<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/26/plastics-companies-blocking-mitigation-efforts>
"Companies have spent decades obstructing efforts to take on the plastics
crisis and may have breached a host of US laws, a new report argues.
The research from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) details
the widespread burdens that plastic pollution places on US cities and states,
and argues that plastic producers may be breaking public-nuisance,
product-liability and consumer-protection laws.
It comes as cities such as Baltimore have begun to file claims against plastic
manufacturers, but the authors write that existing cases “are likely only the
beginning, as more states and municipalities grapple with the challenges of
accumulating plastic waste and microplastics contamination.”
Taxpayers foot the bill to clean plastic pollution from streets and waterways,
and research shows people could ingest the equivalent of one credit card’s
worth of plastic per week.
“We’re in the midst of a population-scale human experiment on the impacts of
multigenerational toxic exposures,” said Carroll Muffett, president of CIEL and
a report co-author. “Plastics are at the epicenter of that.”
Drawing on newly revealed internal documents and previous investigations, the
authors write that producers knew of these risks and produced and marketed
plastics anyway.
Petrochemical producers such as ExxonMobil Chemical and Shell Polymers, and
disposable plastic goods producers like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Unilever, should
be held responsible, they say."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
