A team led by researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that can begin digesting itself when it makes contact with soil or compost.
The soft plastic material is a type of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), commonly found in memory foam products and soft products like cushions, floormats and even shoes. The updated TPU that researchers created includes spores of Bacillus subtilis. The bacteria remains dormant in the plastic until it reaches compost, where it interacts with nutrients and begins to break down the plastic.
“It’s an inherent property of these bacteria,” Jon Pokorski, co-author of the study and a nanoengineering professor at Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, said in a statement. “We took a few strains and evaluated their ability to use TPUs as a sole carbon source, then picked the one that grew the best.”
The research team combined the bacteria and the TPU in a plastic extruder, where the materials were melted and mixed together to create the pieces of biodegradable plastic.
Then, researchers tested the plastic by placing strips of it in compost. The team set up two compost areas with the same temperature, 37 degrees Celsius, and similar humidity levels of 44% to 55%. One area was sterile while the other was microbially active.
The results showed that the plastic reached over 90% biodegradation in a 5-month timeframe in both compost types. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.
“What’s remarkable is that our material breaks down even without the presence of additional microbes,” Pokorski said. “Chances are, most of these plastics will likely not end up in microbially rich composting facilities. So this ability to self-degrade in a microbe-free environment makes our technology more versatile.”
Next, the researchers plan to continue to determine the feasibility of scaling up this development while also finding ways to speed up the biodegradation time. They also hope to try this method on other types of plastics.
While the development could help reduce the impact of new plastic products in the future, many scientists still underscore the importance of reducing plastic production altogether.
Steve Fletcher, director of the Revolution Plastics Institute at the University of Portsmouth who was not involved in the study, told BBC News, “Care must be taken with potential solutions of this sort, which could give the impression that we should worry less about plastic pollution because any plastic leaking into the environment will quickly, and ideally safely, degrade. Yet, for the vast majority of plastics, this is not the case.”
Negotiators wrapped up the fourth round of formal discussions over the United Nations’ global plastics treaty early on Tuesday morning, inching closer to a final agreement that’s intended to “end plastic pollution.”
Delegates made important progress on the treaty, the final version of which is due by the end of the year. They pared down a lengthy draft of the text and agreed on a formal agenda for “intersessional” work ahead of the next — and final — meeting, in Busan, South Korea, scheduled for November 25. That work will involve critical issues around funding the treaty’s provisions and identifying plastic-related chemicals that should be restricted.
The agenda, however, doesn’t mention the elephant in the room: whether and how the treaty will limit plastic production.
“Nothing happened that was particularly surprising, but this outcome is still quite demoralizing,” said Chris Dixon, an ocean campaign leader for the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency who attended the talks. Other groups called the outcome “disappointing” and said the negotiations had been “undermined by deep-rooted industry influence.”
Dixon and other environmental advocates have spent the past threemeetings fighting for a treaty that addresses the “full life cycle” of plastics — meaning one that goes beyond waste management to limit the amount of plastic that’s made in the first place.
The world already produces more than 400 million metric tons of plastic per year, and fossil fuel companies are planning to dramatically increase that number over the next few decades. Plastics have been described as the fossil fuel industry’s “plan B” as the world pivots away from using oil and gas in transportation and electricity generation. This could have dire implications not only for plastic pollution but for the climate; according to a recent study, greenhouse gas emissions from growing plastic production could eat up one-fifth of the world’s remaining carbon budget by 2050.
Just because production limits aren’t on the agenda for ad hoc working groups, however, doesn’t mean they’re out of the treaty; it just means delegates may arrive in Busan less prepared to discuss technical concepts related to plastics manufacturing. Language about the “full life cycle” of plastics is still in the treaty’s mandate — which countries agreed on in 2022 — and throughout the draft text. Countries can also host unofficial discussions on the topic between now and November.
There’s already widespread support for addressing plastic production in the treaty. Dozens of countries supported a statement presented by Rwanda and Peru last week saying that a global plastic reduction target should be “a North Star” for the treaty. The paper suggested reducing production by 40 percent below 2025 levels by 2040. Another declaration, published on Monday and signed by 28 countries, called for the treaty to “achieve sustainable levels of production of primary plastic polymers.”
Activists from Greenpeace urged treaty negotiators to place limits on plastic production.
IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth
Dixon said translating that support into binding treaty text is a matter of “political commitment.” On Monday, production was “the first topic to get dropped” as delegates scrambled to agree on an agenda for intersessional work, she said. They were trying to avoid a repeat of the previous conference, which ended with no agenda at all.
Santos Virgilio, a delegate representing Angola, said during a panel on Monday that it is “too early to say” how his country and others will coax oil-producing states into accepting treaty provisions on plastic production. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar are among the countries most vociferously opposed to addressing plastic production as part of the treaty. Plastics industry lobbying groups also turned out in full force at the negotiating session to oppose production caps.
Chris Jahn, council secretary of the International Council of Chemical Associations, said in a statement on Monday that the industry is “fully committed to a legally binding agreement all countries can join that ends plastic pollution without eliminating the massive societal benefits plastics provide for a healthier and more sustainable world.”
Industry groups used the convening as a public relations opportunity, touting the benefits of plastic in ads placed throughout Ottawa. In a hotel, one collection of ads said plastics “save lives,” “deliver water,” and “reduce food waste.”
The United States has also resisted plastic production limits as part of the treaty. A State Department official told the Financial Times on Tuesday that “overly prescriptive approaches” could alienate “major producers or consumers of plastics.” Instead of cutting the supply of plastics, the U.S. wants to focus on reducing demand and improving infrastructure for recycling and reuse.
Despite frustrations, several observers noted a promising shift in the tone at this week’s negotiating session, compared to the previous meeting. “There was a different energy, it was more collaborative,” said Erin Simon, the vice president and head of plastic waste and business for the environmental nonprofit WWF. Bjorn Beeler, the general manager and international coordinator for the nonprofit International Pollutants Elimination Network, said it was “very significant” that the delegates were able to move from a 70-page “zero draft” of the treaty — a laundry list of options meant to represent everybody’s viewpoints — to a more formal version that’s been vetted by negotiators.
Pro-plastic ads at an Ottawa hotel.
IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth
All of the most ambitious provisions of the treaty are still in the newly updated draft, Beeler said, meaning they’re still up for discussion. He also noted growing support for health-related aspects of the treaty, particularly a provision to limit potentially dangerous chemicals that are commonly added to plastics. Delegates agreed to create an expert group to focus on this topic during intersessional work. They tasked it with proposing a framework to identify the most problematic types of plastic and plastic-related chemicals, as well as product designs that increase plastic products’ recycling and reuse potential.
Although countries disagree on whether certain substances should be banned or just restricted, and which criteria should be used to identify such substances, there is more convergence on regulating chemicals than on most other issues. Even Iraq, a major oil producer, submitted a statement supporting the creation of two lists of banned and restricted plastic chemicals.
“Everyone knows there are hazardous chemicals in plastics,” Beeler said. Griffins Ochieng, the executive director of the Kenya-based Center for Environmental Justice and Development, said in a statement that a global plastics treaty that addresses chemicals in plastics “is an impetus toward eradicating plastic pollution.”
One other expert group will focus on finance — where to get funding to help developing countries transition away from single-use plastics and test plastics for hazardous chemicals, among other treaty objectives, and how to distribute that money. Some countries and many environmental groups support the creation of a dedicated fund to help poor countries implement the provisions of the plastics treaty. Others say it would be simpler to use an existing mechanism like the Global Environmental Facility, a multilateral fund that provides grants to support government projects.
With eight months remaining in 2024, delegates have a lot of work ahead of them if they want to wrap up a treaty by the end of the year, which is the goal countries agreed on when they decided to write a treaty in March 2022. Even if the treaty does not take its most ambitious form, it could still have a big impact. Policies to disincentivize the use of virgin plastic, for instance — like recycled content requirements — are relatively noncontroversial, and they could indirectly limit plastic production. Beeler said it’s also possible that new requirements on the measurement and disclosure of plastic production could eventually lead to production limits after the treaty is ratified.
Simon, with WWF, said she feels cautiously hopeful following this week’s meeting. The conference was “not a failure, and definitely not a win.” she said. “But it is progress.”
For several months last year, patrons of a Seattle coffee shop called Tailwind Cafe had the option of ordering their Americanos and lattes in returnable metal to-go cups. Customers could simply borrow a cup from Tailwind, go on their way, and then at some point — perhaps a few hours later, perhaps on another day that week — return the cup to the shop, which would clean it and refill it for the next person. If it wasn’t returned within 14 days, the customer would be charged a $15 deposit, though even that was ultimately refundable if the cup was returned by the end of 45 days.
Tailwind’s head chef, Kayla Tekautz, said her cafe started the program out of a desire to address the environmental scourge of disposable plastic foodware and other packaging, the vast majority of which cannot be recycled. It was a partnership with a reusable packaging and logistics company called Reusables.com, which provided Tailwind and another Seattle area store, Cloud City Coffee, with branded cups and a QR code-operated drop-off receptacle.
But the cafe quickly ran into trouble. It was “overwhelming” to explain the return system to every interested customer, Tekautz said. Many were hesitant to participate after learning that they could only return the cups to Tailwind or the other drop-off location, 6 miles away. Plus, Tailwind’s QR code reader kept malfunctioning, requiring repeated visits from a mechanic. At the end of last summer, Tailwind quietly ended the return program. “It just didn’t work,” Tekautz said. (Reusables.com didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment.)
In an effort to reduce consumption of single-use plastic, Seattle has spent the past several years encouraging local businesses to offer reusable cups, dishes, utensils, and packaging. It has made some laudable progress. Concertgoers at the Paramount Theater and attendees of the Northwest Folklife Festival, for example, can now order their libations in reusable polypropylene cups. And since 2022, students at the University of Washington have been able to check out bright green reusable food containers from a company called Ozzi.
Reusable cups offered at the Northwest Folklife Festival in Seattle. Courtesy of Reuse Seattle
These programs are helping Seattle avoid single-use plastic and create a “waste-free future,” according to the city’s reuse website. It’s a target that’s being pursued by many American cities, and at the global level too. Disposable plastic foodware and packaging — which accounts for nearly 40 percent of all plastic production — can only be phased out if there are robust, efficient reuse systems to replace them.
But some businesses, like Tailwind, have struggled to get reusable containers off the ground, often because of the small scale and disconnected nature of existing reuse programs. Instead of pooling resources and employing just one or two large cleaning and logistics services, businesses have so far chosen among several competing initiatives — or in some cases, have created and run their own programs. The result is a slew of incompatible containers, specific to just a few stores or locations, and inefficient systems for gathering, washing, and transporting between customers’ homes, sanitation facilities, and storefronts.
Having so many companies creating their own designs and logistics can be expensive, causing them to miss out on economies of scale that could make reuse more affordable and easily adoptable. According to Ashima Sukhdev, a policy adviser for the city of Seattle, she should be able to “pick up a coffee from my local cafe, and then drop it off in the lobby of my office building. Or drop it off at the library, or at a bus stop.”
What Sukhdev is describing would represent a highly unusual level of coordination across company lines. At coffee shops, this would mean reusable mugs shared not only between Tailwind and Cloud City, but also Starbucks and Peets. For grocery stores, it could mean picking up a jar of olives at Safeway, dropping off the empty container at Walgreens, and then having the same jar refilled with jam and sold at Whole Foods. Achieving this would require companies to rethink the way they compete with each other and differentiate their products. It would also require big changes from consumers, who have been trained for 70 years to expect disposability in just about every aspect of daily life.
Pat Kaufman, right, with Reuse Seattle team members. Courtesy of Reuse Seattle
Experts say these changes are necessary. “For this solution to become a reality, you’re gonna need standards,” said Pat Kaufman, manager of Seattle Public Utilities’ composting, recycling, and reuse program.
Kaufman is currently on a yearlong sabbatical working for a nonprofit called PR3, which is trying to create those standards. The questions they’re facing are: What will standardized reusable packaging systems look like — and what will it take to get companies, and consumers, to adopt them?
Every year, the world produces about 400 million metric tons of plastic — almost entirely out of fossil fuels like oil and gas. Some of this is used in essential products like contact lenses and medical equipment, but a much greater fraction goes toward sporks, cups, bags, takeout containers, and other items that get thrown away after just a few minutes of use. Most of this plastic will never be recycled due to technical and economic restraints; more than 90 percent of all plastics get sent to a landfill or incinerator, or turn up as litter in the environment, where they degrade into microplastics and leach hazardous chemicals. Plastics manufacturing causes additional harms, including air pollution that disproportionately affects low-income communities and communities of color living nearby.
For all of these reasons, public pressure to cut back on single-use plastics has escalated dramatically in recent years. Many companies have responded by launching trials and pilot programs allowing customers to borrow and return reusable cups, bottles, trays, jars, and other containers. These include small players like Ozzi, as well as behemoth brands like Walmart and Coca-Cola. There have been “more trials than Donald Trump,” said Stuart Chidley, co-founder of a reusable packaging company called Reposit.
Returnable containers from Reposit are offered at Mark & Spencer grocery stores in the U.K. Courtesy of Reposit
As in Seattle, however, their efforts have been siloed, making it hard for the reuse sector to grow. According to a recent report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, or EMF — a nonprofit that advocates for a “circular economy” that conserves resources — even companies that have pledged to dramatically scale down their use of plastics have only replaced 2 percent or less of their single-use containers with reusables.
“To realize the full benefits of return systems, a fundamentally new approach is required,” the authors concluded.
The four types of reuse systems
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has identified four broad categories of reuse systems, based on who owns the containers and where they’re refilled or returned: refill on the go, refill at home, return on the go, return from home.
Refill on the go: Consumers bring their own reusable containers to grocery stores and other locations, and refill them there — think the bulk section of a supermarket, where shoppers refill their own jars or bags with nuts, grains, and other foods.
Refill at home: Consumers own their own reusable containers but instead of refilling them at a store, they order refills in the mail. For example, you order concentrated dish soap tablets and then dissolve them in a dispenser you already own.
Return on the go: Businesses own containers and let consumers borrow them — often by charging a deposit that is refunded when the container is returned. This system involves container drop-off points at grocery stores, coffee shops, and other designated locations outside the home.
Return from home: Businesses own the reusable containers, which logistics providers pick up from people’s homes and then transport to a washing facility so they can be used again — much like milkmen of old.
The EMF report focuses on reusable containers that you can return to the coffee shop, grocery store, or another drop-off point — known as “return on the go” — as opposed to those that consumers own and bring with them to stores. It says that three things need to happen to make reuse mainstream. First, companies have to achieve high return rates, so they don’t lose inventory when people steal or forget to return their containers. Second, they have to share infrastructure for washing, collecting, sorting, and delivery in order to achieve economies of scale. Third, reusable containers must be standardized. The third pillar makes the other two much easier to achieve, since it’s simpler to share logistics, scale up, and familiarize customers with reuse systems if they share common characteristics — for instance, if containers are designed with similar shapes, sizes, and materials.
To that end, PR3 has spent the past four years drafting standards for reuse systems, with a particular focus on container design. Through a “consensus body” composed of members from big business, the advocacy world, and government, PR3 is hoping to eventually certify the world’s first reuse standards under the International Organization for Standardization (known as ISO, to prevent confusion around different acronyms in different languages). This would lend legitimacy to the PR3 proposals, as the ISO maintains one of the world’s most widely accepted catalogs of standards. Others within its portfolio cover everything from food safety to the manufacturing of medical devices, and have been voluntarily adopted by many large companies and government bodies.
PR3 released a draft of its standards last year, and it’s been updating them behind closed doors since then. Specific standards on washing protocols are set to be published for public review this week, and the nonprofit hopes that its consensus body will vote to finalize standards for container design later this year.
A worker from Taiwan’s Blue Ocean, an environmental protection company, cleans reusable mugs in Taoyuan.
Sam Yeh / AFP via Getty Images
PR3 released a draft of its standards last year, and it’s been updating them behind closed doors since then. Specific standards on washing protocols are set to be published for public review this week, and the nonprofit hopes that its consensus body will vote to finalize standards for container design later this year.
So, what makes a good reusable container system? It’s complicated. Containers have to hold up under the stresses of logistics and transportation. They have to be relatively inexpensive. Perhaps most intangibly, they have to seem reusable, so customers don’t accidentally throw them in the trash. This can be accomplished through design elements — like containers’ color, texture, shape, and weight — or through other means, like easily recognizable drop-off boxes for used containers. Some reuse advocates support deposit fees, in which customers pay a small amount, usually just a dollar or two, in order to borrow a reusable container. They get the deposit back once they’ve returned the container.
None of these features is guaranteed to work. In designing draft standards, PR3 has often had to make educated predictions about which ones consumers will respond to. And those predictions can have far-reaching implications. If you assume customers will frequently lose or forget to return their containers, for example, then it probably won’t make sense to design thick containers that are capable of withstanding hundreds of uses.
“In the real world, return rates vary wildly,” Claudette Juska, PR3’s technical director and one of its co-founders, told Grist. “You don’t want to design a container for 400 uses if it’s only going to be used four times.” The most recent version of PR3’s standards say containers must be designed to withstand at least 20 uses and reused in practice at least 10 times.
On the other hand, it may be counterproductive to design containers with the expectation that they won’t be returned. According to Chidley, with Reposit, cheap-looking and -feeling containers could actually cause low return rates, since people might be more careless with them. His philosophy is to use features like color, weight, and shape to communicate containers’ reusability, making it less plausible that people will confuse them for disposables.
PR3 doesn’t have much specific advice on these characteristics, but some entrepreneurs Grist spoke with said they’ve hit higher return rates through particular design choices. For Chidley, this means making containers “beautiful” through high-quality, heavier materials with stylish branding. His containers are available at Marks & Spencer grocery stores across England and Scotland. Lindsey Hoell, founder of a reusable container logistics company called Dispatch Goods and a member of PR3’s standards panel, has forgone sharp-edged takeout food containers in favor of ones with smoother edges that “feel fancier.” And because so many single-use plastics are either black or white, her containers are bright red. “There’s a lot of soft science of what makes a consumer feel like something is durable,” she told Grist. Her containers are available across most of the U.S., mostly through grocery and meal delivery programs like Blue Apron and Imperfect Foods.
To some extent, the discussion about expected use cycles and perceived quality is really just another way of asking what kinds of materials reusable containers should be made of: durable plastic or something else? Answering that question can bring into conflict businesses’ economic interests with concerns about health and the environment.
In the published draft of its standards from last year, PR3 recommended that reusable containers be “plastic-free,” citing plastic additives’ wide-ranging impacts on human health and ecosystems. Plastic can be cheap, light, and durable, but plastic-related chemicals have been shown to build up in people’s bodies and the environment, where they may contribute to hormone disruption, cancer, and reproductive harm.
PR3 panel members like Jane Muncke, chief scientific officer for the nonprofit Food Packaging Forum, supported the recommendation. “I don’t think plastics are suitable materials for reusable packaging,” she told Grist. She’s concerned about chemicals migrating into foods and beverages — especially hot, acidic, or fatty foods, which are better at soaking up some plastic additives. Durable plastics are also largely nonrecyclable; after being turned into new products a few times, they have to be thrown away or “downcycled” into lower-quality products like carpeting.
Still, many entrepreneurs and even the PR3 founders themselves have moved away from a hard-line stance against plastics. Hoell, for example, originally got into reuse because she was frustrated by plastic-strewn beaches in California — “I’m a surfer and I hate plastics,” she told Grist. She started out making stainless steel containers but soon discovered that rigid plastics had much lower up-front costs, giving her more wiggle room to deal with lower return rates. She didn’t have to worry as much about frequently lost, stolen, or damaged containers.
Plastic was also easier to transport because of its light weight, Hoell added, and she cited some analyses suggesting that it has a lower carbon footprint than alternatives like steel. (These findings are controversial, however; critics say it’s misleading to focus only on plastic-related carbon emissions and not the materials’ other dangers, like toxic chemicals leaching from landfills.)Dispatch Goods now only makes its containers out of polypropylene, a kind of plastic that’s generally considered more inert than others (although it can still leach hazardous chemicals). Other reuse logistics companies like R.world, which operates in Seattle and is also represented on the PR3 panel, have similarly opted for polypropylene containers instead of metal or glass.
At Seattle Pacific University, a reusable container program for students eating at the Gwinn Commons dining hall also uses rigid plastic. The containers’ low cost allows Sodexo, the school’s foodservice provider, to charge students just $5 to participate in its reuse system all year, without tracking return rates or worrying too much about lost inventory. “We don’t have a list of subscribers,” said Andrew Chaplin, the dining team’s general manager. The program “runs itself.”
Representatives from PR3 told Grist that plastic has been a hot topic of debate among consensus body members, and that the final version of the standards is likely to move away from the “plastic-free” recommendation. “The standards are going to address this with the understanding that if the world can move away from plastic, great, but in the meantime, before that’s feasible, we’d better move where we can,” said Amy Larkin, PR3’s co-founder and director, who pointed out that moving to reusable plastics will still make a huge dent in overall plastic demand. “Let’s get rid of 90 to 95 percent of the production of single-use packaging.”
Rather than calling for specific container shapes and sizes, PR3 has drafted a few broad requirements — like that containers be designed to “optimize durability,” and that they follow “best practices for recyclability.” They must comply with existing food-safety regulations. Optionally, companies may label products with a universal symbol — kind of like the ubiquitous “chasing arrows” used to indicate recyclability. Such a symbol doesn’t yet exist for reuse, but PR3 has proposed one: a black, white, or orange rose-like pictogram along with the word “reuse.”
More specific design elements are included only as recommendations. To make washing easier, for instance, PR3’s draft says reusable containers should have interior angles no smaller than 90 degrees, as well as “feet” to maximize airflow during drying. They also say containers should “nest” to save storage space and make transportation easier.
A stack of reusable plastic to-go containers at a restaurant in Denver. Hyoung Chang / The Denver Post via Getty Images
This flexible approach fits into a category that EMF calls “bespoke with shared standards,” where containers can vary from brand to brand while still sharing common characteristics — like where labels are placed, or the width of a bottle’s mouth. This leaves big brands free to design their own unique packaging if they want to.
PR3’s approach aims to appease big businesses by allowing them to keep using containers that look and feel very different, so long as they conform to a set of broad requirements. “Product companies want that kind of autonomy,” Juska told Grist.
Coca-Cola, for example, sets itself apart with its iconic — and patented — hourglass-shaped Coke bottle. And beauty companies are notorious for differentiated packaging: Walking down the perfume aisle, you might see bottles shaped like everything from a high-heeled shoe to a kitten.
Many reuse advocates want to do away with those unique container designs, going even further than what PR3 has suggested in order to enable sharing among different companies — a situation where packaging is considered “pooled” within a market. So instead of an extravagant diversity of perfume bottles, all fragrances might come in interchangeable cylindrical jars.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation envisions a system in which the same containers are “pooled” so they can be used across company lines. Courtesy of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation
A small number of companies — especially in Europe — already do this. For example, through a German program called Mach Mehrweg Pool (roughly translated to “Make Reuse Pool”), brands share a collection of identical glass jars that can be filled with different foods. When consumers return the empty containers to a supermarket, a logistics provider picks them up and brings them back to food producers for cleaning. Another organization called the German Wells Cooperative runs a similar program for reusable soda and water bottles, counting more than 150 beverage makers as members.
Other companies that have experimented with pooling, however, have only done so within the brands they control. Coca-Cola, for instance, has a “universal bottle” initiative in South America in which a single, standardized reusable bottle can be used for all of its beverage brands — Fanta, Sprite, Coke, and others. But the initiative is not universal across company lines; you couldn’t refill a Coke bottle with Pepsi.
Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of Loop, a “global reuse platform” that is represented on the PR3 panel, said standard-setters shouldn’t try to resist companies’ impulses to differentiate. Brands should be allowed to experiment with both unique and standardized reusable packaging and then “let the market decide” which is preferable, he told Grist. He raised concerns that pooling might not make sense for some particular products — like baby food, since shared containers can increase the risk of contamination, and babies are more vulnerable to illness.
There is already evidence, however, that companies are leaving money on the table by choosing not to pool their containers. According to EMF’s direct comparison of pooled and nonpooled standardized packaging, pooling containers reduces the cost of reusable packaging systems by up to 28 percent. Plus, at least some intervention — perhaps regulation or financial incentives — is likely required to create conditions that are more favorable to reusables; a hands-off, market-led approach is what has led to today’s proliferation of throwaway plastics. EMF’s modeling suggests that only reuse systems “built collaboratively from the outset” can reach cost parity with single-use. Exactly what that collaboration will look like, however, is unclear, since the kinds of government regulations that could help foster it might be incompatible with the United States’ free market ethos and antitrust laws. Internationally, some cities and countries have done more than the U.S. to promote reuse, but none has gone as far as what EMF is suggesting.
Plus, at least some intervention — perhaps regulation or financial incentives — is likely required to create conditions that are more favorable to reusables; a hands-off, market-led approach is what has led to today’s proliferation of throwaway plastics. EMF’s modeling suggests that only reuse systems “built collaboratively from the outset” can reach cost parity with single-use. Exactly what that collaboration will look like, however, is unclear, since the kinds of government regulations that could help foster it might be incompatible with the United States’ free market ethos and antitrust laws. Internationally, some cities and countries have done more than the U.S. to promote reuse, but none has gone as far as what EMF is suggesting.
Even in the absence of robust regulations, PR3’s standards are likely to nudge the country — and the world — in the right direction. Once they’re finalized, PR3 plans to submit them to the American National Standards Institute, the U.S. member organization of the ISO. From there, the standards would be opened up to public comment, potential revisions, and then final approval. PR3 would have to go through a separate submission and review process to get the standards approved by member countries of the ISO.
What would happen next is unclear. Other ISO standards — like for information security and energy efficiency — have been voluntarily adopted by individual companies or industry groups, either because they contain genuinely useful guidance on a complicated issue or because they increase businesses’ perceived trustworthiness.
ISO standards can also inform government regulations and international agreements. According to Juska, PR3 is already in talks with Canada’s environment ministry to shape new rules on reusable packaging, and the same thing could happen in any number of other jurisdictions. Juska is also hopeful that PR3’s standards will be acknowledged by or incorporated into the United Nations’ global treaty to end plastic pollution. The latest draft of the treaty mentions the need for standards — including for reusable packaging systems — some three dozen times, which Juska said is indicative of how “desperately needed” they are.
“If we want everyone to move in the same direction, we need to set some design parameters for how we want the system to function,” she said.
*Correction: This story originally misattributed Szaky’s comment about baby food to a different person.
Last week, the EPA released a suite of long-awaited rules meant to cut down the carbon that the U.S. emits when generating electricity. The rules primarily target existing coal plants and new natural gas facilities, in many cases requiring dramatic emissions cuts that won’t be possible without an unprecedented deployment of carbon capture. (The new EPA proposals are part of an ongoing flurry of federal regulatory actions that must be issued by May 22 to minimize the possibility that they’ll be rolled back if Republican Donald Trump defeats President Joe Biden in November’s election.)
The EPA’s new power sector rules have been widely scrutinized for their potential impact on the country’s electric utilities, which have lately been drawing up plans to expand natural gas capacity in response to the growing electricity demand promised by new industrial facilities, AI-supporting data centers, and electric vehicle adoption. However, last week’s rules also contained substantial new controls on the pollution generated by the nation’s aging fleet of coal-fired power plants — as well as the toxins left behind by the many that have already shuttered — including a proposal that closes a longstanding loophole in federal regulations governing the cleanup of coal ash, a toxic waste byproduct of the coal-fired power process.
The new rule builds on a landmark 2015 rule prohibiting coal ash from being permanently stored in places where it comes into contact with groundwater. This was meant to reform the widespread practice of creating so-called coal ash ponds where the toxin is stored in a wet slurry. While at that time the EPA only applied the rule to coal plants in active use, the new rule will require the cleanup of hundreds of “legacy” coal ash ponds.
“EPA’s new rule is aimed at cleaning up coal plants once and for all,” said Lisa Evans, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, in a press briefing last week. “Coal plants will have to monitor each of these toxic dumps, stop the leaking of hazardous chemicals, and clean up groundwater when contamination is found. This is a watershed moment. For decades, utilities fought coal ash regulation every step of the way with legislation, lawsuits, and lobbying.”
Chris Bowers, an attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, noted that coal ash cleanup is an important environmental justice issue, in part because coal plants have been disproportionately located near poor communities and people of color; some 78 percent of all Black Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant.
“Coal ash continues to be one of the largest, if not the largest, by-volume sources of industrial solid waste that is generated annually. Massive amounts are generated because we’re still burning coal for energy,” said Bowers.
But whether or not the new coal ash regulation brings relief to communities grappling with groundwater contamination may well depend on political will and the agency’s appetite for enforcing its own rules — especially when it means overriding the authority of states that have their own ideas about how strict the rules actually are.
Environmental advocates say that the enforcement of the earlier coal ash rule established a concerning precedent: Rather than implementing the 2015 rule, some states and utilities are effectively waiting out the clock on the Biden administration in the hopes that a potential Trump administration will be friendlier to the power industry. Some utilities are suing the EPA in federal court over interpretations of the rule, while in Georgia and Alabama, state regulators have issued permits that the EPA says are in plain violation of the requirement — leaving the Biden EPA a limited window within which to decisively establish where utilities are allowed to dump coal ash.
“It’s been a pitched battle among the power industry to try to close the chapter on this and do as little as possible,” said Bowers.
Coal plants are usually built near bodies of water because they use turbines powered with steam that must be continuously cooled. For decades, power plants across America dumped coal ash in pits conveniently dug between the plant and a nearby river or lake. Frank Holleman, coordinator of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s regional coal ash initiative, told Grist that this storage method would normally be impermissible for any other kind of waste. Had the 2015 rules been imposed earlier, the ash would have had to be moved to a landfill that was lined to prevent the waste from leaking into its surroundings.
An aerial view of a coal-fired power plant in Juliette, Georgia.
Gautama Mehta
“That’s the way all kinds of other waste, including municipal garbage, is stored, but instead of doing that, these utilities — which have tremendous financial resources and tremendous engineering expertise — dug unlined pits between their coal-fired plants and the neighboring water body,” said Holleman.
“When you dig a hole next to a river or lake, you will quickly hit the water table,” Holleman added. That means the water becomes at risk of being contaminated by various toxins, because coal ash contains high concentrations of elements like arsenic, lead, mercury, and selenium, which are hazardous to human and animal health.
Research had long established these dangers to groundwater, but it took two disastrous spills — one at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil coal plant in 2008, and a second at Duke Energy’s Dan River Steam Station in North Carolina in 2014 — for the EPA to issue its landmark 2015 rule. That rule gave the EPA control of the permitting process for coal ash disposal, but it also allowed individual states to apply for delegated authority to administer their own coal ash programs, on the condition that their standards for the cleanup be at least as restrictive as the federal rule.
The 2015 rule went largely unchallenged by utilities until the EPA, under President Biden, ramped up enforcement. Now, in Georgia and Alabama, the federal government is at loggerheads with state agencies over its interpretation of the 2015 rule — leaving environmental advocates concerned that last week’s extension of that rule to cover legacy ponds could suffer the same fate. Meanwhile, a group of utilities is suing the EPA in the D.C. Circuit court over its heightened enforcement of the 2015 rule, which the utilities say amounts to an actual change to the rule itself.
Georgia was among a handful of states to be granted its own permitting program. Fletcher Sams, executive director of the Altamaha Riverkeeper, a conservation organization in Georgia, has spent the last five years advocating for residents of the town of Juliette, which is home to what was once the nation’s largest coal plant. The state’s dominant utility company plans to close a massive coal ash pond that has come into contact with groundwater there; residents allege that the pond previously contaminated drinking water drawn from wells in the town, sickening locals.
Sams told Grist that he is “very excited about new rules for legacy ponds that would regulate them the same as 2015 ponds. However, if they’re going to enforce them in Georgia like they’re enforcing the 2015 rule, they’re not worth the paper they’re printed on.”
Georgia’s state environmental agency recently approved a pond closure plan at another coal plant in northwest Georgia, where 1.1 million tons of coal ash will be stored permanently in an unlined pit. The EPA issued a letter in February declaring that this plan violated the federal standard, but the agency has not yet directly intervened to contravene the state’s authority.
In Alabama, however, the EPA took the more drastic step last summer of proposing to deny the state’s request for a delegated program similar to Georgia’s, due to the state’s planned approval of coal ash permits that violate the 2015 rule. (A spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management said that the EPA’s denial was “unwarranted” and that the state has complied and continues to comply with federal requirements in its coal ash permitting, which it says is “protective of human health and the environment.”)
The debate between the EPA and the utilities opposing it — as well as the state of Georgia — hinges on the definition of the word “infiltration.” The EPA and environmental advocates argue that the 2015 rule prohibits a coal ash storage site from being infiltrated by water in any direction, while utilities and the Georgia Environmental Protection Division say the word “infiltration” refers only to rainwater seeping into coal ash from above, rather than groundwater from below.
At sites where coal ash is in direct contact with groundwater, the EPA expects utilities to dig it up and install a liner separating it from the water table underneath. But many utilities only want to put a “cap” above the ash ponds to prevent rainwater infiltration — and nothing below.
Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
According to the new Climate Damages Tax report, introducing a fossil fuel tax on companies in the richest countries in the world could generate hundreds of billions to aid the most vulnerable nations in coping with the climate crisis.
The impacts of climate change disproportionately affect poorer nations that have contributed to it the least.
“Climate change is a war. A category five hurricane releases energy equivalent to 10,000 times the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Those countries on the path of hurricanes and cyclones and submerging coasts are on the front line,” wrote Avinash Persaud, special envoy on investment and finances to the prime minister of Barbados, in the preface to the report. “Climate change is not a freak of nature. It is human-made, as human-made as power and greed. If the consequences of climate change were felt disproportionately by those who have contributed to it, it would have stopped long ago.”
The report calculated that a new extraction tax on the biggest fossil fuel companies — those based in countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) — could create $720 billion for vulnerable countries’ loss and damage fund by 2030, reported The Guardian.
Co-author David Hillman, director of Stamp Out Poverty, said the report “demonstrates that the richest, most economically powerful countries, with the greatest historical responsibility for climate change, need look no further than their fossil fuel industries to collect tens of billions a year in extra income by taxing them far more rigorously. This is surely the fairest way to boost revenues for the loss and damage fund to ensure that it is sufficiently financed as to be fit for purpose,” The Guardian reported.
The authors of the report said the levy could be imposed using existing tax systems. They added that introducing the tax in OECD countries this year at a starting rate of $5 per metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent and increasing it by $5 per tonne annually would generate $900 billion by the end of the decade.
The $180 billion not being put toward loss and damage would be set aside as a “domestic dividend” to provide support for a just climate transition in communities of richer countries.
“We need concerted global leadership to force the fossil fuel industry to stop drilling and start paying for the damage they are causing around the world. A climate damages tax would be a powerful tool to help achieve both aims: unlocking hundreds of billions of funding for those at the sharp end of the climate crisis while helping accelerate a rapid and just transition away from fossil fuels around the world,” said Greenpeace UK’s joint director Areeba Hamid.
From extreme temperatures in excess of the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold to devastating drought and wildfires, the planet is seeing the impacts of the climate crisis in ever-increasing severity.
Publication of the report comes as the board of the loss and damage fund holds its first-ever meeting in Abu Dhabi to discuss how it will be financed, reported The Guardian.
The report said if the climate damages tax was only introduced in G7 nations — home to a large number of global oil and gas companies — it could raise $540 billion by 2030, with $135 billion in domestic climate funds for G7 countries.
“We will only stop climate change by making those who contribute to it, pay for it. More talk, more conferences, more insurance where the victims are asked to pay by installment, will not do the job. We need to end the mismatch between those who gain and those who lose. This is what an international community serious about halting climate change must do,” Persaud wrote. “We cannot afford to wait.”
“Stamping an end date on the coal era is precisely the kind of leadership we need from the world’s wealthiest countries. This decision provides a beacon of hope for the rest of the world, showing the transition away from coal can happen much faster than many thought possible,” said Jennifer Layke, global energy director of WRI, in the press release. “Putting an end to the world’s dirtiest fuel will provide cleaner air and massive health benefits to communities throughout these countries. It’s now imperative that these countries prioritize just transition measures to support the workers and communities who have relied on coal for decades.”
The communiqué, published following talks between climate, environment and energy ministers in Turin, said the G7 nations would “phase out existing unabated coal power generation in our energy systems during the first half of 2030s,” reported CNN.
The reference to “unabated” coal left room for the use of coal beyond 2035 if countries captured their carbon pollution before it entered the atmosphere.
Another caveat to the agreement was that nations can decide upon “a timeline consistent with keeping a limit of 1.5°C temperature rise within reach, in line with countries’ net-zero pathways.”
This language also seems to allow coal use after 2035 if countries’ overall emissions do not contribute to a global temperature increase higher than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Anonymous sources said the stipulation was to give extra room to Japan and Germany, which rely heavily on coal, Reuters reported.
Germany has committed to shutting down all of its coal plants by 2038. Meanwhile, its current government said it wants to phase coal out completely by 2030.
According to UK thinktank Ember, coal makes up 32 percent of the energy mix in Japan, 27 percent in Germany and 16 percent in the U.S., reported CNN.
“As some of the largest emitters — and with the greatest concentrations of wealth — the G7 countries have a unique ability to steer the world’s course toward a clean energy future. This commitment says to the rest of the planet that this transition is possible — and international cooperation is critical to getting us there. It marks a profound shift in thinking from last year’s G7 meetings when countries failed to reach an agreement to move away from fossil fuels,” Layke said in the press release.
Scientists have said that by limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius we can avoid the most extreme effects of climate change.
Some G7 nations have almost ceased to use coal power entirely. In Italy, Canada and the UK, coal accounts for less than six percent of electricity use, while France’s coal use is almost nonexistent.
“Many of these countries have already publicly committed to phase out dates ahead of 2030, and only have a small amount of coal capacity anyway,” said Jane Ellis, climate policy leader at Germany’s Climate Analytics, as CNN reported.
Ministers from the G7 nations said $600 billion in investments for electricity distribution and transmission would be needed annually by 2030 while renewable energy development was being ramped up, reported Reuters.
“Today these countries have taken positive steps toward building a zero-carbon energy system that will transform the global economy. Now the G7 countries should back this political will with the critical finance needed to rapidly transition the world away from fossil fuels and toward zero-carbon energy, both in their own countries and abroad,” Layke said in the press release.
A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has found that Tyson Foods dumped hundreds of millions of pounds of pollutants into U.S. waterways from 2018 to 2022. The pollutants came from company facilities including slaughterhouses and processing plants.
UCS analyzed publicly available data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and found that Tyson Foods processing plants released 371.72 million pounds of pollutants into waterways from 2018 to 2022. Half of the pollutants were dumped in waterways of Nebraska, Illinois and Missouri. The group published the findings in a report titled Waste Deep: How Tyson Foods Pollutes US Waterways and Which States Bear the Brunt.
“As the nation’s largest meat and poultry producer, Tyson Foods plays a huge role in our food and agriculture system and has for decades exploited policies that allow big agribusiness corporations to pollute with impunity,” Omanjana Goswami, co-author of the report and an interdisciplinary scientist with the Food and Environment Program at UCS, said in a press release. “In 2022, the latest year for which we have data, Tyson plants processed millions of cattle and pigs and billions of chickens, and discharged over 18.5 billion gallons of wastewater, enough to fill more than 37,000 Olympic swimming pools.”
Waterways in Nebraska had the most wastewater pollutants dumped by Tyson Foods plants, about 30% of the total or 111 million pounds, UCS reported. The pollutants dumped in Nebraska included 4.06 million pounds of nitrate, which a 2021 study linked to increased risks of central nervous system cancers in children.
According to the National Provisioner, Tyson Foods is one of the top meat and poultry processing companies in the U.S. From 2018 to 2022, it generated 87 billion gallons of wastewater, based on EPA data. This wastewater can include pathogens and microorganisms (such as E. coli) and slaughterhouse byproducts, such as body parts of animals, feces and blood.
As noted in the report, the dumped pollutants contained high amounts of nitrogen (34.25 million pounds) and phosphorus (5.06 million pounds), which can contribute to algal blooms in waterways. As UCS pointed out in its analysis, many Tyson Foods facilities are located near waterways that are home to threatened and endangered species.
The facilities are also positioned near historically underserved communities, leading to additional pollution near and burden on vulnerable populations.
“Pollution from these plants also raises environmental justice concerns,” Stacy Woods, co-author of the report and research director for the Food and Environment Program at UCS, said in a press release. “We know from previous research that almost 75% of water-polluting meat and poultry processing facilities are located within one mile of communities that already shoulder heavy economic, health or environmental burdens. In mapping these plants, we found Tyson largely fit that pattern, with many plants located near communities where people live with more pollution, less socioeconomic and political power, and worse health compared to other areas of the United States.”
The report provides insight into a larger problem. As The Guardian reported, meat processing pollution in the U.S. is much higher and goes beyond Tyson Foods.
“There are over 5,000 meat and poultry processing plants in the United States, but only a fraction are required to report pollution and abide by limits,” Goswami told The Guardian. “As one of the largest processors in the game, with a near-monopoly in some states, Tyson is in a unique position to treat even hefty fines and penalties for polluting as simply the cost of doing business. This has to change.”
This story was produced by Grist and was co-published with Fast Company.
When office workers stopped working in offices in 2020, trading their cubicles for living room couches during COVID-19 lockdowns, many began questioning those hours they had spent commuting to work. All those rushed mornings stuck in traffic could have been spent getting things done? Life was often lonely for those stuck in their homes, but people found something to appreciate when birdsong rang through the quiet streets. And the temporary dip in travel had the side effect of cutting global carbon emissions by 7 percent in 2020 — a blip of good news in an otherwise miserable year.
Emissions bounced back in 2021, when people started resuming some of their normal activities, but offices have never been the same. While remote work was rare before the pandemic, today, 28 percent of Americans are working a “hybrid” schedule, going into the office some days, and 13 percent are working remotely full-time.
Recent data suggest that remote work could speed along companies’ plans to zero out their carbon emissions, but businesses don’t seem to be considering climate change in their decisions about the future of office work. “In the U.S., I’m sad to say it’s just not high on the priority list,” said Kate Lister, the founder of the consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics. “It gets up there, and then it drops again for the next shiny object.” Commuter travel falls under a company’s so-called “Scope 3” emissions, the indirect sources that routinely get ignored, but represent, on average, three-quarters of the business world’s emissions.
A 10 percent increase in people working remotely could reduce carbon emissions by 192 million metric tons a year, according to a study published in the journal Nature Cities earlier this month. That would cut emissions from the country’s most polluting sector, transportation, by 10 percent. Those findings align with other peer-reviewed research: Switching to remote work instead of going into the office can cut a person’s carbon footprint by 54 percent, according to a study published in the journal PNAS last fall, even when accounting for non-commute travel and residential energy use.
“It seems like a very obvious solution to a very pressing and real problem,” said Curtis Sparrer, a principal and co-founder of the PR agency Bospar, a San Francisco-based company where employees have been working remotely since it started in 2015. “And I am concerned that this whole ‘return to office’ thing is getting in the way.”
Many companies are mandating their employees show up for in-person work regularly. Last year, big tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta told employees that they had to come back to the office three days a week or face consequences, like a lower chance of getting promoted. Even Zoom, the company that became a household name during the pandemic for its videoconferencing platform, is making employees who live within 50 miles of the office commute two days a week.
Amazon employees in Seattle watch as others join a walkout to protest the company’s return-to-office policies in May 2023. Organizers called attention to the climate impact of commutes, saying it runs counter to the company’s climate pledge to be carbon-neutral by 2040.
AP Photo / Lindsey Wasson
Of course, there are many benefits that come with heading into the office to work alongside other humans. Interacting with your coworkers in person gives you a social boost (without the awkward pauses in Zoom meetings) and a compelling reason to change out of your sweatpants in the morning. From a climate change standpoint, the problem is that most Americans tend to jump in their cars to commute, instead of biking or hopping on the bus. A recent poll from Bospar found that two-thirds of Americans are driving to work — and they’re mostly in gas-powered cars. Even though purchases of electric vehicles are rising, they still make up roughly 1 percent of the cars on the road.
The climate benefits start falling off quickly when people are summoned into the office. Working from home two to four days a week cut emissions by between 11 and 29 percent compared with full-time office work, according to the study in PNAS by researchers at Cornell University and Microsoft. If you only work remotely one day a week, those emissions were only trimmed by 2 percent. Another big factor is that maintaining physical office space sucks up a lot of energy, since it needs to be heated and cooled.
So should companies be allowed to claim they’re going green when they’re forcing employees to commute? Many Americans don’t think so, according to Bospar’s survey. Well over half of Millennials and Gen Zers said it’s hypocritical for companies to observe Earth Day while requiring employees to attend work in-person.
“We are entering a time of magical thinking, where people seem to think that this is enough, and it’s not,” Sparrer said. “And the frustration I have is that we all got to experience what it’s like to work from home, and we know how it works, and we know how it can be improved.”
Working from home, though, could present some environmental challenges. Recent research that looked at trends before the pandemic found that if 10 percent of the workforce started working remotely, transit systems in the U.S. would lose $3.7 billion every year, a 27 percent drop in fare revenue, according to the study in Nature Cities, conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Florida, and Peking University in Beijing. Some experts worry that remote work could push people into the suburbs, where carbon footprints tend to be higher than in cities.
Right now, there are many employees who want to work at home full-time but are forced to go into the office, Lister said. She sees the return-to-office mandates as a result of corporate leadership that wants to go back to how things used to be. “As that generation retires,” she said, “I think that a lot of these conversations will go away.”
