this issue.”

Kakadellis suggests that a path forward will also necessitate shifting the way consumers think about certain waste management strategies — like composting. 

Composting turns organic material, like food scraps, into a nutrient-rich mixture that can be used to fertilize new plants and crops. It can be considered a form of “recycling” food, although its end product technically cannot be eaten. This important detail means consumers must learn to view composting, despite its potential environmental benefits, as a form of food waste, says Kakadellis. 

“It’s really thinking about the best use of food, which is to eat it,” she said. 

Although it’s been touted as a great alternative to chucking your moldy bananas in the trash, composting is indeed classified as a form of food waste by the United Nations and the European Union. In 2021, the EPA updated its definition of food waste to include composting and anaerobic digestion — both of which can take inputs like uneaten food and turn them into fertilizer or biogas, respectively.

In updating its guidance, the EPA published a food waste hierarchy — which shows the best way to reduce food waste is to prevent it. This includes things like adding accurate date-labels to food products, so consumers aren’t confused about when something they’ve purchased has gone bad or is no longer safe to eat. It’s also preferable to find another use for unsold or uneaten food — like donating it to food banks or integrating into animal feed, where it can be used to raise livestock (assuming that livestock will also eventually feed humans). 

Composting will always have a role to play in diverting food waste from landfills — because those operations can accept spoiled or rotten food, which food banks, for example, cannot. “It’s not an either/or. They have to go hand in hand,” said Kakadellis. “But we’re skipping all these other steps and we’re going straight to the recycling too often.”

Leonard agrees, pointing out the high costs associated with ensuring the nation’s sprawling, complex food system runs smoothly: from the farm where crops are harvested to the trucks and cold storage that handle packaged goods. “There’s a tremendous amount of energy that’s gone into producing that food,” she said. “We don’t do that to create compost. You know, we do that to feed people.”

Composting, of course, serves more than one purpose and has environmental benefits beyond lowering food loss and waste. For example, it replenishes soils. But Leonard notes that if more work were done on the prevention side — like, making sure farms aren’t overproducing food — then soils wouldn’t be so depleted in the first place and wouldn’t need so much remediation.

Both Leonard and Kakadellis emphasize that no one tool for avoiding sending food to landfills should be off the table. Leonard, who previously worked with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, once did research on organics bans in other states. 

“I asked them if they were encouraging businesses or households to move up the EPA hierarchy and find other, better uses for their food scraps? And they said, no, no. What we’re really trying to do is just get people to do anything on the hierarchy.” That includes composting.

Until there are more options for both pre- and post-consumer food waste, composting may be the best, most accessible option for many people. “It is the easiest thing to do,” said Leonard. “And it’s probably the safest thing to do until we have better protocols in place.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The US wants to cut food waste in half. We’re not even close. on Jan 22, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

According to the National Retail Federation, a United States trade group, Americans will spend nearly $1 trillion on clothes, electronics, trinkets, and other goods during the 2024 holiday season, which it defines as November 1 through December 31. That’s about a fifth of the whole year’s retail sales in just two months.

Will all that shopping make people happier? Probably not — more than half of Americans say they regret their previous Black Friday purchases, according to one national survey. Polling suggests the high people get from buying stuff is ephemeral; it fades quickly, only fueling the desire to buy more.

Perhaps the biggest loser in the cycle of overconsumption, however, is the planet. Obscured by the low prices featured in online flash sales are externalized costs to climate and the environment — in the form of raw material extraction, climate pollution from manufacturing and transport, and the waste that results when products and their packaging are eventually thrown away. By some estimates, the retail industry accounts for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The internet is littered with blogs and opinion articles claiming consumers are to blamed — that “our need to shop is ruining our planet.” But Flora Bagenal, the producer of a new Netflix documentary called Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy sees an injustice in that framing. Why should everyday people feel guilty, the film asks, when manufacturers and retail companies are doing everything within their power to drive up the pace of consumption? These corporations have designed products to break down quickly, promised that recycling would keep the planet clean, and precision-engineered their advertisements and marketplaces to make the shopping impulse all but irresistible — all while passing the environmental toll onto the public.

“I’ve always felt that we don’t hold our companies to account,” Bagenal told Grist. “I wanted to explore that from the perspective of somebody who feels caught up in the system as much as everyone else.” Bagenal lives in the United Kingdom and has produced several other documentaries on topics including the anti-vaccine movement and mental health care.

Without explicitly using the term, Buy Now! makes the case for an alternative paradigm called the “polluter pays principle,” which holds that companies — not the public — should be held financially responsible for dealing with the waste they generate. In wonkier terms, the idea manifests as “extended producer responsibility,” or EPR, policies that typically require large companies to pay into a central fund for waste management and prevention. In the U.S., five states have passed EPR laws for packaging.

Through interviews with former executives at Adidas, Amazon, and Apple, Buy Now! argues that consumer goods companies have knowingly abdicated their responsibility to the public good. Grist sat down with Bagenal to discuss the film and how she and her team of executive producers went about conveying the polluter pays principle to a general audience.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. What was your motivation for producing a film about overconsumption, and the role of big consumer goods companies in turning it into a crisis?

A. We knew the waste problem was a really big problem, but we were worried about making something depressing that people turn away from. And so gradually, we evolved our thinking into shifting away from piles of rubbish and landfills and things like that — instead, we thought: Well, where’s it all coming from? And as you start peeling back the layers and going another step back, you realize that any film about waste is really going to have to be about who’s making the stuff that becomes waste. That was really a revelation for us — we realized that we could tell the story a bit differently and target companies that hadn’t been held accountable.

Q. The film’s subtitle is “The Shopping Conspiracy,” hinting at the strategies companies use to get people to buy more while still denying responsibility for the resulting trash. But one could argue that this is exactly what we’d expect from companies incentivized to maximize their profits. Why do you think their behavior warrants being called out as a conspiracy?

A. We had a lot of conversations about this — in the back of the taxi, in the back of the studio, in the edit suite. There’s no table where these imaginary execs sat around and decided to do this and then laid it on the world. But the conspiracy comes from the fact that you can’t work for one of these companies and not know the truth: that, while we’re all here trying to do our best, feeling guilty and wondering what we can do, these big companies are well aware of the impact they have on the planet and are still not doing enough. If I go down to the shop and decide to not buy a pot of yogurt because it might not be recyclable, nothing will change. But if a company like Adidas or Amazon or Apple actually decided to sell less stuff or make a product that would last three times as long, then something would change.

Q. The philosophy you’re describing — that polluters should pay for their pollution — has been popularized among policy wonks as “extended producer responsibility.” What strategies did you use to make that idea more accessible?

A. EPR is really popular in NGO [nongovernmental organization] and business circles, but we felt it was going to be really hard to communicate in a film and to get people to care. So we spent a lot of time trying to crystallize it into something that feels so obvious, that is hard to fight against. And actually, it was Erik Liedtke, the former Adidas exec, who hit the nail on the head at the end of the film. He said, “Stop putting it on us [the public], stop telling us it’s our responsibility. You produce this stuff, you need to account for its life after it gets thrown away.” 

We also called the film “Buy Now!” to get at that moment when you press the button and you decide to give your money to a company. That transaction is the bit that makes money, that’s the bit that the industry is interested in. But once you press “buy now,” you’re making a contract that you don’t know about — you’re now a caretaker of this thing, and it’s your responsibility until you dispose of it, and then it becomes the whole world’s responsibility. The only one who’s not really responsible anymore is the company.

Q. Several countries and U.S. states have passed EPR laws, and environmental groups have put forward some ambitious proposals for new ones. But what’s the bigger-picture solution that those policies should be paired with?

A. There is a lot of good stuff now that companies are doing. The fashion industry in particular has embraced the idea of EPR, and some of the consumer goods companies like Coca-Cola have talked about it. I think it’s really, really important as a tool for governments to hold companies to account and to share the costs of environmental impacts. But it doesn’t solve the problem entirely. I think all of us still need to buy less stuff, and companies need to make less stuff. It’s fine to tax [companies] for the end-of-life stuff, but it doesn’t get away from the fact that reduction is the ultimate goal.

Q. Despite everything you describe about corporate responsibility for climate and environmental pollution, it can still be hard for people to imagine how to resist beyond individual actions — like by shopping less. How do you hope viewers will take action?

A. Well, not shopping doesn’t have to be just forgoing something. It feels quite satisfying as an act of resistance to be like, “You know what? I’m not going to spend my precious time and money on this company. I don’t need another coat.” 

But the people that I really think about are the people who are working inside companies and have been feeling guilty for a long time. The people who feel like there’s something wrong and they’ve tried to change it and no one’s listened, or that they’re not in the right job and they could be using their time and the energy to do something that is more constructive. It’s those people I would love to watch this and have a change of heart. We’ve already seen some reactions to the trailer from people who work in advertising who basically have said, “You know, we sell this shit to you, that’s what we do all day long. And we all feel really bad about it.” I would love it if there were a few people who saw this and took it as an opportunity to say, “You know what? I can do better than this.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Who’s responsible for waste? A Q&A about the ‘conspiracy’ of overconsumption. on Nov 27, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

According to the National Retail Federation, a United States trade group, Americans will spend nearly $1 trillion on clothes, electronics, trinkets, and other goods during the 2024 holiday season, which it defines as November 1 through December 31. That’s about a fifth of the whole year’s retail sales in just two months.

Will all that shopping make people happier? Probably not — more than half of Americans say they regret their previous Black Friday purchases, according to one national survey. Polling suggests the high people get from buying stuff is ephemeral; it fades quickly, only fueling the desire to buy more.

Perhaps the biggest loser in the cycle of overconsumption, however, is the planet. Obscured by the low prices featured in online flash sales are externalized costs to climate and the environment — in the form of raw material extraction, climate pollution from manufacturing and transport, and the waste that results when products and their packaging are eventually thrown away. By some estimates, the retail industry accounts for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The internet is littered with blogs and opinion articles claiming consumers are to blamed — that “our need to shop is ruining our planet.” But Flora Bagenal, the producer of a new Netflix documentary called Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy sees an injustice in that framing. Why should everyday people feel guilty, the film asks, when manufacturers and retail companies are doing everything within their power to drive up the pace of consumption? These corporations have designed products to break down quickly, promised that recycling would keep the planet clean, and precision-engineered their advertisements and marketplaces to make the shopping impulse all but irresistible — all while passing the environmental toll onto the public.

“I’ve always felt that we don’t hold our companies to account,” Bagenal told Grist. “I wanted to explore that from the perspective of somebody who feels caught up in the system as much as everyone else.” Bagenal lives in the United Kingdom and has produced several other documentaries on topics including the anti-vaccine movement and mental health care.

Without explicitly using the term, Buy Now! makes the case for an alternative paradigm called the “polluter pays principle,” which holds that companies — not the public — should be held financially responsible for dealing with the waste they generate. In wonkier terms, the idea manifests as “extended producer responsibility,” or EPR, policies that typically require large companies to pay into a central fund for waste management and prevention. In the U.S., five states have passed EPR laws for packaging.

Through interviews with former executives at Adidas, Amazon, and Apple, Buy Now! argues that consumer goods companies have knowingly abdicated their responsibility to the public good. Grist sat down with Bagenal to discuss the film and how she and her team of executive producers went about conveying the polluter pays principle to a general audience.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. What was your motivation for producing a film about overconsumption, and the role of big consumer goods companies in turning it into a crisis?

A. We knew the waste problem was a really big problem, but we were worried about making something depressing that people turn away from. And so gradually, we evolved our thinking into shifting away from piles of rubbish and landfills and things like that — instead, we thought: Well, where’s it all coming from? And as you start peeling back the layers and going another step back, you realize that any film about waste is really going to have to be about who’s making the stuff that becomes waste. That was really a revelation for us — we realized that we could tell the story a bit differently and target companies that hadn’t been held accountable.

Q. The film’s subtitle is “The Shopping Conspiracy,” hinting at the strategies companies use to get people to buy more while still denying responsibility for the resulting trash. But one could argue that this is exactly what we’d expect from companies incentivized to maximize their profits. Why do you think their behavior warrants being called out as a conspiracy?

A. We had a lot of conversations about this — in the back of the taxi, in the back of the studio, in the edit suite. There’s no table where these imaginary execs sat around and decided to do this and then laid it on the world. But the conspiracy comes from the fact that you can’t work for one of these companies and not know the truth: that, while we’re all here trying to do our best, feeling guilty and wondering what we can do, these big companies are well aware of the impact they have on the planet and are still not doing enough. If I go down to the shop and decide to not buy a pot of yogurt because it might not be recyclable, nothing will change. But if a company like Adidas or Amazon or Apple actually decided to sell less stuff or make a product that would last three times as long, then something would change.

Q. The philosophy you’re describing — that polluters should pay for their pollution — has been popularized among policy wonks as “extended producer responsibility.” What strategies did you use to make that idea more accessible?

A. EPR is really popular in NGO [nongovernmental organization] and business circles, but we felt it was going to be really hard to communicate in a film and to get people to care. So we spent a lot of time trying to crystallize it into something that feels so obvious, that is hard to fight against. And actually, it was Erik Liedtke, the former Adidas exec, who hit the nail on the head at the end of the film. He said, “Stop putting it on us [the public], stop telling us it’s our responsibility. You produce this stuff, you need to account for its life after it gets thrown away.” 

We also called the film “Buy Now!” to get at that moment when you press the button and you decide to give your money to a company. That transaction is the bit that makes money, that’s the bit that the industry is interested in. But once you press “buy now,” you’re making a contract that you don’t know about — you’re now a caretaker of this thing, and it’s your responsibility until you dispose of it, and then it becomes the whole world’s responsibility. The only one who’s not really responsible anymore is the company.

Q. Several countries and U.S. states have passed EPR laws, and environmental groups have put forward some ambitious proposals for new ones. But what’s the bigger-picture solution that those policies should be paired with?

A. There is a lot of good stuff now that companies are doing. The fashion industry in particular has embraced the idea of EPR, and some of the consumer goods companies like Coca-Cola have talked about it. I think it’s really, really important as a tool for governments to hold companies to account and to share the costs of environmental impacts. But it doesn’t solve the problem entirely. I think all of us still need to buy less stuff, and companies need to make less stuff. It’s fine to tax [companies] for the end-of-life stuff, but it doesn’t get away from the fact that reduction is the ultimate goal.

Q. Despite everything you describe about corporate responsibility for climate and environmental pollution, it can still be hard for people to imagine how to resist beyond individual actions — like by shopping less. How do you hope viewers will take action?

A. Well, not shopping doesn’t have to be just forgoing something. It feels quite satisfying as an act of resistance to be like, “You know what? I’m not going to spend my precious time and money on this company. I don’t need another coat.” 

But the people that I really think about are the people who are working inside companies and have been feeling guilty for a long time. The people who feel like there’s something wrong and they’ve tried to change it and no one’s listened, or that they’re not in the right job and they could be using their time and the energy to do something that is more constructive. It’s those people I would love to watch this and have a change of heart. We’ve already seen some reactions to the trailer from people who work in advertising who basically have said, “You know, we sell this shit to you, that’s what we do all day long. And we all feel really bad about it.” I would love it if there were a few people who saw this and took it as an opportunity to say, “You know what? I can do better than this.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Who’s responsible for waste? A Q&A about the ‘conspiracy’ of overconsumption. on Nov 27, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

“It’s pretty astonishing,” said chef-turned-bioengineer Vayu Hill-Maini. “In just 36 hours, this fungal growth is really kind of transforming what otherwise is pretty inedible.” 

He hopes others see it that way, too. In a recently published paper in Nature Microbiology, the Stanford University assistant professor made a convincing argument that fungal fermentation of food waste and agricultural byproducts could be the next culinary frontier. 

For Hill-Maini, this is about more than making trendy dishes. It’s about improving food sustainability and reducing hunger worldwide. The process he is so excited about has been doing exactly that for centuries in parts of Indonesia, where oncom, a traditional staple, is an affordable and nutritious alternative to animal protein. 

Stir-fried; used as a stuffing, filling, or basis of sauce; and even served as a fried snack, oncom is traditionally made by combining a bit of old oncom with something like soybean pulp and leaving it to ferment. It’s much like making miso, and results in a protein similar to tempeh. Its prevalence in Southeast Asian cuisine inspired Hill-Maini, who once worked as a chef, to investigate the spore-bearing organisms behind the dish and figure out how the fungus that creates it could be embraced worldwide. 

Fermentation has been around for thousands of years. It is what makes beer and wine possible, and has long been used to whip up kitchen-table fixtures such as kimchi, sauerkraut, and yogurt. It’s even behind kombucha and sourdough bread. But it turns out this chemical process, in which bacteria, molds or yeasts break down sugar to create simpler compounds, could help alleviate the mounting crisis of food waste. Hill-Maini thinks it could do that, in theory, by turning waste generated during the production of plant-based milks into inexpensive and highly nutritious dishes, helping rein in a key source of the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the world’s food system. 

“We’ve known for many years that fungi are nature’s degraders,” said Hill-Maini, noting that fungi used to reduce streams of food waste could be the “most efficient way to convert waste into human food.”

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Hill-Maini’s paper is the result of three years of investigating just where N. intermedia could grow, and whether it could turn the cast-offs and refuse of industrial food processing into something people would want to eat. After analyzing everything from coffee grounds to orange peels — some 30 things in all — he and his team discovered that the strain of fungus grows on most everything they tried. They also found it didn’t produce mycotoxins, the potentially deadly substances associated with some fungi. 

And, perhaps most notably, it resulted in the creation of foods that repurpose what might otherwise end up in the garbage without sacrificing taste in the interest of altruism. Equally important, he wanted the process widely accessible.

“This is industrial-scale. It’s not compost bins and home kitchens. It’s massive industries that generate food-waste-grade products every single day,” said Hill-Maini. 

The research focused particular attention on what’s left behind during the production of plant-based dairy, produce, and brewing. Interestingly enough, Hill-Maini discovered many of these inedible items could be transformed into something with appetizing colors, textures, and flavors. 

This could be a boon for the climate, because evidence suggests every metric ton of wet waste that is upcycled through fermentation — in this case, turned into dinner instead of landing into methane-spewing landfills — prevents the release of about 600 kilograms of CO2. Before long, Hill-Maini would like to see fungal fermentation incorporated into food manufacturing facilities and any emerging refuse immediately transformed by mold. 

But what really fascinates him are the climate benefits N. intermedia could provide. “What we’re thinking is we can convert this waste into protein, and then that protein can reduce animal consumption,” said Hill-Maini. “We might be able to have a massive impact.”

Drumming up enough U.S. consumer interest in food made from waste will require a pitch that goes beyond the increasingly futile message “this is better for the planet.” But that kind of branding may not be necessary. Rick von Hagn, who has spent the last few years experimenting with N. intermedia at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, says the taste and texture of this ancient way of cooking may do the trick on its own. The farm-to-table restaurant in Tarrytown, New York has begun serving fungus-fermented foods in a handful of dishes. 

His journey with the spore started in 2022, when he and colleague Andrew Luzmore began collaborating with Hill-Maini, identifying various kitchen waste streams that might be good candidates for fermentation. They’d ship something to the bioengineer, who would send back a fermented food, the first of which began as “the press-cake that’s left when you make flaxseed oil,” said Luzmore. “I remember taking out what looked like a burger patty and placing it in a hot pan. As it cooked it started looking like a well-seared steak.” 

They’ve since discovered that combining the fungus with a wide range of ingredients provides a texture and flavor additive that can transform even the trickiest alt-protein dishes into a culinary star. The two chefs have used N. intermedia to improve the texture of sausages made with a mixture of meat and grains or vegetables, and brought rock-hard bread “back to life” by fermenting it with the fungus and keeping it out of local landfills. The rejuvenated bread “has the texture of French toast and the flavor of grilled cheese.” As it ferments, N. intermedia takes on an “earthy, floral quality,” von Hagn noted, and cooking it provides “a cheesy, deeply savory, mushroom-y flavor and aroma.” 

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Using the fungus in dishes has been such a hit with customers that the team at Blue Hill has built its own microbiology lab to evaluate the potential of fermenting various things and developing recipes with them. It is, as Luzmore described it, “a key to a whole new set of possibilities that have largely remained unexplored beyond its traditional use in Indonesia.” 

Matthew Kammerer, executive chef at The Harbor House Inn in Elk, California, loves that idea. “Any cooking that’s done with byproducts or turned into something unique to limit food waste is something I’ll always definitely support,” said Kammerer, who has not been involved with the research project. 

For the last seven years, Kammerer has been working with koji mold, or Aspergillus oryzae, which is widely used in Japanese cuisine to ferment soybeans and make things like soy sauce and miso. In the last decade, “koji’s kind of been the star of the show, but it seems like a very similar process and technique,” said Kammerer. He’s interested in learning more about N. intermedia’s gastronomic potential, which he dubs “far less mainstream.” 

All told, it’s not just fine-dining restaurants in the U.S. that can be found embracing the culinary novelty of this Indonesian technique. Hill-Maini is now collaborating with San Sebastián, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Spain, with the aim to develop alcoholic beverages using N. intermedia. Chefs at Alchemist, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Denmark, have created a dessert in which its fungal enzymes enhance the sweetness and flavor of a sugarless rice custard. 

The biggest barrier to the adoption of this strain of fungus is the dearth of places to buy the spores needed to grow it in the U.S. In Java, the Indonesian birthplace of oncom, oncom leftovers are used much like seeds to grow a new batch of the alternative protein — a process similar to using sourdough starter to make bread. In California, Hill-Maini’s team used a lab sample of N. intermedia to carry out its research. That limited availability is one reason Luzmore and von Hagn went all-in on a microbiology lab, while Hill-Maini is building a kitchen alongside his laboratory at Stanford. 

Of course, the steeper hurdle is getting people to eat something that many view as garbage.

“There’s a few things working against us. We’re talking about waste, we’re talking about mold. If you say ‘mold-fermented waste,’ I think people will be really turned off and disgusted,” he said. That’s where having fine-dining chefs can help flip people’s aversion to inclination. 

The irony is fermented food products, like sourdough, and those rife with fungi, such as blue cheese, have long reigned over the food scene in the U.S. Kombucha — the beloved moldy, fermented drink that hit astronomical popularity in recent years but was first brewed millennia ago — is one such success story. Hill-Maini hopes to see a similar kind of rocket-like trajectory for N. intermedia. 

Embracing a food-waste-fighting fungus on kitchen tables and restaurant plates across the world is not the future of food, said Hill-Maini, but the present. “Look, this is happening in Indonesia. It’s happening in the U.S. in various ways,” he said. “This is just a new way to look at it, towards planetary health.”

He and his team aren’t re-inventing the wheel, but rolling it into a new part of the world as a force for planetary good. One discarded pile of oat pulp or moldy loaf of bread, at a time.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The funky mold turning food waste into culinary delights on Nov 8, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

“They’re not so obvious at first … but as you walk on it, the shells become more apparent as you go, and little flecks of white start coming out,” said Helen Jones, operations director at LeftCoast, which runs the local community garden. She’s describing the concrete mix made with crushed seashells that now serves as a sentry against floods for the garden, bolstering the space against stormwater runoff or heavy rains.  

It wasn’t too long ago that frequent water inundation was a mainstay at The People’s Pantry. A regular day of rainfall would turn the garden’s corners into something like a marsh, morphing uneven ground into dangerously slick walkways, and even seeping into the housing the land is wedged in-between. 

This led Jones to meet with local officials last April to see how the issue could be remedied. By the year’s close, the garden’s visitors were looking on in bemusement as a team of scientists at the University of Central Lancashire installed a promising solution: A permeable concrete mix made with cement, aggregate — materials like gravel and rock that are part of typical concrete mixes — and discarded shellfish waste collected from nearby fish processors. 

The material is the brainchild of Karl Williams, who directs the Centre for Waste Management at the University of Central Lancashire. His focus on turning items people traditionally perceive to be waste into useful resources is what led him to begin experimenting with using fishing industry shells otherwise tossed into landfills to improve the built environment.

“We’re trying to minimize the carbon footprint of using waste materials, and we’re looking for local solutions,” said Williams. 

When crushed, scallop and whelk shells produce an ideal shape that enhances the porosity of pervious concrete, a highly permeable form of concrete, which allows for incoming water to drain right through the layer, instead of amassing on the surface like it would with traditional materials. In coastal, urban environments like Blackpool, where flooding is happening more frequently because of climate change, and an abundance of hard surfaces and a lack of natural greenery means there is a lot more runoff than can currently be absorbed, the shell concrete acts like a sponge, holding onto the water for a period of time before releasing it into the surrounding ground — not unlike a sustainable urban drainage system. 

For Williams, the appeal of using discarded seashells to accomplish this flood mitigation is that it also tackles the climate impacts of both food waste and traditional construction. The construction and use of our built environment accounts for more than one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions — the cement industry alone accounts for about 8 percent of the planet’s carbon emissions — while food waste is responsible for at least another 8 percent. The climate toll of both industries is what gave Williams the idea to develop the pervious concrete made from locally-sourced shells, as part of a European Union-funded multinational research project.

“There’s quite a lot of work around in the construction sector looking at how you can use alternative materials,” said Williams, noting that the construction and food industries happen to be two sectors where “they don’t really talk to each other.” He describes the shell concrete, which he started developing in 2018, as “a conduit for both industries to actually think about the waste that they produce, the products they produce, and how they can work together.”  

Fishmongers typically remove the shells from coastal shellfish catches before they sell them to retailers, producers, or directly to consumers. Incorporating them into the concrete material saves them from being simply tossed into landfills, Williams noted. There’s a cost-saving incentive for the fishmongers, too: Currently, in the United Kingdom, a shellfish processor looking to dispose of waste shells in landfill must pay almost 100 pounds per metric ton, so Williams says commercial operations have an incentive to avoid contributing to waste and instead give away their garbage to be repurposed. 

Meanwhile, the more recycled material that you can put into a building material like cement, the lower the carbon footprint of the production process. Replacing the aggregate with alternative materials can shrink the emissions typically generated from quarrying, processing and transportation. 

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So far, although the shells added to the concrete mix allow for improved porosity and compressive strength, and decrease the amount of aggregate used by 20 percent by weight, Williams and his team haven’t quite figured out how to make the overall material carbon-neutral. (Williams says that reducing the emissions footprint of the mixture by investigating lower carbon cements and shell waste processing is the next phase of the project.) 

In the research realm, the idea to deploy crushed shells in aggregate solutions to mitigate flood risk is nothing new, and neither is the use of ingredients otherwise destined for landfills in permeable concrete. A 2017 study tested the durability of pervious concrete using crushed seashells, while a 2020 conference paper experimented with crushed coconut shells in building materials, and a 2021 analysis examined oyster shell aggregate for urban greening applications. 

But this is one of the first to be used successfully outside of a lab. In addition to the Blackpool community garden, the shell concrete has been laid in a historically flood-prone cycling route in northern France, which Williams’ team worked with multiple organizations to implement in 2022. They are currently in talks to roll this out next at a third test site — a U.K. car-park.

“I would not claim this is the very first, or highly innovative, but it’s intriguing, right?” said Xianming Shi, a professor at the University of Miami who studies sustainable construction materials. Shi isn’t convinced that the crushed shell concrete is a large-scale answer to either food waste or emissions associated with concrete. He pointed out that, while decomposition of food waste in landfills is a troubling source of emissions, shells don’t contain as much organic waste as other food products, such as fish or vegetables. 

He also argued that this material is unlikely to be a primary driver in reducing the emissions of the cement industry, because the use of a recycled material to partially replace aggregate in concrete would not greatly reduce the life-cycle footprint of the concrete, unless this recycled material is carbon negative. 

Rather, Shi sees it as an avenue to public engagement with this and other emerging techniques that could eventually make more of a difference. “This type of project, maybe it leads to further interest in unconventional concrete,” he said. Other examples include a living microalgae used to produce bio-cement, developed by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, or the work of National Renewable Energy Laboratory scientists to create a lignin-based resin that replaces the cement in concrete. 

Some of these may have wider applications than shell-based concrete, which, like other forms of concrete used to absorb flood risk across the world, is riddled with limitations. For one, concrete with high porosity also tends to have lower compressive strength than traditional pavements, meaning it usually isn’t strong enough to act as structural concrete for foundations, nor is it commonly used in high-traffic areas. Many permeable concrete mixtures additionally require regular, specialized maintenance to prevent issues. But while the shell concrete may not function as a large-scale solution, Williams is looking at its use in low-load-bearing sites, such as gardens, parking lots, and sidewalks, where nearby sources of shell waste mean it may be a better answer to flooding woes than other forms of porous concrete.

In a warming world, a seashell concrete may just end up emerging as one among many quick-hit localized solutions in the building and construction industry’s adaptation toolkit. 

Williams’ team is now mapping where outside of the U.K. the types of shellfish needed for their concrete can be found to better understand where else this could be tested. Each location poses its own engineering challenges, as different types of shells fracture differently, which matters for the porosity of their product. So what works for an urban garden in Blackpool, England, a seaside town not far from a copious number of cockles and whelks, or a cycling route near French waters where scallops are in no short supply, may not work elsewhere.

More than eight months have passed since The People’s Pantry installed the shell concrete, and Jones says this is their first growing season in years where they haven’t once faced off with a flood. “There’s been no surface water at all,” Jones said. “I mean, we’ve had some quite torrential showers, but you can walk out straight away and there’s nothing being retained.” 

And while Jones is enthralled with its multifunctional purpose in reducing need for concrete aggregate as well as providing a use for food waste (she considers it “brilliant”), visitors to the community garden are often captivated by a much simpler concept: “The residents have a whale of a time just pouring water into it.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A new solution for flood-prone cities? Concrete made from shellfish waste. on Aug 29, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

Regional leaders will gather later this month in Tonga for the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in Tonga and high on the agenda will be Japan’s dumping of
treated nuclear wastewater in the Pacific Ocean.

A week ago on the 6 August 2024, the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima in 1945 and the 39th anniversary of the Treaty of Rarotonga opening for signatures in 1985 were marked.

As the world and region remembered the horrors of nuclear weapons and stand in solidarity, there is still work to be done.

• READ MORE: Other nuclear wastewater in Pacific reports

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown has stated that Japan’s discharge of treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean does not breach the Rarotonga Treaty which established a Nuclear-Free Zone in the South Pacific.

Civil society groups have been calling for Japan to stop the dumping in the Pacific Ocean, but Brown, who is also the chair of the Pacific Islands Forum and represents a country
associated by name with the Rarotonga Treaty, has backtracked on both the efforts of PIFS and his own previous calls against it.

Brown stated during the recent 10th Pacific Alliance Leaders Meeting (PALM10) meeting in
Tokyo that Pacific Island Leaders stressed the importance of transparency and scientific evidence to ensure that Japan’s actions did not harm the environment or public health.

But he also defended Japan, saying that the wastewater, treated using the Advanced Liquid
Processing System (ALPS) to remove most radioactive materials except tritium, met the
standard set by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Harmful isotopes removed
“No, the water has been treated to remove harmful isotopes, so it’s well within the standard guidelines as outlined by the global authority on nuclear matters, the IAEA,” Brown said in an Islands Business article.

“Japan is complying with these guidelines in its discharge of wastewater into the ocean.”

The Cook Islands has consistently benefited from Japanese development grants. In 2021, Japan funded through the Asian Development Bank $2 million grant from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction, financed by the Government of Japan.

Together with $500,000 of in-kind contribution from the government of the Cook Islands, the grant funded the Supporting Safe Recovery of Travel and Tourism Project.

Just this year Japan provided grants for the Puaikura Volunteer Fire Brigade Association totaling US$132,680 and a further US$53,925 for Aitutaki’s Vaitau School.

Long-term consequences
In 2023, Prime Minister Brown said it placed a special obligation on Pacific Island States because of ’the long-term consequences for Pacific peoples’ health, environment and human rights.

Pacific states, he said, had a legal obligation “to prevent the dumping of radioactive wastes and other radioactive matter by anyone” and “to not . . .  assist or encourage the dumping by anyone of radioactive wastes and other radioactive matter at sea anywhere within the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone.

“Our people do not have anything to gain from Japan’s plan but have much at risk for
generations to come.”

The Pacific Islands Forum went on further to state then that the issue was an “issue of significant transboundary and intergenerational harm”.

The Rarotonga Treaty, a Cold War-era agreement, prohibits nuclear weapons testing and
deployment in the region, but it does not specifically address the discharge of the treated
nuclear wastewater.

Pacific civil society organisations continue to condemn Japan’s dumping of nuclear-treated
wastewater. Of its planned 1.3 million tonnes of nuclear-treated wastewater, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has conducted seven sets of dumping into the Pacific Ocean and was due to commence the eighth between August 7-25.

Regardless of the recommendations provided by the Pacific Island Forum’s special panel of
experts and civil society calls to stop Japan and for PIF Leaders to suspend Japan’s dialogue
partner status, the PIF Chair Mark Brown has ignored concerns by stating his support for
Japan’s nuclear wastewater dumping plans.

Contradiction of treaty
This decision is being viewed by the international community as a contradiction of the Treaty of Rarotonga that symbolises a genuine collaborative endeavour from the Pacific region, born out of 10 years of dedication from Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, the Cook Islands, and various other nations, all working together to establish a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific. Treaty Ratification

Bedi Racule, a nuclear justice advocate said the Treaty of Rarotonga preamble had one of the most powerful statements in any treaty ever. It is the member states’ promise for a nuclear free Pacific.

“The spirit of the Treaty is to protect the abundance and the beauty of the islands for future
generations,” Racule said.

She continued to state that it was vital to ensure that the technical aspects of the Treaty and the text from the preamble is visualised.

“We need to consistently look at this Treaty because of the ongoing nuclear threats that are
happening”.

Racule said the Treaty did not address the modern issues being faced like nuclear waste dumping, and stressed that there was a dire need to increase the solidarity and the
universalisation of the Treaty.

“There is quite a large portion of the Pacific that is not signed onto the Treaty. There’s still work within the Treaty that needs to be ratified.

“It’s almost like a check mark that’s there but it’s not being attended to.”

The Pacific islands Forum meets on August 26-30.

Brittany Nawaqatabu is assistant media and communications officer of the Suva-based Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG). 

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Change may be on the horizon, however, due to a 2022 agreement from United Nations member states to draft a legally binding treaty by 2025 to “end plastic pollution.” Thanks to advocacy from a small group of waste pickers, the treaty mandate recognized “the significant contribution made by workers in informal and cooperative settings,” using a euphemism often understood to refer to waste pickers. It recommended that, over the next two years of scheduled negotiations, delegates consider “lessons learned and best practices” from these informal and cooperative settings.

Now, four negotiating sessions later, the global plastics treaty has given waste pickers an unprecedented boost in visibility. The most recent draft of the agreement refers to waste pickers explicitly — albeit in brackets indicating the need for further discussion — and virtually every stakeholder involved has something to say about their importance in waste management and in shaping the treaty.

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“We’ve been unusually successful in these negotiations in highlighting the importance of waste pickers,” said Taylor Cass Talbott, advocacy coordinator for the International Alliance of Waste Pickers, or IAWP, a group that promotes the interests of nearly half a million waste pickers across 34 countries. “If this language sticks,” she added, “this is pretty historic, not just for waste pickers but for the representation of labor within a multilateral environmental agreement.”

Perhaps counterintuitively, those offering statements of support include the plastic companies and industry groups whose plastic trash gets cleaned up by waste pickers. In a document submitted to the U.N. Environment Programme before the treaty’s third negotiating session last year, the American Chemistry Council — the United States’ main petrochemical industry trade group — said the agreement should “uplift developing economies and the informal sector.” Likewise, the International Council of Chemical Associations and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers said in separate submissions that they also support the inclusion of the “informal sector” that waste pickers represent.

Consumer-facing food and beverage companies have made similar but more specific statements, sometimes elaborating on how the treaty should advance waste pickers’ interests. These include better labor protections and living wages, as well as formal integration into government waste collection schemes.

Waste pickers are also calling for a seat at the table as governments build out or redesign their waste-management systems. They fear that more formalized waste management could cut off their access to dumpsites and landfills and, thus, compensation.

In some ways, the recently heightened recognition represents a success for waste pickers, who, through the IAWP, have systematically sought to elevate their profile throughout the treaty negotiations. That transnational plastic manufacturers and product companies feel compelled to at least allude to them in policy documents could be construed as evidence of the IAWP’s growing power and influence.

Still, observers to the treaty negotiations are concerned that all of the talk won’t translate to action. “There is always the question: Is this strategic, or are we just giving them the opportunity to twist our demands?” said Andrea Lema, the global waste picker support coordinator for the nonprofit Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. She and others worry that the private sector is taking advantage of waste pickers, disingenuously expressing concern for them in order to appear more virtuous than they really are and boost their reputations in the minds of consumers.

Soledad Mella, president of Chile’s main waste picker collective, has attended all four of the plastic treaty negotiating sessions so far, and has experienced this tension firsthand. She said she’s wary of corporate greenwashing from companies for whom waste pickers have long provided a free cleanup service. But at the same time, these companies should be concerned about waste pickers, and some of them — mostly the consumer-facing brands that sell plastic products — have genuinely helped to amplify waste pickers’ demands through their own PR efforts and submissions to the U.N.

Coca-Cola, for example, has been listed as the number one plastic polluter for six years in a row, based on crowdsourced data from public litter cleanups. But Coke representatives have spoken alongside waste pickers at negotiating session side events, and together with Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Unilever, the company has launched an initiative to extend the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to the informal waste sector.

Whether such initiatives will translate to real change for waste pickers is an open question. But the IAWP considers it important to be in conversation with these companies, given the strong hand they could have in redesigning waste-management systems through extended producer responsibility laws known as EPR. These laws, broadly supported by treaty negotiators, seek to make companies financially responsible for the waste they produce. Under some scenarios, this could involve providing compensation and other support for waste pickers.

“Companies have a role to play using their leverage to ensure we are being compensated and included in EPR planning and implementation,” said Johnson Doe, founder of the Green Waste Pickers Cooperative in Ghana. His work involves going door-to-door throughout the capital city of Accra to pick up people’s recyclable waste. Others in his organization make daily trips to a landfill in Accra to scavenge, sort, and sell recyclable materials.

Involvement in new or improved EPR systems is part of Doe and the IAWP’s principal demand for a “just transition” for waste pickers, a deliberately broad term for policies that recognize and protect waste pickers’ rights as the waste-management sector develops. Crucially, this includes formally integrating waste pickers into government waste-management systems — officially hiring them to provide some of the waste collection services they have already been offering for years. Being on a city, county, or state payroll could deliver such benefits as job security, living wages, health care, and worker protections. 

Other just-transition policies might involve formalizing waste picker-led programs to repair broken products or deliver reusable containers to people’s homes, which have the added benefit of reducing the need for new plastic production.

Carsten Wachholz, of the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty — a consortium of more than 200 food and beverage companies, retailers, plastic producers, and other enterprises — said his organization began engaging with the IAWP at their request, and that the two groups agreed to consult each other when developing policy recommendations and position papers. He said he didn’t want to speculate on the intentions of individual companies to support waste pickers, or whether their treaty engagement will translate to tangible improvements for waste pickers. “This will very much depend on how countries will implement their obligations under a future treaty,” he told Grist, “and if dedicated support for ensuring a just transition can be mobilized.” 

Charlene Collison, secretariat of the Fair Circularity Initiative — the business and human rights endeavor that Coca-Cola helped launch — said she could not speak on behalf of individual companies but that the initiative’s members have broadly agreed to improve waste and recycling value chains “in robust consultation with stakeholders,” including waste pickers. Earlier this year, the organization published a report offering governments and companies a methodology for determining a baseline living income for waste pickers.

A Coca-Cola spokesperson did not directly respond to questions about greenwashing but pointed to its participation in the Fair Circularity Initiative, the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty, and the Responsible Sourcing Initiative, an effort to “improve livelihoods” of waste pickers through research and investment.

While Doe said that he and the IAWP are prepared to work with consumer goods companies and hold them accountable for the pledges they make, companies higher up the plastics value chain — the petrochemical producers and trade groups that say they want to “uplift” waste pickers — are another matter.

“They are a lost cause,” he told Grist, describing a fundamental mismatch between the industry’s objectives and those of waste pickers. For example, the petrochemical industry does not support limits on plastic production — in part, according to one waste picker Grist spoke with, out of an insincere concern that making less plastic would deprive waste pickers of their livelihoods. Waste pickers say they have plenty of plastic trash to collect already; even if they ran out, it would be easy to switch to other materials like aluminum cans or cardboard. 

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The petrochemical industry also opposes additional restrictions on hazardous chemicals used in plastics, an important priority for waste pickers since they are chronically exposed to these chemicals through their work.

Mella, the waste picker from Chile, said the idea that petrochemical companies support waste pickers is “laughable.” 

“It’s super nice and super interesting for them to say, ‘We the petrochemical industry are very concerned about what’s going to happen to waste pickers,’” she told Grist in Spanish. But those statements are “obsolete” when considered alongside the industry’s plans to dramatically ramp up plastic production and its promises to deal with the resulting waste through unproven technologies like so-called “chemical recycling,” a suite of technologies that the industry says can melt down plastics and turn them into new products in an endless loop. Investigations from Reuters, Beyond Plastics, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, and others have shown that, of the handful of chemical recycling facilities in the U.S., none operate at full capacity and most turn plastic into chemicals or fuel to be burned.

To Mella’s knowledge, no petrochemical industry group has reached out to the IAWP to develop policy positions that would benefit waste pickers. Mella said the industry’s discourse is mostly about boosting business. It “has nothing to do with waste pickers’ social, economic, and cultural reality,” she told Grist. “There is zero chance of us ever aligning our position with that of the petrochemical industry.”

In response to Grist’s request for comment, Matthew Kastner, a spokesperson for the International Council of Chemical Associations, or ICCA, said that his organization is advocating for measures that would support waste pickers, such as design principles to make plastics more easily recyclable, recycling targets that could drive up demand for waste pickers’ work, and chemical recycling — which he said could lead to more types of used plastic having greater value in the future.

“Altogether, there is a potential to increase the value and volume of plastics that waste pickers can profit from, and ICCA hopes to be able to collaborate with waste pickers in a responsible and mutually beneficial manner,” Kastner told Grist. He listed a handful of initiatives around the world where industry groups are engaging with local waste picker organizations, including one to integrate waste pickers into South Africa’s formal waste-management system and another to provide $230,000 to “boost recycling cooperatives and promote a humanized circular economy in Brazil.”

Plastics Europe, a trade group representing the continent’s petrochemical manufacturers, told Grist: “We indeed recognize this complex situation and urge continued discussion involving all relevant actors as the treaty process continues,” and declined to comment further. American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers did not respond to Grist’s requests for comment.

According to Lema, with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, one reason companies have been so quick to latch onto waste pickers is because they represent a more human side of the plastics issue. “When you’re talking about waste pickers, you’re talking about the lives of the people behind the treaty,” she said. 

To be sure, it’s not just the private sector that waste pickers have to worry about. Although the waste pickers and advocates Grist spoke with voiced concerns about industry invoking their name and demands, there have also been tensions with nongovernmental organizations. Mella said she’s seen “real alignment” with environmental groups, but only about half of them are incorporating the IAWP’s demands about a just transition for waste pickers into their policy positions. The rest are more single-mindedly focused on limiting global plastic production.

Cass Talbott, with the IAWP, said she’s most concerned with the positions of member states, since these are the stakeholders who will be directly responsible for determining what makes it into the final treaty text. She said she’d like to see greater specificity from any group that alludes to waste pickers as part of the treaty negotiations, and, where appropriate, for stakeholders to get in direct contact with the IAWP if they intend to invoke the rights and interests of waste pickers.

“We are willing to be at the table — we don’t want to be appropriated,” she told Grist. 

A 48-page policy document from the IAWP lists dozens of ways that waste pickers’ rights and interests have already been honored in jurisdictions around the world — for example, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where waste pickers’ role in waste management was recognized in the municipal constitution passed in the 1990s, and in Portland, Oregon, where an organization called Ground Source Association has secured contracts with city, county, and regional authorities to allow the formal employment of nearly 50 waste pickers.  

Enshrining similar victories at the global level will require more than just words of support. Cass Talbott said one of the IAWP’s main priorities at the next and final round of treaty negotiations this November will be to ensure that an article on a just transition makes it into the final draft.

“There’s been some greater will among governments to support the just-transition article and measures throughout the treaty,” she said, “and other stakeholders have to show up for it at this point.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Does the plastics industry support waste pickers? It’s complicated. on Jul 30, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

But researchers have found it is no better at controlling dust than rainwater. It can also contain toxic chemicals and have radioactive concentrations several hundred times the acceptable federal limit in drinking water. Given the risks it poses to human health and the environment, Pennsylvania lawmakers and the state’s environmental agency disallowed this practice more than seven years ago. 

But oil and gas companies have continued to spread their wastewater practically unchecked across the state, thanks to a loophole in state regulations. A Grist review of records from 2019 to 2023 found that oil and gas producers submitted more than 3,000 reports of wastewater dumping to the state Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP. In total, they reported spraying nearly 2.4 million gallons of wastewater on Pennsylvania roads. This number is likely a vast undercount: About 86 percent of Pennsylvania’s smaller oil and gas drillers did not report how they disposed of their waste in 2023. 

Wastewater dumping is an open secret on Pennsylvania roads. At a legislative hearing this spring, state senators Katie Muth and Carolyn Comitta, both Democrats, said they witnessed companies spreading wastewater last fall during a tour of new fracking wells. Lawson, who has become a public face of opposition to wastewater dumping, experiences sinus pains and believes her symptoms are connected to living near roads coated with wastewater. Sometimes the pain has been so intense she’s had to leave her home “to get different air.” She’s submitted multiple complaints to DEP over the years, but she says it has done little to drag the agency off the sidelines. 

“I am told [by DEP] to catch the truck,” Lawson said. “I’m told to be my own cop.” 

Neil Shader, a spokesperson for DEP, told Grist that the department “is committed to responding to all brine/roadspreading complaints that are received from the general public” and that it investigates all complaints. “If/when a responsible party is identified, appropriate enforcement action is taken,” he said. 

Lawmakers first banned the use of wastewater from fracking wells as a dust suppressant in 2016. Two years later, the DEP issued a moratorium on the use of wastewater from traditional drilling methods as well. But conventional oil and gas companies have found a loophole that allows them to skirt these rules with impunity. The DEP requires permits for wastewater disposal, but the agency grants an exception if the wastewater can be reused for a “beneficial” purpose. Any waste that is no more injurious to the environment and human health than a commercial alternative may be classified as a “coproduct,” a designation that receives less DEP oversight.

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Under Pennsylvania law, companies can grant their wastewater coproduct status by conducting in-house analyses to determine whether their waste is harmful to human health or the environment. These tests do not have to include a radiation analysis, even though studies have shown radium from oil and gas wastewater — which often contains 300 to 560 times the acceptable levels of radioactive substances in drinking water — has made its way into roadside vegetation, fresh water, and up the food chain. A company is only required to submit its justification for using the coproduct status if asked by the DEP to do so. 

The agency rarely asks. In 2021, the DEP requested justification for claiming coproduct status from 16 companies. Only 10 responded. The DEP told them that the materials they submitted were “inadequate.”

Any conventional driller who is audited and “roadspreads” in the absence of an approved coproduct determination from the DEP — and without updating or submitting a new coproduct determination — is technically violating the agency’s moratorium, putting them in murky legal territory. But without agency enforcement, these companies face no consequences.

“As far as I am aware, there have been zero notices of violations, compliance orders, fines, and penalties for anything dealing with rogue dumping of wastewater,” said David Hess, a former DEP secretary. “No one is enforcing the moratorium.” 

Shader, the DEP spokesperson, told Grist that the coproduct term will no longer appear in waste reports because oil and gas companies “have been using the product type incorrectly,” likely misunderstanding the term’s purpose. The agency “investigates reports of unauthorized roadspreading of brine and will take enforcement action as appropriate,” he said. “DEP encourages members of the public who observe potentially unauthorized roadspreading of brine to report the activity to DEP.”

The agency’s decision to drop the classification can largely be traced to the work of Karen Feridun. Feridun is the co-founder of the environmental organization Better Path Coalition, and in 2019 she noticed that the DEP had newly listed “coproduct” as a waste type in its oil and gas reports, implying to her that the agency had tacitly issued a blanket approval of wastewater dumping on roads. She then filed a public records request, which led the DEP to request a meeting with her. During the discussion, agency representatives told her that its oil and gas division had added the term to its waste reports after an “oral request” from Pennfield Energy LLC, a conventional driller in Pennsylvania. The agency told her it had no paper trail of the communication. 

Feridun was outraged. “I am convinced they knew exactly what drillers were going to do,” she said. To her, the agency had all but confirmed it had endorsed wastewater dumping.

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The DEP has denied Feridun’s interpretation of its decision. The agency was attempting to “readily identify” which companies had already conducted waste toxicity assessments as a precursor to dumping their wastewater, Shader said. “The addition of this product type code was in no way intended to imply that the requirements [for safety and efficacy] did not need to be satisfied.” 

The incident also appeared to indicate miscommunication within the agency. State waste codes are generated by the DEP’s Bureau of Waste Management, but oilfield oversight largely rests with the agency’s oil and gas division. Feridun wondered whether the oil and gas division had informed the waste management department of its decision to include a novel term in its records. Since the department told Feridun it had no paper trail, she said it could not give her an answer.

When asked whether the DEP’s oil and gas division communicated its waste report change to the bureau of waste management in 2019, Shader said that the divisions communicate “on a regular basis to discuss activities regulated by both programs.”

Lawson’s experiences, new research, and the findings from Feridun’s records request have thrust oil and gas companies’ behavior back into the state’s political spotlight. At a state senate hearing in April, Bill Burgos, a professor of environmental engineering at Pennsylvania State University, told lawmakers “there is no more research that needs to be done” to determine whether oil and gas wastewater is safe and effective for treating roads. Burgos has published several studies on oil and gas wastewater, including one recently that found the fluid is ineffective as a dust suppressant. 

In early May, Feridun and a group of other activists delivered a letter to Governor Josh Shapiro and members of the legislature asking them to ban companies from spraying roads with wastewater. Two lawmakers have since introduced dueling bills on the issue. Representative Martin Causer, a Republican serving a swath of northern Pennsylvania, proposed to legalize the practice while Representative Greg Vitali, a Democrat representing a region east of Philadelphia, moved to ban it.

Some of the public pressure appears to have paid off. In April, the DEP proposed amending coproduct criteria to mandate an assessment of a material’s efficacy, but it is unclear if this would include radiation testing, which would give the DEP — and the public — a fuller picture of oil and gas waste’s toxicity.

Earlier this month, the agency went a step further: At a legislative hearing in front of the state house’s Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, the DEP said it supported Vitali’s bill banning oil and gas companies from spreading their wastewater on roads and preventing the fluid from being treated as a coproduct by the department. The bill advanced out of the committee with support split along party lines, but it faces a steep climb to the governor’s desk, given that Republicans control the state senate. 

Until something changes, people like Lawson continue to live near roads doused with toxic wastewater. She said the dumping has been more frequent lately. If the DEP is going to more aggressively regulate oil and gas companies, it needs to be better funded, said Hess. 

“As long as [companies] can get away with it, they will,” he said. “That has been the history of their entire existence.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘Roadspreading’ returns: How Pennsylvania’s oil industry quietly dumped waste across the state on Jul 24, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jake Bolster.

For the moment, the specifics of this financing remain bound up in diplomatic haggling. Still, countries broadly agree that billions of dollars are a necessary, if modest, starting point; modeling studies have pegged the need anywhere between $3 trillion and $17 trillion. Disagreements center on how to raise it, who should administer it, and what to spend it on.

But these differences are unlikely to sink a treaty whose urgency has never been more apparent to national leaders. Each year some 20 million metric tons of plastic, roughly the mass of 200 aircraft carriers, enter the environment. Microscopic shreds of the stuff are increasingly found not just in nature’s remotest reaches, including Mount Everest and the Mariana Trench, but throughout the human body, with unknown consequences. And with production of this petrochemical-derived material set to skyrocket – possibly tripling by 2060 – plastic pollution and climate action are increasingly considered joined at the hip.

Whatever form the treaty takes, it’s likely to prioritize one popular line item: expanding waste management, like trash systems and recycling, in the Global South. A good place to start addressing the problem, the thinking goes, is to get it out of nature and into landfills and recycling plants. Worldwide, 2.7 billion people live without regular refuse collection. As garbage volumes surge across the developing world, growing quantities of degrading plastic litter filter into rivers, lakes, and oceans.

This has put the spotlight on waste management as a low-tech, politically palatable way to curtail plastic pollution. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, which represents 38 industrial countries, says a comprehensive package of measures – tackling plastic’s whole lifespan, from production to disposal – could eliminate 95 percent of the pollution by 2040. Such steps include taxing plastic, banning some single-use items, and redesigning goods so they don’t have to be thrown in the trash. But it also called a $2.1 trillion expansion of old-fashioned waste infrastructure, like landfills, recycling plants, and the logistics systems that supply them, a “crucial prerequisite.” To meet the goals, it estimated, the world must recycle about 40 percent of its plastic. Today it recycles about 9 percent.

A key target is Southeast Asia, where roughly a third of all marine plastic originates. There are several reasons for this. Rising living standards have boosted consumption of consumer goods, like soft drinks and takeout meals, packaged in single-use plastic. Europe, Japan and the USA continue to offload hundreds of millions of tons of plastic waste to the region each year, not all of it legally. With many population centers near coastlines and waterways, any mismanaged waste gets a free ride to the sea.

The governments of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have not invested nearly enough to fix this, mostly because they cannot afford to. Landfills, garbage trucks and recycling systems cost a lot, but aren’t very profitable. For cash-strapped governments facing multiple crises – pandemics, climate disasters, poverty – building even basic waste infrastructure can quickly fall by the wayside. Many of the 670 million people who live in the association’s member states have no one to take their trash.

“So what do you do when it’s not collected?”, said Umesh Madhavan, research director at The Circulate Initiative, a nonprofit focused on ocean plastic pollution and the circular economy. “You dump it or dig a pit and bury it. Or you try and burn it.”

That is a common outcome for much of the refuse in Southeast Asia, where by one estimate, only about a third of waste gets any form of management – like landfills, recycling plants or incinerators. The number is closer to 100 percent in the U.S. and other wealthy nations.

For that reason, research suggests, basic waste management can bring outsize benefits. Last year a study by data scientists at the University of California at Santa Barbara identified five relatively simple and straightforward actions that could go a long way towards eliminating 89 percent of mismanaged plastic globally; improving trash and recycling systems were among them. In the OECD’s most ambitious scenario – which envisions a 95 percent reduction in plastic leakage by 2040 – these types of measures deliver three-quarters of the drop.

“Downstream” solutions – that is, addressing plastic at the end of its life – will find supporters in Southeast Asia, where the governments of Malaysia and the Philippines have joined domestic petrochemical and manufacturing interests to promote “waste-to-energy” and “co-processing” plants as solutions to clear backlogged waste. These operations, which burn plastic to generate electricity or produce cement, are common in rich countries. But ASEAN environmentalists call them “false solutions” that release noxious and planet-warming pollutants while failing to tackle the root issues of the plastic crisis.

Some scientists and environmentalists in the developing world say a treaty centered on waste management is bound to fail. They say experience shows no number of landfills or recycling plants can contend with the volume of plastic they’re seeing. 

“Nobody is talking about the production side of things. We’re just talking about how we can deal with the waste,” said Hema Mahadevan, a public engagement campaigner for Greenpeace Malaysia. “If you really want to cut down on plastic waste, then you should really start from the top. Go to the source of the problem.”

Jorge Emmanuel, a Filipino chemical engineer and former technical advisor for the United Nations Development Programme, said the Philippines’ waste systems are broken in ways infrastructure can’t fix. A 2023 study found it has the world’s highest per-capita rate of plastic released to the ocean, at about 7 pounds a year. Emmanuel said the country has tough laws supporting recycling and prohibiting illegal dumps, but officials don’t enforce them. That’s why he and others are urging treaty writers to invert how they think about waste: Focus on reducing the amount of plastic in the system, with waste management as a last resort.

“I’m in public health, and we say prevention is better than cure,” he said. “If you put money into preventing the problem, you’ll spend less to take care of the problem afterwards.”

He and others with extensive first-hand experience with the region’s plastic pollution have a few suggestions for those crafting the treaty. The first is to direct money and supportive policies toward entrepreneurial solutions.

Southeast Asia, for instance, has in recent years seen a blossoming of projects and small-scale enterprises that hint at what a low-plastic economy might look like. On the Vietnamese resort island of Phu Quoc, a startup called Greenjoy has persuaded local businesses to replace 1 million plastic straws with those made of lepironia, a local grass.

An initiative in the Philippines has equipped 1200 sari-sari stores, the local equivalent of bodegas or corner stores, to dispense liquid detergent, dishwashing soap, and fabric conditioner in bulk to customers who bring their own containers. The products are made by local manufacturers rather than global corporations, and they’re cheaper. The project directors claim this has replaced thousands of thin plastic packages called sachets that are virtually impossible to recycle.

But such efforts have struggled to scale, often for lack of money. Businesses tackling plastic pollution often fall into a “missing middle” where they’re too big to receive microfinance, venture or philanthropic funding, but too risky for bank loans, said Madhavan. He and others said this financing gap could be plugged with funding from the plastic treaty, or by cash from corporations that need to comply with regulations.

New financing tools could help. In January the World Bank launched an experimental bond that will raise $14 million to help community-recycling projects in Indonesia and Ghana expand. The more plastic these projects collect, the more money the bond’s investors will make.

But novel financial methods can bring novel problems. The World Bank-funded projects will make money in part by selling plastic credits, a relatively young instrument of questioned effectiveness. They work something like carbon credits. A local project gathers plastic litter, disposes it properly, and a government, corporation, or other entity that wants credit for that cleanup pays the project for what it collected. Advocates say this can offer a quick injection of capital into developing countries with overwhelmed waste systems. Verra, the world’s biggest issuer of carbon credits, and companies like it are urging plastic-treaty negotiators to help this new tool scale up.

Environmentalists blast this idea, saying the credits are too easy to game for projects of dubious environmental value, like co-processing. Even if such credits incentivize local junk cleanups, they argue, they’re not enough to remake a system that pours so much plastic on developing countries in the first place.

A global plastic fund also could mobilize the world’s largest recycling workforce. Most of the world’s plastic recycling is not done by municipalities or corporations, but people who salvage things from the trash as a livelihood. There are some 20 million waste pickers in the world, mostly in the Global South; together their efforts account for 60 percent of the plastic recycled on earth.

Indumathi, a woman in Bengaluru, India, began waste picking about two decades ago after falling into medical debt. She started out going street to street, but as the years passed she wondered how to make this low-margin business safer and more profitable for herself. She saved enough money to open her own scrap shop. She helped convince the city to give waste pickers identification cards to avoid harassment by cops and passersby.

Today she leads a recycling business with 88 employees and 10 collection trucks. Her ardent advocacy has secured contracts from the local government to collect recyclables in several neighborhoods. She suggested money from the plastic treaty could provide workers with more protective equipment, better working conditions, and opportunities for career advancement like she had.

“What has happened to my life is just transition,” Indumathi said through a translator provided by Hasiru Dala, a social impact organization that advocates for waste pickers. “I want the same for all waste pickers everywhere.”

Finally, any funding effort could go into building the hidden infrastructure that makes treaties work. For example, Emmanuel said, many developing countries will not have the resources to write their own action plans on plastic – nationally defined strategies on how to tackle the problem, as with treaties on climate and biodiversity –  and should get funding and technical support for them.

Or if the treaty ends up requiring countries to ban plastics that contain chemicals linked to cancer, but doesn’t specify further, “developing countries would need technical and financial support to create or strengthen their scientific infrastructure to make determinations of what is cancer-causing,” Emmanuel said in an email. That could come as equipment or training for Philippine scientists, for example.

Money doesn’t buy everything, of course. Erin Simon, vice president and head of plastic waste and business at the World Wildlife Fund, said plastic-reduction pilots around the world have fizzled out because there was no policy to support them. She wants to see a treaty that includes a range of pro-transition measures – like banning some single-use plastics and making corporations financially responsible for the fate of their packaging — that will give innovators more of a fighting chance.

“You have tons of levers, but the challenge lies in pulling all the levers together,” she said. “Therein lies the hope of the treaty.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline One way a plastics treaty could help the Global South: Fund waste management. on Jul 19, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Saqib Rahim.

Papua New Guinea will face a grim reality of a ban on its shipping of oil and hydrocarbons in international waters if it continues to ignore the implementation of a domestic waste oil policy that is 28 years overdue.

The Conservation and Environment Protection Authority’s Director for Renewable Brendan Trawen made this stark revelation in response to queries posed by Post-Courier Online.

In the backdrop of investment projects proposed in the resource space, the issue of waste oil and its disposal has incurred hefty fines and reputational damage to the nation, and could seriously impact the shipments of one of the country’s lucrative exports in oil and LNG.

• READ MORE: Waste oil – a timebomb for Papua New Guinea – Matthew Vari

“International partners are most protective of their waterways. Therefore, PNG has already been issued with a warning on implementation of a ban of oil and hydrocarbon shipments, including LNG from PNG through Indonesian water,” he said.

In addition, the issuing of a complete ban on all hydrocarbon exports from Singapore through Indonesian waters to PNG.

“In light of growing international concern about the need for stringent control of transboundary movement of hazardous waste oil, and of the need as far as possible to reduce such movement to a minimum, and the concern about the problem of illegal transboundary traffic in hazardous wastes oil, CEPA is compelled to take immediate steps in accordance with Article 10 of the Basel Convention Framework,” Trawen said.

He indicated CEPA had limited capabilities of PNG State through to manage hazardous wastes and other wastes.

Safeguarding PNG’s international standing
The government of PNG had been “rightfully seeking cooperation with Singaporean authorities since 2020” to safeguard PNG’s international standing with the aim to improve and achieve environmentally sound management of hazardous waste oil.

“Through the NEC Decision No. 12/2021, respective authorities from PNG and Singapore deliberated and facilitated the alternative arrangement to reach an agreement with Hachiko Efficiency Services (HES) towards the establishment of a transit and treatment centre in PNG.

“In due process, HES have the required permits to allow transit of the waste oils in Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea for recycling.”

Minister of Environment, Conservation and Climate Change Simon Kilepa acknowledged that major repercussions were expected to take effect with the potential implementation ban of all hydrocarbons and oil shipments through Indonesian waters.

Political, economic and security risks emerged without doubt owing to GoPNG through CEPA’s negligence in the past resolving Basel Convention’s outstanding matters.

“It is in fact that the framework and policy for the Waste Oil Project exists under the International Basel Convention inclusive of the approved methods of handling and shipping waste oils. What PNG has been lacking is the regulation and this program provides that through,” he said.

“CEPA will progress its waste oil programme by engaging Hachiko Efficiency Services to develop and manage the domestic transit facility.

“This will include the export of waste oil operating under the Basel and Waigani agreements dependent upon the final destination.”

CEPA will proceed with the Hazardous Waste Oil Management Programme immediately to comply with the long outstanding implementation of the Basel Convention requirements on the management of Hazardous waste oil.

A media announcement and publicity would be made with issuance of Express of Interest (EOI) to shippers and local waste companies

A presentation would be made to NEC Cabinet and a NEC decision before the sitting of Parliament.

Matthew Vari is a senior journalist and former editor of the PNG Post-Courier. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

In March 2022, the United Nations’ 193 member states got together in Nairobi, Kenya, and agreed to do something about it. They pledged to negotiate a treaty to “end plastic pollution,” with the goal of delivering a final draft by 2025. The most ambitious vision espoused by member states in the negotiating sessions that have taken place so far would require petrochemical companies to stop making so much of the darn stuff by putting a cap on global plastic production.

Given the existential threat this would pose to fossil fuel and chemical companies, you might expect them to be vociferously opposed to the treaty. Yet they claim to support the agreement. They’re even “championing” it, according to statements from a handful of industry groups. The American Chemistry Council has repeatedly “welcome[d]” progress on the treaty negotiations, while an executive from the International Council of Chemical Associations told Plastics Today in April that the industry is “fully committed” to supporting an agreement.

So what exactly do plastic-producing companies want from the treaty? To answer this question, Grist sifted through dozens of public statements and policy documents from five of the world’s largest petrochemical industry trade organizations, as well as two product-specific industry groups. These documents included press releases reacting to treaty negotiating sessions and longer position statements detailing the industry’s desired pathway to a “world without waste.” 

Much of what these groups have published is vague — many documents call for “targets,” for example, without saying what they should be. Grist reached out to all of the groups for clarification, but only two agreed to answer questions about the policies they support.

What we found is that, although they fall far short of what so-called “high-ambition” countries and advocacy groups would like to get out of the treaty, industry groups’ proposals to bolster recycling and waste collection could cause a significant reduction in mismanaged plastic waste — even in the absence of a cap on plastic production. According to a policy analysis tool developed by researchers at the University of California, the elements of the treaty that industry groups support, cobbled together, could cut global plastic pollution by 43 million metric tons annually by 2050 — a 36 percent reduction below business-as-usual estimates.

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Meanwhile, a realistic production cap could cut annual pollution by 48 million metric tons all by itself. Excluding a production cap from the treaty will make it much harder to rein in plastic pollution, said Douglas McCauley, an associate professor of biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the creators of the policy tool. “It means you really have to ramp up your ambition on what some of the other policies would need to do,” he told Grist.

These numbers matter, because the plastic industry’s influence over the treaty negotiations seems to be growing stronger. At the most recent round of talks — held in Ottawa, Canada, at the end of April — nearly 200 petrochemical and fossil fuel lobbyists registered to attend. That’s 37 more than were registered for the previous session, and more than the number of representatives from European Union member states. 

At the same time, several delegations promoted solutions on the industry’s terms. Malaysia warned about the unintended economic consequences of limiting plastic production, and India said the treaty should focus on pollution while considering plastics’ utility to modern society. Given the power of the plastics industry and the tendency of international negotiations to cater to the lowest common denominator, it’s possible that the treaty will strongly reflect these industry priorities.

How the industry sees the problem

To understand the industry position on the plastics treaty, it’s important to understand how plastic makers conceptualize the plastics crisis. While they agree that pollution is a scourge, they don’t think the solution is to reduce society’s production and use of plastic. After all, plastics come with myriad benefits. They’re inexpensive, lightweight, and widely used in important sectors like clean energy and medicine — their “unmatched properties and versatility have allowed for incredible innovations that conserve resources and make more things in life possible,” as the Plastics Industry Association has put it. America’s Plastic Makers, an arm of the American Chemistry Council, says policymakers should ensure that the material stays “in our economy and out of our environment.”

The way to do this, according to industry groups, is through “plastics circularity,” a concept that seeks to keep the material in use for as long as possible before it’s thrown away. Generally, this means more recycling. But circularity can also refer to scaled-up systems allowing plastic to be reused, or better infrastructure for waste collection. As plastic makers see it, the plastic treaty’s function should be to increase circularity while retaining the social and economic benefits derived from plastic products. 

Perhaps the biggest problem faced by circularity proponents is plastic’s abysmal recycling rate. At present, the world only recycles about 9 percent of all plastic it produces; the rest gets sent to landfills or incinerators, or winds up as litter. What’s more, in most cases the material can only be reprocessed once or twice — if at all — before it has to be “downcycled” into lower-quality products like carpeting. Although some experts believe it’s impossible to recycle much more plastic due to technological and economic constraints, plastic makers say otherwise. Indeed, plastics circularity hinges on the possibility of a better recycling rate.

The industry’s first solution: Recycling targets

To that end, several industry groups — including the World Plastics Council, the self-described “global voice of the plastics industry” — are advocating for “mandatory minimum recycling rates” as part of the treaty, as well as higher targets for recycled content used in new products.

This could mean that countries, regions, or other jurisdictions would set legally binding quotas for the amount of plastic recycled within their borders and then converted into new items. Plastic makers typically favor targets that are set at the local or national level and that differentiate based on the type of plastic, since some types are harder to recycle than others.

Industry groups also want recycling targets to be “technology-neutral,” meaning they should count plastics processed through controversial “chemical recycling” techniques. Although these techniques do not yet work at scale, the industry says they will one day be able to break down mixed post-consumer plastic into their constituent polymers using high heat and pressure, and then turn those polymers back into new plastic products. Environmental experts oppose chemical recycling, pointing to evidence that it is primarily used to burn plastics or turn them into fuel.

The two policies — on plastics recycling and recycled content — could be mutually reinforcing, with the latter creating a more reliable market for the recycled material generated by the former. Ross Eisenberg, president of America’s Plastic Makers, told Grist via email that recycling and recycled content targets would “create demand signals and provide added certainty for companies to make additional investments for a circular economy, so more plastic products are reused or remade into new plastic products.”

According to Plastics Europe, the continent’s main plastic trade group, boosting the recycling rate would decrease countries’ dependence on fossil fuels used to make virgin plastics.

Plastics Europe and the World Plastics Council declined to be interviewed for this article. They did not respond to questions about their support for specific recycling and recycled content targets, although Plastics Europe has voiced support for “mandatory data and reporting objectives for all stages of the life cycle of the plastics system.” For the U.S., America’s Plastic Makers supports a 30 percent recycled content requirement in plastic packaging by 2030, and for 100 percent of plastic packaging to be “reused, recycled, or recovered by 2040.”

The industry’s second solution: Infrastructure and design changes

Additional policies supported by industry groups could indirectly facilitate an increase in the plastics recycling rate by raising money for recycling infrastructure. These policies typically involve systems for “extended producer responsibility,” or EPR, requiring companies that make and sell plastics to help pay for the collection and recycling of the waste they generate, as well as the cleanup of existing plastic pollution. Every industry group Grist reached out to says it supports EPR as a part of the treaty, although some specifically note in their policy documents that such policies should be adopted at the local or national level, rather than globally. Some groups, including the American Chemistry Council and Global Partners for Plastics Circularity — an umbrella group supported by a dozen plastics associations and companies — also call more vaguely for additional financing through “public-private partnerships and blended finance.”

For plastic packaging — which accounts for about 36 percent of global plastic production — a European industry consortium called the Circular Economy for Flexible Packaging supports “mandatory legislation on product design” to make products easier to recycle. It doesn’t back any specific design elements, but points to ideas laid out by the Consumer Goods Forum, an industry-led network of consumer product retailers and manufacturers. These ideas include using clear instead of colored plastics, limiting the use of unnecessary plastic wrap, and ensuring that any adhesives or inks applied to plastic packaging don’t render it nonrecyclable. Plastics Europe additionally supports technical and design standards for biodegradable and compostable plastics intended to replace those made from fossil fuels.

Many groups also say they support targets for “pellet containment,” referring to the tiny plastic pieces that are melted down and shaped into larger items. These pellets are notorious for spilling out of manufacturing facilities or off of cargo ships and into waterways; in Europe, 20 truckloads of them escape into the environment every day. Several trade groups say in their public statements that they support an industry-led program called Operation Clean Sweep to help companies achieve “zero resin loss” by “fostering a venue for precompetitive collaboration and peer-learning opportunities.” 

However, Operation Clean Sweep has been around since 1991 and has not yet achieved its goal; some policymakers have recently called for stricter regulations on plastic pellet loss.

The industry’s third solution: Application-based regulations

In addition to capping plastic production, many countries’ delegates — along with scientists and environmental groups — would like the treaty to ban or restrict some of the most problematic plastic polymers, as well as certain chemicals used in plastics. They call these “chemicals and polymers of concern,” meaning those least likely to be recycled, or most likely to damage people’s health and the environment. Potential candidates include polyvinyl chloride, widely used in water pipes, upholstery, toys, and other applications; expanded polystyrene, or EPS, the foamy plastic that’s often used in takeout food containers; and endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as phthalates, bisphenols, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

The general idea of identifying problematic chemicals and polymers in the plastics treaty is very popular; observers of the negotiations say it’s been one of the areas of greatest convergence among delegates. Industry groups are also supportive — but only of a very specific approach. According to the World Plastics Council, the treaty shouldn’t include “arbitrary bans or restrictions on substances or materials,” but rather regulations based on the “essential use and societal value” of particular types of plastic.

For instance, polystyrene used in packing peanuts and takeout containers is virtually never recycled and might be a good candidate for restriction. But the Global Expanded Polystyrene Sustainability Alliance — a trade group for EPS makers — points to evidence that, in Europe and Japan, the material can be recycled at least 30 percent of the time when it’s in a different format — namely, insulation for products like coolers, as well as big pieces used to protect fragile shipments.

In a press release, the group said this distinction in polystyrene formatting demonstrates the need to assess plastics’ “individual material applications and uses independently.”

“We’ve got five major types” of polystyrene, said Betsy Bowers, executive director of the Expanded Polystyrene Industry Alliance, a trade group representing the U.S. EPS market. “Some of them can be recycled, and some of them can’t.”

Plastics Europe has said an application-based approach could also consider plastic products on the basis of “leakage,” how easily the products become litter; the feasibility of redesigning them; or “effects on human or animal health.” That said, the organization does not support restricting plastic-related chemicals as part of the treaty, beyond what is already spelled out in existing international agreements like the Stockholm Convention. The International Council of Chemical Associations, whose members include individual chemical manufacturers and regional trade groups, does not support any chemical regulation as part of the treaty. 

In an email to Grist, the American Chemistry Council said it supports a “decision-tree approach” to prevent specific plastic products from leaking into the environment. The organization said in a letter sent to President Joe Biden last May that it opposes “restrictions of trade in chemicals or polymers” because they would “make U.S. manufacturers less competitive and/or jeopardize the many benefits plastics provide to the economy and the environment.”

The International Council of Chemical Associations, the Plastics Industry Association, and the Circular Economy for Flexible Packaging initiative did not respond to Grist’s request to be interviewed for this story, or to questions about the policies they support.

The impact of the plastic industry’s favorite policies

While it’s clear that self-preservation is at the heart of the petrochemical industry’s agenda for the plastics treaty, the policies it supports could have a positive impact on plastic pollution. According to the policy analysis tool created by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Santa Barbara, a suite of ambitious policies to hit recycling and recycled content rates of 20 percent, reuse 60 percent of plastic packaging (where applicable), and dedicate $35 billion to plastics recycling and waste infrastructure could prevent 43 million metric tons of plastic pollution annually by midcentury. Most of this reduction would come from the infrastructure funding.

McCauley, one of the creators of the tool, said these policies are certainly better than nothing. They can bring the world “closer to a future without plastic pollution,” he told Grist, although he emphasized that recycling is not a silver bullet. 

The policy tool takes for granted that higher recycling and recycled content rates are achievable, but this might not be the case. Bjorn Beeler, executive director and international coordinator for the nonprofit International Pollutants Elimination Network, said a 20 percent recycling rate would be “nearly impossible” to reach, given the relatively low cost of virgin plastic and the petrochemical industry’s projected expansion over the coming decades. Jan Dell, an independent chemical engineer and founder of the nonprofit The Last Beach Cleanup, estimated the maximum possible recycled content rate for consumer product packaging would be about 5 percent, due to insurmountable technological constraints related to plastics’ toxicity.

Experts tend to favor plastic production caps as a much faster, reliable, and more straightforward way to reduce plastic pollution than relying on recycling. According to McCauley’s policy tool, capping plastic production at the level reached in 2019 would prevent 48 million metric tons of annual plastic pollution by 2050 — even in the absence of any efforts to boost recycling or fund waste management. “It’s possible to be effective without the cap,” said Sam Pottinger, a senior research data scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a contributor to the policy tool. “But it requires a huge amount of effort elsewhere.”

There’s no reason the plastics treaty couldn’t incorporate a production cap in addition to the industry’s preferred recycling interventions. Some experts say this would form the most effective agreement; according to the policy tool, a production cap at 2019 levels plus the suite of recycling targets and funding for waste infrastructure could prevent nearly 78 million metric tons of annual plastic pollution by 2050. Bumping up the funding for recycling and waste infrastructure to an aggressive $200 billion, in combination with the production cap and other policies, would avert nearly 109 million metric tons of pollution each year.

“We need to use all of the tools in our toolbox,” said Zoie Diana, a postdoctoral plastics researcher at the University of Toronto who was not involved in creating the policy tool. She too emphasized, however, that governments should prioritize reducing plastic production.

What the industry doesn’t like to talk about

The case for a production cap goes beyond plastic litter concerns. It would also address the inequitable impact of toxic pollution from plastic manufacturing facilities, as well as the industry’s contribution to climate change. In April, a study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that plastic production already accounts for 5 percent of global climate pollution, and that by 2050 — given the petrochemical industry’s plans to dramatically ramp up plastic production — it could eat up one-fifth of the world’s remaining carbon budget, the amount of emissions the world can release while still limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). To achieve international climate goals, some environmental groups have estimated that the world must reduce plastic production by 12 to 17 percent every year starting in 2024.

“Whether the treaty includes plastic production cuts is not just a policy debate,” said Jorge Emmanuel, an adjunct professor at Silliman University in the Philippines, in a statement describing the mountains of plastic trash that are harming Filipino communities. “It’s a matter of survival.”

Petrochemical companies, for their part, do not deeply engage with these arguments — at least not in their public policy documents. They claim that plastics actually help mitigate climate change, since the lightweight material takes less fuel to transport than alternatives made of metal and glass. And industry groups’ public statements mostly do not address environmental justice concerns related to plastic use, production, and disposal, except to vaguely say that the treaty shouldn’t harm waste pickers — the millions of workers, most of them in the developing world, who make a living collecting plastic trash and selling it to recyclers. 

The fifth and final round of negotiations for the plastics treaty is scheduled to take place in Busan, South Korea, this November. Although many observers, including a group of U.S. Congressional representatives and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, have called for conflict-of-interest policies to limit trade groups’ influence over the talks, these requests face long odds. The dozens of countries advocating for production limits may have to defend their proposals against an even larger industry presence than they did at the last session in Ottawa.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How to create a ‘world without waste’? Here are the plastic industry’s ideas. on Jul 2, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

Photo by Ben Ostrower

Time to tip one to a rare victory in the never-ending battle to achieve an actual clean up, not a cover up, of Butte’s toxic mining wastes since it was listed as a Superfund site more than 40 years ago.  

Thanks to the ferocious efforts of a very determined band of citizens who want their inalienable right to a “clean and healthy environment” guaranteed by the Montana Constitution, the “good guys” defeated a “waste in place” plan to use soil contaminated with toxics as infill. 

For far too long it’s been the citizens versus ARCO-BP, one of the wealthiest corporations on the planet, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which has all too often has sided with the polluter, not the people.  

To make matters worse, the citizens have had to fight closed meetings where backroom deals were signed between the EPA and ARCO-BP, the state, and local government officials who willingly ignored Montana’s constitutional mandate that citizens have access to all public meetings unless individual privacy takes precedent over the public’s “right to know.”  And rest assured, when it comes to toxic wastes, there are very few instances concerning individual privacy on Superfund sites.

In this particular case, ARCO-BP, with the EPA’s blessing, had determined it could use soil contaminated with cadmium, lead and arsenic as infill material along the Silver Bow Creek corridor.  The Butte watchdogs, led by Evan Barrett, former legislator Fritz Daily, and many others, said “no way” to using what they called “dirty dirt” and fought to remove the toxics from the creek corridor and backfill it with clean material. 

As Barrett put it, “It looks like the ‘dirty dirt train’ has been derailed,” adding: “It’s a validation for public involvement.  But it’s been a real battle. They were playing hardball.”

Indeed, the EPA and ARCO-BP have been playing “hardball” for the same reason industry polluters always do — it costs less to leave the waste in place rather than moving it to a repository actually designed to hold such toxics and monitored to ensure they don’t leak. 

In this case, ARCO-BP tried to justify their plan by claiming leaving the contaminated materials in place would produce less truck traffic from both hauling the waste away and bringing in clean soil for infill.  Given Butte has been stuck with Superfund remediation impacts for more than four decades, the concern about the number of trucks was a laughable excuse, at best.

While this is one small victory for the people of Butte, it gives hope to other Montana communities now facing similar Superfund issues of “waste in place” instead of an actual clean up.  Most prominent is the EPA’s proposal to leave highly toxic wastes from the defunct Columbia Falls aluminum smelter in place rather than excavating and removing them to a facility permitted to receive such high-level toxics.

Mind you, there are a couple hundred acres of buried wastes at the Columbia Falls site and, wouldn’t you just know it, sitting in the flood plain of the Flathead River.  Considering the 1.2 million cubic yards of those wastes contain fluoride, cyanide and toxic metals, there’s every reason the citizens and local government officials of Columbia Falls aren’t going for it.  Peter Metcalf, a Columbia Falls resident and board member of the Coalition for a Clean CFAC echoed the battle cry of Butte’s citizens, accurately noting: “We have one chance to get this right for the community.”  And when it comes to Superfund sites, whatever they get right or wrong the first time around is what the populace gets to live with far into the future.  

So here’s to Butte’s citizens for fighting — and winning — and blazing a trail for Columbia Falls citizens in their battle for a clean up, not a cover up.   

As Barrett put it: “We want it all clean.  You need to do the right thing and we are not going to give up until it’s done.”  

That’s exactly what our constitution guarantees — and Montanans have no reason to settle for anything less.

The post Down With Dirty Dirt and ‘Waste in Place’ in Butte appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

North Koreans are used to donating human waste for agricultural purposes, but usually this is done in the winter ahead of planting season. Recently, a summer collection was announced as one of the policies under leader Kim Jong Un’s new agriculture-first initiative.

Residents are complaining that this time they are being asked to dry feces in their yards in the summer heat, when smells travel more easily and flies and maggots are attracted.

As in the past, those who can afford it can pay their way out of it can avoid doing their duty. This time it will cost 5,000 won or about 30 US cents, a resident of the northern province of Ryanggang told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“Today, the neighborhood-watch unit held a residents’ meeting and issued an order from the party to dry human waste and donate it for collection,” he said. “Residents could not hide their bewilderment at the party’s order to dry human waste … in the hot weather.”

He said that they were told to deliver the 10 kilograms of dry dung to a nearby fertilizer factory where they would receive a certificate as proof of their contribution. 

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“Residents expressed their dissatisfaction, saying that this was the first time they had been ordered to dry human waste in the summer when flies were flying around,” he said. 

“At least the households in single family homes can scoop up and dry the waste with some privacy,” he said. “But households living in apartments protested, asking how they are supposed to accomplish this.”

Another Ryanggang resident likened the order to an unofficial tax, because most households would rather pay the 5,000 won than go through the smelly ordeal of drying their own excrement.

“The party is always saying that we live happily under a tax-free socialist system, but the party’s orders are always a tax, 100%,” she said. “Every time the party gives us instructions it’s all about collecting payment.”

Translated by Claire S. Lee Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kim Jieun for RFA Korean.

Onkalo — the name means “cavity” or “cave” in Finnish — is among the most advanced facilities of its kind, designed for an unprecedented and urgent task: safely storing some of the most toxic material on Earth nearly 1,500 feet underground in what’s called a deep mined geologic repository.

The process requires remarkable feats of engineering. It begins in an encapsulation plant, where robots remove spent nuclear fuel rods from storage canisters and place them in copper and cast iron casks up to two stories tall. Once full, these hefty vessels, weighing around 24 metric tons, will descend more than a quarter-mile in an elevator to a cavern hollowed out of crystalline bedrock 2 billion years old. (The trip takes 50 minutes.) Each tomb will hold 30 to 40 of these enormous containers ensconced in bentonite clay and sealed behind concrete. As many as 3,250 canisters containing 6,500 metric tons of humanity’s most dangerous refuse will, the theory goes, lie undisturbed for hundreds of thousands of years.

Nothing assembled by human hands has stood for more than a fraction of that. The world’s oldest known structure, Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, is a bit more than 11,000 years old. Designing Onkalo to endure for so unfathomably long is necessary because the material left behind by nuclear fission remains radioactive for millennia. Safely disposing of it requires stashing it for, essentially, eternity. That way nothing — be it natural disasters, future ice ages, or even the end of humanity itself — would expose anyone, or anything, to its dangers.

“The plan is that there will be no sign [of the facility],” said Pasi Tuohimaa, communications manager for Posiva, the agency that manages Finland’s nuclear waste. “Nobody would even know it’s there, whether we’re talking about future generations or future aliens or whatever.”

Building such a place, as technologically complex as it is, might be easier than convincing a community to host it. Gaining that approval can take decades and rests upon a simple premise.

“One of the principles of geologic disposal is the idea that the generations that enjoy the benefits of nuclear power should also pay for and participate in the solution,” said Rodney Ewing, a mineralogist and materials scientist at Stanford University and co-director of the university’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

The long process of gaining such support is called consent-based siting, an undertaking many in the nuclear energy sector consider vital as the world abandons fossil fuels. Nuclear power accounts for almost a fifth of the United States’ electricity generation, and its expansion is among the few elements of the Biden administration’s energy agenda that enjoys strong bipartisan support. Over the last year, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has touted the nation’s newest reactor, celebrated plans for an experimental small modular reactor, and unveiled a $1.5 billion loan to restart a defunct plant in Michigan. 

These are hardly one-offs. The U.S. intends to triple its nuclear energy capacity by 2050. Yet experts say there isn’t enough public discussion of how to deal with the corresponding increase in radioactive trash, which will compound a problem the country has deferred since the start of the nuclear age. After botching plans for a deep mined geological repository a generation ago, the United States is scrambling to catch up to Finland and several other nations, including Canada, which could choose a site by year’s end.

As the U.S. races toward a post-carbon future in which nuclear energy could play a key role, policymakers, energy experts, and community leaders say dealing with the inevitable waste isn’t a technical problem, but a social one. Engineers know how to build a repository capable of safeguarding the public for millennia. The bigger challenge is convincing people that it’s safe to live next to it.

The United States knew, even before the world’s first commercial nuclear power plant began operating in Pennsylvania in 1957, how best to dispose of the effluvium generated by splitting atoms to generate electricity. Earlier that year, geologists and geophysicists wrote a National Academy of Sciences report that proposed burying it. Opinions haven’t changed much in the 67 years since. 

“The only viable way to possibly deal with the issue of isolating radioactive waste that can remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years from the environment is a deep geologic repository,” said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “There’s really no alternative.”

Yet this refuse, most of it from the nation’s 54 commercial reactors, remains in what amounts to cold storage. Depleted fuel rods are kept on-site in water tanks for about half a decade, then moved to steel and concrete canisters called dry casks and held for another 40 years in what’s known as interim storage. Only then is the material cool enough to stash underground. That last step has never happened, however. The nation’s 85 interim storage sites hold more than 86,000 tons of waste, a situation that’s akin to leaving your trash behind the garage indefinitely. The situation could grow more dire as the nation invests in advanced small modular reactors. 

“It’s a pet peeve of mine, to be honest,” said Paul Murray, who became the Department of Energy’s deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition in October. “Everybody talks about the shiny new reactors, but nobody ever talks about back-end management of the fuel that comes out of them.”

Congress attempted to rectify that in 1982 when it passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. President Ronald Reagan called the law “an important step in the pursuit of the peaceful uses of atomic energy.” It required that the federal government begin taking responsibility for the nation’s nuclear waste by 1998, and that the utilities generating it pay a fee of one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour of nuclear-generated electricity to be rid of it. The plan stalled because the government never took possession of most of the waste. That failure has allowed the utilities to collect $500 million in fines from Washington each year since 1998. A report that the Government Accountability Office released in 2021 noted that federal liabilities could reach $60 billion by 2030. 

The federal government’s missteps continued when plans for a deep geologic repository derailed about 15 years ago. The 1982 law directed the Department of Energy to provide the president, Congress, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency with suggestions for several sites. Congress amended the law in 1987 to designate one: Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas on land the Western Shoshone Nation considers sacred.

This top-down process was the antithesis of consent-based siting, and it collapsed amid community opposition and the efforts of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The Nevada Democrat convinced President Obama to scuttle the proposal, which by that point had cost $13 billion. The Obama administration convened a panel of scientists to devise a new plan; in 2012, it suggested creating an independent agency, giving it responsibility for the nuclear fund and directing it to revamp the effort through consent-based siting.

That recommendation mimicked what Finland had done, and Canada was doing, to build community consensus. Posiva spent four decades working toward the facility on Olkiluoto; the Canadian search started 24 years ago with the creation of the independent Nuclear Waste Management Organization. Yet more than 10 years after the Department of Energy made consent-based siting its official policy, there’s been little progress toward a deep mined geologic repository in the U.S. for commercial nuclear waste. (Radioactive refuse generated by the defense industry has, since 1999, been secured 2,150 feet underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.)

Instead of identifying possible sites for a deep geologic repository, the Energy Department directed Murray, who has a background in nuclear technology and environmental stewardship, to address a backlog of waste that could, by his estimate, take 55 years to clear out of interim storage. Much of this trash is languishing in dry casks that dot power plants in 37 states. Last year, he formed a 12-member Consent-Based Siting Consortia to start the search for a federally-managed site that would temporarily consolidate the nation’s waste until a permanent site is built.

He could start by looking at existing energy communities with coal-fired power plants that have been decommissioned or soon will be, according to Kara Colton. She leads the Energy Communities Alliance, a coalition of local governments that is part of the consortia and is distributing $1 million in federal grants to three communities interested in hosting a nuclear waste storage facility. (Additional grants will be available this summer.) But she worries that, without a concerted, long-term effort by the government to find a permanent repository, no one will commit to participating.

“This is a multi-generational project and we have a political system that changes all the time,” she said. “Without assured funding, we’re checking every year to see if the progress that’s made will change.” 

But Murray’s quest to consolidate temporary waste storage may be moot. Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the Department of Energy lacks the authority to designate an interim storage site unless that facility is tied to a plan to establish a deep mined geologic repository. That makes Murray’s efforts “pretty meaningless,” Lyman said.

Murray concedes that his mission faces challenges. “Without a robust repository program, it’s very difficult to site interim storage,” he said. “We have to, as a nation, start a repository program, otherwise people think they’ll become the de facto disposal facility.”

Gaining consensus for a permanent storage site, then building it, could take 50 years, he said. In the meantime, the nation’s utilities continue to pile up 2,000 metric tons of nuclear waste each year. 

If 50 years sounds preposterous, consider that Finland began its search for a repository site in 1983. Within a decade, the government had considered four locations in a process that weighed community opinions alongside geological and environmental criteria like bedrock density, groundwater movement, and potential changes in the movement and formation of the glaciers above due to climate change. 

Eurajoki, a rural village of just over 9,000 people, provided the greatest social support and the best geographical factors. When the town council voted to approve the site in 2000, its members, and many residents, seemed predisposed to the idea because Olkilouto, which is 8 miles away, already hosted two reactors. (A third, Olkiluoto 3, opened in April 2023; the three plants provide about one-third of the country’s electricity.)

Still, Posiva, the independent agency charged with establishing a deep geologic repository, engaged in a long-term campaign to foster community support and trust, teaching residents about nuclear energy and waste storage to alleviate their concerns. Tuohimma, Posiva’s communications manager, called it a “long road show” with origins in the company’s efforts to sell the technology in the 1970s. Although the Finnish Green Party and Greenpeace expressed concerns about the project — stemming from the building of new nuclear plants and not disposal of the waste — opposition has since eased. Construction of the 1 billion euro facility started in 2000; Posiva estimates that over the next century, running, filling, and eventually sealing the site will cost 5.5 billion euros. How long that takes will depend upon the rate at which the country generates radioactive waste.

Eurajoki Mayor Vesa Lakaniemi told German news site DW that hosting all that nuclear infrastructure generates about 20 million euros in taxes each year. That’s almost half the town’s annual revenue and is “how we can plan our future investments,” including a renovated school, a new library, and an 8 million euro sports facility. Lakaniemi believes residents ultimately supported the project because of Posiva’s safety record, and because Finns tend to trust their government and its institutions.

Canada’s efforts have not gone so smoothly.

The country’s hunt for a site began in 2002 when parliament passed the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act. The law established the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, or NWMO, which unveiled a nine-step plan in 2010 that would lead, within a decade or so, to an agreement to host a repository. Within two years, 21 communities had expressed interest in doing just that. 

The agency spent the past dozen years winnowing the list to the two most geologically and socially appropriate sites. To do that, it began by ensuring each candidate had a suitable site — one large enough for the required infrastructure, yet far enough from drinking water supplies and protected lands like national parks. Communities also had to outline the material benefits they would receive from the employment opportunities and industrial development the project would foster.

Over time, the screening process cut the list of potential sites to two. The first is South Bruce, a small farming community roughly 100 miles west of Toronto and about 35 miles from the country’s largest nuclear power plant. The other is Ignace, a rural town about 150 miles northwest of Lake Superior. 

The First Nations communities in those locations — the Saugeen Ojibway Nation near South Bruce and the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation near Ignace — also must provide consent, but that process is separate, and generally less publicized, from those taking place in the townships.

The site near Ignace sits on what is roughly equivalent to federal land, which makes acquisition easier than in South Bruce, where the Nuclear Waste Management Organization had to sign agreements with property holders to eventually purchase their land for the 1,500-acre project, should it go through. That meant selling the idea not only to the community, but to individual landowners. The agency gained support by spending liberally to help the town with everything from new fire trucks to a scholarship fund to paying some municipal salaries. All told, it has given the town more than $9.3 million since 2013. (Ignace has received almost $14 million since 2018.)

Still, the idea of hosting a repository has divided the 6,000 or so residents in South Bruce, who were once united by their participation in church groups and youth sports. Supporters say they trust the science showing that repository technology is safe, and they point to the benefits it’s already brought. But critics worry about the impact of all that radioactive material on the town now and decades into the future, and they worry the potential economic and environmental costs haven’t been adequately studied. They also feel the NWMO is less interested in considering their perspectives and answering their questions than in selling the repository through fiscal promises.

Carolyn Fell, the agency’s communications manager in South Bruce, said residents can find her in the office five days a week, where she is happy to answer questions. “We have heard concerns from the community, and at every turn we do our best to answer in a very up-front and transparent way,” she said.

Michelle Stein isn’t so sure about that. She and her husband Gary raise cattle and sheep on a farm they bought in South Bruce 30 years ago. They also raise three children there, with dreams of them taking over. But after NWMO started signing agreements with adjacent landowners for what would become 1,500 acres back in 2019, Stein’s kids moved away. Now, she worries her land could soon be worthless and her livelihood gone.

“In my opinion, they should at least pay us what they paid people who sold at the beginning of the project,” Stein said. She also fears the impact the facility might have on groundwater, and whether anyone would buy beef and lamb grown alongside a nuclear site. She feels some of her neighbors, and the town council, have been bought off by NWMO’s investments in the community.

“They say they won’t come into a non-willing community,” Stein said, “but they’re certainly pushing us to be willing.”

Stein joined more than a dozen others in organizing Protect Our Waterways to oppose the project. The group’s volunteer chair, Anja Vandervlies, worries the buffer zone, which prohibits living or farming within a certain distance of the facility, might end up including some or all of her farm. She and Stein have testified before the town council, written op-eds for the local paper, and erected bright yellow, handmade billboards reading, “Say No to NWMO” and “Stop Canada’s Nuke Dump!” But they have felt crowded out by what they considered aggressive marketing by the agency. In 2022, their field of candidates for town council fared poorly in the election; Mayor Mark Goetz said he and the body’s five elected members now publicly support the waste facility. 

Goetz succeeded his father, who was mayor in 2012 when South Bruce told the Nuclear Waste Management Organization it was interested in hosting the repository. Goetz said his father was interested in the economic development the project would bring to a community heavily dependent on agriculture. He rejects claims that the town council has not sought community input, noting that it has held hundreds of events over the past 12 years. He’s also grateful for the financial support the NWMO has provided thus far. More than that, however, he believes someone has to host the site, so why not South Bruce?

“We’ve benefited from cheap nuclear power, and I don’t think we should leave this waste to sit for future generations to deal with,” Goetz said. 

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Voters will decide the matter in a referendum in October. More than 50 percent of voters must cast ballots for it to count, which, to Goetz’s mind, makes the council’s position largely moot.

“The beauty of the referendum is that everyone gets an equal vote,” he said. “It’s a democracy, and it’ll be majority rule, so it doesn’t really matter which way the council decides.” 

But if the referendum brings out less than 50 percent of voters, the decision falls back to the town council.

A win in South Bruce won’t necessarily be enough, though, because the Saugeen Ojibway Nation also must endorse the idea. Even then, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization will make the final decision later this year, and it also has an eye on the location near Ignace.

That option, called the Revell site, sits about midway between Ignace and the larger town of Dryden. Vince Ponka, the agency’s regional communications manager for northern Ontario, described it as an egg-shaped formation of granite several miles long and deep within the Canadian Shield, a vast igneous and metamorphic formation that rings Hudson Bay. 

“It’s an ideal piece of rock to hold the [deep mined geologic repository],” he said. Although the facility would be beyond the city limits, Ignace would host the “Center of Expertise,” an office and educational complex meant to teach people about the repository. He called it a “real architectural gem” that could boost economic development. 

Jodie Defeo, a registered nurse and an Ignace town council member, said she was indifferent when she learned about the possibility of a repository 14 years ago, but any skepticism was allayed last summer during a trip to Olkiluoto that the Nuclear Waste Management Organization funded. 

“There was no sense of caution or anything, it appeared like there was no cause for concern” among the people of Eurajoki, she said. She saw the improvements the tax revenue made in the local schools and infrastructure, and she returned home a booster. She believes a similar facility could bring good fortune to Ignace, which fell upon hard times when the mining industry began to dwindle a few decades ago. 

“There are no pots of money for aging infrastructure,” she said. Few jobs, a tanking housing market, and a dwindling population result in a tiny tax base. While her 17-year-old son is interested in staying in Ignace, her 27-year-old son moved to Thunder Bay, a city of roughly 110,000 almost three hours south on the shore of Lake Superior. For Defeo, the possibility of hosting a repository brings with it a sense of hope.

“I feel like we could be on the cusp of a change,” she said.

Wendy O’Connor doesn’t share her optimism. She’s the communications officer for Thunder Bay and volunteers with the opposition group We the Nuclear Free North. She said that although Ignace raised its hand to host the repository, all the waste will pass through her city. The trucks carrying it will trundle about 1,000 miles along the Trans Canada Highway, a largely two-lane road that hugs the coast of Lake Huron and the cliffs of Lake Superior. She’s worried about the risk of accidents on the highway or at the site.

Of course, there is always the risk that radioactive material will leak while in transit or short-term storage, something that has happened in Germany and New Mexico over the past two decades — though with no known health impacts. 

“We can say with confidence, accidents are not only possible but they occur,” said Ewing, the Stanford University professor. But, he added, they are studied and mistakes remedied. 

Although scientists express confidence in the engineering of repositories, it is almost inevitable that, over millennia, some of the canisters within them will corrode, some of the barriers sealing their tombs will erode, and some of the waste will leak. Theoretically, it is safer that it happens deep within the Earth, where it poses a far smaller threat. As the 2018 Stanford report that Ewing helped produce notes, “‘safe’ doesn’t mean zero health risks for hundreds of thousands of years, but a health risk that is low enough to be acceptable to today’s population and future generations.”

Given the risks, however small, of hosting the nation’s nuclear waste, some wonder if consent-based siting is little more than a form of flattery, a way of paying a community to take on a task no one else wants to do. 

“A cynic would say that what it really means is that every community has its price,” said Lyman. “The question is how much compensation is enough, and is the level of compensation that will be enough something that the industry and the government can afford. These are all unanswered questions.” 

But as the efforts in Finland and Canada show, at least the approach provides a community with a say in its future — something the U.S. government denied the people of Nevada when it chose Yucca Mountain all those years ago. The collapse of that effort shows the limitations of a top-down approach, and the nation’s growing stockpile of nuclear waste underscores the urgent need to address a problem too long ignored. As Lyman noted, the country needs to push forward. It must be mindful of intergenerational equity by making the best choice it can to protect those who will be here hundreds, even thousands, of years from now, using the best science and technology available today. And that, in the eyes of many experts in the field, means developing deep mined geologic repositories.

“Any strategy to increase nuclear power that doesn’t include a strategy to handle the waste should not be pursued,” Ewing said.

Of course, nuclear energy is not the only path leading the world away from fossil fuels, and there are legitimate safety concerns and other reasons to question its place in a post-carbon future. But as long as the United States and other governments consider expanding its use, they will have to figure out what to do with the inevitable waste it generates, and do so with the support of the communities that will bear that burden. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How do you convince someone to live next to a nuclear waste site? on Jun 27, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Austyn Gaffney.

But they’re not doing enough.

According to a new analysis published Wednesday by the shareholder advocacy nonprofit As You Sow, dozens of the world’s largest companies are falling short on both ambition and action to ensure plastic packaging doesn’t end up in landfills or littering the environment. Too few companies have quantitative sustainability targets for plastic, the report says, and those that do are either setting the bar too low or are failing to make significant progress — or both.

“Every company can be doing more,” said Kelly McBee, circular economy manager at As You Sow and one of the report’s co-authors. In particular, she said corporations should place more emphasis on reducing the plastic they use, rather than replacing virgin plastic with recycled content. 

For its report, As You Sow looked at annual reports, sustainability reports, filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other publicly available resources from 225 of the world’s most valuable companies across five sectors: apparel, food and beverage, household products, quick-service restaurants, and retail. The nonprofit evaluated these corporations on six criteria related to advancing a “circular economy for plastic packaging,” referring to a system that keeps plastic in use for as long as possible before it has to be thrown away. 

These criteria included the recyclability of companies’ plastic packaging, whether that packaging is made from recycled material, and how much of it is reusable. The report also considered companies’ efforts to reduce plastic use and support extended producer responsibility, or EPR, policies that would make them financially responsible for managing their plastic packaging after it’s sold to consumers.

Each company got scores for overall ambition and overall action, which, combined, contributed to a letter grade. Measurable steps were weighted more heavily than targets “to elevate the importance of action over words,” as McBee put it.

No company got an A, and only nine got a B. Half got an F, and almost every industry was characterized by “unambitious to modest goals” with “slow progress” toward achieving them. The industries with the highest average scores were cosmetics, household products, alcoholic beverages, and consumer electronics. Those at the bottom were hospitality, chemicals, and motor vehicles.

It’s not the first time As You Sow has brought scrutiny upon companies that contribute to the plastics crisis. Previous reports in 2020 and 2021 ranked a smaller cohort of companies on their commitments to sustainable packaging and found similar shortcomings on reuse, data transparency, and financial contributions to waste management infrastructure.

In its most recent report, As You Sow also found that few companies had a quantitative, time-bound target for switching to reusable packaging, although many had pilot programs. And of the 147 companies with a package recyclability goal, only 15 percent were on track to meet it.

These findings line up with what some other groups have found about the gap between companies’ plastic promises and their actions. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for a circular economy, reported last year that corporations that had signed on to its “global commitment” to advance plastics circularity had collectively made no progress to reduce virgin plastic use since 2018. 

Other analyses have suggested that most large companies are off course to meet self-imposed targets for plastics recycling by 2025.

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.

Of all the ways companies can make their plastic pledges more credible, McBee says her top recommendation is that they think beyond goals to reduce just their virgin plastic use, referring to plastics that are made directly from fossil fuels. Companies with such a goal tend to replace their virgin plastic with recycled material — a swap that may increase circularity, but does not address what As You Sow calls “a key driver of pollution”: the overuse of plastic.

Instead, As You Sow calls for companies to decrease their “plastic use intensity,” or the amount of plastic used for each dollar of revenue. This might be accomplished by redesigning packaging to have less surface area or thinner plastic layers, or by eliminating unnecessary types of plastic packaging.

Notably, reducing plastic use intensity is not the same as reducing net plastic use. If a company produces a lot more of a given product, its overall use of plastic packaging could grow even if it’s making less plastic per dollar earned. This is essentially what has happened with Coca-Cola, which said in its most recent sustainability report that it had “avoided half a million metric tons of virgin plastic” in 2022 but increased its total virgin plastic use due to “growth of plastic packaging.”

McBee said absolute reduction targets would be ideal, but that intensity targets can give more flexibility to growing businesses. This is a position that is perhaps informed by As You Sow’s status as both a shareholder and an advocate. The organization buys shares in major companies and uses them as leverage, either to negotiate directly with executives or to file resolutions on environmental practices. As an advocacy group, As You Sow wants companies to adopt the most robust environmental policies; as a shareholder, McBee said As You Sow is “financially invested in the success of these companies.”

Valliant, with Beyond Plastics, pushed back on the idea of plastic intensity targets and called for “a solution that doesn’t bring more plastic into our lives and the planet and our bodies.”

“At the end of the day,” she told Grist, “we need less plastic overall.”

Either way, both McBee and Valliant agreed that companies should be investing more in reusable packaging and packaging-free product formats — for example, concentrated soap tablets that don’t need to come in a plastic bottle. Valliant said the need to prioritize reusable over recycled packaging is especially urgent given research suggesting that recycling plastic increases its toxicity.  

As You Sow’s other recommendations for companies include eliminating toxic chemicals from plastic products, phasing out or dramatically reducing the use of flexible and multilaminate plastic packaging (like the plastic used in bags of potato chips), and making financial contributions to recycling infrastructure that are commensurate with the amount of plastic packaging they produce. To incentivize some of these measures, the report suggests that companies align CEO compensation with key benchmarks for circularity. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, some companies like Mars and Coca-Cola are beginning to do this.

If the environmental costs of inaction on plastics aren’t persuasive enough, then perhaps the legal, regulatory, and reputational ones are. By failing to act more aggressively, companies may be exposing themselves to investigations and lawsuits from state attorneys general and to increasingly common bans and restrictions on whole categories of plastic. Plus, there’s the United Nations’ global plastics treaty, which environmental advocates are hoping will place a cap on the amount of plastic the world produces annually.

Stronger action on plastics can also appease consumers. According to McBee, customers are increasingly connecting the “ambiguous” issue of plastic pollution back to individual companies that are responsible for it. “They’re going out of their way to support the companies that are making a difference,” she said, “and facilitating the creation of the world they want to live in.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A new report looks at major companies’ efforts to address plastic waste — and finds them lacking on Jun 12, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

The Singapore cargo ship Dali chartered by Maersk, which collapsed the Baltimore bridge in the United States last month, was carrying 764 tonnes of hazardous materials to Sri Lanka, reports Colombo’s Daily Mirror.

The materials were mostly corrosives, flammables, miscellaneous hazardous materials, and Class-9 hazardous materials — including explosives and lithium-ion batteries — in 56 containers.

According to the Mirror, the US National Transportation Safety Board was still “analysing the ship’s manifest to determine what was onboard” in its other 4644 containers when the ship collided with Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, collapsing it, on March 26.

• READ MORE: Baltimore Key Bridge collapse investigation begins

The e-Con e-News (ee) news agency reports that prior to Baltimore, the Dali had called at New York and Norfolk, Virginia, which has the world’s largest naval base.

Colombo was to be its next scheduled call, going around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, taking 27 days.

According to ee, Denmark’s Maersk, transporter for the US Department of War, is integral to US military logistics, carrying up to 20 percent of the world’s merchandise trade annually on a fleet of about 600 vessels, including some of the world’s largest ships.

The US Department of Homeland Security has also now deemed the waters near the crash site as “unsafe for divers”.

13 damaged containers
An “unclassified memo” from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said a US Coast Guard team was examining 13 damaged containers, “some with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] and/or hazardous materials [HAZMAT] contents.

The team was also analysing the ship’s manifest to determine if any materials could “pose a health risk”.

CISA officials are also monitoring about 6.8 million litres of fuel inside the Dali for its “spill potential”.

Where exactly the toxic materials and fuel were destined for in Sri Lanka was not being reported.

Also, it is a rather long way for such Hazmat, let alone fuel, to be exported, “at least given all the media blather about ‘carbon footprint’, ‘green sustainability’ and so on”, said the Daily Mirror.

“We can expect only squeaky silence from the usual eco-freaks, who are heavily funded by the US and EU,” the newspaper commented.

“It also adds to the intrigue of how Sri Lanka was so easily blocked in 2022 from receiving more neighbourly fuel, which led to the present ‘regime change’ machinations.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

One year since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese went to San Diego to unveil the AUKUS deal the news came that the first of three second-hand Virginia class nuclear-powered submarines supposed to arrive in 2032 may not happen.

Former coalition prime minister Scott Morrison announced AUKUS in September 2021 and Albanese continued to champion the pact between the US, Britain and Australia.

Phase one involves Australia acquiring eight nuclear-powered submarines as tensions in the Indo-Pacific are growing.

• READ MORE: Other AUKUS reports

Concerns about the submarines ever materialising are not new, despite the US passing its National Defence Bill 2024 which facilitates the transfer of the nuclear-powered warships.

However, the Pentagon’s 2025 fiscal year budget only set aside funding to build one Virginia submarine. This affects the AUKUS deal as the US had promised to lift production from around 1.3 submarines a year to 2.3 to meet all requirements.

Australia’s acquisition of the first of three second-hand SSNs were to bridge the submarine gap, as talk about a US-led war on China continues.

US Democratic congressperson Joe Courtney told The Sydney Morning Herald on March 12 the US was struggling with its own shipbuilding capacity, meaning promises to Australia were being deprioritised.

Production downturn
Courtney said that the downturn in production “will remove one more attack submarine from a fleet that is already 17 submarines below the navy’s long-stated requirement of 66”.

The US needs to produce 18 more submarines by 2032 to be able to pass one on to Australia.

After passing laws permitting the transfer of nuclear technology, the deal is running a year at least behind schedule.

Greens Senator David Shoebridge said on X that “When the US passed the law to set up AUKUS they put in kill switches, one of which allowed the US to decide not [to] transfer the submarines if doing so would ‘degrade the US undersea capabilities’”.

Pat Conroy, Labor’s Defence Industry Minister, retorted that the government was confident the submarines would appear.

The White House seems unfazed; it would have been aware of the problems for some time.

Meanwhile the USS Annapolis, a US nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) has docked in Boorloo/Perth.

AUKUS still under way
Regardless of whether Australia acquires any nuclear-powered vessels, the rest of the AUKUS deal, including interoperability with the US, is already underway.

Andrew Hastie, Liberal Party spokesperson, confirmed that construction at HMAS Stirling will start next year for “Submarine Rotational Force-West (SRF-West)”, the permanent US-British nuclear-powered submarine base in WA, which is due to be completed in 2027.

SRF-West includes 700 US army personnel and their families being stationed in WA. If the second-hand nuclear submarines do not materialise, the US submarines will be on hand.

SRF-West may also serve as an alternative to the five British-designed AUKUS SSNs, slated to be built in Kaurna Yerta/Adelaide over coming decades.

Australia respects the Pentagon’s warhead ambiguity policy, meaning that any US military equipment stationed here could be carrying nuclear weapons: we will never know.

Shoebridge said on March 13 he was entering a hearing to decide where the AUKUS powers can dump their nuclear waste. Local waste dumps are being considered, as the US and Britain do not have permanent radioactive waste dumps.

The waste to be dumped is said to have a low-level radioactivity. However, as former Senator Rex Patrick pointed out, SSNs produce high-level radioactive waste at the end of their shelf lives that will need to be stored somewhere, underground, forever.

‘Radioactive waste management’
The Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023, tabled last November, allows for the AUKUS SSNs to be constructed and also provides for “a radioactive waste management facility”.

The Australian public is spending US$3 billion on helping the US submarine industrial base expand capacity. An initial US$2 billion will be spent next year, followed by $100 million annually from 2026 through to 2033.

The Pentagon has budgeted US$4 billion for its submarine industry next year, with an extra US$11 billion over the following five years.

The removal of the Virginia subs, and even the AUKUS submarines from the agreement, would be in keeping with the terms of the 2014 Force Posture Agreement, signed off by then prime minister Tony Abbott.

As part of the Barack Obama administration’s 2011 “pivot to Asia”, the US-Australia Force Posture Agreement allows for 2500 Marines to be stationed in the Northern Territory.

It sets up increasing interoperability between both countries’ air forces and allows the US unimpeded access to dozens of “agreed-to facilities and areas”.

These agreed bases remain classified.

US takes full control
However, as the recent US overhaul of RAAF Base Tindall in the NT reveals, when the US decides to do that it takes full control.

Tindall has been upgraded to allow for six US B-52 bombers that may be carrying nuclear warheads.

US laws that facilitate the transfer of Virginia-class submarines also make clear that as Australia is now classified as a US domestic military source this allows the US privileged access to critical minerals, such as lithium.

Paul Gregoire writes for Sydney Criminal Lawyers where a version of this article was first published. The article has also been published at Green Left magazine and is republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The spotlight

If you’ve read any climate-related news in the past several years, you’re probably familiar with the scourge of microplastics. These tiny bits of plastic end up clogging oceans. They show up at alarming rates in bottled water, food, clouds — and in the human body. A study published just last month in the journal Toxicological Sciences tested 62 placentas, and found microplastics, in varying concentrations, in every single one. While their long-term impacts on human health are still largely unknown, another study published earlier this month linked microplastics in arteries with increased risk of heart attacks and stroke.

A lot of attention has focused on phasing out single-use plastics, which create visible plastic pollution and release microplastics when they break down. But there’s growing recognition that plastics, and microplastics, are hidden in a staggering number of products we depend on — including, notably, our clothing.

The bits of plastic shed from synthetic textiles have their own term: microfibers. Scraps of polyester, nylon, elastane, and other synthetic fabrics slough off of our clothes in the course of wearing, storing, and washing them. Laundry alone may account for about a third of the microplastics released into the ocean each year — and some innovations and regulations have emerged to reduce the transfer of microplastics from our washing machines to our water systems. But another set of innovators are imagining something bigger: what our clothes could be made of instead.

The problem, of course, is that plastics are so darn functional. Synthetic fibers are typically cheaper to produce than organic materials, and they also offer performance benefits, like stretchiness and weatherproofing.

“The age of plastic began because it mimicked other things, and the functionality was so good that it became its own thing,” fashion designer Uyen Tran told Grist, when we interviewed her for our 2023 Grist 50 list. In 2020, Tran founded a company called TômTex to create bio-based materials that can replace synthetic fabrics as well as leather and suede. She believes that a wave of new materials is ready to outcompete plastic-based textiles. “I think biomaterial is on the edge of becoming its own thing as well. Just give us a few more years, and you will see.”

In this newsletter, we’re rounding up a handful of the materials — from apple waste to artificial spider silk — that are already on the market, offering a glimpse of a plastic-free future for our textiles.

Shrimp shells: TômTex’s bio fabrics are made out of the waste from mushrooms and shrimp shells. The company sources the latter partially from the shrimp industry in Tran’s native Vietnam, which creates hundreds of tons of shell waste annually. And, Tran noted in her Grist 50 profile, she eventually hopes to build a network of regional production facilities all over the world, sourcing materials from waste streams in different regions. The company debuted its fully biodegradable shell-based fabric at New York Fashion Week in 2022, in a collaboration with designer Peter Do. Its mushroom-based fabric was seen on runways in both London and Paris Fashion Weeks in 2023. Read more

Apple mush: Another example of a company harnessing waste streams as raw materials for textiles is Allégorie, a New York-based accessory company making bags and wallets out of apple pomace — the mush left behind from juicing — as well as cactus, mangos, and pineapple leaves. Co-founder Heather Jiang told Marie Claire that some of the products even retain a pleasant, fruity scent.

Allégorie’s fruit-based products are meant to offer a better vegan leather, as the majority of faux leather products currently on the market are made of plastics like polyurethane and vinyl. The company also sees reducing food waste as part of its mission. Read more

Old cotton: A perhaps less surprising waste stream is used clothing itself. Early last year, a Swedish company called Renewcell opened the world’s first commercial-scale textile-recycling facility, the BBC reports. The company shreds old cotton clothing (with up to 5 percent non-cotton content), like shirts and jeans, and then chemically processes them to separate the fibers, which results in a simple organic compound called cellulose. This can then be spun into new viscose fabric.

The big sell here is reducing textile waste; more than 100 billion clothing items are produced each year, and only 1 percent end up getting cycled into new garments. But the company is using that existing stock instead of plastic to make new clothes — and clothes that in turn won’t create more microplastics. The mill has contracts with a number of suppliers, including Swedish fashion giant H&M. Read more

Enhanced cotton: A company called Natural Fiber Welding is working on enhancing natural materials like cotton to confer some of the same benefits that synthetic fabrics offer. Wired reports on how the process, known as (you guessed it!) “fiber welding,” uses liquid salts to partially break down the fibers and then fuse them together, creating longer and stronger threads that can mimic some of the coveted characteristics of synthetics, like strength and durability, especially relevant for athletic and outdoor apparel. The company announced a partnership with Patagonia in 2021. Read more

Lab-grown spider silk: A Japanese company called Spiber is pioneering what it calls “brewed protein” fibers — a way to produce desirable natural substances in a lab. As The Japan Times reports, it began in 2007 with efforts to engineer spider silk, which has long been admired for its strength, durability, and lightness. (Hence the name, which combines “spider” and “fiber.”) The company’s first product, made from a silk protein synthesized by bacteria enhanced with a snippet of spider DNA, was used in 2015 by The North Face, in a prototype coat called the Moon Parka.

But the company encountered a challenge in trying to create a product that wouldn’t shrink when wet, as spiderwebs do. Today, taking lessons from its initial engineering process, Spiber produces a brewed protein material that does not replicate any specific natural substance. The novel material is now being used by sportswear company Goldwin (the distributor for The North Face in Japan), which hopes to have 10 percent of its new products use brewed protein by 2030. Read more

— Claire Elise Thompson

More exposure

• Read: more about microfibers, and some of the technological and regulatory solutions that could stop them escaping from laundry machines into waterways (Grist)
• Read: an article about “instant fashion” and its heavy dependence on polyester (Harvard Business Review)
• Read: about a mountain of clothing waste that was burned in Chile’s Atacama Desert in 2022 — essentially an oil fire (Grist)
• Read: more about the growth of biomaterials, in clothing and other industries (Dezeen)

A parting shot

Another increasingly common bio-based textile is lyocell. The semi-synthetic fiber, also sometimes known by the brand name Tencel, is famous for its softness and its relative sustainability. It’s made by chemically dissolving wood pulp (usually fast-growing eucalyptus), pushing the mixture through a shower-head-like device called a spinneret, and then spinning the fibers into a yarn. In this photo from The Fashion Awards 2023 in London, Nicole Scherzinger (of Pussycat Dolls fame) wears a custom Tencel gown by Patrick McDowell, a luxury designer who only uses sustainable and recycled fabrics.

IMAGE CREDITS

Vision: Grist

Parting shot: Samir Hussein / Getty Images

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Apple waste, spider silk, enhanced cotton: How bio-based textiles could replace plastic in our clothing on Mar 13, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Claire Elise Thompson.

Tibon had never seen the man before. But she recognized the name as her great-grandfatherʻs. At the time, he was living on Rongelap in the Marshall Islands when the U.S. conducted Castle Bravo, the largest of 67 nuclear weapon tests there during the Cold War. The tests displaced and sickened Indigenous people, poisoned fish, upended traditional food practices, and wrought cancers and other negative health repercussions that continue to reverberate today. 

A federal report by the Government Accountability Office published last month examines what’s left of that nuclear contamination, not only in the Pacific but also in Greenland and Spain. The authors conclude that climate change could disturb nuclear waste left in Greenland and the Marshall Islands. “Rising sea levels could spread contamination in RMI, and conflicting risk assessments cause residents to distrust radiological information from the U.S. Department of Energy,” the report says. 

In Greenland, chemical pollution and radioactive liquid are frozen in ice sheets, left over from a nuclear power plant on a U.S. military research base where scientists studied the potential to install nuclear missiles. The report didn’t specify how or where nuclear contamination could migrate in the Pacific or Greenland, or what if any health risks that might pose to people living nearby. However, the authors did note that in Greenland, frozen waste could be exposed by 2100. 

“The possibility to influence the environment is there, which could further affect the food chain and further affect the people living in the area as well,” said Hjalmar Dahl, president of Inuit Circumpolar Council Greenland. The country is about 90 percent Inuit. “I think it is important that the Greenland and U.S. governments have to communicate on this worrying issue and prepare what to do about it.”

The authors of the GAO study wrote that Greenland and Denmark haven’t proposed any cleanup plans, but also cited studies that say much of the nuclear waste has already decayed and will be diluted by melting ice. However, those studies do note that chemical waste such as polychlorinated biphenyls, man-made chemicals better known as PCBs that are carcinogenic, “may be the most consequential waste at Camp Century.”

The report summarizes disagreements between Marshall Islands officials and the U.S. Department of Energy regarding the risks posed by U.S. nuclear waste. The GAO recommends that the agency adopt a communications strategy for conveying information about the potential for pollution to the Marshallese people.

Nathan Anderson, a director at the Government Accountability Office, said that the United States’ responsibilities in the Marshall Islands “are defined by specific federal statutes and international agreements.” He noted that the government of the Marshall Islands previously agreed to settle claims related to damages from U.S. nuclear testing. 

“It is the long-standing position of the U.S. government that, pursuant to that agreement, the Republic of the Marshall Islands bears full responsibility for its lands, including those used for the nuclear testing program.”

To Tibon, who is back home in the Marshall Islands and is currently chair of the National Nuclear Commission, the fact that the report’s only recommendation is a new communications strategy is mystifying. She’s not sure how that would help the Marshallese people. 

“What we need now is action and implementation on environmental remediation. We don’t need a communication strategy,” she said. “If they know that it’s contaminated, why wasn’t the recommendation for next steps on environmental remediation, or what’s possible to return these lands to safe and habitable conditions for these communities?” 

The Biden administration recently agreed to fund a new museum to commemorate those affected by nuclear testing as well as climate change initiatives in the Marshall Islands, but the initiatives have repeatedly failed to garner support from Congress, even though they’re part of an ongoing treaty with the Marshall Islands and a broader national security effort to shore up goodwill in the Pacific to counter China. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Decades after the US buried nuclear waste abroad, climate change could unearth it on Feb 26, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Anita Hofschneider.

But a new startup called Capture6 claims it can solve desalination’s controversial brine problem with another controversial climate technology: carbon capture. The company announced new plans this week to build a carbon capture facility in South Korea that will work in tandem with a nearby desalination plant, sucking carbon dioxide out of the air and storing it in desalination brine, which it will import from the plant. But that’s not all. Capture6 also claims it can wring new fresh water out of the brine, bolstering the company’s sustainability claims — and its potential profit — even further.

If it works, this facility will deliver a triple benefit. It will decrease the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, create a new source of freshwater, and limit the polluting effects of desalination. But that’s still a very big “if.”

So-called “direct air capture” facilities use a chemical reaction to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and fuse it with another substance, preventing it from leaking into the atmosphere. The greenhouse gas can then be stored in solid compounds like limestone or in chemical solutions — or, previous studies have shown, in salty brine. Capture6’s innovation is to source that brine from wastewater treatment plants and desalination plants, which have every reason to want to dispose of it in a way that does not open them to charges of pollution.

The newly announced venture in South Korea, known as Project Octopus, takes the process one step further. The facility will be located at the Daesan Industrial Complex, an oil and gas industrial park in a region of the country that has suffered from water shortages due to an ongoing drought. The Korean state water utility, K-water, is building a seawater desalination plant at the industrial park to provide water to the oil and gas plants, which use thousands of gallons of water to cool down their machinery as it operates.

The Capture6 facility will use the brine created by K-water’s desalination plant to capture carbon dioxide, and it will also use the modified brine to extract even more fresh water that the oil and gas plants can then use in lieu of pumping from less sustainable sources. Carbon6 also says that the solvent produced by its direct air capture operations can then be used for additional point-source carbon capture at the nearby oil and gas plants, providing a double emissions benefit before the company buries all the carbon deep underwater. In other words, Capture6 will use the byproduct of water production to create even more water, and it will use the byproduct of capturing carbon to capture more carbon.

“It’s an interesting example of solvent-based direct air capture, but what is innovative here is the pairing of direct air capture with the brine from desalination,” said Daniel Pike, the head of the carbon capture team at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonpartisan climate think tank. “Essentially what’s going on is the company is saying, ‘hey, where do we get the chemicals for our solvents? We’ll get them from desalination plants.’”

(Capture6 received funding from Third Derivative, a carbon capture accelerator launched by Rocky Mountain Institute, but Pike himself doesn’t have a financial relationship with the company.)

The company, which has received early funding from several venture capital funds as well as the states of California and New York, announced its first facility last year in Southern California. That facility, known as Project Monarch, will store carbon dioxide in wastewater from a water treatment plant in the city of Palmdale, then sell fresh water back to the city’s water system. 

“What we are trying to do is really to decarbonize the water sector,” said Leo Park, the vice president for strategic development at Capture6. “So we’re trying to integrate our facilities into the easiest thing, which is wastewater and desalination plants.”

The company’s initial pilot facility in Korea will operate on a small scale. The test project will capture 1,000 tons of carbon per year. That’s equivalent to the annual emissions of around 220 passenger cars, and about as much as is being captured at a much-lauded direct air capture facility that began operations in Tracy, California, last year. The company’s carbon capture process will yield around 14 million gallons of fresh water, enough to supply around 80 homes. 

But when K-water’s desalination plant gets running at full capacity, Capture6 says it will be able to capture almost 500,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year by 2026. That’s many times more storage than other direct air capture facilities have achieved so far. The large-scale plant will also produce around 5 billion gallons of fresh water each year, half as much as the Daesan desalination plant itself and enough to supply around 30,000 homes.

Pike says that the company’s growth goal is extremely ambitious, and it’s unclear whether the facility will have a net negative impact on emissions, given that desalination and direct air capture both require a lot of energy. In the case of Project Octopus, that energy will initially come from Korea’s power grid, which relies heavily on fossil fuels.

“Even assuming you have the solvent, you have an intense energy need just to power a direct air capture process, and a big challenge we have in direct air capture is how to improve energy efficiency,” he said. “Then what they’re doing is they’re also running a very energy-intensive process for deriving the solvent, moving a lot of water around. It’s a lot of energy, a lot of water. That big picture is the challenge here.”

If Capture6 can prove that its facilities store more carbon than they emit, the company won’t have any trouble monetizing its technology. The oil and gas companies in Daesan will buy its produced water for their cooling needs, and K-water will rely on the company to minimize the environmental harms of desalination, which generated backlash when the plant was first announced.

“There were a lot of local concerns about brine discharge, because [locals] were worried that it was going to impact the marine ecosystem and fishing activities,” said Park. “Our solution can help minimize brine discharge, so there’s an additional environmental benefit we can generate. This is one of the reasons K-water wanted to work with us.”

Even so, the full-size Capture6 facility will only absorb around half of the brine that the K-water desal plant produces, meaning the utility will still have to release a lot of toxic liquid into the ocean. Park says he hopes the company can eventually scale up far enough to absorb all the plant’s brine, but they’re not there yet.

Unlike many other direct air capture companies, Capture6 doesn’t need to sell carbon credits to make money. Park hopes to someday sell credits to private companies seeking to offset their emissions, but for the moment Capture6’s main revenue source is the same as any ordinary desalination plant: water. Park says the company could build future facilities at lithium mines, which also produce brine and need water to operate.

But Ekta Patel, a researcher and doctoral student at Duke University who studies the politics of desalination, said the big question about this business model was how much energy it takes for Capture6 to make the new water. 

“My mind jumps immediately to the issue of energy,” she said. “How much more energy does reclaiming the additional water take, is it from renewable or nonrenewable sources, and what does that do to the cost of the water?” She added that if “addressing challenges related to carbon emissions and water” required a jump in energy usage, the solution was just “shifting around resource problems.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Can carbon capture solve desalination’s waste problem? on Jan 17, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jake Bittle.

A degree of this may be put down to basic lack of sensibility or competence.  But there may also be an inadvertent confession in the works here: Australians may not be too keen on such arrangements once the proof gets out of the dense, floury pudding.

It took, as usual, those terrier-like efforts from Rex Patrick, Australia’s foremost transparency knight, forever tilting at the windmill of government secrecy, to discover that Western Australians are in for a real treat.  The US imperium, it transpires from material produced by the Australian Department of Defence, will be deploying some 700 personnel, with their families, to the state.  And to make matters more interesting, Western Australia will also host a site for low-level radioactive waste produced by US and UK submarines doing their rotational rounds under the AUKUS arrangements.

The briefing notes from the recently created Australian Submarine Agency reveal that the Submarine Rotational Force-West (SRF-West) will host as many as four US nuclear submarines of the US Navy Virginia-class at HMAS Stirling and one UK nuclear-powered boat from 2027.  As part of what is designated the first phase of AUKUS, an Australian workforce of some 500-700 maintenance and support personnel is projected to grow in response to the program before Australia owns and operates its own US-made nuclear-powered boats.  Once established and blooded by experience, “This workforce will then move to support our enduring nuclear-powered submarine program and will be a key enabler for SRF-West.”

The ASA documents go on to project that “over 700 United States Personnel could be living and working in Western Australia to support SRF-West, with some also bringing families.”  The UK will not be getting the same treatment, largely because the contingent from the Royal Navy will be moving through on shorter rotations.

The stationing of the personnel in question finally puts to rest those contemptible apologetics that Australia is not a garrison for the US armed forces.  At long last Australians can be reassured, if rather grimly, that these are not fleeting visits from great defenders, but the constant, and lingering presence of an imperial power jealously guarding its interests.

The issue of storing waste will have piqued some interest, given Australia’s current and reliably consistent failure to establish any long-term storage facility for any sort of nuclear waste, be it low, medium or high grade.  But never fear, the doltish poseurs of the Defence Department are always willing to please and, as the department documents show, learn in their servile role.

As Patrick reveals, the documents released under FOI tell us that “operational waste” arising from the Submarine Rotational Force operation at HMAS Stirling will include the storage of low to intermediate level radioactive waste on Australian defence sites.  One document notes that, “The rotational presence of United Kingdom and United States SSNs in Western Australia as part of the Submarine Rotational Force – West (SRF-West) will provide an opportunity to learn how these vessels operate, including the management of low-level radioactive waste from routine sustainment.”

The ASA also confirms with bold foolhardiness that, “All low and intermediate radioactive waste will be safely stored at Defence sites in Australia.”  The storage facility in question is “being planned as part of the infrastructure works proposed for HMAS Stirling to support SRF-West.”

The Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles has retained a consultant, Steve Grzeskowiak, to the remunerative value of AU$396,000 from February to December this year to identify a suitable site on land owned by the Commonwealth. Absurdly, the same consultant, when Deputy Secretary of Defence Estates, conducted an analysis of over 200 Defence sites in terms of suitability for low-level waste management, finding none to pass muster.

In a troubling development, Patrick also notes that the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023, in its current form, would permit the managing, storing or disposing of radioactive waste from an AUKUS submarine, which would include UK or US submarines.  Importantly, that waste could well be of a high-level nature.  “While the Albanese Government has made a commitment that it will not do so, the Bill leaves the legal door open for possible future agreement from the Australian Government to store high-level nuclear waste generated from US or UK nuclear-powered submarines.”

To round matters off, Australia’s citizenry was enlightened to the fact that they will be adding some $US3 billion (AU$4.45 billion) to the US submarine industrial base.  In the words of the ASA, “Australia’s commitment to invest in the US submarine industrial base recognises the lift the United States is making to supporting Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines.”  This will entail the pre-purchase of “submarine components and materials, so they are on hand at the start of the maintenance period” thereby “saving time” and “outsourcing less complex sustainment and expanding planning efforts for private sector overhauls, to reduce backlog”.

Decoding such naval, middle-management gibberish is a painful task, but nothing as painful as the implications for a country that has not only surrendered itself wholly and without qualification to Washington but is all too happy to subsidise it.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

In Momauk township’s In Khaung Par village, locals said they are getting skin diseases after contact with water in a nearby stream.  

Liquid waste from mining sites is drained into a stream near In Khaung Par village, said a villager who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, and has affected the skin on his legs, palms and body. Many residents reported symptoms like peeling skin, rashes and sores on their hands, arms and legs. 

“This has never happened before. Our village mainly uses stream water. There has never been a disease [from it]. Last year the mining work began near the village,” he said. “A harsh liquid waste like acid was released from the rare earth mining ponds and poured into the stream. People use [the water] and get sores.”

More than 1,000 people live in In Khaung Par, and the majority have noticed symptoms from the chemical waste runoff, according to local residents. Along with skin lesions, some residents have also passed out. 

Despite the seriousness of the disease, most locals can’t afford treatment and have not gone to Momauk Hospital, the villager added. Most of the locals work in agriculture and are only using traditional medicine to treat themselves.

Rare earth mining near In Khaung Par village started in 2021 with the permission of the Kachin Independence Organization, locals said.

RFA called Kachin Independence Organization information officer Col. Naw Bu about the outbreak, but he did not respond by the time of publication. 

Rare earth minerals are widely used in technology and major supply chains around the world, and are heavily relied on by neighboring China. However, the industry’s growth has come at a high cost to local communities, including environmental destruction, land confiscation, along with providing funds for Myanmar’s military. 

Kachin residents have protested the mines, and told RFA they strongly object to the industry, whose sites have expanded to take up roughly as much land as Singapore. However, the Kachin Independence Army has not made any commitments to relocating or removing sites they said. 

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

“At some point I felt the need to take off the balaclava – not for everyone, but mainly for me,” Hlatshwayo told Grist. Over time, he began to take pride in his work, as he was now an entrepreneur serving a clear environmental purpose. In 2017, he and his fellow organizers began to advocate on behalf of the city’s 8,000 waste pickers. They pitched projects to municipal governments, representing themselves as environmental agents, incentivized to collect every piece of plastic, paper, or metal they could find.  

While he still collects recyclables on Mondays and Tuesdays, Hlatshwayo now spends much of his time advocating for the rights of waste pickers at universities, resident councils, and corporate conferences. “Every street, every bin, every landfill – that’s where we are, because that’s where the value is,” he said at an industry conference last year.

In 2021, single-use plastic waste grew to more than 130 million tons worldwide, while governments around the globe ramped up efforts to address plastic pollution. But as cities, countries, and companies face increasing pressure to reduce their waste, they risk sidelining workers like Hlatshwayo. When recycling collection services are formalized, or outsourced to private companies, they often monopolize waste streams that more than 20 million waste pickers around the world rely on for income.

Reforms like these may not even decrease the volume of plastic in landfills or the environment, in part because they disrupt an informal sector that currently captures over 60 percent of all plastic recycled. In South Africa, this rate reaches up to 90 percent of all post-consumer packaging, and only 10 percent of urban households sort their own waste. By scouring alleyways on foot and sorting dumpsters by hand, waste pickers often go where few formal systems can follow. They can achieve collection rates that, though largely invisible, are far higher than systems that rely on residents or optimize for speed. 

A 2020 pilot program in Johannesburg measured the volume of recyclable materials collected by waste pickers in the suburbs of Brixton and Auckland Park, finding recycling rates so high that, if extrapolated across the city, it would take all 8,000 waste pickers just 28 days to gather as much recycled material as the city and its contractors collected in one year. 

“Private companies are not capable of extracting anywhere near the amount of recyclables that reclaimers are,” said Melanie Samson, an associate professor at the University of Johannesburg. “There’s no comparison, in terms of the efficacy of the recycling rate.”

While Hlatshwayo’s organizing efforts advance at the local level, a similar fight is taking place on the world stage. This week, delegates from over 175 countries arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, to negotiate the terms of a global treaty intended to end plastic pollution. Waste pickers from nine countries — South Africa, Kenya, Senegal, India, Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Italy and the United States — will make their case through a series of events and interventions in treaty discussions. 

Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, has called the plastics treaty the most significant multilateral environmental deal since the Paris climate accord. Once active, the treaty will legally bind United Nations member states to abide by its terms. (This week’s meeting is the third of five planned sessions to hammer out the details; the first took place in November 2022 and the last is scheduled for late 2024, with the treaty potentially in force as early as 2025.)

To protect their rights as workers, waste pickers are calling for explicit text requiring national governments and plastic producers to identify local waste picker leaders, include them in policy discussions, and account for their current contributions in the design of new collection systems. Failing to consider these demands from Hlatshwayo and others within the International Alliance of Waste Pickers — a union of waste picker organizations representing more than 460,000 workers in 34 countries — could have dire consequences for millions of the world’s poorest workers. 

“If you were to cancel the production of plastic bottles, PET bottles — it’s great for the environment, yes we all agree — but there’s so much social impact connected to that plastic bottle,” Hlatshwayo told Grist. “A lot of livelihoods could be lost through a simple decision that is not properly communicated.”

Thousands of waste pickers are already fighting to keep their livelihoods. The Environmental Justice Atlas, a resource produced by the Autonomous University of Barcelona, has documented dozens of cases around the world where privatization in the waste sector has threatened informal workers’ access to materials, including landfill closures and the development of incineration plants.

Nothing about the treaty has been fully ironed out yet, and the enormous uncertainty has locked environmental groups, industry representatives, and other interest groups in a war of communications. Each needs to convince the delegates of member states, who are the only people with the power to bring issues to the floor, that their strategies to reduce plastic pollution are the most effective, just, or economically viable. 

Will there be, for instance, globally agreed upon targets, or will each country define these targets for themselves? Will there be a cap on the primary production of plastic, or should companies simply be required to use more recycled material? The suite of potential measures stretches from drastically reducing single-use plastics to phasing out chemicals of concern, like BPA, POPs, and PFAS, which remain in global circulation despite some regional bans. 

In August, the United Nations Environment Programme released a “zero draft” of the treaty – a comprehensive outline, which provides options for different pollution reduction strategies that were raised during the first two sessions. During the week’s negotiations thus far, many states expressed their support for the zero draft, while a new coalition of countries — including Saudi Arabia and Iran — voiced interest in significant changes, likely toward a less ambitious treaty. 

The zero draft drew widespread support from environmental groups for its attention to curtailing plastic production; eliminating single-use plastics and chemicals of concern; promoting transparency in trade and labeling; supporting a “just transition” away from the status quo; and developing future targets.

At the same time, some called for greater specificity on key issues, like the role of producers in addressing plastic waste. The Environmental Investigations Agency, a global nonprofit, suggested that the treaty emphasize “reuse” as a priority for plastic producers, which would encourage companies to use less material overall, rather than relying on imperfect recycling systems. 

Toward the end of the document, waste pickers appeared in three separate clauses. The language called for improved working conditions, integration into a “safe” plastics value chain, and the use of revenue from collection systems run by plastic producers for waste picker support or retraining.

For waste pickers, these improvements could look different depending on the local context, but they might include the provision of dedicated warehouses for sorting materials, trucks for transporting their wares, or protective equipment for working in hazardous conditions. While some waste picker cooperatives already have government contracts, as in Brazil and Colombia, integration for others will mean recognizing their work in local laws, including their contributions in national statistics, and providing salaries, because the vast majority of their income relies on the ever-fluctuating price of materials on the global market. 

Given this variability, what a just transition means in the context of plastic policy is an ongoing dialogue. In South Africa, a working group between waste picker organizations, companies, and the government is moving forward on several fronts, including by building a database of decentralized workers and implementing a service fee per kilogram collected in certain neighborhoods. 

The inclusion of “just transition” language in the zero draft was a major win for the waste pickers’ movement, one that reflected the strength of their advocacy and the number of member states willing to bring their issues to the floor, including Brazil, Uruguay, and the Philippines.

But according to Lucia Fernández, acting general secretary of the International Alliance of Waste Pickers, now is no time to rest easy. Her colleagues still need to ensure that these clauses make it to the final draft and that their specific measures are defined clearly, so the treaty can be enforced. Ideally, they will account for the way the work can be formal or informal, part-time or full-time, and organized or decentralized.

Bert De Wel, the climate policy officer for the International Trade Union Confederation, an umbrella organization for national trade unions, was surprised by the size and capacity of the waste pickers when they first arrived in force at the initial plastics treaty meetings. 

“It’s due to them that [a] just transition and the workers’ aspects are mentioned in the [United Nations] mandate,” he said, adding that his organization looks forward to partnering with the alliance in the future.

Despite this solidarity, many waste pickers are in a more precarious position than other workers. At the base of a recycling hierarchy — in which waste pickers sell to waste collectors, who sell to buyers and brokers, who sell the aggregate materials to a recycling company — waste pickers are not only the most populous participants in the supply chain, but also the farthest from formal recognition, profits, and security. If countries are not careful, they could also disrupt the foundation of their recycling systems: A 2017 tax on plastic products in India actually reduced recycling rates by discouraging immediate buyers from paying waste pickers higher rates. 

While the debate rages on in Kenya, Hlatshwayo decided to stay at home in Johannesburg, where he can see tangible improvements taking place in his city’s recycling system and plastic producers’ cooperation with waste pickers. In his city, he said, they are innovating new business models and community engagement, and these stories are not always documented at the national level.

“Our governments are rushing into making decisions internationally without even knowing what they’re doing locally,” Hlatshwayo said. “We’ve mastered the art of collecting and diverting all of this plastic…. Come and integrate what is already working.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How waste pickers are fighting for recognition in the UN global plastics treaty on Nov 16, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Erin X. Wong.

State regulators on Monday released their draft rules for what to do with all the hazardous oilfield waste that’s left over once a well is drilled. The announcement gives the public one month to comment on the new rules — while some industry representatives started giving input more than two years ago, documents and interviews show.

Oilfield waste executives and consultants helped write the regulations beginning in 2021. Oil and gas business advocates also gave feedback to the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates the industry.

The effort was initiated by a commissioner who has investments in oilfield waste companies. Jim Wright, one of the agency’s three elected commissioners, ran for his seat with an eye on rewriting what’s known as Rule 8. Wright owns stock in several hazardous waste management companies in Texas, according to statements filed with the Texas Ethics Commission.

In an interview, Wright brushed off critics who suggest his involvement in the industry makes him a biased regulator. He said that he had little to do with re-writing the rules after he became commissioner, and that, if anything, his position on the Commission has hurt his businesses rather than helped it. Few companies want to risk doing business with companies associated with regulators, he said.

“For those who think this is my rule — what Jim Wright wants — that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Wright said. “Even before I came to office, [commission] staff knew we really needed to take a hard look at Rule 8.”

Wright said he believes the new rules will benefit all Texans, not just the oilfield waste industry.

Supporters of industry’s early involvement say the rules, which haven’t been significantly revised since 1984, needed to be changed to make the permitting process more efficient and to allow new waste recycling technologies to be permitted. Critics say the revised regulations would benefit the industry over the public.

“There’s an obvious conflict of interest if the industry gets to rewrite their own rules to their own financial benefit, and they end up writing rules that make people sick or contaminate groundwater and put our collective future at risk,” said Virginia Palacios, executive director of Commission Shift, a watchdog group that advocates for stricter financial policies for commissioners.

Michael Lozano, who does communications and government affairs for the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, which provided input on the draft rules to the Commission before they were released, disagreed.

“With all due respect to our friends on the environmental NGO side, they don’t know what the field application is; they don’t understand what operators are literally doing day in and day out,” he said. “We all want robust environmental standards.”

In an email, Railroad Commission spokesperson Patty Ramon said soliciting very early industry input is typical for the agency’s rulemaking process. Ramon said that at least one member of the public who had protested a facility’s permit in the past was also invited to provide early feedback.

The obscure rules govern the disposal of massive amounts of waste. Companies drill thousands of wells every year in Texas. They typically pump mud into the ground as they drill; rocky soil and a salty liquid known as “produced water” then comes up along with the oil and natural gas. All that waste has to go somewhere.

That’s where Rule 8 comes in.

The Railroad Commission uses Rule 8 to decide how companies should handle that material. Unlike most hazardous waste, the toxic muck from the oilfield is exempt from federal regulations. The state regulations govern how waste can be recycled or dumped — typically in pits near the well or in commercial hazardous waste pits.

The pits can leak toxic chemicals and radioactive materials and pollute surface or groundwater if not properly managed.

In recycling, the mud can be cleaned and used for more drilling, rocks and gravel can be used to build roads and some of the less-contaminated water can be removed for other uses. However, “produced water” is most often injected back into the earth under a different permit, a method that has caused an increase in earthquakes across West Texas.

The rule change would impose new environmental standards such as restricting where waste pits can be located; allow companies to suggest new forms of oilfield waste recycling; and limit who can protest permits, which environmental groups warn could limit public input. However, Ramon wrote that filing a protest is “not a cumbersome process” and that the changes would prevent competitors from filing protests.

Texans have until 5 p.m. on Nov. 3 to give feedback on the draft changes by filling out an online form or attending a meeting at 10 a.m. Oct. 26 at the Commission’s office or 9 a.m. Oct. 27 online at adminmonitor.com/tx/rrc. There will then be another formal proposal and chance for comment later.

Residents want more protections; new rules would allow industry-created pilot programs

Throughout the state, Texans for years have tried to stop oilfield waste dumps from moving into their communities — a fight that some say is already an uphill battle.

Southeast of San Antonio, outside a tiny city called Nordheim, drivers haul waste to a commercial pit facility next to 63-year-old Ron Pilsner’s family’s farm. His father and grandfather grew up there. A ranch-style home anchors the property, surrounded by Black Angus cattle, oak trees and grassland.

Pilsner says the facility ruined their sense of peace: Bright lights shine from it at night. There’s constant beeping from vehicles backing up and often the wafting stink of petroleum, insecticides and what he describes as a smell like skunks. He no longer wants to open the windows and he worries about the waste pits’ liners leaking and contaminating the area’s groundwater.

Nordheim residents tried to stop a San Antonio-based developer from building the pits in 2014. Pilsner’s parents, Marvin and Bernice, joined the protesters, who put up “DON’T DUMP ON NORDHEIM” signs with a skull and crossbones. The couple went at least once to Austin to ask the Railroad Commission not to approve the project.

The agency approved it anyway; a lawsuit by residents seeking to overturn the decision failed.

After Petro Waste Environmental began construction and operations, the nuisance grew bad enough that Pilsner’s dad stopped renovating the farmhouse, where he planned to retire. A typically frugal man, he spent $16,000 on new furniture, Pilsner said. He moved into a nursing home before he ever got to sleep on the new mattresses. He died last year.

On a scorching, triple-digit September afternoon, Pilsner toured the waste pit’s perimeter with Sister Elizabeth Riebschlaeger, an 87-year-old Catholic nun who had family who lived in Nordheim and who supported the residents in their fight. Riebschlaeger argued the commission needed to give citizens more of a say.

“Of course we’re defeated,” Riebschlaeger said, “but we’re still making noise.”

Waste Management, which acquired Petro Waste in 2019, said it was in compliance with the current Rule 8 and did not expect to need to make any changes based on the draft rules.

The company said it did stop accepting some materials in 2021 that smell and was investing in reducing truck traffic at the facility. “At WM, safety is a core value and we are committed to being a good neighbor,” the statement said.

Under the draft rules, only people like the Pilsners who own land adjacent to a proposed waste pit or recycling facility would be notified of a company’s intent to locate its facility there.

And only people who can prove they would suffer “actual injury or economic damage” from a waste pit would be allowed to protest a new facility permit — a definition that would limit environmental groups’ influence in stopping new pits from being built. Those people would have 15 days to file a protest, from the time the company filed the application or last provided public notice, and the company would then have 30 days to either withdraw its permit application or request an administrative hearing to settle the dispute.

The draft rules also introduce an option for companies to create pilot programs for their waste: Instead of dumping it in pits or recycling it, companies could propose alternative recycling methods not covered by the rules.

The change addresses the industry’s concern that the current regulations aren’t flexible enough to include new technologies. But environmental groups worry that new methods could get a fast-track to permits with little oversight.

The new rules otherwise update existing standards, adding detail and codifying what was internal guidance used by Railroad Commission staff. For example, under current rules the pits are required to have a plan to manage stormwater runoff, including during intense rainfall events, and cannot be located in a floodplain. Under the new draft rules, such pits also can’t be located on a beach, barrier island, or within 300 feet of wetlands, rivers, streams or lakes. Nor can they be located within 500 feet of any public water system well or intake location.

The old rules said liners for waste pits must “reasonably” prevent pollution but didn’t include specific standards. The draft rules say pits must be lined with a plastic strong enough to resist damage from crude oil, salts, acids and alkaline solutions. Critics of the commission said the new liner standards aren’t much stronger than the internal guidance used by the agency.

Critics also point out that the draft rules don’t spell out the penalties when pits leak or operators violate the rules of their permit. Ramon, the commission spokesperson, said that more details on fines would be available in the formal rule proposal and would likely be similar to existing regulations.

Fines can be determined on a case-by-case basis and could be reduced if a company demonstrates “good faith;” critics say that would give companies more wiggle room to contest fines.

Industry drafts the rules

The draft rules fulfill a goal and campaign promise for Wright, a Republican from South Texas who was elected to the Railroad Commission in 2020. Wright first tried to influence the agency’s regulations years ago, when he was part of the oilfield waste services industry.

Wright was the CEO and president of a Corpus Christi company called Environmental Evolutions, which hauls hazardous waste, and has investments in other hazardous waste companies, according to state filings. Along with some of his customers, Wright wanted to help guide the commission’s staff on how to more consistently apply the regulations affecting them, he said.

At the time, one commissioner agreed to give the group access to commission staff members, according to an interview Wright did on a podcast, but none of the staff actually wanted to work with them on the rules at that time. A 2019 bill to formalize a commission-appointed oil and gas advisory group failed to pass.

So Wright decided to run for a seat on the Railroad Commission.

Wright received campaign donations from the oilfield waste industry, according to campaign finance reports. NGL Water Solutions Permian LLC, the oilfield waste division for Tulsa-based NGL Energy Partners, is one of Wright’s top donors and has given him $226,000 since 2019; a company executive gave an additional $2,500. The company has also donated to the campaigns of the other two commissioners, Christi Craddick and Wayne Christian.

In an interview, Wright said that campaign fundraising was a “necessary evil” to be in politics, but that campaign donations don’t impact his decisions on the Railroad Commission and that he makes that clear to donors.

After he defeated the better-funded incumbent Ryan Sitton in an upset, Wright’s staff turned to the waste rules, internal documents show. An investigative watchdog group called Documented obtained copies of the documents through public records requests and shared them with the Tribune.

Wright’s former director of public affairs, Kate Zaykowski, helped facilitate the formation of a regulatory task force that included at least seven people from oil and gas and oilfield waste companies, including Pioneer Natural Resources and Waste Management, Inc.

Beginning in early 2021, the task force went page-by-page through a years-old attempt to revise the rules, using it as a framework to define more clearly how permits can and can’t be approved, said Kevin Ware, an environmental engineering consultant who chaired the task force. The task force then gave its proposal to the commission.

Commission staff then invited powerful oil and gas lobbying groups to take part in an “informal review” of the task force’s recommendations. Representatives from major companies such as ExxonMobil, Apache Corp. and Chevron were invited to attend commission meetings about the rules. Those companies and at least one lobbying group sent feedback and questions.

Mark Henkhaus, a consultant and former Railroad Commission employee who chaired a regulatory committee for the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, sent an email in August 2022 to a commission staff member raising concerns that an oil waste company may have been trying to craft the rules to its benefit.

“I want to make sure that the waste handlers are not using the Commission to further their business, if you know what I mean,” Henkhaus wrote. Henkhaus declined to comment.

Aaron Krejci, Wright’s director of public affairs, said that while Wright had reactivated the task force and requested their input, he was not involved in the group’s deliberations or suggestions to agency staff.

“The task force was helpful in getting the proverbial rulemaking ball rolling,” Krejci wrote in an email. But he added, “The rule which was just released is not a product of the task force, but rather the Commission staff who have been working internally on these updates for quite some time.”

And Wright said that if the regulations were simply to benefit the waste management industry, they wouldn’t change at all — the status quo is almost always better for business.

Instead, he characterizes the draft rules as a step forward in the Railroad Commission’s ability to better regulate an industry that’s dramatically changed over the last four decades and protect water resources from pollution. He points out that the rules include new setbacks from surface water and better standards for lining waste pits.

“I think it benefits Texas, not just industry,” Wright said. “I don’t see [how this rule] was formulated for the benefit of industry at all.”

Carla Astudillo contributed to this story.

Disclosure: Exxon Mobil Corporation and Permian Basin Petroleum Association have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In Texas, oilfield companies helped to craft new waste rules for 2 years before the public got to see them on Oct 9, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Erin Douglas.

It was a theme the former president and 2024 GOP frontrunner hit repeatedly throughout his remarks at Drake Enterprises, a truck parts manufacturer that offered to host Trump's rally: The electric vehicle transition and the Biden administration's efforts to accelerate it are going to send jobs overseas and leave the U.S. automobile industry in ruins.

"It doesn't make a damn bit of difference what you get because in two years you're all going to be out of business, you're not getting anything," Trump said. "I mean, I watch you out there with the pickets, but I don't think you're picketing for the right thing."

The former president repeatedly and falsely accused the Biden administration of attempting to bring about a "transition to hell" and impose "electric vehicle mandates that will spell the death of the American auto industry," a narrative that was also prominent during the Republican primary debate that Trump skipped.

Kevin Munoz, a spokesperson for President Joe Biden's 2024 reelection campaign, said in response that Trump is "lying about President Biden's agenda to distract from his failed track record of trickle-down tax cuts, closed factories, and jobs outsourced to China." During Trump's four years in office, the offshoring of U.S. jobs increased.

"There is no 'EV mandate.' Simply put: Trump had the United States losing the EV race to China and if he had his way, the jobs of the future would be going to China," said Munoz. "President Biden is delivering where Donald Trump failed by bringing manufacturing back home, and with it, good-paying jobs for the American people."

As HuffPost's Jonathan Cohn reported late Wednesday, "Since Biden took office in January 2021, total auto industry employment in the U.S. has risen from about 948,000 to 1,073,000 jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a monthly rate of about 4,000 new auto jobs a month."

Challenging the notion that the Biden administration's EV policies are imperiling the U.S. auto industry, Cohn noted that electric vehicle subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act "will close the cost gap so that companies manufacturing electric vehicles and their parts can compete."

"And there are lots of signs that the effort is working," Cohn wrote. "Auto companies have announced plans to build literally dozens of new factories in the U.S., many in what's coming to be known as the 'battery belt,' stretching from Georgia in the South to Michigan in the North. They are expected to generate hundreds of thousands of jobs directly, plus many more (along with economic growth) indirectly."

The UAW leadership has made clear that, unlike Trump, it doesn't oppose the transition to electric vehicles.

Rather, the union wants policymakers to ensure that EV manufacturing jobs are unionized. UAW president Shawn Fain has criticized Biden—who joined union members on the picket line earlier this week—for not doing enough to prevent a "race to the bottom" in the EV transition as automakers increasingly invest in the nonunion U.S. South.

Fain has also not been shy about his feelings toward the former president.

"I don't think the man has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for," Fain said in a CNN appearance on Tuesday. "He serves the billionaire class, and that's what's wrong with this country."

"People are trying to push that this is organic, but it's not. Trump is curating a crowd, and it pisses me off."

Trump—who has repeatedly called on the UAW to endorse his presidential run—didn't respond Wednesday when asked by a reporter whether he supports the union's push for a nearly 40% wage increase for autoworkers, who have seen their hourly pay decline sharply over the past two decades.

During his speech, Trump "didn't specifically address demands made by autoworkers, other than to say he would protect jobs in a way that would lead to higher wages," the Detroit Free Pressreported.

"But he left it unclear how he would do so," the newspaper added, "given that he didn't demand specific wage increases as president."

It's not clear how many union members were in the audience at Trump's speech, though some were waving "Auto Workers for Trump" and "Union Members for Trump" signs. One individual who held a "Union Members for Trump" sign during the rally admitted to a reporter for The Detroit News that she's not a union member.

"Another person with a sign that read 'Auto Workers for Trump' said he wasn't an auto worker when asked for an interview. Both people didn't provide their names," the outlet reported.

Chris Marchione, political director of the International Union of Painters and Allied TradesDistrict Council 1M in Michigan, toldJacobin's Alex Press that at least one local "right-to-work" activist assisted the Trump campaign in organizing Wednesday's rally.

"People are trying to push that this is organic, but it's not," Marchione said. "Trump is curating a crowd, and it pisses me off. If he wants to support union workers, pay the fucking glaziers who got screwed when they put the windows on Trump Tower."

Ahead of Trump's Michigan visit, the AFL-CIO said in a statement that Trump's presidency was "catastrophic for workers," pointing to his anti-union appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, defense of so-called "right-to-work" laws, repeal of Labor Department rules aimed at protecting worker pay, and failure to protect manufacturing jobs.

"The idea that Donald Trump has ever, or will ever, care about working people is demonstrably false," said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler. "For his entire time as president, he actively sought to roll back worker protections, wages, and the right to join a union at every level."

"UAW members are on the picket line fighting for fair wages and against the very corporate greed that Donald Trump represents," Shuler added. "Working people see through his transparent efforts to reinvent history. We are not buying the lies that Donald Trump is selling. We will continue to support and organize for the causes and candidates that represent our values."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Head south on state Highway 96, past a stretch of soybean crops and tobacco fields, and you’ll arrive in Zebulon, North Carolina, population 8,665. There, on a quiet stretch of Industrial Drive, sits a nondescript commercial building. It’s easy to miss; the name on the front door is barely legible. But atop that humble three-acre lot lies a leading solution to the global plastic pollution crisis — well, according to the plastic industry.

The facility is home to the 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week operations of Braven Environmental, a company that says it can recycle nearly 90 percent of plastic waste through a form of chemical recycling called pyrolysis. Traditional recycling is able to process only about 8.7 percent of America’s plastic waste; pyrolysis uses high temperatures and low-oxygen conditions to break down the remaining plastics, like films and Styrofoam, ideally turning them into feedstock oil for new plastic production.

The American Chemistry Council, the country’s leading petrochemical industry trade group, claims that chemical recycling will create a “circular economy” for the bulk of the world’s plastic, diverting it from oceans and landfills. Plastic giants have gone so far as to dub the process “advanced recycling,” but environmentalists say this is a misnomer because the majority of the plastic processed at such facilities is not recycled at all. In fact, researchers have found that the process uses more energy and has a worse overall environmental impact than virgin plastic production. Numerous companies have tried and failed to prove that chemical recycling is commercially viable.

Despite these challenges, lawmakers nationwide are now embracing the technology, thanks to a massive lobbying push from the ACC and other petrochemical groups. As of September, 24 states have passed industry-backed bills that reclassify chemical recycling as manufacturing. The change effectively deregulates the process, since manufacturing facilities tend to face less stringent guidelines than waste incinerators.

As one of only seven commercial facilities currently operating in the United States, Braven Environmental is at the vanguard of the growing chemical recycling boom. An Intercept investigation, however, found numerous issues at its Zebulon facility.

A review of meeting minutes, permit applications, and compliance documents reveal that Braven misled the public about the risks of its pyrolysis operation and has potentially endangered human health and the environment through “significant noncompliance” with hazardous waste management regulations. While the ACC has touted Braven as a sustainable success story, documents also show that much of the company’s pyrolysis oil was not converted into useful plastic or fuel — it was disposed of as highly toxic waste.

“Chemical recycling is really a greenwashing technique for burning up a bunch of petrochemicals in a new way, and it’s releasing tons of air pollutants into the environment,” said Alexis Luckey, executive director of Toxic Free NC, in an interview. “What we’re talking about is incinerating carcinogens and neurotoxicants in a community.”

On Sept. 26, 2022, inspectors visited the Braven site and photographed vapor rising from an open dumpster filled with waste char, a potentially hazardous byproduct of the plastic pyrolysis process.

“Hazardous Items, We Have None”

On April 8, 2019, the Zebulon Board of Commissioners held a joint public hearing with the town planning board to gather community feedback on several proposed construction projects. One of the developments on the docket was from a company called Golden Renewable Energy, based in Yonkers, New York. 

Golden Renewable — which changed its name to Braven Environmental in the North Carolina business registry in 2021 — was requesting a special use permit to “locate a refinery and the storage of flammable liquids” on a parcel of land zoned for heavy industry.

According to minutes from the hearing, Meade Bradshaw, former assistant planning director for Zebulon, explained that Braven must show the proposed development “will not materially endanger the public health, safety, or welfare” in order to be granted a special use permit. In response, Ross Sloane, Braven’s business development director, made a series of promises to this effect, painting the company as a safe, family-run operation.

“We’ve never had an incidence in an operation that’s been operating up in New York now for seven years,” Sloane said. “My entire family operates the machine, so I don’t want to lose sleep.”

While Sloane pointed to Braven’s operations in Yonkers as evidence of the company’s safety record, The Intercept’s review of New York State Department of Environmental Conservation records found no indication that the company’s facility in Yonkers has ever been legally permitted to conduct plastic pyrolysis activities.

An air quality permit completed on February 22, 2013, states that the facility’s function was the conversion of vegetable oil to biofuels — a far cry from advanced thermal decomposition of plastic waste. In July 2014, inspectors from the DEC visited the facility and observed plastic waste being accepted and processed without authorization. The company agreed to resolve the violations, pay civil fines, and apply for a modified permit to accept recycled plastics, but the permit was never completed. DEC staff inspected the site again in 2021 and confirmed that Golden Renewable had moved its processing equipment out of state. DEC public records did not contain any additional permit information, and the Yonkers operation is Braven’s only other facility.

Public hearing meeting minutes also show Sloane told the town that Braven does not handle any hazardous materials. “Any kind of material trash, landfill items, hazardous items, we have none,” he said. “We do not contain any kind of hazardous materials. We have nothing that goes into a drain. … It’s all biodegradable.”

Stormwater outfall and riprap in front of Braven’s facility on Sep. 17, 2023.

This turned out to be false. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Resource Conservation and Recovery Act database, Braven’s Zebulon facility generated and shipped 9.6 tons of hazardous ignitable waste and benzene in 2021 alone. In March of that year, Braven registered with the EPA as a large quantity generator: a facility that generates at least 1,000 kilograms per month of hazardous waste.

One list of warnings in a Braven air permit application reads like a toxicologist’s worst nightmare: The pyrolysis oil may cause cancer and genetic defects, as well as damage to organs, fertility, and unborn children. Other hazards included being “extremely flammable” and “very toxic to aquatic life” with “long lasting effects.”

Stephanie Hall, a parent of students at a nearby K-12 charter school, voiced concerns about air emissions during the hearing in Zebulon. She pointed out that the Braven lot would be adjacent to a community college and a public housing community, as well as only 780 feet from the charter school.

Sloane offered reassurance that Braven would “have no smells or emissions that are emitted to the air.” But when a planning board member asked for more information, he backtracked.

“It’s not a zero-emission process,” he clarified. “We do have an emission of CO2. It’s the exact same CO2 that comes through in your gas logs at your home.”

In response to The Intercept’s request for comment, Michael Moreno, Braven’s co-founder and chief commercial officer, wrote, “Braven strives to operate its Zebulon facility safely, responsibly and in compliance with its permits and regulatory requirements. Any discrepancies found are proactively resolved with the agencies involved.”

Braven’s special use permit application notes that the facility will have an exhaust stack but still characterizes the operation as a “closed loop process where all by products are fully contained without being discharged into the atmosphere.” An emissions test report prepared for Braven in March 2020 contradicts this claim, revealing that, in addition to CO2, the company’s plastic pyrolysis emits air pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter. The report also found that Braven would emit an estimated 5.14 tons of volatile organic compounds per year. It did not specify which VOCs were present, though known human carcinogens like benzene and styrene are commonly found in emissions from petrochemical operations. On the day that I visited the Braven facility and adjacent lots, a faint acrid scent — like burning plastic — was detectable as far as 700 feet away.

On the day that I visited the Braven facility and adjacent lots, a faint acrid scent — like burning plastic — was detectable as far as 700 feet away.

Certain industrial facilities must annually report their chemical emissions for inclusion in the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory. Since pyrolysis facilities are classified by the EPA as waste incinerators, they’re required to meet Clean Air Act guidelines but are excluded from TRI reporting requirements. This makes it difficult to assess the full health risks that Braven and other plastic pyrolysis units could pose to surrounding communities. In April, more than 300 environmental and public health organizations filed a petition with the EPA for the inclusion of waste incinerators in the database.

Ilona Jaspers, director of the Center for Environmental Medicine, Asthma, and Lung Biology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, has studied emissions generated from the burning of plastic waste. She called the TRI’s lack of pyrolysis and waste incineration data “a giant loophole.”

“I am all for finding good ways to make plastics into something usable, but the danger of generating air toxics in the process is considerable,” she said. “When we looked at the list of chemicals generated in the emissions of the plastics, a lot of it is not good. It’s kind of terrifying what gets generated when you burn plastics.”

In addition to air pollutants, residents raised the risk of potential water contamination. Hall, a professional engineer with a background in water resources, noted during the public meeting in Zebulon that the building slated to house Braven’s operations was built in 1994, so the lot would not have established stormwater control measures to treat any potential runoff. “You may want to include some sort of sand filter or proprietary stormwater device to help with any incidental spills,” she suggested, since the lot lies near a Federal Emergency Management Agency floodplain.

“When that industrial park was developed, there were no regulations for stormwater control,” Bradshaw, the former assistant planning director, told The Intercept. “Because they’re just occupying an existing building … from a site standpoint, it did not need to meet current regulations. But the commissioners, as part of the special use permit, could’ve made that a condition if they wanted to.”

At a subsequent session, the planning board unanimously recommended denial of the permit, based on “lack of evidence and testimony” showing Braven would not endanger public health and safety. But the planning board’s decision was “just a recommendation,” Bradshaw noted, and did not dictate the final decision. The Board of Commissioners unanimously voted to approve the special use permit on May 6, 2019, under the sole condition that masonry screening be conducted around the fuel tanks.

Braven was up and running by March 2020. Four months in, one major company had already bet big on the nascent operation’s long-term success: To further its “corporate responsibility” goals, Sonoco agreed to deliver its waste plastics to Braven for the next 20 years.

On Sept. 26, 2022, inspectors visited the Braven site and photographed gallons of pyrolysis oil. “These containers were open and were not marked with the words ‘hazardous waste,’ an indication of the hazards of the contents or an accumulation start date,” inspectors wrote.

Significant Noncomplier

As part of an unannounced hazardous waste compliance inspection, an environmental specialist from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, visited Braven’s Zebulon facility on September 26, 2022. The details of the resulting compliance report paint an alarming picture of a business operating in stark contrast to the health and safety promises made to Zebulon residents three years prior.

Inspectors cited Braven for numerous regulatory violations, including accumulating more than 400 containers of hazardous waste without a permit over the course of two years, as well as failing to “manage waste material in a manner to prevent it from discharging to the ground and storm drain system.”

The report details one incident in April 2022, when Braven sent 31,080 gallons of hazardous waste to a rented warehouse facility about one mile down the road. The transfer was conducted by a local trucking company, not a licensed hazardous waste transporter, and the warehouse was not permitted to receive such waste. The containers, which contained toxic chemicals like toluene and ethylbenzene, were then disposed of by a waste management service, though the transportation manifests for the disposal contained numerous inaccuracies.

The report also states that Braven generates light, medium, and heavy cut oils through plastic pyrolysis but has been unable to find a buyer for the heavy cut oils. As a result, the oil accumulated in a tank until it was eventually discarded as hazardous waste — twice. “The facility has been unable to demonstrate that it has been or can be legitimately used or recycled,” inspectors wrote.

“It’s an open question for a number of these facilities what it is they’re actually producing and what it’s used for.”

“There’s very little actual monitoring data from these facilities that are doing plastic pyrolysis,” Veena Singla, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told The Intercept. “It’s an open question for a number of these facilities what it is they’re actually producing and what it’s used for.”

Even Braven’s purportedly recyclable products pose substantial risks. In June 2021, Braven announced a “long-term agreement” to supply pyrolysis-derived oils to Chevron Phillips Chemical. The press release did not state outright what the oil will be used as feedstock for, stating only that it will help Chevron “achieve its circularity goals.” However, ProPublica reported in February that one Chevron refinery in Mississippi is turning pyrolysis oil into jet fuel; according to EPA documents, air pollution from the fuel production process could subject nearby residents to a colossal 1 in 4 cancer risk.

The Intercept confirmed that some of the pyrolysis oil at this Chevron facility is indeed supplied by Braven: The chemical name and unique registry number listed in an EPA record obtained by ProPublica matches the details of Braven’s pyrolysis oils found in a North Carolina air quality permit exemption application. Additionally, in July 2022, the EPA published notice in the Federal Register of several new pyrolysis oils manufactured by Braven, including the same one on the EPA record.

A public housing community less than 400 feet away from the back of Braven Environmental’s lot.

Some residents within one mile of Braven were already at an increased risk for environmental carcinogens before the business moved in: One nearby census tract has worse particulate matter and ozone exposure, hazardous waste proximity, and air toxics cancer risk than over 90 percent of the country.

During the town hearing, Sloane had emphasized Braven’s “proactive” safety features; the special use permit application promised “daily inspections.” The compliance investigation, however, noted numerous deficiencies in emergency preparedness, including the absence of a fire extinguisher in the main room where containers of flammable waste were accumulating, some of which were left open and unlabeled.

According to the report, Braven staff admitted that personnel had not conducted weekly inspections, and they were unable to provide documentation that an engineer’s certification had been completed for a hazardous waste tank. Neither safety data sheets for the pyrolysis oils nor an emergency contingency plan had been completed with all required information, and the plan had not been distributed to local emergency authorities.

Additionally, inspectors observed during the visit that oil-contaminated stormwater was being pumped from a containment pit into a storage tote, but the connecting hose was leaking and “dark staining was evident” on the paved area between the pit and the storm drain.

Christopher Serrati, Braven’s manager of operations, told inspectors at the time that the concrete surrounding the storm drain had been “power washed in the past to remove staining.” The report noted an absorbent sock had been placed around the storm drain, and dark staining was present on soil adjacent to the property’s stormwater outfall, indicating hazardous waste may have been discharged to the ground.

Following an assessment period, the North Carolina DEQ cited Braven as a “significant noncomplier” and issued the company an “initial imminent and substantial endangerment order” on April 28, 2023. Braven has not received any state or federal penalties.

“This is an ongoing state lead enforcement matter, and EPA is currently not involved. EPA cannot further comment regarding the facility’s compliance or enforcement activities,” wrote an EPA spokesperson.

As part of a spill remediation plan, the DEQ required that Braven test both stormwater and soil from the contamination sites. Four of the contaminated stormwater samples tested positive for high concentrations of benzene, according to a report submitted to the agency in January. The report notes, however, that Braven believes the high benzene levels can be attributed to oils that were left in the sampling totes.

Top/Left: Braven Environmental received a special use permit to store flammable liquids on Industrial Drive in Zebulon, N.C. Bottom/Right: Birds sit atop a water tower in downtown Zebulon, N.C. Photos: Schuyler Mitchell/The Intercept

“In the past, all waste including dike water was shipped as hazardous waste and therefore, our crew did not realize the new operations and they inadvertently used the old empty oil totes for dike stormwater storage,” wrote Braven. The report states that going forward, “Braven will use only clean totes to store dike stormwater, if any, to avoid any potential hazardous waste conditions for the stormwater totes.” Braven has also installed an oil/water separator for stormwater discharge.

However, Braven’s claim that contaminated stormwater had previously been disposed of as hazardous waste appears to contradict notes in the initial compliance investigation. “Records dated April 2022 documenting shipment of rainwater … were provided after the inspection and document the material was previously disposed of as non-hazardous,” inspectors wrote.

Singla, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the storm drain discharge a “big concern.”

“We know that when there’s spills or leaks from industrial facilities, benzene can contaminate surface water, groundwater especially,” Singla said. “If there’s any built environment over that groundwater, the benzene can migrate up through the soil into indoor spaces and then contaminate the air, and people can be exposed that way.”

Another report submitted by Braven in June notes “site-specific groundwater investigations have not been conducted,” though a contractor completed a reconnaissance survey of potential “wells, springs, surface-water intakes, and sources of potable water” within 1,500 feet of the facility and did not observe any apparent water supply wells. The contractor said it also contacted the county for more information on potential water sources in the area but did not receive a response.

In late August, a new remedial action oversight report was posted to the DEQ’s public records database. A state chemist’s review of Braven’s soil samples found “evidence of elevated hexavalent chromium and arsenic” in the site’s underlying soil. The state’s report attributes these findings to “a release of waste,” since the results were above the levels found in background samples. Both arsenic and chromium are considered occupational carcinogens by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The state offered Braven two remediation options: complete additional sampling and remove the contaminated soil, or close the impacted areas as a landfill. According to Melody Foote, a public information officer from the DEQ’s Division of Waste Management, Braven completed the additional sampling in late September. The DEQ is waiting for the sampling results and findings report, which is expected in three to four weeks.

Zebulon Commissioner Shannon Baxter called the noncompliance report “extremely disturbing” and noted that the public hearing testimony given in 2019 “appears to be in conflict with how Braven is actually operating.” Baxter was previously a member of the planning board and recommended denial of Braven’s permit in 2019. She noted that her views should not be interpreted as representative of the entire Board of Commissioners.

“I had my concerns as a member of the Planning Board, which is why we voted to recommend denial of the Special Use Permit,” Baxter wrote in a message to The Intercept. “Now, as a Commissioner, I am troubled about how these violations will affect the safety of our Community, especially the students attending school down the road from the Braven facility.”

A community garden sits outside of East Wake Academy, a K-12 charter school located down the road from Braven Environmental.

Aggressive Expansion

A troubled record hasn’t deterred the petrochemical industry from throwing its weight behind Braven in recent months. The company has announced three major executive hires since April, including a chief operating officer, development director, and president and CEO. Heath DePriest, the new COO, previously served in leadership positions at Phillips 66, a petroleum company. A press release notes that CEO and President Jim Simon held roles at the refinery subsidiary of Koch Industries.

In June, Braven announced a new “strategic framework agreement” with another Koch Industries subsidiary, Koch Project Solutions, to “support Braven’s aggressive expansion plans.” The press release cited a new project to be built in the Gulf Coast region, which will allegedly produce 50 million gallons of pyrolysis oil per year.

Braven’s past expansion plans, however, have not materialized. In 2020, the company was the subject of a number of splashy headlines for its plans to invest $32 million in Cumberland County, Virginia, a rural region west of Richmond. Promising the creation of more than 80 new jobs, the project marked the first economic development opportunity for the county since 2009. Braven was slated to break ground in late 2021, but the year quietly came and went, until a sole public update arrived via an article in a Cumberland County newspaper: “Braven No Longer Coming.” The article, published in January 2022, did not explain why Braven had pulled out, and the company declined to comment at the time.

Braven has also been the subject of several legal actions. In 2015, sisters Joan Prentice Andrews and Jane Prentice Goff filed a lawsuit against Golden Renewable in New York, which also named four executives, including co-founders Moreno and Nicholas Canosa, as defendants. The suit claims that the sisters had collectively invested a total of $650,000 in Golden Renewable’s “bio-energy business” after Canosa had given the false impression that the company was “imminently signing a contract” to sell its biofuels to the Pentagon. The suit’s charges included wire fraud, mail fraud, and violations under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The case was settled out of court and voluntarily dismissed less than one month after the defendants were summoned.

The following year, a New York court ruled that Golden Renewable owed a different plaintiff over $10,000 in a civil debt lawsuit. The company was also released from a New York state tax warrant in 2018 after paying an outstanding balance of $16,522. In January 2020, Moreno was released from another New York tax warrant along with his wife, totaling over $300,000. After stepping down as Braven’s CEO in April, Canosa remains on the company’s board of managers. Moreno currently still serves as Braven’s chief commercial officer.

Plastic trash hangs in a tree near Braven Environmental in Zebulon, N.C.

In April, Braven announced it had completed a financing round led by institutional investors Fortistar, Arosa Capital, and Avenue Capital, where Moreno also serves as senior managing director. While Fortistar and Arosa have investments in the energy sector, Avenue backs businesses in financial distress — or as it calls them, “good companies with bad balance sheets.”

But any bad balance sheets that Braven might have are unlikely to dissuade the numerous major petrochemical companies now banking on chemical recycling. Last year marked the ACC’s highest lobbying spend on record, up to nearly $20 million. That same year, the group shelled out more than $265,000 for Facebook and Twitter ads focused on promoting chemical recycling. One ACC ad effort included the sponsorship of a promotional video specifically for Braven, which features Canosa and Moreno alongside the ACC’s associate director of plastics sustainability.

Dow, Shell, and Chevron have all invested in developing their own plastic pyrolysis technology, while Exxon Mobil launched one of the largest chemical recycling plants in North America earlier this year, the first of 13 facilities it says it will launch by the end of 2026. Worldwide, the advanced recycling market is projected to grow by 3,233 percent in less than a decade, from $270 million in 2022 to more than $9 billion by 2031.

As chemical recycling spreads, we know from existing studies that the facilities are most likely to harm communities that are already vulnerable and marginalized.

“We found that these facilities are commonly sited in places where the surrounding community is disproportionately low income, or disproportionately people of color, or both.”

“We found that these facilities are commonly sited in places where the surrounding community is disproportionately low income, or disproportionately people of color, or both,” said Singla, who authored a report for the Natural Resources Defense Council on the environmental justice impact of chemical recycling.

Meanwhile, North Carolina could soon become the 25th state to take up the reclassification of chemical recycling. In April, three Republican state Senators introduced Senate Bill 725, which would amend the state’s waste management laws to explicitly note “solid waste management does not include advanced recycling.”

Braven, the only advanced recycling facility in North Carolina, was already exempt from obtaining a solid waste permit, according to Foote, the public information officer. Foote told The Intercept that since Braven processes “recovered material” — defined in state laws as “material that has known recycling potential, can be feasibly recycled, and has been diverted or removed from the solid waste stream” — it is not regulated as “solid waste.”

There has been one recent development that could slow chemical recycling down. In June, the EPA unveiled new proposed rules under the Toxic Substances Control Act that would establish reporting requirements for 18 substances derived from plastic pyrolysis. The agency would require companies to submit their chemical feedstocks for review so the agency can screen them for “impurities,” including PFAS, dioxins, heavy metals, bisphenols, and flame retardants.

The public comment period ended on August 19. The EPA is currently reviewing responses and is targeting early next year for follow-up action, according to a spokesperson.

The ACC, American Petroleum Institute, and Dow were among those who submitted comments urging the EPA to withdraw the proposed new rules.

“The ACC would welcome the opportunity to meet with EPA leadership to clarify misconceptions about advanced recycling,” the ACC wrote, “and invite Agency officials to an advanced recycling facility for a first-hand sense of their operations.”

In response to The Intercept’s request for comment, Ross Eisenberg, president of America’s Plastic Makers from the ACC’s Plastics Division, wrote in a statement, “Progress towards a circular economy can only be achieved with smart, cohesive approaches that avoid inconsistent and conflicting approaches by regulators. … ACC remains committed to working with EPA as a constructive stakeholder in the development of effective, practical, and responsible policies.”

Braven already appears to be pulling from the ACC’s playbook in its efforts to curry favor with state lawmakers. Democrat Deborah Ross, who represents the North Carolina congressional district that includes Zebulon, made a trip to Braven’s facility on August 25.

“I enjoyed meeting and learning from Braven’s innovative leaders and employees this morning in Zebulon,” Ross is quoted as saying in a Braven press release. “I look forward to applying the insights and information I gained during my visit to the important discussions in Congress about advanced recycling technologies.”

The Intercept emailed the compliance report to Ross’s office and asked whether Braven had mentioned the inspection and ongoing remediation efforts before, during, or after the representative’s visit.

“Congresswoman Ross does her best to accommodate invitations she receives from constituents and visits dozens of businesses in her district every year — these tours and constituent meetings should never be interpreted as expressing support for any particular company’s policy positions or business practices,” wrote a spokesperson. “She was not aware of this investigation before touring Braven, nor was it discussed during or after her visit. As a vocal supporter of environmental protections, she takes these allegations seriously and strongly supports NC DEQ’s work to hold companies in our state accountable for harmful waste or activities that threaten our people and our environment.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Schuyler Mitchell.

While Japan’s discharge of nuclear waste waters into the Pacific from its Fukushima nuclear plant has been drawing flak across the Pacific, a high-powered delegation of Chinese ocean and marine scientists and Asia-Pacific scholars from Shandong Province visited Fiji to promote South-South cooperation to mitigate climate change — the Pacific island nations’ biggest security threat.

Facilitated by the Chinese Embassy in Suva, Shandong Province and Fiji signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to exchange scholars and experts from the provincial institution to assist the Pacific Island nation in the agriculture sector.

At the signing event, Agriculture Minister Vatimi Rayalu said Fiji and China had a successful history of cooperating in agriculture.

• READ MORE: China in the Pacific

He told the Fiji Broadcasting Corporation that this initiative was critical to agricultural production to promote heightened collaboration among key stakeholders and help Fiji connect to the vast Chinese market.

Shandong Province has a 3000 km coastline with a population of 100 million. It is China’s third largest provincial economy, with a GDP of CNY 8.3 trillion (US$1.3 trillion) in 2021—equivalent to Mexico’s GDP.

The province has also played a major role in Chinese civilisation and is a cultural center for Confucianism, Taoism and Chinese Buddhism.

On August 30, during a day-long conference at the University of the South Pacific under the theme of sustainable development of small island states, scholars from Shandong Province and the Pacific exchanged ideas on cooperation in the sphere of the ocean and marine sciences, and education, development and cultural areas.

Chinese assistance welcomed
In a keynote address to the conference, Fiji’s Education Minister Aseri Radrodro welcomed China’s assistance to foster a scholars exchange programme and share best practices for improved teaching and learning processes.

He said: “We are restrategising our diplomatic relations via education platforms disturbed by the pandemic.”

Emphasising that respect is an essential ingredient of Pacific cultures, he welcomed Chinese interest in Pacific cultures.

Also, he invited China to assist Fiji and the region in areas such as marine sciences, counselling, medical services, IT, human resource management, and education policies and management.

“Overall, sustainable development for Small Island States requires a realistic approach that integrates social, economic, and environmental considerations and collaborations among governments, civil society, international organisations, and the private sector that is essential for achieving sustainable development goals,” he told delegates.

Radrodro invited more Chinese scholars to visit the Pacific to increase cultural understanding between the regions and suggested developing a school exchange programme between Fiji and China for young people to understand each other.

The Chinese ambassador to Fiji, Zhou Jian, pointed out that China and the Pacific Island Countries (PICs), were connected by the Pacific Ocean and in a spirit of South-South cooperation, China already had more than 20 development cooperation projects in the region (he listed them) and 10 sister city arrangements across the region.

Building a human community
Pointing out that his province’s institutions have some of the prominent scholars in the world on climatic change action and marine technology, the Vice-Chairman of Shandong Provincial Committee, Wang Shujian, said he hoped that these institutions would help to build a human community with a shared future in the Pacific.

Many Chinese speakers reflected in their presentations that their cooperative ventures would be in line with the Chinese government’s current international collaboration push known as the “Global Development Initiative”.

This initiative has eight priority areas: poverty alleviation, food security, pandemic response and vaccines, financing for development, climate change and green development, industrialisation, digital economy, and connectivity in the digital era.

Jope Koroisavou of the Ministry of iTaukei (indigenous) affairs explained that the “Blue Pacific” leaders in the region talk about is a way of life that “bridges our past with our future,” and it was important to re-establish the balance between taking and giving to nature.

He listed three takeaways in this respect: cultural resilience and preservation, eco-system stewardship and conservation, and community component and inclusive decision-making.

Professor Yang Jingpeng from the Centre for South Pacific Studies at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications acknowledged that they needed to learn from indigenous knowledge, where indigenous people were closely connected to the environment.

Bio-diversity, climate action, South-South cooperation
“They play an important role in protecting biodiversity,” he noted. “Their knowledge of nature will be greatly beneficial to address climatic change”.

He expressed the wish that under South-South cooperation, their centre would be able to work with this knowledge and scientific methodologies to mitigate climatic change.

Mesake Koroi of the FBC noted that Pacific Islanders needed to get over the idea that because indigenous villagers practice subsistence farming, they were poor when, in fact, they were rich in traditional knowledge, which was important to address the development and environmental challenges of today.

“Using this traditional knowledge, people don’t go out fishing when the winds are blowing in the wrong direction or the moon is not in the correct place”, he noted.

“In my village, 10,000 trees will be planted this year to confront climatic change.”

On an angry note, he referred to Japan’s dumping of nuclear-contaminated water to the Pacific Ocean using a purely “scientific” argument, which he described as “inexcusable vulgar, crude and irresponsible”.

He asked if science said was so safe, why did they not use it for irrigation in Japan?

Nuclear tests suffering
Koroi lamented that historically, major powers had used the Pacific for nuclear testing without respect for the islanders’ welfare — who had to suffer from nuclear fallouts.

“The British, French, and Americans are all guilty of these atrocities, and now the Japanese”, noted Koroi.

Since China was coming to the Pacific without this baggage, he hoped this would transform into a desire to work with the people of the Pacific for their welfare.

Professor He Baogang, of Deaking University in Australia, noted that though the Chinese mindset acknowledged that dealing with climate change was a human right (health right) issue, it still needed to be central to their approach to the problem.

“This should be laid down as important, ” he argued, and suggested that this could be demonstrated by working on areas such as putting green shipping corridors into action.

“China and Pacific Island countries need to look at an agreement to decarbonise the shipping industry,” he argued. “This conference needs to address how to proceed (in that direction)”.

Pointing out that there was a long history — going back to more than 8000 years — of Chinese ancestry among some Pacific people, pointing out that some Māori traditional tattoos were similar to the Chinese tattoos, Professor Chen Xiaochen, executive deputy director, Centre for Asia-Pacific Studies, East China Normal University, noted “now we are looking for common ground for Pacific development needs”.

Knowing each other better
In an informal conversation with IDN, one of the professors from China said that the time had come for the people of China and the Pacific to come to know each other better.

“Chinese students hardly know about Pacific cultures and the people,” he told IDN, adding, “I suppose the Pacific people don’t know much of our cultures as well.”

He believes closer collaboration with universities in Shandong Provincial would be ideal “because it is a centre of Chinese civilisation”.

“Now the Pacific is looking north,” noted Professor Xiaochen, adding, “my flight from Hong Kong was full of Chinese tourists coming South to Fiji”.

Kalinga Seneviratne is a visiting consultant with the University of the South Pacific journalism programme. IDN-InDepthNews is the flagship news service of the nonprofit Inter Press Syndicate. Republished in collaboration with Asia Pacific Report.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The post Tepco’s License to Kill: Dispersal of Radioactive Waste as Disaster Response appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John Laforge.

One of Fiji’s three deputy prime ministers, Viliame Gavoka, has appealed to the country’s prime minister to review his stance on Japan’s disposal of treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.

Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka supports Japan’s compliance with safety protocols outlined by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency.

However, Rabuka also spoke about the need for an independent scientific assessment.

• READ MORE: ‘The ocean is suffering’ – protesters fume over NZ silence on Fukushima wastewater dump
• Other Fukushima reports

He has also signed off on the Melanesian Spearhead Group’s Udaune Declaration on Climate Change, in which his fellow prime ministers of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Oslands and Vanuatu, and spokersperson of FLNKS of New Caledonia, “strongly urged Japan “not to discharge the treated water into the Pacific Ocean until and unless the treated water is incontrovertibly proven scientifically to be safe to do so and seriously consider other options like use in concrete”.

Japan has, however, already begun the release of the treated nuclear wastewater in spite of strong condemnation from the region and across the world.

Gavoka, who is also leader of the Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA), further highlighted the concerns of his party’s Youth section which also implored Rabuka to reconsider his position.

The SODELPA leader acknowledged the diversity of opinions within the coalition government and the allowance for conscience votes, underlining the dynamics of political relationships.

SODELPA general-secretary Viliame Takayawa is also concerned, particularly noting the view that Rabuka has taken on the role of a national leader.

He confirmed that the party intends to communicate directly with the prime minister on Tuesday to raise this pressing issue.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Japan yesterday began the decades-long release of more than one million tonnes of treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean in defiance of protests across the region.

Protesters in Auckland decried New Zealand’s “convenient silence” on Japan’s nuclear waste release at a rally.

Among the crowd was a young Pacific advocate who called on the New Zealand government to oppose the release.

• READ MORE: Niue and Tuvalu ‘concerned, dismayed, disappointed’ with Fukushima release
• Other Fukushima reports

“We’re calling for New Zealand to release a statement opposing the dump and then come up with a regional consensus that the leaders’ meeting [Pacific Islands Forum Summit] in November can accept,” said codirector Marco de Jong of Te Kuaka New Zealand Alternative.

At the Auckland protest on Friday morning, de Jong said New Zealand was taking the easy way out.

He said the government’s silence was convenient and left Pacific nations to fight on their own.

“The ocean is suffering, climate change is accelerating. And the Pacific is being rendered as a sacrifice zone, a military buffer and climate disaster area,” de Jong said.

‘Nuclear legacies’
“Things like the nuclear waste dump compound harms. There are nuclear legacies that have not been addressed. And this is part of a broader story.”

Aaron Lee, an Aucklander originally from South Korea, said the issue was causing tension back home.

“It should not be happening,” Lee said.

He said if it really was “clean water” and “clean treated wastewater”, why could not Japan use it in its agricultural lands?

Lee said protesters had been fiercely opposing the release in South Korea.

Auckland University sociology lecturer Dr Karly Burch told the protest: “it’s really important to put it in the context of nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism.”

“It involves targeting indigenous peoples and their lands and waters to sustain the nuclear production process,” she said.

Legal thresholds
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) standards were basically legal thresholds or standards, Dr Burch said.

“So they’re saying up to this amount, it’s legally allowable to pollute, it’s legally allowable to have bodies exposed to a certain amount of ionising radiation.”

“And so it’s really important that when we hear these things, when we hear these approvals, we’re thinking of them in legal terms, because that’s really what this is all about.”

She said the IAEA’s legal standards were “extremely narrow” in their focus.

The IAEA backs it’s standards the UN nuclear watchdog boss told RNZ in July 2023.

Despite assurances, protesters in and around the Pacific Ocean have hit the streets.

In Suva, hundreds of protesters gathered and chanted: “If it’s safe, put it in Japan.”

“Pacific Islands Forum, United Nations, We are the Pacific, We are angry,” protesters chanted.

And at least 16 protesters in Seoul were arrested as they attempted to enter the Japanese embassy.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Fukushima protest march | 25/8/23#fyp #fiji #FukushimaNuclearWasteWater pic.twitter.com/zHvjem9wTD

— fijivillage (@fijivillage) August 24, 2023

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The leaders of five Melanesian countries and territories avoided a definitive update on the status of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua’s application for full membership in the Melanesian Spearhead Group in Port Vila.

However, the 22nd MSG Leaders’ Summit was hailed as the “most memorable and successful” by Vanuatu’s prime minister as leaders signed off on two new declarations in their efforts to make the subregion more influential.

As well as the hosts, the meeting was attended by Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and the pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) of New Caledonia.

• READ MORE: ‘The world is watching’ – it’s a test for Melanesian leaders over West Papua, says Wenda
• Other MSG reports

But the meeting had an anticlimactic ending after the leaders failed to release the details about the final outcomes or speak to news media.

The first agreement that was endorsed is the Udaune Declaration on Climate Change to address the climate crisis and “urging countries not to discharge potentially harmful treated nuclear contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean”.

“Unless the water treated is incontrovertibly proven, by independent scientists, to be safe to do and seriously consider other options,” Vanuatu Prime Minister Alatoi Ishmael Kalsakau said at the event’s farewell dinner last night.

The leaders also signed off on the Efate Declaration on Mutual Respect, Cooperation and Amity to advance security initiatives and needs of the Melanesian countries.

This document aims to “address the national security needs in the MSG region through the Pacific Way, kipung, tok stori, talanoa and storian, and bonded by shared values and adherence to the Melanesian vuvale, cultures and traditions,” Kalsakau said.

He said the leaders “took complex issues such as climate change, denuclearisation, and human rights and applied collective wisdom” to address the issues that were on the table.

Stefan Armbruster reporting from Port Vila.  Video: SBS World News

No update on West Papua
The issue of full membership for the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP)  was a big ticket item on the agenda at the meeting in Port Vila, according to MSG chair Kalsakau.

However, there was no update provided on it and the leaders avoided fronting up to the media except for photo opportunities.

ULMWP leader Benny Wenda (above) told RNZ Pacific late on Thursday he was still not aware of the result of their membership application but that he was “confident” about it.

“I don’t know the outcome. Maybe this evening the leaders will announce at the reception,” Wenda said.

“From the beginning I have been confident that this is the time for the leaders to give us full membership so we can engage with Indonesia.”

According to the MSG Secretariat the final communique is now expected to be released on Friday.

Referred to Pacific Islands Forum
However, it is likely that the West Papua issue will be referred to the Pacific Islands Forum to be dealt with.

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape said after the signing: “on the issues that was raised in regards to West Papua…these matters to be handled at [Pacific Islands Forum]”.

“The leaders from the Pacific will also visit Jakarta and Paris” to raise issues about sovereignty and human rights,” he said.

Kalsakau said he looked forward to progressing the implementaiton of important issue recommendations from the 22nd MSG Leaders’ Summit which also include “supporting the 2019 call by the Forum Leaders for a visit by the OHCHR to West Papua”.

Indonesia ‘proud’
Indonesia’s Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Pahala Mansury, said Indonesia was proud to be part of the Melanesian family.

Indonesia is an associate member of MSG and has said it does not accept ULMWP’s application to become a full member because it claims that this goes against the MSG’s founding principles and charter.

During the meeting this week, Indonesian delegates walked out on occasions when ULMWP representatives made their intervention.

Some West Papua campaigners say these actions showed that Indonesia did not understand “the Melanesian way”.

“You just don’t walk out of a sacred meeting haus when you’re invited to be part of it,” one observer said.

However, Mansury said Indonesia hoped to “continue to increase, enhance and strengthen future collaboration between Indonesia and all of the Melanesian countries”.

“We are actually brothers and sisters of Melanesia and we hope we can continue to strengthen the bond together,” he said.

Australia and China attended as special guests at the invitation of the Vanuatu government.

China supported the Vanuatu government to host the meeting.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The leaders of five Melanesian countries and territories avoided a definitive update on the status of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua’s application for full membership in the Melanesian Spearhead Group in Port Vila.

However, the 22nd MSG Leaders’ Summit was hailed as the “most memorable and successful” by Vanuatu’s prime minister as leaders signed off on two new declarations in their efforts to make the subregion more influential.

As well as the hosts, the meeting was attended by Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and the pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) of New Caledonia.

• READ MORE: ‘The world is watching’ – it’s a test for Melanesian leaders over West Papua, says Wenda
• Other MSG reports

But the meeting had an anticlimactic ending after the leaders failed to release the details about the final outcomes or speak to news media.

The first agreement that was endorsed is the Udaune Declaration on Climate Change to address the climate crisis and “urging countries not to discharge potentially harmful treated nuclear contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean”.

“Unless the water treated is incontrovertibly proven, by independent scientists, to be safe to do and seriously consider other options,” Vanuatu Prime Minister Alatoi Ishmael Kalsakau said at the event’s farewell dinner last night.

The leaders also signed off on the Efate Declaration on Mutual Respect, Cooperation and Amity to advance security initiatives and needs of the Melanesian countries.

This document aims to “address the national security needs in the MSG region through the Pacific Way, kipung, tok stori, talanoa and storian, and bonded by shared values and adherence to the Melanesian vuvale, cultures and traditions,” Kalsakau said.

He said the leaders “took complex issues such as climate change, denuclearisation, and human rights and applied collective wisdom” to address the issues that were on the table.

Stefan Armbruster reporting from Port Vila.  Video: SBS World News

No update on West Papua
The issue of full membership for the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP)  was a big ticket item on the agenda at the meeting in Port Vila, according to MSG chair Kalsakau.

However, there was no update provided on it and the leaders avoided fronting up to the media except for photo opportunities.

ULMWP leader Benny Wenda (above) told RNZ Pacific late on Thursday he was still not aware of the result of their membership application but that he was “confident” about it.

“I don’t know the outcome. Maybe this evening the leaders will announce at the reception,” Wenda said.

“From the beginning I have been confident that this is the time for the leaders to give us full membership so we can engage with Indonesia.”

According to the MSG Secretariat the final communique is now expected to be released on Friday.

Referred to Pacific Islands Forum
However, it is likely that the West Papua issue will be referred to the Pacific Islands Forum to be dealt with.

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape said after the signing: “on the issues that was raised in regards to West Papua…these matters to be handled at [Pacific Islands Forum]”.

“The leaders from the Pacific will also visit Jakarta and Paris” to raise issues about sovereignty and human rights,” he said.

Kalsakau said he looked forward to progressing the implementaiton of important issue recommendations from the 22nd MSG Leaders’ Summit which also include “supporting the 2019 call by the Forum Leaders for a visit by the OHCHR to West Papua”.

Indonesia ‘proud’
Indonesia’s Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Pahala Mansury, said Indonesia was proud to be part of the Melanesian family.

Indonesia is an associate member of MSG and has said it does not accept ULMWP’s application to become a full member because it claims that this goes against the MSG’s founding principles and charter.

During the meeting this week, Indonesian delegates walked out on occasions when ULMWP representatives made their intervention.

Some West Papua campaigners say these actions showed that Indonesia did not understand “the Melanesian way”.

“You just don’t walk out of a sacred meeting haus when you’re invited to be part of it,” one observer said.

However, Mansury said Indonesia hoped to “continue to increase, enhance and strengthen future collaboration between Indonesia and all of the Melanesian countries”.

“We are actually brothers and sisters of Melanesia and we hope we can continue to strengthen the bond together,” he said.

Australia and China attended as special guests at the invitation of the Vanuatu government.

China supported the Vanuatu government to host the meeting.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The leaders of five Melanesian countries and territories avoided a definitive update on the status of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua’s application for full membership in the Melanesian Spearhead Group in Port Vila.

However, the 22nd MSG Leaders’ Summit was hailed as the “most memorable and successful” by Vanuatu’s prime minister as leaders signed off on two new declarations in their efforts to make the subregion more influential.

As well as the hosts, the meeting was attended by Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and the pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) of New Caledonia.

• READ MORE: ‘The world is watching’ – it’s a test for Melanesian leaders over West Papua, says Wenda
• Other MSG reports

But the meeting had an anticlimactic ending after the leaders failed to release the details about the final outcomes or speak to news media.

The first agreement that was endorsed is the Udaune Declaration on Climate Change to address the climate crisis and “urging countries not to discharge potentially harmful treated nuclear contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean”.

“Unless the water treated is incontrovertibly proven, by independent scientists, to be safe to do and seriously consider other options,” Vanuatu Prime Minister Alatoi Ishmael Kalsakau said at the event’s farewell dinner last night.

The leaders also signed off on the Efate Declaration on Mutual Respect, Cooperation and Amity to advance security initiatives and needs of the Melanesian countries.

This document aims to “address the national security needs in the MSG region through the Pacific Way, kipung, tok stori, talanoa and storian, and bonded by shared values and adherence to the Melanesian vuvale, cultures and traditions,” Kalsakau said.

He said the leaders “took complex issues such as climate change, denuclearisation, and human rights and applied collective wisdom” to address the issues that were on the table.

Stefan Armbruster reporting from Port Vila.  Video: SBS World News

No update on West Papua
The issue of full membership for the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP)  was a big ticket item on the agenda at the meeting in Port Vila, according to MSG chair Kalsakau.

However, there was no update provided on it and the leaders avoided fronting up to the media except for photo opportunities.

ULMWP leader Benny Wenda (above) told RNZ Pacific late on Thursday he was still not aware of the result of their membership application but that he was “confident” about it.

“I don’t know the outcome. Maybe this evening the leaders will announce at the reception,” Wenda said.

“From the beginning I have been confident that this is the time for the leaders to give us full membership so we can engage with Indonesia.”

According to the MSG Secretariat the final communique is now expected to be released on Friday.

Referred to Pacific Islands Forum
However, it is likely that the West Papua issue will be referred to the Pacific Islands Forum to be dealt with.

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape said after the signing: “on the issues that was raised in regards to West Papua…these matters to be handled at [Pacific Islands Forum]”.

“The leaders from the Pacific will also visit Jakarta and Paris” to raise issues about sovereignty and human rights,” he said.

Kalsakau said he looked forward to progressing the implementaiton of important issue recommendations from the 22nd MSG Leaders’ Summit which also include “supporting the 2019 call by the Forum Leaders for a visit by the OHCHR to West Papua”.

Indonesia ‘proud’
Indonesia’s Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Pahala Mansury, said Indonesia was proud to be part of the Melanesian family.

Indonesia is an associate member of MSG and has said it does not accept ULMWP’s application to become a full member because it claims that this goes against the MSG’s founding principles and charter.

During the meeting this week, Indonesian delegates walked out on occasions when ULMWP representatives made their intervention.

Some West Papua campaigners say these actions showed that Indonesia did not understand “the Melanesian way”.

“You just don’t walk out of a sacred meeting haus when you’re invited to be part of it,” one observer said.

However, Mansury said Indonesia hoped to “continue to increase, enhance and strengthen future collaboration between Indonesia and all of the Melanesian countries”.

“We are actually brothers and sisters of Melanesia and we hope we can continue to strengthen the bond together,” he said.

Australia and China attended as special guests at the invitation of the Vanuatu government.

China supported the Vanuatu government to host the meeting.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

A Japanese government spokesperson says it is “not wilfully trying to divide the Pacific” over the Fukushima treated nuclear wastewater release.

Japan is set to start discharging more than one million tonnes of treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean tomorrow (local time).

This comes 12 years after a tsunami slammed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant resulting in what has been labelled as the largest civil nuclear energy disaster since Chernobyl.

• READ MORE:  NZ women’s peace group protests over imminent Fukushima nuclear wastewater release
• Other Fukushima reports

Palau, Papua New Guinea, Cook Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia have publicly backed the plan or at least placed their faith in Japan’s word that it will be safe.

The release is forecast to take 30 to 40 years to complete.

Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka is the most recent Pacific leader to speak out in defence of Japan.

He said he is satisfied their plan is safe after reading the UN nuclear agency’s report.

Rabuka’s voice is important because he is in the Pacific Islands Forum leadership team — known as the Troika — as the past chair of the Forum. The other two are current chair Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown and future chair, the Tongan Prime Minister Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni.

Since making that statement Rabuka has apologised for speaking ahead of the recent Troika meeting, but he has not backtracked on his view.

‘Discharged’ into Japan’s own backyard
Rabuka has taken to social media in response to criticism of his statement of support.

“Comparisons between the nuclear legacy in the Pacific and Japan’s nuclear wastewater release is fear-mongering,” he wrote.

He also said the wastewater was not being dumped but discharged into Japan’s “own backyard”, over 7000km from Fiji.

1/3 One of my critics at the weekend appeared to be somehow connecting the wastewater discharge with the cataclysmic power of the nuclear bombs dropped in the Pacific as part of weapons testing.

— Sitiveni Rabuka (@slrabuka) August 22, 2023

That in itself has been the centre of debate with nuclear activists continuing to call it a dump.

One nuclear expert appointed by the Pacific Islands Forum said there was an argument that it was a dump over a release.

But the International Atomic Energy Agency has gone to great lengths — even travelling to New Zealand and Rarotonga — to explain why this is not a dump.

Director-General Rafael Grossi told RNZ Pacific earlier this year that he condemned dumping which he said had happened in the past and was not the case for Japan’s plan.

Against and on the fence
Vanuatu’s Foreign Minister has drafted a declaration urging Japan to stop the discharge.

He wants the leaders of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) meeting in Port Vila today to support the declaration.

Tuvalu has also spoken out, expressing opposition to Rabuka’s stance.

Tuvalu’s Minister for Finance, Seve Paeniu told FBC News that if Japan was genuinely confident, why did it not consider disposing of it within its own lakes and waters.

TEPCO assures the Pacific
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) spokesperson Junichi Matsumoto told the first media briefing today that his team was “moving quickly” to prepare the release which would depend on the conditions.

“The final decision will be made on the morning of the [August] 24 based on the climate conditions or weather conditions,” he said.

“A very small amount will be carefully discharged using a two-step process.”

RNZ asked TEPCO about the nuclear legacy in the Pacific.

“To the members of the PIF, we have been providing explanations on the discharge into the sea,” Matsumoto said.

“So we would like to continue to provide the explanation on our initiative.

“And in terms of assurance, it may be a bit different in terms of nuance, but the result of sea area monitoring will be communicated.

Matsumoto said anyone wishing to could check the results of the sea area monitoring on the TEPCO website.

When questioned about when Pacific nations would see the effects of the release, he said that according to dispersion models particles would arrive on the shores of Papua New Guinea and Fiji in “a few years’ time or a few decades”.

“It will be impossible to distinguish that [discharged] tritium [in the Pacific Ocean] from that already existing in nature,” Matsumoto said.

A Japan government spokesperson said Tokyo was not wilfully trying to divide the Pacific and no compensation would be given to Pacific nations for potential reputational damage.

“The Japanese government has been taking opportunities at international conferences and at bilateral meetings to thoroughly and meticulously explain and disseminate information to the world through its website, as well as through social network media including X [formerly Twitter],” the spokesperson said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) Aotearoa, the longest running women’s peace group in New Zealand, has called on the Japanese government to change its plan to release treated nuclear wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station into the Pacific Ocean.

The protest comes as Pacific leaders remain undecided over the controversial — and widely condemned — Japanese move as reports suggest the start of the wastewater release could begin in the next few days.

“Releasing more radioactive materials is a wilful act of harm that will spread further radioactive contamination into the global environment,”said WILPF in its protest letter sent to Japanese Ambassador Ito Koichi last weekend.

• READ MORE: Uncertainty remains in Pacific as Japan due to make Fukushima decision
• Other Fukushima reports

“The treated water contains tritium, which cannot be removed. Tritium will be dumped into the ocean for several decades.

“There has been no assessment of future biological impacts. Nor has there been a review of less expensive and safer alternatives.”

An RNZ Pacific report said today that the past, present and future Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) chairs — known as “the Troika” — had not decided if they were for or against the imminent discharge.

The Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) meeting in Port Vila, Vanuatu, this week has been urged to call on Japan to drop plans for the wastewater release.

Accident reminder
WILPF reminded the Japanese government in its protest letter that after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami which caused the accident at the power station, the radioactive contaminated water was treated by a multi-nuclide removal system (ALPS) and stored in more than 1000 tanks on the power plant site.

It also reminded Tokyo of its pledge about Fukushima at the time.

The Japanese government and the operating company, TEPCO, stated that this water would not be disposed of in any way without the understanding of the concerned parties and would be stored on land.

The London Convention, which Japan ratified in 1980, strictly regulates the dumping of radioactive waste into the ocean.

“Therefore,” said the protest letter, “the release of treated water is a violation of international law.

“Such an action would also damage the trust between Japan and its neighbours and the Pacific Islands.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Image by Scott Goodwil.

Market fundamentalists would have us believe that if only we left the provisioning of all human needs to the tender mercies of unregulated markets, a cornucopia of fabulous wealth would trickle down to all. A powerful fire hose of propaganda ceaselessly proclaims this, amply funded by those whose interest lie in accumulating unlimited wealth without regard to social or environmental harm.

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The post The World’s Food System Brings us Inflation, Hunger and Waste appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Pete Dolack.

The Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is disappointed with the Fiji government and Pacific Islands Forum’s endorsement of the Japanese government’s plans to dump 1.3 million tonnes of nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean at the end of this month.

Nuclear justice campaigner Epeli Lesuma of PANG said this was a “blatant disregard” of the expert opinion of a panel of scientists commissioned by the Forum.

“It’s disappointing because Pacific leaders appointed this panel of experts so ideally our trust should be with them and the recommendations they have provided to us,” Lesuma said.

• READ MORE:  PNG prime minister urged to oppose nuke wastewater release into the Pacific Ocean
• Other Fukushima reports

“These are not just random scientists. These are esteemed and respected professionals engaged to provide us with this advice.”

Last week, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said he was satisfied with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) report that stated Japan’s plans to release treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean had met relevant international standards.

“I have made it my business as a Pacific Island leader to carefully study the information and data on the matter…I am satisfied that Japan has demonstrated commitment to satisfy the wishes of the Pacific Island states, as conveyed to Japan by the Pacific Island Forum chair,” Rabuka said in a video on the Fiji government’s official Facebook page.

“I am satisfied that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report is reassuring enough to dispel any fears of any untoward degradation of the ocean environment that would adversely affect lives and ecosystems in our precious blue Pacific,” he said.

‘Convinced’ of IAEA’s seriousness
“I am convinced of the seriousness of the IAEA to continuously monitor this process in Japan.”

The controversial plan by Japan continues to spark anger and concern across many communities, environmental activists, non-government and civil society organisations.

Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s statement. Video: Fiji govt

Sharing Rabuka’s sentiments was the PIF chair and Cook Islands Prime Minister, Mark Brown, who said the IAEA was the world’s foremost authority on nuclear safety.

“We have received the comments, and the report from our scientific panel and the IAEA and [we are] taking a measured response.

“I’d have to say that as the IAEA is responsible for assessment and for anything to do with the safety of reactors around the world, their findings and credibility need to be upheld.”

For Lesuma and other concerned members of Pacific communities, the fight was more than just the Pacific being used as a dumping ground.

He maintains that the two Pacific Island leaders’ support for the IAEA report discredited the PIF-commissioned panel’s decision and credibility.

“They are contradicting themselves because they have appointed this group of experts to advise them. Yet they do not believe their recommendations.

‘Now we are backtracking’
“It’s disappointing that this panel was appointed during Fiji’s term as Forum chair. Here we were as head of this regional body but now we are backtracking and saying we don’t believe you.”

Lesuma said civil society groups would continue to back the opinions and recommendations of PIF’s independent panel of scientific experts.

“Their opinions were formulated by science and with the Pacific people and the care of the ocean at its centre,” he said.

PIF’s independent panel of experts remains adamant that there is insufficient data to deem the discharge of nuclear waste safe for release into the Pacific Ocean.

In a June statement this year, PIF General Secretary Henry Puna said the Forum remained committed to addressing strong concerns for the significance of the potential threat of nuclear contamination to the health and security of the Blue Pacific, its people, and prospects.

“Even before Japan announced its decision in April 2021, Pacific states, meeting for the first time in December 2020 as States Parties to the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (Treaty of Rarotonga), recalled concerns about the environmental impact of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Reactor accident in 2011 and urged Japan to take all steps necessary to address any potential harm to the Pacific,” he said.

“They ‘called on states to take all appropriate measures within their territory, jurisdiction or control to prevent significant transboundary harm to the territory of another state, as required under international law’.

International legal rules
“These important statements stem from key international legal rules and principles, including the unique obligation placed by the Rarotonga Treaty on Pacific states to ‘Prevent Dumping’ (Article 7), in view of our nuclear testing legacy and its permanent impacts on our peoples’ health, environment and human rights.”

Puna said Pacific states therefore had a legal obligation “to prevent the dumping of radioactive wastes and other radioactive matter by anyone” and “not to take any action to assist or encourage the dumping by anyone of radioactive wastes and other radioactive matter at sea anywhere within the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone”.

Specific concerns by the Forum on nuclear contamination issues were not new, Puna added, and that for many years, the Forum had to deal with attempts by other states to dump nuclear waste into the Pacific.

“Leaders have urged Japan and other shipping states to store or dump their nuclear waste in their home countries rather than storing or dumping them in the Pacific.

“In 1985, the Forum welcomed the Japan PM’s statement that ‘Japan had no intention of dumping radioactive waste in the Pacific Ocean in disregard of the concern expressed by the communities of the region’.”

Against this regional context, he said the Forum’s engagement on the present unprecedented issue signify that for the Blue Pacific, this was not merely a nuclear safety issue.

“It is rather a nuclear legacy issue, an ocean, fisheries, environment, biodiversity, climate change, and health issue with the future of our children and future generations at stake.

Pacific people ‘have nothing to gain’
“Our people do not have anything to gain from Japan’s plan but have much at risk for generations to come,” Puna had said.

The Pacific Ocean contains the greatest biomass of organisms of ecological, economic, and cultural value, including 70 percent of the world’s fisheries. It is the largest continuous body of water on the planet.

The health of all the world’s ocean ecosystems is in documented decline due to a variety of stressors, including climate change, over-exploitation of resources, and pollution, a Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) report highlighted.

The PINA news report cited a paper by the US National Association of Marine Laboratories (NAML), an organisation of more than 100 member laboratories, that stated the proposed release of the contaminated water was a transboundary and transgenerational issue of concern for the health of marine ecosystems and those whose lives and livelihoods depend on them.

Japan aims to gradually release 1.3 million tonnes of treated nuclear wastewater from the defunct Fukushima power plant over a period of 30-40 years.

Aralai Vosayaco is a final-year student journalist at The University of the South Pacific. She is also the 2023 news editor (national) of Wansolwara, USP Journalism’s student training newspaper and online publication. Asia Pacific Report and Wansolwara collaborate.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Wansolwara.

Japan plans to start releasing treated nuclear wastewater from the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean as soon as later this month, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun daily is reporting, citing government sources.

The newspaper said the release was likely to come shortly after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida meets US President Joe Biden and the South Korean President, Yoon Suk-yeol, next week in the US, where Kishida planned to explain the safety of the wastewater.

Japan’s nuclear regulator last month granted approval for plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) to start releasing the water, which Japan and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) say is safe but nearby countries fear may contaminate food.

• READ MORE: Anti-nuclear group condemns Fiji PM Rabuka’s Fukushima wastewater stance
• Other Fukushima reports

Bottom-trawling fishing was scheduled to start off Fukushima, north-east of Tokyo, in September, and the government aimed to start the water discharge before the fishing season got under way, the newspaper said.

In July the UN’s nuclear watchdog approved plans by Japan to release the water, despite objections from local fishing communities and other countries in the region.

About 1.3m tonnes of water stored in huge tanks on the site has been filtered through TEPCO’s advanced liquid processing system (ALPS) to remove most radioactive elements except for tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that is difficult to separate from water.

500 Olympic pool sized
The treated water will be diluted with seawater so that the concentration of tritium is well below internationally approved levels before being released into the ocean 1km from the shoreline via an undersea tunnel.

The water — enough to fill 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools — became contaminated when it was used to cool fuel rods that melted after the power plant was hit by a powerful earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

Discharging the water is expected to take 30 to 40 years to complete.

Attempts by Japanese government officials to win regional support for the plan have had limited success.

China denounced the plan as “extremely irresponsible” when it was announced in 2021. Hong Kong has threatened to ban food imports from 10 Japanese prefectures if the water release goes ahead as planned.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Pacific anti-nuclear advocacy groups and campaigners have condemned the Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s backing of Japan’s plans to release over one million tonnes of treated nuclear wastewater from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean.

On Thursday, Rabuka announced he was “satisfied” with Japan’s efforts to demonstrate that the release will be safe.

He said he had read the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report which “works for us” and that he “trusts their expert judgment and monitoring process”.

• READ MORE: Other Fukushima reports

He also encouraged others to read the report.

“It is my job as a leader to treasure and reassure myself and to reassure you that I am paying close attention to this,” he said.

“With Japanese friends and other partners including the IAEA, I will personally be ensuring the highest possible standards of safety and protection for our vast liquid continent and under my leadership, Fiji will continue to defend our precious Pacific home.”

The IAEA has said Japan has checked off all boxes to ensure the imminent release of the treated nuclear waste would be consistent with international standards.

AFG Fiji ‘deeply concerned’
However, the Alliance for Future Generation Fiji said it was “deeply concerned” and “condemned” Rabuka’s stance.

The group is urging Rabuka to reconsider “and take a stronger position” on the issue.

AFG Fiji said releasing treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean would have “far-reaching consequences for the entire Pacific region and beyond”.

“This action has the potential to inflict lasting damage to marine ecosystems, threatening the livelihoods of countless communities that depend on the ocean for sustenance and economic well-being. Our concerns regarding this matter are deeply rooted in the Pacific Ocean as a source of identity for all Pacific communities,” AFG Fiji said.

“We urge the Fiji Prime Minister and by extension, his government, to reconsider its stance and take a stronger position in advocating for the implementation of alternative, safe, and sustainable solutions for the Fukushima nuclear wastewater.

“We also urge Pacific leaders to trust the independent panel of scientific experts, appointed by the Pacific Islands Forum to review the data and information provided by Japan. As members of the global community, it is our collective responsibility to uphold principles of environmental stewardship and to prioritise the health and safety of our oceans and the lives they sustain,” the NGO said.

The campaigners are also calling on the international community to show solidarity and “demand that Japan seeks alternative solutions to handle its nuclear waste responsibly”.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Pacific anti-nuclear advocacy groups and campaigners have condemned Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s backing of Japan’s plans to release over one million tonnes of treated nuclear wastewater from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean.

On Thursday, Rabuka announced he was “satisfied” with Japan’s efforts to demonstrate that the release will be safe.

He said he had read the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report which “works for us” and that he “trusts their expert judgement and monitoring process”.

• READ MORE: Other Fukshima reports

He also encouraged others to read the report.

“It is my job as a leader to treasure and reassure myself and to reassure you that I am paying close attention to this,” he said.

“With Japanese friends and other partners including the IAEA, I will personally be ensuring the highest possible standards of safety and protection for our vast liquid continent and under my leadership, Fiji will continue to defend our precious Pacific home.”

The IAEA has said Japan has checked off all boxes to ensure the imminent release of the treated nuclear waste would be consistent with international standards.

AFG Fiji ‘deeply concerned’
However, the Alliance for Future Generation Fiji said it was “deeply concerned” and “condemned” Rabuka’s stance.

The group is urging Rabuka to reconsider “and take a stronger position” on the issue.

AFG Fiji said releasing treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean would have “far-reaching consequences for the entire Pacific region and beyond”.

“This action has the potential to inflict lasting damage to marine ecosystems, threatening the livelihoods of countless communities that depend on the ocean for sustenance and economic well-being.

“Our concerns regarding this matter are deeply rooted in the Pacific Ocean as a source of identity for all Pacific communities,” AFG Fiji said.

“We urge the Fiji Prime Minister and by extension, his government, to reconsider its stance and take a stronger position in advocating for the implementation of alternative, safe, and sustainable solutions for the Fukushima nuclear wastewater.

“We also urge Pacific leaders to trust the independent panel of scientific experts, appointed by the Pacific Islands Forum to review the data and information provided by Japan. As members of the global community, it is our collective responsibility to uphold principles of environmental stewardship and to prioritize the health and safety of our oceans and the lives they sustain,” the NGO said.

The campaigners are also calling on the international community to show solidarity and “demand that Japan seeks alternative solutions to handle its nuclear waste responsibly”.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

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Last week, regulators rolled out enhanced oversight for new hospices in Arizona, California, Nevada and Texas. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which pays for most of American hospice care, announced that this change was spurred by “numerous reports of hospice fraud, waste, and abuse” and “serious concerns about market oversaturation.”

In November, ProPublica and The New Yorker highlighted that the four states were overrun with for-profit hospices, many of them sharing the same addresses and owners. Some of these hospices obtained licenses only to sell them to other entrepreneurs. Others appeared to be billing Medicare for “phantom” — that is, nonexistent — patients. Some did both. The government’s own data revealed a pattern of rapid hospice growth in the four states, far outstripping the demand for services.

A ProPublica analysis of Medicare data reveals a sharp uptick in providers since 2018.

During the new oversight period, which can last up to a year, Medicare and its contractors will now scrutinize the claims submitted by new hospices in these states before they pay them. This process — often known as “medical review” or “pre-pay review” — will make it more difficult for a hospice to bill the government for inappropriate patients or medically unnecessary services. Theresa Forster, vice president for end-of-life care policy at the National Association for Home Care & Hospice, praised this action, which all four industry trade groups had recommended. “This gives new hospices an opportunity to start off on the right foot and identify any problem areas from the start,” she said.

The change is part of a larger effort by CMS this year to address fraud, waste and abuse in its hospice program. In January, CMS overhauled its inspections of hospices, with the changes going into effect immediately. In March, the agency released a proposed rule that would require further analysis of the number of patients leaving hospice alive, the diagnoses provided on hospice claims and Medicare hospice spending. And in April, the agency made hospice ownership data public for the first time. The data will allow patients and families to better discern whether their hospice is for-profit or not-for-profit — a distinction that, as researchers have shown, can significantly affect the quality of care. “It’s plain and simple: families deserve transparency when making decisions about hospice and home health care for their loved ones,” Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “Shining a light on ownership data is good for families, good for researchers, and good for enforcement agencies.”

These reforms were prompted not just by the ProPublica-New Yorker story but by the continued pressure from lobbyists and lawmakers in its wake. This spring, during hearings held by the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees, members cited the investigation as they questioned Becerra on the agency’s next steps for tackling hospice profiteering. In one exchange, Becerra testified that his inspectors had “conducted some unannounced site visits of the hospices identified by that article” and that an audit of suspicious providers was underway. Legislators have sent a series of public letters to HHS, requesting urgent briefings and actions on hospice fraud, including two this summer. The most recent letter, released last week and signed by 26 representatives from both parties, applauded CMS’ commitment to addressing hospice abuse while also requesting further reforms, including targeted moratoriums in high-growth areas and standards to rein in deceptive marketing practices.

“This is an area that escapes partisan gridlock,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., one of the letter’s signatories and coordinators, told me. “No one sympathizes with people who are cheating this system, particularly when you are involving some of America’s most vulnerable populations.”

Palliative care physicians have also been pushing for stricter guidelines. In April, the Journal of Palliative Medicine published a statement of “Core Roles and Responsibilities” signed by 325 doctors in the field. The group was motivated to issue the statement, it wrote, “out of concern for physician colleagues who may be asked to participate in hospice programs that are staffed, structured, and operated in ways that put patients and families at risk of poor care, and concomitantly expose physicians to violations of clinical and ethical standards.” Among other improvements, it called for hospices to strengthen their staffing, training and frequency of visits.

Ira Byock, the lead author and the former president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, said that the condition of hospice care in the United States represented a “true public health crisis.”

This year has also seen a spate of further reporting, commentary and research on the profit motive in hospice, including a detailed report on private equity’s role in hospice care from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Eileen Appelbaum, the center’s co-director and one of the co-authors of the report, “Preying on the Dying,” said that she has long been concerned about how investors can harm vulnerable patients and families. “Problems of asymmetric information — most patients and their caregivers have no prior experience with hospice care — further increase the difficulty of overseeing private hospice agencies,” the report notes.

Ben Marcantonio, the interim CEO at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, the industry’s largest trade group, said that “in my experience, whether hospices are gaming the system is not a direct reflection of tax status. What we need is the right stewardship of taxpayer dollars, so the right delivery of care is provided at the right time with the right amount of resources.”

Blumenauer told me that he and other legislators were committed to checking in with CMS and trade groups like NAHC and NHPCO about ongoing, collaborative efforts to reform the hospice program. “Your article struck a chord on a series of levels,” he said. “We are going to continue pounding away on this issue.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Ava Kofman.

The post Dumping Doubts: Releasing Fukushima’s Waste Water appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) disaster has forever stained the Japanese nuclear industry.  Since then, the site has been marked by over 1,000 tanks filled with contaminated water that arises from reactor cooling.  The attempts by the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc (TEPCO) to decommission and clean the plant has also seen a daily complement of 150 tons arising from groundwater leakage into the buildings and systems involved in the cooling process.

According to Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority, the gradual 1.3 million or so tons kept in those tanks into the Pacific over three decades is something that can be executed without serious environmental consequences.  This was a view that was already entertained in 2021, expressing confidence that the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) being used in cleaning the contaminated water would be effective.  Of primary concern here is the presence of a radioactive form of hydrogen called tritium, the presence of which is a challenge to remove.

There are various questions arising from this, not least the assumption that the levels of radioactivity arising from tritium will be significantly reduced by 1/40^th of regulatory standards through the use of seawater.  But as has been pointed out by such scientists as Ken Buesseler, Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress and Antony M. Hooker, there are also nontritium radionuclides that “are generally of greater health concern as evidenced by their much higher dose coefficient – a measure of the dose, or potential human health impacts associated with a given radioactive element, relative to its measured concentration, or radioactivity level.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency neither recommends nor endorses the plans – a curious formulation that does little for confidence.  Its safety review of the plan to release treated water does, however, conform, in the view of the IAEA General Rafael Mariano Grossi, to the body’s safety standards.  “The IAEA notes the controlled, gradual discharges of the treated water into the sea, as currently planned and assessed by TEPCO, would have a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment.”

A number of countries have expressed consternation at the planned move, including concern that the IAEA may have been lent upon to reach its conclusions on the Japanese release program.  Tokyo is, after all, a generous donor to the organisation.  For his part, the Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno huffed at the claim that “Japanese funding and staffing at the IAEA [could be used] to question the neutrality of the IAEA final report”.  Not only did such criticism “completely miss the target but also shakes the significance of the existence of international organisations.”

Members of Japan’s fishing and agricultural industry, China, South Korea and the Pacific Island nations concerned about the fate of the Blue Pacific, have been vocal opponents.  China’s Foreign Ministry opined that the report had been released in “haste”, failing “to fully reflect the views from experts that participated in the review”.

But some in the nuclear and environmental science fraternity are wondering what the fuss is all about, though their rebuttals hardly inspire optimism.  University of Portsmouth’s Jim Smith, an academic of environmental science, considered all such concerns “just propaganda.  The politicians don’t have any evidence in saying this.”  More to the point, other sites had also been responsible for releasing tritiated water, including a nuclear site in China and the Cap de La Hague nuclear fuel reprocessing site, which already “releases 450 times more tritiated water into the English Channel Fukushima ha planned for release into the Pacific”.  What examples to emulate.

Nigel Marks, Brendan Kennedy and Tony Irwin also tell us, based on their “collective professional experience in nuclear science and nuclear power”, that the release will be safe.  Their primary focus, however, is solely on the treatment of tritium, based on an almost heroic assumption that 62 other relevant radionuclides higher than regulatory standards have been effectively removed by the ALPS approach.

They dismiss those old phobias of radiation, underlining it as a common feature of the environment.  “Almost everything is radioactive to some degree, including air, water, plants, basements and granite benchtops.  Even a long-haul airline flight supplies a few chest X-rays worth of radiation to everyone on board.”  Continuing their focus on tritium, the wise trio find that the Pacific Ocean already has 8.4 kg (3,000 petabecquerels, or PBq) of the substance, compared to 3g (1PBq) of the total tritium present in the Fukushima waste water.

Such views serve to soften and conceal the broader problems of institutional malfeasance and past secrecy, citing the argument of sound science to conceal error and good old incompetence.  The discharge plans have also been sold in technical, jargon-laden terms, notably to such audiences as the Pacific Islands Forum.

Adding to this the inherent clandestine air that has surrounded TEPCO, scepticism should not only be mandatory but instinctive.  Why not, ask such voices as Hooker and Buesseler, consider other disposal methodologies, such as solidifying the ALPS treated wastewater within concrete?  No, counter the Japanese authorities, citing insuperable technical and legal problems.

That remains the troubling question. As Dalnoki-Veress writes, Japan’s claims to have investigated and rejected that encasement option in any comprehensive, systematic way should be dismissed out of hand.  “One way it is different is that it suggested using diluted water rather than ALPS treated water which will be 2 orders of magnitude less in volume.”  How awfully cheeky of them.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog has told RNZ Pacific its standards are not outdated.

It comes as nuclear activists raise concerns about the viability of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Japan’s impending release of over one million tonnes of treated radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.

The report, released last week, said Japan’s plans for a controlled, gradual release of the treated and diluted water would have a “negligible radiological impact on people and the environment”.

• READ MORE: Other Fukushima treated radioactive waste reports

In an exclusive interview, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi told RNZ Pacific he stood by the agency’s safety standards.

“The standards are well, and fine. I have to be clear on this; they are not outdated,” he said.

“One of the first things that was done was to analyse, after the accident, whether the existing safety standards needed to be changed, needed to be updated.

“The conclusion was the standards did not need updating.”

Grossi said the parameters set were good enough then, and were good enough now.

NZ continues to ‘stand alongside’ Pacific
Grossi met NZ Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta in Auckland on Monday, before travelling to Rarotonga to meet with Pacific leaders.

Anti-nuclear activists have called repeatedly for New Zealand to take a firm opposition standpoint and even take Japan to court under the International Law of the Sea given the country’s long-standing anti-nuclear stance.

“What New Zealand has been very clear about is that there are long standing concerns in the Pacific about nuclear testing and the impact on the marine environment and health of the people,” Mahuta said after the meeting.

“And we recognise that that is a significant set of considerations that must be taken into account.

“New Zealand continues to stand alongside Pacific partners to ensure that their concerns are adequately taken on board,” Mahuta said.

“I am encouraged that the IAEA is taken it upon themselves to engage with the Pacific to hear their concerns, and the nature of their long standing worries about the impact of nuclear testing and their region, the health of the oceans, and gain some further insight about the response to the report,” she said.

Mahuta said she reiterated New Zealand’s full confidence in the IAEA’s advice and commended their science-based approach.

‘Hit on the head again’
While in Japan to release the report, Grossi sat down with 11 mayors, the Chamber of Commerce and the Fishermen’s Associations.

“I have to say that there is mistrust — there is concern,” he said.

Grossi said the fisher-people of Japan were justifiably angry and lacked trust.

“I think it is logical that they feel in this way; they have they suffered once with the accident, and now they fear that they are going to be hit on the head again with this thing. So I have to understand this.”

He wanted be clear, however, that the products from Fukushima were “perfectly fine for consumption”.

In South Korea last week, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog was greeted with fierce protests.

Grossi was asked if the water is safe enough to drink and when he said yes, he was met by anger.

“This is not trying to make this into a farce. But if any water does not contain harmful radionuclides – why not?” he said.

“And there is a check that the water does not contain any harmful radionuclide – [but] there won’t be a reason for somebody to consume it apart from the taste because it would be salty.”

Concrete not an option
IAEA experts had looked at the Pacific Islands Forum panel’s suggestion that the wastewater, treated by an advanced liquid processing system, could be turned into concrete and then used at the Fukushima site as a sea wall.

Grossi said while it was not in their scope to do so, their experts had taken a look “informally”.

“According to our experts, this option in the case of Japan would not be possible,” Grossi said.

Transforming the water into concrete would release vapour “in itself complicating the problem even further”.

Secondly, under Japanese law, the concrete would become “nuclear waste”.

“There have been people, including some of our experts, looking informally into this,” Grossi said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

As Pacific communities protest the Japanese government’s plan to dump more than a million tonnes of radioactive waste water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean, Australian anti-nuclear activists are highlighting the complicity of Australian uranium exporting companies.

While the Fukushima Daiichi power station operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), claims that the water will be treated to reduce radioactive content, anti-nuclear activists have no faith in TEPCO’s assurances.

The Candlelight Alliance, a Korean community group in Sydney, is organising a protest outside the Japanese consulate this Saturday.

• READ MORE: Other Fukushima nuclear power plant reports

Spokersperson Sihyun Paik told Green Left: “We have a great fear that it may already be too late to stop Japan’s release of radioactively contaminated waste water into our largest ocean, an action by which every Pacific Rim nation will be impacted.

“There are serious, global ramifications,” he said. “It will directly endanger the marine life with which it comes into contact, as well as devastate the livelihoods of those reliant on such marine life, such as fisherfolk.

“All living organisms will be implicitly affected, whether it is the unwitting consumer of contaminated produce, or even beachgoers.

“The danger posed by the plan cannot be contained within just the Northeast Asia region. In two to three years, it will eventually reach and contaminate all ocean waters to certain, yet significant degrees according to scientists.

Korean fishery victims
“The local Korean fishery industry is the first commercial victim of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and it raised deep concerns to the Korean government immediately after the explosion of the nuclear reactors.

“This was in conjunction with Korea’s progressive action groups during the term of the previous Moon Jae-In administration.

“However, since the current administration (2022), the voice of protest has been extinguished at the government level, invariably raising suspicion of possible under the table dealings between Japan’s Kishida government and current Korean President Yoon [Suk Yeol] during the latter’s recent visit to Japan.”

Epeli Lesuma, from the Fiji-based Pacific Network on Globalisation, told Green Left that “for Pacific people the Ocean represents more than just a vast blue expanse that Japan can just use as a dumpsite.

“Our Ocean represents the economic, spiritual and cultural heart of Pacific countries.

“Pacific people know all too well the cost of nuclear testing and dumping. The Pacific was used as a nuclear test site by the UK, France and the USA who carried out a total of 315 tests on Christmas Island in Kiribati, Australia, Māohi Nui or French Polynesia and the Marshall Islands.

“These nuclear legacies have cost us countless lives and continue to impact the health and well-being of our people; it has impacted access to our fishing grounds and land to plant crops to support our families; and it has cost us our homes, with Pacific people displaced (on Bikini and Enewetak) due to nuclear contamination.

Japan, Pacific share trauma
“Japan and the Pacific share the trauma of nuclear weapons and testing.

“So it comes as a deep disappointment to us that the Japanese government would consider actions that threaten not only Pacific people and our Ocean but the health and well-being of all the planet’s oceans and the people who depend upon them.

“The Pacific Ocean also contains the largest tuna fish stocks which are a source of economic revenue for our countries. The Japanese government’s plans to dump its nuclear wastewater into our Ocean pose a direct threat to the economic prosperity of our countries and in turn our developmental aspirations as well as being a fundamental breach of Pacific people’s rights to a clean and healthy sustainable environment.”

Australian anti-nuclear activist Nat Lowrey delivered a statement of solidarity from the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance when she visited affected local communities in Fukushima in March.

The statement acknowledged that uranium from the Ranger and Olympic Dam mines was in TEPCO’s Fukushima reactors when the meltdowns, explosions and fires took place in March 2011.

The ANFA statement said that “Australian governments, and mining companies BHP and Rio Tinto, are partly responsible for the death and destruction resulting from the Fukushima disaster. They knew about the corruption in Japan’s nuclear industry but kept supplying uranium.”

Lowrey said that since it was Australian uranium that fuelled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, “the Australian government has a responsibility to stand with local communities in Fukushima as well as communities in Japan, Korea, China and Pacific Island states in calling on the Japanese government not to dump radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean”.

‘Fundamental self-determination right’
“We must support Pacific peoples’ fundamental right to their sovereignty and self-determination against Japan’s nuclear colonialism.

“If Japan is to go ahead with the dumping of radioactive waste, Australia should play a lead role in taking a case to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea against Japan.”

Paik said no Australian government had taken serious action since the Fukushima disaster.

“Despite the Japanese government’s decision to release nuclear contaminated water into the ocean, no official statement or comment has been made by the [Anthony] Albanese government.

“We did not expect any form of government level protest on this issue due to conflicts of interest with Australia’s member status in the Quad partnership which is a key pillar in Australia’s foreign policy, and an influential determinant of our stance on nuclear energy.”

When the G7 met in Tokyo, the Japanese government urged the summit to approve the planned radioactive water release.

Tanaka Shigeru, from the Pacific Asia Resource Centre in Japan, said: “Japan did not get the approval by the G7 as it had hoped, but it stopped at saying the G7 will adhere to the conclusion of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

‘IAEA approves release’
“The IAEA is of course approving of the release, so it is a way for them to say they have approved without explicitly saying so.”

Shigeru said that despite a three-year propaganda campaign over Fukushima, most people polled in Japan in April said that “the government has not done enough to garner the understanding of the public”.

Only 6.5 percent of those polled believe that the Japanese government has done enough.

Yet it has “done enough to keep people from the streets”, Shigeru said.

“While there are, of course, people who are still continuing the struggle, I must say the movement has peaked already after what has been a fervent three-year struggle.”

Japanese opponents of the radioactive water release, including fisherfolk, have been fighting through every administrative and legal step but now “there are no more domestic hurdles that the Japanese government needs to clear in order to begin the dumping”, Shigeru said.

“The opposition parties have been so minimised in Japan that there is very little realistic means to challenge the situation except for maybe international pressure. That is really the only thing standing in the way of the dumping.

Ambassador propaganda
“So Japan has been taking ambassadors from the Pacific nations on lucrative paid-for trips to Fukushima to spread the propaganda that the dumping will be safe.”

Lesuma confirmed the impact on swaying some Pacific Island governments, such as Papua New Guinea and the Federated States of Micronesia.

“Pacific Islands Forum member states have been some of the most vocal opponents at the international level of the Japanese government’s plans to dump their nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean,” he said.

“The PIF leaders had appointed an Independent Panel of Experts who have engaged with TEPCO scientists and the IAEA to provide advice to Pacific governments on the wastewater disposal plans … the Panel has concluded unanimously that Japan should not release nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean and should explore other alternatives.

“The Fiji government has been one such Pacific government consistent in coming out strongly in opposing Japan’s plans.

“The PNG Fisheries Minister, Jelta Wong, has also been vocal and consistent in expressing his disapproval of the same, going as far as saying that the nuclear wastewater discharge would create a ‘Pacific Chernobyl’ with the potential to cause harm to Pacific people for generations to come.”

Peter Boyle is a Green Left activist and contributing writer. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Investing in proper waste management and recycling solutions in Southeast Asia and India could cut emissions by 229 million metric tons by 2030, the equivalent of shutting down 61 coal-fired power plants, said the report released on Wednesday.

Mismanaged plastic waste refers to uncollected and improperly disposed of waste, including litter and garbage that ends up in open dumps or burned, polluting the surrounding environment.

The report covered Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and India. It was prepared by the New York-based non-profit The Circulate Initiative, as part of a tool designed to calculate the greenhouse gas emissions, energy and water consumption of plastic waste management and recycling solutions across South and Southeast Asia. 

Across the six countries, the mismanaged plastic waste rates ranged from about 50% to 75%, the report said, adding that Indonesia produced 5.8 million metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste annually, the highest amount among the six countries.

India came in second with 5.3 million metric tons of waste annually, while Vietnam produced 4.6 million metric tons. Thailand produced 3.4 million metric tons, while Malaysia and the Philippines produced 1.2 million metric tons each annually.

Every ton of plastic waste in landfills releases about 3 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to climate change, according to researchers.

The report said that open burning is the sole carbon footprint hotspot in Indonesia and the Philippines, with such activity accounting for 48% of plastic waste in Indonesia and 30% in the Philippines and contributing to 94% of Indonesia's total carbon footprint and 86% in the Philippines.

According to the report, if the six countries adopt plastic waste recovery and recycling solutions instead of incineration and waste-to-energy approaches, they could prevent approximately 20 million tonnes of emissions in 2030.

Another scientific report released in April said Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia are the top five countries worldwide for producing large municipal solid waste, at 1.14 kilograms per capita per day. 

Globally, mishandled plastics pose a considerable challenge and are closely tied to the worsening climate crisis. Environmental experts have estimated that 140 million metric tons of plastic waste have already accumulated in oceans and rivers worldwide.

The annual influx of plastic waste into the ocean could almost triple by 2040, reaching a staggering 29 million metric tons.

However, research indicates that it is feasible to achieve an 80% reduction in plastic leakage into the ocean by 2040 by utilizing existing technologies. 

Beyond the hazards posed to the marine and land environment and humans, plastics have a significant carbon footprint and emit 1.8 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas, or about 3.4% of global emissions, with 90% of these coming from their production and conversion from fossil fuels. 

By 2060, emissions from the plastics lifecycle are set to more than double, reaching 4.3 billion tonnes of gas emissions.

Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Subel Rai Bhandari for RFA.

Ortiz lives in Waukegan, Illinois, a suburb about an hour north of Chicago that has a lurid history of toxic waste. With a population of only 88,000, the city has five Superfund sites, many of them found along the Lake Michigan shoreline. 

And that’s not even counting the large pools of toxic materials leftover from decades of burning coal in Waukegan. Deep pits of hazardous sludge sit along the shores of Lake Michigan, the watershed for roughly 12 million people. 

Ortiz, co-chair of the local environmental justice organization Clean Power Lake County, calls these coal waste sites a “ticking time bomb” vulnerable to future spills, with the potential to harm millions. 

Waukegan’s coal-fired power plant, which closed last year, sits a little over a mile from an elementary school, a public park, and single-family housing intermixed with local taquerias and bakeries. The city is majority Latino according to U.S. Census data.

Now, a permanent solution to coal industry debris could soon be a reality.

When coal is burned for fuel, it produces a waste product known as coal ash. This burnt byproduct is stored in large, manmade landfills commonly called ponds or pits. The material is toxic and contains at least 17 heavy metals and radioactive materials, such as mercury, cadmium, and arsenic, which cause cancer and birth defects, as well as heart and lung diseases.

In May, the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, proposed new regulations to stop a loophole that has allowed historic coal ash ponds to go unmonitored for years. The new ruling would force energy companies and other owners of the coal ash ponds to clean up inactive sites. 

Coal ash has an infamous toxic history. The 2008 Kingston, Tennesse, coal ash spill — where over 5 million cubic yards were spilled into surrounding waterways and caused the death of cleanup workers years after the event — is regarded as one of the nation’s worst industrial disasters. 

The regulation of coal ash at the federal level is fairly new. In 2015, the EPA issued the first national minimum standards for new and operating coal ash ponds, leaving out hundreds of legacy sites that haven’t received coal ash since before 2015. 

The recently announced EPA rules change comes on the heels of litigation from the nonprofit environmental justice organization Earthjustice. Lisa Evans, senior counsel there, told Grist that the newly proposed ruling goes a long way to prevent future disasters, calling current regulations on legacy coal ash ponds “irrational, dangerous, and reckless.” 

“The EPA made a lot of compromises in the 2015 rule and came out with the weakest rule it could have created,”  said Evans. 

Coal ash ponds are notorious for leaking into surrounding bodies of water and soil. According to a report last year, roughly 90 percent of coal plants have tainted the surrounding groundwater. 

That same report also found that approximately 70 percent of decommissioned power plants with accompanying coal ash ponds are found in low-income communities or majority-nonwhite census tracts.

Ortiz said that in addition to fear of toxic materials slowly seeping into Lake Michigan, she worries climate change is speeding up the chance for future disasters. 

In a report published last year, the Midwest environmental advocacy nonprofit Environmental Law and Policy Center found that Lake Michigan has 12 toxic waste sites that are particularly at risk of spilling and harming nearby communities, thanks to lake erosion and increased storms fueled by climate change.

Waukegan was identified as one of the sites, alongside other coal ash ponds in Indiana and Wisconsin.

“The longer we leave (coal ash ponds) there unaddressed, something catastrophic is going to happen,” Ortiz said. 

The Waukegan Generating Station no longer operates its coal-fired power stations, but its waste remains. Midwest Generation, a subsidiary of national energy company NRG Energy, owns the power plant. 

Two coal ash ponds at the plant are in the process of being cleaned up. According to Midwest Generation, one pond will be capped and covered, a process where the pond is filled with soil and sediment and covered with plastic, and remains in place. The other pond will have its materials excavated and moved to a permitted disposal landfill. 

Both ponds are currently regulated by the EPA and the cleanup process is on hold as the company awaits state permitting approval.

A third site at the Waukegan plant is a historic coal ash waste site that has not received coal ash since 1977, according to Midwest Generation. This would classify the site as a legacy coal ash site and its cleanup would likely be regulated under the new EPA proposal.

In a statement, Midwest Generation said it is still reviewing the EPA’s proposal and “will continue to be committed to compliance with applicable laws and will comply with any final rules related to legacy (coal) ash areas.”

Read Next

Closing the coal ash loophole

Austyn Gaffney

The decommissioning of coal-fired power is part of an overarching Illinois initiative to be coal-free by 2045. Illinois was the first state in the Midwest to legislate the phase-out of coal-fired power plants and focus on renewable energy and environmental justice with the 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. 

Alongside proper environmental cleanup and regulation, Ortiz said the issue of environmental justice is key to the future of Waukegan.

The still-standing coal plant in Waukegan is a “symbol of pain and suffering” for Ortiz. She said it’s a reminder that Waukegan residents, specifically Black and Latino, have been sacrificed in the name of industry profit.

She said when visiting other, affluent and majority-white suburbs in the region, the communities along Lake Michigan have full use of the natural resource and aren’t exposed to the dangers of legacy coal pollution. 

“Why can’t we have that as well? Why can’t our children have an easily accessible lakefront?” Ortiz said.

Coal may not be synonymous with the Midwest, but the region has an abundance of coal ash ponds. 

According to data from Earthjustice, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio are among the top five states with regulated and unregulated coal ash ponds. Additionally, there are 88 coal ash dump sites within two miles of at least one of the Great Lakes, the water source for an estimated 30 million people. 

Following the curve of Lake Michigan, a city in northwest Indiana echoes Waukegan’s past, and the residents hope new regulations could chart a future without polluting industries in their backyard. 

Michigan City, Indiana, is located roughly 100 miles from Waukegan and is home to 32,000 residents, a third of them Black. 

Indiana has the largest number of operational coal plants in the country and 100 coal ash sites. According to Earthjustice estimates, half of these sites are currently unregulated. 

Ashley Williams is the executive director of Just Transition Northwest Indiana, a nonprofit environmental justice organization based out of Michigan City. 

She said the contamination is a “silent crisis” with roughly 2 million tons of toxic coal ash sitting near Lake Michigan. Michigan City’s coal-fired power plant sits in the shadow of nearby playgrounds, homes, and public beaches.

The Michigan City Generating Station, owned by the Northern Indiana Public Service Company, or NIPSCO, is still in operation. The coal plant has five ash ponds that are regulated under current federal rulings. 

Like Waukegan, the NIPSCO site includes one currently unregulated man-made coal ash fill, which contains sediment, sand, and coal ash, and is used to buffer the coal plant from Lake Michigan’s waters.

The infrastructure that stops this material from spilling into Lake Michigan is aging and at risk of a “catastrophic release,” according to an engineering study authorized by Earthjustice. 

According to Energy News Network, the seawall site contains roughly two million cubic yards of coal ash and areas of the pond go as deep as 40 feet in the ground. A NIPSCO spokesperson disputed the estimated amount of coal ash on the historic site, which the news site said is based on NIPSCO documents. In a statement to Grist, NIPSCO said there is an estimated 109,000 tons of leftover coal material outside of the ponds. 

This seawall location would likely be regulated under the new EPA proposal.

In a statement, NIPSCO said it will “continue to monitor the progression of EPA’s latest proposal for regulations related to coal ash management and how this might apply to the work we’re already doing to comply with current regulations.” 

Williams said the region’s history of industrial pollution is buried everywhere. 

The nearby town of Pines, Michigan has been in a longstanding cleanup and legal battle dating back to the 1970s. For decades, NIPSCO dumped coal ash waste in the town’s landfill, used it to build roads, and gave it to residents to fill their yards and homes. 

“It’s been a long road getting to this point,” she said. 

The NIPSCO coal-fired power plant will close as early as 2026. Williams said she wants to ensure the site doesn’t get developed and turned into another site of environmental injustice. 

She said Just Transition Northwest Indiana advocates for a statewide shift in energy production and wants both youth and current industry workers to be at the forefront of planning the future of the region. 

“We’re trying to reclaim our power from polluters,” she said. “What’s happening in Michigan City is the beginning of what a just national transition could be.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New EPA rules tell polluters in Great Lakes communities to clean up legacy coal waste on Jun 23, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by John McCracken.

Ortiz lives in Waukegan, Illinois, a suburb about an hour north of Chicago that has a lurid history of toxic waste. With a population of only 88,000, the city has five Superfund sites, many of them found along the Lake Michigan shoreline. 

And that’s not even counting the large pools of toxic materials leftover from decades of burning coal in Waukegan. Deep pits of hazardous sludge sit along the shores of Lake Michigan, the watershed for roughly 12 million people. 

Ortiz, co-chair of the local environmental justice organization Clean Power Lake County, calls these coal waste sites a “ticking time bomb” vulnerable to future spills, with the potential to harm millions. 

Waukegan’s coal-fired power plant, which closed last year, sits a little over a mile from an elementary school, a public park, and single-family housing intermixed with local taquerias and bakeries. The city is majority Latino according to U.S. Census data.

Now, a permanent solution to coal industry debris could soon be a reality.

When coal is burned for fuel, it produces a waste product known as coal ash. This burnt byproduct is stored in large, manmade landfills commonly called ponds or pits. The material is toxic and contains at least 17 heavy metals and radioactive materials, such as mercury, cadmium, and arsenic, which cause cancer and birth defects, as well as heart and lung diseases.

In May, the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, proposed new regulations to stop a loophole that has allowed historic coal ash ponds to go unmonitored for years. The new ruling would force energy companies and other owners of the coal ash ponds to clean up inactive sites. 

Coal ash has an infamous toxic history. The 2008 Kingston, Tennesse, coal ash spill — where over 5 million cubic yards were spilled into surrounding waterways and caused the death of cleanup workers years after the event — is regarded as one of the nation’s worst industrial disasters. 

The regulation of coal ash at the federal level is fairly new. In 2015, the EPA issued the first national minimum standards for new and operating coal ash ponds, leaving out hundreds of legacy sites that haven’t received coal ash since before 2015. 

The recently announced EPA rules change comes on the heels of litigation from the nonprofit environmental justice organization Earthjustice. Lisa Evans, senior counsel there, told Grist that the newly proposed ruling goes a long way to prevent future disasters, calling current regulations on legacy coal ash ponds “irrational, dangerous, and reckless.” 

“The EPA made a lot of compromises in the 2015 rule and came out with the weakest rule it could have created,”  said Evans. 

Coal ash ponds are notorious for leaking into surrounding bodies of water and soil. According to a report last year, roughly 90 percent of coal plants have tainted the surrounding groundwater. 

That same report also found that approximately 70 percent of decommissioned power plants with accompanying coal ash ponds are found in low-income communities or majority-nonwhite census tracts.

Ortiz said that in addition to fear of toxic materials slowly seeping into Lake Michigan, she worries climate change is speeding up the chance for future disasters. 

In a report published last year, the Midwest environmental advocacy nonprofit Environmental Law and Policy Center found that Lake Michigan has 12 toxic waste sites that are particularly at risk of spilling and harming nearby communities, thanks to lake erosion and increased storms fueled by climate change.

Waukegan was identified as one of the sites, alongside other coal ash ponds in Indiana and Wisconsin.

“The longer we leave (coal ash ponds) there unaddressed, something catastrophic is going to happen,” Ortiz said. 

The Waukegan Generating Station no longer operates its coal-fired power stations, but its waste remains. Midwest Generation, a subsidiary of national energy company NRG Energy, owns the power plant. 

Two coal ash ponds at the plant are in the process of being cleaned up. According to Midwest Generation, one pond will be capped and covered, a process where the pond is filled with soil and sediment and covered with plastic, and remains in place. The other pond will have its materials excavated and moved to a permitted disposal landfill. 

Both ponds are currently regulated by the EPA and the cleanup process is on hold as the company awaits state permitting approval.

A third site at the Waukegan plant is a historic coal ash waste site that has not received coal ash since 1977, according to Midwest Generation. This would classify the site as a legacy coal ash site and its cleanup would likely be regulated under the new EPA proposal.

In a statement, Midwest Generation said it is still reviewing the EPA’s proposal and “will continue to be committed to compliance with applicable laws and will comply with any final rules related to legacy (coal) ash areas.”

Read Next

Closing the coal ash loophole

Austyn Gaffney

The decommissioning of coal-fired power is part of an overarching Illinois initiative to be coal-free by 2045. Illinois was the first state in the Midwest to legislate the phase-out of coal-fired power plants and focus on renewable energy and environmental justice with the 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. 

Alongside proper environmental cleanup and regulation, Ortiz said the issue of environmental justice is key to the future of Waukegan.

The still-standing coal plant in Waukegan is a “symbol of pain and suffering” for Ortiz. She said it’s a reminder that Waukegan residents, specifically Black and Latino, have been sacrificed in the name of industry profit.

She said when visiting other, affluent and majority-white suburbs in the region, the communities along Lake Michigan have full use of the natural resource and aren’t exposed to the dangers of legacy coal pollution. 

“Why can’t we have that as well? Why can’t our children have an easily accessible lakefront?” Ortiz said.

Coal may not be synonymous with the Midwest, but the region has an abundance of coal ash ponds. 

According to data from Earthjustice, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio are among the top five states with regulated and unregulated coal ash ponds. Additionally, there are 88 coal ash dump sites within two miles of at least one of the Great Lakes, the water source for an estimated 30 million people. 

Following the curve of Lake Michigan, a city in northwest Indiana echoes Waukegan’s past, and the residents hope new regulations could chart a future without polluting industries in their backyard. 

Michigan City, Indiana, is located roughly 100 miles from Waukegan and is home to 32,000 residents, a third of them Black. 

Indiana has the largest number of operational coal plants in the country and 100 coal ash sites. According to Earthjustice estimates, half of these sites are currently unregulated. 

Ashley Williams is the executive director of Just Transition Northwest Indiana, a nonprofit environmental justice organization based out of Michigan City. 

She said the contamination is a “silent crisis” with roughly 2 million tons of toxic coal ash sitting near Lake Michigan. Michigan City’s coal-fired power plant sits in the shadow of nearby playgrounds, homes, and public beaches.

The Michigan City Generating Station, owned by the Northern Indiana Public Service Company, or NIPSCO, is still in operation. The coal plant has five ash ponds that are regulated under current federal rulings. 

Like Waukegan, the NIPSCO site includes one currently unregulated man-made coal ash fill, which contains sediment, sand, and coal ash, and is used to buffer the coal plant from Lake Michigan’s waters.

The infrastructure that stops this material from spilling into Lake Michigan is aging and at risk of a “catastrophic release,” according to an engineering study authorized by Earthjustice. 

According to Energy News Network, the seawall site contains roughly two million cubic yards of coal ash and areas of the pond go as deep as 40 feet in the ground. A NIPSCO spokesperson disputed the estimated amount of coal ash on the historic site, which the news site said is based on NIPSCO documents. In a statement to Grist, NIPSCO said there is an estimated 109,000 tons of leftover coal material outside of the ponds. 

This seawall location would likely be regulated under the new EPA proposal.

In a statement, NIPSCO said it will “continue to monitor the progression of EPA’s latest proposal for regulations related to coal ash management and how this might apply to the work we’re already doing to comply with current regulations.” 

Williams said the region’s history of industrial pollution is buried everywhere. 

The nearby town of Pines, Michigan has been in a longstanding cleanup and legal battle dating back to the 1970s. For decades, NIPSCO dumped coal ash waste in the town’s landfill, used it to build roads, and gave it to residents to fill their yards and homes. 

“It’s been a long road getting to this point,” she said. 

The NIPSCO coal-fired power plant will close as early as 2026. Williams said she wants to ensure the site doesn’t get developed and turned into another site of environmental injustice. 

She said Just Transition Northwest Indiana advocates for a statewide shift in energy production and wants both youth and current industry workers to be at the forefront of planning the future of the region. 

“We’re trying to reclaim our power from polluters,” she said. “What’s happening in Michigan City is the beginning of what a just national transition could be.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New EPA rules tell polluters in Great Lakes communities to clean up legacy coal waste on Jun 23, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by John McCracken.

Fiji got to celebrate World Oceans Day this week — a day when our conscience gets the occasional prick on matters related to the value of the ocean in sustaining life.

I like to brag about growing up surrounded by the sea and those unique moments during childhood I spent rowing across Qamea’s picturesque and mangrove-fringed Naiviivi Bay, plucking seashells from shallow tide pools and digging up vetuna (sandworm) from the sand.

Yes, the sea is a way of life for all of us.

• READ MORE: World Ocean Day, June 8

Think of this.

The ocean covers more than 70 percent of the planet.

It is our life source, supporting humanity’s sustenance and existence, and that of every other organism on earth.

The ocean produces much of the oxygen we breath and need to survive, it is the habitat of most of earth’s biodiversity and is the main source of meat protein for more than a billion people around the world.

40 million ’employees’
The ocean is key to our economy with an estimated 40 million people to be employed by ocean-based industries by 2030.

In Fiji, an estimated 60 percent of the 900,000 population are thought to live in coastal communities, surviving on activities linked to the ocean, and our fisheries and tourism sectors are so intrinsically connected to the health of the ocean.

But the ocean we call our home is facing a variety of threats that challenges its existence and endangers humanity.

United Nations statistics say that we have depleted 90 percent of big fish populations and destroyed 50 percent of coral reefs.

“We are taking more from the ocean than can be replenished. We need to work together to create a new balance with the ocean that no longer depletes its bounty but instead restores its vibrancy and brings it new life,” the UN says.

With such dreadful reality in the backdrop, the 2023 WOD theme seemed timely and relevant — “Planet Ocean: tides are changing”.

It provides us with an opportunity to rethink what we’ve done, what we need to do and how to work together with world leaders, decision-makers, indigenous leaders, scientists, private sector executives, civil society, celebrities, and youth activist to make the health of the ocean a public agenda.

Clean up day
On Wednesday this week, The Fiji Times’ front page photo was of Josaia Waqaivolavola, a Year 2 student from Veiuto Primary School who was captured on camera participating in a beach clean up at My Suva Picnic Park along the Nasese foreshore.

His group collected 10 trash bags filled with plastics, among others.

It’s when we see the amount of rubbish along our coastlines and in the sea around us that we begin to realise that all the talk about “putting rubbish in the bin” is not working.

We talk about responsible citizenship but plastics continue to pollute our communities, roads, streets and parks, and our oceans.

Plastics have become so cheap to produce that we are producing things we don’t intend to keep for long.

In other words, we are producing plastics only to throw them away.

We are now mass producing disposable plastics at a phenomenal rate that the world’s waste management systems are finding hard to keep up.

40% of plastics disposable
It is estimated that about 40 percent of the now more than 448 million tonnes of plastics produced every year is disposable and used in products intended to be discarded virtually soon after purchase.

Just go to the beach and you’ll find them on the sand.

World statistics estimate that each day billions upon billions of plastic material find their way into our rivers, streams and eventually into our oceans.

During my childhood years on Qamea, my family’s livelihood depended on the sea.

At a time, when village canteens had no refrigerators to store meat, the sea was our main source of daily meat protein.

Many years ago, scientists and environment experts were warning us that the amount of plastics in the world’s ocean would increase 10 times by 2020.

That was three years ago.

Too polluted for fish
They further advised that by 2050, if statistical predictions remain true, we’d have so much plastics in the sea and our oceans would too polluted that fish and other delicacies would be unsafe to eat or we’d not be able to even swim anymore.

Cleaning the ocean is good but may not be good enough.

We need to nip this spiralling issue in the bud.

We need to work before the plastic reaches the ocean.

We need to work on land where they are produced before we go to the ocean.

In Fiji, the concern over disposable plastic waste is the same as the threat in other countries of the world — we are using more disposable plastics at a rate faster than we are able to effectively dispose them that our waste managing systems are struggling to contain the problem.

Recycling not effective
Our recycling initiatives are not effectively solving our disposable plastic dilemma.

During this year’s WOD celebrations, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the ocean as “the foundation of life”.

That pretty much sums everything up.

If the ocean is life, then why can’t we get out act together.

The ball is in everyone’s court and the time to act is now.

Until we meet again, stay blessed, stay healthy and stay safe!

John Mitchell is a Fiji Times journalist and writes the weekly “Behind The News” column. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau says Pacific security is about the security of the Pacific peoples and their way of life as identified by Forum Leaders in the Boe Declaration.

Kalsakau said this reaffirmed climate change as the single greatest threat to regional security.

The PM was speaking at the opening of the Pacific Fusion headquarters in Port Vila on Tuesday, alongside Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific climate action reports

He said Vanuatu, with the world’s first climate change refugees with the relocation in 2005 of 100 villagers in Torba Province, “will always consider climate change its top priority”.

He said climate change is real, an existential threat, impinging on the security and stability of all nations.

“We do not have to look too far to see how the increased intensity of climate change-induced tropical cyclones wreak havoc on the daily lives and livelihoods of our people and set us back years in our development,” said Kalsakau.

He said Vanuatu’s Pacific brothers also faced human security challenges caused by the nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands (by the US), Mororoa Atoll (France) and Australia (United Kingdom).

‘Our reefs are dying’
“With the effects of global warming and nuclear testing, our ocean is getting warmer, our reefs are dying and fishes are now very scarce.

“Our children and grandchildren are bound to never experience what we’ve enjoyed in our childhood.

“The maintenance and sustenance of our marine resources must be the top priority of our Pacific Leaders.”

Kalsakau said there were other pressing issues such as the Fukushima nuclear waste water discharge and AUKUS.

“I say again that Pacific security is about the security of our Pacific peoples and way of life.

“This is why Vanuatu stood alongside our Pacific brothers and sisters to produce the Rarotonga Treaty. Which brings me to today’s very special occasion.

“The Pacific Fusion Centre is guided by the regional security priorities identified by the Boe Declaration and supports regional decision-making on these shared security priorities,” he said.

The centre, which is funded by Australia and to be run in collaboration with Pacific Forum member states, will aim to provide training and analysis on regional security issues.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Notable nuclear accidents: NRX (1952) Kyshtym (1957) Windscale (1957) SL-1 (1961) Wood River Junction (1964) K-27 (1968) Three Mile Island (1979) Constituyentes (1983) Mohammedia (1984) K-431 (1985) Chernobyl (1986) Tokai (1997, 1999) Fukushima (2011) … but wait, hundreds, possibly thousands, of Small Modular Reactors (nuclear SMRs) are about to pop up around the world. What could possibly go wrong?

“Multiple and unexpected failures are built into society’s complex and tightly coupled nuclear reactor systems. Such accidents are unavoidable and cannot be designed around.” (Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents, Princeton University Press, 1999)

“On dozens of occasions because of human error or technical miscue or active threat, the world has come dangerously close to the brink of nuclear conflagration… it is a terrifying history of which most people remain ignorant.” (Julian Cribb, How to Fix a Broken Planet, Cambridge University Press, 2023.)

Should nuclear power really circumnavigate the planet with mini-power plants?

For Germany, which closed its last three nuclear plants in April 2023, the country’s Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management conducted a study: “SMRs have been the subject of repeated discussion in recent times. They promise cheap energy, safety, and little waste. BASE commissioned an expert report (in German) to evaluate these concepts and the risks associated with them. The report provides a scientific assessment of possible areas of application and the associated safety issues. It concludes that the construction of SMRs is only economically viable for a very large number of units and poses significant risks if widely deployed.”

Yet, “resistance to nuclear power is starting to ebb around the world with support from a surprising group: environmentalists… This change of heart spans the globe, and is being prompted by climate change, unreliable electrical grids and fears about national security in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” (Source: Why Even Environmentalists are Supporting Nuclear Power Today, NPR, August 30, 2022)

U.S. senators recently introduced a nuclear energy bill called the Advance Act with bipartisan support, hopefully enhancing and advancing America’s world leadership role in nuclear energy by deploying SMRs by the bucketful, idealized as a “cleaner smarter safer solution” to today’s bulky nuclear power plants. Advance Act will cut red tape and make it easier and much faster for SMRs to gain a foothold in the marketplace.

Meanwhile, like the U.S., China has the same red hot nuclear fever. It has set aside $440B for its nuclear program, planning to build 150 new reactors by 2037, which equates to 10 per year, which, by almost all standards, seems unachievable. It tops cumulative world production over the past three decades.

Fearful of being left in China’s nuclear dust, on May 18th, a proposed House bill by Wittman (R-VA) speeds-up the building process for SMRs. And Joe Manchin (D-WV) has proposed the Nuclear Fuel Security Act to set up a nuclear fuel security program promoting domestic production of uranium.

The excitement over nuclear is palpable, as politicians’ hands tremble with excitement, introducing what’s billed as the perfect green clean way to solve energy needs. There are cheerleaders galore. The U.S. Congress for one is a very influential cheerleading group, but it’s more pervasive than that. Big players like Japan and China are going all-in for nuclear. (“Japan Adopts Plan to Maximize Nuclear Energy,” in Major Shift, AP News, December 22, 2022.)

Wait a moment… isn’t Japan currently being criticized in several quarters of the world for dumping Fukushima toxic radioactive water into the ocean? After all, the U.S. National Association of Marine Laboratories, with over 100 member laboratories, issued a position paper strongly opposing the toxic dumping because of a lack of adequate and accurate scientific data in support of Japan’s assertions of safety.

Regardless, last week the G7 nations gave its blessing for Japan to dump Fukushima’s toxic water into the Pacific Ocean. Hmm.

Interestingly, PM Shinzo Abe (1954-2022) shortly after Fukushima’s meltdown 10 years ago, assured the International Olympic Committee in consideration of holding the games in Tokyo, that “everything was under control.” Notwithstanding numerous assurances by Japanese authorities of no harm, no foul, over the years, several independent journalists in Japan have reported numerous deaths because of the Fukushima meltdown and its aftermath but never acknowledged by the government. Assurances are not always assurances!

Therefore, it’s only fair that the darker side of nuclear cheerleading — yea, yea, yea, no nuclear no nuclear — deserves some notoriety. For starters, the results of a recent study by Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 31, 2022, entitled “Nuclear Waste from Small Modular Reactors.”

Stanford News also published the study: Sandford-led Research Finds Small Modular Reactors Will Exacerbate Challenges of Highly Radioactive Nuclear Waste. The study concludes that SMRs will generate more radioactive waste than conventional nuclear power plants. Stanford and the University of British Columbia jointly conducted the study, e.g., SMRs will be manufactured in factories and industry analysts claim SMRs will be cheaper and produce fewer radioactive byproducts than the big bulky conventional reactors; however, the study discovered the upsetting fact that, pound-for-pound when compared to the big bulky conventional nuclear plants, SMRs will increase nuclear waste… considerably!

“Our results show that most small modular reactor designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30 for the reactors in our case study,” said study lead author Lindsay Krall, a former MacArthur Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation: “These findings stand in sharp contrast to the cost and waste reduction benefits that advocates have claimed for advanced nuclear technologies.” (Stanford study)

U.S. nuclear plants have already produced over 88,000 metric tons of “spent nuclear fuel” with nowhere to put it other than risky open pools of water at plant locations and some dry casks setups. Throughout America nuclear facilities contain open pools of spent fuel rods. According to Paul Blanch: “Continual storage in spent fuel pools is the most unsafe thing you could do.” (Paul Blanch, registered professional engineer, US Navy Reactor Operator & Instructor with 55 years of experience with nuclear engineering and regulatory agencies, widely recognized as one of America’s leading experts on nuclear power)

Accordingly, “the most highly radioactive waste, mainly spent fuel rods, will have to be isolated in deep-mined geologic repositories for hundreds of thousands of years. At present, the U.S. has no program to develop a geologic repository, after spending decades and billions of dollars on the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. As a result, spent nuclear fuel is currently stored in pools or in dry casks at reactor sites, accumulating at a rate of about 2,000 metric tonnes per year.” (Stanford)

Nobody wants it in their backyard. Furthermore, what’s the message behind the fact that humanity has humiliatingly endangered itself by utilizing the most potent toxic material on Earth to boil water that results in highly radioactive spent fuel rods that can only be stored in deep-deep geologic repositories as far away from civilization as possible, locked away for centuries upon centuries? Rubbing two sticks together a million years ago was much smarter.

The Stanford study claims that few, if any, developers of SMR have analyzed the management and disposal of nuclear waste. “The study concludes that, overall, small modular designs are inferior to conventional reactors with respect to radioactive waste generation, management requirements, and disposal options.”

Meanwhile, SMRs are about to enter a world of nuclear power that has sharp critics. For example, crib notes of a detailed analysis of nuclear by Greenpeace, which has considerable nuclear expertise on staff, provides an offset to the ringing applause around the world for SMRs: “6 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy is not the Way to a Green and Peaceful World,” March 18, 2022.

Greenpeace is not at all hesitant about exposing the “myths being perpetuated by the nuclear industry.”

For starters the scale of proposed nuclear energy installations does not come close to meeting the needs to go to net zero emissions in a timely fashion, according to projections by the World Nuclear Association, greenhouse gas emissions would only drop by 4% by 2050, assuming 37 new large nuclear reactors brought onto the grid per year from now to 2050. Yet only 57 new reactors are schedule for construction over the next 15 years. A number for SMRs is unknown currently.

Nuclear power plants are extremely dangerous as easy targets for terrorists, cyberattacks or acts of war. Moreover, they are unique hazards for accidents by nature like Fukushima and/or by human error like Chernobyl, and some accidents never go away.

“For the first time in history, a major war is being waged in a country with multiple nuclear reactors and thousands of tons of highly radioactive spent fuel. The war in southern Ukraine around Zaporizhzhia puts them all at heightened risk of a severe accident…. Nuclear power plants are some of the most complex and sensitive industrial installations, which require a very complex set of resources in ready state at all times to keep them operational,” Ibid.

Nuclear power plants are a water-hungry technology that must, must, must have a lot of water to cool the radioactive hot stuff. Nuclear power facilities are vulnerable to water stress, warming rivers, and rising temperatures. Facilities in the US and France have often been shut down during heatwaves or have scaled down activity, especially France’s shakiness in 2022. Global warming is nuclear power’s biggest enemy.

And, then there’s this: “Electricite de France SA’s fleet of 56 atomic power plants has long been the backbone of Europe’s energy system, but in 2022 it was more of a millstone. As reactors were shut down to fix cracked pipes, the company’s nuclear power generation slumped to the lowest since 1988, making the region more dependent on fossil fuels just as Russia squeezed natural gas exports.” (Source: “French Nuclear Revival Hits Trouble as New Reactor Defects Found,” Bloomberg, March 10, 2023) 

Not only does nuclear power put enormous stress on structural facilities, a huge incalculable risk, but water flowing past the nuclear fuel in the reactor cores gets heated to over 500°F. It can be heated to this temperature because it is pressurized to over 1,000 pounds per square inch (psi). The reactor vessel and its attached piping must be robust to remain intact and contain this high-pressure fluid. Abnormally high pressure can break even robust containers. (Union of Concerned Scientist) The strongest known pressure relief valves and piping must endure enormous pressure 24/7/365. This is an extreme high-risk category of nuclear operations.

Nuclear energy is also too expensive. According to a World Nuclear Industry Status Report, nuclear energy per MWh (megawatt-hour) costs 3-to-5 times more than wind or solar. Moreover, according to the same source, total costs of building and running a plant to lifetime for utility scale operations over the past decade have dropped by 88% for solar and by 69% for wind whilst nuclear has increased by 23%. Duh!

“Stabilizing the climate is an emergency. Yet, Nuclear Power is slow” (Greenpeace). The World Nuclear Industry Status Report says is takes 10 years on average in the world to construct a plant.

It’s impossible to get around the issue of radioactive waste, which is a huge problem that haunts the industry. Some isotopes remain highly radioactive for several thousand years. What to do with it? The costs are outrageous. The US Energy Dept. projected cost for long-term nuclear waste cleanup jumped more than $100B in just one year. According to Stanford’s study, SMRs will exaggerate this problem by factors of 2-to-30. (Stanford study)

But, of course there’s always the easy way out of handling toxic waste: According to a Greenpeace International 2021 Tweet: “French companies are exporting nuclear waste to Siberia dumping barrels in unsafe conditions completely exposed to the elements.” Hmm.

Moreover, it’s oxymoronic to claim nuclear power is “sustainable green energy” and should be eligible for green funding. Oh, please! Only radioactive waste is sustainable. Interestingly, in 2021 Austria, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, and Spain objected to an inclusion of nuclear power in the EU’s green finance category.

And nuclear energy has always overpromised and underdelivered: “Hypothetical new nuclear power technologies have been promised to be the next big thing for the last forty years, but in spite of massive public subsidies, that prospect has never panned out. That is also true of Small Modular Reactors, SMRs,” Ibid.

As explained in a press release d/d November 18, 2020, regarding SMR development: “The proposed reactors are still on the drawing board and will take a decade or more to develop. If built, their power will cost ten (10) times more than wind or solar energy. The most advanced SMR project to date in the US has already doubled its estimated costs from $3B to over $6B,” Ibid.

However, Russia has already launched a floating 70MW reactor in the Arctic Ocean (of all places!). China is also working on a floating design SMR. And three provinces in Canada are looking into SMRs. Rolls-Royce in the UK is working on a 440MW SMR. SMRs are generally designed to produce 50 to 300MW of electricity compared to the typical 1,000MW of traditional large-scale reactors.

In fairness to advocates, according to Nuscale, one of the engineering firms behind SMR development: “Even under worst case scenarios, where we lose all off-site power, the reactor will safely automatically shut down and remain cool for an unlimited time.’ adding, ‘this is the first time that’s been done’ for commercial nuclear power.” (Source: “The Countries Building Miniature Nuclear Reactors,” Future Planet, Yale e360, March 9, 2020).

Still, every nuclear conversation turns to radioactive waste and safety regardless of claims made by industry and with good reason. In fact, the repercussions of nuclear accident deaths and disfigurements are always buried from public view, until years later when the brutal truth finally comes out.
A BBC Future Planet article on July 25, 2019, “The True Toll of the Chernobyl Disaster”: “According to the official, internationally recognized death toll, just 31 people died as an immediate result of Chernobyl while the UN estimates that only 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the disaster. In 2005, it predicted a further 4,000 might eventually die as a result of the radiation exposure… Brown’s research, however, suggests Chernobyl has cast a far longer shadow.”

According to an article in USA Today, February 24, 2022, “What Happened at Chernobyl? What to Know About Nuclear Disaster”: “At least 28 people were killed by the disaster, but thousands more have died from cancer as a result of radiation that spread after the explosion and fire. The effects of radiation on the environment and humans is still being studied.”

As of 2023, the death count is much more than the 4,000 calculation of 2005.

The legacy of nuclear accidents, as deaths and deformities mount over time, kills the dream of a carbonless, clean power future. But legacies take years to form. Given enough time, radioactive waste will greet 30th century archaeologists.

For a prize-winning compelling read about the most toxic place in America and a terrifying look at the radioactive nuclear materials produced at Hanford for four decades: (Atomic Days, The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, Haymarket Books, 2022)

Regardless of the strongest assurances, nuclear accidents happen. They just happen!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Hunziker.

Pacific Youth are looking at how they can spark positive change following the Hiroshima G7 Youth Summit which has just wrapped up.

Youth from around the world have met in the Japanese city in an effort to find solutions to stop the use of nuclear weapons.

The summit was co-organised by the Centre for Peace at the Hiroshima University and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

• READ MORE: Other nuclear weapons protests

Among the attendees was Māohi — indigenous French Polynesian — youth delegate Tamatoa Tepuhiarii.

“I feel empowered, empowered to contribute for my community,” Tepuhiarii said.

He is aiming to do a PhD in anthropology, and said he wants to examine nuclear impacts on Māohi people.

“My Grandpa, he worked on Moruroa [atoll], and he died suddenly; he just fell suddenly and my mum told me that the blood came out from his mouth.

“We know now that his death is related to the nuclear testing period,” he said.

From 1966, French Polynesia’s Moruroa and Fangataufa tolls were the main French nuclear weapons test sites — that is where Tepuhiarii’s grandfather worked, unaware of the devastating consequences to come.

Some of the explosions were 200 times the strength of the bombs dropped by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

“We can see the impact of nuclear weapons on our society, on the Māohi society,” he said.

“The nuclear testing period, and particularly nuclear testing, has impacted on the whole society now 27 years after the last bomb, which exploded at Fangataufa,” Tepuhiarii said.

For Tepuhiarii, learning more about his family’s nuclear history is vital, to preserve the knowledge and share the stories of those who have suffered and continue to suffer.

Youth G7 outcomes
The youth summit statement noted the concerns some Pacific nations have on Japan’s plans to release more than one million tonnes of ALPS treated radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.

ALPS (Advanced Liquid Processing System) is a multi-nuclide removal system to strip various radioactive materials from contaminated water.

“[We] support in solidarity with the states who sit on the frontlines of this crisis and see this as an act of trans-boundary harm upon the Pacific,” the joint statement said.

Eleven requests have been made for G7 countries to take onboard including, “sincerely committing to steps towards nuclear disarmament”.

“We urge you to take bolder and more decisive actions by honouring our recommendations,” the G7 youth statement requested.

The official G7 meeting with world leaders starts on May 19.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Ahead of a public hearing scheduled for Tuesday evening regarding Holtec International's plan to discharge 1 million gallons of wastewater from the former Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, New York, more than 100 organizations wrote to Gov. Kathy Hochul this week demanding she take action to stop the plan for good.

Led by the Stop Holtec Coalition, 138 groups including Food & Water Watch, Hudson Riverkeeper, and Beyond Nuclear called on the Democratic governor to support the passage of state Senate Bill 5181 and Assembly Bill 5338, both of which would prohibit the dumping of "any radiological agent into the waters of the state."

Food & Water Watch New York tweeted last week that it is "time for Gov. Hochul to choose a side" regarding radioactive waste dumping.

"We are deeply concerned about the impacts on the health and safety of local residents, the river's ecosystem, and local economies," wrote the groups. "The Hudson Valley region is densely populated and also serves as a recreational area for millions from New York City and across the state. We call on you to use your authority as governor to ensure the necessary state and federal agencies take action to halt the dumping of toxic waste into our waterways including the Hudson River."

The letter was sent less than two weeks after Holtec announced it would delay its plan to begin the discharge, which had previously been set to begin in May with the dumping of 45,000 gallons of wastewater from pools that were used to cool spent nuclear reactor fuel rods before Indian Point was shuttered in 2021 after decades of local activism.

The company initiated a "voluntary pause" on the plan this month to give it time to better explain the discharge process to local community members—about 100,000 of whom use the Hudson as a primary drinking water source.

With groups including Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) warning in recent months that the treated wastewater could contain the isotope tritium—which can cause cancer, miscarriage, and other adverse health effects—many local leaders and residents say they don't need Holtec to further explain the plan to know that they oppose it.

"To best ensure public health and safety, Holtec should be required use the precautionary principle and keep radioactive fuel pool water contained on site—and not release it out into the environment, where it can bioaccumulate in the aquatic ecosystem and put swimmers and paddlers and others at risk of exposure," saidManna Jo Greene, environmental action director for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. "When passed, Gov. Holchul should urgently sign the [S.B. 5181] and the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board should do everything in its power to ensure the best possible alternative is implemented."

Advocates have said Holtec should keep the wastewater in tanks at the site of the decommissioned plant until a safe disposal method can be found.

The signatories of the letter sent to Hochul noted that 21 municipalities have recently passed resolutions officially opposing the discharge plan, and nearly half a million people have signed a petition to stop Holtec.

"Holtec's ploy is ludicrously dangerous—and it's on Gov. Hochul to stop the dump," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. "Years after activists successfully halted the nuclear threat in the Hudson Valley, we are called to arms yet again to defend precious water resources from industry's expediency. Gov. Hochul must listen to the people, and do everything in her power to keep radioactive waste out of our water."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

Ahead of a public hearing scheduled for Tuesday evening regarding Holtec International's plan to discharge 1 million gallons of wastewater from the former Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, New York, more than 100 organizations wrote to Gov. Kathy Hochul this week demanding she take action to stop the plan for good.

Led by the Stop Holtec Coalition, 138 groups including Food & Water Watch, Hudson Riverkeeper, and Beyond Nuclear called on the Democratic governor to support the passage of state Senate Bill 5181 and Assembly Bill 5338, both of which would prohibit the dumping of "any radiological agent into the waters of the state."

Food & Water Watch New York tweeted last week that it is "time for Gov. Hochul to choose a side" regarding radioactive waste dumping.

"We are deeply concerned about the impacts on the health and safety of local residents, the river's ecosystem, and local economies," wrote the groups. "The Hudson Valley region is densely populated and also serves as a recreational area for millions from New York City and across the state. We call on you to use your authority as governor to ensure the necessary state and federal agencies take action to halt the dumping of toxic waste into our waterways including the Hudson River."

The letter was sent less than two weeks after Holtec announced it would delay its plan to begin the discharge, which had previously been set to begin in May with the dumping of 45,000 gallons of wastewater from pools that were used to cool spent nuclear reactor fuel rods before Indian Point was shuttered in 2021 after decades of local activism.

The company initiated a "voluntary pause" on the plan this month to give it time to better explain the discharge process to local community members—about 100,000 of whom use the Hudson as a primary drinking water source.

With groups including Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) warning in recent months that the treated wastewater could contain the isotope tritium—which can cause cancer, miscarriage, and other adverse health effects—many local leaders and residents say they don't need Holtec to further explain the plan to know that they oppose it.

"To best ensure public health and safety, Holtec should be required use the precautionary principle and keep radioactive fuel pool water contained on site—and not release it out into the environment, where it can bioaccumulate in the aquatic ecosystem and put swimmers and paddlers and others at risk of exposure," saidManna Jo Greene, environmental action director for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. "When passed, Gov. Holchul should urgently sign the [S.B. 5181] and the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board should do everything in its power to ensure the best possible alternative is implemented."

Advocates have said Holtec should keep the wastewater in tanks at the site of the decommissioned plant until a safe disposal method can be found.

The signatories of the letter sent to Hochul noted that 21 municipalities have recently passed resolutions officially opposing the discharge plan, and nearly half a million people have signed a petition to stop Holtec.

"Holtec's ploy is ludicrously dangerous—and it's on Gov. Hochul to stop the dump," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. "Years after activists successfully halted the nuclear threat in the Hudson Valley, we are called to arms yet again to defend precious water resources from industry's expediency. Gov. Hochul must listen to the people, and do everything in her power to keep radioactive waste out of our water."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

The German nuclear phase-out is a victory of reason over the lust for profit; over powerful corporations and their client politicians. It is a people-powered success against all the odds.

I thank all the brave people who took risks for their beliefs; everyone who took part in demonstrations; all the people who signed petitions and sent letters of protest. And I'm proud of the role Greenpeace has played in opposing high-risk nuclear technology.

Roland Hipp (left) coverses with Greenpeace nuclear expert Heinz Smital in September 2020. (Photo: Michael Löwa/Greenpeace)

In the current debate about the last remaining nuclear power plants in Germany, it is often forgotten how big the movement against nuclear plants was in this country, even before the catastrophic events at Chornobyl and Fukushima.

The construction of the planned reprocessing plant in Wackersdorf was stopped in 1989 after years of widespread protest, a first major success of the anti-nuclear movement, with which Greenpeace is inextricably linked.

Greenpeace activists protest during the Bund-Laender Kommission meeting in Berlin against Gorleben as a possible nuclear waste final storage. (Photo: Paul Langrock/Greenpeace)

Greenpeace: protest and research

Greenpeace has repeatedly protested against the transport of nuclear waste from German nuclear power plants to the reprocessing plants in Sellafield (England) and La Hague (France) and was also able to prove that these plants are anything but harmless.

Greenpeace measurements from 1998 showed that soil samples from the vicinity of the Sellafield nuclear plant were comparable to radioactively contaminated samples taken from the 30-kilometer exclusion zone around the Chornobyl reactor.

At the turn of the century, in the North Sea off La Hague we found radiation levels well above regulatory limits, revealing routine illegal discharges of radioactive wastewater.

In 2005, shipments to so-called nuclear fuel recycling plants in England and France from Germany were banned. This is also a success of Greenpeace, of protest based on facts.

The latest major milestone of the anti-nuclear movement, here in Germany, was the decision against the Gorleben repository. Once again, the nuclear industry and their political apologists were unable to oppose or overwrite the science: The dilapidated salt dome is demonstrably unsuitable for storing radioactive waste, which must be kept safe for hundreds of thousands of years.

Greenpeace volunteers present Advent wreaths during protest against the Castor nuclear waste transport from LaHague to the intermediate storage Gorleben. (Photo: Gordon Welters/Greenpeace)

At the same time, the success points to the huge problem that advocates of nuclear power want to pass on to future generations: There is not one single safe repository for nuclear waste anywhere in the world. It is also good that Germany will not produce any new nuclear waste after April 16.

Nuclear power is not only risky, but also not a solution to the energy crisis. Before the anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, Greenpeace activists are calling for the German nuclear power plants to be finally switched off.

The accidents in Chornobyl and Fukushima have shown us in the most emphatic way that this technology cannot be controlled by humans in the event of a disaster. The German federal government's decision in 2011 to shut down nuclear power plants was correct at the time, and it still is.

Nuclear energy is expensive, risky, and far from independent: More than half of the uranium traded worldwide comes from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. With resources no longer squandered on the false promise of nuclear energy, following its removal from the energy mix, the renewable energy transition can finally pick up speed. I look forward to a safe and secure future with renewable energies, without fear of the next nuclear accident and misguided investments in error-prone and outdated technology.

Today I celebrate the nuclear phase-out and the many people who made it possible.

This story was originally posted byGreenpeace Germany.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Roland Hipp.

ANALYSIS: By Ming Wang

Public opinion will dictate how Japanese seafood is received after the wastewater is disposed of into the Pacific Ocean.

The global seafood market faces turmoil with the release of the Fukushima nuclear wastewater from Japan into the Pacific Ocean, computer modelling predicts.

Japan announced in 2021 it will release more than 1.25 million tonnes of treated Fukushima radioactive wastewater into the sea as part of its plan to decommission the power station when its storage capacity reaches its limit this year.

• READ MORE: Other Fukushima nuclear waster reports

Seafood is one of the most important food commodities in international trade, far exceeding meat and milk products.

According to the United Nations Comtrade database, global seafood trade has grown from US$7.57 billion in 2009 to US$12.36 billion in 2019, an increase of 63.2 percent.

The Japanese nuclear wastewater discharge raises global worries about the safety of Japanese seafood as public opinion influences consumers’ preference for seafood.

In this empirical study involving American consumers, 30 percent of respondents said they reduced their seafood consumption following the Fukushima nuclear plant accident and more than half believe Asian seafood poses a risk to consumer health due to the disaster.

Temporary bans
Most of Japan’s seafood trading partners, such as China, Russia, India and South Korea, imposed temporary bans on food from several districts around Fukushima in the wake of the accident in 2011.

My research models the potential impact of the Fukushima nuclear wastewater disposal on the global seafood trade using the import and export data for 26 countries which make up more than 92 percent of the world’s trade in marine products.

A community classification theory of complex networks was used to classify seafood trading countries into three communities. Seafood trade is frequent among countries within each individual community and less between the communities.

The first community contains Ecuador, Italy, Morocco, Portugal and Spain. The second contains Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

The third community contains China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan of China, Russia, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.

Modelling shows China, South Korea, and the US maintain a steady trade of seafood imports and exports between them. Data used for the modelling shows that the rate of change in trade between China and Korea, China and the US and between Korea and the US is very close to zero.

However, China, South Korea and the US are expected to increase their seafood imports from Denmark, France, Norway and other community group two countries while reducing seafood exports to them. This is because these three countries have already reduced their seafood trade with Japan.

The increase in exports from community group three to community group two nations leads to a decrease in imports and exports between countries within community group two. For example, the study notes that Denmark, Norway and France are all experiencing a decrease in seafood exports and imports between each other.

While the rates of change in trade between countries look very close, the size of each country’s import and export market is different, so the actual trade volume can vary greatly.

The model also divided the global seafood market into two segments — the first being the Japanese market and the second comprising 25 other countries. It calculated that Japan’s seafood exports fell by 19 percent in 2021, or US$259 million.

Different impacts
Public opinion after the Fukushima wastewater is discharged will have different impacts on the import and export trade of seafood for each country, especially for countries which trade with Japan.

What people think (about the discharge) is closely related to the amount of Japanese seafood imported by each country. The higher the amount of Japanese seafood imported by a particular country, the more negative public opinion is likely to be, according to computer modelling.

Japanese imports of seafood will also be reduced, predicts the computer model. However, the amount of reduction depends on how well the Japanese public accepts local seafood after the discharge of the nuclear wastewater.

The Japanese government has announced it will spend US$260 million to buy local seafood products if domestic sales are affected by the release of Fukushima wastewater.

If the Japanese public is more accepting of seafood caught in waters around the discharge area, seafood imports from other countries to Japan will likely fall. However, if public opinion does not go this way, Japan will have to import more seafood to meet local demand.

Reduced imports
If 40 percent of the reduction in Japanese seafood exports is absorbed by its own market, the modelling shows this would result in a US$272 million reduction in Japanese seafood imports from other countries.

The table pictured above from the computer model shows the predicted decrease in the trade volume of seafood exports from 25 countries to Japan. The impact of seafood exported to Japan is also related to the community classification.

Countries in the same community as Japan show a more significant reduction in their seafood exports to Japan while countries not in the same community have less impact. The planned Fukushima nuclear wastewater disposal will mainly affect countries in the same seafood trading community as Japan.

These countries will see more significant reductions in their imports of Japanese seafood and in the exports of their seafood to Japan compared to countries in other communities.

Ming Wang is a doctoral candidate in econometrics, complex networks and multi-modal transportation at the School of Maritime Economics and Management, Dalian Maritime University, China. He declares no conflict of interest. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info via Wansolwara.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

“[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.

The city was referring to a forthcoming Direct Pack facility for recycling plastic items called PET thermoforms — clamshells, berry containers, salad boxes, egg cartons, and similarly shaped containers made from polyethylene terephthalate, one of the seven main kinds of plastic. Direct Pack already has a recycling facility in Guadalajara that it says can recycle tens of thousands of tons of PET thermoforms each year, and it’s been constructing a new one in Mexicali, Mexico, just across the border from California. 

The facility is great news for plastic companies based in the U.S., where industry publications say PET thermoform recycling has remained “a struggle.” These companies face growing scrutiny over skyrocketing plastic pollution, and have spent decades trying to convince the public that recycling is the answer. Direct Pack says on its website that it can give PET thermoforms new life again and again, turning plastic containers like those thrown away at the Phoenix Super Bowl into a “valuable infinite resource.” 

But environmental advocates in Mexico are less excited about the idea of processing more of what they see as garbage from abroad. “The U.S. shouldn’t send this waste to Mexico,” said Marisa Jacott, director of the Mexican nonprofit Fronteras Comunes. “We have less money, less infrastructure.” Rather than engaging in what she called “waste colonialism,” she urged U.S. companies to stop producing so much plastic in the first place and to stop promoting recycling as a cure-all to the plastic waste crisis. 

Direct Pack’s Mexicali facility is part of a larger plan from the U.S. plastics industry to improve recycling infrastructure for the 1.6 billion pounds of PET thermoforms that the U.S. and Canada produce every year. Unlike the PET bottles used for bottled water, soda, and fruit juice, which are among the easiest plastic products to recycle, PET thermoforms are accepted by just 11 percent of the United States’ material recovery facilities, or MRFs — the plants where mixed materials from recycling bins like paper, aluminum, and plastic are sorted into bales for further processing. And even that doesn’t mean that those thermoforms will ultimately be turned into new products; most recyclers are unwilling to buy and reprocess PET thermoforms because it costs more to sort, wash, and recycle them than to make new plastics.

The main North American trade group for PET container recyclers lists only one facility in the United States that will accept PET-only bales of plastic for reprocessing. The president of another industry group, the Association of Plastic Recyclers, said last year that PET thermoforms were a low-volume commodity that weren’t worth the costs of sorting and storage.

Given such a bleak landscape, Ornela Garelli, an oceans and plastic campaigner for the nonprofit Greenpeace Mexico, says the promise of thermoform recycling is a “greenwashing strategy” from the plastics industry — a way to justify the continued production of plastics. She says it’s time to stop making so many thermoforms in the first place, not hold out hope that more recycling infrastructure will ever be able to keep up with a growing glut of plastic waste.

Still, U.S. plastic makers are doubling down. A U.S.-based nonprofit called the Recycling Partnership — funded and overseen by plastic and packaging companies, including Coca-Cola and Exxon Mobil — says it plans to fund a number of PET recycling efforts this year, beginning with a first round of grants announced in early January for three companies focused on PET reclamation. 

One of these companies is Direct Pack, whose headquarters are in Azusa, California, just outside Los Angeles. But rather than building out PET thermoform recycling infrastructure stateside, the Recycling Partnership’s grant is being used to help Direct Pack build a new PET recycling facility in Mexicali, set to begin operating this spring. According to the Recycling Partnership, the plant will source thermoforms from across the U.S., process them into a plastic feedstock called “flake,” and send them across the street to an existing Direct Pack thermoform production plant, where they will be converted into new packaging.

Andrew Jolin, Direct Pack’s director of sustainability, told Grist that “the whole process is environmentally sound,” adding that the company has been “embraced by the local community with our competitive pay scale and benefits.” He said concerns about the recyclability of PET thermoforms are “disinformation” propagated by Greenpeace and that Direct Pack plans to open a similar recycling plant in North Carolina by the end of the year.

Critics, however, have raised legal and ethical objections. Jim Puckett, founder and executive director of the U.S.-based nonprofit Basel Action Network, told Grist it was “disgusting” that the City of Phoenix and the companies represented by the Recycling Partnership were touting the Mexicali facility. “Of course it’s wonderful for them, they get to sweep their garbage across the border,” he said.

Puckett says the Mexicali facility could run afoul of an international agreement called the Basel Convention, which regulates the international plastic waste trade. Although the U.S. hasn’t ratified the agreement, Mexico has — meaning it’s illegal for Mexico to import plastic waste from the U.S. unless it’s “almost free from contamination and other types of waste” and “destined for recycling in an environmentally sound manner,” rather than incinerated or dumped. Bales of PET that contain more than 2 percent other types of plastic, paper, metal, food, or other materials are generally regulated under the Basel Convention as “hazardous waste” and are banned from U.S.-Mexico trade.

“It’s really difficult to achieve that level of cleanliness,” Puckett said. In California, MRFs are unable to sort bales of PET beyond an average of about 10 percent contamination — and that’s when they include PET bottles. There’s virtually no data on contamination in thermoform-only bales — since most recyclers in the U.S. won’t buy PET thermoforms, they’re typically not sorted into bales on their own.

Craig Snedden, Direct Pack’s president, said the company does not check PET bales before they’re imported from the U.S. to the company’s Guadalajara facility, but he’s confident that they contain less than 2 percent contamination, based on data on the weight of PET collected compared to the weight of all the nonrecyclable materials Direct Pack sends to a landfill.  Adam Gendell, The Recycling Partnership’s director of materials advancement, said the most common types of contamination are from food, which “doesn’t sink anybody’s ship” or “cause deleterious effects to the natural environment.” 

In response to a detailed list of questions, a spokesperson for the City of Phoenix referred Grist to Direct Pack and highlighted its goal of achieving “zero waste” by 2050.

Environmental groups have also raised concerns that PET thermoform recycling could divert millions of gallons of water from residential use in Mexicali, which was declared to be in a state of emergency drought last summer. Multiple washes are required to remove sticky glues and labels from PET thermoforms, making them significantly more water-intensive to recycle than bottles.

Jolin said the Mexicali facility would “not us a lot of freshwater” — about 800 gallons per day. He said it’s more environmentally friendly to recycle PET thermoforms than to make packages out of other materials like paper, because doing so requires more trees to be harvested. (The U.S. recycling rate for cardboard is greater than 90 percent, compared to 5 percent for plastic.)

Garelli, with Greenpeace Mexico,  said supporting a PET thermoform recycling plant in Mexico allows Direct Pack and its funders through the Recycling Partnership to skirt labor regulations that are tougher in the U.S. The minimum wage in Mexicali is about $17 per day — $2.12 an hour, based on an eight-hour workday — compared to $15.50 an hour in California.

“Instead of forcing their own companies to make the transition toward reusability, they are sending all their plastic waste to countries where there are more flexible laws,” she said. “They can pay low salaries to the workers.”

Federal data compiled by the Basel Action Network shows that U.S. plastic waste exports to Latin America have grown by some 90 million pounds per year since 2017, when China stopped accepting it with its “National Sword” policy. “It is not fair for countries — not only Mexico but other Latin American countries — to keep receiving this waste from the U.S.,” Garelli said. 

Editor’s note: Greenpeace is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline American cities want to recycle their plastic trash in Mexico. Critics call it ‘waste colonialism.’ on Mar 31, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

Photograph Source: U.S. Army photo by Spc. Edward A. Garibay, 16th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment – Public Domain

When Australia – vassal be thy name – assumed responsibilities for not only throwing money at both US and British shipbuilders, lending up territory and naval facilities for war like a gambling drunk, and essentially asking its officials to commit seppuku for the Imperium, another task was given.  While the ditzy and dunderheaded wonders in Canberra would be acquiring submarines with nuclear propulsion technology, there would be that rather problematic issue of what to do with the waste.  “Yes,” said the obliging Australians, “we will deal with it.”

The Australian Defence Department has published a fact sheet on the matter, which, as all such fact sheets go, fudges the facts and sports a degree of misplaced optimism.  It promises a “sophisticated security and safety architecture” around the nuclear-powered submarine program, “building on our 70-year unblemished track record of operating nuclear facilities and conducting nuclear science activities.”

This record, which is rather more blemished than officials would care to admit, does not extend to the specific issues arising from maintaining a nuclear-powered submarine fleet and the high-level waste that would require shielding and cooling.  In the context of such a vessel, this would entail pulling out and disposing of the reactor once the submarine is decommissioned.

Australia’s experience, to date, only extends to the storage of low-level waste and intermediate-level waste arising from nuclear medicine and laboratory research, with the low-level variant being stored at over a hundred sites in the country. That situation has been regarded as unsustainable and politically contentious.

The department admits that the storage and disposal of such waste and spent fuel will require necessary facilities and trained personnel, appropriate transport, interim and permanent storage facilities and “social license earned and sustained with local and regional communities.” But it also notes that the UK and the US “will assist Australia in developing this capability, leveraging Australia’s decades of safely and securely managing radioactive waste domestically”.

That’s mighty good of them to do so, given that both countries have failed to move beyond the problem of temporary storage.  In the UK, the issue of disposing waste from decommissioned nuclear submarines remains stuck in community consultation.  In the US, no option has emerged after the Obama administration killed off a repository program to store waste underneath Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.  The reasons for doing so, sulked Republicans at the time, were political rather than technical.

Where, then, will the facilities to store and dispose of such waste be located?  “Defence – working with relevant agencies including the Australian Radioactive Waste Agency – will undertake a review in 2023 to identify locations in the current or future Defence estate that could be suitable to store and dispose of intermediate-level waste and high-level waste, including spent fuel.”

The various state premiers are already suggesting that finding a site will be problematic.  Both Victoria and Western Australia are pointing fingers at South Australia as the logical option, while Queensland has declared that “under no circumstances” would it permit nuclear waste to be stored.  “I think the waste can go where all the jobs are going,” remarked Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.  “I don’t think that’s unreasonable, is it?”

Western Australia’s Mark McGowan, in furious agreement, suggested that a site “somewhere remote, somewhere with very good long-term geological structure that doesn’t change or move and somewhere that is defence lands” narrowed down the options.  “[T]hat’s why Woomera springs to mind.”

South Australia’s Premier, Peter Malinauskas, insists that the waste should go “where it is in the nation’s interest to put it” and not be a matter of “some domestic political tit-for-tat, or some state-based parochial thing.”

When it comes to storing nuclear waste, parochialism is all but guaranteed.  The Australian government is already facing a legal challenge from traditional owners regarding a 2021 decision to locate a nuclear waste site at Kimba in South Australia.  The effort to find a site for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility intended for low and intermediate radioactive waste produced by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation at Lucas Heights, New South Wales, took three decades.

According to members of the First Nations group opposing the decision, the proposed facility risks interfering with a sacred site for women.  Dawn Taylor, a Barngarla woman and Kimba resident, told the ABC that, “The Seven Sisters is through that area.”  She feared that the waste facility would end up “destroying” the stories associated with the dreaming.

The federal resources minister, Madeleine King, has stated with little conviction that a cultural heritage management plan “informed by the research of the Barngarla people” is in place.  “There are strict protocols around the work that is going on right now to make sure there is no disturbance of cultural heritage.”

Local farmers, including the consistently vocal Peter Woolford, are also opposed to the project.  “We just can’t understand why you would expose this great agricultural industry we have here in grain production to any potential risk at all by having a nuclear waste dump here.”

The Australian security establishment may well be glorifying in the moment of AUKUS, itself an insensibly parochial gesture of provocation and regional destabilisation, but agitated residents and irate state politicians are promising a good deal of sensible mischief.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The Australian Defence Department has published a fact sheet on the matter, which, as all such fact sheets go, fudges the facts and sports a degree of misplaced optimism. It promises a “sophisticated security and safety architecture” around the nuclear-powered submarine program, “building on our 70-year unblemished track record of operating nuclear facilities and conducting nuclear science activities.”

This record, which is rather more blemished than officials would care to admit, does not extend to the specific issues arising from maintaining a nuclear-powered submarine fleet and the high-level waste that would require shielding and cooling. In the context of such a vessel, this would entail pulling out and disposing of the reactor once the submarine is decommissioned.

Australia’s experience, to date, only extends to the storage of low-level waste and intermediate-level waste arising from nuclear medicine and laboratory research, with the low-level variant being stored at over a hundred sites in the country. That situation has been regarded as unsustainable and politically contentious.

The department admits that the storage and disposal of such waste and spent fuel will require necessary facilities and trained personnel, appropriate transport, interim and permanent storage facilities and “social license earned and sustained with local and regional communities.” But it also notes that the UK and the US “will assist Australia in developing this capability, leveraging Australia’s decades of safely and securely managing radioactive waste domestically”.

That’s mighty good of them to do so, given that both countries have failed to move beyond the problem of temporary storage. In the UK, the issue of disposing waste from decommissioned nuclear submarines remains stuck in community consultation. In the US, no option has emerged after the Obama administration killed off a repository program to store waste underneath Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. The reasons for doing so, sulked Republicans at the time, were political rather than technical.

Where, then, will the facilities to store and dispose of such waste be located? “Defence – working with relevant agencies including the Australian Radioactive Waste Agency – will undertake a review in 2023 to identify locations in the current or future Defence estate that could be suitable to store and dispose of intermediate-level waste and high-level waste, including spent fuel.”

The various state premiers are already suggesting that finding a site will be problematic. Both Victoria and Western Australia are pointing fingers at South Australia as the logical option, while Queensland has declared that “under no circumstances” would it permit nuclear waste to be stored. “I think the waste can go where all the jobs are going,” remarked Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. “I don’t think that’s unreasonable, is it?”

Western Australia’s Mark McGowan, in furious agreement, suggested that a site “somewhere remote, somewhere with very good long-term geological structure that doesn’t change or move and somewhere that is defence lands” narrowed down the options. “[T]hat’s why Woomera springs to mind.”

South Australia’s Premier, Peter Malinauskas, insists that the waste should go “where it is in the nation’s interest to put it” and not be a matter of “some domestic political tit-for-tat, or some state-based parochial thing.”

When it comes to storing nuclear waste, parochialism is all but guaranteed. The Australian government is already facing a legal challenge from traditional owners regarding a 2021 decision to locate a nuclear waste site at Kimba in South Australia. The effort to find a site for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility intended for low and intermediate radioactive waste produced by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation at Lucas Heights, New South Wales, took three decades.

According to members of the First Nations group opposing the decision, the proposed facility risks interfering with a sacred site for women. Dawn Taylor, a Barngarla woman and Kimba resident, told the ABC that, “The Seven Sisters is through that area.” She feared that the waste facility would end up “destroying” the stories associated with the dreaming.

The federal resources minister, Madeleine King, has stated with little conviction that a cultural heritage management plan “informed by the research of the Barngarla people” is in place. “There are strict protocols around the work that is going on right now to make sure there is no disturbance of cultural heritage.”

Local farmers, including the consistently vocal Peter Woolford, are also opposed to the project. “We just can’t understand why you would expose this great agricultural industry we have here in grain production to any potential risk at all by having a nuclear waste dump here.”

The Australian security establishment may well be glorifying in the moment of AUKUS, itself an insensibly parochial gesture of provocation and regional destabilisation, but agitated residents and irate state politicians are promising a good deal of sensible mischief.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

According to a new analysis published last week, United Nations data on the global waste trade fails to account for “hidden” plastics in textiles, contaminated paper bales, and other categories, leading to a dramatic, 1.8-million-metric-ton annual underestimate of the amount of plastic that makes its way from the European Union, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States to poor countries. The authors highlight the public health and environmental risks that plastic exports pose in the developing world, where importers often dump or incinerate an unmanageable glut of plastic waste.

“Toxic chemicals from these plastics are poisoning communities,” said Therese Karlsson, a science and technical adviser for the nonprofit International Pollutant Elimination Network, or IPEN. IPEN helped coordinate the analysis along with an international team of researchers from Sweden, Turkey, and the U.S.

Many estimates of the scale of the plastic waste trade make use of a U.N. database that tracks different types of products through a “harmonized commodity description and coding system,” which assigns each product category a code starting with the letters HS. HS 3915 — “waste, parings, and scrap” of plastics — is often assumed by researchers and policymakers to describe the total volume of plastic that’s traded globally. But the new analysis argues this is only “the tip of the plastic waste iceberg,” since HS 3915 misses large quantities of plastic that are included in other product categories.

Discarded clothing, for example, may be tracked as HS 5505 and not counted as plastic waste, even though 60 to 70 percent of all textiles are made of some kind of plastic. And another category called HS 6309 — used clothing and accessories — is assumed by the U.N. to be reused or recycled and is therefore not considered waste at all, even though an estimated 40 percent of these exported clothes are deemed unsalvageable and end up dumped in landfills.

Plastic contamination in paper bales — the huge stacks of unsorted paper that are shipped abroad to be recycled — also tends to be overlooked in estimates of the international plastic waste trade, even though these bales may contain 5 to 30 percent plastic that must be removed and discarded.

Accounting for plastic from just these two product categories increases plastic waste exports from all the regions analyzed by as much as 1.8 million metric tons per year — 1.3 million from paper bales and half a million from textiles. That’s more than double the plastic that’s counted when only plastic “waste, parings, and scrap” are analyzed.

Additional product categories like electronics and rubber add even more to the global plastic waste trade, although Karlsson said a lack of data makes it hard to quantify their exact contribution. All this plastic strains developing countries’ waste management infrastructure, leading to large quantities of plastic waste ending up in dumps, landfills, or incinerators. Burning this waste causes hazardous air pollution for nearby communities, and dumps and landfills can leach chemicals like PCBs — a group of compounds that can cause cancer in humans — into soil and water supplies.

More than 10,000 chemicals are used in the production of plastic, and one-fourth of them have been flagged by researchers for their toxicity and potential to build up in the environment and in people’s bodies. The report calls for greater transparency from plastic and petrochemical industries about the chemicals they put in their plastic products, and for regulators to require them to use fewer, nontoxic chemicals.

Karlsson also called for a total ban on the global plastic waste trade, along with enforceable limits on the amount of plastics the world makes in the first place. “Regardless of what way we’re handling plastic waste, we need to decrease the amount of plastics that we generate,” she told Grist, “because the amount of plastic waste being produced today will never be sustainable.”

Without aggressive action to phase down plastic production, the world is on track to have produced a cumulative 26 billion metric tons of plastic waste by 2050, most of which will be incinerated, dumped, or sent to landfills.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Rich countries export twice as much plastic waste to the developing world as previously thought on Mar 13, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

The post Japan to Delay Ocean Dumping of Contaminated Waste Water from Fukushima appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John Laforge.

Less of the Antarctic Sea was covered by ice last month than in any January ever recorded, scientists said Wednesday while warning that melting sea ice is accelerating global heating.

The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said analysis of satellite imagery showed Antarctic sea ice coverage was 31% below average last month, significantly lower than the previous January low mark set in 2017.

At the opposite end of the Earth, Arctic ice coverage was 4% below average and the third-lowest January level observed, the agency reported.

C3S also said last month was the third-warmest January ever recorded in Europe, with above-average air temperatures—including the Balkans and Eastern Europe—prevailing throughout much of the continent.

"While January 2023 is exceptional, these extreme temperatures remain a tangible indication of the effects of a changing climate for many regions and can be understood as an additional warning of future extreme events," C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess said in a statement. "It is imperative for global and regional stakeholders to take swift action to mitigate the rise in global temperatures."

Last month, a 600-square-mile iceberg—nearly the size of Greater London—broke off Antarctica's Brunt Ice Shelf, although scientists said the event was unrelated to climate change. January is summer in the Southern Hemisphere.

Still, "while the decline in Antarctic sea ice extent is always steep at this time of year, it has been unusually rapid this year," scientists at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported last month, "and at the end of December, Antarctic sea ice extent stood at the lowest in the 45-year satellite record."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

While Auckland residents enjoy a brief reprieve from the rain, the rubbish continues to pile up as the full cost of the New Zealand flash floods continues to be counted.

Some streets in Auckland are littered with items damaged and discarded from Friday’s freak flooding — causing a health hazard for locals.

Electronics, furniture, books and clothing line Shackleton Road in Mt Eden.

• READ MORE: Other Auckland flash flood reports

Connor O’Boyle’s home was inundated with one and a half metres of flood waters leaving most of what he owns destroyed.

“Everything is contaminated with black water. It’s actually a health hazard and it’s been a long time waiting to get feedback from the insurers so we’re really not sure how the clean-up is going because 20 other of my neighbours have all been flooded.”

He said residents tried to keep the street tidy but became overwhelmed.

“We initially tried to keep things tidy; we have flexi-bins and skips, but there is just too much.”

Frustrating wait
O’Boyle said it has been a frustrating wait for its removal.

“My other neighbours have been emailing the mayor’s office and they have got responses to take the rubbish to waste disposal sites but we physically can’t get there so we have got no real answers with the rubbish.”

O’Boyle has criticised the council’s communication.

“It would just be nice for a plan to be put together for the residents, pretty much the response from the local government is: ‘it’s your problem you sort it out’.”

Another couple, the Naras, echoed his sentiments and said help has been scarce.

“It is difficult to find help, everything is in shortage. If you don’t get help within three days there is no use in getting help because it stinks. I cleaned up everything myself, if after six days you’re going to come and clean up the house [it] is already damaged.”

Another neighbour said looters were also a big issue.

Wardrobes stolen
“Going through, all the remnants of the flood, we had a couple of guys come and steal two wardrobes, they were drying out to be assessed by insurance, it’s pretty bad.”

The man said the council officials have let the residents down.

“Being a first world country this shouldn’t happen to us. This is New Zealand. We should have better drainage facilities here and the response should be pretty quick. The council and government have failed us in this area.”

Neighbour Fraser said they have been left with few options.

“This is probably not nice on the eyes either but what else can we do about it?”

He said even the efforts they have made have been exploited by others.

“It is quite unfortunate that people have just been dumping their rubbish in our bin, they are probably not aware that we paid for that ourselves. Even the swimming pool, a lot of people have been dumping stuff in that.”

‘This is huge’ – council
Council general manager of waste solutions Parul Sood said the flooding was an unprecedented undertaking for the clean-up crews.

“This is just huge, we haven’t dealt with something like this before.”

Sood said they have increased the number of dump sites but admitted it had been difficult to get to all the city’s streets and it could be a long time until the final piece of waste was collected.

“It is quite a massive impact on the city. I just think it will be a while before we clean out each and every piece of rubbish that has been generated by this really massive storm.”

However, O’Boyle said the response has not been good enough.

“It’s just disappointing that we can’t get the street cleaned, it’s not only a health hazard but it’s probably also causing contamination in our waterways. We all want to try to do the right thing and we just need it tidied up.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is failing to uphold its legal obligation to regulate the nearly half-billion gallons of toxic wastewater that petroleum refineries dump into the nation's waterways on a daily basis, according to an exhaustive study published Thursday.

The Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), a watchdog founded by former EPA enforcement attorneys, analyzed publicly available records and found that in 2021 alone, the 81 refineries across the U.S. that discharge into rivers, streams, and estuaries released 1.6 billion pounds of chlorides, sulfates, and other dissolved solids harmful to aquatic life; 15.7 million pounds of algae-feeding nitrogen; 60,000 pounds of selenium, which can cause mutations in fish; and other pollutants, including cyanide; heavy metals such as arsenic, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, and zinc; and petrochemicals like benzene.

"Much of the water pollution from refineries is legal," EIP's report explains, "because EPA and the states have failed to set any limits on certain pollutants and have failed to update and modernize permit limits for other pollutants" despite the Clean Water Act's mandate that EPA does so. "But a portion of the problem is also illegal. As it turns out, EPA and state enforcement of existing permit limits for refineries is lax and rarely results in penalties for violations."

"Almost 83% of refineries (67 of 81) exceeded their permitted limits on water pollutants at least once between 2019 to 2021, according to EPA enforcement and compliance records," the report notes. "But only about a quarter of the refineries with violations (15 of the 67) were penalized during this period."

Other key findings of the report, titled Oil's Unchecked Outfalls, include:

• Wastewater discharged by 68% of the refineries examined (55 of 81) contributes to the "impairment" of downstream waterways—meaning they are too polluted to support aquatic life or allow for recreational uses like swimming or fishing.
• U.S. refineries are often old–averaging 74 years, but some dating back to the 1880s—and many have antiquated and inadequate pollution control systems. Most have also expanded over the last forty years, increasing both the volume and variety of pollutants they discharge. But EPA has not updated its standards for refineries since 1985.
• Two-thirds of the refineries examined by EIP (56 of 81) are located in areas where the percentage of low-income households within three miles exceeds the national average, and over half are located in areas where the percentage of people of color exceeds the national average.
• Sixty-seven refineries were flagged by EPA as violating permitted pollution limits 904 times between 2019 and 2021, including for dumping excessive amounts of cyanide, zinc, total suspended solids, ammonia, and oil and grease.

"Oil refineries are major sources of water pollution that have largely escaped public notice and accountability in the U.S., and too many release a witches' brew of contaminants to our rivers, lakes, and estuaries," EIP executive director Eric Schaeffer said in a statement. "This is because of lax federal standards based on wastewater treatment methods that are nearly forty years old."

"The Clean Water Act requires EPA to impose more stringent standards that reflect the advanced wastewater treatment methods available today," said Schaeffer, former director of civil enforcement at EPA. "After decades of neglect, EPA needs to comply with the law and set strong effluent limits for refineries that protect public health and environment. EPA and the states also need to start enforcing the limits that exist and penalizing polluters."

EIP identified which refineries are the top dischargers of key pollutants. When it comes to selenium, the Chevron El Segundo Refinery in California and the Motiva Port Arthur Refinery in Texas are the worst offenders, each dumping more than 12 pounds per day into local waterways. The Phillips 66 Wood River Refinery in Illinois and the BP Cherry Point Refinery in Washington pour out more nickel than any other facility in the country. El Segundo is also the biggest discharger of nitrogen, at 4,351 pounds per day, followed by the PBF Delaware City Refinery’s 3,283 pounds per day. For total dissolved solids, the worst offenders are the ExxonMobil Baytown Refinery (347,345 pounds per day) and the Valero Corpus Christi Bill Greehey Refinery (291,527 pounds per day), both in Texas.

EIP also documented the worst refineries for permit violations from 2019 to 2021. The Hunt Southland Refinery in Mississippi exceeded its permitted pollution limits 144 times during that time period but faced just two Clean Water Act enforcement actions totaling $85,500. The Phillips 66 Sweeny Refinery in Texas, meanwhile, ran up 44 violations but was hit with just a single $30,000 fine.

"After decades of neglect, EPA needs to comply with the law and set strong effluent limits for refineries that protect public health and environment. EPA and the states also need to start enforcing the limits that exist and penalizing polluters."

"EPA's national discharge limits for refineries apply to just ten pollutants, including ammonia, chromium, and oil and grease," states the report. "These skeletal standards do not begin to address the variety and volume of dangerous contaminants found in the wastewater from refining processes."

For example, the report documents that refineries are "a notable source" of toxic "forever chemicals" (PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), in part because they use firefighting foams that contain them. Even though PFAS have been linked to numerous adverse health impacts, EPA's newly released plan for regulating industrial discharges does not establish limits on these synthetic compounds in refinery wastewater.

"EPA's current rules for refineries are almost 40 years old, based on outdated treatment methods, and do not even apply to most of the pollutants that refineries discharge," says EIP's report. "EPA needs to waste no further time and move quickly to update these standards and impose the more stringent discharge limits the law requires."

"The states and the EPA also need to penalize permit violations more consistently so that refining companies have an economic incentive to clean up waterways," the report continues. "Currently, most violations by refineries are not penalized at all, and when they are, the amounts are paltry compared to the profitability of the industry. More stringent enforcement will provide a financial incentive for violators to update their pollution control systems and improve their operations to protect public health and the environment."

Bruze Reznick, executive director of Los Angeles Waterkeeper, lamented that "once again, the U.S. government has turned a blind eye while oil and gas companies pollute our environment, including our sensitive marine ecosystems, and disproportionately harm our frontline communities."

"We must now put the spotlight on oil refineries' essentially unregulated water pollution and demand that EPA fulfill its duty under the Clean Water Act by setting, updating, and actually enforcing discharge limits for these refineries," said Reznick.

He was echoed by Sejal Choksi-Chugh, executive director of San Francisco Baykeeper, who said that "it's high time for EPA to crack down on the toxic pollution from oil refineries that's threatening both wildlife and human health."

EIP researchers argued that "EPA's failure to require the cleanup of refinery wastewater is a part of a wider pattern."

"Most of the discharge limits in effect today for industries across the U.S. were established well before the end of the last century," the report points out. "According to the latest state water quality reports, about half of America's rivers, streams, and lakes, and a quarter of our estuaries are too polluted to support aquatic life, swimming, fishing, or to supply drinking water. The 1972 Clean Water Act promised to make all waters fishable and swimmable, but we are only halfway home to that goal more than fifty years later."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.