The president of plastics at Brightmark stands amid 900 tons of waste plastic in Indiana. Their purpose is to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel, naphtha and wax.

From an Article by James Bruggers, Inside Climate News, September 11, 2022

ASHLEY, Indiana—The bales, bundles and bins of plastic waste are stacked 10 feet high in a shiny new warehouse that rises from a grassy field near a town known for its bright yellow smiley-face water tower.

Jay Schabel exudes the same happy optimism. He’s president of the plastics division of Brightmark Energy, a San Francisco-based company vying to be on the leading edge of a yet-to-be-proven new industry—chemical recycling of plastic.

Walking in the warehouse among 900 tons of a mix of crushed plastic waste in late July, Schabel talked about how he has worked 14 years to get to this point: Bringing experimental technology to the precipice of what he anticipates will be a global, commercial success. He hopes it will also take a bite out of the plastic waste that’s choking the planet.

“When I saw the technology, I said this is the sort of thing I can get out of bed and work on to change the world,” said Schabel, an electrical engineer. “My job is to set it up and get it running,” he said of the $260 million, 120,000 square foot building and adjacent chemical operations. “Then perpetuate it around the world.”

But the company, which broke ground in Ashley in 2019, has struggled to get the plant operating on a commercial basis, where as many as 80 employees would process 100,000 tons of plastic waste each year in a round-the-clock operation.

Schabel said that was to change in August, with its first planned commercial shipment of fuel to its main customer, global energy giant BP. But a company spokesman said in mid-August that the date for the first commercial shipment had been pushed back to September, with “full-scale operation…extending through the end of the year and into 2023.”

Even with that new timetable, the plant, located along Interstate 69 in the northeast corner of Indiana, Brightmark faces ongoing economic, political and — environmental critics and some scientists say — technical headwinds. Its business model must contend with plastics that were never designed to be recycled. U.S. recycling policies are dysfunctional, and most plastics end up in landfills and incinerators, or on streets and waterways as litter.

Environmental organizations with their powerful allies in Congress are fighting against chemical recycling and the technology found in this plant, known as pyrolysis, in particular, because they see it as the perpetuation of climate-damaging fossil fuels. “The problem with pyrolysis is we should not be producing more fossil fuels,” said Judith Enck, a former regional director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the founder and executive director of Beyond Plastics, an environmental group. “We need to be going in the opposite direction. Using plastic waste as a feedstock for fossil fuels is doubling the damage to the environment because there are very negative environmental impacts from the production, disposal and use of plastics.”

The global plastics crisis is well documented with annual plastic production soaring from 20 million metric tons to 400 million metric tons over the last five decades. Nearly all are made from fossil fuels and much is designed to resist biodegradation and can last in the environment for hundreds of years, increasingly as microscopic bits that are ubiquitous and have invaded the human body.

The amount of plastic discharged into the ocean could reach up to 53 million metric tons per year by 2030, or roughly half of the total weight of fish caught from the ocean annually, according to a December report by a committee of scientists with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

The U.S. produces the most plastic waste in the world, nearly 300 pounds per person in a year, the report found. But only a small percentage, less than 6 percent, of plastics used by consumers in the U.S. actually get recycled, a recent analysis of EPA data by Beyond Plastics and the Last Beach Cleanup found.

What does get recycled, such as soda bottles, typically goes through a mechanical process involving sorting, grinding, cleaning, melting and remolding, often into other products. But there are limits to the kinds of plastics that are acceptable for mechanical recycling and how many times these plastics can be re-used in this way.

Chemical recycling, called advanced recycling by the chemical industry— which touts it as almost a Holy Grail of solutions—seeks to turn the harder-to-recycle kinds of plastic waste back into plastics’ basic chemical building blocks. Pyrolysis is among the chemical recycling technologies getting the most attention, with industry representatives saying pyrolysis can turn mixtures of plastic waste into new plastic, fuel or chemicals for making everything from detergents to cars to clothing.

With these plastic wastes, such as grocery bags, cups, lids, containers and films, the industry claims, pyrolysis heats them at high temperatures in a vessel, with little or no oxygen and sometimes with a chemical catalyst, to create synthetic gases, a synthetic fuel called pyrolysis oil, and a carbon char waste product. It’s a process that’s been around for centuries, used for making tar from timber for wooden ships in the 1600s, for example, or coke from coal for steelmaking in the last century.

Brightmark describes its plant as the “largest-scale pyrolysis facility in the world.” It is designed to take plastic waste hauled in from municipal and industrial sources. The waste is cleaned, chopped up and pressed into small pellets, then fed into pyrolysis tanks and heated by burning natural gas. The synthetic gas created by the pyrolysis process is then mixed with the natural gas to generate temperatures between 800 degrees and 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, Schabel said.

“We flush the molecules out and condense them,” Schabel said, describing what the high heat does to the plastic waste. “We are hitting them with a thermal hammer to break them into pieces. They want to come back together but we control how they come back together.”

The char is sent to a landfill as non-hazardous waste, he said, and the pyrolysis oil goes to a small-scale refinery behind the warehouse, where it’s separated into low-sulfur diesel fuel, flammable liquid naphtha, and wax for industrial uses or candles. “We call this a hyper-local oil well,” Schabel said on the tour. But a lot of what comes into the plant gets lost in the process.

In a document Brightmark filed in December with the EPA, the company acknowledged that just 20 percent of the plant’s output is its primary product — what it described as fuels. Most of the rest, 70 percent, is the synthetic gas that the company said is combusted with natural gas to generate heat, with 20 percent of that syngas burned away in a flare. The rest is the char, according to the filing.

The company now disputes its own numbers, with a spokeswoman saying company officials are working to get them corrected to reflect a larger percentage of output as diesel fuel or naphtha. But the EPA filing plays into one of the sharpest criticisms of pyrolysis — that it’s not really plastics recycling at all.

With pyrolysis, “what you make is what I would call, and I grew up in New Jersey, so forgive me, a dog’s breakfast of compounds,” said University of Pittsburgh Professor Eric Beckman, a chemical engineer with a Ph.D. in polymer science. “It’s like everything you can think of, gases, liquids, solids,” he said.

If plastic waste could be turned only into naphtha, a bonafide building block for plastics, a company could operate what Beckman called a closed loop, and circular system for plastics that could be considered recycling, he said. But that is not what pyrolysis does.

“And this is where it gets controversial,” Beckman said, adding: “because you have people doing this who are saying, ‘We’re recycling it.’ No, you’re not. You’re burning it.” And any time that fossil fuels are being burned, he said, they are emitting greenhouse gas and air pollutants.

Jan Dell, a chemical engineer who has worked as a consultant to the oil and gas industry and now runs The Last Beach Cleanup, a nonprofit that fights plastic waste, agreed. “The fact that pyrolysis operations have to burn so much of the material to get to the high temperatures is a fundamental flaw,” she said.

>>> To be continued tomorrow …….

Construction phase of Shell Cracker Plant in Monaca, PA, October 2019

Spokespersons for both PTT Global Chemical America and JobsOhio said this week the company remains committed to building the multi-billion dollar project in southeast Ohio’s Belmont County as PTTGCA continues searching for an investment partner.

The $20 million was paid to Bechtel Corp. in 2019 to complete site engineering and site preparation for a plant that would convert ethane – a byproduct of natural gas drilling from the Utica and Marcellus shale fields – into different types of polyethylene, raw materials for products that range from plastic bottles to vehicle parts.

The project has been optimistically viewed as a potential economic development boost for an Appalachian region still struggling from the loss of manufacturing jobs decades ago. The plant, its backers say, would create thousands of construction jobs and hundreds of permanent positions and spawn a manufacturing renaissance along the Ohio River.

A similar $6 billion petrochemical plant built by Shell Chemical Appalachia LLC 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of Pittsburgh is scheduled to begin operations this year. Shell announced its final investment decision in 2016. News that PTTGC would partner with a Japanese company to build a petrochemical plant in Belmont County first surfaced in 2015, spurring talk of a regional petrochemical hub to take advantage of abundant supplies of ethane.

In an interview with The Associated Press this week, Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted expressed skepticism about whether the Ohio plant would be built. “They can’t find a partner because of market conditions,” Husted said. “They’re the ones who made the promise on what they’re going to do, and it’s up to them.”

Husted said the site, which is owned by PTTCGA, would be attractive to other developers. “There’s a lot of options for other end users,” Husted said. “The last thing I’m going to do is create a false hope. People in Appalachia have been promised a lot of things that businesses never delivered.”

PTTGCA spokesperson Dan Williamson said the company has invested $300 million in the project thus far and that company officials are committed to building the plant. He said there is no deadline for a decision on building it. “If the company wasn’t still hopeful of this happening, they would not continue to invest in it,” Williamson said.

JobsOhio spokesperson Matt Englehart blamed the coronavirus pandemic for the delay in an investment decision that resulted in PTTGCA paying back the $20 million. A U.S. subsidiary of South Korea’s Daelim Industrial Co. withdrew as PTTGCA’s partner in July 2020.

JobsOhio, which is funded with profits from Ohio liquor sales, has provided an additional $50 million in grants and loans for developing the site where a FirstEnergy Corp. coal-burning power plant once stood.

“PTTGCA remains committed to the project, and JobsOhio and its partners continue to work closely with PTTGCA to bring the project to a positive final investment decision,” Englehart said in a statement, adding that PTTGCA is “actively pursuing investors.”

PTTGCA is “in the process” of resubmitting its expired air permit to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, Williamson said. The permit will reflect PTT Global Chemical’s commitment to reducing global emissions 20% by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050, he added.

The Ohio EPA recently renewed the company’s wastewater discharge permit.

Working in the company’s favor is that prices for polyethylene and other raw plastics have rebounded since a steep drop in 2020. Analysts say global demand for plastic products will continue to rise this decade.

In our oceans, yes, and in our rivers, yards and our own bodies

From an Article by Tik Root, Washington Post, March 2, 2022

For the first time, the international community has agreed on a framework to curb the world’s growing plastic problem. A resolution adopted March 2nd by the United Nations lays out an ambitious plan for developing a legally binding treaty by the end of 2024 to “end plastic pollution.”

“With plastic pollution getting worse every day, there is no time to waste,” said Rwandan Environment Minister Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya. “This decision is a historic milestone in the global effort to prevent our planet from drowning in plastics.”

The resolution came on the third day of the biennial U.N. Environment Assembly in Nairobi, where more than 150 countries are represented. It calls for the creation of an intergovernmental negotiating committee to hash out details of a treaty by the end of 2024.

“This is just an amazing show of what the world can do when we work together,” said U.S. delegate Monica Medina, the assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs. Choking back tears, she added, “It is the beginning of the end of the scourge of plastic on this planet. … I think we will look back on this as a day for our children and grandchildren.”

U.S. is top contributor to plastic waste, report shows

The committee’s mandate includes all phases of the plastic life cycle — from design and production to waste management. It comes at a time when the world produces billions of pounds of plastic waste annually — about 353 million tons in 2019, according to a recent report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and amid mounting scientific concerns about issues such as marine plastic debris and the potential impact of microplastics.

Millions of tons of plastic end up in the oceans each year, leading to alarming images of turtles and other wildlife caught in the waste. Even Mount Everest has not escaped microplastics pollution. The United States contributes most to this deluge, according to a National Academy of Sciences study, generating about 287 pounds of plastics per person.

“The high and rapidly increasing levels of plastic pollution represent a serious environmental problem at a global scale,” noted the U.N. resolution, which also acknowledged “the urgent need to strengthen global coordination, cooperation and governance to take immediate actions toward the long-term elimination of plastic pollution.”

Some countries, states and municipalities have taken action to curb plastic waste. Rwanda, for instance, has had a ban on plastic bags for more than a decade. In the United States, Sens. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) have led congressional efforts on plastic pollution, including the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law in 2020. But this latest move is the most concerted international effort yet to tackle the problem of plastic pollution.

Environmental activists and industry representatives alike welcomed the agreement. “It has all the critical components we thought were necessary at this stage in the process,” said Erin Simon, the head of plastic waste and business at the World Wildlife Fund. In a statement, the International Council of Chemical Associations, a trade association, wrote, “We commend the governments that spent long days finding common ground to develop a meaningful resolution to address plastic pollution.”

The U.N. resolution was years in the making, said David Azoulay, a lawyer at the Center for International Environmental Law. He says he remembers the idea first surfacing at the 2016 iteration of the U.N. Environment Assembly in the context of marine plastic. “Envisioning a treaty was unthinkable,” Azoulay said. But, he added, Wednesday’s resolution has gone even beyond that early focus.

“The issue is not just plastic in the ocean; the issue is plastic pollution throughout its life cycle,” Azoulay said. “There is very little in there that I wish wasn’t in there. Everything we need to have the conversations that will lead to a good treaty is in there.”

Azoulay was glad that among the achievements in the resolution, its final version specifically charged the negotiating committee with looking at plastic production, included the option for a dedicated fund to help finance the treaty and mentioned human health impacts of plastic pollution.

The world created about 8 million tons of pandemic plastic waste, and much of it is now in the ocean

“There were efforts to weaken the language on health that failed,” said Bjorn Beeler, the international coordinator at the International Pollutants Elimination Network, an advocacy and research group. Although he said he would have liked a more explicit mention of the chemical additives in plastics, that language was “negotiated out.” An aspect about which Simon is excited is the call for national action plans from each participating country. More harmonized and standard data is “critical,” she said but acknowledged that “the proof is in the action we take from here on out.”

Getting from resolution to treaty will not be easy. “The fact that they are headed toward binding rules I take as a very good sign,” said Steven Blackledge, who runs the conservation program at the nonprofit group Environment America. “The devil is in the details.”

The U.N. negotiating committee will have a multitude of specifics to wade through in a relatively short time. Among the many items, any treaty will have to tackle reporting standards, financing mechanisms and, perhaps the thorniest issue, plastic production. “The million-dollar question is how much we’ll talk about reducing the production of virgin plastic,” Azoulay said.

That topic is likely to prove contentious. Ahead of the conference, Joshua Baca, the vice president for plastics at the American Chemistry Council, the trade association for chemicals manufacturers, called restricting and regulating the production of plastic “a very shortsighted approach.”

With such major hurdles left to clear, Beeler said he is skeptical that the timeline will hold. “As you get into it, it’s going to be a monster. I don’t fathom how you can get a deal within two years,” he said. “This is meaningful; this is significant. But this is really the first step.”

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SEE ALSO: Spotlight on United Nations Environment Assembly With Legally Binding Pact to Address Plastic Pollution | The Weather Channel, March 2, 2022

On the third and final day at the resumed fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly taking place at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) headquarters in Kenya, all eyes are on the establishment of an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to work towards a global and legally binding agreement to address plastic pollution.

Plastic pollution of micron size has spread throughout our lives

From a Video Presentation by Dr. Sherri Mason, Penn State — Erie Campus, March 1, 2021

Plastic pollution in the world’s oceans has been publicized widely; we’ve heard about the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” Lesser known is the prevalence of microplastics in freshwater systems, which are conduits from land to the sea.

Dr. Sherri Mason, cutting-edge plastic pollution researcher and Sustainability Coordinator at Penn State Erie, will present an overview of what plastic is, its proliferation in our society, and its emergence as one of the most prominent environmental pollutants.

Dr. Sherri A. Mason completed her doctorate in Chemistry at the University of Montana as a NASA Earth System Science scholar. Her research group is among the first to study the prevalence and impact of plastic pollution within freshwater ecosystems. Among her many accolades Dr. Mason earned the Heinz Award in Public Policy in 2018.

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See also: Microplastics: An emerging threat to the Chesapeake Bay, David Alan, VRBO News Now, April 8, 2021

“You can see everything from water bottles to plastic bags,” said Chris Moore with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. We found a sneaker, dozens of construction hard hats, even a traffic drum. Every bit of trash we saw as we walked the shoreline was the ugly side of our reliance on plastics. The bigger problem is some of these larger plastic objects will break down here in the hot sun. Some of the trash will end up back in the bay to be torn apart by tides, forming microplastics.

The tiny specks of plastic — some invisible to the naked eye — pose a significant risk to a host of juvenile finfish found in the Chesapeake Bay. There are concerns that oysters and clams may be trying to filter microplastics and cannot. Microplastic contamination is not just a concern for the environment. A 2016 study showed the commercial seafood industry in Virginia and Maryland contributed $1.4 billion in sales and 30,000 jobs to the local economy.

Plastics have become a persistent pollutant worldwide

Announcement of the Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community, Ambridge, Pa., February 10, 2021

The Story of Plastic takes a sweeping look at the man-made crisis of plastic pollution and the worldwide effect it has on the health of our planet and the people who inhabit it.

We hope you can join us for this Promote PT screening and panel discussion on February 13th from 11 am to 2 pm.

Panelists include:

>> Stiv Wilson, CoDirector, Peak Plastic Foundation, Creator and Executive Producer of The Story of Plastic;

>> Dr. Patricia M. DeMarco, Vice President of the Forest Hills Borough Council and professor at Chatham;

>> Anaïs Peterson, Earthworks fellow, regional activist, and graduate of the University of Pittsburgh.

REGISTER HERE FOR THE STORY OF PLASTICS

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwpceurrjIrHtZ2mDUp1JY8jk2qH9QOkGsq

Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community
P.O. Box 31, Ambridge, PA 15003

The Shell workers were paid to rally for Trump

From an Article by Reid Frazier, Allegheny Front, September 21, 2020

At a marina in Moundsville, West Virginia, Dan Williamson looked out across the Ohio River at a quiet stretch of land on the other side. “There’s a little activity going on,” said Williamson, a spokesman for PTT — an oil and gas company based in Thailand that wants to build an ethane cracker on the far side of the river, in Dilles Bottom, Ohio. “But really we’re kind of in between phases right now.”

The plant would turn the region’s plentiful natural gas into plastics. It’s taken years to develop, and a final decision on whether the company would build the plant was due this summer. But then came the pandemic. “It just kind of changed the game for all industries, including this one. And so they have had to put off their announcement of a decision,” Williamson said.

For years, industry boosters in Appalachia have promoted the idea of a building boom for petrochemical plants like the PTT ethane cracker. Oil and gas backers have said there’s enough gas in the region for four or five chemical plants like this. But so far, only one of those plants is a ‘go’ — Shell, with the help of $1.65 billion in state tax breaks, is building a giant plastics plant in western Pennsylvania.

But other projects have either been dropped or put on hold, and now the pandemic has left some some communities in the Ohio River Valley wondering if those plants will ever get built.

A project in West Virginia was canceled last summer when its Brazilian owners backed out. A planned $84 billion Chinese investment in West Virginia’s gas and chemical industry has yet to materialize. And PTT has watched as potential partners backed away from the project. Matsubeni, a Japaneese company, initially signed on as a partner but was out of the picture by 2016.

In July, Daelim, a Korean chemical company that had agreed to invest in the PTT plant, cited the pandemic when it backed out of the project, which could be the largest of its kind ever built in the U.S. according to PTT.

Williamson says PTT is still looking for investors, but he says the real barrier for the plant is simple: COVID-19. “I believe and the project leaders believe that if not for the pandemic, it would be under construction right now,” Williamson said.

Problems Before the Pandemic

Some aren’t so sure. “Don’t believe company announcements — believe the ribbon cutting,” said Kathy Hipple, an analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a left-leaning think tank that works toward sustainable energy.

She says Daelim’s decision to pull out of the PTT project is a red flag. “We view this as a market signal that the project has possibly become far too risky for them to continue,” Hipple said. “The other possibility is that the economics of building a petrochemical complex have changed tremendously.”

Hipple said the price of plastic has fallen by around 40 percent since PTT first announced its interest in the site five years ago, pushed down by new supply from new plants built on the Gulf Coast. She thinks a wave of environmental policies around the globe — like bans on single-use plastics — could threaten the industry’s bottom line.

Steve Lewandowski, an analyst at the research firm IHS Markit, thinks there will still be demand for plastic in the next few decades. But he also wonders if delays in the Ohio project might be a sign that the $10 billion plant is looking too expensive for investors.

“If it was such a compelling case to build there, that cracker would have been approved under construction and then it probably would be another one on top of that — and it’s not,” Lewandowski said. “So there’s something going on that is causing companies to say, ‘That’s probably not the right place to be.’”

Advantages for Appalachia

Lewandowski said Northern Appalachia has advantages — Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania sit atop the Marcellus Shale, the biggest natural gas formation in the country. And it’s close to East Coast and Midwest manufacturers that would use the plastic. But he thinks companies might want to keep their production centered on the Gulf Coast, where dozens of similar plants have been running for decades.

“We’re assessing that the cost to build [in Ohio] is higher than on the Gulf Coast. And we would we would argue it’s probably going to be a bit more expensive to operate only because they’re not really in a cluster of industry.”

If a part breaks down at a plant in Louisiana, there’s a better chance that a supplier nearby will be able to replace or repair it than there would be in Ohio, he said.

But closer to the proposed Ohio plant site, there are fewer doubts. In August, a senior Trump administration official visited the site and said it would boost the Ohio River valley’s economy.

‘100 Percent Positive That This Will Be a Go’

That has people like Matt Coffland confident. “I’m 100 percent positive that this will be a go,” Coffland said. “No doubt about it.”

Coffland is a big proponent of the PTT project — and it’s easy to see why. He owns Matt’s Tiger Pub — a tavern in the town of Shadyside, Ohio, a few miles from where thousands of hungry construction workers could one day build the project. “I mean, it’s three miles away from my doorstep. And you’re talking an influx of close to ten thousand people at one point,” Coffland said.

Coffland sees the plant as a good thing not just for his restaurant but for his part of southeastern Ohio — which he says has been neglected by the state in favor of the ‘three Cs” — Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus. “I think we deserve it by now,” he said. “Finally, something is going to land right here in our lap. You know, it’s about time.”

Someone else who’s hoping the project moves ahead works in a school building a few blocks away. John Haswell is superintendent of the Shadyside Local School District.

On the wall of his office hangs a set of drawings showing what a K-12 school complex would look like. If PTT builds its chemical plant, the company agreed to pay for the new building. “Any time that I can build something or we can build something for $30 million and it does not cost our taxpayers a cent — that’s a pretty good deal,” Haswell said.

The district’s 700 students are in a school built 1932, and Haswell says a new building is badly needed. Uncertainty over whether the PTT project will go forward — or whether he’ll have to ask taxpayers for more money to build a new school — has made him anxious.

“I would really love to get really busy on a building project, but until we have that final investment decision, I can’t do anything but sit. Sit and wait and wait and wait,” Haswell said.

Opposition to Cracker

If the delay has made Haswell antsy, it’s been a reprieve for Amanda Petrucci. She and her husband live with their four children and seven goats on a hillside across the Ohio river in Moundsville, West Virginia.

On a recent afternoon, she pointed out a few landmarks — a hilltop across the river where a well owned by an ExxonMobil subsidiary blew out in 2018, releasing 60,000 tons of the potent greenhouse gas methane, a natural gas processing plant a half-mile from her front door, which flares gas at all hours, and a Superfund site just down the hill.

The site used to house a chemical plant. In the 1990s, the U.S. EPA declared it a superfund site, and began a cleanup. Around that time, her family endured a spate of health problems — her son developed a rare blood disorder, her husband was diagnosed with asthma, and she developed Tourette’s syndrome and migraines.

Petrucci blamed dust from the Superfund site for their health problems. (The EPA says dust levels at the site never endangered human health.) She worries about the oil and gas infrastructure that ring her property, and isn’t happy about PTT’s proposed ethane cracker a mile from her house.

“I think we’re going to get hit with more toxic air. How many more layers can we throw on everybody in the community?” Petrucci said. She says she’s been thinking about moving somewhere where the air and water are clean, and there’s no oil and gas. But she hasn’t found anywhere that fits that bill just yet.

So it was welcome news for her when she heard PTT was delaying a final decision on its ethane cracker. “I [felt] like I could kind of just hang out here for a little bit longer and enjoy life here,” she said. “I feel relieved and feel like I can enjoy my property a little more.”

NOTE: John Haswell is superintendent of the Shadyside Local School District in Shadyside, Ohio. His district would get a $30 million school building if PTT builds a proposed ethane cracker in Belmont County, Ohio.

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See also: Project Design Planning for Ethane Cracker Complex at Belmont County, Ohio, FrackCheckWV, June 21, 2020

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See also: THE SHELL ETHANE CRACKER, As the world grapples with plastic pollution, Pa.’s ethane cracker promises more plastic, Reid Frazier, StateImpact Penna., YouTube, September 21, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R01yOnk_ynw

Plastic credit cards represent 5 grams of pollutants

From the Cover Story of Consumer Reports Magazine, Volume 85, Number 6, June 2020, pp. 26 – 35.

The first company to ever sell fully synthetic plastic—the Bakelite Corp., established in 1922—advertised it as “The Material of a Thousand Uses.”

It had that right: Today, beyond the plates we eat from, the straws we drink through, the furniture we sit on, and the toys our kids play with, there is plastic in the clothes we wear, in the cars we drive, even in the lifesaving medical equipment in our hospitals. And—more than anywhere else—plastic is in our packaging, encasing everything from laundry detergent to prescription pills, from the food we eat to the beverages we drink.

In fact, the world has produced more than 10 billion tons of the stuff, mostly since the 1950s, and we just keep making more. In 2018, manufacturers created almost 400 million tons of new plastic, and production is expected to almost quadruple by 2050. The vast majority of that plastic eventually ends up piled up around the planet. Some of it may last for hundreds of years, and when it does break down, it can become small particles of plastic—microplastics—that spread farther across the planet, entering our water and food supply.

Why is this a problem? After all, manufacturers and certain regulatory agencies have long assured us that plastics are safe for human health. “In the U.S., we have a robust system that looks at materials that are in contact with food, and that includes plastics, managed by the [Food and Drug Administration],” says Karyn Schmidt, senior director of regulatory and technical affairs at the American Chemistry Council, an industry group that represents plastics and chemical manufacturers. “Consumers should feel very confident using any plastic coming into contact with food that they would buy in a grocery store.”

MORE ON ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH

And yet there’s growing concern. It’s not just the photos of whales, albatrosses, and sea turtles washing ashore, stomachs clogged with the stuff, or the stories about swirling ocean vortexes collecting litter from around the globe—although these are sobering. Reliable research now shows that tiny bits of plastic are in our food, drinking water, the air we breathe, and, yes, inside our bodies.

“This credit card here, this is how much plastic you are consuming every week,” Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., holding up a Visa card, said when announcing legislation meant to reduce plastic pollution this past February. He was referencing a preliminary estimate by some scientists that the plastic the average person may be eating and drinking totals as much as 5 grams per week. One research review published in 2019 calculated that the average American eats, drinks, and breathes in more than 74,000 microplastic particles every year.

Some scientists say it’s likely that ingesting these tiny bits of plastic could expose us to harmful chemicals. “There cannot be no effect,” says Pete Myers, Ph.D., founder and chief scientist of the nonprofit Environmental Health Sciences and an adjunct professor of chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

“People have this idea that plastic is clean,” a sterile object that doesn’t come apart, says Sherri Mason, Ph.D., sustainability coordinator at Penn State Behrend in Erie, Pa., and a chemist who has studied the presence of plastic in tap water, beer, sea salt, and bottled water.

But, in fact, the raw materials of plastic are created from fossil fuels including oil and natural gas. And thousands of chemicals, depending on the product, are used to make it harder, softer, or more flexible. These chemicals include bisphenols, such as bisphenol A (BPA), and phthalates, which can flow or leach into the foods touched by plastic, especially when that plastic is warmed.

“It’s ironic that as public attention to this issue is really growing, global plastic production is increasing,” says Judith Enck, a former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, now a visiting professor at Bennington College in Vermont and president of Beyond Plastics, a nonprofit focused on ending plastics pollution. And as more plastic is produced and discarded, contaminating our water, food, and air, exposure levels for the average person will continue to rise.

Shopping bags disintegrate into microplastics, potentially entering our food supply and, eventually, our bodies. (To be continued.)

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See also: Scientists Discover Highest Concentration of Deep-Sea Microplastics to Date, Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch.com, May 01, 2020

Scientists have discovered the highest concentration of microplastics ever recorded on the seafloor—1.9 million pieces in one square meter (approximately 11 square feet) of the Mediterranean.

But the finding, published in Science on Thursday, suggests a much broader problem as deep-sea currents carry plastics to microplastic “hotspots” that may well also be deep-sea ecosystems rich in biodiversity. For study coauthor professor Elda Miramontes of the University of Bremen, Germany, the results are alarming.

Shale-fueled US plastics boom puts spotlight on sustainability

From S & P Global Platts News Service, October 22, 2019

Virgin plastic production is thriving in the US, fueled by the North American shale boom. But the reversal of fortune for the US chemical industry has highlighted a bigger challenge amid widespread concern about plastic waste and sustainability.

The growth of shale activity across the US unearthed ethane feedstock so cheap that a region that had been facing naphtha-fed plant shutdowns and petrochemical imports saw the cost advantage of home-fracked gas shaping its future as a global petrochemical supplier.

As such, the focus has overwhelmingly been on ethane-fed crackers and derivative polyethylene (PE), the resin used to make the most-used plastics in the world, and less on how to deal with the plastics they produce after use.

Companies are stepping up their efforts in recycled plastics, most notably with the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, to which dozens of companies have committed more than $1 billion to find solutions to the plastic waste problem.

While petrochemical giants like Dow, BASF, LyondellBasell, Sabic, Braskem, Sinopec, Sasol and Reliance Industries are among the alliance’s members, most efforts in the US focus on research and funding.

Production is still mainly virgin plastics, with inclusion of recycled resin in new plastic products being pushed by resin buyers. And resin producers face the same key challenge as their counterparts in other regions, of sourcing enough high-quality plastic waste as a feedstock.

New ethylene and polyethylene (PE) capacity growth

Fourteen new ethane crackers that are operational, under construction or planned from 2017 beyond 2020 will add nearly 18.5 million mt/year, or 52%, more US ethylene capacity. In addition, 28 new PE plants starting up or planned in the same span will increase capacity by nearly 60%, or 13.67 million mt/year.

Other derivatives are accompanying some of the new crackers, such as monoethylene glycol or alcohols units, and a new polypropylene plant under construction. The companies that went all in on these projects include the biggest global names in petrochemicals: Dow, ExxonMobil, Chevron Phillips Chemical, LyondellBasell, Formosa Plastics USA, Sasol and Ineos.

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Massive cranes, some over 700 ft. tall dominate “Cracker” construction site

Article by Gerry Ricciutti, WKBN News, September 24, 2019

“Work could take another year and a half to complete”

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ExxonMobil Scouting Property For 2nd Cracker Plant In Beaver County

From an Article by Reid Frazer, StateImpact Penna., October 17, 2019

ExxonMobil is reportedly looking for land to build a large chemical plant in Beaver County. If built, it would be the second major chemical plant in Beaver County built to take advantage of cheap natural gas from the region’s fracking industry.

Shell is already buidling a six-billion dollar plant in Monaca that will make plastic out of ethane, a common byproduct of natural gas. Other companies are looking at locations in Ohio and West Virginia.

“Certainly there is a a large supply of (natural gas liquids) which could potentially be converted into plastics for industrial use,” said Jennifer Van Dinter, an analyst at S&P Global Platts.

“By the early 2020s, we’re (projecting) between about 500,000 and 600,000 barrels a day of ethane being produced, and that would be capable of supporting four to five petrochemical facilities,” Van Dinter said.

Plastics are an overwhelming problem for society

Editorial from Morgantown Dominion Post, August 16, 2019

More than 50 years later, we are still reckoning with that one word.
In an iconic scene in the 1968 film, “The Graduate,” a brief dialogue ensues between the recent college graduate and a family friend at his graduation party.

Mr. McGuire: “I want to say one word to you. Just one word.” Benjamin: “Yes, sir.” Mr. McGuire: “Are you listening?” Benjamin: “Yes, I am.” Mr. McGuire: “Plastics.”

Many have over-analyzed that exchange from a score of perspectives but we’re going to keep it simple here. The future in 1968 was going to be in the booming plastics industry and Benjamin should look to a career in it.

Half a century later we’re wallowing, no, drowning in that industry’s pollution from the high seas to the lowlands.

To its credit, the Monongalia County Commission took the initiative on plastic recycling years ago and has just kept going with it. Ditto for the city of Morgantown contracting with its trash hauler to provide for single-stream recycling.

However, we’re losing the battle on plastics recycling and look to be harming the environment in our efforts. For instance, the good done by the recycling roundups and pickups is often undercut by carbon emissions of the hundreds of vehicles those tons of plastics arrive in. Not to mention the water used to clean them for recycling.

We recently read that despite Lane County, Ore.’s successful roundups it decided to turn over plastic recycling to its residents. After volunteers undergo training to serve as community collectors their goal is to collect two cubic yards of plastic before scheduling a date to drop it off for recycling.

Two cubic yards is approximately the size of a pickup truck bed or a jumbo refrigerator. Collectors may be neighbors, businesses, churches, civic groups or others. Yet, even if that program’s goal of 300 collectors is met it still won’t stem the tide of plastic needing to be recycled.

It’s estimated worldwide, only about 14% or 15% of all plastic is recycled. The problem it would seem is our society generates far more plastic than it needs. We realize there might be bigger issues than goals to collect No. 2, 4 and 5 plastic bottles, jugs, tubs and lids.

But any policies and programs to endlessly recycle single-use cutlery, bottles and straws is delusional without a new approach to this issue. Aiming for no-plastic use for the vast majority of people is unrealistic.

However, we can all do more to overcome our plastics’ addiction. Clearly, consumers may not know where to start, but if everyone takes some responsibility for this issue and government leads we can do better.

If we use less plastics to begin with and collect more of it we can make a greater difference. Otherwise, that one word 50 years from today may just spell, disaster.

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See also: “Marium, The Dugong Who Charmed Thailand, Dies After Ingesting Plastic,” Amy Held, NPR, August 17, 2019

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/17/752042032/marium-the-dugong-that-charmed-thailand-dies-after-ingesting-plastic/

How much plastic is in our garbage?

From the Press Release, WVU Today, April 25, 2018

West Virginia University English professor Stephanie Foote has been named one of the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Fellows for her work related to cultural production in and around the Anthropocene, the geological epoch in which human activity has had a global effect on Earth’s climate and environment.

The Carnegie Corporation of New York awards the high-profile fellowship, known as the “brainy award.” Foote was chosen from among 270 nominees from across the country and is the first WVU professor to receive the prestigious recognition.

The fellowship recognizes “high-caliber scholarship that applies fresh perspectives to some of the most pressing issues of our times, shows potential for meaningful impact on a field of study and has the capacity for dissemination to a broad audience.”

Each member of the class of 31 scholars will receive up to $200,000 in order to devote time to significant research, writing and publishing in the humanities and social sciences.

“Stephanie Foote is the most recent example of how West Virginia University’s faculty are finding creative and exciting ways to address the challenges that face modern society,” said President E. Gordon Gee. “It is an example of the tremendous quality of our faculty research and a reminder of the power that higher education has to transform our state and the world.”

Provost Joyce McConnell called the Carnegie Fellowship “an exciting next step” for Foote, who has already been recognized as a fellow at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, where she is in residence this year.

“Stephanie Foote’s work is both urgent and important to our region,” McConnell said. “More than that, it has tremendous potential to change the way we think about our place in the world.”

For Foote, Jackson and Nichols Professor of English in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, the fellowship will support her research in the emerging field of environmental humanities.

She will complete her third book, “The Art of Waste: Narrative, Trash, and Contemporary Culture,” which argues that garbage, perhaps the most ubiquitous feature of contemporary life, is the richest, most powerful text of our time.

By paying close attention to garbage, we can trace the histories of the global and local circulation and transformation of raw material, the human costs of making, using and discarding commodities and the intense anxiety about personal responsibility toward environmental toxicity embodied by trash.

Further, these stories allow us to grasp the ethical challenges driven not only by physical consequences on the world, but also by our investments in the material world.

Foote looks at social, medical, psychological, industrial, historical, literary and statistical evidence. For example, she analyzes a broad range of data from how garbage circulates globally, to records of how it is burned, buried, salvaged or resold, to psychological models about the intensity of our relationships to objects and how it expresses our cultural values.

“I use the stories garbage tells and the stories that we tell about garbage to explore a broad range of cultural narratives about human choices and environmental degradation,” Foote said. “If literary creation is the sign of human civilization, garbage is the visible sign of its costs.”

In addition to completing her book, Foote is planning to use the fellowship to fund the establishment of a public humanities website and the formation of a working group to where scholars can collaborate on issues related to the environmental humanities.

She will also organize a symposium in which scholars, activists and citizens from the Appalachian coal-producing region can exchange ideas about the global and local circulation of garbage.

-WVU-