PITTSBURGH — Environmental justice advocates gathered last week to celebrate progress and chart a path to the future while focusing on healing, self care and mental health.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the Environmental Justice Summit highlighted the need for self-care and connection among researchers and advocates working to advance justice. Exposure to pollution and anxiety about climate change can negatively impact mental health and people who work to right injustices face the risk of compassion fatigue and burnout.
“Advancing justice is emotionally difficult work,” Dani Wilson, executive director of the Cancer and Environment Network of Southwestern Pennsylvania, which coordinated the event alongside the University of Pittsburgh, told EHN. “Taking care of ourselves and each other is critical to fostering moments of joy and connection that help us stay in the movement.”
Over three days, attendees strategized about how to advance environmental justice in the greater Pittsburgh region and how to foster resilience with tools like meditation, storytelling, community-building, yoga, crafting and cooking. The event also highlighted the importance of humor, connection and optimism.
“This is a social movement,” said Jamil Bey, founder of the nonprofit think tank UrbanKind Institute and newly-appointed director of the Department of City Planning for Pittsburgh. “That means that as part of this work, we’ve gotta have fun with our friends. We’ve gotta stay connected and be able to laugh.”
On Friday, Dr. Sacoby Wilson, an environmental health scientist, professor and director of the Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health at the University of Maryland, set the tone for the day by declaring himself a “hardcore Steelers fan” and waving a Terrible Towel above his head while shouting “Go Steelers!”
Dr. Sacoby Wilson, an environmental health scientist, professor and director of the Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health at the University of Maryland, waves a terrible towel at the EJ Summit Pittsburgh.
Credit: John Altdorfer, courtesy of the Cancer and Environment Network of SWPA
Wilson peppered an otherwise serious talk about the ravages of environmental racism and his work developing tools to combat it with football jokes, referencing recent quarterback drama (“two quarterbacks are better than one!”), emphasizing the importance of both offense and defense for communities burdened by pollution and quipping that if we want to score a touchdown, the community needs to work as a team.
“Where you live can kill you,” Wilson said, noting that poor, Black and Brown neighborhoods in most places, including southwestern Pennsylvania, face higher levels of exposure to pollution that result in worse health outcomes and lowered life expectancy. These places are also more likely to experience the impacts of climate change and other disproportionate harms.
“We need a holistic framework for environmental justice that also acknowledges the need for housing justice, economic justice, social justice, educational justice, reproductive justice and racial justice,” he said, “because these things are all connected. And you can’t get equity without justice… And on a separate note, we’re going to the Super Bowl this year, right?”
Environmental justice victories
EJ Summit attendees show off their artwork.
Credit: Stephanie Ciranni, Cancer Bridges
Other speakers shared recent victories and progress.
Professor Tiffany Gary-Webb, the associate dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, shared the results of her work with the Black Environmental Collective and the Black Equity Coalition. The group formed in April 2020 to ensure an equitable response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Pittsburgh and has evolved to continue advancing racial equity in western Pennsylvania.
“We used data to try and understand where there were higher rates of COVID and sent those to the county and state health departments. We talked to elected officials and put out our own dashboard with the numbers for Black populations, and through those efforts we were able to get critical resources to our communities and see that data change,” Gary-Webb said, pointing to a study that summarized the group’s effectiveness. “Now we’re continuing that work with a focus on other issues in our communities.”
Ash Chan, a farmer and steward at Oasis Farm and Fishery, shared their experience working at a Black-owned garden and market in Pittsburgh’s predominantly Black, working-class Homewood neighborhood, which has a long history of disinvestment and has been without a grocery store since 1994. The organization uses vacant land to grow food and offers classes in urban farming and healthy cooking.
“We see food as a driver of social and economic capital, as well as a way that connects people to their cultural roots and their natural environment,” Chan said. “We’re growing what folks want. For example, last year we noticed that elders in the community would line up for okra before we even opened our farmer’s market …so this year we’re growing six different kinds of okra based on that demand.”
Bearing witness to injustice
Kayien Conner (left) and Melanie Meade (right) at the EJ Summit.
Credit: John Altdorfer, Cancer and Environment Network of SWPA
While the Summit highlighted progress and promoted resilience, it also emphasized “bearing witness” — a process described by event organizers as actively listening, not looking away, and most importantly, responding — to “the slow violence of environmental degradation on our land.”
Participants were invited to attend a “bearing witness ceremony” in Clairton, a small town about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh that regularly sees some of the most polluted air in the country due to emissions from a coal-based U.S. Steel plant.
“The injustices are very thick and very brutal in Clairton,” said Melanie Meade, a clean air activist and resident of Clairton. Meade shared the heartbreak she has experienced learning that Clairton’s rate of childhood asthma is more than double the national rate, watching many loved ones die of cancer and witnessing the impacts of poverty and violence. “The people are tired and they are sick and they are in great need, and we need to stand in the way for them.”
Later in the day, Kayien Conner, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work, told Melanie she’d been moved by her words and asked if she could connect her with an organization she’s involved with that offers mental health resources for Black communities to get additional resources to Clairton.
“Yes, please, thank you!” Melanie said.
“See? We’re here making connections, collaborating, getting this work done already!” Wilson shouted to applause and laughter.
Political optimism
Bearing witness ceremony in Clairton, Pennsylvania.
Credit: Dani Wilson
Speakers at the symposium also noted that western Pennsylvania is on the precipice of major political changes that offer many reasons for optimism for environmental advocates, pointing to the election of progressive politicians like Summer Lee and Lindsay Powell and county executive Sara Innamorato, all of whom have pledged to prioritize environmental justice.
“We’re really shaking things up politically right now,” said Bey. “If we don’t do this now, then that’s on us. Now is the time. Let’s keep lifting each other up, let’s do our work and let’s get this done.”
PITTSBURGH — On a windy, rainy afternoon in early April, bundled-up protesters gathered in front of U.S. Steel’s corporate headquarters downtown ahead of a shareholder vote on the sale of the company to Japanese-owned Nippon Steel.
They held signs bearing messages like, “Will your grandkids forgive you?” and “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
The ongoing political debate over the pending sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel has reached the highest levels of government, but residents near the company’s Pittsburgh-area plants say those conversations are excluding the voices of communities subjected to U.S. Steel’s health-harming emissions.
“It's completely unacceptable and untenable for a community to be subjected to thousands of violations of the Clean Air Act for decades,” Matt Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Project, a coalition of more than 40 environmental advocacy groups in the region, told EHN during the protest. “The people at the negotiating table need to deal with these issues as part of the sale process.”
After the protesters on the sidewalk chanted “U.S. Steel, you steal our health,” shareholders gathered in a boardroom in the skyscraper high above voted to sell the company to Nippon Steel for $14.1 billion, with 98% of shares voting in favor of the deal. It remains to be seen whether it will go through or be halted by regulators.
“This sale has been pushed forward by U.S. Steel at the expense of both community members and workers,” Hilary Lewis, the steel director for Industrious Labs, an environmental advocacy organization focused on decarbonizing heavy industry, told EHN. “There’s been a lot of pushback because these important stakeholders are just not being heard.”
U.S. Steel has been fined more than $20 million for Clean Air Act violations at its Pittsburgh-area facilities since 2018, and the company recently settled a lawsuit for about $25 million with environmental advocacy groups over more than 12,000 air permit violations in the region. It’s a decades-long pattern and impacted residents accuse the company of acting under a “pay-to-pollute” model, opting to pay fines rather than stop violating clean air laws. Meanwhile, climate advocates say U.S. Steel is lagging behind the rest of the industry when it comes to advancing clean technology and phasing out health-harming and climate-warming coal.
In April, President Joe Biden told steel union workers in Pittsburgh that his administration would attempt to block the sale of the company to Nippon Steel and the national security review that’s now underway could last at least a year. The United Steelworkers Union has opposed the sale, expressing concerns about whether Nippon Steel would honor its existing commitments to things like pensions and other worker benefits and citing Nippon Steel’s history of hiring “anti-union lawyers” in disputes with its U.S. steel plants. The Japanese company delayed the takeover last week by three months.
While the protesters outside U.S. Steel tower want to see the company’s environmental compliance issues in Pennsylvania addressed in these debates, the potential sale has also sparked concerns about how the deal might impact U.S. Steel’s existing, hard-won environmental compliance agreements in the region.
“We’re talking about another country millions of miles away,” Natalie Morris, a resident of Braddock who lives near U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Mill, told EHN during the protest. “I don’t think they’re going to care about us.”
And — whether or not the sale goes through — U.S. Steel remains a distant laggard in the push toward cleaner steelmaking, as steelmakers nationwide are increasingly turning away from coal.
What will a sale mean for U.S. Steel’s existing environmental commitments?
U.S. Steel operates three facilities in the U.S. that still rely on coal. Two are in Pennsylvania’s Monongahela Valley near Pittsburgh and one is in Gary, Indiana.
The company was once an industrial powerhouse, but has faced challenges for several decades due to competition from cheaper steel produced in other parts of the world. The proposed sale to Nippon Steel is pitched as a solution to the company’s financial woes, but union opposition has framed it as a means to generate exponential profits for executives at the expense of workers.
All three U.S. Steel plants still reliant on coal are regularly fined for violating clean air regulations. The Clairton Coke Works, about 15 miles south of Pittsburgh, is the largest coke-making plant in the country —a process that involves cooking coal at extremely high temperatures to create a key steelmaking ingredient known as “coke.” Coke made at the Clairton Coke Works supplies both the other western Pennsylvania steel plant and the Indiana plant.
Residents impacted by the plant’s ongoing pollution problems in Pennsylvania are also worried about what the sale might mean for existing legal agreements over pollution violations.
For example, in March a judge finalized a settlement that requires U.S. Steel to spend nearly $20 million upgrading its western Pennsylvania facilities and put an additional $5 million into health and clean air programs in local communities. It’s the largest Clean Air Act citizen suit payout in Pennsylvania history and the third-largest in U.S. history, according to environmental advocates.
“It's completely unacceptable and untenable for a community to be subjected to thousands of violations of the Clean Air Act for decades.” - Matt Mehalik, Breathe Project
The settlement was the result of a lawsuit filed by the Allegheny County Health Department, which oversees local air quality, and environmental advocacy groups PennEnvironment and the Clean Air Council, in response to a fire that knocked out pollution controls at the company’s Clairton plant in 2018. The incident resulted in weeks of substantial Clean Air Act violations and well-documented health effects.
The agreement also requires U.S. Steel to invest in measures to prevent similar pollution events, creates financial penalties for pollution control equipment outages for the next five years and requires the company to shut down one of its oldest, dirtiest coke ovens.
“This is not just about a financial penalty to U.S. Steel,” Matt Donohue, a staff attorney at the National Environmental Law Center, who argued the case, told EHN. “During discovery it became apparent that if nothing was done there would be more outages, more pollution events and more harm to the communities surrounding the plant. Preventing that from happening was the most important thing to us.”
In an email, U.S. Steel spokesperson Andrew Fulton said, “U. S. Steel employs more than 3,000 hardworking men and women throughout its [southwestern Pennsylvania] facilities … their work has yielded exceptional, measurable results including an environmental and permit regulation compliance rate exceeding 99%.”
U.S. Steel has reached similar settlements over other pollution incidents. According to Donohue and a spokesperson for U.S. Steel, these agreements will remain in place and remain legally binding regardless of who owns the company.
“That’s true for all agreements like this, but because we knew the sale was possible, we also went through our agreement with a fine-toothed comb to make sure that whoever owns this company has to comply with all of the terms of the agreement on the same timeline,” Donohue said.
What would it take for U.S. Steel — or whoever owns the company next — to clean up its operations in Pennsylvania?
The ongoing political debate over the pending sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel has reached the highest levels of government, but residents near the company’s Pittsburgh-area plants say those conversations are excluding the voices of communities.
Credit: Kristina Marusic for EHN
The movement toward cleaner steelmaking in the U.S. is already well underway. About 70% of steel produced in the country is made with electric arc furnaces, which do not use coal, while the remaining 30% still use coal to power blast furnaces. Around 72% of the industry’s climate-warming pollution comes from those remaining blast furnaces.
“Not only is [coal-based steelmaking] inherently dirty, but [Clairton Coke Works] is also regularly out of compliance with health-protective regulations,” Lewis, the advocate from Industrious Lab, said. “A half measure would be just complying with the law, but if we’re actually talking about protecting community health, we need to get coke out of steelmaking.”
In 2019 U.S. Steel announced $1.5 billion in upgrades to its western Pennsylvania facilities, but reneged on that promise in 2021 and instead put that money toward an electric arc furnace in Arkansas.
Electric arc furnaces essentially recycle scrap steel instead of using coke to make new steel products. But on its own, an electric arc furnace isn’t capable of making “virgin” steel, which is considered higher quality, less likely to crack and is needed for certain steel applications, including much of what’s used by the automobile industry.
In order for U.S. Steel to do away with coal at its Pennsylvania plants, they’d need both electric arc furnaces and a method of producing direct reduced iron, a replacement for coke that can be made using green hydrogen from renewable energy.
“A half measure would be just complying with the law, but if we’re actually talking about protecting community health, we need to get coke out of steelmaking.” - Hilary Lewis, Industrious Labs
Last month, a Swedish company announced the first “green” steel plant proposed in the U.S. If the project moves forward, the Mississippi plant will use both electric arc furnaces and direct reduced iron made with green hydrogen to make steel. Green hydrogen isn’t yet available at the scale required to meet total demand for steelmaking, Lewis conceded, but the U.S. Department of Energy is working to change that.
“This Mississippi project is a perfect model that U.S. Steel could follow,” Lewis said, noting that a company in Boston is working on a similar green steel project that uses electricity rather than green hydrogen. “That technology isn’t as commercially advanced as green hydrogen, but the point is that there are numerous clean technologies that U.S. Steel could move toward using instead of coal.”
Making that transition will also be essential to staying competitive as the world decarbonizes, according to Lewis.
“The auto industry makes up about a third of all steel sales,” Lewis said. “That industry has climate goals and commitments that will eventually require them to eliminate the use of steel made using coal, and when they do, they’ll be taking their business to facilities like the new green steel plant in Mississippi and that will leave companies still producing steel with coke behind.”
U.S. Steel declined to go on the record about whether the company has or will consider investing in these technologies for its western Pennsylvania facilities, but noted that they’re working on carbon capture and battery-powered locomotive projects.
“According to the Allegheny County Health Department, hazardous air pollutants have decreased by 80% in Allegheny County over the last 12 years,” Fulton, U.S. Steel spokesperson, said. “U.S. Steel has invested roughly $750 million in its Mon Valley operations in the past five years and invests more than $100 million per year on environmental compliance.”
As for the potential sales impact on environmental efforts, both U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel have set goals of being carbon neutral by 2050, but “neither company has a very concrete plan for how they’re going to do this and neither company is addressing concerns about the ongoing use of coal in steelmaking,” Lewis said.
Nippon Steel has made some investments in electric arc furnaces, but Mehalik, of the Breathe Project, said Nippon Steel also has a record of environmental issues at some of its plants.He expressed concern that even if the company sells, health harms from its Pennsylvania facilities could persist.
“Everywhere that U.S. Steel operates communities are affected and harmed, but it’s particularly acute here,” Mehalik said. “Whether the sale proceeds or not, whoever ends up owning U.S. Steel needs to bring these things to a close.”
BAYTOWN, TX — As Exxon Mobil moves forward with federal re-permitting for its massive petrochemical complex in the Houston area, residents remain frustrated with the lack of accessibility and Spanish-language outreach from the state and company.
At issue is Exxon Mobil’s application for its Baytown Olefins Plant permit, which must be approved by the the Texas Commision on Environmental Quality every five years to continue operations.
The olefins plant — which produces about 10 billion pounds of petrochemical products annually — is part of Exxon’s petrochemical complex in Baytown, which includes the nation’s third-largest refinery. The renewal has been contested by residents and activists due to pollution concerns and 12 consecutive quarters of Clean Air Act violations at the Exxon Mobile Baytown Complex. If approved, the permit would allow the facility to operate for the next five years.
A public hearing this week — the second in as many months — was held for community members to bring comments or questions to Exxon Mobil or the TCEQ.
At the previous hearing community residents brought up concerns about the meeting notice not being published in Spanish on the TCEQ’s site. TCEQ attorney Amy Browning said that the reconvening was a result of the agency’s failure to “publish (the meeting notice) in Spanish electronically on the commission’s site.”
In addition to the original meeting notice not being published in Spanish, Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, or TEJAS, representative Deyadira Arellano pointed out at both meetings that Exxon’s slides related to their plant operations are not translated to Spanish. At this week’s meeting, Exxon approached her in the break period to offer slides in Spanish to her email. However, Arellano said that her frustration resided with the TCEQ.
TEJAS representative Deyadira Arellano pointed out at both meetings that Exxon’s slides related to their plant operations are not translated to Spanish.
Credit: Cami Ferrell for EHN
“The TCEQ should preview these materials ahead of time,” said Arellano. “It is important to ensure meaningful engagement efforts are inclusive and accessible to all diverse members of our communities.”
Exxon’s Public and Government Affairs Manager Aaron Stryk said that they are “continuously working to improve their Spanish language communications” and do provide Baytown-related communications updates in English and Spanish.
“It is important to ensure meaningful engagement efforts are inclusive and accessible to all diverse members of our communities.” - Deyadira Arellano, TEJAS
The TCEQ publishes all public comments and addresses each of them during the permitting process. English-speaking individuals have access to a digital comment interface 24/7 to comment on the permit while the comment period is open. However, Spanish speakers have no accessibility tools provided from the TCEQ to help navigate the English-only interface. Many have to opt to comment in person or mail in their comments and then have their comments translated, according to TCEQ Attorney Christyn Cavasos.
TEJAS has long advocated for better accessibility for Spanish speakers from the TCEQ. The state agency has a history of neglecting Latino and Spanish speaking communities in their outreach, including important air pollution monitoring information.
The permit will undergo a revision phase if needed after the comments have been finalized. Following the revision, the TCEQ will submit the permit to the EPA which has 45 days to reject it. If applicable, emissions units must comply with new federal regulations.
HOUSTON — This week EHN is publishing letters from eighth grade students at YES Prep Northbrook Middle School in the Houston-area neighborhood of Spring Branch, Texas.
English educators Cassandra Harper and Yvette Howard incorporated the environment into a series of lessons in December last year. Each student conducted their own research to begin drafting letters to EHN about their concerns or hopes. EHN reporter Cami Ferrell visited their classrooms to share information about her personal reporting experiences in Houston.
The collection of letters, some of which were lightly edited, do not represent the opinions of YES Prep Northbrook or EHN, but are offered here as a peek into the minds of children and their relationship with environmental issues. Read the first, second and third set of letters.
Farith Juarez
I want to discuss global pollution because it is a severe problem and challenge we all face daily and it does not only affect people, but animals and the environment too. Animals lose their homes due to how much trash we produce and just throw it into places without thinking, whether it is a cup or a plastic bag, it takes months and years for it to decompose.
The issue of pollution can affect my community because places like rivers, lakes, ponds, and even sewers are full of trash, making It hard for people to enjoy a day swimming when all the water is dirty and full of trash everywhere you step. Not only is it hard on us, it is especially hard on animals. Imagine having to live in a place where you are constantly surrounded by trash, not only that but animals like turtles can confuse plastic bags with jellyfish and eat them, causing them to choke or suffer health problems in the future.
Sometimes in the apartments where I live, the sewers get too full of trash and they start to (spew) all the trash out, making it hard for people who live on the first floor because their apartment may flood, or they cannot get out because of all the water. This problem personally makes me feel hurt because not all manufactured items decompose quickly, it could take years. And by the time that trash is gone, there will be more trash. I am personally worried about our future and the future of our kids because by the time more children are born, they won't be able to know the beautiful Earth we once had because everything will be dirty and full of trash. They won't believe that we once enjoyed life without trash and animals suffering in the dirty water.
The government also needs to stop allowing items that take a long time to decompose into the market as well as to stop throwing trash in the water or burning it because it can release harmful chemicals as well as make the earth's atmosphere hotter. I want people to understand that a plastic cup may be the downfall of a whole community or it is one singular trash (item) that (can) take an animal’s life. A thing that all American citizens should be doing is recycling. People need to understand that you can reuse everything, and you will feel better knowing you did not contribute to pollution.
- Farith Juarez
Lucy Ely
I am writing to discuss how severe the issue of climate change is, and how we can work to lessen the problem. This is a complex matter that can be made worse by simple decisions we make every day.
The main problem is people are producing too much carbon dioxide, causing the planet to heat up, and basically making life more challenging. It harms absolutely everyone on this planet. It personally affects me by making me worry about the future for myself, family, friends, and strangers across the world. In the city of Houston, where I live, there has been an extended drought during spring, summer, and fall. Being just one of the many impacts of climate change.
All this terrifies me and makes me feel bad for any ways I’ve possibly contributed to this issue. I’m scared the future won’t be a safe place for all who live here on Earth. I’m worried about future generations suffering, because of the people now and then not doing better. This makes it so important that people can be aware of what is happening, so more things can be done to make the world safer.
For example, if climate change were talked about more the government could in theory use someone’s idea to act. I think they could try to make it a requirement to have carbon capture facilities at every place that releases carbon emissions. I want the readers to understand that climate change is real and needs to be taken seriously.
- Lucy Ely
Keyla Cactzoy
I am writing to discuss that I have been noticing that summer by summer it is getting hotter and hotter. I am concerned why this is happening. I have also noticed that there have been lots of wildfires which makes me wonder what will happen to the animals' homes? I have been reading articles about animals going to become extinct because of us.
Because of people acting like it is not a big deal and not caring about the poor world I feel hopeless as if one day the world would look dead. But it does not have to be this way. We can all put a little effort into the situation, any good little thing you do would be helpful. If people could start learning how to save the world like for example: eat less meat, start using electric cars, and stop leaving trash everywhere. These examples would be more than enough to start taking care of our world, animals, and people.
We all have an option to keep hiding from reality like nothing is going on or to be a good person to society and start helping the world out by putting a little effort into the situation. It is your choice in the end just remember that you are doing it for a better future and community and if you think that doing these things will not make a difference just know that it will make a good impact to the world.
- Keyla Cactzoy
Jessica Godinez
Recently we had extreme temperatures in the summer which caused plants to dry up and some people to get heat fevers or skin allergies. Although this keeps happening people don't seem to pay much attention, thinking that soon over time their sickness will wear off, which is obviously not true. If we don't make a change there will be a lot of deaths for animals, plants, and us humans.
I feel disappointed (that) people always make their mess not caring who they might put at risk, and they expect other people to clean after them. We can't continue this. We have to keep trying for the better.
You might ask, what kind of things do we do to cause climate change? Well, humans like to drive cars because it’s way faster than walking to get to their destination faster. What (some) people don't know is that the back of the car releases carbon dioxide, which is caused by burning gasoline and fuel. That causes air pollution and is one of the major reasons for climate change.
We should start making a change by starting to recycle and not throw our trash in our environment like oceans because it can cause animals and plants to suffer. Another thing we can do is protest about climate change to the government and act for ourselves and for the better of our planet.
- Jessica Godinez
Javier Carrillo
This could affect my community.
If climate change gets any worse then that would mean that the weather we know today could get even worse and put thousands if not millions of people’s lives at risk. One example of climate change contributing to the weather is the maximum and minimum temperature in Texas have risen by 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit. This personally makes me feel strange of what is to come, and our lives might be on the line. Who knows, someday if climate change is still a problem, then maybe the sun may be too unbearable to even be in. The most important thing I am worried about is the safety of others today and in the future.
To address climate change, it is important that everyone in our community does the bare minimum. Everyone, including you, makes an enormous difference. One way the government should protect the climate is to limit the amount of smoke or smog that is released from smokestacks that are built inside factories. But what can you do? Mostly you can do some simple but highly effective things such as recycling or buying electric cars! It might seem as if you are not doing much but you can make a dramatic difference.
Schools evacuated due to toxic gas. Smelly tap water at home. Tourist operators and fishers struggling to stay in business. Job losses. Power outages affecting tens of thousands of people at a time. Dangerous health problems. Even lives lost.
Such crises were some of the consequences of sargassum in the islands of the Caribbean in 2023, and they have become common in the region since 2011 when massive blooms began inundating the shorelines in the spring and summer months.
On April 18, 2023 in Guadeloupe, the air-quality monitoring agency Gwad’Air advised vulnerable people to leave some areas because of toxic levels of gas produced by sargassum. Six weeks later, about 600 miles to the northwest, sargassum blocked an intake pipe at an electricity plant at Punta Catalina in the Dominican Republic. One of the facility’s units was forced to temporarily shut down, and a 20-year-old diver named Elías Poling later drowned while trying to fix the problem.
A team removes sargassum at the facilities of the Punta Catalina Thermoelectric Power Plant in the Dominican Republic in 2023.
Credit: Punta Catalina Thermoelectric Power Plant
In Jamaica, during the months of July and August, fishers found themselves struggling through one more season as floating sargassum blocked their small boats and diminished their catch.
“Sometimes, the boats can’t even come into the creek,” said Jamaican fisherman Richard Osbourne. “It blocks the whole channel.”
In the British Virgin Islands (BVI), most of Virgin Gorda’s 4,000 residents had to deal with sporadic water shutoffs and odorous tap water for weeks after sargassum was sucked into their main desalination plant last August.
And in Puerto Rico, a highly unusual late-season influx inundated the beaches of the Aguadilla area for the first time, leaving residents like Christian Natal and many others out of work for a week when it shut down businesses including the jet ski rental company that employs him.
Christian Natal works at a water vehicle rental company in the “Crash Boat” beach in the municipality of Aguadilla that had to close last year due to the unusual arrival of sargassum to the northwest of Puerto Rico.
Credit: Gabriel López Albarrán/Centro de Periodismo Investigativo
These victims are among thousands of people hurt by sargassum blooms last year alone in the Caribbean, where about 70% of the population of around 44 million lives near the coast, according to the World Bank.
Scientists blame the explosive growth of the seaweed on global pollution, climate change, and other international problems that Caribbean islands did little to cause and lack the political power to resolve.
“Seaweed must be seen as an impact of global warming, with the opening up of the right to compensation on the grounds that we are small, vulnerable islands,” said Sylvie Gustave dit Duflo, the vice-president of the Guadeloupe Region in charge of environmental issues and president of the French Biodiversity Office.
She added that the countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) — which include 15 member states and five associate members that are territories or colonies — recorded economic losses of about $102 million due to sargassum in 2022 alone.
“These figures do not take into account the losses recorded in all the other Caribbean countries, including the French islands,” she said. Nor do they take into account yearly costs of beach cleaning estimated to be as high as an additional $210 million.
Ezekiel Bobb, who lives near the ocean at Handsome Bay, Virgin Gorda, has suffered from the odor of decaying sargassum in recent years. He has tried to do his part by using it for fertilizer in his garden, but he is unable to make much dent in the massive amounts that wash ashore.
Credit: Freeman Rogers/The BVI Beacon
Gustave dit Duflo and other experts say the global problem requires a global response. But so far, the Caribbean has failed to coordinate even a region-wide strategy, and the international community has largely turned a blind eye. National-level responses — which in most Caribbean countries include a draft management strategy that hasn’t been officially adopted or adequately funded — have done little to take up the slack.
Most sargassum influxes are predictable, and the worst impacts are often preventable. But again and again, Caribbean governments have waited to react until the crisis stage. And even then, the responses have often focused on protecting the tourism industry while other groups, such as local communities or fishers, are left behind.
As a result, residents’ health, livelihood and natural environment have been endangered, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on reactive emergency responses that experts say could have been better spent on prevention, planning and mitigation.
At the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) last December in Dubai, Gustave dit Duflo helped unveil a French proposal for the sort of international response she says is urgently needed. It includes forming a global coalition to better understand the problem, ensuring that sargassum is on the agenda of major international forums, and continuing previous work in partnership with the European Union, among other measures.
But to implement the proposal, governments in the Caribbean and further abroad will have to overcome hurdles that have previously stymied cooperation, including political and legislative differences, funding shortages, and debate about whether to prioritize health, the environment, the economy, or other areas.
In the meantime, sargassum has already started to arrive on the Caribbean’s shores once again. And once again, the region is not ready.
The ‘Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt’
By April 8, 2024 (above), sargassum was once again washing ashore near the desalination plant at Handsome Bay, Virgin Gorda, but the promised protective boom had not been installed.
Sargassum is not a bad thing in itself. Nor is it new to the Caribbean, where it has always washed ashore in modest quantities in the spring and summer, providing habitat for marine life and helping build beaches as it decays.
But 2011 brought too much of a good thing. Way too much.
Without warning that year, sargassum suddenly swamped shorelines. It piled several feet high on some beaches. It stank like rotten eggs as it decomposed. It shut down resorts, dealing a major blow to a tourism sector in some areas of the Caribbean still struggling to recover from the 2008-2009 global recession. It gave coastal residents headaches, nausea and respiratory problems. It disrupted turtle nesting sites and threatened reefs and mangroves.
Sargassum has caused problems for boats operating at the ferry terminal in Road Town, Tortola in the British Virgin Islands (shown above on May 20, 2023.)
Credit: Freeman Rogers/The BVI Beacon
As sargassum continued to flood the Caribbean and the western coast of Africa 8,000 miles away, scientists made a surprising discovery. Historically, most of the seasonal influx in the Caribbean had come from a two-million-square-mile gyre in the northern Atlantic Ocean: the Sargasso Sea.
“The Sargasso [Sea] has been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s an ecosystem that was perfect, so to speak,” said Dominican Republic oceanographer Elena Martinez. “It was there surrounded by four oceans gyres, or currents, that kept it perfect.”
But scientists soon learned that most of the new Caribbean influx wasn’t coming from the Sargasso Sea anymore: It was coming from a new sargassum ecosystem that had formed in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
The area dubbed the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt ina 2019 article in Science is now visible from space, and its length often exceeds 5,000 miles, according to scientists who use satellites to track it.
Its cause is still debated. Sargassum researcher Dr. Brian Lapointe sees the Atlantic belt as a global version of a smaller bloom he witnessed in 1991 that shut down a nuclear power plant and other electricity facilities along the Florida coast.
Since the 1980s, the world population has nearly doubled, explained Lapointe, a professor at Florida Atlantic University. This, in turn, has led to a massive increase in the sargassum-boosting nutrients washing out of major rivers like the Mississippi in the US, the Amazon and Orinoco in South America, and the Congo in Africa.
“To grow that world population, we’ve used these fertilizers; we’ve deforested along all the major rivers in the world,” he said. “The nitrogen has gone up faster than the phosphorus from all these human activities, including wastewater, sewage, from the increasing human population.”
Another likely culprit is climate change. Martinez said warming waters may have disrupted the giant gyre that held the Sargasso Sea in place for thousands of years, releasing sargassum to float south and form the new belt.
Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt diagram. | REVIEW article Commercial Potential of Pelagic Sargassum spp. in Mexico, Frontiers
The new belt also receives additional nutrients from the Sahara dust that frequently blows across the Atlantic — which itself could be exacerbated by climate impacts such as the expansion of deserts as temperatures rise. Some scientists also argue that warming oceans provide a more sargassum-friendly growing environment.
Experts tend to agree that the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt is here to stay — and that it is a global problem that needs a global response.
‘A terrible scene for the people’
That much was clear by 2018, when the belt grew to a record size that was estimated at 22 million tons and much of the Caribbean saw its worst-ever inundation. The season spurred increasing calls for a collaborative international response.
The following year, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres visited St. Lucia for a July meeting of the Caribbean Community, and he took a side trip to the small fishing village of Praslin Bay.
Surrounded by dignitaries, Guterres walked down a dock lined with small boats bobbing atop thick mats of sargassum, which for years had plagued fishers, sea moss farmers and other residents in the area.
“So it’s a terrible scene for the people?” he asked a resident in a video posted on the United Nations website.
“Yes,” the man responded. “It’s killing the fishes in the bay. The stench. It’s destroying our electronics because of the fumes.”
After his visit, Guterres described his sadness on seeing a “landscape that resembled an algae desert for hundreds of meters.”
Then he called for international action.
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres visits Praslin Bay, St. Lucia in July 2019 on the sidelines of his attendance at the Caribbean Community Heads of Government Summit that year.
Credit: United Nations
“Oceans don’t know borders, nor does climate,” he said. “It is a global collective responsibility to take action now.”
But that broad international action has not materialized as planned. Despite a growing patchwork of studies and projects across the region, various attempts by the UN and others to coordinate a Caribbean-wide response have been largely stalled by funding shortages, geopolitical issues, the Covid-19 pandemic and other factors.
One of the most extensive efforts came about three months after Guterres’ visit to St. Lucia, when Guadeloupe hosted the First International Conference on Sargassum in October 2019. Partners at the event — where the three-year Sarg’Coop program financed by about $3.2 million in European Union funds was officially launched — included the French government, the Guadeloupe Region, UNESCO and other entities. In attendance were representatives from more than a dozen Caribbean countries and territories, as well as the US, Mexico, Brazil and France.
Some progress followed. For instance, the Guadeloupe Region — in partnership with the French government, the French National Research Agency and two Brazilian agencies — launched a call for projects that enabled a dozen international studies to be carried out on the health, environmental and economic impact of the seaweed, as well as possible uses for it.
Other regional meetings have been held since then as well. Last June, for instance, an European Union-Caribbean conference on “Turning Sargassum into Opportunity” was held in the Dominican Republic, and the topic was discussed the following month at a summit of the EU and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (EU-CELAC) in Brussels, Belgium.
But almost five years after the 2019 Guadeloupe conference, the broader goals have not come to fruition on a regional level as envisioned, experts acknowledge. No Caribbean strategy is in place, and the region-wide warning and monitoring center envisioned at the conference has not been established.
Large sargassum mats sweeping into the shoreline in Manchioneal, Portland, Jamaica – one of the top three worst affected areas in the island.
Credit: Mona GeoInformatics Institute
Instead, many of the actions that grew out of the Guadeloupe conference have centered mainly on the French Caribbean. Funded in part by about $66 million allocated for 2018 to 2026 by the government of France — which for decades has struggled with algae washing ashore on its European coasts — the French islands have launched some of the most extensive response efforts in the Caribbean in recent years.
But even this has not been enough to protect residents.
Describing Guterres’ visit to Praslin Bay as “nothing more than a photo op,” Martinique-based professor Dr. Dabor Resiere and seven otherresearchers claimed in a March 2023 article that the “local authorities failed to take advantage of such an important visitor to give international recognition to the sargassum phenomenon in the Caribbean.”
Four years later, they added, the situation remained “unchanged.”
“Despite the French government’s plans to tackle the sargassum problem, these toxic algae are continuing to inundate the coasts of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana in ever-greater volumes,” the researchers wrote in the Journal of Global Health, adding, “Today, there is no national and international consensus on facing this public health problem. There is no Caribbean network or a broad consensus to advance research at this level.”
Even Praslin Bay saw scant relief in the years after it welcomed the UN secretary general.
In 2022, St. Lucian sargassum researcher Dr. Bethia Thomas produced videos aboutthe village andtwo other nearbycommunities as part of her doctoral thesis. In each video, several residents listed complaints ranging from breathing problems to fisheries destruction to corroding jewelry.
“It affects how I breathe, and I also think it affects the children and the way that they function, because sometimes they’re so moody and they cannot sit and do the activities because it’s so awful,” a teacher says in the video of Praslin Bay. “And I think it’s affecting us mentally.”
Concerns about sargassum’s effects on the mental health of coastal residents and workers were noted in a September 2023 report by the 34-member Western Central Atlantic Fishery Commission. “The unpleasant odor, the deterioration of their environment, lack of access to the beaches for relaxation, uncertainty about the future, increase in physical ailments such as respiratory illness and skin rashes, and concerns about other potential health risks, among other things, will naturally affect mental health,” stated the commission, a regional fisheries body established under the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.
However, the report added that such mental health impacts are not currently being studied.
In the absence of a regional strategy, national sargassum management plans have been developed in most countries and territories in the Caribbean, including eight through grant-funded projects affiliated with the University of the West Indies in St. Lucia, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, BVI, Anguilla and Montserrat.
But few have been officially adopted at the government level, and even fewer are adequately funded or closely followed.
Sargassum lines the shore in July 2023 in Anegada in the British Virgin Islands.
Credit: Freeman Rogers/The BVI Beacon
“Sometimes the small communities get left behind,” Thomas said. “Maybe not intentionally, but in small island developing states with limited resources, you have to prioritize. And perhaps other things — like building a new hospital and constructing new roads, new schools — might take precedence over developing a sargassum management plan.”
Partly as a result, sargassum responses can vary dramatically from island to island.
But in probing major influxes in six Caribbean countries and territories last year, CPI found one constant: people are suffering.
Negligible investment from polluting countries
As residents experience health and economic consequences, Caribbean leaders often complain about a shortage of money to deal with the crisis. Local funds, they note, are tied up with many competing priorities, including handling climate-related impacts like hurricanes, droughts and flooding.
They also say that the cost of the sargassum crisis should be shouldered in part by the larger countries mostly responsible for it, but that accessing international climate financing for the purpose is not easy.
A CPI review of projects funded by the Global Environment Facility and by members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development between 2000 and 2021 found out that of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on climate change projects in the world, less than $7 million went to address sargassum-related issues. About 89% of those funds, or $6 million, were spent in the Caribbean.
But for many non-independent islands, the problem is compounded by a political status that renders them ineligible for most climate financing.
“We have no access to global funds: Resilience fund, the loss-and-damage fund,” said BVI Health and Social Development Minister Vincent Wheatley, whose home overlooks the Virgin Gorda desalination plant that was recently damaged by sargassum.
The sargassum that filled Handsome Bay, Virgin Gorda (shown above on Sept. 1, 2023) was sucked into the intake pipe of the island’s main desalination plant and caused damage that led to water shortages and cut-offs.
Credit: Anika Christopher/The BVI Beacon
At the annual UN Climate Change Conferences, he explained, overseas territories are not parties and don’t have their own seat at the negotiating table.
“We fall under the [United Kingdom],” he said. “So whatever the UK negotiates, it will pass on to us.”
Therefore, he said, the BVI and other overseas territories have been in separate negotiations with the UK.
“We banded together to petition the UK to carve out a specific fund for [its] overseas territories,” he said, adding that these discussions are ongoing and include sargassum.
A lack of funding and regional coordination has also stymied efforts to monetise the seaweed by finding a large-scale sustainable use for it.
“Even though there are so many things you can make with sargassum, the actual amount of sargassum that is used for products is still very low,” said Dr. Franziska Elmer, a sargassum researcher based in Mexico.
Sargassum plan proposed at COP28 in Dubai
The 2023 sargassum bloom in the Caribbean had mostly abated by Dec. 2, when Gustave dit Duflo, the French Biodiversity Office president, stood at a podium 8,000 miles away during a side event at the COP28 meeting in Dubai.
As dignitaries looked on, she issued a stark warning about sargassum.
“It is a very invasive and aggressive phenomenon, and through all the Caribbean it affects tourism, and all the economies of the region are based on biodiversity and tourism,” she told those gathered at the French pavilion on the sidelines of the conference. “The Caribbean has a lot of hot-spots of biodiversity. So if we don’t act, in 20 years this marine biology, including the reef, will disappear from our coast.”
She then explained the French government’s proposal to address the issue. The program, she said, has four prongs: forming an international coalition to better understand the problem and its causes; addressing sargassum in international forums like the COP of Biodiversity; acting in the framework of the Cartagena Convention; and working with the EU to support the continuation of the regional Sarg’Coop project launched during the 2019 conference in Guadeloupe.
The French government has presented the proposal as an unprecedented move at COP 28, with the aim of placing the sargassum issue on one of the high-level panels of the United Nations Conference on the Oceans to be held in Nice, France, in June 2025.
Such collaboration is essential, according to Gustave dit Duflo.
“We manage sargassum at a local level, but this is not a phenomenon of an island. It is the whole basin of the Caribbean and a part of the Atlantic,” she said. “This is why all the countries that are impacted, we need to create an international coalition to be able to find means and ways to act.”
Since COP28, the Netherlands and its overseas countries and territories decided to join the international program proposed by France alongside Costa Rica, Mexico, Dominican Republic and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, Gustave dit Duflo told CPI.
A meeting will be held soon with the European Commission to define the project’s legal guidelines and financing, she said.
Also at COP 28, the EU and the government of the Dominican Republic co-organised a related panel at the Dominican Republic pavilion, where they launched an initiative to “turn sargassum into an economic opportunity” by tapping the EU-Latin America and the Caribbean Global Gateway Investment Agenda.
To succeed, such projects will need to build on work that came out of efforts like the 2019 conference in Guadeloupe — and overcome the challenges that delayed them.
Since early 2019, for instance, Météo France, the French weather service, has been operating a sargassum monitoring and detection service in the French West Indies and French Guiana. But so far, these efforts have not expanded into the regional center envisioned at the 2019 conference despite various monitoring systems launched in recent years, such as the Jamaica Early Advisory System, the regionalCARICOOS tracker in Puerto Rico, and theSatellite-based Sargassum Watch System at the University of South Florida.
The Sarg’Coop program launched at the 2019 conference also planned to replicate work done in Martinique, which in 2015 had set up a hydrogen sulfide and ammonia monitoring system that was later developed into a large-scale measurement network and extended into Guadeloupe in 2018.
Under Sarg’Coop, the Martinique-based research institute Madininair was given responsibility for supporting St. Lucia, Dominica, Tobago, Cuba and Mexico in preparing similar networks. But the Covid-19 pandemic delayed progress, and only recently did the effort get back on track with work carried out in each of those countries.
Asked about the past obstacles to implementing a common international strategy, Gustave dit Duflo, also a lecturer in neuroscience at the University of the West Indies, pointed to geopolitics. As one example, she cited the May 2023 summit of the Association of Caribbean States in Guatemala. The summit discussions, she said, were largely dominated by the conflict in Ukraine as countries in the region debated the issue of supporting Russia or the United States.
Regional collaboration has also been hindered by legislative differences across borders, according to the scientist.
Guadeloupe senator Dominique Théophile made a similar observation when he was commissioned to conduct a study on sargassum management strategies in the Caribbean ahead of the 2019 conference. After several trips to St. Lucia, the Dominican Republic and Mexico, he found that the most successful area management plans were carried out by major hotel groups on a local scale.
But such strategies often could not be deployed throughout the entire Caribbean.
For instance, health and environmental laws in French and other European territories precluded a practice that is common elsewhere in the region — spreading sargassum behind beaches — because of the possibility that the seaweed could contain arsenic and other heavy metals that could affect the ocean or groundwater.
Because of such laws, Théophile explained, the French sargassum management strategy attaches heightened importance to health and environmental impacts. Often for financial reasons, other countries’ initiatives don’t address such environmental and health considerations in corresponding detail, he said.
As countries work to rectify such issues and establish an international response, time is of the essence for residents of the coastal Caribbean.
Shortly after the COP28 drew to a close, scientists at the University of South Florida estimated the sargassum floating in the tropical Atlantic Ocean at about five million metric tons, compared to a December average of about two million. By February, the mass had increased to some nine million tons — the second highest quantity ever recorded for the month.
In other words, another record-setting sargassum season could have just started.
Reporters Rafael René Díaz Torres (Centro de Periodismo Investigativo), Mariela Mejía (Diario Libre), and Hassel Fallas (La Data Cuenta) collaborated in this investigation.
This investigation is the result of a fellowship awarded by the Center for Investigative Journalism’s Training Institute and was made possible in part with the support of Open Society Foundations.
HOUSTON — This week EHN is publishing letters from eighth grade students at YES Prep Northbrook Middle School in the Houston-area neighborhood of Spring Branch, Texas.
English educators Cassandra Harper and Yvette Howard incorporated the environment into a series of lessons in December last year. Each student conducted their own research to begin drafting letters to EHN about their concerns or hopes. EHN reporter Cami Ferrell visited their classrooms to share information about her personal reporting experiences in Houston.
The collection of letters, some of which were lightly edited, do not represent the opinions of YES Prep Northbrook or EHN, but are offered here as a peek into the minds of children and their relationship with environmental issues. You can see the first set of letters here.
Gissel Leiva Salgado
Many wonder where our future is headed; some imagine flying cars or living on new planets, but we might never be able to get there if we continue to live the way we are. Many people aren't aware of how damaging climate change is for our environment and health. This letter aims to inform people why they should worry about climate change and try to help however they can.
One issue that many people don’t realize is one of the major causes of climate change: the overuse of fossil fuels and refineries. Using fossil fuels causes greenhouse gasses to rise into the atmosphere, making it hotter on Earth. Refineries also release harmful gasses that can cause many illnesses due to the bad air quality they create, and they can also cause the people working in them to develop health issues.
In the Spring Branch area, the majority of people are Hispanic and have jobs that require them to work outside. Climate change can affect them more because of their jobs since they have to spend hours upon hours working outside in extremely high temperatures. This can cause heat-related illnesses. Many people don’t understand the feeling of having to worry about the health of someone you care for because of the effects of climate change.
Many of us imagine the future getting better as we advance in technology and medicine, but we forget the negative things we ignore. We ignore how the air quality gets worse and the water becomes more filled with harmful plastics. Our decisions as a whole affect the world around us in major and minor ways. Because of our decisions future generations may never be able to see and experience things we did like seeing certain plants, places or animals. We all need to work together to improve the state of our planet if we want even a slight chance of getting back what we’ve ruined.
- Gissel Leiva Salgado
Gavin Rodriguez
We should take care of what is precious to us. This includes our environment. With the current climate crisis, we are abusing the Earth. Every summer breaks new heat records and the winters are colder than ever, which is not normal. I am writing to you to convince all people to act against climate change in any way possible.
The issue here in Houston is that we are experiencing a rise in extreme weather. Specifically, this affects me and my community by leaving it an unsafe, unhealthy environment to live in. For example, just over a month ago, a fire broke out in the Spring Branch area. That fire could have been detrimental to Houston and caused many deaths. Although this wasn’t the case, people had to deal with breathing problems, inhaling that dangerous smoke. If this keeps up, it will cause significant problems in the community such as: health concerns, environmental problems, and the deaths of many.
The public must know about climate change because they are the people who can stop climate change. We as citizens can help with this issue by cutting down the use of cars, and other exhaust-based vehicles since the smog from these vehicles plays a major role in the air pollution that sits within the world today. We can do this by taking public transportation, walking to places more often, and riding bicycles to our destinations.
People can also reach out to the government to act on climate change, like petitions, or a letter, like I am writing now. To those who read my message, I thank you for your time and your consideration of my opinion.
- Gavin Rodriguez
Gaddiel Romero
People have started to feel the change, how hot it has been getting and the natural disasters that have been occurring. The purpose of today’s letter is to address this issue that has been happening all over the world, but no one seems to want to take the time to talk about it, and mostly only protest about it. Climate change has started to occur due to the mistakes that we as humans have been creating and have chosen to neglect until now. Now more than ever, if we still want to have some of the things that we have, the animals, the buildings, and even the health that we have or the life expectancy that we have now we need to desperately make a change.
As for how people are getting affected by climate change, it can take a toll on your emotional health because it can cause you to feel hopeless, hateful, and other emotions due to how people work or interact with these changes. Climate change can affect many communities, such as Latino communities, because it has been proven by studies that Latinos have more jobs that involve being in the sun. This is bad because if climate change keeps occurring, then the life expectancy for the Latino community will drop.
Now, this letter is to get you, the people, the readers, to do something about this. To make changes, we need to try to do fewer things that are harming our world such as burning fossil fuels, and deforestation. These are only some examples of the many things that we do daily that harm our planet. If we still want to live here and the other generations to come, then now is the time to make a change.
- Gaddiel Romero
Fernanda Barrientos
To address climate change, it is important that we put in more effort to inform others who do not speak our language about the harm climate change does to our health. To my readers, I want you to understand that one way that environmental activists can help with this is by trying to translate or write in different languages so that people who do not speak or understand the (original) language can get the same amount of information on this matter.
(In some communities) few people speak English, meaning that they do not get any or enough information about their health. This issue affects my community because many people are getting severe sicknesses and do not know why, due to not enough resources written in their native language. For example, a while ago there was a fire in front of my apartment complex and many people did not know about it, causing children to go to school inhaling all the smoke. This made me feel upset because as I stated before only a few people knew about it, and there were people living inside the woods that were not aware of the fire. This impacted my community because the smoke was still lingering a while after the fire had been put out and that was all we were inhaling for almost two weeks.
- Fernanda Barrientos
Jakeline Cebrian
For a very long time, people have been talking about how climate change is becoming more prominent, yet nothing is being done. Generally, people either don’t care enough about it or just aren’t informed enough. My community, my family, me, we all are surrounded by oil and petroleum refineries and fires with unknown causes, yet it’s not like we are currently dying because of it, is it? I mean most people think that they won’t live long enough to see a true effect. They think that we will eventually leave this world and it will no longer be our problem. But then whose problem is it going to be? Eventually, someone will have to come up with something to fix a huge problem that could have been stopped before. A huge problem they didn’t even cause. Why should the people after us have to deal with something that they didn’t cause just because the true culprits didn’t do anything and now, they are gone? I understand that in our lifetime nothing extremely significant might happen, but what about the kids? What about the kids of our kids? Do they not deserve to live in a world where they don’t have to constantly worry about the side effects of just living?
Climate change might seem very intimidating but even the simplest of changes can have a significant effect. Simply eating more plant-based foods will mean less greenhouse gas emissions, and less land needed so not as many trees will die. However, it is important that the government also takes action. They should easily be able to come up with something as simple as being stricter when it comes to flaring —the burning of gasses— and venting —the release of gasses. They could also continue to support scientists such as the ones studying more about geoengineering or the ones who are restlessly trying to find and use recent technology to prevent further damage.
In the end, although climate change is unfortunately irreversible as of right now, there is still the option of not letting it get any further.
HOUSTON — In honor of Earth Day 2024, EHN is publishing letters from eighth grade students at YES Prep Northbrook Middle School in the Houston-area neighborhood of Spring Branch, Texas.
English educators Cassandra Harper and Yvette Howard incorporated the environment into a series of lessons in December last year. Each student conducted their own research to begin drafting letters to EHN about their concerns or hopes. EHN reporter Cami Ferrell visited their classrooms to share information about her personal reporting experiences in Houston.
The collection of letters, some of which were lightly edited, do not represent the opinions of YES Prep Northbrook or EHN, but are offered here as a peek into the minds of children and their relationship with environmental issues.
Mario Ramos
Is climate change really an issue? Some people might think not, so I am writing to discuss my
opinion on climate change and why we should do more to prevent it. The purpose of this letter is to call attention to the effect that climate change and pollution has on minority communities. I would like to discuss this issue because climate change is having a major effect on minority communities, specifically the Hispanic community, and as a Hispanic (person), that makes this a personal issue.
Refineries are usually built around minority communities. Now normally you wouldn’t think that this is a bad thing, right? Well, unfortunately, it is very much a problem. You see, refineries, specifically ones that work with crude oil, tend to release emissions. Some emissions are discharges of harmful chemicals released into the air, especially from the production of gas.Communities that have refineries built around or close to them, tend to see more illnesses related to gas emissions. Early death, heart attacks, respiratory disorders, stroke and asthma, are all illnesses that are commonly found in communities close to refineries.
Fifth Ward, a neighborhood in Houston, has a history of cancer clusters because of the water being contaminated by toxic waste left over from wood treatment operations.* I have a family that lives in Fifth Ward, and it might just be me but I don’t like the idea of my family getting cancer from the water.
If you live in Houston, you know that the heat is no joke. My dad works in the labor field, as do many other Hispanic people, and they spend hours a day working in the intense heat. I am disappointed. I am Hispanic and I don’t want my people to suffer these diseases and cancers just because we as humans can’t take care of the environment. And this can be personal to any other person of color because, unfortunately, minorities aren’t offered desk jobs away from the heat, or make enough.
Student longing for winter
During the 2010s, my age was only a digit. That one digit in my age made me feel a sense of joy for almost anything winter related.
It was second grade, and I could barely sleep because of all the excitement that I had bundled up in me. It was going to snow the very next morning. As soon as I wake up to go to school, I immediately go outside. The snow softly falling into my hands, it felt like I was in a movie. I was so excited that I even started to eat some of the snow. I felt so joyful for just tiny little frozen water crystals. It felt like it was really December, the December I’ve always wanted to explore and experience, the December that brought me happiness for a kid so young.
But where did that go?
Years passed after the snow of second grade, and it barely ever came back. I wanted it to come back. It has only been at least 3 years since it snowed here, and the joy from that was only temporary, it only lasted for that one day. I’m still waiting for it. 3 years and I’m starting to lose hope for it to come back.
Why isn’t it coming back to me and everyone else?
Greenhouse gas emissions trap the heat around our atmosphere, not letting even a single snowflake fall. I’m starting to think that I might even wait 5 years just for at least a few snowflakes.
It’s gone now.
The winter that I have always wanted.
Katherine Gomez
I want to express my worry about climate change. In today's time it has been the hottest it has ever been and will continue to be. The Arctic is melting which is causing change around the world. In February 2021, Texas was hit by a cold wave that had 700 deaths and cost billions in economic damage. There was a fire in Spring Branch Texas that burnt for days. During this time ash fell from the sky for days and people were concerned for their health as they could not escape it, even inside. This should not happen again.
This issue keeps on happening, but people continue to ignore climate change and it has gotten worse over the years. People expect climate change to disappear or be taken care of. There are people around the globe who are affected, my own community is having to deal with this. My hope is thin for our future generations because of our carelessness now, unless we start caring.
We can start by bicycling to get around places and save more energy or use less than necessary at our homes. Then comes bigger steps where we must adapt by turning to renewable energy. There are new developments of batteries that store renewable energy and capture carbon dioxide from power plants to either store underground or turn into valuable products like gasoline. This is our future. It will make a change for the better.
The actions we take now are our future, so we can pretend climate change is not an issue or take a stand now. Generations of kids– and mine- are in your hands. It might seem difficult or even inevitable, but it is not. Even the miniscule of actions, like writing a letter, is worth everything.
Jose Sotomayor
We all have heard of problems like: violence and inflation, but a problem that I haven't heard talked about much is climate change. As a resident of Houston, Texas I am really concerned how people don't really know about this dangerous situation the planet is facing. I live in a city where the air quality is horrible because of all the gasses being freed into the area from the refineries surrounding the city. Most people think we are safe from climate change, but we aren't because it is slowly affecting our health. Which is why I'm writing this letter to inform you about the dangers of climate change and how we can solve them.
Another thing to think about is that Texas has a lot of diversity when it comes to natural areas as it has a coast, canyons, and flat grasslands; reading this you may think of a beautiful place full of animals and nature; however, that's not the case. In the nearby city of Galveston there is one of most touristic beaches in Texas, but because all the factories and refineries around the water have become extremely dirty and the sand has a lot of trash from people around the city.
It may seem like we are too late, but we aren't, thanks to the technology we are developing scientists have found new ways to make things we all use. For example, electric cars are a new way to help the planet as it doesn't burn fuel that liberates smoke which is one of the major causes of climate change. All these things show that we as a community can make a big impact on the environment and that we still have hope to fix the damage we have caused.
It's sad seeing how human pollution and abuse of resources is affecting the Earth rapidly, it's sad thinking that our future generations will face the consequences of our actions if we don't stop living the way we do now. The Earth is heating up and multiple disasters are coming with it, but it is still not too late. What people don't realize is that we as normal people can make a significant change.
Hector Guerrero
The Earth is a beautiful place, but we are ruining it with issues that are unspoken. If climate change goes unspoken for too long, we are going to do more damage than we have already done. We could at least try to keep it from worsening
Climate change is a huge problem. If we do not try to prevent it everyone could be at risk. People who work outdoors are more likely to get ill from the temperature. In Houston, this affects my Latino community because they mostly do outdoor jobs. Factories and refineries are adding to the problem of climate change, they produce (emissions) that get trapped in the atmosphere that heat the earth. This is going to impact the future of many kids who will grow up in a world where the heat can be unbearable. Climate change is affecting the weather around us; back in 2021, there was snow that was not supposed to be in this city. Because we were not prepared for snow, many people lost their lives because of climate change.
Climate change also fuels natural disasters and they become more dangerous. As a result, there will be more deaths and injured people in the hospital. Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time. It affects not only the environment, but also human health, economies, and communities. The evidence is clear: our planet is warming at an alarming rate, with grave consequences. Climate change will also affect animal lives and could cause animals to go extinct.From more frequent and severe natural disasters to food and water shortages, the impacts of climate change are already being felt around the world.
We all must address this issue. We can start by making simple changes in our lives like using renewable energy, planting more trees, and cleaning up plastics and trash. This can cause damage to our economy and the environment around us. Switching to renewable sources would not only be more beneficial, but it will also slow climate change and provide more options that do not emit gas. Furthermore, fossil fuels are limited unlike renewable energy that can be used multiple times.
As a student growing up, I do not want to get an outside job in the future and have an elevated risk of getting ill because of climate change that we caused in the past. We must all act to stop climate change before it gets worse, and humanity could cease to be productive.
The study gathers over 1,600 firsthand reports from Indigenous peoples across various climates, highlighting significant impacts on their ecosystems.
It documents 369 local indicators of climate change impacts, emphasizing the nuanced, local experiences often overlooked by traditional measures.
Researchers advocate for integrating local knowledge into climate research and policies to enhance adaptation strategies.
Key quote:
“There is the idea existing in the scientific community that local knowledge is not a valid source of knowledge, and the study aims to bridge this gap.”
— Victoria Reyes-García, research professor, Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Why this matters:
Indigenous communities, having lived in close connection to their environments over centuries, possess deep-rooted understanding and observations of local ecosystems, weather patterns, and natural resource management. This traditional ecological knowledge can provide crucial insights that are often absent in scientific data.
HOUSTON – Terri Blackwood, a Baytown resident living along the Houston Ship Channel, knows the smells of pollution well.
Blackwood’s backyard is along the water shore where several oil and gas facilities and chemical plants cluster. She keeps a journal of more than 100 instances in which she smelled something “off,” felt ill, saw flares or noticed her house shaking. Depending on the severity and duration, she has filed reports to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) or called Exxon, the largest petrochemical complex in the area.
“I’m not anti-industry,” Blackwood told EHN. “I know they’re not moving. I’m not either. I’m just for the safety of the neighborhood.”
Soon Blackwood and her neighbors may get some relief: three facilities in ExxonMobil’s Baytown complex near her home are subject to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s updated regulations released last week that aim to reduce cancer risk and air pollution at 200 chemical facilities. The agency is targeting six cancer-causing compounds including ethylene, chloroprene, benzene, 1,3- butadiene, vinyl chloride and ethylene dichloride. Nearly 40% of these facilities are in Texas and 14% are in Harris County — where Houston is located — alone.
“I’m not anti-industry. I know they’re not moving. I’m not either." - Terri Blackwood, a Baytown resident
These new regulations could mean relief for communities located along the fenceline, especially communities of color that are often disproportionately located near these facilities and often lacking adequate monitoring. While Harris County has nearly 20% of all of TCEQs air monitors, they are often spread out and far from facilities’ fencelines. Last year, the EPA granted the city of Houston $500,000 to increase air monitoring of benzene, 1-3 butadiene and ethylene via the Inflation Reduction Act. The new rule requires fenceline monitoring of the six targeted chemicals.
The rule will also more tightly regulate flaring and remove existing air pollution emissions exemptions from startups, shutdowns and malfunctions at plants. The EPA estimates the new rules will reduce the number of people with elevated cancer risk due to air pollution by 96%.
ExxonMobil did not respond to Environmental Health News’ request to comment about the new rules.
“It’s good that they’re making progress,” Juan Flores, Galena Park resident and community air monitoring director for the Houston-based nonprofit Air Alliance, told EHN. “I would like to see more progress to limit this even further, especially as a person who is dealing with health effects because of this stuff.”
Blackwood said keeping track of this new data will be “another thing” she will have to keep an eye on. In the last few months, Air Alliance monitored her house with different types of air monitors and she hopes the federal fenceline data will reflect what she “already knows.” The TCEQ only considers air quality data from a previously established network of federal and commercial air monitors.
While the federal changes are welcome, community concerns persist. The state of Texas and the TCEQ have historically challenged the EPA’s authority. In March, Texas’ Attorney General Ken Paxton challenged the EPA’s new national air quality standards in a lawsuit. Blackwood and Flores fear that Texas will prevent the new rule’s efficacy.
“I didn't realize I needed to pay more attention,” said Blackwood. “I definitely, naively, presumed EPA was a final authority for ensuring public safety."
Victoria Cann, media relations specialist for the TCEQ, told EHN the agency “will conduct investigations to evaluate compliance with applicable requirements as part of the compliance and enforcement program.”
Cann also said that the new requirements will be considered in the permitting process for facilities that are subject to the new standards.
Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, or TEJAS, has advocated for decades for stronger chemical regulations like this one.
“We remember family, friends, and neighbors who we lost as a result of health-related issues because of highly hazardous air pollutants, including carcinogens like ethylene oxide and 1,3-butadiene,” TEJAS representative Deyadira Arellano told EHN. “We owe it to our loved ones to act on environmental justice and call for enhanced inspections and enforcement at facilities that repeatedly violate emissions rules.”
Depending on the type of chemical, facilities have between 90 days and two years to reach full EPA compliance. The full rule can be found here.
GROTON, Mass. — Steam billows inside Black Earth Compost’s processing facility as Syed Dong, regional operations manager, opens the building’s delivery door and lets in the chilly March air.
Inside, billions of bacteria are breaking down a big pile of food scraps, yard waste and compostable bioplastic packaging into water, carbon dioxide and compost, a nutrient-rich soil amendment.
“This is where we ignite the composting process,” Dong told Environmental Health News over the roar of machinery blowing air through the pile. Soon, his team will move the heap outdoors for further processing in windrows, long organic waste piles covered with leaves. After three months, the compost will be sold or distributed to farmers, landscapers, garden centers and residential customers.
Black Earth Compost is one of a growing number of industrial composters accepting compostable bioplastic packaging along with yard and food waste. Compostable packaging is derived from both plants, such as corn, sugarcane or bamboo, and petroleum products, and is designed to decompose under controlled conditions at a composting facility. It is a type of biodegradable bioplastic that’s a popular substitute for single-use plastics in the food industry, from cups, bowls and cutlery to wrappers, bottles, bags and take-out boxes. In theory, compostable food packaging helps cut plastics pollution and methane gas emissions from landfills by diverting food scraps to a composter and breaking down into a product that nourishes soil. Consumers are more likely to compost food waste if it’s tangled up with biodegradable plastic packaging or restaurant serviceware, experts say.
Black Earth Compost facility in Groton Massachusetts.
Credit: Syed Dong
“If packaging touches food, it really should be compostable if you can't have it [be] reusable,” Frank Franciosi, executive director of U.S. Compost Council, told EHN, citing plastic’s abysmal 5 to 6% recycling rate and the oft-quoted figure that if global food waste were a country, it would produce one-third of greenhouse gas emissions.
But our composting infrastructure isn’t ready to handle bioplastic packaging. We do not have guardrails for ensuring that materials are truly compostable and safe for recycling back into soils. Consequently, traditional plastics often contaminate compost while truly compostable materials often rot in a landfill. Additionally, the potential for compostable packaging to leave behind microplastics and chemical additives that could harm soil ecosystems, or be taken up by crops, isn’t well researched.
Contamination from traditional plastics or materials misleadingly labeled as biodegradable, makes it tougher to evaluate the safety and efficacy of composting bioplastic packaging. It also makes it economically more difficult for industrial composters to thrive.
“These early generation [bioplastic] alternatives are very imperfect, but from our perspective, redesigning packaging is the right direction. I just don't think we're there yet in terms of really having cracked that nut,” Eric Roy, an assistant professor of environmental sciences at the University of Vermont, told EHN.
Composting packaging materials
Composting is nature’s process for recycling organic matter into fertilizer. Industrial composters use temperature, moisture and aeration and hone their feedstock mix to enhance the process. Operators range from small community composters that process waste in windrows to large facilities equipped with forced air and biofilters to capture smelly emissions.
Over the last decade, food waste collection has become more common and so has the collection of compostable packaging. More sophisticated operations are more likely to take compostable bioplastics, as evidence suggests they can decompose packaging better, Linda Norris-Waldt, deputy director of the U.S. Compost Council, told EHN.
“If packaging touches food, it really should be compostable if you can't have it [be] reusable.” - Frank Franciosi, executive director of U.S. Compost Council
Black Earth Compost operates three small facilities and began accepting food packaging when it realized compostable bags were vital for food scrap collection, Andrew Brousseau, compost operations manager at Black Earth Compost, told EHN. “Early on, we felt [compostable packaging] was a great solution to single use plastic,” he said. “Our stance is that reusable should be used where possible and where that's not possible… it should be compostable.”
Food scraps bring additional nutrients to compost, which benefit the soil, while the compostable packaging helps with collection of the scraps, is a carbon source for the compost and creates structure and air spaces in the pile, Brousseau said.
Black Earth Compost takes only packaging that is certified compostable by the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI), OK Compost, or the Compost Manufacturing Alliance. These voluntary certifications require manufacturers to meet criteria for breaking down within 12 weeks at an industrial compost facility, as well as be PFAS-free and pass a soil ecotoxicity test. Even so, vestiges of plastic contamination poke out from the windrows at Black Earth Compost—a clear Dunkin Donuts cup, bright blue flowerpots and numerous pale green garbage bags.
Syed Dong demonstrates what a certified compostable garbage bag looks like after roughly one month of decomposing
Credit: Meg Wilcox
Plastic contamination at Black Earth Compost facility.
Credit: Meg Wilcox
Lifting a garbage bag shredded and riddled with holes, Dong said, “This one’s compostable.” But the Dunkin Donut’s cup and flowerpots? Not so much. More troubling are look-alike green garbage bags that are fully intact. These look-alike products are designed to mimic their compostable counterparts and it’s impossible for Black Earth Compost’s drivers to tell the difference, said Dong.
Fraudulent marketing of these materials as “biodegradable” or “plant-based” is rampant and confusing, Brousseau said.
“Our stance is that reusable should be used where possible and where that's not possible… it should be compostable.” - Andrew Brousseau, compost operations manager at Black Earth Compost
Removing plastic items from compost production is a never-ending job at Black Earth Compost. It starts with educating customers and pick-up drivers and ends with the use of specialized fans for sucking out remaining plastic contamination, with a lot of labor-intensive hand sorting in between.
A recent study by the Composting Consortium found that 21% of composters’ operating costs are spent on removing contaminants, the majority of which are traditional plastics. But they also found that plastics contamination was a problem regardless of whether a facility accepted compostable packaging.
“It’s the intrinsic nature of what we're doing as recyclers,” Brousseau said.
Do compostable bioplastics really break down?
Examples of some of the certified compostable materials that Black Earth Compost accepts from its customer, Cabot Theater in Beverly, Massachusetts. The theater composts all popcorn bags, cups, straws and napkins and recycles. All drinks are served in compostable cups.
Credit: Lisa Champigny
While some report that compostable items like cutlery don’t break down well, the Composting Consortium’s field study found that, for the most part, compostable packaging does fully decompose at industrial facilities. Eight of nine composters studied that accepted compostable packaging had no detectable amounts of the materials in their finished compost.
“When [compost] piles have optimum conditions with the best management practices, bioplastics by and large break down very well,” Rhodes Yepsen, an executive director at BPI and a member of the Composting Consortium, told EHN.
That’s Black Earth Compost’s experience. “After three months, there's no more compostable plastic,” Dong said. “Any plastic that you see past that point within the life of a pile, that's conventional plastic.”
However, in compost samples University of Vermont researchers studied, they found fragments of poly-lactic acid, or PLA, which is commonly used to make compostable packaging, and what appeared to be compostable bags but could have been look-alikes. Though they weren’t the majority of plastics found, they were “wellrepresented,” Kate Porterfield, a doctoral student at the University of Vermont, told EHN.
More troubling, the University of Vermont’s research found widespread microplastic contamination in compost materials, though that research didn’t distinguish whether the microplastics came from compostable or traditional plastic materials.
Roy said, “it's a tricky question” what happens to microplastics created by compostable materials.
“Theoretically, they will persist in the environment for a shorter amount of time than traditional plastics will,” and that’s a “good thing.” But there’s “some evidence that these materials are not necessarily entirely benign in the soil environment.”
Degradation of microplastics “all depends on what the polymer is, how it's put together and the environmental circumstances,” Richard Thompson, professor of marine biology and director of Plymouth University’s Marine Institute, told EHN.
Meanwhile, studies show that chemical additives or chemicals transported by microplastics, may be more concerning than the plastic polymers themselves, which complicates our understanding of risk. “All the combinations of polymer, additive, shape and size…each might have different effects in the soil environment,” Roy said.
That is perhaps why Franciosi said that, after PFAS, “microplastics are the next fire” for the compost industry.
PFAS and other chemicals
Food and yard waste delivery inside Black Earth Compost facility.
Credit: Syed Dong
PFAS used in coatings on food packaging have long been a concern for composters, but state actions to ban the chemical from food contact materials along with the Food and Drug Administration’s recent announcement that manufacturers will no longer use it on fiber-based food packaging may alleviate some concerns.
“I think [the FDA’s announcement] would have an enormous impact on really eliminating that source of PFAS into the compost,” David Andrews, senior scientist at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, told EHN.
BPI’s certification test for PFAS adds another layer of protection for composters accepting only certified materials, although non-certified materials will continue to slip by.
“When [compost] piles have optimum conditions with the best management practices, bioplastics by and large break down very well.” - Rhodes Yepsen, an executive director at BPI
Little is known about the chemicals that are used in compostable bioplastics; however, one study found that many bioplastic materials were as toxic as their conventional counterparts. Certifying entities like BPI require compostable packaging to pass a soil ecotoxicity test that evaluates plant germination and biomass rates over several weeks. But that test may not be sufficient to evaluate the potential for harm, Roy said.
“It's a good test to include, but it's not necessarily the way to comprehensively screen a material for every potential effect on the soil,” he said. It doesn’t capture everything that might be happening within the soil environment, such as effects on microbial communities or effects that take longer to manifest.
In response, Yepsen said, “BPI is open to evaluating how studies might better capture factors like microbial communities and long-term effects.”
But the larger concern is that many manufacturers do not certify their compostable packaging materials and there are no laws requiring them to do so.
Future of bioplastics and compost
Research is needed to understand how quickly microplastics from compostable packaging may linger in soils, and whether they may release chemical additives that could harm soil life.
While Roy said it will be difficult to eliminate microplastics, they can be reduced by reducing unnecessary packaging, setting policies that test for and limit plastic contamination in compost, educating the public and innovating in packaging materials that are free of harmful chemical additives, degrade quickly and have proven not to pose a risk to soil organisms or plants.
Additionally, the U.S. composting infrastructure needs significant investment. Nearly three-quarters of Americans don’t have access to composting services and much of compostable food packaging ends up in peoples’ homes and ultimately in a landfill or incinerator. The proposed federal Compost Act would provide funds for composting infrastructure, Franciosi said. Extended producer responsibility laws that require packaging manufacturers to invest in recovery systems could also help fund these facilities.
Meanwhile, back at Black Earth Compost, Brousseau envisions scaling up to a decentralized network of small compost facilities, each serving ten Massachusetts communities, and a future where food packaging is largely compostable. “Imagine the peanut butter jar, bag of oysters, cheese block wrapping … you don’t have to clean it and maybe have it recycled. You can toss it in the bin, get it recycled locally and support your regional food system.”
In anticipation of the next round of global plastic treaty talks, experts are calling on the U.S. to take a leadership role in pushing for an ambitious treaty.
In a letter sent today, environmental groups ask the administration to support a version of the treaty that includes reductions in plastic production, which has been a contentious issue thus far. In addition,they’re calling on the Biden administration to bolster domestic plastic pollution efforts and be a model for other countries.
“The U.S. is the number one generator of plastic waste in the world — both per capita and total. [It’s] also a leading producer of virgin plastic,” Anja Brandon, the associate director of U.S. Plastics Policy at the Ocean Conservancy, told reporters at a virtual media briefing. “If we want to solve this problem, we need to start at home.”
The Ocean Conservancy, along with 28 other environmental organizations, sent the letter to the Biden administration today calling for a more ambitious approach at the treaty, outlining an eight-point plan to tackle plastic, including establishing a national reduction target that would end new plastic pollution by 2040, supporting policies to end single-use plastics and regulating microplastics.
“Your Administration is in a prime position to tackle the plastic pollution crisis through comprehensive action,” states the letter.
The push comes just weeks before the fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international, legally binding plastic pollution treaty, which will take place from April 23 to April 29 in Ottawa, Canada. In the first three sessions of treaty talks, negotiators from about 175 countries — along with industry representatives, environmentalists and others — met to advance a treaty to address global plastic pollution. However, disagreements remain, including over regulating the chemicals in plastic production, plastic production caps, as well as the role of chemical recycling and bioplastics.
“If we want to solve this problem, we need to start at home.” - Anja Brandon, Ocean Conservancy
Many countries have aligned on two separate coalitions. One’s a High Ambition Coalition that wants an end to plastic pollution by 2040, and another one, dubbed the Global Coalition for Plastics Sustainability — largely nations economically reliant on fossil fuels such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Cuba, China and Bahrain — is pushing for a larger focus on addressing plastic waste (via chemical and mechanical recycling and other means) rather than plastic bans or limits. The U.S. is not part of either.
It’s been a “middle-of-the-road position so far for the U.S.,” Brandon said. She credited the U.S. delegation for helping the treaty process overcome procedural issues, and is encouraged that they’re still talking about reductions, but said environmental groups remain underwhelmed.
“Is the ambition where we want it to be? Absolutely not. We need to meet this crisis with the urgency it demands,” she said. “We can’t recycle and cleanup our way out of the problem.”
Brandon also made it clear as to what she sees preventing a more ambitious treaty so far: the fossil fuel industry.“[Plastics] are being used as fossil fuels’ plan B” as we move away from fossil fuels as energy, she said.
Felipe Victoria, senior manager for multilateral affairs at the Ocean Conservancy, told reporters that at the Ottawa meeting this month leaders will decide which options for tackling plastic will be chosen in the final agreement. There are two planned treaty meetings after Ottawa.
“A lot of progress needs to be made in this session,” he said.
Existing plastic legislation as a model
Alexis Jackson, associate director of The Nature Conservancy’s California Oceans Program, told reporters the Biden administration and other countries should look to existing plastic legislation in steering national and international plastic pollution efforts.
She pointed to California’s landmark SB-54 law, which mandates that all single-use packaging and plastic food service ware in California be recyclable or compostable by 2032, with a 25% reduction in single-use plastic packaging and food service ware and a 65% recycling rate for these materials.
A couple main points of SB-54 should be included in the treaty, she said, including reductions in how much plastic is made and a “polluter-pays” model where plastic producers are financially and physically responsible for the material’s end-of-life management.
Brandon said though they haven’t seen a “huge shift in priorities,” consistent pressure from environmental groups and the public could steer the U.S. into a more progressive approach.
And, she added, even once the treaty is established, the work has just begun.
“Getting to a treaty is getting to the 50-yard line. It’s what you do after.”
PITTSBURGH — EHN reporter Kristina Marusic recently spoke with The Allegheny Front about three communities in the Ohio River Valley that are fighting proposed chemical recycling plants.
Chemical recycling is an umbrella term for processes that use heat, chemicals or both to break down plastic waste into component parts for reuse as plastic feedstocks or as fuel. The industry says chemical recycling could help solve the plastic waste crisis, but some environmental health advocates say chemical recycling facilities worsen climate change and emit toxic chemicals.
In the midst of domestic and international fights over the future of chemical recycling, the impending closure of a plant in Tigard, Oregon, built to convert polystyrene waste into plastic feedstock, has raised a new round of questions about the efficacy and feasibility of the process.
Regenyx, which was run by Agilyx and Americas Styrenics, will cease operations at the end of April, Agilyx announced in late February. The joint venture, launched in 2019, was one of just 11 facilities in the U.S. that use heat and/or chemicals to break down plastic waste for reuse as plastic feedstocks or as fuel. It was a “demonstration project” and successfully met its objectives, including proving the viability of the technology, but it would be cost-prohibitive to maintain and upgrade the plant’s dated equipment, Agilyx senior vice president of engineering and execution Mark Barranco said in a statement.
Jenny Gitlitz, director of solutions to plastic pollution at Beyond Plastics, described the notion that the plant was successful as “pure spin.” The facility had the capacity to handle 3,650 tons of waste per year, but diverted just 3,000 tons from landfills across its lifetime, Agilyx said. Of that amount, approximately 70% was converted to styrene monomer to be turned into new polystyrene products, the company said. In keeping with a series of setbacks the plastics industry has faced in attempting to build out chemical recycling infrastructure, the joint venture reportedly lost more than $4.5 million since 2021, including delays in the development of other Agilyx facilities, Gitlitz said. She anticipates more closures in the future.
“This industry is more speculative than it is real,” Gitlitz told EHN.
The Regenyx facility was one of two chemical recycling plants west of Texas, alongside Fulcrum Sierra BioFuels in McCarran, Nevada, which turns household waste into aviation and diesel fuel and recently defaulted on $289 million in bonds, stoking doubt about its economic viability. Another Agilyx-designed plant, based in Portland and operated by Waste Management, closed in 2014 after just 16 months in use. The company wanted to build a facility on the West Coast capable of handling 50 tons of plastic waste per day, but later relocated that plan to the Gulf Coast and doubled its expected capacity. After progressing through preliminary engineering design, that project has been paused, Barranco said. Another planned Agilyx facility, the proposed 100-ton-per-day TruSytrenyx plant in Channahon, Illinois, was announced in 2020 but is still awaiting a funding decision. Meanwhile, Agilyx is also expanding into Japan, where its Toyo Styrene facility recently completed construction.
Ross Eisenberg, president of industry association America’s Plastic Makers, said the Regenyx facility succeeded in its goal and its closure shouldn’t affect other chemical recycling facilities.
“The plastics industry is investing billions of dollars in chemical recycling here in the United States to create a more circular system for a variety of types of used plastic that keeps these valuable resources in use,” Eisenberg said in a statement.
Closed Loop Partners, an investment firm focused on the circular economy, estimated in 2021 that the market for recycled plastics could be as high as $120 billion annually. The firm projected demand for recycled plastics to reach 5 million to 7.5 million metric tons by 2030, requiring supply to double or triple.
Gitlitz said she’s “extremely skeptical” about the economic and operational viability of chemical recycling technology, as well as its ability to address the plastic crisis.
“This industry is more speculative than it is real.” - Jenny Gitlitz, Beyond Plastics
A Beyond Plastics report from October 2023 found that Agilyx suffered $22.4 million in operating losses in 2020 and 2021. The report also found that the Regenyx facility produced 211 tons of styrene waste that was shipped off-site to be burned, along with generating nearly 500 tons of hazardous waste. Elsewhere, PureCycle reported net losses of $215 million from 2020 through 2022 because of a three-year delay in the construction of its plant in Ironton, Ohio, Beyond Plastics found. That facility was completed in May 2023, then closed for months later in the year because of a full-plant power outage that contributed to mechanical failures.
Celeste Meiffren-Swango, state director for green advocacy group Environment Oregon, said the failure of operational chemical recycling facilities to reach their announced capacity leaves them in an extended “startup phase.” Given the financial challenge of scaling up and the operational issues at some plants, she doesn’t expect that to change.
“[Chemical recycling] is extremely energy intensive, really expensive and just one in a line of examples of the plastics industry’s proposed solutions that further entrench us in the linear economy while doing nothing to stop the production of single-use plastics,” Meiffren-Swango told EHN. “People want an easy solution to the plastic waste crisis and there just isn’t one.”
To Meiffren-Swango, the Regenyx closure represents further evidence that chemical recycling isn’t viable—and an opportunity to pivot toward more effective methods of dealing with plastic waste.
“The plastics industry could take this as a warning sign that this model is not sustainable and use all of the money they’ve been investing in these facilities to invest in actual solutions to the plastic waste crisis, including making less plastic and investing in models like reusability, instead of continuing to literally burn all their money trying to make chemical recycling work,” Meiffren-Swango said.
The fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international, legally binding plastic pollution treaty will take place from April 23 to April 29 in Ottawa, Canada.
In the first three sessions of treaty talks, negotiators from about 175 countries — along with industry representatives, environmentalists and others — met to advance a treaty to address global plastic pollution.
What’s at stake in the plastic treaty talks?
The plastic crisis is threatening both the planet and human and wildlife health.
Global plastic waste is set to almost triple by 2060.
The world generates roughly 400 million tons of plastic waste each year.
Less than 10% of plastic ever made has been recycled.
The treaty is the first international attempt to address this.
What’s the state of the plastic treaty?
Consensus was elusive at the last round of talks in Kenya.
There is a High Ambition Coalition of countries that wants an end to plastic pollution by 2040. There is also a Global Coalition for Plastics Sustainability — largely nations economically reliant on fossil fuels such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Cuba, China and Bahrain — that has positioned itself as the counterbalance to the High Ambition Coalition and is pushing for a larger focus on addressing plastic waste (via chemical and mechanical recycling and other means) rather than plastic bans or production limits. The U.S. is not part of either.
Want to learn more broadly about the treaty and how plastic pollution impacts our health? Our newsroom has been hard at work on exploring these issues. Below we have articles to help you understand the treaty process and progress, plastic impacts to our health and chemical recycling and bioplastics.
And follow our newsroom on X, Instagram or Facebook to stay up-to-date on this historic treaty.
Jessica Georges loves the beaches of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where she lives.
But a few years ago, she realized even the most pristine parts of town weren’t immune to plastic pollution. “You can’t walk three yards on most beach days and not run into some sort of plastic,” she told EHN. Increasingly bothered by what she saw, she created a low-waste business — Green Road Refill — to sell low-cost and low-waste goods to her community.
Now, she and other low-waste businesses are strengthening their efforts to reduce plastic pollution via the National Business Coalition for the Oceans, a nationwide organization of businesses supported by nonprofit Oceana. The coalition focuses on advancing federal, state and local policies to improve ocean health, in part by curbing single-use plastics. Businesses involved in the coalition work for plastics policy change by sending letters, signing petitions, testifying at hearings and educating customers.
“We’re really happy to be part of a coalition where others are bringing their perspectives and their solutions, and we can all join forces and create the systems change that’s necessary,” Lauren Sweeney, a coalition member and co-founder of reusable packaging company Deliver Zero, told EHN.
Plastic policy progress
Oceana’s business coalition emerged in 2021, after a partnership between Oceana, government officials and regional businesses helped ban oil and gas drilling along the Atlantic and eastern Gulf coasts. It became clear businesses voicing their concerns had the power to convince lawmakers, said Claudia Davis, the coordinator of the coalition.
The coalition provides tools to business owners to help them learn about policy issues related to the oceans and gives them accessible ways to participate in policy efforts. Davis organizes members to sign petitions, author opinion pieces to publish in news outlets, testify at hearings and meet with lawmakers about relevant legislation. Any business interested in ocean health can join. Now, 250 business owners, from diving shops to restaurants to refilleries (shops where customers can refill reusable packaging with home and personal care products), are involved.
“We really want to encourage collective action from the business community, because that's what's going to deliver policy victories that make a change for the most people,” Davis told EHN.
At the federal level, the coalition is working to pass the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, which would set nationwide plastics reduction targets, ban certain single-use plastic products and create a nationwide beverage container refund program.
The coalition is working to expand the number of states and local governments with similar plastic legislation.
In 2022, the coalition worked with multiple businesses in New York City to pass the “skip the stuff” law, which prohibits New York City restaurants from providing single-use plastics in takeout orders unless the customer asks. While the law will help reduce plastic pollution, it will also help restaurants save money, Davis said.
Skip the Stuff rally in NYC.
Credit: Raine Manley/NRDC
New York City's “skip the stuff” law prohibits New York City restaurants from providing single-use plastics in takeout orders unless the customer asks.
Credit: Raine Manley/NRDC
Sweeney and Larasati Vitoux, another coalition member who runs a New York City refillery called the Maison Jar, testified for the bill at a hearing in front of New York City’s Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection.
“I think it really made a difference to have members of the community who were saying “This is important to me not just as an individual, not just because I want to see less trash in my community, but [because] it's gonna save me and all of us money in the long run,”’ Davis said.
A business perspective
Low-waste businesses can provide a crucial perspective to lawmakers concerned about how policy changes will impact the economy. “Other businesses will come forward and say these bills are terrible for business,” Sweeney said. “Actually, you can run a business without polluting the planet and the oceans. The goal of these organizations is to counter the narrative that plastic reduction solutions are inherently anti-business.”
Bringing business voices to environmental advocacy work is critical, said Jennifer Congdon, deputy director for Beyond Plastics, an environmental nonprofit not involved in Oceana’s coalition. Policymakers can get a lot of reassurance from hearing that environmental policies pushed by advocates “are going to shift the economy, but they’re not going to harm the economy,” she told EHN. “There’s a path forward for economic growth.”
"You can run a business without polluting the planet and the oceans. The goal of these organizations is to counter the narrative that plastic reduction solutions are inherently anti-business.” - Lauren Sweeney, Deliver Zero
At Green Road Refill, Georges sells more than 40 plant-based products such as dish soaps, shampoos and detergents. Running a refill shop is difficult work with slim margins, said Georges and Katie Rodgers-Hubbard, who runs a similar refillery in Savannah, Georgia, called Lite Foot Company.
Bills that restrict single-use plastics give businesses like theirs a leg up by shifting the external costs of plastic like its environmental and public health harms — back to the businesses. “That makes plastic less competitive against other materials and other methods of delivering goods to people,” said Congdon.
Preventing plastic pollution
Lite Foot Company in Savannah, Georgia.
Credit: Katie Rodgers-Hubbard/Lite Foot Company
While they work toward policy action, the businesses themselves are helping to fight pollution, too. In 2023, Rodgers-Hubbard decided that running a low-waste business and joining other nonprofit efforts wasn’t enough. She started a new, nonprofit branch of her business: Lite Foot Environmental Foundation.
The foundation is creating a grade-school curriculum to educate students about plastic pollution and reuse. They also host clothing and book swaps and clothing repair days to encourage the Savannah community to extend the life of belongings. “We’re hoping to push the narrative,” Rodgers-Hubbard said. “Let’s fix things, let’s buy things of quality.”
And at Green Road Refill, Georges doesn’t only sell closed-loop products —her suppliers are closed-loop, too. She buys many of her products in 30- to 55-gallon containers from a company called Rustic Strength, which she then sends back to the company once the containers are empty. When considering what to put on her shelves, she prioritizes products with biodegradable and non-toxic ingredients.
Georges also focuses on educating customers and gives talks to libraries and elementary schools about plastic pollution. She asks everyone who gets a refill at her shop to contribute to an art installation made of non-recyclable bottle caps—a great way to start conversations about reducing one’s plastic footprint, she said. She passes information and petitions from Oceana on to customers in her monthly newsletters.
“When I first started, I had to really do a lot of work explaining what plastic was and why it's important to reduce your own plastic footprint,” she said. But now, the people who visit her shop are more familiar with refilleries and living a low-waste lifestyle.
“Businesses that exist almost for the sole purpose of reducing single use plastic are growing,” said Sweeney. “This is an exciting sector and the U.S. could develop more leadership in this sector by actually passing policy more quickly.”
PITTSBURGH — When Sandy Field first heard about the plan to build a new chemical recycling facility in her community in Point Township, Pennsylvania, she thought it sounded like a great idea.
“The plastic waste crisis is a real problem and I thought this sounded like a good solution,” she told Environmental Health News (EHN). “But then I went to the company’s open house and did some more research and I started to realize what a toxic process they’re proposing, taking 450,000 tons of plastic, melting it and making chemicals out of it right next to our river.”
The proposal came from Encina, a Texas-based company that hopes to build chemical recycling plants in the U.S., Mexico, Europe, Middle East and Asia. To date, the company has only recycled plastic at a small demonstration facility in San Antonio, Texas. The facility in Point Township, a suburban and farmland community of about 4,000 people, would be their first attempt to scale their operations.
Field, who lives about four miles from the proposed site, joined a campaign to stop the plant, citing concerns about air emissions and discharges of unregulated pollutants including microplastics and “forever chemicals”(commonly known as PFAS) into the Susquehanna River.
There are proposals in the works for similar chemical recycling plants across the country. According to a 2023 report by the nonprofit activist organization Beyond Plastics, 11 such facilities had already been constructed in the U.S. as of September 2023, with one closing this year.
The Encina site is part of a broader trend of proposed chemical recycling facilities in the Appalachian region. One of the more high profile proposed plants in Youngstown, Ohio, by SOBE Thermal Energy Systems, is currently on hold after the city passed a one-year moratorium on chemical recycling.
Experts say Encina and another proposed chemical recycling facility in Follansbee, West Virginia, are not geographic accidents. Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley are already home to a dense network of oil and gas infrastructure, including fracking and conventional wells, pipelines and a massive plastics plant. Chemical recycling facilities would represent a further expansion of this network, adding to the region’s overall burden of toxic pollution and continuing demand for fossil fuels and related infrastructure.
For example, in 2021, the nonprofit environmental advocacy group PennFuture reported that Pennsylvania subsidizes fossil fuels with an annual amount of $3.8 billion. The shale gas industry accounts for 52.1% of these subsidies, or $2 billion.
Jess Conard, Appalachia director of the nonprofit activist organization Beyond Plastics, lives in East Palestine, Ohio, and experienced the risks associated with living near this type of infrastructure firsthand last year, when a train carrying chemicals used to make plastic derailed and caught fire, poisoning the town.
“The chemicals that make plastic are very hazardous to our health, and when you transition the waste from a solid product to a vapor through advanced recycling, it’s not actually managing the waste,” Conard said. “It’s just changing the medium in which we’re exposed to these chemicals.”
“The river is a major focus of our lives”
Sandy Field kayaking on the Susquehanna River downstream of the proposed chemical recycling site.
Credit: Sandy Field
Sally Field speaking at our public meeting at the Unitarian church in Northumberland , PA, near the proposed chemical recycling site.
Credit: Sally Field
Encina’s proposed Pennsylvania plant would process up to 450,000 tons of plastic each year by melting them and using chemicals to break them down into substances like benzene, toluene and xylenes, which would then be sold to plastics manufacturers. The process also creates liquid oil products and solid hazardous waste. The company’s proposal included drawing as much as 1.7 million gallons of water a day from the Susquehanna River and discharging as much as 2.9 million gallons a day back into the waterway.
“The river is a major focus of our lives,” Field said. “We use it for recreation and fishing and we all drink out of it, and it’s really central to the character of the Susquehanna Valley.”
In an email, a spokesperson for Encina said the company would use “best-in-class technology” to remove pollutants and microplastics prior to discharging water into the Susquehanna and noted that their air and water emissions data would be public.
“The health and safety of our people and the communities in which we operate is our top priority,” the Encina spokesperson said. “We address community concerns through regular meetings and communications where we listen and discuss our plans for water treatment and protection.”
In October, Encina withdrew its permit application for stormwater management — which the company needs in order to start construction — after state regulators said it was deficient, but the company said it is still moving forward with plans for the site.
“The river is a major focus of our lives.” - Sally Field
Local officials have had mixed reactions to the proposal, with some welcoming the temporary construction jobs the project would bring to the region and others expressing concern about environmental health impacts. In 2020, former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed into law a bill exempting chemical recycling facilities from having to obtain a solid waste permit. The Encina plant had already been proposed at the time and it remains the only proposed chemical recycling facility in the state, so the bill is seen as having been passed specifically to benefit Encina.
Pennsylvania is one of 24 states — including Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky — that have passed similar laws, which the American Chemistry Council has lobbied for, to reclassify chemical recycling facilities as manufacturing rather than waste facilities, which reduces regulatory oversight and makes it easier for these companies to obtain public subsidies.
Field sees Encina’s project as one of several “false solutions” being pushed by industrial interests in response to mounting concern over climate change and plastic pollution. A longtime climate activist, Field joined No False Solutions PA, a coalition of advocacy groups opposing chemical recycling, carbon capture, hydrogen energy and fracking.
Field co-authored a 50-page statement published by the group in January that decries these industries as “emerging technologies that claim to be solutions to the climate crisis but in fact exacerbate the climate crisis, damage the environment and/or harm public health.”
“We’d like to be talking about positive things, focusing on our renewable energy future, but instead we’re stuck playing whack-a-mole with every dumb idea that comes out of the fossil fuel industry as they decline and they’re just trying to stay in business,” Field said.
For Field, stopping Encina’s proposed plant represents the importance of taking a stand against these “false solutions” in Pennsylvania.
“This is the first advanced recycling facility being proposed in Pennsylvania, so we really feel an obligation to stop it,” Field said. “These false solutions would all take Pennsylvania in the wrong direction, moving backwards on our health and the environment.”
“Ask lots of questions”
The Better Vision for the Valley event put on by the Ohio Valley Environmental Advocates in October.
Credit: OVEA
Frank Rocchio doesn’t resemble a stereotypical environmental activist.
His shaved head and well-tailored suits are more in line with his decade-long career in the Secret Service and counter-terrorism intelligence in Washington, D.C., or his current role as a wealth management advisor.
But last year Rocchio and his wife founded Ohio Valley Environmental Advocates, a community advocacy group dedicated to stopping a proposed chemical recycling facility in Follansbee, West Virginia, about 40 miles southwest of Pittsburgh.
Rocchio grew up in Follansbee, and he and his wife moved back there a few years ago to raise their son and daughter, who are now six and eight years old, wanting to be closer to Rocchio’s parents and live at a slower pace. Their home is within a couple miles of Empire Diversified Energy’s proposed advanced recycling plant.
“‘Environmental’ is in our name but public health is really our main concern,” Rocchio told EHN. “This region is bleeding money. We’d like to welcome any industry that can bring in jobs, as long as that industry is being responsible and putting the health and safety of our community at the forefront.”
Initially, Empire Diversified Energy proposed a medical waste processing plant — which promptly drew opposition from the community. After ditching that plan, the company announced that it wanted to use a new “pre-pyrolysis process” to recycle plastic waste, which involves using heat and chemicals to break plastic products down into component parts.
But according to Rocchio, the company’s story just kept changing — from what they wanted to do at the plant to whether or not they’d require an air permit — and these incongruities created mistrust.
“Their answers to our questions kept changing and there were a lot of red flags, so my wife and I just started digging,” Rocchio said. They learned that the pre-pyrolysis technology the company intended to use is new and hasn’t yet been used at scale in the U.S., that the site would emit greenhouse gasses and toxic chemicals and that the plant was expected to create a maximum of 25 new jobs, according to Rocchio.
"We’d like to welcome any industry that can bring in jobs, as long as that industry is being responsible and putting the health and safety of our community at the forefront.” - Frank Rocchio
They also learned that the region was already home to numerous major air polluters and that Follansbee is in a valley prone to weather inversions that trap pollutants, so they worried about the cumulative effects of adding more toxic air emissions to that mix. They found the same stories about accidents and fires at other chemical recycling plants that prompted concerns about SOBE’s proposed plant in Youngstown.
Fofllansbee’s city council and mayor have asked Empire Diversified to meet with the community and answer questions prior to approving building permits at the site, with at least one councilmember saying he was uncomfortable approving these permits until he had a more comprehensive understanding of the company’s plan. Several public meetings have been held since then. Local union leaders have said the company might hire union members and expressed support for the project. Empire Diversified has filed an application for a state air quality permit from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection that’s still under review.
“East Palestine was also a warning in terms of supportive infrastructure and emergency services,” Rocchio said. “We know they’d be trucking in, railing in and barging in feedstock and supplies for this plant, and we only have a volunteer fire department here.”
Empire Diversified Energy did not respond to a request for comment, but the company is still pursuing permits for the facility and says it intends to hold community meetings each month to increase transparency around its plans.
Roccio offered advice to other communities facing proposals for advanced recycling facilities.
“Ask a lot of questions,” he said. “Do your research. Especially if your tax money is subsidizing something like this, you need to ask how much money is likely to stay in the local economy and how many jobs will be created.”
“Seek out subject matter experts in academia,” he added. “They’re usually happy to get on the phone about these things and you’ll need technical expertise to be able to hold the people who are writing these permits accountable. Above all, don’t stop asking questions.”
Chemical recycling, or advanced recycling, is an umbrella term for processes that use heat and/or chemicals to break down plastic waste into component parts for reuse as plastic feedstocks or as fuel.
These processes are different from conventional or mechanical plastic recycling, which breaks down plastic waste physically but not at a molecular level. Only 5% to 6% of plastic waste gets recycled in the U.S., and proponents of chemical recycling say the process could help.
But it’s controversial. Environmental health advocates say chemical recycling is energy intensive and inefficient, creates toxic waste, contributes to climate change, and creates the false promise of a circular economy for plastics.
Eastman Chemical Company operates one of the largest chemical recycling facilities in the U.S. out of its Kingsport, Tennessee, plastics plant, where they use chemical processes to break waste plastic down into feedstocks that are then turned into things like water bottles, food and personal care product packaging, and plastic houseware.
The chemical recycling portion of the plant is still in the start-up phase. It processed around 20 million pounds of plastic in 2023, and the company hopes to eventually recycle up to 250 million pounds of waste plastic annually.
The other portion of Eastman Chemical Company’s Kingsport, Tennessee plant produces plastic using traditional methods. The plant was fined $45,500 in October 2023 by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation for violating clean air laws with toxic emissions of sulfur dioxide and volatile organic compounds more than 30 times over legal limits. The company averaged about five fines per year for smaller violations between 2016 and 2022.
Eastman Chemical Company says it is committed to being a good neighbor, and hopes to address concerns about chemical recycling by ensuring that their process supplements mechanical recycling, only reprocessing plastic to create additional plastic (rather than fuel), and utilizing these technologies only when they can help lower greenhouse gas emissions.
EHN sat down with Chris Layton, the director of sustainability for specialty plastics at Eastman Chemical to learn more. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
AUSTIN, TX — At SXSW, a new documentary highlighted the harmful effects of plastics on human health and opened my eyes to this widespread crisis.
Upon arriving at the premiere of Plastic People, I felt well-informed about plastics. However, throughout the film I discovered new insights, including the production process, impacts on the human body from the harmful chemicals in plastics, and potential solutions. I was captivated.
Here are the five key points I took away from the film.
1. There is no way to avoid exposure to plastic
Plastic has become such a staple in our everyday lives that avoiding it completely is a massive challenge, if not impossible. It is everywhere — from the highest mountains to the deepest parts of our oceans. If you take a closer look at your favorite products, you'll probably notice that many of them contain plastic. All of us carry traces of plastics in our bodies, regardless of efforts to minimize exposure.
2. Plastics never disappear, they just break down into tinier particles
Plastics, once created, become a permanent presence in our environment. This is due to microplastics, which are tiny particles that form when plastics break down rather than decompose and disappear. These fragments find their way into our food, water, plants, crops, oceans, and other places. We often hear that recycling is the answer, but in reality, recycling is no more than a band-aid solution. The only real solution is to stop producing these harmful products.
3. Research of the effects of microplastics on the human body is limited
I was surprised to learn that we are just beginning to study the effects plastics have on human health. Some of the chemicals in plastics we are familiar with – flame retardants, PFAS, BPA, phthalates, and others – and we already know are harmful. These substances are associated with health issues like obesity, infertility, cancer, heart disease, and more. Environmental Health Sciences’ founder and Chief Scientist, Pete Myers — who is featured in the film — also noted how plastics negatively impact sperm count, and that by 2045, many males will not be able to reproduce as easily. It's even more frightening to imagine the potential effects that unknown chemicals in plastics may have on our health.
4. Plastic production is directly linked to oil and gas companies
I've often heard of the link between environmental chemicals and major corporations. This close relationship means the demand for plastic directly impacts the demand for fossil fuels. One resident in the film highlighted how a nearby petrochemical plant was polluting their town with high benzene levels, despite the safe level of benzene being zero. Petrochemical plants — which process fossil fuels into chemicals — across the United States are contaminating nearby communities, and a majority of plastics are derived from petrochemicals. These companies intend to triple their plastic consumption by 2060. It's alarming to think that major corporations are considering increasing plastic consumption when we are already struggling to handle the current production levels.
5. The solution is not on us. The only way out is reducing the amount that we produce
l couldn’t help but wonder “What are we supposed to do about this?” Past generations encountered pollution challenges and addressed them. Why are we not doing the same? We can work individually to reduce plastics in our homes and everyday lives, but that will not resolve the issue entirely. We need to redesign these products and the hazardous chemicals in them.
For those who may not be fully informed about the health impacts of plastics, this documentary serves as a huge eye-opener. It can be frustrating to discover that the products we trust to be "safe" and are exposed to in our daily lives are actually harming us. This documentary shines light on the issue, promotes awareness, and will hopefully drive change.
To learn more about the Plastic People film, visit their website here.
