Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

To Turn Off the Plastics Tap, We Must Grow the Grassroots Movement

Each year 11 million tons of plastics enter the ocean primarily from land-based sources. If we don’t work to curb plastics production, that amount will triple by 2060. At that point there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. There will be so many dreadful statistics in our future if we allow the plastics industry to conduct business as usual, and this is what drove me to start a new organization with the central mission to end plastic pollution everywhere.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Environmental Groups Oppose Tax Breaks for Proposed Lockport Plastic Factory

More than 60 organizations signed onto a letter this week urging the Lockport Industrial Development Agency not to give SRI CV Plastics $500,000 in tax abatements. Among them are the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York, the New York Public Interest Research Group and Beyond Plastic, a nationwide organization with the goal of ending plastic pollution.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

How Plastics Are Poisoning Us

Eventually, though, like Franklin-Wallis, Schaub comes to see that she’s been living a lie. Midway through her experiment, she signs up for an online course called Beyond Plastic Pollution, offered by Judith Enck, a former regional administrator for the E.P.A. Only containers labelled No. 1 (pet) and No. 2 (high-density polyethylene) get melted down with any regularity, Schaub learns, and to refashion the resulting nurdles into anything useful usually requires the addition of lots of new material. “No matter what your garbage service provider is telling you, numbers 3, 4, 6 and 7 are not getting recycled,” Schaub writes. (The italics are hers.) “Number 5 is a veeeery dubious maybe.”

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

How to Build a Zero-Waste Economy

These advocates and entrepreneurs are also envisioning a future free from single-use items altogether. By promoting a “circular economy” — patterns of consumption that reduce waste generation of any kind — they hope to eliminate not only single-use plastics, but also disposable products made from paper and metal. Their vision will require whole new business models and supply chains that prioritize reuse — containers and dishware and shipping packages that can be used again and again rather than discarded after just a few minutes.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Inside Indiana’s ‘Advanced’ Plastics Recycling Plant: Dangerous Vapors, Oil Spills and Life-Threatening Fires 

The plastics industry champions the process as something that makes plastics sustainable, even green, by turning old plastic containers, packaging and the like into new plastic products without the need to extract more fossil fuels to create new plastic feedstocks. But many scientists and environmentalists say pyrolysis is anything but sustainable, describing it as energy-intensive manufacturing with a large carbon footprint that incinerates much of the plastic waste and mostly just makes new fossil fuels.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

New York Packaging Reduction Bill Faces Ticking Clock

New York’s long-debated and many-times-revised Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act is the center focus again, with days left to move to the Senate and Assembly before the legislative session ends. Proponents say the legislation would address an out-of-control waste problem while providing economic payoffs.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

A New Report Details the Climate, Health and Human Rights Impacts of a Plastic Bottle

On May 23, Defend Our Health, in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Beyond Petrochemicals campaign, released “Hidden Hazards: The Chemical Footprint of a Plastic Bottle,” a new report that explores the impact of PET plastics across their entire life cycle. Its authors find that the proliferation of single-use PET plastics — notably by companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo — “may prolong the climate crisis, threaten human health, and promote environmental racism.”

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Countries Are Negotiating a New Global Treaty to Drastically Reduce the Plastic Waste That Has Been Poisoning the World

Late last year, world leaders, scientists, and advocates started working on a global, legally binding treaty under the United Nations to end plastic waste. The second round of negotiations concluded last week in Paris with a plan to produce an initial draft of the deal. This treaty could be huge. Although it will take months of negotiating for any of the details to become clear, the agreement — set to be finalized by the end of 2024 — will require countries to do far more than just fix their recycling systems.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

13,000 Petition Signatures Delivered to New York Capitol Urging Passage of Packaging Reduction Bill

In her post-EPA life, Judith Enck has made limiting the production and use of a plastic her life’s work. Her mission before the end of Albany’s legislative session is passage of an extended producer recycling bill, the “Packaging Reduction & Recycling Infrastructure Act," sponsored by the chairs of the Environmental Conservation Committees in both houses — state Assemblymember Deborah Glick and Sen. Pete Harckham.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Sick of All the Plastic in Your Life? A Proposed New York Bill Would Reduce It — And It Has a Shot

Advocates say polls show that the public is on their side. They delivered a petition including 13,000 e-signatures to the Assembly and Senate leadership offices. Lawmakers were off for the long holiday weekend before resuming session Tuesday for a two-week sprint to adjournment. With just seven working days left of the official 2023 legislative session, advocates for a measure that would reduce plastic packaging by half say their bill is gaining momentum.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act Proposed to NYS Legislature

The current New York State legislative session is scheduled to adjourn around June 9. A proposed Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (assembly bill 5322 and senate bill 4246) may be voted on before the close of the session. The act would require plastic packaging to be reduced by half, reduce toxics in packaging and prohibit plastic burning.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Trashed: The Secret Life of Plastic Recycling

ABC News' groundbreaking investigation looks into how well the U.S. plastic bag recycling system is working, and how communities are impacted by nearby landfills and incinerators.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

The Little-Known Unintended Consequence of Recycling Plastics

Instead of helping to tackle the world’s staggering plastic waste problem, recycling may be exacerbating a concerning environmental problem: microplastic pollution. A recent peer-reviewed study that focused on a recycling facility in the United Kingdom suggests that anywhere between 6 to 13 percent of the plastic processed could end up being released into water or the air as microplastics — ubiquitous tiny particles smaller than five millimeters that have been found everywhere from Antarctic snow to inside human bodies.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Does Plastic Bag Recycling From Stores Like Target, Walmart Work or Still End up in a Landfill?

For months, the I-Team and ABC news tracked plastic bags that we dropped off at store recycling bins around the country and several ended up in landfills or incinerators. But how often do bags that are dropped off properly at retail stores get recycled? The I-Team, ABC News, and ABC stations across the country assembled 46 bundles of recyclable plastic bags. Each contained a tracking device.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Who Said Recycling Was Green? It Makes Microplastics By the Ton

Research out of Scotland suggests that the chopping, shredding and washing of plastic in recycling facilities may turn as much as six to 13 percent of incoming waste into microplastics—tiny, toxic particles that are an emerging and ubiquitous environmental health concern for the planet and people.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

‘The Poison Plastic’: Why Calls Are Growing for a Ban on PVC

A toxic train derailment in Ohio has forced an uncomfortable conversation in the US. The pollution and response to the accident was bad enough for local residents, but black and lower-income communities face the effects of America’s dirty plastic industry on a daily basis.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Are Microplastics Invading the Male Reproductive System?

A new pilot study shows that microplastics — plastic particles that are smaller than five millimeters or close to the size of a short rice grain – can be found in human testis and semen, according to the paper published last month inScience of The Total Environment. While experts believe more data are needed to confirm the findings, this study sheds light on the possible penetration of microplastics into the human reproductive system and the urgency for understanding their potential health impact.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

East Palestine Families Living in Limbo Months After Fire

Almost 3 months after a fiery Norfolk Southern train derailment blackened the skies, sent residents fleeing and thrust East Palestine into a national debate over rail safety, residents say they are still living in limbo. They’re unsure how or whether to move on from the accident and worry what will happen to them and the village where they have deep family roots, friendships and affordable homes.

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