Author: Joseph Winters

Plastic packaging waste from the online retail giant Amazon ballooned to 709 million pounds globally in 2021 — equivalent to the weight of some 70,000 killer whales — according to a new report published Thursday by the nonprofit Oceana. That’s an 18 percent increase over Oceana’s estimate of Amazon’s plastic packaging for 2020, indicating a growing problem that environmental advocates — and even Amazon’s own shareholders — say the company is doing too little to address.

Author: George Monbiot

There are two extraordinary facts about the convention on biological diversity, whose members are meeting in Montreal now to discuss the global ecological crisis. The first is that, of the world’s 198 states, 196 are party to it. The second is the identity of those that aren’t. Take a guess. North Korea? Russia? Wrong. Both ratified the convention years ago. One is the Holy See (the Vatican). The other is the United States of America.

Author: Joseph Winters

As international negotiators began hammering out the details of a global plastics treaty last week, legislators in the United States were busy unveiling a domestic policy to address the plastic pollution crisis. A new bill introduced by four congressional Democrats on Thursday takes aim at plastic manufacturers in an attempt to reduce the country’s reliance on single-use plastics.

Author: DeAnne Toto

The European Parliament Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) voted in favor of the reform of EU procedures and control measures on waste shipments Dec. 1, with 76 votes in favor, none against and five abstentions.

Author: Jennifer Rankin

The EU executive wants to ban mini-shampoo bottles in hotels and the use of throwaway cups in cafes and restaurants, as part of sweeping legal proposals to curb Europe’s mountains of waste. A draft EU regulation published on Wednesday also proposes mandatory deposit and return schemes for single-use plastic drinks bottles and metal cans, as well as an end to e-commerce firms wrapping small items in huge boxes.

Author: Saqib Rahim

Four years ago, city officials in Palo Alto, California, posed what they thought was a straightforward question: Where did their recycling go?  Concerned citizens had seen dire headlines about plastic dumping in Southeast Asia, and they wanted to know if their waste contributed.

Author: Valerie Volcovici

Countries have begun to discuss a future global plastics treaty which would cut pollution, some hope entirely by 2040, at U.N. talks in Uruguay this week, with many states calling for curbs on plastic production as a way to reach that goal.

Author: Matt Simon

This week in Uruguay, scientists, environmentalists, and government representatives—and, of course, lobbyists—are gathering to begin negotiations on a United Nations treaty on plastics. It’s only the start of talks, so we don’t know how they will shape up, but some of the bargaining chips on the table include production limits and phasing out particularly troublesome chemical components.

Author: Tosin Thompson

Plastic is one of the fastest growing materials and production is on course to double, to more than one billion tonnes a year, by 2050. With that, will come more pollution. This week, delegates from more than 150 countries are expected to meet in Uruguay to begin negotiations for a historic global agreement to end plastic pollution.

Author: Meera Subramanian, Nature

On a warm windy day in early April, Jace Tunnell steps out of his car at Morgan’s Point, a spit of land that juts out into the Houston Ship Channel in Texas. Tunnell, a marine biologist and reserve director at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute, sets his watch and gets to work, walking along the high-tide line and picking up every plastic pellet he can see.

Author: Dustin Godfrey

Burnaby firm Golden Trust Trading is being sued for millions of dollars by two separate shipping companies claiming it was responsible for docking fees in Thailand for plastic it had reportedly exported to the country.

Author: Matthew Campbell, Bloomberg

About two years ago, Vinyou Jiaramankong learned his neighborhood was changing. Next to the 40-year-old’s neat house in the southern suburbs of Bangkok, a storage yard was being converted into a plastic recycling factory. Shielded by high walls that extended directly to the edge of Jiaramankong’s property, the facility would take in used plastic, melt it down, and run the resulting mixture through an extruder.

Authors: Chris Vedelago and James Dowling

Australia’s largest plastic bag recycling program has collapsed amid revelations hundreds of millions of bags and other soft plastic items dropped off by customers at Coles and Woolworths are being secretly stockpiled in warehouses and not recycled.

Author: Amy Gibbons

British plastic waste is still being illegally dumped and burned abroad, contributing to “shocking” and “irreversible” impacts on human health and the environment, MPs have heard. A cross-party committee is calling for a blanket ban on UK plastic waste exports by 2027 after finding the “dirty trade” is leaving behind toxic traces on foreign soil linked to cancer, liver disease, skin lesions and abnormal foetus development.