Environment

Both the African environment and the human health of Africans suffer from toxic chemicals and imported wastes more than in developed countries. Africa has become the destination of illegal toxic waste exports and, as this study shows, toxic chemicals are also present in toys, kitchen utensils, and other consumer products sold at African markets.

This executive summary combines IPEN's two new reports on the chemicals in plastic pellets that endanger human health and the environment — "Plastic pellets found on beaches all over the world contain toxic chemicals" and "Widespread chemical contamination of recycled plastic pellets globally", in which we investigated chemicals in pellets made from recycled waste plastics.

Almost all plastics contain toxic chemicals that are not removed during recycling but are carried over to the new products, and the recycling process can even generate new toxic chemicals such as dioxins. The increased recycling is intended to contribute to a so-called circular economy, but plastics containing toxic chemicals should not be recycled. Instead, they should be considered non-circular materials.

Plastic pellets, or nurdles, are used to make plastic products but are often lost during production, transportation, and storage. They can carry many different chemicals, both those intentionally added and pollutants that attach to the plastics in the environment. Some of these chemicals are especially concerning since they are known to have several negative effects on human health and the environment.

Unlike other pollutants that are single elements or simple chemical compounds, microplastics represent a cocktail of toxicity: plastics contain at least 10,000 different chemicals. Those chemicals are linked to diseases from diabetes to hormone disruption to cancers.

Every single stage of the lifecycle of plastic, from the extraction of oil and gas to the disposal of plastic waste, causes harm to our environment and our health. It's time to look at the big picture. This is the life cycle of plastic-from cradle to grave.

Plastic clean-ups have proliferated in response to the growing plastic crisis. Such clean-ups may involve large-scale unsupervised methods of plastic collection that do not discriminate between aquatic life, plastic and organic matter. As a result, the rise of these plastic cleanup technologies has raised red flags in civil society and academia.

This report addresses the plastic industry’s claims that chemical recycling, also known as “advanced recycling,” can play a significant role in reducing global plastic pollution. The science and data currently available do not support this claim and actually point to the conclusion that chemical recycling would support expansion of plastic production, while potentially causing unacceptable levels of environmental and social harm.

Promising research continues to emerge around alternative materials to single-use plastic. However, labels like “compostable” and “biodegradable” are misleading. The case study offers greater transparency around these novel materials, their behavior in the environment, and other concerns.

This report explores the current state of PET-based bottle recycling in Europe, as well as its potential for improvement, alongside analysis of common claims made to consumers on bottle labels relating to recycling.