As the Rest of the World Tackles Plastic Disposal, the US Remains Slow to Move 23/05/2021
Photo: Pixabay
For the first time ever, international shipments of plastic waste came under global control this year. That’s because disposable plastic – a major pollutant of the world’s waters and atmosphere, fodder for incinerators, occupier of overflowing landfills, and material for costly recycling – was added to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal.
The convention is a United Nations treaty aimed at managing the adulterating of lands and seas with novel polluting entities, but how effectively this international protocol will work to control plastics disposal remains to be seen.
Criminal dumping poses test for EU s electronic waste
It is estimated the EU exports around 400,000 tonnes of undocumented electrical waste every year (Photo: Vibek Raj Maurya)
Brussels, Today, 07:03
EU member states risk missing new e-waste targets as they face challenges to comply both with existing rules and to fight criminal activities such as illegal dumping, a new report of the European Court of Auditors published on Thursday (20 May) revealed.
Discarded electrical and electronic tools, household appliances and even large equipment such as solar panels often contain complex combinations of highly toxic substances, which can cause damage to people and the environment if they are not disposed of properly.
As the rest of world tackles plastics disposal, the U.S. resists
by Charles Pekow on 17 May 2021
In an expansion of the U.N.’s 1989 Basel Convention, amendments to the international protocol on the shipment of hazardous waste were revised to include plastics in 2021, with nations currently figuring out how to implement the agreement.
The United States is the only major nation not to have fully implemented the treaty, despite strong support for it among both the Republican and Democratic parties. The Biden administration could soon change that.
The U.S. remains a major dumper of hazardous waste globally, including large amounts of plastics, despite the attempted limitations imposed by the Basel Convention. The potential impacts of plastics and other “novel entities” on human health and ecosystems are largely unknown.
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$400 billion of planned petrochemical outlay at risk on exaggerated plastics demand
Carbon Tracker Initiative, 04 September 2020
Key Quotes
Remove the plastic pillar holding up the future of the oil
industry, and the whole narrative of rising oil demand collapses.
Kingsmill Bond, Carbon Tracker Energy Strategist and report lead
author.
There are huge benefits in the change from the current linear
system to a more circular one. You can have all the functionality
of plastics but at half the capital cost, half the amount of
feedstock, 700,000 additional jobs and 80% less plastic pollution.
Yoni Shiran, lead author of Breaking the Plastic Wave