Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

EPA Announces New ‘Work Plan’ for East Palestine 7 Months Later

Minutes after workers burned five tankers of vinyl chloride after a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, a toxic plume of smoke smothered the area for miles. Residents scrambled to get away, worried for their health and safety. Now, seven months later, the Environment Protection Agency announced a new “work plan” — which, for the first time since the derailment, broadens the scope of possible contamination.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Climate Week Nyc’s Headline Partner Is a Notorious Polluter

As the only headline partner of Climate Week, the top level of sponsorship for the event, Saint-Gobain will have the opportunity to host discussions like a “Sustainable Construction Talk,” dedicated to “preserv[ing] our planet, while providing everyone with comfortable, decent housing“ and “building a comprehensive response to climate change.” But Saint-Gobain’s history in New York tells a very different story.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Turkey’s Plastic Recycling Industry Is Booming. But It Comes at a Cost.

Dotted across the southern Turkish city of Adana are illegal dump sites for plastic recycling waste that never got recycled. The labels show they've come from consumers in Europe and the United States. These countries now ship recyclable plastic waste to countries like Turkey. But this rapidly growing industry often skirts regulations, leading to health and environmental risks for the surrounding community. The World's Durrie Bouscaren reports from Adana.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Most Plastic in the U.S. Can’t Be Recycled

While Americans often diligently sort and recycle plastics at home, only 5% of plastics in the U.S. can actually be recycled. Judith Enck of the non-profit Beyond Plastics joins us to talk about plastic pollution and solutions to it.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

The Plastic Recycling Hoax

Plastic is just about everywhere, and there’s going to be a lot more of it. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development expects global plastic use to triple by 2060. So what are we to do with all the waste?

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

How to Navigate A World Filled with Plastic

Plastics are everywhere, but L.A. Times environment reporter Susanne Rust thought she was doing a pretty good job avoiding them. That was until she spent a week recording her daily plastic interactions. She found plastics in her phone. Her car. Her swimming equipment. There was almost nothing that Rust encountered that didn’t have plastic in it.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

A Slim Percentage of Plastic Gets Recycled. How Can We Change That?

The reports on plastic waste are staggering. Households in the U.S. generated 51 million tons of plastic waste in 2021 and 5 to 6% of that was recycled, according to Greenpeace. Beyond Plastics and The Last Beach Cleanup similarly puts the rate at 5 to 6%. On Cincinnati Edition, we're going to dive into these findings and talk about what happens when plastic is recycled, looking at the sorting and reprocessing of the material. Plus, we'll talk about what can and cannot be recycled and look at efforts to reduce plastic waste.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

EPA Approved a Fuel Ingredient Even Though It Could Cause Cancer in Virtually Every Person Exposed

The Environmental Protection Agency approved a component of boat fuel made from discarded plastic that the agency’s own risk formula determined was so hazardous, everyone exposed to the substance continually over a lifetime would be expected to develop cancer. Current and former EPA scientists said that threat level is unheard of. It is a million times higher than what the agency usually considers acceptable for new chemicals and six times worse than the risk of lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Ohio Activists Join National Groups to Deliver Petition to EPA to Ban Vinyl Chloride

Environmental and community groups are calling on the US EPA agency to ban vinyl chloride, a chemical used to make PVC pipes and many other consumer products. It’s also the chemical vented from five derailed train cars in East Palestine, Ohio earlier this year and burned, resulting in an explosion. The groups submitted 27,570 signatures to the agency this week.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

President Biden, Come to East Palestine and Bring FEMA With You

The Ohio train derailment is not a comeback story, it's a grim warning. It's about an industry that values profit over people and the environment, and about a regulatory system that has failed to keep these industries in check. There is an undeniable connection between this disaster and the plastics industry. The production of PVC plastic depends on transporting harmful chemicals like vinyl chloride. The insatiable demand for plastics has driven the need for increased transport of these hazardous substances, placing communities near rail tracks under constant threat. As company profits soar, our communities are left to grapple with the aftermath of their negligence.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

The Risks of 'Chemical Recycling'

So-called ‘chemical recycling’ of plastics is a highly inefficient process that releases large amounts of carbon emissions and hazardous pollutants. James Bruggers reports for Inside Climate News and joined Host Steve Curwood to discuss the health and safety problems he’s been covering at the Brightmark chemical recycling plant in Indiana.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Company Seeking Subsidies Circulates Fake Study

A plastics manufacturer seeking tax breaks to build a plant in Lockport has put its application on hold after being called out Thursday for circulating a summary of a study that was fabricated and produced by artificial intelligence. Prior to a public hearing Thursday, the India-based firm SRI CV Plastics, seeking $312,000 in subsidies from the Lockport Industrial Development Agency, provided the agency’s board a one-page summary of a study that touted the safety of PVC pipes, one of the products the company plans to make at the plant.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Compostable Plastic Is Garbage

In most cases, compostable plastic is compostable only under very specific conditions.And a home compost pile is like the industrial version in the same way that a pickup-basketball game among preteens is the same sport as the NBA. Fruit and vegetables start to dissolve into soil within a few weeks; meat takes a little longer. Eventually, any form of compostable plastic should break down too, Frederick Michel Jr., a compost expert at Ohio State University, told me. Eventually. In one study, compostable plastic bags buried in soil for three years were so sturdy they could still hold a full load of groceries.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Plastic's Health Impacts Are Becoming Impossible To Ignore

Plastic has been creeping into our food, our air, our water, and our bodies for decades now, with most people blissfully unaware of its presence and health risks. But two catastrophes in the past six months suddenly made it impossible to ignore how plastic affects Americans' lives, health, and future. The catastrophes I'm referring to are the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment and the smoke from Canadian wildfires that enveloped U.S. cities for days. If you're not already aware—and many aren't—these two moments have everything to do with plastic. Let me explain.

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Andrew Craigie Andrew Craigie

Threatened Seabirds Are Foraging at Plastic Pollution Hotspots

Threatened seabirds are spending days and sometimes weeks foraging for food around floating garbage patches in the ocean, according to a major study that warns international action to tackle plastic pollution is urgently needed. The research used tracking data from more than 7000 birds, combined with plastic pollution location data, to map the plastic exposure risk of 77 species of petrel, a group of migratory seabirds.

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