WIRED’s gear team has tested dozens of bags meant to ease commutes and withstand wear and weather. Here, our favorite ecological bags are as capable and durable, but made using recycled materials like plastic water bottles, old nylon, and even fishing nets retrieved from the ocean.
It’s important to find ways to reuse what would otherwise pollute our oceans and sit in landfills forever. But first, ask yourself: Do you need a new bag? Buying sustainable items when you already have good ones at home doesn’t help much. But if the bag you have now isn’t working out, then you might get some peace of mind with our picks below that utilize recycled materials. Not every bag is made from 100 percent recycled materials, but every little bit counts.
Updated July 2024: We’ve added a crossbody purse and reusable shopping bags from Kind Bag, plus Sherpani’s Skye Mini Crossbody. We’ve also updated prices and links throughout.
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How Do We Test Bags?
When it comes to products like bags, personal style dictates what you (and we) like. It’s the first thing you’ll notice. We try to test a number of different types of bags in many different styles. Beyond just looking good, we make sure they’re actually worth your money in terms of comfort and durability.
When we get a new bag, we start using them as one normally would, taking purses to the grocery store or out to bars, filling backpacks and totes with our laptops and work gear and heading to a coffee shop to work for the afternoon, and stuffing travel bags with clothes and shoes. We note what they’ll fit, how they’re organized, and if the straps are comfortable or start to dig in after a while. We also fill them with heavy objects—sometimes weights, and sometimes just a bunch of random other products we’re testing—and we fling them around. If threads and straps start to pull, they’re out. Whenever possible, we keep bags to use over and over again for months or years to test long-term durability too, and will update this guide if our feelings change.
LOWELL — Middlesex Community College college offers a variety of First Year Experience sessions as part of Orientation Plus to set up new students for success from day one. FYE sessions provide new students with information to make their transition to the college easier. Students earn one credit toward their degree for participating.
“Students who enroll in Orientation Plus have higher grade point averages and are more likely to complete their degrees,” said Department Chair of Social Sciences and FYE Coordinator Deborah Botker. “Orientation Plus ensures that students start on their collegiate journey with the essential strategies to pursue their goals.”
Attending an FYE session allows students to meet advisers, faculty and staff who will assist them throughout their academic journey. Orientation helps new students get used to the college, campuses, community and resources available to them at MCC. The orientation can be completed at the student’s own pace from a phone, tablet or computer.
Registered students can select a FYE course online at middlesex.mass.edu/sections/IDS101, calling 1-800-818-3434 or emailing their adviser.
MBTA, Keolis to provide extra late-night train service for Lowell Folk Festival
Keolis Commuter Services, the operating partner for the MBTA commuter rail system, will operate two extra late-night trains this weekend to accommodate passengers attending the Lowell Folk Festival. On Friday, July 26 and Saturday, July 27, an additional Lowell Line train will depart Lowell at 12:45 a.m. and make all stops to Boston.
The Lowell Regional Transit Authority will also provide buses for service between Lowell Station (Kennedy Center/Gallagher Terminal) and the festival site. The last bus to the station from the festival site will leave at 10:30 p.m. More info on the shuttle schedule can be found at lrta.com/news/2024-lowell-folk-festival-lrta-shuttle-schedule.
Free office furniture at UMass Lowell
LOWELL — UMass Lowell will have used office furniture free for pickup, including desks, file cabinets, chairs and bookshelves, every Thursday through September, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The giveaway takes place in the garage in the rear of Lot B at the Tsongas Center, 300 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Parking will be available in the Tsongas B Lot at 99-1 River Place. The event is presented by UMass Lowell’s Office of Sustainability.
For information, call 978-934-3224 or email announcements@uml.edu.
Recycle day
LOWELL — All towns are invited to drop off a wide variety of electronics, appliances and household items on Saturday, July 27, between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Bring these items — rain or shine — to the parking lot of Saint Rita’s Parish, 158 Mammoth Road.
• Small electronics items are $5 each: computer towers, scanners, tape players, printers, copiers, DVDs and compact discs, stereo equipment, fax machines, lighting, vacuums, answering machines, speakers, circuit boards, radios, record players, modems, fans, video equipment and game consoles.
• Appliances: refrigerators, dorm size $25, large $40; dishwasher, dryer and stove all $25 each; small microwave $15, large $20.
• TVs and monitors: 18-26 inches are $25 each; 27-35 inches, $30; over 35 inches or projection TV, $45.
• Household items: Anything, including the kitchen sink, will be accepted. Pricing may vary with size and item from $10-$40.
There is no charge on keyboards; car, boat, and motorcycle batteries; cables, wires; and cellphones. Bring unwanted old or new bicycles for reuse and recycling at no charge, as well as working or nonworking mini bikes and mopeds. No paint or chemicals will be accepted.
Cash or check only. For information on pricing, contact Dennis Wood at 508-277-7513 or denwaynewood@yahoo.com.
SAN FRANCISCO — The mother of a 3-year-old girl whose body was found in a San Francisco Bay Area recycling center over the weekend said Tuesday she feared for her daughter’s well-being whenever the child was with her ex-husband, who authorities said died by suicide and is suspected in the child’s death.
San Jose police said an employee in the processing area of a San Jose recycling facility found Ellie Lorenzo’s body Saturday. She was last seen alive with her father, Jared Lorenzo, who was involved in a bitter custody battle with the child’s mother and died Friday from an apparent suicide in San Francisco. The San Jose Police Department said in a statement Tuesday that Lorenzo, 42, is a suspect in the girl’s death.
“Ellie was stolen from me, her grandmother and the rest of our family and friends in an evil and brutal manner,” the child’s mother, Chrystal Obi, said in the statement posted on social media. Obi didn’t respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Obi said that Lorenzo had learned that the court had ruled she could move with her daughter out of state before he picked up the child Thursday from her home in Mountain View, California, for a court-ordered visitation with the child.
Obi said she worried about Ellie’s safety whenever the child was with her father.
“I wanted desperately for her constant supervision and worried for her safety each time she was with him for court ordered visitation,” she wrote.
The child was last seen alive with Lorenzo Thursday at a residence in Fremont, 20 miles (30 kilometers) northeast of Mountain View, before he drove with the child to his apartment nearby, the San Jose Police Department said in a statement. On Friday, Lorenzo left his apartment at 6 a.m. “and drove to the city of San Jose where he removed Ellie’s body from the trunk of his vehicle and disposed of her in a trash receptacle,” the police department said.
That trash bin later was emptied by the garbage company, and Ellie’s body was unknowingly transferred to the recycling facility, authorities said.
Obi said she did not doubt that her ex-husband “killed her” and went to great lengths to cover his crime, “moving her to a different city, hiding her body in a bag inside a box inside a dumpster and driving to another city to take his own life,” she wrote.
Police said that after dumping the child’s body, Lorenzo drove to several Bay Area cities and stopped in San Francisco, where he was found dead Friday morning from an apparent suicide.
Authorities have not said how Lorenzo or Ellie died. The motive and circumstances surrounding the child’s death are still under investigation, the San Jose Police Department said.
Obi had fought for sole custody since their marriage broke up in 2021, saying the father was “increasingly erratic” and had become “progressively unstable,” according to court records, the Mercury News reported.
When Ellie was five months old, Obi accused her husband of “emotional abuse” and “gaslighting me with excuses that don’t make sense.”
Lorenzo “moves around the room talking to himself and becomes increasingly agitated,” she said, and “places tape over the light switches” to keep them on, the newspaper reported.
___
This story corrects the spelling of the mother’s last name to Obi.
Coastal Animals Are Thriving on Plastic Pollution Out in the Pacific Ocean | Extreme Earth
In the time it takes you to read this sentence — say, four seconds — the world produces nearly 60 metric tons of plastic, almost entirely out of fossil fuels. That’s about 53,000 metric tons an hour, 1.3 million metric tons a day, or 460 million metric tons a year. Those numbers are fueling widespread and growing contamination of Earth’s oceans, rivers, and the terrestrial environment with plastic trash.
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.
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.”
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 toolcreated 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.
About 48 million tons of plastic waste is generated in the United States each year, but only 5 to 6 percent of it is actually recycled. A new report from the Center for Climate Integrity, “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling,” accuses the plastics industry of a decades-long campaign to “mislead” the public about the viability of recycling. Correspondent Ben Tracy talks with the report’s co-author, Davis Allen, and with Jan Dell, a former chemical engineer, about an inconvenient truth surrounding the lifecycle of plastic. [Originally broadcast April 14, 2024.]
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BOSTON — Byproducts of a trip to the market and convenience store, plastic bags get a bad rap from environmentalists as wasteful consumables that litter oceans, parks and beaches and take hundreds of years to break down.
Voters in at least 160 cities and towns in Massachusetts, including Gloucester, Manchester, Newburyport and Marblehead, have banned the bags or restricted their use.
Others are considering limits, including lawmakers on Beacon Hill, who have revived a push for a statewide ban.
The state Senate voted 38-2 Thursday to approve a bill that will ban single use plastic bags and require retailers to charge customers 10 cents for a paper bag, among other initiatives to reduce plastic waste.
Supporters of the ban say single-use plastic bags clog the waste stream and litter oceans, parks and beaches.
“They may sit in a landfill. They may be incinerated, both of which release microplastics and greenhouse gases back into the environment,” Sen. Becca Rausch, a Newton Democrat, the bill’s primary sponsor, said in remarks ahead of the bill’s passage. They probably won’t be recycled because less than 10% of plastics are actually recycled in the United States. And plastics can persist in the environment for decades to centuries to an entire millennium.”
Members of the Senate’s Republican minority voted against the bill, arguing that a single use plastic ban will hurt the state’s small businesses while doing little to reduce pollution.
“This is going to cost consumers more, in a state that already has an incredibly high cost of living and while we’re trying to increase affordability,” Sen. Peter Durant, R-Spencer, said in remarks on Thursday. “I think this becomes too much, too much for us to bear. There are still solutions we can take to implement moving forward, but we have to look at the cost-benefit ratio.”
Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, one of two Republicans who voted for the bill, filed an amendment that would have removed the paper bag fee from the bill, but it was rejected by the Democratic majority.
“If we are going to, rightfully, ban plastic bags, then we should not be dictatorial about how the market responds to the consequences,” the Gloucester Republican said.
Lawmakers withdrew a proposed amendment that would have banned plastic liquor “nips” following pushback from the state’s package store owners who argued it would hurt business and do too little to reduce plastic pollution.
Efforts to phase out the bags are opposed by the plastics and paper industries, as well as some retail groups, who call the restrictions unnecessary and costly.
Beacon Hill has wrestled with the issue for years. Attempts at a statewide ban have faltered amid industry pressure.
In 2019, a similar proposal fell apart after a legislative committee, deliberating behind closed doors, stripped the fee and added a “preemption” clause that would effectively override local plastic bag bans, many of them voter-approved.
“What we’re really trying to do is encourage reuse,” said Janet Domenitz, executive director of MassPIRG, said Thursday. “So the ban on single use plastics gets rid of the most deleterious material. The fee on paper is a way to incentivize people bring your own bag.”
Then-Gov. Charlie Baker suspended local plastic bag bans in 2020 and banned the use of reusable bags as part of a raft of measures to stop spread of COVID-19. The state rescinded those limits a year later after it proceeded with reopening plans, citing research that the virus doesn’t survive well on plastic surfaces.
Nationwide, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags a year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which says the average bag takes up to 1,000 years to break down. Most bags are used an average of 12 minutes.
The bill now moves to the House of Representatives, which must approve it before sending it to Gov. Maura Healey’s desk for consideration.
Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhinews.com
A compost bin in a Capitol Hill alleyway. Sept. 1, 2023.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
It’s been a slow rollout of Denver’s new pay-as-you-throw trash program.
Pay-as-you-throw expands composting citywide, adds more frequent recycling pickup and charges residents based on the size of their trash bin.
City Council passed the climate policy in June of 2022, and it took effect in January of 2023. But it’s taken over a year for the city to distribute compost bins across the city — an effort that is still ongoing.
Here are the neighborhoods next up for compost bins: Athmar Park, Auraria, Baker, Barnum, Barnum West, Civic Center, Lincoln Park, Sun Valley, Union Station, Valderde, Villa Park and Westwood, as well as parts of the Central Business District and West Colfax.
Residents of single-family homes and apartment buildings with up to seven units should keep an eye out for a letter in the mail explaining the service and giving residents a chance to request their compost bin size. Residents will also receive a pail for the kitchen to keep food scraps and a compost guide.
Why are some neighborhoods getting compost bins earlier than others?
The city is prioritizing distributing compost bins to parts of the city with the lowest trash diversion rates.
That’s because pay-as-your-throw aims to incentivize more compost and recycling and less trash. Residents who haven’t received compost bins yet will get a credit on their trash pickup invoice.
Denver will not finish distributing compost bins until 2025. Since the program began in 2023, trash diversion rates have increased by 3 percent to 26 percent of waste.
Jan Dell is a former chemical engineer who has spent years telling an inconvenient truth about plastics. “So many people, they see the recyclable label, and they put it in the recycle bin,” she said. “But the vast majority of plastics are not recycled.”
About 48 million tons of plastic waste is generated in the U.S. each year; only 5 to 6 percent of it is actually recycled, according to the Department of Energy. The rest ends up in landfills or is burned.
Dell founded a non-profit, The Last Beach Cleanup, to fight plastic pollution. Inside her garage in Southern California is all sorts of plastic with those little arrows on it that make us think they can be recycled. But, she said, “You’re being lied to.”
Those so-called chasing arrows started showing up on plastic products in 1988, part of a push to convince the public that plastic waste wasn’t a problem because it can be recycled.
CBS News
Davis Allen, an investigative researcher with the Center for Climate Integrity, said the industry didn’t need for recycling to work: “They needed people to believe that it was working,” he said.
A new report, called “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling,” accuses the plastics industry of a decades-long campaign “…to mislead the public about the viability of plastic recycling,” despite knowing the “technical and economic limitations that make plastics unrecyclable” at a large scale.
“They couldn’t ever lie about the existence of plastic waste,” said Allen. “But they created a lie about how we could solve it, and that was recycling.”
Tracy asked, “If plastic recycling is technically difficult, if it doesn’t make a whole lot of economic sense, why has the plastics industry pushed it?”
“The plastics industry understands that selling recycling sells plastic, and they’ll say pretty much whatever they need to say to continue doing that,” Allen replied. “That’s how they make money.”
Plastic is made from oil and gas, and comes in thousands of varieties, most of which cannot be recycled together. But in the 1980s, when some municipalities moved to ban plastic products, the industry began promoting the idea of recycling as a solution.
Allen showed us documents and meeting notes they obtained from public archives, and from a former staff member of the American Plastics Council. “What we see in here is a widespread knowledge that plastics recycling was not working,” he said.
At a trade conference in Florida in 1989, an industry leader told attendees, “Recycling cannot go on indefinitely, and does not solve the solid waste problem.”
In 1994 an Exxon executive told the staff of the plastics council that when it comes to recycling, “We are committed to the activities but not committed to the results.”
Allen said, “They always kind of viewed recycling not as a real technical problem that they needed to solve but as a public relations problem.”
The industry just launched a new ad campaign, called “Recycling is real,” and says it’s investing in what it calls advanced recycling technology.
The American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, responded to “CBS Sunday Morning” in a statement, calling the Center for Climate Integrity’s report “flawed” and “outdated,” and says “plastic makers are working hard to change the way that plastics are made and recycled.”
Jan Dell doesn’t believe plastic will ever be truly recyclable: “It’s the same process they were trying 30 years ago, and my response to that is, it’s science fiction,” she said.
Plastic production is set to triple by 2050, and with so much plastic waste piling up on land and sea, more than 170 countries are working on a United Nations treaty to end plastic pollution.
In a letter to President Biden about the negotiations, the plastics industry says it opposes any bans on plastic production, but supports more recycling.
To which Dell says, “The only thing the plastics industry has actually recycled is their lies over and over again.”
For more info:
Story produced by John Goodwin. Editor: Emanuele Secci.
Ben Tracy is CBS News’ senior national and environmental correspondent based in Los Angeles. He reports for all CBS News platforms, including the “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell,” “CBS Mornings” and “CBS Sunday Morning.”
NAIROBI, Kenya — U.N. agencies have warned that waste from electronics is piling up worldwide while recycling rates remain low and are likely to fall even further.
The agencies were referring to “e-waste,” which is defined as discarded devices with a plug or battery, including cellphones, electronic toys, TVs, microwave ovens, e-cigarettes, laptop computers and solar panels. It does not include waste from electronic vehicles, which fall into a separate category.
In a report released Wednesday, the U.N.’s International Telecommunications Union and research arm UNITAR said some 62 million tons of “e-waste” was generated in 2022, enough to fill tractor-trailers that could be lined up bumper to bumper around the globe. It’s on track to reach 82 million tons by 2030.
Metals — including copper, gold and iron — made up half of the 62 million tons, worth a total of some $91 billion, the report said. Plastics accounted for 17 million tons and the remaining 14 million tons include substances like composite materials and glass.
The U.N. says 22% of the e-waste mass was properly collected and recycled in 2022. It is expected to fall to 20% by the end of the decade because of “staggering growth” of such waste due to higher consumption, limited repair options, shorter product life cycles, growing “electronification” of society, and inadequate e-waste management infrastructure, the agencies said.
They said some of the discarded electronic devices contained hazardous elements like mercury, as well as rare Earth metals coveted by tech industry manufacturers. Currently, only 1% of the demand for the 17 minerals that make up the rare metals is met through recycling.
About half of all e-waste is generated in Asia, where few countries have laws on e-waste or collection targets, according to the report. Recycling and collection rates top 40% in Europe, where per-capita waste generation is highest: nearly 18 kilograms (39 pounds).
In Africa, which generates the least of any of the five big global regions, recycling and collection rates hover at about 1%, it said.
“The latest research shows that the global challenge posed by e-waste is only going to grow,” said Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, head of the ITU telecommunication development bureau. “With less than half of the world implementing and enforcing approaches to manage the problem, this raises the alarm for sound regulations to boost collection and recycling.”
For some, e-waste represents a way to earn cash by rummaging through trash in the developing world to find coveted commodities, despite the health risks.
At the Dandora dumpsite where garbage collected from the Kenyan capital of Nairobi ends up — even though a court declared it full over a generation ago — scavengers try to earn a living by picking through rubbish for e-waste that can be sold to businesses as recycled material.
Steve Okoth hopes the flow continues so he can eke out an income, but he knows the risks.
“When the e-waste comes here, it contains some powder which affects my health,” he said, adding that when electronic devices heat up, they release gases and he “can’t come to work because of chest problems.”
However, Okoth said they don’t have any other options: “We are now used to the smoke because if you don’t go to work you will not eat.”
Recycling plants, like Nairobi’s WEEE center, have collection points across Kenya, where people can safely get rid of old electric equipment.
“We take inventory of the items,” said Catherine Wasolia, WEEE’s chief operating officer, to check for data on submitted devices and wipe them clean. Then they test each to assess if “it can be reused or repurposed.”
E-waste expert George Masila worries about the impact of electronic waste on soil.
“When you have all this e-waste — either in the dumpsites or mercilessly deposited anywhere else — it could have major effects on the soil,” Masila said. “Every year it rains and water flows and attracts all these elements that are deposited into the environment. You have water getting contaminated.”
He said greater recycling and re-use of such materials, “are some of the things we should be considering.”
Report authors acknowledged that many people in the developing world pay their bills through harvesting such e-waste, and called for them to be trained and equipped to make such work safer.
“We must try to support these people trying to find their niche,” said Ruediger Kuehr, senior manager of the sustainable cycles program at UNITAR.
It’s fairly easy to recycle plant pots if your municipality is set up for it. And if not, there is still a way you can make sure that your plastic pots have a second life. Here’s everything you need to know about plant pot recycling.
Recycling has turned into quite a process. I find myself asking if things are recycled more often than not.
And with plastic being our top packaging method, we go through a lot of it. But as much as I wish we could toss everything into the recycling bin and give it a new life, that isn’t always the case.
Here’s how you can recycle plant pots and keep just a little bit more plastic out of the landfill!
Coloured plastic pots are still eligible for recycling at most facilities.
What Plastics Can You Recycle?
Containers that can be recycled will have a resin identification code on the plastic. This is depicted as a number surrounded by a triangle. This will tell you what type of plastic an item is made of.
While there are more common numbers for plastic, it doesn’t necessarily mean the item can be recycled. Typically, 1, 2, and 5 plastics are commonly recycled and allowed in most recycling programs.
Those with the number 3, 4, and 6 are somewhat specialty plastics and often need to be dropped off to be recycled as specialty facilities.
Check your plant pot to see if you can identify the number on it to help you determine if it’s recyclable or not.
These same rules apply to seedling trays and cell packs.
How to Recycle Plant Pots
Most plant pots are okay to go in the recycling, including the plastic trays used for seedlings, the plastic nursery containers and pots, and the cell packs smaller plants come in.
Like any containers in your recycling bin, the containers must be clean. Check to make sure the pots are free of soil and plant debris. Give your containers a quick rinse with your garden hose before you place them in your recycling bin.
There may also be stipulations on the size of plant pots for recycling. For instance, where I live in British Columbia, the plant pots can be no larger than 25 litres.
When in doubt, look up your municipalities local recycling regulations. They’ll tell you directly if they recycle plant pots or will list out the types of plastics they accept.
Larger pots may not be allowed in curbside recycling programs.
Where Can I Recycle My Plastic Plant Pots?
Most plastic plant pots can be placed directly in the curbside recycling program that most cities or municipalities have.
If you don’t have a curbside recycling program, you can take these containers to a local recycling depot. Most should offer a free drop-off.
My province, BC, has a great resource called Recyclepedia where it allows me to input what I’m recycling and where I am to help me find a drop off zone. Your city or municipality may have a similar resource. Just Google the recycling rules of your town or city!
If you have a large collection, many small nurseries will happily take them back and reuse them if they’re in good condition. Call your local nursery and ask if they’d accept plastic pots.
While I grow many plants from seed, I still end up with some new plastic pots every gardening season. Don’t we all!
How to Upcycle Plant Pots
While recycling is a wonderful thing, the reality is that most of our plastic doesn’t make its way to a local recycling facility. Trying to reduce plastic usage and reuse it whenever possible are always great options.
Here are some ways that I have seen plastic pots being used:
Use them again for seed starting. The more you grow from seed, the more you need to reuse these plastic pots, and the less likely you are to buy plants in more plastic containers.
Fill up space in patio containers or raised beds. Rather than fill the base with expensive soil, flip plastic pots upside down. This works wonderfully if it is a very deep container or you’re working with shallow-rooted plants.
Cut off the bottom of the pot to make a watering halo.
Use it as a water reservoir, similar to an olla (as I mention in this post).
Use the pot as a planting guide to create a ready-made hole when repotting a new plant.
Use larger pots with drainage holes to hold produce and rinse it with a garden hose
Make a squirrel or rat baffle by slipping a plastic pot upside down onto the pole of a bird feeder.
Cover a tender perennial with a large pot, filling it with dry leaves for insulation.
If you have any more clever uses for plastic pots, leave them in the comments below. Then I can add to the list for everyone to benefit from…and keep plastic out of the landfill!
NEW ORLEANS — It’s a beloved century-old Carnival season tradition in New Orleans — masked riders on lavish floats fling strings of colorful beads or other trinkets to parade watchers clamoring with outstretched arms.
It’s all in good fun but it’s also a bit of a “plastics disaster,” says Judith Enck, a former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator and president of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics.
Carnival season is at its height this weekend. The city’s annual series of parades began more than a week ago and will close out on Tuesday — Mardi Gras — a final day of revelry before Lent. Thousands attend the parades and they leave a mess of trash behind.
Despite a massive daily cleanup operation that leaves the post-parade landscape remarkably clean, uncaught beads dangle from tree limbs like Spanish moss and get ground into the mud under the feet of passers-by. They also wash into storm strains, where they only complicate efforts to keep the flood-prone city’s streets dry. Tons have been pulled from the aging drainage system in recent years.
And those that aren’t removed from the storm drains eventually get washed through the system and into Lake Pontchartrain — the large Gulf of Mexico inlet north of the city. The nonbiodegradable plastics are a threat to fish and wildlife, Enck said.
“The waste is becoming a defining characteristic of this event,” said Brett Davis, a New Orleans native who grew up catching beads at Mardi Gras parades. He now heads a nonprofit that works to reduce the waste.
One way of making a dent in the demand for new plastic beads is to reuse old ones. Parade-goers who carry home shopping bags of freshly caught beads, foam footballs, rubber balls and a host of other freshly flung goodies can donate the haul to the Arc of New Orleans. The organization repackages and resells the products to raise money for the services it provides to adults and children with disabilities.
The city of New Orleans and the tourism promotion organization New Orleans & Co. also have collection points along parade routes for cans, glass and, yes, beads.
Aside from recycling, there’s a small but growing movement to find something else for parade riders to lob.
Grounds Krewe, Davis’s nonprofit, is now marketing more than two dozen types of nonplastic, sustainable items for parade riders to pitch. Among them: headbands made of recycled T-shirts; beads made out of paper, acai seeds or recycled glass; wooden yo-yos; and packets of locally-made coffee, jambalaya mix or other food items — useful, consumable items that won’t just take up space in someone’s attic or, worse, wind up in the lake.
“I just caught 15 foam footballs at a parade,” Davis joked. “What am I going to do with another one?”
Plastic imports remain ubiquitous but efforts to mitigate their damage may be catching on.
“These efforts will help green Mardi Gras,” said Christy Leavitt, of the group Oceana, in an email.
Enck, who visited New Orleans last year and attended Mardi Gras celebrations, hopes parade organizers will adopt the biodegradable alternatives.
“There are great ways to have fun around this wonderful festival,” she said. ”But you can have fun without damaging the environment.”
___
Associated Press reporter Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.
Starbucks is rolling out a greener beverage option, but it won’t come in the company’s classic green-and-white cups.
Starting Wednesday, drive-thru customers and those who place orders through the coffee chain’s mobile app can bring their own cups, an effort to cut down on waste, the company said Wednesday. The only requirement is that cups must be clean.
“Offering customers more options to use a personal cup when they visit Starbucks marks tangible progress towards the future,” Starbucks Chief Sustainability Officer Michael Kobori said in a statement.
Starbucks said customers should inform employees at their local drive-thru that they have brought their own cup. A barista will then collect the cup at the pickup window using a “contactless vessel” and return the cup with the customer’s beverage of choice in the same way “to ensure hygiene and safety,” according to Starbucks.
Customers can receive a 10 cent discount or 25 Starbucks Rewards Bonus Stars at participating stores each time they fill up using their own cup.
Starbuck, which has long allowed dine-in customers to use their own cups, has said it wants to halve its waste production by 2030.
Until now, Starbucks drive-thrus have served drinks in cups made of paper and plastic, which are difficult to recycle, according to the company. An estimated 50 billion cups in the U.S. end up in landfills every year, while less than 1% of domestic paper recycling mills can process plastic-coated cups, according to chemical manufacturer BASF.
Elizabeth Napolitano is a freelance reporter at CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and technology news. She also writes for CoinDesk. Before joining CBS, she interned at NBC News’ BizTech Unit and worked on the Associated Press’ web scraping team.
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After the holidays, don’t just toss your Christmas tree! Instead, try these crafty and fun Christmas tree recycling ideas. Here’s what to do with a Christmas tree to help you immortalize the spirit of the season all year long.
There really is nothing like a fresh tree for Christmas. It smells wonderful and brings some of the outdoors inside for a short while. When Christmas is over, it’s usually time to hack it up, but it seems to me that there is a more fitting end for something so special.
Not one to waste nature’s bounty, I’ve used my tree to make many creative projects over the years and found even more Christmas tree crafts from other creatives to share with you. Here is a list of my favourite crafty Christmas tree recycling projects to give an old tree new life.
This post will cover…
Christmas Tree Crafts and Recycling Projects
Sometimes, it’s hard to get rid of the Christmas tree. There are times when I struggle to pack up the holidays and get rid of the year’s tree.
If the Christmas tree holds lots of sentimental value for you as well, there are plenty of creative ways to recycle the tree when her job is complete indoors. Here are 20 ideas on what to do with a Christmas tree after the holidays.
If you’re looking for things to make with branches from your Christmas tree, this coat rack keeps the branches’ original natural look.
Take some of your more uniquely shaped and strong branches and build your own coat rack. This fun DIY project looks store-bought and is a handy accessory for the front or back door. Read the instructions on creating this branch coat rack with only a few tools!
From one Christmas tree to the next, this reindeer can allow the evergreen to live its next life and continue the holiday spirit. Miniature and adorable, this reindeer uses all sizes of twigs and branches to create a wooden ornament or planter decoration.
I love how versatile these wood-slice flowers are. They could work outside in the garden or on a porch. The flowers would also look great inside as a wall hanging or Christmas decoration. Wood slices are easy to make, and they can be used for a ton of projects.
For those looking for things to make with branches, you can use the thicker branches along with the trunk itself to get all the different sizes for these flowers.
When people ask me what to do with a Christmas tree, I always suggest these ornaments first. Ornaments made from an old Christmas tree could commemorate a special Christmas, such as a baby’s first Christmas or a first Christmas together. They are also a frugal way to get a bunch of ornaments to fill up next year’s tree.
I made these wooden ornaments from a very special tree for Kiddo and me. That Christmas, we went to a Christmas tree farm and cut down our tree ourselves. So we wanted to hold onto it long after the tree was gone!
Many of you probably know I am a huge wreath fan. I have one for pretty much every occasion! I love this simple twig wreath because you could use it any time of the year, and its simplicity makes it an easy addition to most home styles.
These twig flower pots give me major cottage vibes! Oftentimes, pots are more expensive than the flowers inside them. These are a great way to enhance plastic pots without breaking the budget on fancy clay ones from the garden centre.
Once you’ve tried pyrography, you won’t want to stop! This is the next step to doodling: decorating wood with a heated pen that burns designs into it. The result is gorgeous and makes for beautiful coasters, ornaments, or décor.
For these wood slices, I made coasters with botanical-inspired designs. One of the best Christmas tree crafts, they became wonderful personalized gifts for friends and family the following holiday season.
Who knew push pins could look so good? The little ones would work great on a corkboard, and the larger ones would work for hanging up décor and artwork around the house. They are a super quick project and require very few tools.
Why not make your wood stand out all on its own? If you have a section of the wall you are unsure what to do with, wood slices can fit in just about any space. Cut them as big or small as you want and arrange them in any pattern.
This artwork would look great in a cabin or for those who love a rustic style inside the home.
If you are wondering what to do with a Christmas tree and are willing to go big, this one is for you! A branch chandelier is a great way to combine nature with sophistication. Plus, the creator of this chandelier made the whole thing for just $35!
Windchimes have always been one of my favourite additions to the garden. Their soft jingle in the breeze is calming and fun to listen to outdoors. Making one yourself is easy, simply use a branch as the top of the windchime.
I’ve made a few windchimes over the years, including this beaded version.
Using branches from your Christmas tree and a few items foraged from the garden, it is super simple to replicate some popular planter ornaments. After loving some planter decorations in a garden centre but not loving the price tag, I set my sights on making my own!
Take a look at some of the rustic decorations and see if it is something you can do yourself. Wood slices, pinecones, and snowflakes are all easy to make out of wood, using both the trunk and smaller branches of the Christmas tree.
Bringing nature indoors gives you the perfect blend of rustic and chic. I used branches and some good-quality rope to make these swing shelves. It’s a very simple Christmas tree craft, but it looks like a million bucks.
I used these branches topped with stuffed animals to decorate my son’s nursery, but let your imagination go wild!
I hope you have the perfect trunk or branch for this unique idea of what to do with a Christmas tree. Lamps are a wonderful way to light up the garden at night, providing softened light to enjoy the outdoors in the evening. I made this outdoor lamp using a branch as the stand for my lamp.
You don’t even need a frame to create this project. Gather twigs from your tree, then place them together to make your own DIY photo frame. Why not frame a photo from this year’s Christmas?
Simple and effective, branch coasters are a must-have for the coffee table and have remained one of my favourite upcycled Christmas tree crafts over the years. Leave them plain or decorate them…it is totally up to you! Varnish and stain are essential in making these coasters pop out.
Once again, never underestimate the power of wood slices! By circling a mirror with wood slices, it went from a plain hanging to a feature piece in the home. The careful placement of the slices really makes this project stand out.
Don’t be scared to play with wood slices and branches. By careful whittling and cutting, you can create a myriad of shapes and designs to display as art on your wall or elsewhere throughout the home. Creativity is everything!
I go crazy for anything miniature. These twiggy gnomes look adorable in garden pots, indoors or out. They can be used for Christmas, but I think they look great year-round as a pseudo mini garden gnome.
The supplies are small on this one, with just a little bit of paint and twigs from your Christmas tree, making it one of the best things to make with small branches.
A successful garden is one that is full of helpful critters. To encourage bees, ladybugs, and other beneficial bugs to your garden, a bug hotel is a great idea. This bug hotel doubles as artwork for your garden, perfect for hanging on a fence. It’s long been one of my most useful pieces of garden art, made entirely with recycled tree branches.
By now, you should have plenty of ideas on what to do with a Christmas tree. With some creative recycling and crating, your Christmas tree can turn into something new.
Whether you’re carrying it on for next Christmas or turning it into something you can use all year, your tree will still hold some sentimental value of the time spent with family during the holidays. If you created one of my Christmas tree crafts, I would love to see it!
FAQ About Using Christmas Trees
Can you replant a cut Christmas tree without roots?
There is no way to replant a cut Christmas tree. It’s only meant to be enjoyed indoors and then gets composted or repurposed after the holiday season. But they’re still much more sustainable than buying a fake Christmas tree!
If you want to keep and replant a Christmas tree, you’ll need to use a living tree with the root ball still intact. In this case, it would be potted inside and then brought outside after the holiday,
As a toddler, Ryan Hickman started collecting and sorting bottles and cans. More than a decade later, he’s just 14, and Ryan’s Recycling is a full-fledged business spanning much of Southern California, with almost a dozen employees and plenty of accolades. Carter Evans reports.
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As demand for electric vehicles continues to grow, one start-up company is looking to make the cars even more sustainable – by turning used tires into batteries.
Most electric vehicles rely on lithium-ion batteries for their power. But critics say that those batteries are far from being as efficient, environmentally friendly and sustainable as they could be. That’s where one Chile-based company says old tires come into play.
The company, called T-Phite is putting used car tires through a process called pyrolysis, which entails putting the tires under extreme heat so that they break down into smaller molecules. T-Phite CEO Bernardita Diaz says those molecules become three primary byproducts – pyrolytic oil, steel and carbon black, a substance that contains graphite material essential to providing an electric pathway within batteries for energy to surge.
According to black carbon supplier Imerys, which is not involved with this project, carbon black is usually produced “by the incomplete combustion of heavy petroleum products such as FCC tar, coal tar, ethylene cracking tar, and a small amount of vegetable oil.”
Along with having “excellent electrical conductivity,” Imerys says that the substance is also known for being wear-resistant.
Making this substance out of used tires solves two problems, Diaz told Reuters.
“One is the final disposal of tires and the second is the demand that is being generated for electromobility materials,” she said. “And when you obtain materials from other waste, you are generating what is known as the circular economy.”
In the U.S. alone, roughly 250 million tires are left for scrap every year, according to the Federal Highway Administration. Of those tires, less than half are either recycled into new products or used to create tire-derived fuel, the agency said.
“Natural resources are already very limited and the fact that new solutions can be found from waste is very important,” Diaz said, adding that their process can go beyond lithium-ion batteries and extend to sodium batteries, “the next-generation batteries in electromobility.”
“It is very important and gratifying for us that this innovation has not only focused on a business niche, but that it provides much more openness,” she said.
Diaz’s company told Reuters that potential investors have shown significant interest in the process and may be looking to help scale it up to an industrial level. But while their process is certainly impressive, it is built on years of research into this possible solution.
In 2014, scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee found that carbon can be isolated from tire rubber-derived materials, and that the substance performed better than when derived from other materials. Further research from separate scientists published in 2021 found that carbon black can “systematically improve” battery performance so that they can charge faster.
Ryan Hickman began collecting bottles for recycling when he was just 3 years old. Now, at 14, he’s still going, earning money for college and giving back to his community. Carter Evans has the story.
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When you stroll through a supermarket aisle you might ask, “How often should I reuse my reusable bags to truly make an environmental difference?” To address this, recent studies have looked into the impact of various bag materials and their sustainability.
Understanding the Bag Life Cycle
Life cycle assessments, a cornerstone in evaluating the environmental footprint of a product, break down each stage: raw material acquisition, manufacturing, transportation, and disposal. Through this, one can gauge greenhouse gas emissions, water and energy consumption, waste disposal, and other environmental impacts.
Factors that further complexify the assessment include:
The bag’s material: Is it from virgin resin or recycled plastic?
Its origin: Where was it made, and how much transportation did it require?
Decorations on the bag, which can magnify its environmental cost.
The bag’s end-of-life: Is it recycled, reused, or simply discarded?
Crunching the Numbers: How Often to Use Reusable Bags?
Drawing from a 2018 Danish study, we get some startling numbers regarding the reuse of various bag materials compared to the standard plastic bag:
Polypropylene bags (the common green reusable ones): 37 times.
Paper bags: 43 times.
Cotton bags: A whopping 7,100 times.
Meanwhile, a UK study focusing strictly on climate change implications found:
Paper bags should be reused three times.
Low-density polyethylene bags: Four times.
Non-woven polypropylene bags: 11 times.
Cotton bags: 131 times.
It’s essential to note that reusing plastic bags, even as bin liners, amplifies the number of times an alternative bag needs reuse.
Debunking the Organic Myth of Reusable Bags
Interestingly, the same Danish study pointed out that organic cotton bags possess a more significant environmental footprint than their non-organic counterparts, largely because of increased production costs. Sometimes, our well-intentioned assumptions about sustainability might not align with reality.
A 2014 US study discovered that bags like LDPE and polypropylene did exhibit a lower environmental toll than regular plastic bags, but only with adequate reuse. The snag? Approximately 40% of consumers forget their reusable bags, resorting to plastic ones, thereby escalating the environmental load of their shopping.
Furthermore, the quantity of bags and their volume plays a role. The Danish study ensured an even playing field by standardizing bag volumes, sometimes requiring two bags for their evaluations.
Key Takeaways for Conscious Consumers
Maximize Bag Usage: Regardless of the bag’s material, using it numerous times is key.
Opt for Recyclable Materials: Prioritize bags made from materials that can be recycled.
Simplicity is Sustainable: Bags adorned with prints or decorations can inadvertently increase their environmental cost.
Prevent Litter: Always find ways to recycle, reuse, or repurpose your bags.
In our journey towards a more sustainable future, understanding the true impact of our daily choices, like which shopping bag to use, is crucial. With informed decisions, we can each contribute to a greener planet.
VIENNA — VIENNA (AP) — The Biden administration hopes to create a commercial nuclear fusion facility within 10 years as part of the nation’s transition to clean energy, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Monday.
Calling nuclear fusion a pioneering technology, Granholm said President Joe Biden wants to harness fusion as a carbon-free energy source that can power homes and businesses.
“It’s not out of the realm of possibility” that the U.S. could achieve Biden’s “decadal vision of commercial fusion,” Granholm said in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press in Vienna.
Fusion works by pressing hydrogen atoms into each other with such force that they combine into helium, releasing enormous amounts of energy and heat. Unlike other nuclear reactions, it doesn’t create radioactive waste. Proponents of nuclear fusion hope it could one day displace fossil fuels and other traditional energy sources. But producing carbon-free energy that powers homes and businesses from fusion is still decades away.
A successful nuclear fusion was first achieved by researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California last December in a major breakthrough after decades of work.
Granholm also praised the role of the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog in verifying that states live up to their international commitments and do not use their nuclear programs for illicit purposes, including to build nuclear weapons.
“The IAEA is instrumental in making sure that nuclear is harnessed for good and that it does not fall into the hands of bad actors,” she said.
The watchdog organization has agreements with more than 170 states to inspect their nuclear programs. The aim is to verify their nuclear activities and nuclear material and to confirm that it is used for peaceful purposes, including to generate energy.
Nuclear energy is an essential component of the Biden administration’s goal of achieving a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net zero emissions economy by 2050.
Asked about the difficulty of finding storage sites for radioactive waste, Granholm said that the U.S. has initiated a process to identify communities across the country who may be willing to host an interim storage location. Currently, most of the spent fuel is stored at nuclear reactors across the country.
“We have identified 12 organizations that are going to be in discussion with communities across the country about whether they are interested (in hosting an interim site),” she said.
The U.S. currently does not recycle spent nuclear fuel but other countries, including France, already have experience with it.
Spent nuclear fuel can be recycled in such a way that new fuel is created. But critics of the process say it is not cost-effective and could lead to the proliferation of atomic weapons.
There are two proliferation concerns associated with recycling, according to the Washington-based Arms Control Association: The recycling process increases the risk that plutonium could be stolen by terrorists, and second, those countries with separated plutonium could produce nuclear weapons themselves.
“It has to be done very carefully with all these non-proliferation safeguards in place,” Granholm said.
Professor Dennis Whyte, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the U.S. has taken a smart approach on fusion by advancing research and designs by a range of companies working toward a pilot-scale demonstration within a decade.
“It doesn’t guarantee a particular company will get there, but we have multiple shots on goal,” he said, referring to the Energy Department’s milestone-based fusion development program. “It’s the right way to do it, to support what we all want to see: commercial fusion to power our society” without greenhouse gas emissions.
On other topics, Granholm said that depending on whether the U.S. government shuts down or not, the Biden administration could announce in October details on an $8 billion hydrogen hub program that will be funded by the bipartisan infrastructure law.
A hub is meant to be a network of companies that produce clean hydrogen and of the industries that use it — heavy transportation, for example — and infrastructure such as pipelines and refueling stations. States and companies have teamed up to create hub proposals.
Environmental groups say hydrogen presents its own pollution and climate risks. When released into the atmosphere, it boosts volumes of methane and other greenhouse gases.
“Our goal is to get the cost of clean hydrogen down to 1 dollar per kilogram within one decade,” Granholm insisted.
As fossil fuel emissions continue warming Earth’s atmosphere and extreme weather phenomena occur globally, Granholm was asked her opinion on the announcement by U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that the U.K. will delay crucial climate targets.
Sunak said last week that he will push back the deadline for selling new gasoline and diesel cars and the phasing out of gas boilers as part of one of his biggest policy changes since taking office.
“When you see the heatwaves that the U.K. experienced this summer, I think it becomes obvious that we need to put on the accelerator,” she said, while adding that the U.K. has been a “great partner” in pushing modern technologies.
“We want to see everybody moving forward as quickly as possible (on the clean energy transition), including ourselves,” she said.
Copenhagen, Denmark — Denmark’s Lego said on Monday that it remains committed to its quest to find sustainable materials to reduce carbon emissions, even after an experiment by the world’s largest toymaker to use recycled bottles did not work. Lego said it has “decided not to progress” with making its trademark colorful bricks from recycled plastic bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate, known as PET, and after more than two years of testing “found the material didn’t reduce carbon emissions.”
Lego enthusiastically announced in 2021 that the prototype PET blocks had become the first recycled alternative to pass its “strict” quality, safety and play requirements, following experimentation with several other iterations that proved not durable enough.
The company said scientists and engineers tested more than 250 variations of PET materials, as well as hundreds of other plastic formulations, before nailing down the prototype, which was made with plastic sourced from suppliers in the U.S. that were approved by the Food and Drug Administration and European Food Safety Authority. On average, a one-liter plastic PET bottle made enough raw material for ten 2 x 4 Lego bricks.
Despite the determination that the PET prototype failed to save on carbon emissions, Lego said it remained “fully committed to making Lego bricks from sustainable materials by 2032.”
The privately-held Lego Group, which makes its bricks out of oil-based plastic said it had invested “more than $1.2 billion in sustainability initiatives” as part of efforts to transition to more sustainable materials and reduce its carbon emissions by 37% by 2032, Lego said.
The company said it was “currently testing and developing Lego bricks made from a range of alternative sustainable materials, including other recycled plastics and plastics made from alternative sources such as e-methanol.”
Also known as green methanol, e-methanol is composed of waste carbon dioxide and hydrogen, created by using renewable energy to split water molecules.
Lego said it will continue to use bio-polypropylene, the sustainable and biological variant of polyethylene — a plastic used in everything from consumer and food packaging to tires — for parts in Lego sets such as leaves, trees and other accessories.
“We believe that in the long-term this will encourage increased production of more sustainable raw materials, such as recycled oils, and help support our transition to sustainable materials,” it said.
Lego was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Kristiansen. The name derived from the two Danish words, leg and godt, which together mean “play well.” The brand name was created unaware that lego in Latin means “I assemble.”
