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Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11

The latest climate report is alarming (Opinion)

By Eric Engle Aug 10, 2021 Appearing on-line in the Charleston Gazette-Mail

The sixth assessment report of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was released Monday, and its findings are beyond dire.

It provides a disturbing wake up call after decades of industry and corporate malevolence enabled by world governments, as well as deliberate inaction by the most responsible parties.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a United Nations body established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and later endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly. The purpose of the body is to provide the world with scientific information relevant to understanding the risk of anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change, as well as it’s natural, political, and economic impacts and risks, and possible response options for world governments and other stakeholders.

Working Group I assesses the science as comprehensively as possible, in this case involving hundreds of global climate scientists, thousands of studies and eight years of work, building on more than three decades of prior research. Working Group II assesses the vulnerability for economies and the natural world. Working Group III assesses options for mitigation of the worst possible outcomes and adaptation to what’s locked in. The findings of Working Groups II and III are due next year.

Government representatives from 197 countries will be meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, this November for UN climate talks referred to as the Conference of Parties 26, as established under the Paris Climate Accords of 2015. The goal of these conferences is to periodically offer revised plans for meeting the warming goals of the Paris agreement of ideally 1.5 degrees Celsius, but no more than 2 degrees Celsius, global temperature rise over a preindustrial baseline by the end of this century.

Temperatures have currently risen by about 1.1 Centigrade above a mid-19th century baseline.

We’ve been witnessing the devastation wrought by just 1.1c warming over the established baseline: Extreme, record-breaking temperatures in the northwestern region of the U.S. and western Canada; extreme and long-lasting drought throughout the U.S. west; massive, almost unfathomable flooding events in central China and numerous European countries; wildfires in the U.S. west and throughout the Mediterranean region burning thousands of acres, destroying homes and properties and killing hundreds; hurricanes in Texas and Puerto Rico in 2017 that dumped 40 inches of rain in a four-day period (Hurricane Harvey in Houston) and killed upwards of 3,000 people (Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico), just to name a few. This can’t be allowed to continue.

Global systems we all depend on are being destabilized. The jet stream of the northern hemisphere is becoming wavier as the Arctic warms three times faster than the rest of the planet. This leads to things like the stalled out low-pressure system that dumped a year’s worth of rain in three days on central China and what’s referred to as an “omega block” pattern that caused temperatures in Pacific Northwest cities like Portland and Seattle to jump to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit — temperatures unheard of in these cities.

The Atlantic Meridional Oscillating Current, a system that includes the Gulf Stream that runs along the U.S. eastern seaboard, is an ocean current that moves warmer, saltier water from the Caribbean and U.S. Gulf northward toward Greenland and around to Europe. As the water gets colder on its trip North, it becomes denser and sinks and is circulated back in a southerly direction. This system affects weather patterns in the U.S. northeast and northern Europe and impacts the living patterns of numerous ocean species that economies in these regions depend on.

Recent studies have shown the current slowing down with the potential to stop in the no-too-distant future because of the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, introducing fresh glacial runoff water and warmer Arctic oceans.

Geologic history shows this would be disastrous, causing extreme cold in these northern regions and putting an end to monsoon rains that other regions around the world depend on.

These are just a few of the myriad effects of human-caused climate destabilization.

To quote author Kate Aronoff, “There is no prosperous future for humanity that includes one for the fossil fuel industry. Barring an about-face in its core business model — a change we have no reason to suspect will happen — these companies’ mission to dig up and burn as much coal, oil and gas as possible stands directly at odds with a reasonably habitable planet.”

We’ve seen failure to heed science lead to another surge in infections, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. as well as stalled recovery efforts. Will we also fail to leave posterity a habitable planet? We’re almost out of time to have any choice in the matter.

Eric Engle, of Parkersburg, is chairman of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, a board member for the West Virginia Rivers Coalition and co-chairman of Sierra Club of West Virginia’s executive committee.

Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11

Climate Corner: Bipartisanship, money should not be focus

Aug 7, 2021

Eric Engle

editorial@newsandsentinel.com

A bipartisan infrastructure bill is moving through the U.S. Senate, slowly but surely, and is being touted by the White House as a major achievement. The $1.2 trillion bill (with approximately $550 billion in new spending) is a good start, but it is not nearly enough to meet the climate crisis and the multiple other infrastructure-related crises we face with the urgency demanded.

The original proposal from the Biden administration was a $2.6 trillion proposal with $566 billion for R&D and manufacturing, $387 billion for housing, schools, and buildings, and $400 billion for home-and-community-based care. Virtually all of this was wiped out in the bipartisan compromise. $157 billion was originally set aside for electric vehicle-related infrastructural investment. That number is down to $15 billion in the compromise. $363 billion was set aside in the original proposal for clean energy tax credits. Those credits are wiped out of the bipartisan compromise.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill, according to Bloomberg Law, would also, “eliminate the need for federal agencies to do environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act for activities like applying pesticides and doing timber cuts on parcels of land up to 3,000 acres. Bloomberg Law continues, “The bill would also codify an executive order President Donald Trump enacted in 2017 that sought to streamline environmental reviews by consolidating the decision-making process across agencies and putting new deadlines in place. President Joe Biden rescinded the Trump order early in his administration.”

Stephen Schima, Senior Legislative Counsel at Earthjustice, points out that, “These provisions on NEPA not only severely limit or, at times, eliminate the review of health and environmental impacts, but taken together, they may effectively silence frontline communities, shield decisions from public scrutiny, and make it more difficult to hold the government accountable when they ignore impacts on communities most affected by the climate crisis.”

Progressives in the House of Representatives are vowing not to support this legislation unless a companion bill, a $3.5 trillion measure that would need to be passed using budget reconciliation in the Senate to pass on a simple majority vote without Republican support, is also sent to them. These progressives have the votes in the House to force this companion bill concession, and I hope they hold strong and do so. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) is already saying she opposes the $3.5 trillion price tag of the companion measure and Sen. Manchin was recently booed by his own caucus when mentioning deficit concerns. It seems deficits are never a concern with defense spending (the most recent National Defense Authorization Act authorized total military spending of nearly $778 billion), but always become a concern on desperately needed investments like infrastructure.

All Democratic Senators, including Senators Manchin and Sinema, are poised to support a budget resolution from the Senate Budget Committee outlining what the budget reconciliation companion legislation will look like. The Senate Parliamentarian advises on what passes muster under budget reconciliation rules (the Parliamentarian’s role is strictly advisory). The companion measure has got to pass, along with the bipartisan compromise bill, to even begin making the investments we desperately need. Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action supports the Transform, Heal, & Renew by Investing in a Vibrant Economy (THRIVE) Act, which authorizes investments of at least $1 trillion annually between Fiscal Years 2022-2031 – you can learn more about the THRIVE Act at greennewdealnetwork.org.

Action cannot wait. Approximately 14,000 scientists from 1,990 jurisdictions in 34 countries recently published a report in the peer-reviewed scientific journal BioScience stating that, “We suggest an urgent need for transformative change to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, more broadly, human overexploitation of the planet.” According to sciencealert.com, “The researchers suggested, ‘a three-pronged near-term policy approach:’ a significantly higher global price on carbon, a worldwide phase-out and eventual ban of fossil fuels, and development of climate reserves to protect and restore biodiversity and carbon sinks).”

When our only home in the cosmos is becoming unstable and gradually uninhabitable, we can’t worry about bipartisanship and arbitrary price tags. Government spending is not equivalent to household spending and government does not operate like a business with a profit motive or need for return on investment–though there will be almost unfathomable short-and-long-term returns on such important investments. It’s now or quite possibly never.

***

Eric Engle is Chairman of the not-for-profit volunteer organization Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, Board Member for the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, and Co-Chairman of the Sierra Club of West Virginia Chapter’s Executive Committee.

Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11

Climate Corner: What Can an Individual Do?

Jul 31, 2021

George Banziger

editorial@newsandsentinel.com

Human-caused climate change is rapping on our collective door with increasing urgency and with palpable visibility—even in the Mid-Ohio Valley. Before this summer we knew about oceans rising, warming, and becoming more acidic, disappearing glaciers (especially in the northern hemisphere), and constantly rising temperatures since the advent of the industrial revolution. More recently, we have seen triple-digit temperatures in the Pacific northwest, uncontrolled wildfires in the west, and unprecedented floods in western Europe. Summer 2021 is on pace to be the hottest on record in North America. The impact of climate change has now become evident in the Mid-Ohio Valley. Smoke and particulates from the western fires have migrated into the Ohio Valley and have affected our air quality; The Washington County engineer has cited challenges of record rainfall in contributing to the many land slips in that county. My colleague in the Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action team, Aaron Dunbar, has described the warning signs about climate change and the tipping point we may soon be reaching after these several “once-in-a-millennium” extreme weather events.

In the face of all this discouraging news one can feel hopeless and inconsequential as a single individual. But there is an opportunity to take immediate action as a concerned and informed citizen in the current “climate” of the Congress. In the U.S. Senate within the next two weeks senators will be discussing a budget reconciliation bill. A carbon pricing feature will be incorporated into this bill if senators hear from their constituents that it is important to them. Budget reconciliation may be adopted by the senate if 51 of its members agree to certain adjustments in spending and revenue. A price on carbon, that is, a fee assessed on the producer for oil, natural gas, or coal. These fossil fuels are what account for a large share of the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the climate change that we are all experiencing.

Why a price on carbon, you may ask. First of all, such a move will get us to net zero emissions by 2050 with a blend of renewable fuel sources that provide clean, affordable energy. The move to carbon pricing will send a signal to the economy and to industry to attend to energy efficiency, electric energy from renewables, and carbon capture. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will save 4.5 million lives over 50 years by decreasing premature deaths due to air pollution. Energy companies will, of course, raise their prices for products like gasoline, but economists have shown that up to 85% of individual Americans can cover the increased costs by the dividend that is provided to them through the carbon pricing program. In a re-imagined Appalachia that can advance from a dependency on coal and other extractive industries, carbon pricing and increases in investment in renewable energy can bring sustainable good jobs to our region as well as cleaner air and water.

There may be concerns about the cost of carbon pricing. Consider, as the alternative to the status quo, the long-term costs of the federal government and other insurers to compensate for property and human loss in the events of extreme weather, such as increasingly violent hurricanes, wildfires, flooding, and droughts.

Other ideas for reducing greenhouse gases have been offered in the past including cap and trade, which would create another bureaucracy to administer such a policy. And instituting more environmental rules to respond to climate change would require a complex web of multiple regulations across multiple agencies.

Responding to the climate crisis is popular. Eric Engle of the MOVCA in a previous Climate Corner piece has cited the fact that fully two-thirds of Americans are concerned about climate change.

The Citizens Climate Lobby has arranged a convenient procedure to express your views on carbon pricing to your senators. Simply go to cclusa.org/senate. There you will find some advice about how to word your e-mail and phone message as well as the phone numbers for your senators (Senator Manchin – 202-224-3954 and Senator Capito – 202-224-6472). Please do what you can soon to help save our planet.

Watch for future Climate Corner articles about climate action in the infrastructure bill.

George Banziger, Ph..D., was a faculty member at Marietta College and an academic dean at three other colleges. Now retired, he is a volunteer for the Mid-Ohio Valley Interfaith, and Harvest of Hope. He is a member of the Green Sanctuary Committee of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Marietta, Citizens Climate Lobby, and of the Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action team.

Last Updated: April 30, 2023 by main_y0ke11

Cutting Carbon Pollution Quickly Would Save About 74 Million Lives, Study Finds

July 29, 20215:00 AM ET

Rebecca Hersher

Twitter

A wind farm in Wyoming generates electricity for a region that used to be more dependent on coal-fired power plants. A new study finds that millions of lives could be saved this century by rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Matt Young/AP

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions quickly would save tens of millions of lives worldwide, a new study finds. It’s the latest indication that climate change is deadly to humans, and that the benefits of transitioning to a cleaner economy could be profound.

In recent years, the connection between a hotter planet and human death and disease has become clearer, thanks to a series of research papers. A study published in 2021 found that about a third of heat-related deaths worldwide can be directly attributed to human-caused climate change. A 2020 Lancet report warned that climate change is the biggest global public health threat of the century.

But those findings have not been factored into one of the three major computer models that scientists, economists and the federal government use to calculate the societal costs of carbon emissions. That means economists and policymakers may be underestimating the cost of climate change to human life.

“One key takeaway is that there are a significant number of lives that can be saved by reducing emissions,” says R. Daniel Bressler, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University who is the author of the new study, published Thursday in the journal Nature Communications.

When he factored in the latest mortality research, Bressler found that about 74 million lives could be saved this century if humans cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, compared with a scenario in which the Earth experiences a catastrophic 4 degrees Celsius (about 7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming by the end of the century.

He hopes the findings will be helpful to a federal working group currently reassessing how the government calculates the costs and benefits of climate policies. Since 2010, the federal government has calculated the “social cost of carbon” — a dollar amount that represents the cost associated with emitting 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Those costs include changes to agricultural productivity, energy use, species extinction, sea level rise and human health.

The social cost of carbon informs trillions of dollars of federal policy, including regulations about vehicle tailpipe emissions, power plants and appliance efficiency standards.

“There have been over 100 U.S. government regulations where the social cost of carbon was used,” says Maureen Cropper, a climate economist at the University of Maryland, who co-chaired a 2017 National Academies of Sciences committee on the social cost of carbon.

At least 11 states also use the social cost of carbon to inform decisions about their power grids, efficiency regulations and other climate policies, Cropper says, and Canada based its own cost number on the original U.S. calculations.

Having an accurate cost number is especially important at a time when Congress and state governments are considering major infrastructure investments, Bressler says.

“Imagine you’re looking at the cost-benefit analysis of building a new power plant,” Bressler says. “You’re trying to compare a coal plant to a wind farm. And that coal-fired power plant is producing a lot more carbon dioxide emissions. How do we think about the costs associated with that?”

It depends on whom you ask. Under the Obama administration, the cost associated with emitting carbon was calculated to be at least seven times higher than under the Trump administration, mostly because the latter purposely ignored the effects of U.S. emissions on the rest of the world.

President Biden reinstated the Obama-era cost number and directed a federal working group to reexamine the calculation to make sure it includes the most up-to-date research about the costs of climate change. A new cost number is expected in early 2022.

Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11

The Recycling Myth

Big Oil’s solution for plastic waste littered with failure

Bales of plastic waste piled up at advanced recycling firm Renewlogy in Salt Lake City, Utah on May 18, 2021. The company said its technology could turn hard-to-recycle plastic garbage into diesel fuel. REUTERS/George Frey

By JOE BROCK, VALERIE VOLCOVICI and JOHN GEDDIE

Filed July 29, 2021, 11 a.m. GMT

In early 2018, residents of Boise, Idaho were told by city officials that a breakthrough technology could transform their hard-to-recycle plastic waste into low-polluting fuel. The program, backed by Dow Inc, one of the world’s biggest plastics producers, was hailed locally as a greener alternative to burying it in the county landfill.

A few months later, residents of Boise and its suburbs began stuffing their yogurt containers, cereal-box liners and other plastic waste into special orange garbage bags, which were then trucked more than 300 miles (483 kilometers) away, across the state line to Salt Lake City, Utah.

The destination was a company called Renewlogy. The startup marketed itself as an “advanced recycling” company capable of handling hard-to-recycle plastics such as plastic bags or takeout containers – stuff most traditional recyclers won’t touch. Renewlogy’s technology, company founder Priyanka Bakaya told local media at the time, would heat plastic in a special oxygen-starved chamber, transforming the trash into diesel fuel.

Boise, Idaho resident David Garman places plastic waste into his recycling bin. More than 90% of the world’s plastic garbage gets dumped or incinerated because there is no cheap way to repurpose it. REUTERS/Brian Losness

Within a year, however, that effort ground to a halt. The project’s failure, detailed for the first time by Reuters, shows the enormous obstacles confronting advanced recycling, a set of reprocessing technologies that the plastics industry is touting as an environmental savior – and sees as key to its own continued growth amid mounting global pressure to curb the use of plastic.

Renewlogy’s equipment could not process plastic “films” such as cling wrap, as promised, Boise’s Materials Management Program Manager Peter McCullough told Reuters. The city remains in the recycling program, he said, but its plastic now meets a low-tech end: It’s being trucked to a cement plant northeast of Salt Lake City that burns it for fuel.

Renewlogy said in an emailed response to Reuters’ questions that it could recycle plastic films. The trouble, it said, was that Boise’s waste was contaminated with other garbage at 10 times the level it was told to expect.

Boise spokesperson Colin Hickman said the city was not aware of any statements or assurances made to Renewlogy about specific levels of contamination.

Hefty EnergyBag, as the recycling program in Boise is known, is a collaboration between Dow and U.S. packaging firm Reynolds Consumer Products Inc, maker of the program’s orange garbage sacks and popular household goods such as Hefty trash bags, plastic food wrap and aluminum foil. Hefty EnergyBag said in an emailed response to questions that it “continues to work with companies to help advance technologies that enable other end uses for the collected plastics.” It declined to answer questions about Renewlogy’s operations, as did Dow spokesperson Kyle Bandlow. Reynolds did not respond to requests for comment.

The collapse of Boise’s advanced recycling plan is not an isolated case. In the past two years, Reuters has learned, three separate advanced recycling projects backed by other major companies – in the Netherlands, Indonesia and the United States – have been dropped or indefinitely delayed because they were not commercially viable.

In all, Reuters examined 30 projects by two-dozen advanced recycling companies across three continents and interviewed more than 40 people with direct knowledge of this industry, including plastics industry officials, recycling executives, scientists, policymakers and analysts.

Most of those endeavors are agreements between small advanced recycling firms and big oil and chemicals companies or consumer brands, including ExxonMobil Corp, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Procter & Gamble Co (P&G). All are still operating on a modest scale or have closed down, and more than half are years behind schedule on previously announced commercial plans, according to the Reuters review. Three advanced recycling companies that have gone public in the last year have seen their stock prices decline since their market debuts.

PLASTIC BOOM

Many advanced recycling projects have emerged in recent years in response to a global explosion of plastic waste. More than 90% gets dumped or incinerated because there’s no cheap way to repurpose it, according to a landmark 2017 study published in the journal Science Advances.

Not only is this garbage choking landfills and despoiling oceans, it’s contributing to global warming because it’s made from fossil fuels. At a time when demand for transport fuel is under pressure from government vehicle-efficiency mandates and the rise of electric cars, the oil industry is doubling down on plastics. Plastic production – which industry analysts forecast to double by 2040 – will be the biggest growth market for oil demand over the next decade, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency.

Plastic production – which industry analysts forecast to double by 2040 – will be the biggest growth market for oil demand over the next decade.

Source: International Energy Agency

A number of U.S. and European cities have already levied bans or consumer fees on single-use plastic bags. Pressure is also building for “polluter-pays” laws that would shift the cost of waste collection from taxpayers to the companies that make and use plastic. Earlier this month, Maine became the first U.S. state to pass such legislation.

Enter advanced recycling. Also known as “chemical recycling,” advanced recycling is an umbrella term for processes that use heat or chemicals to turn plastic waste into fuel or reclaimed resin to make new plastic.

The American Chemistry Council (ACC), an industry group whose membership is dominated by plastics makers, says polluter-pays measures would hurt the economy. It’s urging U.S. lawmakers instead to ease regulations on and provide incentives to advanced recycling companies.

As of July, 14 U.S. states had passed these kinds of laws. At least $500 million in public funds has been spent since 2017 on 51 U.S. advanced recycling projects, the environmental group Greenpeace said in a report last year. Boise’s government, for example, has spent at least $736,000 on garbage bags for its program, according to purchase orders and invoices between May 2018 and April 2020 obtained by Reuters through public records requests.

The ACC says these technologies are game-changers because they could potentially process all types of plastic, eliminating expensive sorting and cleaning.

Joshua Baca, vice president for plastics at the American Chemistry Council, testifying before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on June 24, 2021 in support of federal measures to promote advanced recycling. C-SPAN

“The potential is enormous,” said Joshua Baca, vice president of the ACC’s plastics division. The ACC this month called on Congress to develop a national strategy to reduce plastic waste, including “rapid scaling” of advanced recycling.

However, the Reuters review found some advanced recycling companies struggling with the same obstacles that have bedeviled traditional recyclers for decades: the expense of collecting, sorting and cleaning plastic trash, and creating end products that can compete on price and quality with fossil fuels or virgin plastic.

Transitioning from the lab to the real-world chaos of dirty and improperly sorted household plastic waste has proven too much for some of these newcomers, said Helen McGeough, a London-based senior plastic recycling analyst at Independent Commodity Intelligence Services, a data and analytics firm.

“People have entered into this, perhaps not understanding the processes properly, the waste that they are handling, and so that’s why some things have failed,” McGeough told Reuters.

Advanced recycling is in its infancy, and as with any emerging technology, setbacks are to be expected, a dozen industry players said.

So far, some of their own research shows it’s no panacea.

An assessment of the Hefty EnergyBag program was commissioned by Reynolds. It compared the environmental impact of recycling plastic waste through a heating process known as pyrolysis – the approach Renewlogy used – to two traditional ways of handling it: burning it in cement kilns or putting it in a landfill.

The study, published on the Hefty EnergyBag program’s website last year, found that in Boise’s case, pyrolysis fared worst among the three in terms of its overall global warming potential. That measure estimated the greenhouse gas emissions of the whole process, from manufacturing the garbage bags and transporting the waste to the energy used in the recycling process.

A narrower analysis, looking just at the final recycling process and its contribution to global warming, found that pyrolysis scored better than landfilling but was worse than burning plastic in a cement kiln.

“These types of studies will really push the chemical recyclers to think about their operations,” said Tad Radzinski, president of Sustainable Solutions Corporation, the consultancy which conducted the study.

The study noted its calculations came from various sources, including a U.S.-based pyrolysis plant that has experience processing the Hefty EnergyBag materials. Asked whether Renewlogy’s plant was the one it examined, Sustainable Solutions said it could not name the plant because of a non-disclosure agreement with that facility.

Reynolds and Dow had no comment about the study.

Renewlogy said it supplied no data to Sustainable Solutions. “Our numbers are vastly different from those used in the report,” Renewlogy said in response to Reuters’ questions.

Orange bags filled with plastic waste in Boise. A recycling effort to turn this garbage into diesel fuel failed. It is now burned in a cement plant. REUTERS/Brian Losness

CASHING IN ON TRASH

Advanced recycling projects have mushroomed globally, especially since 2018. That’s when China, once the top buyer of the world’s used plastic, banned these imports because its recyclers were overwhelmed. Other countries, too, are shutting their doors to foreign waste, putting pressure on the developed world to deal with its own garbage.

The boom is also being fueled by investors looking for the next hot green-tech industry.

Most of the advanced recycling firms involved in the projects reviewed by Reuters use a form of pyrolysis, the process of breaking down matter using high temperatures in an environment with little or no oxygen.

Pyrolysis has been tried before on plastic. British oil giant BP Plc, German chemical maker BASF SE and U.S. oil company Texaco Inc – now owned by Chevron Corp – all separately dropped plans to scale up waste-to-fuel pyrolysis technologies more than 20 years ago due to technical and commercial problems.

BASF said it now believes such an endeavor is viable. It said in October 2019 it invested 20 million euros in Quantafuel, a Norway-based plastic-to-fuel company listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange.

Some scientists challenge the assertion that melting unsorted plastic made from a variety of chemicals is good for the environment.

“Pyrolysis can generate toxic waste, such as dioxins.”

Hideshige Takada, geochemist and professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology

In addition to consuming large amounts of energy, “pyrolysis can generate toxic waste, such as dioxins,” said Hideshige Takada, a geochemist and professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology who has studied pollutants in waste for decades.

A numerical symbol that commonly appears on plastic packaging to identify the resin out of which the product is made

Nor has pyrolysis proven capable of transforming unsorted garbage into high-quality fuel and clean plastic resin, says Susannah Scott, a chemistry professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who receives funding from the plastics industry to perform recycling research.

Plastics have long been stamped with the numbers 1 to 7 inside the familiar “chasing arrows” logo to help traditional recyclers separate the waste before processing it.

Scott said melting different numbered plastics together through pyrolysis produces a complex blend of hydrocarbons that must then be separated and purified for reuse. That process requires a lot of energy, she said, and typically yields products that don’t measure up to the quality of the original material.

With pyrolysis, “the value of what you’re making is so low,” Scott said.

Advanced recyclers say they’re overcoming these problems with innovations in energy efficiency and purification.

Of two-dozen companies whose projects were reviewed by Reuters, three have gone public in the last year: PureCycle Technologies Inc, Agilyx AS and Pryme B.V. The market value of all has declined since their debuts.

One of the hardest hit has been PureCycle, a Florida-headquartered advanced recycling startup that went public this year through a special purchase acquisition company. It ended its first day of trading on March 18 with shares up 13% to $33, giving it a market capitalization of around $3.8 billion.

But its shares tumbled 40% on May 6, the day short-seller Hindenburg Research published a report calling the recycler’s technology “unproven” and its financial projections “ridiculous.” PureCycle shares have since regained some ground.

PureCycle said the same day that Hindenburg’s report was “designed to drive down the stock price in order to serve the short seller’s economic interests.” It declined further comment about the report.

Hindenburg declined to comment.

According to its website, PureCycle uses a “ground-breaking” recycling process developed by P&G, maker of Gillette razors and Head & Shoulders shampoo, to turn a particular type of waste plastic, polypropylene, back into resin. PureCycle is around two years behind schedule on its first commercial plant, which its CEO Mike Otworth told Reuters on March 6 was due to slower-than-expected debt financing and the coronavirus pandemic.

P&G declined to comment.

The ACC, the chemicals trade group, continues to promote the potential of advanced recycling. Last year, it spent $14 million lobbying members of Congress on various issues, the most the organization has ever spent, according to OpenSecrets.org, a non-profit initiative that tracks money in U.S. politics.

Until her two-year term ended in December, Renewlogy’s Bakaya was the chair of the ACC’s advanced recycling unit.

Renewlogy is among a crop of “advanced recycling” startups using heat or chemicals to turn plastic waste into new products. REUTERS/George Frey

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ONE TO WATCH

Bakaya grew up in Australia after her father emigrated there from India, she told business podcast Upside in 2020. She attended Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), graduating from the latter in 2011. She became a prominent figure in advanced recycling, promoting her technology on media forums such as National Geographic and the BBC.

Bakaya garnered a string of accolades, including making Fortune’s “40 under 40: Ones to Watch” list in 2013.

She declined to be interviewed for this story.

Renewlogy’s Priyanka Bakaya holding up a jar of hard-to-recycle plastics at a TEDx talk in Amherst, Massachusetts in 2015. Cade Belisle/The Massachusetts Daily Collegian/Handout via REUTERS

Bakaya said in a TEDx talk in 2015 that she initially set up a company called PK Clean to recover oil from “mixed, dirty landfill-bound plastic.” PK Clean later changed its name to Renewlogy, Bakaya said in an interview with MIT in 2017.

Steve Case, co-founder and former chief executive of AOL Inc, invested $100,000 in PK Clean in 2016, according to a blog he authored on the website of his venture capital firm Revolution. The governor’s office in Utah said it gave a total of $200,000 in grants in 2016 and 2017, while Salt Lake City’s Department of Economic Development provided $350,000 in loans in 2015 to PK Clean, according to Peter Makowski, acting director of business development for the department.

Revolution did not respond to requests for comment. The Utah governor’s office said the program under which PK Clean received the grants had ended and it was no longer funding the company. Salt Lake City said its loans to PK Clean have been repaid.

Boise first sent plastic waste to Renewlogy in June 2018, followed by at least five more truckloads in the following months, minutes of meetings of Boise’s Public Works Commission show. In June 2019, Boise said in a statement it had temporarily stopped sending its waste to Renewlogy while the Utah plant upgraded its equipment. Hefty EnergyBag said Renewlogy left the program for good in December 2020. Renewlogy did not respond to questions about how much of Boise’s plastic waste it had recycled.

Reuters made an unannounced visit to Renewlogy’s Salt Lake City operation in mid-May. On a Monday afternoon, there was little visible activity outside the facility; the front parking lot contained five passenger cars, two of which had flat tires. The back lot contained dozens of bales of plastic waste dotted with faded orange recycling bags stacked next to rusty oil drums and a wheelbarrow full of glass jars containing a murky liquid.

Benjamin Coates, Renewlogy co-founder and chief technology officer, outside the company’s Salt Lake City facility. REUTERS/George Frey

Renewlogy co-founder Benjamin Coates emerged from the building to speak to a reporter. Asked about the status of the company, Coates said opponents of chemical recycling were trying to damage the industry by pushing “conspiracy theories” about the technology. He directed further questions to Bakaya before telling Reuters to leave the premises.

Jeremiah Bates, owner of a tire shop next door to Renewlogy, said the recycling plant didn’t appear to have been active for at least six months and that he had complained to Coates and the local fire marshal about the debris piling up out back.

Renewlogy did not respond to questions about Bates’ assertions.

Jeremiah Bates, owner of Jeremiah’s Tires Services next door to Renewlogy. He told Reuters in May that the recycling facility didn’t appear to have been active for at least six months and that he was concerned about debris piling up. Renewlogy did not respond to Bates’ assertions. REUTERS/George Frey

An inspector from the Salt Lake City Fire Prevention Bureau, Jose Vila Trejo, visited the recycling facility on Feb. 12, according to his inspection report. Vila Trejo told Reuters that his tour of the plant turned up no fire hazard because there were no machines present that could generate heat, flames or sparks.

“They were basically shut down,” Vila Trejo said. “There was no equipment in there.”

Renewlogy confirmed to Reuters that Vila Trejo inspected the building in February. It said the facility had not shut down and that there was equipment at the site.

Renewlogy said it shares the Salt Lake City premises with other companies that work on pyrolysis of wood and other waste, and that much of the junk Reuters saw on the back lot belonged to other firms that it declined to name. Renewlogy added that it continues to operate its plant as a testing facility to develop new plastic recycling technologies.

Reuters exclusively reported in January that an advanced plastic recycling project in India, which was a collaboration between Renewlogy and a charity funded by plastics makers, collapsed last year.

Renewlogy later this year plans to launch another plastics recycling facility, this one in Phoenix, Arizona, according to its website. Joe Giudice, assistant public works director at the City of Phoenix, confirmed the facility was due to start being set up in August. More taxpayer money is due to flow to the company.

The Arizona Innovation Challenge, a state-funded program, in 2017 awarded Renewlogy a $250,000 grant, funds that will be dispersed when Renewlogy sets up in Phoenix, the Arizona Commerce Authority, which runs the program, told Reuters.

Giudice said Phoenix would not be sending Renewlogy any film plastics due to uncertainty over whether they could be easily recycled.

Renewlogy said it would be “starting very small” and would be “validating each step before scaling up.”

Trucks arrive at the Devil’s Slide cement plant in Morgan, Utah. The facility has been burning Boise’s plastic waste since March 2020 as a replacement for coal. REUTERS/George Frey

BOUND FOR THE DEVIL’S SLIDE

Back in Boise, the Hefty EnergyBag program continues, but Renewlogy is no longer involved. Waste in those orange Hefty bags now helps fuel the Devil’s Slide, a cement plant in Morgan, Utah, part of the U.S. unit of Holcim, a European multinational firm. The company told Reuters it has been burning Boise’s plastic since March 2020 as a replacement for coal.

Hefty EnergyBag has forged similar arrangements with cement makers in Nebraska and Georgia, according to the environmental study of the program commissioned by Reynolds.

Environmental groups tracking chemical pollutants say incinerating plastic this way produces significant carbon emissions and releases dioxins associated with the chemicals in the plastic. This is in no way “recycling,” said Lee Bell, advisor to the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), a global network of public interest groups working to eliminate toxic pollutants.

Bandlow, the Dow spokesperson, said the Hefty EnergyBag program was helping to “transform waste into valuable products.” He declined to respond to questions about the environmental impact of burning plastic in cement kilns.

reuters investigates

Jocelyn Gerst, a spokesperson for Holcim’s U.S. operations, said the emissions levels of the plastic waste it burns are “the same or lower than traditional fuel,” and that it had a state permit to incinerate plastic. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it does not have any data to show that “substitution of plastic waste for coal makes a significant difference in air emissions.”

Back in Idaho, Anne Baxter Terribilini, a resident of Meridian, a Boise suburb, said she initially was eager to participate in the Hefty EnergyBag program, but was disillusioned to learn that her plastic waste now ends up in a cement kiln.

“I hate to feel like we are being lulled into complacency, believing that we are having a positive impact on the environment, when really we aren’t,” she said.

Boise officials said they’ve been transparent with the public about the handling of their plastic waste. Haley Falconer, Boise’s sustainability officer, said the city has learned from the setbacks. In hindsight, she said, it would have been better to build a customized recycling program with a local partner so that Boise could control where its waste was going.

But the city has no place else to put its plastic garbage, so it’s sticking with the Hefty EnergyBag program, Boise’s McCullough said.

From Shell to Unilever, plastics polluters back recycling-tech flops

Some of the world’s biggest multinationals are hailing so-called advanced recycling as the solution to a waste crisis that has lawmakers looking to crack down on plastics use.

The impetus is coming from two sets of players: big oil and chemical companies that make the petrochemicals used to manufacture plastic, and global consumer brands that use huge amounts of the material in packaging. These giants are striking deals with startups that claim they can transform this garbage into fuel or resin to make new plastic.

But some recent efforts in this “high-tech” recycling boom have already fizzled.

At least four high-profile projects have been dropped or indefinitely delayed over the last two years because they weren’t commercially viable, Reuters has learned. Here are the details:

NO DIESEL FOR DOW

Dow Inc, one of the world’s biggest plastics makers, backed a program that in 2018 began taking plastic waste from residents in Boise, Idaho and trucking it more than 300 miles (483 kilometers) across the state line to Salt Lake City, Utah. There it was to be converted into diesel fuel by Renewlogy, an advanced recycling startup.

At least four high-profile projects have been dropped or indefinitely delayed over the last two years because they weren’t commercially viable.

Renewlogy touted its technology as capable of handling all types of plastic waste, including takeout containers and cling wrap, things many traditional recyclers won’t touch. But Renewlogy was unable to handle plastic “films,” used to make food packaging and grocery bags, and eventually left the program, the City of Boise told Reuters.

Renewlogy said it left the program because plastic waste being sent from Boise was too contaminated to recycle.

Dow deferred questions to Renewlogy.

Boise’s plastic waste is now being trucked to a Utah cement plant, which burns it for fuel.

SHELL PLANT ‘REPURPOSED’

In March 2019, Enerkem, a Montreal-based advanced recycler, announced that Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch Shell Plc had joined a consortium of equity partners in a waste-to-chemicals recycling project to be based in Rotterdam, which they claimed was the first of its kind in Europe.

Enerkem says its technology uses extreme heat to turn plastic and other common household garbage into “bio-methanol,” a fuel for use in the chemical industry and transportation sector. The Rotterdam project was supposed to convert waste from the equivalent of more than 700,000 homes, Enerkem said in a March 2019 press release.

Two sources directly involved with the project told Reuters it was cancelled late last year due to uncertainty about the plant’s ability to secure a reliable waste supply and to turn a profit.

Enerkem said the project was never cancelled, rather “repurposed” to focus on making jet fuel from waste due to high demand for a sustainable product.

Shell will make a decision in 2022 on whether to invest, a company spokesperson said. Shell declined further comment.

UNILEVER’S ‘RADICAL RECYCLING’ FALTERS

Unilever Plc in 2017 announced it was creating a pilot plant using a “radical recycling process” that turns hard-to-recycle plastic sachets into new packaging. Sachets are used to dispense a vast array of products, including fast-food ketchup, shampoo and toothpaste.

The global consumer products giant told Reuters that its CreaSolv process uses chemicals to dissolve plastic waste into a liquid, drains off the impurities, dries it and extrudes it into clean plastic that can then be turned into new products.

Unilever said in its announcement that it would share this technology with its competitors so that recycling plants could be built around the world.

“At best, the sachets end up in landfill. At worst, they end up as litter in the streets, the waterways and the oceans.”

Unilever in a 2017 announcement about its plastics recycling initiative

Unilever, which makes Dove soap and Hellmann’s mayonnaise, said publicly it began operating a pilot plant in Indonesia in 2018. But within a year it was clear the technology was not commercially viable, and plans to build a full-scale operation were dropped, two people involved in the program told Reuters. Although the sachets could be recycled in small amounts, the people said, it was too expensive to collect, sort and clean enough of these packets to scale up the project without incurring large losses.

In an emailed response to Reuters’ questions, Unilever said the project had faced “some disruption due to Covid-19” but that the pilot plant was still operating. It declined to say at what capacity.

“We’re actively working with others to determine ways to scale this technology,” a company spokesperson said.

On May 6, Reuters called the factory complex where Unilever’s plant was situated in Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia. A front desk operator at the complex said no one had visited Unilever’s recycling facility in at least six months.

Unilever did not respond to questions about this claim.

Consumer goods companies like Unilever use billions of single-serve sachets to sell laundry detergent, instant coffee and other basics, mostly in poor countries. These packets are nearly impossible to recycle, and have become a major source of pollution in places like Africa and Southeast Asia.

“At best, the sachets end up in landfill. At worst, they end up as litter in the streets, the waterways and the oceans,” Unilever said in its 2017 CreaSolv announcement.

DELTA AIRLINES PROJECT GROUNDED

Agilyx, an advanced recycling firm backed by Virgin Group and its billionaire founder Richard Branson, in 2018 announced a deal to convert plastic waste to jet fuel for Delta Air Lines Inc.

Press releases issued by the companies at the time outlined the plan: By 2020, a new plant near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania would supply up to 2,500 barrels a day of “synthetic crude oil” derived from plastics to a nearby refinery owned by Delta.

“This project marks the first truly commercial-scale facility that will advance the new plastics economy,” Agilyx’s CEO at the time, Joe Vaillancourt, said in the release. Branson tweeted on Nov. 25, 2018: “This is a major step forward in the search for a cost effective low carbon aviation fuel.”

Construction on the facility never started.

Current Agilyx CEO Tim Stedman told Reuters in March the project was delayed due to negotiations over contracts and finances and “was eventually killed by COVID,” referring to the pandemic that spread around the world in early 2020. In a June email to Reuters, he described the project as “on hold” and said “we remain optimistic” about its prospects.

A spokesperson for Virgin Group and Richard Branson declined comment and referred questions to Agilyx. A spokesperson for Delta said the project was “on hold” due to the pandemic.

Agilyx and Delta gave no time frame for the project to restart.

Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11

Climate Corner: Talking to kids about climate change

Jul 24, 2021

Linda Eve Seth

editorial@newsandsentinel.com

“Never shelter children from the world.” — Roald Dahl

***

Whether you think our changing climate is a man-made situation or just part of a natural cycle, there is no denying that there are increasing numbers of record-breaking high temperatures, low temperatures, hurricanes, droughts, floods, tornadoes, wild fires …

Whether you get your news and information from the TV, a newspaper, the radio, or from an online source (or likely all of the above) the effects of a warming planet and changing climate patterns are in the news daily.

If the young people in your home are paying any attention at all, they may be struggling to deal with the constant barrage of anxiety-provoking news about the environment. Your kids are hearing warnings and prophecies regarding climate change in the news, on TV, online, in science classrooms, maybe even on the school bus. It’s all around them.

The realities of the world today are tough for parents to grapple with. But it’s even more tough for kids. Our youth deserve to be hopeful about their future.

If adults (parents/teachers) ignore the changing environment, they short change the children in their orbits, but teaching kids about such a complex and unsettling issue can be daunting for any adult.

Parents who are nervous about bringing up climate change with their child might prefer to wait for a teacher to raise the subject first. But parents have a distinct advantage over educators because the former know their children’s interests, their emotional intelligence, and how they’ll be affected by news that’s difficult to hear.

There are plenty of ways to talk about what’s happening to the Earth in age-appropriate ways without frightening a child. The key is to lay a foundation for children to appreciate and be curious about the natural world. The first step parents can take is to help their children develop an appreciation of the natural world before trying to explain climate change. That could mean watching a nature documentary together, visiting a wildlife center, growing a garden, or introducing a child to natural habitats like a creek, beach, or forest. Such experiences give kids a sense of why taking care of the earth is important, which ultimately helps them grasp the stakes of climate change — and care about preventing it.

But understanding the underlying science — let alone its many impacts on the effects of climate change on oceans, animals, crops, land, and the air we breathe — is admittedly complicated. So, for a simple second step, consider sharing books about the environment with your kids; LEARN TOGETHER.

The following books give children the facts — sometimes straight up, sometimes wrapped within the story-telling — to help them learn about the rapidly warming, melting, flooding, parching world that their generation is urgently tasked with protecting.

Here are a few titles to get you started:

* Ages 9+ “Rising Seas” by Keltie Thomas

* Ages 10+ “When the Sky Breaks” by Simon Winchester

* Ages 6-10 “A Place For” by Melissa Stewart, illustrated by Higgins Bond

* Ages 8-12 “The Global Warming Express” by Marina Weber, illus. J. Whysner

* Ages 7+ “Look at the Weather” by Britta Teckentrup

* Ages 5-6 “Great Polar Bear” by Carolyn Lesser

* Ages 3-7 “The Digger and the Flower” by Joseph Kuefler

There are many more books on the subject. Ask your local librarian or the science teacher at school to recommend some that might suit your child’s age, interests, and intellect.

For more specific suggestions about how to talk to your kids about climate change, watch this column next month for a follow-up piece with a few more detailed ideas.

Until then, be kind to your Mother Earth.

***

Linda Eve Seth, SLP, M.Ed., is a mother, grandmother, concerned citizen and member of MOVCA.

Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11

Carbon capture

Jul 22, 2021

The Labor Energy Partnership led by the AFL-CIO and Energy Futures is proposing the Ohio River Valley become a hub for fossil-fuel generated hydrogen and carbon dioxide using carbon capture technology.

The major industry contributing to climate change, fossil fuels, now profits from tax breaks and government funding being directed at Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) projects. Under section 45Q, tax credits for CCS are $35 to $50 per metric ton of CO2 captured.

According to the Department of Energy, CCS research projects received $110 million in 2019, $72 million in 2020, and as of April of 2021 received $75 million. All but five of the 21 large-scale CCS plants sell or send their carbon dioxide to facilities involved in enhanced oil recovery, enabling more oil to be extracted and continuing our reliance on fossil fuels.

Carbon capture technology is still in the early stages of development. It is not ready to be used in the scale necessary to curtail the climate crisis. It has however become a diversion used by industry and governments to avoid doing what needs to be done to actually address the climate crisis in a timely way.

Dr. Randi Pokladnik

Uhrichsville, Ohio

Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11

We are in a climate crisis

The bargainhunter.com

Randi Pokladnik

July 18, 2021

For more than 800,000 years, the carbon-dioxide levels on Earth remained below 300 parts per million. However, since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the late 1800s and the burning of fossil fuels, levels have climbed from approximately 280 ppm to a record high of 415 ppm on April 1, 2021.

As the planet heats up at an alarming rate, West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin thinks we are “setting a very aggressive time table” to reach net-zero emissions. Manchin, the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, told attendees at a recent conference held by the Edison Electric Institute he was worried about coal. It is obvious he’s not worried about the climate.

Neither are most politicians who ignored addressing climate change in the infrastructure bill. The New York Times reported the $579 billion bipartisan bill “does relatively little to fight climate change, an issue that the president has called an existential threat.”

Economically speaking, when it comes to the climate crisis, it is a matter of pay me now or pay me a lot more later. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said in 2020, “By 2050 the costs from climate-change damages could range from $50 trillion to $140 trillion, yet decarbonizing the U.S. grid in 20 years would cost only $4.5 trillion.”

If we cannot afford the costs of an infrastructure bill that truly addresses climate change, can we afford the market costs (economic) and nonmarket costs (lives) that continue to be lost as a result of a warming planet? Regardless of what some politicians might believe, we are in a climate crisis.

France experienced a devastating cold snap this spring. An unusually warm March caused grapes to bud prematurely only to be hit with frigid temperatures in April. It was estimated over 80% of the vineyards in France experienced damage. The economic loss was estimated at $2 billion. Researchers say these early warming periods are happening more often as a result of a warming planet.

The French Alps appeared to be bleeding this spring. It was not blood making the ice red but an overgrowth of a red algae found in the higher elevations of the mountain range. As carbon-dioxide levels increase and nutrient-rich pollution reaches the mountains, these algae multiply rapidly, similar to the blue-green algae that have caused problems in Lake Erie and the Ohio River.

The algae responsible for causing red snow belongs to the genus Sanguina. Because darker colored algae absorb rather than reflect sunlight, they create a positive feedback loop. The higher the carbon-dioxide levels, the more algae growth, and the more algae growth, the more heat is absorbed.

Just last month the Pacific Northwest was hit with a historic record heat wave killing 116 in Oregon and 78 in Washington. It caused fires to erupt in the region. Scientists determined this heat wave was 150 times more likely because of man-made induced climate change.

The heat wave and subsequent heating of shoreline water along the Pacific Coast was cited as the cause of death of more than a billion sea creatures such as sea stars, clams, snails and muscles. Portland, Oregon reached a record-breaking high of 116 F.

Elsa, the fifth tropical storm of 2021, became a record setter as the earliest named “E” storm on July 1, edging out Edouard, which was named on July 6, 2020. Elsa is the earliest hurricane observed in the Caribbean since Hurricane Alma in May 20, 1970. Elsa arrived a month earlier than the normal start date for the Caribbean storm season, which is Aug. 10.

One would think these climate events and hundreds of others are enough to justify taking definitive and quick action to move the world away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. Sadly, that’s not the case, especially in the U.S.

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said, “I don’t know about you guys, but I think climate change is bull-(expletive deleted).”

But Dr. Michael Notaro, associate director of the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research, said data shows Wisconsin’s climate is changing. The months of November, December, March and April now have very little snow. Most of the snow is now compacted into the middle of the winter season in January and February.

The senator might want to consider a report by the Natural Resource Defense Council that shows Wisconsin has a lot to lose economically if they lose their winter season. Winter sports generate $373 million in labor income alone.

Brian Mark, Ohio’s state climatologist, and Aaron Wilson, a senior research associate at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, point to examples of climate-change impacts in Ohio. There are longer drought periods, more intense rainfalls, a noticeable lack of snowfall across the state and the explosion of ticks in forested areas. Mark said while we don’t see wildfires like California, we are seeing higher nighttime temperatures where the lows stay in the 80s in the summer and people must run their air-conditioners more often.

Unfortunately, a majority of Ohio’s state politicians and the current governor seem to be ignoring this issue. Instead of encouraging renewable energy, they have done everything in their power to thwart it and promote fossil fuels.

In May of this year, the Scioto Analysis, an Ohio public policy research group, released a study that showed Ohio is vulnerable to climate change. The study also showed if the state were to adopt energy policies such as a renewable portfolio standard, cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax, it could result in substantial economic gains for the state and the world.

If any state in the U.S. is seeing the effects of climate change, it’s Florida, the state that banned their Department of Environmental Protection from using the term climate change. Instead of acting to remedy climate change, Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, signed into law on June 21 a bill that will prevent cities from shifting away from fossil-fuel sources.

Similar bills have been signed into law in other states, like Texas, a state that saw a record-setting winter storm this past February. The freezing weather and failing energy grid were responsible for the deaths of over 80 people.

Contrary to what Sen. Manchin thinks, we need an aggressive time table to curtail the worst effects of climate change. We cannot afford to remain inactive. Greta Thunberg has repeatedly said, “I want you to act as if the house is on fire because it is.”

Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11

Climate Corner: River can’t be sewer, drinking water source

Jul 17, 2021

Randi Pokladnik

editorial@newsandsentinel.com

The Ohio River gets its name from the Iroquois Indian word Oyo, meaning great river. It is formed by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers starting in Pittsburgh. The river is 981 miles long with the deepest point (132 feet depth) being close to Louisville, Ky. The river is home to 20 locks and dams, 49 power generating facilities, and carries over 230 million tons of cargo each year. It is also the drinking water source for over 5 million people.

I grew up close to the river in the 1960s in Toronto, Ohio. My siblings and I could climb up the hill behind our house and get a great view of the river. That view also included the Titanium Metals Corporation as well as Weirton Steel’s Brown’s Island coke ovens. We kids tried to imagine what the river might have looked like when only the First Nation tribes lived along its shores; a time when the water was clean enough to drink without worry.

Sadly, the river is notorious for being one of the most polluted in the nation, receiving pollution from both point and non-point sources. A non-point source is an amorphous source and includes things like run-off from agricultural sources or parking lots. While these sources do impact the river, they are often hard to monitor or control.

In the fall of 2019, an over-300-mile stretch of the river was affected by a harmful algal bloom (HAB) caused in part by non-point source pollution. According to the National Resource Defense Council, “an algal bloom is an overgrowth of microscopic algae or algae-like bacteria in fresh, salt or brackish waters.” Depending on the type of algae, blooms can be benign or toxic. Those, like the one on the Ohio in 2019, are caused by blue-green algae and can produce toxins like microcystin.

Officials blamed the bloom on drought conditions as well as high temperatures, but nutrient pollution plays a big factor in increasing harmful algal blooms. These nutrients (nitrogen and phosphates) are present in precipitation run-off from places like animal feedlots, farms and urban lawns.

Point sources of pollution, sources where one can point to a discharge pipe, are equally as dangerous. Public records reveal that over 6,900 toxic-containing discharges are poured into the river’s watershed. These discharges can be from industrial or municipal sources.

Discharges into the river fall under the Federal Clean Water Act. Some of the initial goals of this legislation were “to eliminate the discharge of pollutants into navigable waters by 1985”and “to prohibit the discharge of toxic pollutants.” This would be accomplished by having facilities obtain a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit (NPDES).

There are over 40,000 active NPDES permits in the Ohio River watershed. Although these permits must allow for public comments, according to Jim Hecker, environmental enforcement director for Public Justice, very few people can actually monitor and comment on permits and it is difficult to know what to even say in a permit comment. This is why only a handful of people or environmental groups comment in each state.

Even then, environmental departments in individual states along the Ohio River have the final say in granting and enforcing permits. A study from Fronter Group and Environment America Research and Policy Center examined NPDES permit data from 2011 to 2017 and found the following: there were 491 major facilities in Ohio and 407 facilities in West Virginia that had exceeded the requirements for their permits; facility inspections were down significantly; fines for violations were minimal at best; and state officials showed a “lack-luster” enforcement of permits.

Since its formation in 1948, the organization responsible for tracking water quality issues in the Ohio River is the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission or ORSANCO. This eight-state federally funded organization is the only watchdog we have to monitor organic and inorganic pollutants in the Ohio River.

Recently, ORSANCO held their Technical Committee meeting online. These meetings are open to the public, and the data is also available on their webpage. Dr. Sherri Mason, a chemistry professor from Penn State, shared her concerns over plastics and microplastics contaminating freshwater sources like the Ohio River. We know from studies that single-use plastic wastes are wreaking havoc with our health and the environment. Yet, there are plans to build more single-use plastics making cracker plants along the Ohio River. The Shell Ethane Plastic Cracker Facility in Monaca, Pa., is scheduled to go online by Spring of 2022.

ORSANCO’s technical staff has no system in place to detect microplastics or the toxic plasticizers used in making plastics. There is currently no baseline data on how much microplastic materials, including fibers and pre-production pellets (nurdles) are in the Ohio River.

There are also plans to build underground storage (Appalachian Storage Hub) for natural gas liquids in salt deposits under the Ohio River. Powhattan Salt Company LLC wants to withdraw over 1,900,000 gallons of freshwater from the Ohio River on a daily basis to create just one of several planned storage caverns. They also plan to store millions of gallons of the resulting salt brine next to the river behind a dam, with the outflow of the dam flowing into the Ohio River.

A network of companies recently announced their intentions to move “millions of gallons of briny, toxic, wastewater from shale gas drilling and fracking operations” via barges down the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers. These wastes can contain high levels of water-soluble Radium-226. ORSANCO does not have the capabilities to test for this isotope.

If the Ohio Valley region becomes the next petrochemical hub of the USA, the Ohio River and its watershed will indeed be severely impacted. The river cannot be both a sewer and a source of drinking water. Mark B. Hamilton, author of the recently published book, “OYO. The Beautiful River,” said of the Ohio River, “a river without water; food we cannot eat; water we cannot drink; a swim we cannot take.”

***

Randi Pokladnik, Ph.D., of Uhrichsville, is a retired research chemist who volunteers with Mid Ohio Valley Climate Action. She has a doctorate degree in Environmental Studies and is certified in Hazardous Materials Regulations.

Suggested Readings for August 2021

The latest climate report is alarming (Opinion)

Climate Corner: Bipartisanship, money should not be focus

Eric Engle

editorial@newsandsentinel.com

Climate Corner: What Can an Individual Do?

George Banziger

editorial@newsandsentinel.com

Cutting Carbon Pollution Quickly Would Save About 74 Million Lives, Study Finds

The Recycling Myth

Big Oil’s solution for plastic waste littered with failure

Climate Corner: Talking to kids about climate change

Linda Eve Seth

editorial@newsandsentinel.com

Carbon capture

We are in a climate crisis

Climate Corner: River can’t be sewer, drinking water source

Randi Pokladnik

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