Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information or to customize your cookie preferences.

Clothes piling up in your closet? A landmark California bill would mandate brands recycle them

News Feed
Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Let’s say you bought a new pair of jeans and wore them for a few years before deciding it was time to part ways. You could throw them away, or, if you wanted a more environmentally friendly option, you might try to sell or swap them or donate them to a local thrift store.Either way, the onus is on you to pass those jeans on, and hope for the best. But a new California bill that tackles the growing problem of fashion and textile waste could change the way we get rid of our clothes, putting the burden on clothing producers to implement a system for recycling the wares that they sell.If passed, Californians will be able to bring unwanted and even damaged apparel and household textiles to thrift stores, charities and other accessible collection sites throughout the state for sorting and recycling. This first-in-the-nation bill, known as the Responsible Textile Recovery Act, requires producers of apparel, towels, bedding and upholstery to implement and fund a statewide reuse, repair and recycling program for their products.Since 1960, the amount of textile waste generated in the US has increased nearly tenfold, exceeding more than 17m tonnes in 2018. A shocking 85% of all textiles end up in landfills where they emit methane gas and leach chemicals and dyes into our soil and groundwater. And only about 15% of clothing and other textiles gets reused, even though an estimated 95% of the materials – including fabrics, yarns, fibers, zippers and buttons – are recyclable.These shocking numbers drove Josh Newman, the Democratic state senator who sponsored the bill, into action. “We worked really hard to consult with and eventually to align all of the stakeholders in the life cycle of textiles so that at the end there was no opposition,” he said of the bill, which was passed with broad support from state legislators last month, and is now on the desk of the California governor, Gavin Newsom. “That’s an immensely hard thing to do when you consider the magnitude of the problem and all of the very different interests.”Newman’s bill had more than 150 endorsements from environmental organizations, municipal waste managers and retailers such as Ikea, Everlane and Goodwill. Supporters of the landmark legislation say it will help the industry transition to a sustainable and circular economy, which could unlock new environmentally beneficial production and consumption opportunities and create more than 1,000 green jobs.Under the authority of the state’s recycling department, the bill would incentivize manufacturers to adopt less wasteful practices and create greener designs, making manufacturers responsible for their products along the entire lifecycle.Some details about how the whole system will work remain unknown, as the companies that produce apparel and other textiles sold in California would have until 2026 to create a non-profit organization that will design the collection sites, mail-back programs or other solutions.The program won’t be operational until 2028 at the earliest.“As a global fashion retailer, we have an important role to play and that is why we are transforming our business towards circularity and reducing emissions,” said Randi Marshall, regional head of sustainability and public affairs for H&M Americas. She added that because France and the Netherlands have similar laws, the company is already familiar with how this can work. In France, that means people can take clothing and shoes to one of 47,000 collection points for recycling and they subsidize repairs to encourage people to keep goods longer.The fashion industry is a leading industrial polluter, responsible for about 10% of global carbon emissions, more than international flights and maritime shipping combined. The rise of “fast fashion”, or low-cost, low-quality garments that are only worn a few times, is a major contributor to the escalating environmental crisis.Some have expressed concern that the legislation could raise costs for consumers and affect smaller and mid-sized brands. But sustainable fashion designer Yotam Solomon, creator of the Los Angeles-based indie genderless fashion brand Virtue, said he supported the bill. “I think [California’s new law] is something that should have been done a long time ago,” he said. “It’s unfortunately this industry that allowed this to happen.”Newman said consumers shouldn’t feel any price increases, and estimated that the cost to producers would be less than 10 cents per garment or textile.Dr Joanne Brasch, director of advocacy and outreach for the California Product Stewardship Council, who co-sponsored the new legislation, said we’re going to pay for fashion and textile waste one way or another. “Our garbage bills will go up if the cities have to figure it out, our taxes are going to go up if we have to remediate environmental damage,” she said.Waste fabric and clothes in the Atacama desert in Alto Hospicio, Chile, on 15 June 2023. The region is threatened with environmental pollution due to thousands of tons of plastic waste, garbage textiles and rubble piles. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesIn 2021 alone, about 1.2m tons of textiles were discarded in California, costing taxpayers more than $70m.Brasch noted that brands such as Gap, Reformation, Patagonia and the North Face had spent millions of dollars trying to become circular, but had struggled to connect the waste industry with the manufacturing industry.Historically, thrift stores, charities and clothing collectors have been a successful secondhand market for reusable textiles. But when donations are damaged or unusable, they often end up in landfills or in overseas markets in the global south, with countries like Ghana receiving as many as 15m discarded garments, known locally as “dead white man’s clothes”, each week. Disturbing photos of mountains of old clothing have been seen everywhere from the Dandora dumpsite in Kenya to the deserts of Chile.Organizations like the Or Foundation, which advocates for better fashion waste management, are calling for the ending of this phenomenon, known as waste colonialism, and support extended producer responsibility programs like the one California is implementing.European countries were the first to tackle the textile waste problem with legislation. France, which was previously only able to divert 18% of its textile waste back to reuse, passed a textile recycling law in 2007. Today, the country’s diversion rate is over 39%. In 2023, the Netherlands created its own program and the European Union has mandated expanded textile collection for all member states by 2025, which is expected to move the needle when it comes to fashion waste.“We learned from a lot of the advocates involved in France’s program and they’ve been very active to make sure that what California does can be replicated positively,” said Brasch, a scientist and former UC Davis professor. “Being the first [in the US] doesn’t always mean being the best. We hope other states reach out to us and I can explain how to raise the bar.”

California could become the first state to tackle the fast fashion waste overwhelming consumers and landfillsLet’s say you bought a new pair of jeans and wore them for a few years before deciding it was time to part ways. You could throw them away, or, if you wanted a more environmentally friendly option, you might try to sell or swap them or donate them to a local thrift store.Either way, the onus is on you to pass those jeans on, and hope for the best. But a new California bill that tackles the growing problem of fashion and textile waste could change the way we get rid of our clothes, putting the burden on clothing producers to implement a system for recycling the wares that they sell. Continue reading...

Let’s say you bought a new pair of jeans and wore them for a few years before deciding it was time to part ways. You could throw them away, or, if you wanted a more environmentally friendly option, you might try to sell or swap them or donate them to a local thrift store.

Either way, the onus is on you to pass those jeans on, and hope for the best. But a new California bill that tackles the growing problem of fashion and textile waste could change the way we get rid of our clothes, putting the burden on clothing producers to implement a system for recycling the wares that they sell.

If passed, Californians will be able to bring unwanted and even damaged apparel and household textiles to thrift stores, charities and other accessible collection sites throughout the state for sorting and recycling. This first-in-the-nation bill, known as the Responsible Textile Recovery Act, requires producers of apparel, towels, bedding and upholstery to implement and fund a statewide reuse, repair and recycling program for their products.

Since 1960, the amount of textile waste generated in the US has increased nearly tenfold, exceeding more than 17m tonnes in 2018. A shocking 85% of all textiles end up in landfills where they emit methane gas and leach chemicals and dyes into our soil and groundwater. And only about 15% of clothing and other textiles gets reused, even though an estimated 95% of the materials – including fabrics, yarns, fibers, zippers and buttons – are recyclable.

These shocking numbers drove Josh Newman, the Democratic state senator who sponsored the bill, into action. “We worked really hard to consult with and eventually to align all of the stakeholders in the life cycle of textiles so that at the end there was no opposition,” he said of the bill, which was passed with broad support from state legislators last month, and is now on the desk of the California governor, Gavin Newsom. “That’s an immensely hard thing to do when you consider the magnitude of the problem and all of the very different interests.”

Newman’s bill had more than 150 endorsements from environmental organizations, municipal waste managers and retailers such as Ikea, Everlane and Goodwill. Supporters of the landmark legislation say it will help the industry transition to a sustainable and circular economy, which could unlock new environmentally beneficial production and consumption opportunities and create more than 1,000 green jobs.

Under the authority of the state’s recycling department, the bill would incentivize manufacturers to adopt less wasteful practices and create greener designs, making manufacturers responsible for their products along the entire lifecycle.

Some details about how the whole system will work remain unknown, as the companies that produce apparel and other textiles sold in California would have until 2026 to create a non-profit organization that will design the collection sites, mail-back programs or other solutions.

The program won’t be operational until 2028 at the earliest.

“As a global fashion retailer, we have an important role to play and that is why we are transforming our business towards circularity and reducing emissions,” said Randi Marshall, regional head of sustainability and public affairs for H&M Americas. She added that because France and the Netherlands have similar laws, the company is already familiar with how this can work. In France, that means people can take clothing and shoes to one of 47,000 collection points for recycling and they subsidize repairs to encourage people to keep goods longer.

The fashion industry is a leading industrial polluter, responsible for about 10% of global carbon emissions, more than international flights and maritime shipping combined. The rise of “fast fashion”, or low-cost, low-quality garments that are only worn a few times, is a major contributor to the escalating environmental crisis.

Some have expressed concern that the legislation could raise costs for consumers and affect smaller and mid-sized brands. But sustainable fashion designer Yotam Solomon, creator of the Los Angeles-based indie genderless fashion brand Virtue, said he supported the bill. “I think [California’s new law] is something that should have been done a long time ago,” he said. “It’s unfortunately this industry that allowed this to happen.”

Newman said consumers shouldn’t feel any price increases, and estimated that the cost to producers would be less than 10 cents per garment or textile.

Dr Joanne Brasch, director of advocacy and outreach for the California Product Stewardship Council, who co-sponsored the new legislation, said we’re going to pay for fashion and textile waste one way or another. “Our garbage bills will go up if the cities have to figure it out, our taxes are going to go up if we have to remediate environmental damage,” she said.

Waste fabric and clothes in the Atacama desert in Alto Hospicio, Chile, on 15 June 2023. The region is threatened with environmental pollution due to thousands of tons of plastic waste, garbage textiles and rubble piles. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

In 2021 alone, about 1.2m tons of textiles were discarded in California, costing taxpayers more than $70m.

Brasch noted that brands such as Gap, Reformation, Patagonia and the North Face had spent millions of dollars trying to become circular, but had struggled to connect the waste industry with the manufacturing industry.

Historically, thrift stores, charities and clothing collectors have been a successful secondhand market for reusable textiles. But when donations are damaged or unusable, they often end up in landfills or in overseas markets in the global south, with countries like Ghana receiving as many as 15m discarded garments, known locally as “dead white man’s clothes”, each week. Disturbing photos of mountains of old clothing have been seen everywhere from the Dandora dumpsite in Kenya to the deserts of Chile.

Organizations like the Or Foundation, which advocates for better fashion waste management, are calling for the ending of this phenomenon, known as waste colonialism, and support extended producer responsibility programs like the one California is implementing.

European countries were the first to tackle the textile waste problem with legislation. France, which was previously only able to divert 18% of its textile waste back to reuse, passed a textile recycling law in 2007. Today, the country’s diversion rate is over 39%. In 2023, the Netherlands created its own program and the European Union has mandated expanded textile collection for all member states by 2025, which is expected to move the needle when it comes to fashion waste.

“We learned from a lot of the advocates involved in France’s program and they’ve been very active to make sure that what California does can be replicated positively,” said Brasch, a scientist and former UC Davis professor. “Being the first [in the US] doesn’t always mean being the best. We hope other states reach out to us and I can explain how to raise the bar.”

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Group Says New Jersey Toxic Waste Dumping Caused $1B in Harm, Calls Settlement Inadequate

A Jersey Shore environmental group says damage from decades of toxic waste dumping at one of America's most notorious pollution sites caused $1 billion worth of damages

TOMS RIVER, N.J. (AP) — Years of toxic waste dumping in a Jersey Shore community where childhood cancer rates rose caused at least $1 billion in damage to natural resources, according to an environmental group trying to overturn a settlement between New Jersey and the corporate successor to the firm that did the polluting.Save Barnegat Bay and the township of Toms River are suing to overturn a deal between the state and German chemical company BASF under which the firm will pay $500,000 and carry out nine environmental remediation projects at the site of the former Ciba-Geigy Chemical Corporation plant.That site became one of America's worst toxic waste dumps and led to widespread concern over the prevalence of childhood cancer cases in and around Toms River.Save Barnegat Bay says the settlement is woefully inadequate and does not take into account the scope and full nature of the pollution.The state Department of Environmental Protection defended the deal, saying it is not supposed to be primarily about monetary compensation; restoring damaged areas is a priority, it says.“Ciba-Geigy’s discharges devastated the natural resources of the Toms River and Barnegat Bay,” said Michele Donato, an attorney for the environmental group. “The DEP failed to evaluate decades of evidence, including reports of dead fish, discolored waters, and toxic effluent, that exist in its own archived files.”Those materials include documents dating back to 1958 detailing fish kills and severe oxygen depletion caused by the company's dumping of chemicals into the Toms River and directly onto the ground. It also includes a study by a consultant for Ciba-Geigy showing that a plume of contaminated underground water is three-dimensional and thus could not be adequately assessed by the manner used by New Jersey to calculate damage to natural resources, the group said.An accurate calculation of damages to the site and the surrounding area would exceed $1 billion, Save Barnegat Bay said in court papers."This deal does not come close to compensating our community for what we’ve suffered,” former Toms River Mayor Maurice Hill said in a January public hearing on the settlement.The state declined to comment. In court papers, it defended its handling of the damage assessment.BASF, which is the corporate successor to Ciba-Geigy, declined comment on the litigation but said it is committed to carrying out the settlement it reached with New Jersey in 2022.That calls for it to maintain nine projects for 20 years, including restoring wetlands and grassy areas; creating walking trails, boardwalks and an elevated viewing platform; and building an environmental education center.Starting in the 1950s, Ciba-Geigy — which had been the town’s largest employer — flushed chemicals into the Toms River and the Atlantic Ocean, and buried 47,000 drums of toxic waste in the ground. This created a plume of polluted water that has spread beyond the site into residential neighborhoods and is still being cleaned up.The state health department found that 87 children in Toms River, which was then known as Dover Township, had been diagnosed with cancer from 1979 through 1995. A study determined the rates of childhood cancers and leukemia in girls in Toms River “were significantly elevated when compared to state rates.” No similar rates were found for boys.The study did not explicitly blame the increase on Ciba-Geigy’s dumping, but the company and two others paid $13.2 million to 69 families whose children were diagnosed with cancer. Ciba-Geigy settled criminal charges by paying millions of dollars in fines and penalties on top of the $300 million it and its successors have paid so far to clean up the site.Follow Wayne Parry on X at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

Who’s responsible for waste? A Q&A about the ‘conspiracy’ of overconsumption.

The director of Netflix’s “Buy Now!” says companies should be accountable for the trash they generate.

The last few weeks of the year are always a special time — for shopping.  According to the National Retail Federation, a United States trade group, Americans will spend nearly $1 trillion on clothes, electronics, trinkets, and other goods during the 2024 holiday season, which it defines as November 1 through December 31. That’s about a fifth of the whole year’s retail sales in just two months. Will all that shopping make people happier? Probably not — more than half of Americans say they regret their previous Black Friday purchases, according to one national survey. Polling suggests the high people get from buying stuff is ephemeral; it fades quickly, only fueling the desire to buy more. Perhaps the biggest loser in the cycle of overconsumption, however, is the planet. Obscured by the low prices featured in online flash sales are externalized costs to climate and the environment — in the form of raw material extraction, climate pollution from manufacturing and transport, and the waste that results when products and their packaging are eventually thrown away. By some estimates, the retail industry accounts for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. The internet is littered with blogs and opinion articles claiming consumers are to blamed — that “our need to shop is ruining our planet.” But Flora Bagenal, the producer of a new Netflix documentary called Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy sees an injustice in that framing. Why should everyday people feel guilty, the film asks, when manufacturers and retail companies are doing everything within their power to drive up the pace of consumption? These corporations have designed products to break down quickly, promised that recycling would keep the planet clean, and precision-engineered their advertisements and marketplaces to make the shopping impulse all but irresistible — all while passing the environmental toll onto the public. “I’ve always felt that we don’t hold our companies to account,” Bagenal told Grist. “I wanted to explore that from the perspective of somebody who feels caught up in the system as much as everyone else.” Bagenal lives in the United Kingdom and has produced several other documentaries on topics including the anti-vaccine movement and mental health care. Without explicitly using the term, Buy Now! makes the case for an alternative paradigm called the “polluter pays principle,” which holds that companies — not the public — should be held financially responsible for dealing with the waste they generate. In wonkier terms, the idea manifests as “extended producer responsibility,” or EPR, policies that typically require large companies to pay into a central fund for waste management and prevention. In the U.S., five states have passed EPR laws for packaging. Through interviews with former executives at Adidas, Amazon, and Apple, Buy Now! argues that consumer goods companies have knowingly abdicated their responsibility to the public good. Grist sat down with Bagenal to discuss the film and how she and her team of executive producers went about conveying the polluter pays principle to a general audience. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Courtesy of Netflix Q. What was your motivation for producing a film about overconsumption, and the role of big consumer goods companies in turning it into a crisis? A. We knew the waste problem was a really big problem, but we were worried about making something depressing that people turn away from. And so gradually, we evolved our thinking into shifting away from piles of rubbish and landfills and things like that — instead, we thought: Well, where’s it all coming from? And as you start peeling back the layers and going another step back, you realize that any film about waste is really going to have to be about who’s making the stuff that becomes waste. That was really a revelation for us — we realized that we could tell the story a bit differently and target companies that hadn’t been held accountable. Q. The film’s subtitle is “The Shopping Conspiracy,” hinting at the strategies companies use to get people to buy more while still denying responsibility for the resulting trash. But one could argue that this is exactly what we’d expect from companies incentivized to maximize their profits. Why do you think their behavior warrants being called out as a conspiracy? A. We had a lot of conversations about this — in the back of the taxi, in the back of the studio, in the edit suite. There’s no table where these imaginary execs sat around and decided to do this and then laid it on the world. But the conspiracy comes from the fact that you can’t work for one of these companies and not know the truth: that, while we’re all here trying to do our best, feeling guilty and wondering what we can do, these big companies are well aware of the impact they have on the planet and are still not doing enough. If I go down to the shop and decide to not buy a pot of yogurt because it might not be recyclable, nothing will change. But if a company like Adidas or Amazon or Apple actually decided to sell less stuff or make a product that would last three times as long, then something would change. Q. The philosophy you’re describing — that polluters should pay for their pollution — has been popularized among policy wonks as “extended producer responsibility.” What strategies did you use to make that idea more accessible? A. EPR is really popular in NGO [nongovernmental organization] and business circles, but we felt it was going to be really hard to communicate in a film and to get people to care. So we spent a lot of time trying to crystallize it into something that feels so obvious, that is hard to fight against. And actually, it was Erik Liedtke, the former Adidas exec, who hit the nail on the head at the end of the film. He said, “Stop putting it on us [the public], stop telling us it’s our responsibility. You produce this stuff, you need to account for its life after it gets thrown away.”  We also called the film “Buy Now!” to get at that moment when you press the button and you decide to give your money to a company. That transaction is the bit that makes money, that’s the bit that the industry is interested in. But once you press “buy now,” you’re making a contract that you don’t know about — you’re now a caretaker of this thing, and it’s your responsibility until you dispose of it, and then it becomes the whole world’s responsibility. The only one who’s not really responsible anymore is the company. Shoppers line up at a store with loaded carts. Courtesy of Netflix Q. Several countries and U.S. states have passed EPR laws, and environmental groups have put forward some ambitious proposals for new ones. But what’s the bigger-picture solution that those policies should be paired with? A. There is a lot of good stuff now that companies are doing. The fashion industry in particular has embraced the idea of EPR, and some of the consumer goods companies like Coca-Cola have talked about it. I think it’s really, really important as a tool for governments to hold companies to account and to share the costs of environmental impacts. But it doesn’t solve the problem entirely. I think all of us still need to buy less stuff, and companies need to make less stuff. It’s fine to tax [companies] for the end-of-life stuff, but it doesn’t get away from the fact that reduction is the ultimate goal. Q. Despite everything you describe about corporate responsibility for climate and environmental pollution, it can still be hard for people to imagine how to resist beyond individual actions — like by shopping less. How do you hope viewers will take action? A. Well, not shopping doesn’t have to be just forgoing something. It feels quite satisfying as an act of resistance to be like, “You know what? I’m not going to spend my precious time and money on this company. I don’t need another coat.”  But the people that I really think about are the people who are working inside companies and have been feeling guilty for a long time. The people who feel like there’s something wrong and they’ve tried to change it and no one’s listened, or that they’re not in the right job and they could be using their time and the energy to do something that is more constructive. It’s those people I would love to watch this and have a change of heart. We’ve already seen some reactions to the trailer from people who work in advertising who basically have said, “You know, we sell this shit to you, that’s what we do all day long. And we all feel really bad about it.” I would love it if there were a few people who saw this and took it as an opportunity to say, “You know what? I can do better than this.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Who’s responsible for waste? A Q&A about the ‘conspiracy’ of overconsumption. on Nov 27, 2024.

As Fast Fashion's Waste Pollutes Africa's Environment, Designers in Ghana Are Finding a Solution

In a sprawling secondhand clothing market in Ghana’s capital, early morning shoppers jostle as they search through piles of garments, eager to pluck a bargain or a designer find from the stalls selling used apparel from the West

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — In a sprawling secondhand clothing market in Ghana’s capital, early morning shoppers jostle as they search through piles of garments, eager to pluck a bargain or a designer find from the stalls selling used and low-quality apparel imported from the West. At the other end of the street, an upcycled fashion and thrifting festival unfolds with glamour and glitz. Models parade along a makeshift runway in outfits that designers created out of discarded materials from the Kantamanto market, ranging from floral blouses and denim jeans to leather bags, caps and socks.The festival is called Obroni Wawu October, using a phrase that in the local Akan language means “dead white man’s clothes.” Organizers see the event as a small way to disrupt a destructive cycle that has made Western overconsumption into an environmental problem in Africa, where some of the worn-out clothes end up in waterways and garbage dumps. “Instead of allowing (textile waste) to choke our gutters or beaches or landfills, I decided to use it to create something ... for us to use again,” said Richard Asante Palmer, one of the designers at the annual festival organized by the Or Foundation, a nonprofit that works at the intersection of environmental justice and fashion development.Ghana is one of Africa's leading importers of used clothing. It also ships some of what it gets from the United Kingdom, Canada, China and elsewhere to other West African nations, the United States and the U.K., according to the Ghana Used Clothing Dealers Association. Some of the imported clothes arrive in such poor shape, however, that vendors dispose of them to make room for the next shipments. On average, 40% of the millions of garments exported weekly to Ghana end up as waste, according to Neesha-Ann Longdon, the business manager for the Or Foundation’s executive director. The clothing dealers association, in a report published earlier this year on the socioeconomic and environmental impact of the nation’s secondhand clothing trade, cited a much lower estimate, saying only 5% of the items that reach Ghana in bulk are thrown out because they cannot be sold or reused. In many African countries, citizens typically buy preowned clothes — as well as used cars, phones and other necessities — because they cost less than new ones. Secondhand shopping also gives them a chance to score designer goods that most people in the region can only dream of.But neither Ghana's fast-growing population of 34 million people nor its overtaxed infrastructure is equipped to absorb the amount of cast-off attire entering the country. Mounds of textile waste litter beaches across the capital, Accra, and the lagoon which serves as the main outlet through which the city’s major drainage channels empty into the Gulf of Guinea.“Fast fashion has taken over as the dominant mode of production, which is characterized here as higher volumes of lower-quality goods,” Longdon said.Jonathan Abbey, a fisherman in the area, said his nets often capture textile waste from the sea. Unsold used clothes “aren’t even burned but are thrown into the Korle Lagoon, which then goes into the sea,” Abbey said.The ease of online shopping has sped up this waste cycle, according to Andrew Brooks, a King’s College London researcher and the author of “Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-hand Clothes.” In countries like the U.K., unwanted purchases often end up as charity donations, but clothes are sometimes stolen from street donation bins and exported to places where the consumer demand is perceived to be higher, Brooks said. Authorities rarely investigate such theft because the clothes are "seen as low-value items,” he said.Donors, meanwhile, think their castoffs are “going to be recycled rather than reused, or given away rather than sold, or sold in the U.K. rather than exported overseas,” Brooks said.The volume of secondhand clothing sent to Africa has led to complaints of the continent being used as a dumping ground. In 2018, Rwanda raised tariffs on such imports in defiance of U.S. pressure, citing concerns the West's refuse undermined efforts to strengthen the domestic textile industry. Last year, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said he would ban imports of clothing “from dead people.”Trade restrictions might not go far in either reducing textile pollution or encouraging clothing production in Africa, where profits are low and incentives for designers are few, experts say.In the absence of adequate measures to stop the pollution, organizations like the Or Foundation are trying to make a difference by rallying young people and fashion creators to find a good use for scrapped materials.Ghana's beaches had hardly any discarded clothes on them before the country's waste management problems worsened in recent years, foundation co-founder Allison Bartella said. “Fast forward to today, 2024, there are mountains of textile waste on the beaches,” she said.Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

What Bird Flu in Wastewater Means for California and Beyond

Wastewater in several Californian cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, recently tested positive for bird flu. But understanding disease risk and exposure to humans isn’t so straightforward

Since the first avian influenza outbreaks hit the U.S. early this year, health and agriculture experts have struggled to track the virus’s spotty path as it spreads in dairy cow herds and an unknown number of humans. Infection risk still seems low for most people, but dairy workers and others directly exposed to cows have been getting sick. Canada’s first human case was just reported, in a teenager who is in critical condition. To get a better handle on the unsettling situation, scientists are picking up a pathogen-hunting tool that’s been powerful in the past: wastewater surveillance.In the past couple of weeks, wastewater samples in several locations mostly scattered around California—including the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and San Jose—tested positive for genetic material from the bird flu virus, H5N1. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Wastewater Surveillance System reported detections at 14 sites in California during a collection period that ended on November 2. As of November 13, across the U.S., 15 sites monitored by WastewaterSCAN, a project run by Stanford University and Emory University researchers, reported positive samples this month. But finding H5N1 material in wastewater doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a risk to human health, says WastewaterSCAN’s co-director Alexandria Boehm, a civil and environmental engineer at Stanford University.Analyzing trace amounts of viral genetic material, often shed by fecal matter in sewers, can alert scientists and public health experts to a possible increase in community infections. Wastewater sampling became instrumental in forecasting COVID cases across the U.S., for instance. But the way H5N1 affects both animal and human populations complicates identifying sources and understanding disease risk. H5N1 can be deadly in poultry. Cattle usually recover from symptoms—such as fever, dehydration and reduced milk production—but veterinarians and farmers are reporting that cows have been dying at higher rates in California than in other affected states. Cats that drink raw milk from infected cows can develop deadly neurological symptoms. The current cases in humans haven’t caused any known deaths (most people have flulike symptoms, although some develop eye infections), but past major outbreaks outside of the U.S. have resulted in fatalities.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Scientific American spoke with Boehm about the latest bird flu detections in wastewater and the ways that scientists are using these data to better track and understand disease prevalence and exposure—among animals and humans both.[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]When did WastewaterSCAN start tracking H5N1?We noticed something very unusual in Amarillo, Tex. [In the spring of 2024,] after flu season, we saw really high levels of influenza A [one of the four flu virus types that infect humans] RNA nucleic acids in their wastewater. This was surprising because we know influenza A in wastewater tracks with cases in the community—but there were not very many cases in the community, and it was after flu season. We also then heard on the news that they had discovered cattle infected with avian influenza in the same area in Texas. So we worked in collaboration with the local wastewater treatment plants and public health officers to test the wastewater. And we found that, indeed, it was H5 [a subtype of avian influenza A virus] in their waste stream. We determined that most of that H5 was coming from legal discharges into the sanitary sewer from milk processing plants.Then when we scaled the H5 assay across the country, we were finding it in locations where, shortly thereafter, cattle were being identified as being infected [with the virus]. In June the CDC actually sent memos to the states asking them to try to measure H5 in wastewater, recognizing that the measurements can help to understand the extent and duration of the outbreak in the U.S.Has wastewater analysis been able to trace cases to any sources?We can’t always rule out that it’s wild birds or poultry or humans, but overall the preponderance of evidence suggests most of the inputs are likely from cow milk. That cow milk is getting into consumer homes, where people are disposing of it down the drain. I’m sure you have poured out milk down your sink—I know I have. It’s also coming from permitted operations where people are making cheese or yogurt or ice cream, and they might be starting with a milk product that has the avian influenza nucleic acids in it.I want to stress that the milk in people’s homes that might have the avian influenza RNA is not infectious or a threat to human health. It’s just a marker that some milk got into the food chain that originally had the virus in it. It’s killed because milk products are pasteurized—and that’s, by the way, why drinking raw milk or eating raw cheeses right now is not really recommended. The RNA that makes up the genome of these viruses is extremely stable in wastewater. It’s even stable after pasteurization. So you pasteurize the raw milk, and the RNA is still present at about the same concentrations.Detecting it in the wastewater does not mean there’s a risk to human health. What it does mean is that there are still infected cattle that are around the vicinity, and work still needs to be done to identify those cattle and remove their products from the food chain, which is the goal of the officials that are in charge of that aspect of the outbreak.How might we be able to better determine where the viral genetic material is coming from and assess human infection rates?It is very difficult because genetically the virus is not different [between sources]. It’s not like we can say, “Oh, the one in humans is going to be like this, and so let’s look for that.” We’re working really closely with public health departments that are really proactive in sequencing positive influenza cases. If we do start seeing it in [more] people, we will likely know it because we’ll see differences in the wastewater.I don’t want to be alarmist because right now the risk of getting H5N1 is very minimal, and the symptoms are really mild. But I think one of the concerns is that the virus could mutate during this influenza season coming up. Somebody who’s infected with [seasonal influenza] could also get infected with H5N1, and then it could maybe create a new strain that could be more severe. We’re hoping that the wastewater data, along with all the other data that people and agencies are collecting, will together help figure out what’s going on and protect public health better.What are trends are you seeing in your surveillance right now?Most recently, California is just lighting up. A lot of the wastewater samples in California are coming back as positive, even in locations that are very urban—such as the Bay Area and in Los Angeles. The question is: Why? In some of these locations, there actually are small operations where people are making dairy products with milk. But another explanation, like I mentioned earlier, is just the wasting of milk products.How do H5N1 levels in wastewater correlate to infections in animals?We’re sort of seeing it as an early indicator, or concurrent indicator, of cattle in the vicinity being infected with avian influenza. The first detections were in Texas, and we saw a lot of detections in Michigan for a while, and now the hot spot is California. As scientists, we’re going to analyze all this in the future. But anecdotally, the H5 detections in wastewater are following along with when herds are identified, and then once it’s sort of under control, we stop seeing it.Public health officials are using the data to say, “Okay, we got a positive in this location. What are the different sources that could account for it? Have we tested all the cattle that are contributing milk products to industries in this sewer shed? Have we gotten rid of all the infected herds in our state, because now we’re not getting any positives in the wastewater?”How else are scientists and officials staying on top of cases and spread?The [U.S. Department of Agriculture] and different entities around the country are pursuing it from an animal health perspective and a food safety perspective. So there is testing of cattle herds and milk products. There’s also testing of poultry, and then there’s testing of workers that are in contact with infected herds and infected poultry. On the clinical side, there is a push to get influenza-positive samples sequenced to understand what kind of influenza it is, as sort of a safety net to see if there might be some avian influenza circulating in people. So far, cases have been in people who are actually exposed to infected animals, who are working on farms, and perhaps in some of their family members.How has tracking H5N1 been different from or similar to COVID or other pathogens?All the other pathogens that we track have been conceptually similar to COVID, where humans are the source [of pathogenic material in wastewater]. We know that the occurrence of the viral or fungal material in wastewater match the cases. Bird flu is the first example where we’re using wastewater to track something that is primarily not, at least right now, from a human source but has potential human health implications for different reasons. It’s been a really great case study of how wastewater can be used not only for tracking human illness but also zoonotic pathogens—pathogens that affect animals. So now we’re thinking about what else wastewater could be used for. What other kinds of animal byproducts end up in the waste stream that might contain biomarkers of infectious disease? H5 is our first example, and I’m sure there will be more.

Generative AI Could Generate Millions More Tons of E-Waste by 2030

Generative AI could saddle the planet with heaps more hazardous waste

November 14, 20243 min readGenerative AI Is Poised to Worsen the E-Waste CrisisGenerative AI could saddle the planet with heaps more hazardous waste By Saima S. IqbalA server room in a data center. Every time generative artificial intelligence drafts an e-mail or conjures up an image, the planet pays for it. Making two images can consume as much energy as charging a smartphone; a single exchange with ChatGPT can heat up a server so much that it requires a bottle’s worth of water to cool. At scale, these costs soar. By 2027, the global AI sector could annually consume as much electricity as the Netherlands, according to one recent estimate. And a new study in Nature Computational Science identifies another concern: AI’s outsize contribution to the world’s mounting heap of electronic waste. The study found that generative AI applications alone could add 1.2 million to five million metric tons of this hazardous trash to the planet by 2030, depending on how quickly the industry grows.Such a contribution would add to the tens of millions of tons of electronic products the globe discards annually. Cell phones, microwave ovens, computers and other ubiquitous digital products often contain mercury, lead or other toxins. When improperly discarded, they can contaminate air, water and soil. The United Nations found that in 2022 about 78 percent of the world’s e-waste wound up in landfills or at unofficial recycling sites, where laborers risk their health to scavenge rare metals.The worldwide AI boom rapidly churns through physical data storage devices, plus the graphics processing units and other high-performance components needed to process thousands of simultaneous calculations. This hardware lasts anywhere from two to five years—but it’s often replaced as soon as newer versions become available. Asaf Tzachor, a sustainability researcher at Israel’s Reichman University, who co-authored the new study, says its findings emphasize the need to monitor and reduce this technology’s environmental impacts.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.To calculate just how much generative AI contributes to this problem, Tzachor and his colleagues examined the type and volume of hardware used to run large language models, the length of time that these components last and the growth rate of the generative AI sector. The researchers caution that their prediction is a gross estimate that could change based on a few additional factors. More people might adopt generative AI than the authors’ models anticipate, for example. Hardware design innovations, meanwhile, could reduce e-waste in a given AI system—but other technological advances can make systems cheaper and more accessible to the public, increasing the number in use.This study’s biggest value comes from its attention to AI’s broad environmental impacts, says Shaolei Ren, a researcher at the University of California, Riverside, who studies responsible AI and was not involved in the new research. “We might want these [generative AI] companies to slow down a bit,” he says.Few countries mandate the proper disposal of e-waste, and those that do often fail to enforce their existing laws on it. Twenty-five U.S. states have e-waste management policies, but there is no federal law that requires electronics recycling. In February Democratic Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts introduced a bill that would require federal agencies to study and develop standards for AI’s environmental impacts, including e-waste. But that bill, the Artificial Intelligence Environmental Impacts Act of 2024 (which has not passed the Senate), would not force AI developers to cooperate with its voluntary reporting system. Some companies, however, claim to be taking independent action. Microsoft and Google have pledged to reach net zero waste and net zero emissions respectively by 2030; this would likely involve reducing or recycling AI-related e-waste.Companies that use AI have numerous options to limit e-waste. It’s possible to squeeze more life out of servers, for instance, through regular maintenance and updates or by shifting worn-out devices to less-intensive applications. Refurbishing and reusing obsolete hardware components can also cut waste by 42 percent, Tzachor and his co-authors note in the new study. And more efficient chip and algorithm design could reduce generative AI’s demand for hardware and electricity. Combining all these strategies would reduce e-waste by 86 percent, the study authors estimate.There’s another wrinkle as well: AI products tend to be trickier to recycle than standard electronics because the former often contain a lot of sensitive customer data, says Kees Baldé, an e-waste researcher at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, who wasn’t involved with the new study. But big tech companies can afford to both erase that data and properly dispose of their electronics, he points out. “Yes, it costs something,” he says of broader e-waste recycling, “but the gains for society are much larger.”

Suggested Viewing

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

Our team is always growing.
Become a partner, volunteer, sponsor, or intern today.
Let us know how you would like to get involved!

CONTACT US

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Subscribers receive a free day pass for streaming Cinema Verde.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.