By Ellen Webb and Julie Moon, Center for Environmental Health
The U.S. House of Representatives is voting this week on the latest attempt to stifle the Clean Air Act: H.R. 4775, the so-called “Ozone Standards Implementation Act."
In direct contrast to its title, the bill threatens to restrict implementation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) newest standards for ozone and other "criteria" pollutants supposed to be protected by the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAQQS): nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and lead. As criteria pollutants are both the most common air pollutants in the U.S. and considered harmful to human and environmental health, it is clear that passing H.R. 4775 into law will jeopardize public and environmental health.
The bill proposes to dismantle the Clean Air Act systematically: by imposing a two-fold delay of the time in which the EPA is required to review national health standards for ozone and other harmful pollutants (from 5 to 10 years); by imposing an additional delay on the time states have to publicize healthy and unhealthy areas of pollution (and subsequently adopt and implement cleanup standards) from one to eight years; by allowing corporations that apply for permits to pollute at levels beyond national health standards; by imposing considerations of cost and “technological feasibility" in the process of setting NAAQs, which has historically only considered medical and public health data.
Each of these measures—and the bill lists more—undermine the fundamental purpose of the Clean Air Act. The delays in statutory deadlines mean longer delays in practice and delaying implementation of science-based emission standards means that more Americans will suffer from pollution for longer. Forcing a consideration of cost and “technological feasibility" dismisses the fact that costs have no bearing on what is safe and unsafe and thus should not influence on the process of determining safety thresholds for exposure to pollutants.
Human and environmental health advocates have refused to stay silent on such a dangerous bill. In April, 13 major environment, science and health advocacy groups including the Physicians for Social Responsibility, Natural Resources Defense Council and Union for Concerned Scientists signed a letter condemning the bill as “one of the most irresponsible compilations of attacks on Clean Air Act health standards ever to be introduced in Congress. If this bill were to become law, it would be very detrimental for our nation's air quality, public health and Americans' right to clean, safe air ... It eliminates Americans' 46-year right to healthy air based on medical science and substitutes a process in which politics and profits will dictate acceptable air quality. The bill delays life-saving health standards that already are years overdue."
Fundamentally, the bill seems to be completely disregarding the growing number of studies publicizing the health risks of exposure to ozone and other criteria pollutants. In direct backlash to a more health protective, lowered ozone emission standard of 60ppb proposed by the EPA in 2015, section 3(a)(2) of H.R. 4775 singles out the pollutant and prohibits the EPA from proposing new standards before 2025. In other words, the bill seeks to not only ignore ozone standards recommended by health experts but also delay additional suggestions for a decade.
Yet we now know that ozone is not only harmful to the environment (it degrades habitats and decreases biodiversity by interfering with photosynthesis), but also human health. Last month, the Center for Environmental Health's paper on the respiratory health impacts of pollutants from unconventional oil and gas (UOG) operations reported that ozone pollution has been linked with major respiratory health problems ranging from coughing and wheezing to pulmonary infection and severe asthmatic exacerbations.
Our review found that, alongside other criteria pollutants in threat of deregulation by H.R. 4775 and associated with UOG like particulate matter, ozone is associated with: 1. Reduced lung and pulmonary function; 2. Increased susceptibility to lung infection and decreased immunity and 3. the induction of asthma (the third leading cause of hospitalization among children under 15 years). The latter respiratory health impact—asthma—is particularly concerning, since, asthma is not merely a health burden but also a socioeconomic one: asthma is also a leading cause of school absenteeism. One study estimated that if ozone standards were tightened, total school absences would be reduced by about 1 million. Further, the direct (treatment) and indirect (lost days of productivity) for treating asthma in the U.S. has been estimated to be $56 billion.
In ignoring the known human and environmental health risks of unmitigated criteria pollutant emissions, the so-called “Ozone Standards Implementation Act" threatens to subvert the Clean Air Act of 1970, this country's greatest means of protecting all Americans' right to breathe healthy air.
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According to Forbes, the Three R's sustainability catch-phrase, and the recycling cause it bolstered, remain synonymous with the U.S. environmental movement itself. There's only one problem: despite being touted as one of the most important personal actions that individuals can take to help the planet, "recycling" – as currently carried out in the U.S. – doesn't work and doesn't help.
Turns out, there is a vast divide between the misleading, popular notion of recycling as a "solution" to the American overconsumption problem and the darker reality of recycling as a failing business model.
The Myth: Recycling Began as a Plastics' Industry Marketing Tactic
A recycling dumpster in Los Angeles. Citizen of the Planet / Education Images / Universal Images Group / Getty Images
When it was first introduced, recycling likely had altruistic motivations, Forbes reported. However, the system that emerged was never equipped to handle high volumes. Unfortunately, as consumption increased, so too did promotion of recycling as a solution. The system "[gave] manufacturers of disposable items a way to essentially market overconsumption as environmentalism," Forbes reported. Then and now, "American consumers assuage any guilt they might feel about consuming mass quantities of unnecessary, disposable goods by dutifully tossing those items into their recycling bins and hauling them out to the curb each week."
Little has changed since that Forbes article, titled "Can Recycling Be Bad For The Environment?," was published almost a decade ago; increases in recycling have been eclipsed by much higher consumption rates. In fact, consumerism was at an all-time high in January 2020 before the pandemic hit, Trading Economics reported.
But, if the system doesn't work, why does it continue? Turns out, consumers were misled – by the oil and gas industry. News reports from September 2020 revealed how the plastic industry-funded ads in the 1980s that heralded recycling as a panacea to our growing waste problem. These makers of virgin plastics were the biggest proponents and financial sponsors of plastic recycling programs because they created the illusion of a sustainable, closed-cycle while actually promoting the continued use of raw materials for new single-use plastics.
To the masses, these programs justified overconsumption and eased concerns over trash that could be thrown into recycling bins, Forbes reported. Generations of well-meaning Americans since the 1970's and '80's – believing these communications masterminds – have dutifully used-then-recycled plastics and other materials. They trusted that their discards would be reborn as new goods instead of ending up in oceans and landfills.
The plastics industry went even further, lobbying 40 states to put the recycling triangle symbol on all plastic – even if it wasn't recyclable, Houston Public Media reported. This bolstered the public image of plastic as a renewable resource, but the cost was clarity about what actually can be recycled. As recent as 2020, a Greenpeace report found that many U.S. products labeled as recyclable could not actually be processed by most domestic material recovery facilities.
The Reality: Most Recyclables Aren't Being Recycled
An initial pre-sort removes contaminates, items that can't be recycled, at Republic Services in Anaheim, California on Thursday, April 15, 2021. Paul Bersebach / MediaNews Group / Orange County Register / Getty Images
The U.S. relies on single-stream recycling systems, in which recyclables of all sorts are placed into the same bin to be sorted and cleaned at recycling facilities. Well-meaning consumers are often over-inclusive, hoping to divert trash from landfills. Unfortunately, the trash often ends up there anyways – with the additional cost of someone at a recycling plant sorting through it.
The single-stream system is easier on consumers, but results in a mixed stream of materials that is easy to contaminate, hard to sort and more expensive to process. There are a variety of items – including dirty pizza boxes, old clothing, hangers, plastic bags, aerosols, batteries and electronics – that, if added to a residential recycling bin, will contaminate the entire batch of recyclables, a Miami recycling center representative told EcoWatch. At that point, it can be too costly and too dangerous for employees to hand-pick out erroneous items. Because these items cannot be processed in the same way as recyclable materials, their inclusion often means the whole batch will fetch a lower price from buyers or must be thrown away.
"Most people have the attitude that if they just put it in the blue bin, it will get taken away and somebody will figure out what to do with it, but putting something in the blue bin and actually recycling it are two very different things," said David Biderman, CEO and executive director of the Solid Waste Association of North America.
Misunderstandings, misinformation and mislabeling aside, the harsh reality was and remains that most plastic can't and won't be recycled, reported NPR. For example, the EPA reported that plastic generation in 2018 was 35.7 million tons, accounting for 12.2 percent of municipal solid waste (MSW) that year. Of this total, only three million tons were recycled (an 8.7 percent recycling rate). The vast majority – 27 million tons – ended up in landfills, and the rest was combusted. The environmental agency also estimated that less than 10 percent of plastic thrown in bins in the last 40 years has actually been recycled.
The situation is slightly better for other recyclables, though they make up a smaller percentage of MSW. For example, glass products totaled 12.3 million tons in 2018, or 4.2 percent of the annual MSW generation. Almost 25 percent of glass was recycled, 61.6 percent ended up in landfills and 13.4 percent was combusted.
Post-consumer paper and cardboard for 2018 totaled 67.4 million tons, or 23.1 percent of total MSW generation for the year. The material also had the highest recycling rate of any other material in MSW – 68.2 percent. 25.6 percent of paper ended up in landfills and 6.23 percent was combusted.
According to this EPA data, recyclable plastics, glass and paper accounted for 18.5 percent, 5.2 percent and 11.8 percent of MSW landfilled in 2018, respectively. Those three materials alone comprised 35.5 percent of the total landfilled trash in the U.S. for the year; had they been properly collected, processed and purchased, they theoretically could have been diverted and recycled.
The Reason: Recycling Is Bad Business Around the World
Recyclable waste must be sorted, cleaned and processed before it can be sold as a commodity on the open market. Nareeta Martin / Unsplash
Unfortunately, the EPA data also shows that 2018 was not an anomaly but rather another data point showing how the single-stream system in the U.S. has never been economically viable or feasible on a large scale. To further understand why recycling in America is failing, we need to think of recycled goods as commodities – because that's what they are.
According to the recycling center representative, municipalities and counties pay for residential and commercial recyclables to be trucked to local and regional recycling plants for processing. Clean batches are sorted and/or compressed into bales of similar plastics, paper, aluminum or glass. The centers sell the cleaned recyclables on the open market to buyers who will process them into recycled materials like plastic pellets or post-consumer paper; these can be turned into new products.
This entire process – the processing and creation of saleable recycled goods – costs money. As with any good, profitability requires selling for a higher price than it costs to make. Contaminated batches are harder to process into new products and therefore fetch a lower price on the market, if they can be sold at all. Currently, U.S. recyclables are no longer profitable, and no one wants to buy them.
China used to buy the majority of the world's plastics and paper for recycling, The New York Times reported. The U.S. has been the #1 generator of plastic waste in the world for years and used to ship more than half of its total plastic production to China, a November 2020 study found. The research also noted that up to one-fourth of American plastics sent abroad were contaminated or of poor quality, which would make it extremely difficult to recycle anyways.
Starting Jan. 1, 2018, China banned imports of most scrap materials because shipments were too contaminated, The Times reported; the country no longer wanted to be the "world's garbage dump."
As a result, the U.S. and other Western nations who had relied on China to offload their recyclables saw a "mounting crisis" of paper and plastic waste building up in ports and recycling facilities, The Times reported.
The Western nations began sending recyclable waste to other Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, India and Malaysia. These countries often lacked the infrastructure to handle recyclables, so a lot of the waste ended up incinerated or landfilled
In response, in 2019, the United Nations passed an amendment to the Basel Convention hoping to protect the poor and developing countries who'd taken up China's vacated role in the global recycling trade. The amendment ambitiously aimed to clean up the global trade in plastic waste, making it more transparent and better regulated and allowing developing countries to reject contaminated shipments. The U.S. did not ratify the amendment, and new evidence suggests it continues to send illegal and/or contaminated shipments to developing countries.
Domestically, the closing of the Chinese market to U.S. recyclables bankrupted many domestic recycling programs because there was too much supply and no real demand. The smaller Asian countries could not accept nearly as much as China had. Prices of recyclables dropped, and bales of scrap materials were sent to landfills and incinerators when they couldn't be sold, another Times article reported.
This left waste-management companies around the country with no market for recyclabes, The Atlantic reported. They've been forced to go back to cities and municipalities with two choices: pay a lot more to get rid of their recycling or throw it away. The news report noted that most are choosing the latter.
"The economics are challenging," agreed Nilda Mesa, director of the Urban Sustainability and Equity Planning Program at the Earth Institute's Center for Sustainable Urban Development. "If there is not a market for the recycled material, then the numbers do not work for these facilities as well as cities, as they need to sell the materials to recoup their costs of collection and transportation, and even then it's typically only a portion of the costs," Columbia's State of the Planet reported.
Tiffany Duong is an avid ocean advocate. She holds degrees from UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and is an Al Gore Climate Reality Leader and student member of The Explorer's Club.
She spent years as a renewable energy lawyer in L.A. before moving to the Amazon to conduct conservation fieldwork (and revamp her life). She eventually landed in the Florida Keys as a scientific scuba diver and field reporter and writes about the oceans, climate, and the environment from her slice of paradise. Follow her on Twitter/Instagram @lilicedt.
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