Researchers have discovered a variety of large plastic pieces in the guts of dead sea turtles found in the eastern Mediterranean. Some of these plastic items include bottle caps and a Halloween toy in the shape of a witch finger.
A team led by the University of Exeter and the North Cyprus Society for the Protection of Turtles (SPOT) examined 135 loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) that had died in North Cyprus, which has several nesting and foraging sites on beaches in the area. According to the study, many sea turtle deaths in the area are because of bycatch, and strandings also occur that may be related to interactions with the fisheries.
The researchers collected dead sea turtles from 2012 to 2022 and examined their guts for debris, including macroplastics, or plastic pieces larger than 5 millimeters.
In total, researchers found 492 macroplastic pieces in 42.7% of the turtles, and one individual turtle contained 67 of those macroplastic pieces. They published their findings in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin.
Overall, the researchers noted that the plastic pieces ingested tended to be rectangular, sheetlike, hard or foam texture and clear or white in color. The most common types of macroplastics found were polypropylene, polyethylene and polyamide.
The researchers also recorded findings of plastic-like debris, including elastic and rubber. In one turtle, they found a witch finger toy made from rubber.
“The journey of that Halloween toy — from a child’s costume to the inside of a sea turtle — is a fascinating glimpse into the life cycle of plastic,” Emily Duncan, from the University of Exeter’s Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the Penryn Campus, said in a statement. “These turtles feed on gelatinous prey such as jellyfish and seabed prey such as crustaceans, and it’s easy to see how this item might have looked like a crab claw.”
According to the study authors, these findings could further support sea turtles as a bioindicator species, although more studies are needed. A bioindicator species is one that reveals changes to the health of an environment, such as the often-cited example of a canary in a coal mine.
As Brendan Godley, a professor at the University of Exeter who leads the Exeter Marine research group, explained, “Much larger sample sizes will be needed for loggerheads to be an effective ‘bioindicator’ species, and we recommend studies should also include green turtles — allowing a more holistic picture to be gathered.”
The United States government said it is immune to 27 lawsuits filed by local and state governments, businesses, and property owners over the military’s role in contaminating the country with deadly PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals.” The lawsuits are a small fraction of the thousands of cases brought by plaintiffs all over the country against a slew of entities that manufactured, sold, and used a product called aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF — an ultra-effective fire suppressant that leached into drinking water supplies and soil across the U.S. over the course of decades.
The Department of Justice asked a U.S. district judge in South Carolina to dismiss the lawsuits last month, arguing that the government can’t be held liable for PFAS contamination. Lawyers for the plaintiffs called the move “misguided” and said that dismissing the lawsuits would extend an ongoing environmental catastrophe the Pentagon helped create.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known by the acronym PFAS (pronounced PEA’-fass), were invented by the chemical giant DuPont in the 1940s. DuPont trademarked the chemical as “Teflon,” which many Americans came to know and love for its use in nonstick cookware in the back half of the 20th century. 3M, another industry behemoth, quickly surpassed DuPont as the world’s largest manufacturer of PFAS, which have also been used in makeup, food packaging, clothing, and many industrial applications such as plastics, lubricants, and coolants.
The Department of Defense became involved in PFAS development in the 1960s. In response to a number of deadly infernos on military ship decks, the Navy’s research arm, the Naval Research Laboratory, collaborated with 3M on a new kind of firefighting foam that could put out high-temperature fires. The foam’s active ingredient was fluorinated surfactant, otherwise known as perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS — one of thousands of chemicals under the PFAS umbrella. Internal studies and memos show that 3M became aware that its PFAS products could be harmful to animal test subjects not long after the foam was patented.
Starting in the 1970s, every Navy ship — and, soon, almost every U.S. military base, civilian airport, local fire training facility, and firefighting station — had AFFF on-site in the event of a fire and to use for training. Year after year, the foam was dumped into the ocean and on the bare ground at these sites, where it contaminated the earth and migrated into nearby waterways. The chemicals, which do not break down naturally in the environment, are still there today. According to the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, there are 710 military sites with known or suspected PFAS contamination across the U.S and its territories including Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Absorbent booms used to contain aqueous film-forming foam near a scene of a fire in Pennsylvania in 2019.
Bastiaan Slabbers / NurPhoto
The Department of Defense, or DOD, has been under growing pressure from states and Congress to clean up these contaminated sites. But it has been slow to do so, or even to acknowledge that PFAS, which has been found in the blood of thousands of military service members, pose a threat to human health. Instead, the DOD, which is required by Congress to phase out AFFF in some of its systems, doubled down on the usefulness of the chemicals as recently as 2023. “Losing access to PFAS due to overly broad regulations or severe market contractions would greatly impact national security and DOD’s ability to fulfill its mission,” defense officials wrote in a report to Congress last year.
Meanwhile, people living near military bases — and members of the military — have been getting sick. The lawsuits filed in the U.S. District Court in South Carolina, which were brought by farmers and several states, seek to make the government pay for the water and property contamination the DOD allegedly caused.
Even if these lawsuits are allowed to proceed, experts told Grist they are not likely to be successful. That’s because they rely on the 1946 Federal Tort Claims Act, a law that allows individuals to sue the federal government for wrongful acts committed by people working on behalf of the U.S. if the government has breached specific, compulsory policies.
But the Federal Tort Claims Act has loopholes. One of these loopholes, called the “discretionary function” exemption, states that federal personnel using their own personal judgment to make decisions should not be held liable for harms caused. The U.S. government is arguing that members of the military were using their discretion when they began requiring the use of AFFF and that no “mandatory or specific” restrictions on the foam were violated. “For decades military policy encouraged — rather than prohibited — the use of AFFF,” the Department of Justice wrote in its motion to dismiss the cases.
“Every decision has some discretion to it,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, noting that the discretionary function exemption could be applied to virtually any decision made by a federal employee. “But I don’t think anyone, except maybe the manufacturers of PFAS, had much of an inkling that it was so harmful,” he said. 3M and DuPont did not reply to Grist’s requests for comment.
A maintanence worker at the Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs gives a thumbs up to crew on a C-130 aircraft.
Andy Cross / The Denver Post via Getty Images
In its motion to dismiss, the government made another argument that experts told Grist is likely to be successful. The Pentagon has the authority under the 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act — better known as the Superfund Act — to clean up its own contaminated sites. The Environmental Protection Agency hasn’t classified PFAS contamination as “hazardous contamination” yet, but the DOD says it is already spending billions to investigate and control PFAS at some of its bases. Because the military is voluntarily exercising its cleanup authority under the Superfund Act, its lawyers said in the motion, it should not be held liable for PFAS contamination.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs and the defendants declined requests for comment, citing the ongoing legal proceedings.
The U.S. government is the only defendant involved in the PFAS lawsuits that is likely to enjoy immunity. Already, 3M, DuPont, and other chemical companies, faced with the threat of high-profile trials, have opted to pay out historic, multibillion-dollar settlements to water providers that alleged the companies knowingly contaminated public drinking water supplies with forever chemicals. And the judge presiding over the enormous group of AFFF lawsuits has hundreds of other cases to get through that were not brought by water providers. These include personal injury and property damage cases, as well as those seeking to make PFAS manufacturers pay for medical monitoring for exposed populations.
The scale of the litigation is a clear indication that communities around the U.S. are desperate to find the money to pay for PFAS cleanup — the full cost of which is not yet clear, but could be as much as $400 billion. “We can’t even imagine what it would cost,” Tobias said.
If, in the 18 months since the Inflation Reduction Act passed, you’ve found yourself muttering Jerry Maguire’s timeless mantra — “Show me the money!” — a handful of policy analysts has just done exactly that. Their analysis of the nation’s investment in clean energy found that for every dollar the government has contributed to advancing the transition, the private sector has kicked in $5.47, leading to nearly a quarter-trillion dollars flowing into the clean economy in just one year.
Across nearly every segment tracked by Rhodium Group and its collaborators at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, investments have not only increased since President Joe Biden signed the legislation, the rate of growth has quickened, too. In the 12 months from October 2022 through September 2023, $220 billion poured into everything from battery factories to solar farms to emerging technologies like hydrogen, including $34 billion in federal spending, mostly in the form of tax credits.
The report shows, among other things, the scale of investments that the government can spur with a clear commitment to a specific course of action. Both figures reveal a substantive increase in the financial pressure building behind the transition to a clean economy and testify to the role progressive policies play in pushing that economic transformation forward.
“It’s proving the value of the federal government taking the lead, putting in place policy that says, ‘This is the direction that we’re headed: supporting decarbonization, supporting clean energy,’” said Hannah Hess, an associate director of climate and energy at Rhodium Group who co-authored the report.
By taking that lead, many billions more have flowed into the clean economy. In 2023, the sector as a whole logged new records for yet another year. Utility-scale solar and storage grew more than 50 percent compared to 2022 to a total of $53 billion. Investment in the entire EV supply chain hit $42 billion — up 115 percent over the previous year. Meanwhile, retail spending by businesses and households on things like EVs, heat pumps, and rooftop solar came in at $118 billion, all told.
Nonetheless, several economists and analysts said that, while impressive, the rate of investment revealed in the Clean Investment Monitor still isn’t enough for the U.S. to achieve its climate goals. We can certainly cut emissions by 40 percent, as stated in the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, but we’re still far from the 50 percent reduction needed by 2030 to meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement.
“We have more work to do,” said Catherine Wolfram, a professor of energy economics at MIT. While not involved with the Clean Investment Monitor, much of Wolfram’s work at MIT has studied the expected economic impacts of the IRA. Though she doesn’t see the level of investment as yet being sufficient to achieve that ambitious goal, she underscored that the IRA remains a big win, especially as a symbol of America’s commitment to climate action.
By holding a torch to the path the nation’s economy can take toward a future in which excess emissions fade into myths and fables, the government has garnered investments in projects that won’t receive federal support for years to come. In particular, Hess pointed out that more than one-fifth of the $239 billion spent in the 2023 calendar year on clean investments went toward manufacturing, particularly to all things EV. In many cases, companies are spending tens, sometimes hundreds, of millions of dollars to build factories on the promise that they will receive tax credits once batteries, solar panels, and other products start coming off the assembly line.
This reality has some investors keeping a keen eye on Congress.
Bob Keefe, executive director of the nonpartisan advocacy group E2, said that the dozens of attempts by Republican members of Congress to repeal or otherwise roll back provisions and funding sources in the IRA is making some investors squeamish.
“Nobody’s going to want to invest in something if the policies that [are] driving it are under threat,” Keefe said. “I mean, just the mention of ‘threat’ is enough to spook people.”
As long as the government doesn’t “screw it up,” Keefe said, “We are quite literally on the cusp of the biggest economic revolution we’ve seen in this country in generations.”
The trends for this have crystallized. Yes, the wind industry stumbled on land and at sea, according to the report, but it’s poised to find its footing again. But every other sector saw substantial, even startling, growth — particularly emerging technologies like hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel. That broad category saw a tenfold increase in spending in 2023, hitting $9.1 billion.
Federal investments are already exceeding the Biden administration’s own estimates, and this spending, as Hess pointed out, will only increase. Barring unexpected obstructions, the government is on track to inject not the oft-cited figure of $369 billion, but perhaps as much as $1 trillion or more into the clean economy through IRA-related spending alone, according to estimates by Wolfram and her colleagues.
Wherever the final dollar figure falls, the report from Rhodium Group emphasizes the energy and enthusiasm there is behind this economic transition. To those who aren’t forehead deep in economic forecasting, the outpouring has been so expansive as to be wholly unexpected.
“Nobody could have ever predicted that we would see this type of investment, this type of job creation,” Keefe said. “It’s absolutely incredible.”
A new study has found that, while most of the world’s coral reefs are currently damaged or under threat, efforts to restore them can revitalize important ecosystem functions remarkably quickly.
“We found that restored coral reefs can grow at the same speed as healthy coral reefs just four years after coral transplantation,” lead author of the study Ines Lange, an associate professor of marine conservation and management at University of Exeter, said in a press release from Cell Press. “This means that they provide lots of habitat for marine life and efficiently protect the adjacent island from wave energy and erosion. The speed of recovery that we saw was incredible. We did not expect a full recovery of reef framework production after only four years.”
The study was conducted through Indonesia’s Mars Coral Reef Restoration Programme and involved the restoration of coral reefs that had been badly injured by blast fishing three or four decades earlier by adding substrate and transplanting corals.
Before scientists intervened, the reefs had not demonstrated any signs of recovery. This was because loose coral rubble was preventing the survival of coral larvae.
In order to consolidate the rubble, the researchers added steel structures coated with sand, which provided a framework for the transplantation of coral fragments.
To find out how fast the restored sites would recover, the research team looked at the carbonate budgets of a dozen sites — restored at various times as much as four years ago.
“Corals constantly add calcium carbonate to the reef framework while some fishes and sea urchins erode it away, so calculating the overall carbonate budget basically tells you if the reef as a whole is growing or shrinking,” Lange said. “Positive reef growth is important to keep up with sea-level rise, protect coastlines from storms and erosion, and provide habitat for reef animals.”
The study, “Coral restoration can drive rapid reef carbonate budget recovery,” was published in the journal Current Biology.
Research data showed that quick growth of coral transplants supports carbonate production and coral recovery. In only four years, a threefold increase in corals’ net carbonate budget was equal to those at healthy control sites.
However, restored reef communities differed from natural ones because during the transplantation process, branched corals were chosen over other types of corals.
The researchers pointed out that the differences “may affect habitat provision for some marine species and resilience to future heat waves, as branching corals are more sensitive to bleaching.”
The researchers said the findings showed that vigorous management can help improve coral reef resilience and revitalize ecosystem functions essential for marine life — as well as local communities — relatively quickly.
The team hoped that restored reefs would eventually begin to attract a more diverse array of corals.
They emphasized that the outcome in any particular location would depend upon restoration methods, environmental conditions and many other factors.
“These results give us the encouragement that if we can rapidly reduce emissions and stabilize the climate, we have effective tools to help regrow functioning coral reefs,” said study co-author Tim Lamont, a marine biologist at Lancaster University’s Lancaster Environment Centre, in the press release.
In a positive sign for the protection and restoration of bald eagles, a pair of the iconic birds has been spotted nesting in Toronto for the first time in the city’s recorded history, reported the Toronto Star.
Once a common sight in North America, bald eagles were hunted to near extinction in the 1950s. Use of the toxic insecticide DDT — which made its way into the birds’ systems through the food chain, weakening the shells of their eggs — contributed to the record-low numbers, The Guardian reported.
As bald eagle populations continued to decrease due to habitat loss and degradation, the number of breeding pairs on the continent fell to just a few hundred in the early 1960s, according to Michael Dreshcher, a conservation expert and environmental planner with the University of Waterloo.
The birds eventually rebounded following DDT restrictions and a ban on eagle hunting in the 1970s — a development lauded as an early triumph of environmental protection, reported the Toronto Star.
“For decades, we’ve invested heavily in ecological restoration work,” said Karen McDonald, an ecosystem management manager with the division of restoration and infrastructure at the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA), as The Guardian reported. “These eagles are a testament to that: if we didn’t have healthy waters and a healthy food web, I don’t think they’d be here.”
Last year, following 50 years of being listed as an at-risk species, the bald eagle was taken off Ontario’s endangered species list, the Edmonton Journal said.
The recent appearance of the birds of prey in Ontario’s capital indicates they have access to enough food sources like waterfowl, fish and small mammals, according to McDonald, as reported by the Toronto Star.
“We’re pretty excited about it. Bald eagles are known to be excellent biological indicators because they have such a low tolerance to environmental contaminants,” McDonald said. “All of this is telling us that the Toronto area is providing enough resources for these birds, that our ecosystem is healthy enough to support them and that our contaminant load is being drastically reduced so that they’re able to be successful.”
Bald eagles usually build their nests in large trees in close proximity to water, where they catch most of their prey.
The TRCA said the location of the bald eagle nest is not being disclosed to avoid the birds being disturbed.
“Bald eagles are sensitive creatures, particularly during their nesting period. It would be a disservice to draw public attention to them at this time,” TRCA spokesperson Afiya Jilani told CTV News Toronto. “It’s crucial to maintain their habitat as it is during a sensitive time and to prioritize their welfare, especially in the early stages of the nesting process.”
A symbolic species for Indigenous communities, bald eagles represent “everything that is good and kind and charitable,” said Duke Redbird, a Saugeen Ojibway Nation elder with the Urban Indigenous Education Centre, the Toronto Star reported.
Redbird said the bald eagle was borrowed by Americans to be used as a national symbol.
McDonald pointed out that hundreds of annual restoration projects have been implemented in Toronto by TRCA in order to improve the functioning of the city’s ecology and biodiversity.
“I’d like to think that all of this restoration work that we have been working on with our City of Toronto partners, with our federal partners and other non-governmental organizations, is paying off,” McDonald said.
Remake, a U.S.-based nonprofit, has released its annual Fashion Accountability Report for 2024, with brands including Temu, Fashion Nova, Missguided and Skims scoring zero points out of a possible 150 for factors like transparency and environmental justice.
The nonprofit’s Fashion Accountability Report scores companies for their progress on various criteria, including transparency, wages and wellbeing for workers, raw materials, environmental justice efforts, commercial practices and governance. In total, a company can score 150 points for progress toward these markers. The report assessed 52 companies on their social and environmental actions.
Four companies fell to the bottom of the rankings this year with zero points: Fashion Nova, Missguided, Skims and Temu. Fast fashion giant Shein, which was recently called out in a bill proposal in France that would enact penalties on fast fashion companies, scored slightly higher than these four companies with six total points. Other companies with fewer than 10 points include Columbia Sportswear Co., Macy’s, Amazon, Abercrombie & Fitch Co., Chanel and Rothy’s, among others.
The highest scoring brand was Everlane, with 40 out of 150 points, followed by H&M Group with 37, PUMA with 36, Reformation with 34 and Ralph Lauren with 30.
The report highlighted that about half of the companies, 28, have set Supplier Codes of Conduct to assess how factories comply with international labor, health and safety and environmental standards. But none of the companies assessed showed purchasing practices that make sure suppliers provide fair wages and are environmentally sustainable, the report noted.
Another part of the report compared how much money some companies were spending on garment workers wages per year compared to CEO salaries. According to the report, Asia Floor Wage Alliance has estimated the monthly living wage for garment workers in Bangladesh to be around BDT 53,104 (about $484), although the current minimum wage is short, BDT 40,604 (about $370) a month or about BDT 487,248 (about $4,440), annually.
The report authors wrote, “To put it into perspective, it roughly equals:
0.02% of the Walmart CEO’s annual compensation of $24.1 million
0.03% of the Target CEO’s annual compensation of $17.6 million
0.03% of the VF Corporation CEO’s annual compensation of $15.4 million
0.1% – 0.04% of the H&M Group CEO’s annual compensation of between $5 – $12 million
0.06% of the Inditex CEO’s annual compensation of $7.4 million
0.07% of the Marks and Spencer co-CEOs’ annual compensation of $6.1 million
0.1% of the NEXT CEO’s annual compensation of $3.2 million
0.6% of the C&A CEO’s annual compensation of $700,000
0.8% of the New Look CEO’s annual compensation of $524,000.”
The gap could be even wider, as Reuters reported in November 2023 that following worker protests, Bangladesh was raising the minimum wage for garment workers to 12,500 BDT (about $114) per month, or around 150,000 BDT (about $1,367) per year.
On the environmental front, the accountability report found that most of the companies, 37 of them, shared their total annual carbon emissions across their value chain, and 30 of the companies in the assessment have short-term emissions reduction goals to meet the 1.5°C target. Burberry, Everlane, H&M Group and Patagonia have additionally set long-term emissions reduction targets.
Further, 13 of the companies utilized in-site resale programs for their preowned garments, and 15 of the companies assessed offered repair or upcycling programs. But zero companies offered transparency about what happens with collected items taken for upcycling or other take-back initiatives, according to the report.
“What the fashion industry needs is a significant investment in decarbonization that is tailored to the unique needs of each country and each factory,” the authors wrote. “For a true partnership between fashion companies and suppliers, workers should be at the table helping to guide the co-creation of strategies to reduce emissions. Workers are crucial partners in the clean energy transition and need to be supported through and insulated from the effects of climate change.”
