Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) discusses the introduction of the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2020 in Washington, DC. Michael Brochstein / Echoes Wire / Barcroft Media / Getty Images
The world is in the midst of a plastic pollution crisis, and the current U.S. waste management system is not dealing with it effectively. Only eight percent of plastic waste in the U.S. is actually recycled. The rest is incinerated, landfilled or shipped overseas to countries even less equipped to process it, where it risks joining the eight million metric tons of plastic that end up in the world's oceans every year.
<p>That's why Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) <a href="https://www.tomudall.senate.gov/news/press-releases/udall-lowenthal-merkley-clark-unveil-landmark-legislation-to-break-free-from-plastic-pollution" target="_blank">introduced</a> the <a href="https://www.tomudall.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Bill%20Text-Udall-Lowenthal%20Break%20Free%20From%20Plastic%20Pollution%20Act.pdf" target="_blank">Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2020</a> Tuesday, a comprehensive piece of legislation that is being hailed as a first-of-its-kind attempt to address the root causes of the crisis on the national level.</p><p>"Our bill is a game-changer—the first bill to comprehensively tackle the plastic crisis," Udall said in a press call Monday.</p>
<div id="499d8" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="166O6X1581599793"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1227269417999925249" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Today’s the day—we’re introducing the #BreakFreeFromPlastic Pollution Act. Tune in now: https://t.co/QYQW5e50BW</div> — Tom Udall (@Tom Udall)<a href="https://twitter.com/SenatorTomUdall/statuses/1227269417999925249">1581438805.0</a></blockquote></div><p>The bill has several ground-breaking components.</p><ol><li>It requires plastic producers to take responsibility for their waste. The bill would shift the burden of waste collection and management from local governments and taxpayers to the manufacturers of items like packaging, containers, food service products and paper, who would be charged with designing and funding recycling systems.</li><li>It establishes a nation-wide beverage container refund system. Anyone buying a beverage container of any type would be charged an extra 10 cents that would be refunded when they returned the empty item.</li><li>It phases out the most polluting single-use plastics. Starting in Jan. 2022, highly polluting items like plastic bags, polystyrene containers and plastic stirrers and cutlery would be phased out. Straws would only be available by request. The bill would also introduce a nationwide plastic bag fee.</li><li>It mandates minimum recycled content. The bill would require products to be made with increasing percentages of recycled material. For example, plastic bottles would need to be made of 25 percent recycled material by 2025 and 80 percent by 2040.</li><li>It considers <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/environmental-justice" rel="noopener noreferrer">environmental justice</a>. The bill would prohibit the U.S. from shipping waste to countries that cannot manage it. It would only be able to export waste to countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and only with their consent. Further, it puts a pause of up to three years on the granting of permits for facilities that create plastic so that the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/epa" target="_self">Environmental Protection Agency</a> can update its safe air and water standards for these facilities.</li></ol>
<p>Lowenthal said he and Udall had been working on crafting the legislation for about a year.</p><p>"First and foremost, the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/Break-Free-From-Plastic" target="_self">Break Free from Plastic</a> Pollution Act removes the burden of waste collection and recycling from the cities, from states, and, most importantly, from taxpayers, and puts it where it belongs: on the producers and the companies putting out these unsustainable products into the marketplace," Lowenthal said in Monday's press call.</p>
<div id="e37f6" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="595FAO1581599793"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1227347326303338500" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">After decades of treating our land, waterways, and oceans as plastic waste dumping grounds, we now face a global cr… https://t.co/1Kaz5ny9Lw</div> — Rep. Alan Lowenthal (@Rep. Alan Lowenthal)<a href="https://twitter.com/RepLowenthal/statuses/1227347326303338500">1581457380.0</a></blockquote></div><p>This distinguishes it from previous legislative attempts to deal with plastic waste, such as the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1982" target="_blank">Save Our Seas 2.0 Act</a>, which passed the Senate in January. That act focuses more on plastic already in the environment and puts the onus for recycling and cleanup on the government, rather than on producers.</p><p>The new bill has won widespread approval from environmental groups, many of whom worked with Udall and Lowenthal's offices to develop it.</p><p>"It's high time for companies to do more than just say they will recycle. Plastic pollution has become one of the greatest threats to our oceans. This bill would finally tackle the plastic crisis at its source by reducing the amount produced in the first place, and encouraging a shift to refillable and reusable alternatives," <a href="https://oceana.org/" target="_blank">Oceana</a> chief policy officer Jacqueline Savitz said in a statement emailed to EcoWatch. "We need to turn off the faucet, not just run for the mop."</p><p>Yvette Arellano, policy and research grassroots advocate at <a href="http://tejasbarrios.org/" target="_blank">Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services</a>, praised the bill for its attention to the health impacts of plants that convert <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuels" target="_self">fossil fuels</a> to plastics, which especially impact low-income communities of color in Texas and along the Gulf Coast.</p>
<p>"I really want to thank the Senator and the Representative for this, not ambitious, but common sense piece inside of this act. It's very meaningful for us to maintain that human health is being impacted in our most vulnerable communities," she said during the press call.</p><p>"It's a link we rarely see being made," she added.</p><p>With its pause on new plastics plants and its shift of responsibility to producers, one might expect the new bill to meet resistance from the plastics industry. But the bill's sponsors and supporters do not expect this to stymie their efforts.</p><p>Udall said he and Lowenthal had spoken with industry actors while writing the bill, and incorporated some of their ideas.</p><p>Scott Cassel, founder and chief executive officer of the <a href="https://www.productstewardship.us/" target="_blank">Product Stewardship Institute</a>, said in a press call that he had worked with the plastics industry for 20 years.</p><p>"Producers have a pattern of how they will oppose things in the beginning and then will come to the table," he said.</p><p>He added that attempts to deal with the plastic pollution issue on the state and local level had led to a regulatory patchwork that created a "headache" for producers, meaning there might be an appetite for the comprehensive national approach proposed by the new bill.</p>
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Coca-Cola says it will not phase out its plastic bottles. Roberto Machado Noa / LightRocket / Getty Images
Despite its status as the world's No. 1 corporate plastic polluter, Coca-Cola won't be phasing out its single-use plastic bottles anytime soon.
<p>The reason? Customers like them too much, the company's head of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sustainability" target="_self">sustainability</a> Bea Perez told <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51197463" target="_blank">BBC News</a> at the World Economic Forum in Davos Tuesday. Perez said that customers value the bottles because they are lightweight and easily reseal, and argued that getting rid of them would hurt sales.</p><p>"Business won't be in business if we don't accommodate consumers," she said.</p><p>Instead, the company plans to focus on <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/recycling" target="_self">recycling</a>. It has promised to recycle as many bottles as it uses by 2030, to use 50 percent recycled materials in packaging by that date and to work with nonprofits to better collect its waste.</p><p>"So as we change our bottling infrastructure, move into recycling and innovate, we also have to show the consumer what the opportunities are. They will change with us," Perez said.</p><p>However, environmental groups have argued that recycling is not the most effective solution to the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/plastic-pollution" target="_self">plastic pollution</a> crisis. In a statement emailed to EcoWatch, <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/" target="_blank">Greenpeace USA</a> Plastics Campaigner Kate Melges explained exactly what she thought was wrong with Perez's reasoning:</p>
<blockquote>It is mighty convenient for the world's worst plastic polluter to insist that people want their single-use plastic around. Coca-Cola continues to show how out of touch it is with the environmental crises communities around the world are facing. The solution is not to simply swap one throwaway material for another or continue to fall back on recycling. The solution is for Coca-Cola and other consumer goods giants to fundamentally rethink how they're bringing products to people, centering systems of reuse and package-free options. We cannot afford the levels of inaction that Coke has shown thus far. Soon, the company will realize just how sick and tired people are of its plastic addiction.<br><br>As long as companies like Coke keep pushing the myth that their bottles are being turned into new bottles over and over again, we are never going to solve the plastic pollution crisis. In the U.S., only 29 percent of plastic bottles are collected for recycling, and almost none of that is being made back into bottles. Instead, Coke's plastic bottles are being made from fossil fuels, which is a fact they'd rather not talk about.</blockquote><p>Coca-Cola currently produces around three million tonnes (approximately 3.3 million U.S. tons) of plastic packaging every year, according to BBC News. That comes to 200,000 bottles a minute. And currently, many of those bottles are not getting recycled.</p><p>For two years in a row, the <a href="https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/" target="_blank">Break Free From Plastic</a> movement <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/coke-pepsi-plastic-polluters-2641090767.html" target="_self">found</a> Coca-Cola to be the brand best represented among the world's plastic waste. Their most recent October 2019 <a href="https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/globalbrandauditreport2019/" target="_blank">report</a>, based on litter collected in 484 cleanups in more than 50 countries and on six continents, found that Coca-Cola left more waste than the next three companies on the list ― Nestle, Pepsi and snack-maker Mondelez ― put together.</p><p>Worldwide, people use <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/recycling-plastic-reality-2615116844.html" target="_self">one million plastic bottles every minute</a>, and 91 percent of them are not recycled. Some of that unrecycled waste joins the more than <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/8-million-metric-tons-of-plastic-dumped-into-worlds-oceans-each-year-1882012563.html" target="_self">eight million metric tons of plastic</a> dumped into the world's <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oceans" target="_self">oceans</a> every year, threatening <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/marine-life" target="_self">marine life</a>.</p><p>"[C]orporations urgently need to do more to address the plastic pollution crisis they've created," Von Hernandez, global coordinator of the Break Free From Plastic movement, said in October. "Their continued reliance on single-use plastic packaging translates to pumping more throwaway plastic into the environment. Recycling is not going to solve this problem."</p>
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This photo taken on May 19, 2018 shows plastic waste on a garbage-filled beach on the Freedom island critical habitat and ecotourism area near Manila in the Philippines. NOEL CELIS / AFP / Getty Images
Coca-Cola was found to be the most polluted brand in the world for the second year in a row, according to a global audit of collected plastic trash conducted by the Break Free From Plastic global movement, as The Intercept reported.
<p>While Nestle, Pepsi and snack-maker Mondelez followed Coca-Cola, the Atlanta-based beverage giant was responsible for more plastic litter than the other three combined, according to the report called <a href="https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/globalbrandauditreport2019/" target="_blank">BRANDED Volume II: Identifying the World's Top Corporate Plastic Polluters</a>.</p><p>The plastic was counted during "brand audits" where Break Free From Plastic counted plastic litter collected in 484 cleanups in more than 50 countries on six continents in September, as <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_asia/article/d3ae8q/coca-cola-nestle-pepsico-worlds-top-plastic-polluters-2019" target="_blank">Vice</a> reported. </p>
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font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;"> View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"><div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style=" width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"></div></div></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"></div></div></a><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B3-eVEsH7e9/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by #breakfreefromplastic (@breakfreefromplastic)</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2019-10-23T21:40:51+00:00">Oct 23, 2019 at 2:40pm PDT</time></p></div></blockquote> <script async src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script><p>To undertake such a large project, Break Free From Plastic enlisted more than 72,000 volunteers who scoured beaches, waterways and streets. The volunteers collected bottles, cups, wrappers, bags and scraps during World Clean Up Day on Sept. 21. After sorting through the collected debris, the researchers identified 50 different types of waste traced back to nearly 8,000 different brands. Coke was the most counted product at 11,372 identifiable pieces of plastic litter in 37 countries, according to the <a href="https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/globalbrandauditreport2019/" target="_blank">report</a>, as <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/10/23/coca-cola-plastic-waste-pollution/" target="_blank">The Intercept</a> reported.</p><p>The numbers for Coke, PepsiCo, Mondelez International and Unilever were probably low, since more than half of the plastic had eroded to the point where it was impossible to identify which brand it belonged to. The volunteers collected 476,423 pieces of plastic waste, but only 43 percent were marked with a clear consumer brand, according to the <a href="https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/branded-2019-web-FINAL-v2-1.pdf" target="_blank">report</a>.</p><p>Coke was the top source of branded plastic collected in Africa and Europe. It was the second largest in Asia and South America, but fifth in North America. In North America, the most collected plastic litter was produced by Nestle, followed by the Solo Cup Company, and Starbucks, according to the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/10/23/coca-cola-plastic-waste-pollution/" target="_blank">The Intercept</a>.</p><p>"This report provides more evidence that corporations urgently need to do more to address the plastic pollution crisis they've created," said Von Hernandez, global coordinator of the Break Free From Plastic movement. "Their continued reliance on single-use plastic packaging translates to pumping more throwaway plastic into the environment. Recycling is not going to solve this problem."</p>
<video controls id="adf6c" width="100%" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c0ec2be863c6b9927fa31942c26b3de8" expand="1" feedbacks="true" mime_type="video/mp4" shortcode_id="1571936959183" url="https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/runner%2F14814-BFFP-top-plastic-polluters-video-ENG-SUBS.mp4" videoControls="true"> <source src="https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/runner%2F14814-BFFP-top-plastic-polluters-video-ENG-SUBS.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video><p>Recent <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/21/us-plastic-recycling-landfills" target="_blank">investigations</a> have found that only 9 percent of all plastic is recycled. Most ends up in landfills, burned in incinerators or it is dumped in the ocean. The collected litter has spurred Break Free From Plastic to urge companies to eliminate their production of single-use plastic packaging and to instead find innovative solutions, according to <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_asia/article/d3ae8q/coca-cola-nestle-pepsico-worlds-top-plastic-polluters-2019" target="_blank">Vice</a>.<br></p><p>The report suggested that cities adapt a zero-waste lifestyle. It also suggested brands set up a delivery system for refills, that people use traditional packaging like banana leaves, and that consumers to use their own reusable materials, as <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_asia/article/d3ae8q/coca-cola-nestle-pepsico-worlds-top-plastic-polluters-2019" target="_blank">Vice</a> reported.</p><p>Coca-Cola has recently introduced <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/dasani-aluminum-cans-2639822829.html" target="_self">Dasani</a> water in aluminum cans and a plastic bottle made of marine waste. Both <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/coca-cola-pepsico-plastics-2639326311.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2" target="_self">Coca-Cola and PepsiCo</a> have pledged to package their products in fully recyclable, reusable or compostable containers by 2025. However, Break Free From Plastic and Greenpeace balk at the beverage manufacturers actions.</p><p>"Recent commitments by corporations like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and PepsiCo to address the crisis unfortunately continue to rely on false solutions like replacing plastic with paper or bioplastics and relying more heavily on a broken global recycling system," said Abigail Aguilar, Greenpeace Southeast Asia plastic campaign coordinator, in a <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/philippines/press/3647/coca-cola-nestle-and-pepsico-named-top-plastic-polluters-for-the-second-year-in-a-row/" target="_blank">statement</a>. "These strategies largely protect the outdated throwaway business model that caused the plastic pollution crisis, and will do nothing to prevent these brands from being named the top polluters again in the future."</p><p>Coca-Cola responded to questions from <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/10/23/coca-cola-plastic-waste-pollution/" target="_blank">The Intercept</a> with an emailed statement: "Any time our packaging ends up in our oceans — or anywhere that it doesn't belong — is unacceptable to us. In partnership with others, we are working to address this critical global issue, both to help turn off the tap in terms of plastic waste entering our oceans and to help clean up the existing pollution."</p>
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Coke bottles found on Mull Beach in Scotland. Will Rose / Greenpeace
Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestlé were identified as the world's biggest producers of plastic trash in global cleanups and brand audits, a new report from Greenpeace and the Break Free From Plastic movement reveals.
Over the span of nine months, an international team of volunteers sorted through 187,000 pieces of plastic trash collected from 239 cleanups in 42 countries around the world.
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The
<a href="https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/globalbrandauditreport2018/" target="_blank">results</a>, released Tuesday, shows that these multinational food and beverage giants were the top 10 offenders:</p><ol class="ee-ol">
<li>Coca-Cola</li>
<li>PepsiCo</li>
<li>Nestlé</li>
<li>Danone</li>
<li>Mondelez International</li>
<li>Procter & Gamble</li>
<li>Unilever</li>
<li>Perfetti van Melle</li>
<li>Mars Incorporated</li>
<li>Colgate-Palmolive</li>
</ol><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="18ae0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="YO1G951576662680"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1049660885868924928" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">BREAKING: @Coca-cola, @PepsiCo, and @Nestle have emerged as the top corporate polluters from 239 brand audits acros… https://t.co/QuCnYnjbOo</div> — Greenpeace USA (@Greenpeace USA)<a href="https://twitter.com/greenpeaceusa/statuses/1049660885868924928">1539093631.0</a></blockquote></div>
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The organizers behind the effort are calling out these brands for their contribution to plastic pollution.
</p><p>
"These brand audits offer undeniable proof of the role that corporations play in perpetuating the global plastic pollution crisis," Von Hernandez, global coordinator of Break Free From Plastic, said in a press release emailed to EcoWatch. "By continuing to churn out problematic and unrecyclable throwaway plastic packaging for their products, these companies are guilty of trashing the planet on a massive scale. It's time they own up and stop shifting the blame to citizens for their wasteful and polluting products."
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<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODcwMjkxMS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1OTE3Mjk3OH0.UN5ZcHfSLoiDXIea7Fjqwzlo43e1gRFILK66FEgedsk/img.jpg?width=980" id="ced9f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="39ad3f2005e7530e6b9597d5655da3fe" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Greenpeace Southeast Asia conducts plastic brand audit activity at Wonnapa beach, Chonburi province on World Cleanup Day, September 15, 2018.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Greenpeace</small>
</p><p>
In the U.S. specifically, a total of 70 cleanups determined that Nestlé, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola were the worst corporate plastic polluters, in that order.
</p><p>
The three companies have each pledged to cut their packaging waste. Coca-Cola has a global
<a href="https://www.coca-colacompany.com/press-center/press-releases/the-coca-cola-company-announces-new-global-vision-to-help-create" target="_blank">goal</a> to help collect and recycle the equivalent of 100 percent of its packaging by 2030. Nestlé <a href="https://www.nestle.com/media/pressreleases/allpressreleases/nestle-recyclable-reusable-packaging-by-2025" target="_blank">aims</a> to make 100 percent recyclable or reusable packaging by 2025. PepsiCo has a <a href="http://www.pepsico.com/live/pressrelease/pepsico-to-more-than-triple-recycled-content-in-its-plastic-bottles-to-50-p-in-the-european-union-by-2030?sf196839220=1" target="_blank">goal</a> to design 100 percent of its packaging to be recyclable, compostable or biodegradable and to reduce its packaging's carbon impact by 2025.
</p><div id="17056" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="WK30OX1576662681"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-version="4" style=" background:#FFF; border:0;
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width:100%;">
<div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAAGFBMVEUiIiI9PT0eHh4gIB4hIBkcHBwcHBwcHBydr+JQAAAACHRSTlMABA4YHyQsM5jtaMwAAADfSURBVDjL7ZVBEgMhCAQBAf//42xcNbpAqakcM0ftUmFAAIBE81IqBJdS3lS6zs3bIpB9WED3YYXFPmHRfT8sgyrCP1x8uEUxLMzNWElFOYCV6mHWWwMzdPEKHlhLw7NWJqkHc4uIZphavDzA2JPzUDsBZziNae2S6owH8xPmX8G7zzgKEOPUoYHvGz1TBCxMkd3kwNVbU0gKHkx+iZILf77IofhrY1nYFnB/lQPb79drWOyJVa/DAvg9B/rLB4cC+Nqgdz/TvBbBnr6GBReqn/nRmDgaQEej7WhonozjF+Y2I/fZou/qAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC);
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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BoZcPL6B6_H/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif;
font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;
word-wrap:break-word;" target="_top">Greenpeace International 🌍 on Instagram: “All around the world, Greenpeace volunteers are hard at work conducting cleanups and brand audits to determine which corporations are the…”</a></p>
</div></blockquote></div><p>
Awareness about the global plastic waste crisis is growing worldwide. Governments around the world have taken steps to
<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/eu-plastics-ban-2573215290.html">ban single-use plastics</a> and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/beat-plastic-pollution-2573622594.html">individuals are pledging</a> to reduce their plastic footprint.
</p><p>
However, the organizers of the recent report are asking: Shouldn't corporations that package their goods in plastics shoulder some of this responsibility, too?
</p><p>
<span></span>"We all have a role to play in tackling plastic pollution. But the reality is, individual consumers are already bearing the burden of this crisis," Greenpeace content editor Ryan Schleeter wrote in a <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/18876/these-10-companies-are-flooding-the-planet-with-throwaway-plastic/" target="_blank">blog post</a> about today's report. "We're swapping plastic bottles for reusable glass and metal, ditching disposable straws, avoiding unnecessary packaging in our grocery stores, and cleaning up our beaches as best we can. But there's only so much we can do if companies don't step up and provide more sustainable choices."
</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="139c3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="CD5HGC1576662681"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1049657287772639232" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Plastic on Remote #SouthAtlantic Beaches Up 10 Fold in 10 Years #PlasticPollutes @plasticpollutes
https://t.co/ig6yeFf5at</div> — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)<a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/1049657287772639232">1539092773.0</a></blockquote></div>
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Cafeteria Culture
Carrots in a Ziploc
Grapes in a bag
Sandwich in saran wrap, with a "fresh daily" tag
Water bottle snuggled by an extra pair of socks
Plastic straw
Chips to gnaw
Juice in a box
That's an average American kids lunch stuffed in a school bag, with enough plastic packaging to wallpaper the classroom. Once it comes to school lunch, we don't practice what we preach, so let's unpackage what we teach.
<p style="">There is a hidden curriculum in our schools. In many schools across the U.S. lunch is served on foam polystyrene trays, plastic forks and straws come in little plastic baggies, a plastic cup for fruit cocktail or vegetables sit on that foam tray, and a plastic wrapped Burrito or pizza rounds out the meal. Some schools even serve milk in a plastic pouch, like a water balloon. Yet, open any science textbook and whole chapters spout opposite messaging about what we put in our bodies, what touches our food and how we treat the environment. It makes no sense to teach students environmental ethics and recycling when we turn around and show them in the cafeteria that consuming single-use plastic and throwing it in the garbage can is the way we actually do things. This is the hidden curriculum.</p><p style="">There are also hidden costs. Styrene, the monomer that becomes the long chain polymer "polystyrene," is toxic from the start, from factory worker health to environmental contamination. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services categorizes styrene as "reasonably anticipated to be a carcinogen." In the environment, most of us have seen bits of Styrofoam blowing in the wind. Those fragments break down further, and in sunlight UV degradation breaks polystyrene back into the monomer form styrene. Dr. Perry Elizabeth Sheffield, MD, deputy director of Pediatrics and Preventative Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, explained, "As experts in children's environmental health, we know that what we do to the environment, we ultimately do to ourselves and to our children. Products like polystyrene create pollution where they are produced, where they are discarded, and inside our bodies. They dirty our air, contaminate our water, and get into the food chain. Because polystyrene threatens human health and cannot be practically recycled, we support a polystyrene ban." </p><p style="">Styrene likely isn't good for our children's bodies either. There are several studies that show styrene can migrate from packaging to food. But what of the multi-year, daily exposures children have to polystyrene products in the cafeteria? Debby Lee Cohen, executive director and founder of <a href="http://www.cafeteriaculture.org/" target="_blank">Cafeteria Culture</a>, explained "Yet the long term effects of hot food served daily to children, directly onto trays made of the chemical styrene—sometimes 3 times per day and over a 13-year period—has yet to be studied." Hint to future researchers, there's a PhD thesis in evaluating the K-12 styrene exposure experiment underway on millions of U.S. kids.</p><p style="">Debby Lee Cohen envisions zero waste schools, which complements the growing global movement to end the one-way trajectory of plastic from production to the dump, incinerator or middle of the ocean. On a global scale, groups like the <a href="http://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/">Plastic Pollution Coalition</a>, <a href="https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/" target="_blank">Break Free From Plastic</a> and the <a href="https://www.5gyres.org/" target="_blank">5 Gyres Institute</a>, with their <a href="https://www.5gyres.org/styrofoam/" target="_blank">Foam Free</a> campaign, are turning their eyes to upstream to end the single-use throwaway plastic concept, that is rapidly trashing our land and sea. What better place to shift culture than in the classroom?</p><p style="">One classroom took action years ago. Thomas Starr King Middle School in Los Angeles, California learned about plastic pollution in our oceans in 2012 and looked no further than the hundreds of foam trays they used daily. For one week they collected every Styrofoam tray from lunch room garbage cans, rinsed and stack them up, resulting in a 30 foot tall tower. They punched a rope through the middle and hung it in the tree like a giant rectangular snake. Two years later, the former superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, John Deasy, announced in front of cameras on the school grounds that the entire district was going "foam free."</p><p style="">Other similar efforts were happening in other states, and in 2015, the <a href="https://www.urbanschoolfoodalliance.org/" target="_blank">Urban School Food Alliance</a>, a coalition of school districts in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale that leverage their combined buying power, found one company that made compostable lunch trays. By giving that one vendor all of their business, they brought the price down to the point where it was economically feasible. They made the switch. By the end of the 2015 school year half a billion foam trays were kept out of landfills, incinerators and student meals across the U.S.</p><p style="">But, as I document in my book <em>Junk Raft: An Ocean Voyage and a Rising Tide of Activism to Fight Plastic Pollution,</em> the industries that make plastic are not giving up quietly. Dart, one of the largest companies making foamed polystyrene products, is on the offensive, supporting policies that push recycling. In New York City the legislative bill "Intro 1480" was introduced to promote foam polystyrene recycling. While recycling is a publicly favored concept, the reality is dirty foam is costly to recover and hard to recycle, requiring substantial subsidies in communities willing to foot the bill. Most cities don't want to burden tax payers with these added costs. Bills like this are less about stopping the harm to people and the environment, and more about protecting the market for foamed polystyrene plastic products and packaging. Environmental NGO's countered this bill with "Intro 1596" an outright polystyrene ban, and are working hard to educate policy makers to take their name off of one bill and sign on to the other. This work is the hard won fight toward zero waste.</p><p style="">Therefore, we need to rise from those tiny, one-size-fits all, plastic chairs with the built-in desk and stand up for zero waste schools, and for the healthy mind and bodies we want for our kids. There's a new lesson plan coming to a school near you, with a roadmap for change. Model zero waste schools are popping up in <a href="http://www.ecocycle.org/schools/overview" target="_blank">Boulder</a>, Colorado, <a href="http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dsny/zerowaste/schools.shtml" target="_blank">New York City</a>, <a href="http://zerowastemarin.org/schools/" target="_blank">Marin</a>, California and <a href="https://www.biocycle.net/2010/03/23/launching-zero-waste-schools/" target="_blank">Oak Park</a>, Illinois, and dozens of other cities. Cafeteria Culture has launched "<a href="http://www.cafeteriaculture.org/sort2save-kit.html" target="_blank">Sort2Save</a>," a tool kit for schools to go zero waste, with a step-by-step guide to get it done. Can you hear the school bell ringing? It's time to practice what we teach. </p>
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