Saturday, July 24, 2021

Advance Denim BioBlue eliminates chemicals from dyeing process

The denim manufacturer has developed a sustainable dyeing process that cuts toxic pollutants from its production process.


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The denim manufacturer has developed a sustainable dyeing process that cuts toxic pollutants from its production process.

BioBlue Indigo slashes chemicals that contaminate wastewater from its denim dyeing process. The company does this by exluding Sodium hydrosulfite from the process, a difficult to transport, unstable and flammable chemical used to help infuse yarns with pigment.

Sodium hydrosulfite has long been used to convert indigo into its dye-friendly form yet it has also garnered criticism for being less than environment friendly. During the denim manufacturing process, it produces high concentrations of salt which are difficult to remove from wastewater and serve to further pollute the environment.

BioBlue is Advance Denim’s most recent investment in sustainable production.

The company managed to reduce energy consumption by 42% per yard of fabric as well as cut water consumption by 58%. The denim manufacturer succeeded in the latter through investment in a new reverse osmosis recycling system, allowing it to recycle 100% of wastewater generated in the denim finishing process.

Saving water in the manufacturing process is a key concern for Advance Denim. In 2020, the company launched Big Box dyeing. This revolutionary indigo dye process reduces water consumption by 85%, eliminates wastewater as well as decreases energy consumption by 25%.

The denim manufacturer originally committed itself to using less water, energy and chemicals in the dyeing process as well as to using recycled fibres, Tencel and organic cotton. After adopting the latter sustainable materials, dunking them in hazardous chemicals appeared counter-productive, which is why BioBlue Denim was launched.

“It is no secret that sodium hydrosulfite is environmentally unfavourable because it produces hazardous effluent that must be treated prior to discharge,” sustainability and textile chemical management expert Amanda Cattermole said. “Some of the compounds, including salts, coupled with the high PH required in dyeing, contaminate the environment if the effluent is not treated.”

The BioBlue process lessened chemical oxygen demand (COD) by 71% in the dye bath and by 34% in the first wash bath. BOD levels were slashed by 60% in the dye bath and 46% in the first wash. (COD measures the total amount of chemicals in wastewater while BOD calculates the oxygen levels needed for bacteria to break down organic chemicals in the water.)

Advanced Denim intends to continue investing in renewable technologies. The manufacturer hopes that 90% of its generated fibres will be sustainable by 2023.
Recycling won’t solve plastic crisis, report finds

A new report says that recycling methods alone won’t eradicate plastic pollution.




Published by Filipino public interest network Eco Waste Coalition on Wednesday, July 21, the review outlines how ineffective advanced recycling methods such as chemical recycling, waste-to-energy and pyrolysis prove in tackling the plastic waste problem.

‘Plastic Waste Management Hazards: Waste-to-Energy, Chemical Recycling and Plastic Fuels’ argues that the previously mentioned ‘solutions’ to the plastic crisis come with their own environmental drawbacks, as the technologies in question result in the production of hazardous chemicals.

As such, the Coalition advocates for a reduction in plastic production, urging the manufacturing industry to limit the use of plastic where not absolutely necessary.

Lee Bell, a co-author of the report as well as Policy Adviser on Persistent Organic Pollutants for International Pellet Watch (IPEN), said: “No current management method for plastic waste is capable of alleviating the world’s expanding plastic pollution crisis. All methods generate significant toxic hazards because of the toxic additives that are a component of most plastic products. Industry’s championing of various recycling schemes is a marketing ploy designed to fend off plastic regulation and efforts to curb an escalating plastic pollution problem.”

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“The only solution to the plastic waste piling up in our communities and oceans is to limit plastic production to essential uses and eliminate the use of toxic chemicals in plastics,” he emphasized.

One recycling method touted as a potential solution to plastic waste is chemical recycling. This approach, however, can be very polluting. For every tonne of plastic treated via this method, three tonnes of CO2 are released into the atmosphere. The toxicants produced through said form of recycling also include cancer-causing, endocrine- and immune disrupting dioxins and furans. Noteworthy in this sense is also the fact that chemical recycling can’t tackle the microplastic problem, the term referring to plastics either intentionally manufactured on a small scale such as pellets or weathered down into smaller pieces from larger plastic products. Here, again, the report advocates for possible production restrictions.

Eco Waste Coalition posits sustainable design that takes a product’s life cycle into consideration as a way to counteract plastic proliferation, with recycling not meant to substitute but supplement said process, enforced by a functional political and regulatory system.

By 2050, on a global scale, 1800 million tonnes of plastic will be produced while 900 million tonnes of plastic will be incinerated.

More food is wasted on farms than in retail

A study found that the volume of farm-level food waste is much higher than that of post-consumer food waste.


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1,2 billion tonnes of food are lost on farms alone, a report finds.

Conducted by WWF and UK retailer Tesco, the Driven to Waste report shows that farm level waste- the mentioned figure being equivalent to the weight of 10 million blue whales-accounts for the staggering amounts of food being wasted on a global basis. (In comparison, households coupled with the retail and food service sector contributed to the lesser sum of 931 million tonnes of food waste.)

Yet, it’s the common perception that consumers and retailers are primarily responsible for food loss. This is because ‘food loss’ as a term is conceived as being caused by ‘negligence or a conscious decision to discard food’. Yet the described phenomenon can be attributed to a variety of factors, ranging from pests, disease and natural disasters to poor infrastructure and unfavourable market conditions.

The Driven to Waste report highlights the fact that food waste is just as predominant in the food pre-production stage, specifically pre-as well as mid-harvest and slaughter. Beyond uncontrollable factors such as weather, transport conditions or processing, human decisions that affect the proliferation of food loss at an early stage of the supply chain relate to issues such as direct governance or cultural factors. One example for this would be farmers who are unable to afford clean technologies or (re-)training. With farmers in developing countries often unable to dictate prices or apply sustainable technologies to render food waste sustainable, particularly when faced with unexpected food order cancellation, the generation of food waste at early stages in the production cycle should come as no surprise.

Yet, internationally, statistics on food loss as well as food waste remain skewered. As such, the Sustainability Development Goals issued by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization only demands a slash of post-retail global food waste by 50% by 2030, failing to account for the vast volume of food waste generated at other stages of the supply chain.

Pete Pearson, Global Food Loss and Waste Initiative Lead at WWF, champions a holistic approach to the problem. According to him, national governments and market actors across the world are called to support farmers in order to reduce food waste. In order to address the relative power imbalances between farmers and retailers as well as change the rigid market structures that stringently separate customers from farmers, a multi-stakeholder policy needs to be adopted, Pearson argues.

“NGOs and multilateral organisations, market and supply chain actors, governments and citizens can all play a role in tackling the direct drivers of food waste on farms,” he concludes
US: EPA says 50% national recycling target within reach

The EPA believes that a US national recycling strategy is feasible under current political and industrial conditions.


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In October 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) called for a 50% recycling rate by 2030.

This target was outlined in a draft version of the governmental body’s National Recycling Strategy.

Achieving said objective could be considered a watershed moment of sorts, seeing as the US recycling rate has been stuck in the mid-30% range since the 1990’s.

Yet, based on the current political climate, the US stands a good chance of sticking to its recycling commitment, according to Nena Shaw, acting division director of the EPA’s Resource Conservation and Sustainability Division.

"We are at a unique moment where there are so many policy drivers coming into alignment to positively impact our work," Shaw explained. "Congress, industry non-profits, the international community and the American public all want to see an improved recycling sector."

She stressed the fact that the country is ramping up, both on a state legislative as well as congressional level, being perfectly placed to meet the Biden administration’s demands for environmental justice and sustainable investment. Policies in this sense relate to the provision of new jobs, the improvement of public health as well as the minimization of climate change effects.

The EPA has petitioned Congress for funds going up to $10 million. The grant will be used to enhance the functionality of existing waste infrastructure by establishing a recycling pilot program. Said plan is intended to boost job security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions while extending the lifecycle of sustainable raw materials.

"The connections between materials usage, the economy and the environment underscored by sustainable materials management is critical to our nation's health and prosperity," Shaw said.

Placing more emphasis on material repair and reuse as well as easing down on excess product consumption are two examples for how the recycling market may take further hold in the US. According to Shaw, this process may be facilitated by the adoption of a waste conscious product design mentality by companies and innovators.

"When governments and organizations purchase materials made from recycled content, we drive demand for recycled materials, and we make the system more economically viable," she commented.

A thriving circular economy, however, is dependent on a universal standardized methodology to measure recycling rates. Global figures on recycling are often estimates as there is a lot of variation in defining the term ‘recycling’ as well as the activities that fall under it-in a country as vast as the US, these discrepancies at state level render comparison of recycling rates impossible. In recognition of this, the EPA is slated to release a national recycling methodology, coupled with a recycling measurement guide to help local and state governments track progress against the national recycling goal.

Shaw calls for a holistic approach to achieve this level of ‘transformational change’. She proposes an active collaboration of federal state and local government, trade associations and private industry actors, stating that the multiple stakeholder approach is what will ‘help create a more viable recycling system’ that will help reduce the country’s ecological footprint.
Repairing, not recycling is the way to tackle the smartphone e-waste explosion

Smartphone e-waste continues to proliferate. Extending a smartphone’s lifespan can help lessen carbon emissions as well as avoid the massive energy loss and toxicant proliferation tied to conventional recycling processes.


© Maksym Yemelyanov - stock.adobe.com

In 2021, 3,8 billion people across the world own a smartphone.

This corresponds to 48,33% of the world’s population. Considering that in 2016, the number of smartphone owners was limited to 2,5 billion or 33,58% of the global population, the increase appears staggering.

With smartphone sales expected to skyrocket, mobile phone waste streams are equally set to explode.

Smartphones are responsible for 10% of the world’s annual e-waste rate, which, in 2019, translated to 50 million tonnes. In weight, said waste stream corresponds to 300,000 double decker buses.

Beyond its pollution potential, smartphone e-waste represents a missed economic opportunity. Globally, only 17, 4% of e-waste gets recycled, resulting in a general raw material loss equivalent to the material value of $10 billion. With demand for mobile phones at an all-time high, the internationally fast dwindling supply of critical raw materials needed for their production has begun to take its toll on production. The Royal Society of Chemistry estimates that 6 key components needed for smartphone production will run out in the next 100 years. As of now, the microchip shortage currently affecting the car industry is predicted to similarly inconvenience smartphone manufacturers.

This is why extending the existing lifecycle of phones is crucial to the industry.

Using smartphones for longer will not only save on raw materials but also lessen e-waste streams as well as save on energy needed for recycling. By keeping smartphones for four years rather than the customary three, the number of phones sent to waste could be reduced by as much as 25%.
Reuse challenges

Extending smartphone usage is also dependent on phone manufacturers.

As consumers are not only wont to discard phones when a new model comes out but also when there are no more software updates available or functionality becomes compromised, manufacturers need to move away from built in obsolescence, that is, the tendency to create a product for a finite life span so as to induce future sales along the line.

For repair to be feasible on the consumer end, phone manufacturers are also tasked with making spare parts available to third party repair services as well as affordable to consumers looking to fix their phones.
Repair Initiatives

With Right-to-Repair legislation on the rise in Europe, attitudes to phone repair are slowly shifting.

As such, the EU has incorporated ‘Right to repair’ within its circular economy plan whilst France released a repairability index in 2021, providing insight on malfunctioning devices and informing customers on how easy phone repair can be.

Financial measures to incentivise phone reuse are also becoming more popular. In Sweden, tax incentives worth up to almost 2500 EUR exist for appliance repairs, and similar (albeit less lucrative) schemes exist in Austria.

Ideas to render the approach profitable to manufacturers are diverse. Re-modelling existing phone contracts-which have consumers purchase phones in a time span going anywhere from 18-24 months- into ‘phone lease contracts’ is one prominent suggestion. This would see the user pay for the phone as a service, returning it to the manufacturer when it malfunctions. The producer then gets to mine the precious raw materials contained within the phone whilst also refurbishing and returning the product to its user.

Restricting the number of phones owned by individuals has also been posited as a solution to the smartphone e-waste crisis. Getting white collar workers to stop using a personal as well as a business phone alone could slash smartphone usage by half a billion.

Beyond the measures introduced, eliminating smartphone e-waste is dependent on changing consumer mindset. With phones having become a status symbol with a waste factor equivalent to that of high fashion, affixing recycled products with greater inherent value needs to take centre stage if smartphone repair is to have a beneficial impact on the environment.
Tokyo 2020: Olympic medals made from old smartphones, laptops

Used electronic devices have been recycled in a nationwide effort to produce the Olympic medals for the Tokyo 2020 Games. The project plans to set a precedent for future Olympic Games.



As the athletes take the podium and, with a slight bow, have their medals placed around their necks, they will be happy to have landed in the top three. For the people behind the Tokyo Medal Project, they'll be happy that those Olympic medals are there in the first place.

The project recycled old electronic gadgets such as smartphones and laptops to produce the Olympic Medals that are being awarded at the Tokyo Games.

For the people of Japan, the project offered a unique opportunity to be a part of the Games.

"The campaign called on the public to donate obsolete electronic devices for the project," Toyko 2020 spokesperson Hitomi Kamizawa told DW. "We are grateful for everyone's cooperation."

The project capitalized on the fact that billions worth of precious metals such as gold and silver, which are used in electronic devices, get discarded each year globally thanks to people simply dumping or burning their gadgets instead of ensuring they are properly collected and recycled.

A recycling supply chain

There was a two-year national effort in Japan to collect enough recycled material to produce about 5,000 bronze, silver, and gold medals for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Up to 90% of Japanese cities, towns, and villages participated by setting up donation pick-up sites where hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens donated their old electronic devices.

The recycling campaign produced 70 pounds (32 kilograms) of gold, 7,700 pounds of silver and 4,850 pounds of bronze. All from nearly 80 tons of small electrical devices such as old phones and laptops, said Kamizawa.


Although recycling efforts like these often seem straightforward, the medal project had to engage the national government, thousands of municipalities, companies, schools and other local communities.

One of the primary companies involved was Renet Japan Group whose business philosophy revolves around sustainability.

"We developed a waste management movement for the medal project with the cooperation of many stakeholders, from the Japanese government to local communities," Toshio Kamakura, director of Renet Japan Group, told DW.

When the project was launched in April 2017, there were just about 600 municipalities on board. By the end of the project in March 2019, that figure had risen to more than 1,600. There was a major public relations campaign, and collection points were set up to make it easier for the people to contribute, Kamakura said.


Aproximately 6.2 million phones were collected by the Japanese phone operator NTT DoCoMo


Collecting the used devices was just the first step. Following a process of dismantling, extracting and refining by contractors, the recycled material was then molded into Junichi Kawnishi's design concept — a design that beat out 400 other entries in a competition held by Tokyo 2020.

The bigger picture

While the Japanese will be the first to have all of the Olympic medals made out of recycled material, the concept is not new. In the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, 30% of the sterling silver to make the gold and silver medals were obtained from recycled materials such as car parts and mirror surfaces.

Looking ahead to the Paris Games in 2024, where social change and enhancing the environment are among the main themes, there are hopes that the Tokyo 2020 Medal Project will set a precedent.

When it comes to the environmental aspect Kamakura thinks it is necessary to continue in order to build a more sustainable material society.

A record 53.6 million tons (Mt), or 7.3 kilograms per person of electronic waste — equivalent to 350 cruise ships the size of the Queen Mary 2 — was produced globally in 2019, making it the world's fastest-growing domestic waste stream, according to the United Nations. E-waste has surged by more than a fifth in the past five years amid growing demand for electronic gadgets, mostly with short life cycles and few options for repair.

Less than a fifth of the scrap ends up being properly collected and recycled, posing serious environmental and health risks.





UK: Calls grow loud for Amazon ‘anti-waste law’

The global online retailer has been accused of destroying in-date groceries as well as electronic goods such as laptops and TV’s.


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British charities have urged Prime Minister Boris Johnson to issue an ‘Amazon law’ after allegations against the online giant’s wasteful practices came to light recently.

Boxes of groceries containing crisps, tinned food and soft drinks appear to be earmarked as waste in photos and footage taken by an Amazon worker at the retailers Dunfermline depot in Fife.

Amazon previously came under fire for disposing of non-food items such as books, laptops and TV’s, relevant footage showing sealed face masks, computer equipment and sealed face masks placed into boxes called ‘destroy’.

The scope of new and unused good being binned in the UK by Amazon can be considered massive, with eight workers from eight different warehouses testifying to having witnessed the destruction of returned items in impeccable condition.

A former Amazon employee at a Hertfordshire centre concurred, stating that he believes that the practice ‘happens in every facility’.

Amazon denied throwing away edible food prior to its expiry date, stressing that it supplied 23 food banks and charities with 2,9 million food and drink products.

The online shopping giant also pointed out that it does not send any products to landfill in the UK.

“Our priority is to resell, donate or recycle any unsold products. We recognise that confusion may have stemmed from our use of the word “destroy”. We are in the process of replacing it with terms that more accurately reflect our longstanding business practices.”

Yet recent investigations showed that 124,000 items were sent to landfill from the Dunfermline warehouse.

"Really it does sound like an extraordinary approach just to be disposing of goods which are perfectly good but just don't have a home and they can't be bothered to store them," Environment Secretary George Eustice told MPs before a House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee.

"Obviously that is a chronic waste and we are looking at things like the WEEE [waste electrical and electronic equipment] regulations that we have on electronic goods that are there in retained EU law.

A letter signed by representatives of six of the largest UK environmental organisations including Greenpeace, the Environmental Investigation Agency as well as Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland petitions the government to adopt an anti-waste law that will require companies to reuse or donate unsold items.
EU Commission report calls for new recycling category for Light-EV batteries

Waste collection and recycling rates for batteries used in light vehicles such as e-bikes could be improved by the institution of a fifth recycling category, a report finds.



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Waste collection and recycling rates for batteries used in light vehicles such as e-bikes could be improved by the institution of a fifth recycling category, a report finds.

Initiated by the European Commission’s Joint Research Center, the study calls for an update of existing collection rules.

The 2006 Batteries Directive in effect currently identifies three battery categories. A fourth-relating to batteries in use in electric vehicles (EV’s)-is already part of a new Batteries Regulation proposed as of December 2020.

Additions suggested by the Research Center report relate to establishing definite collection targets for recycling within the suggested fifth category.

This is of import considering that current collection targets correlate to the relative life spans of less innovative products. With e-bike batteries typically in use for as long as 9 years, running counter against the assumed three specified by conventional collection targets, generated waste becomes available at a much later date. This serves to skewer recorded collection data while also impeding the safe and efficient collection of waste batteries by failing to account for waste volume generated several years along the line.

To rectify this problem, the report suggests the institution of a return channel for batteries sourced from such Light Means of Transport (LMT), including sport shops, bicycle as well as scooter dealers. It also recommends the alignment of non-collection requirements (ex. sustainability, information or remanufacturing) to the characteristics of LMT batteries.

The report mainly advocates for the adoption of an ‘Available for Collection’ (AfC) method for establishing collection rate targets. Considering that batteries used in light vehicles have a multiple year lifecycle, using sales figures (‘placed-on-market based target’) to calculate waste volume does not seem prescient.

Adopting the alternative approach would make it possible to have collection targets already by 2025 instead of 2030.
Why Germany's disaster management works from the bottom to the top

Unlike many other countries, Germany's civil protection and disaster management system is deeply rooted in communal and municipal structures. The current flood catastrophe has disclosed major shortcomings.


Air-raid alarm sirens are still crucial for Germany's civil protection system


When the first floods hit southwestern Germany last week, local emergency managers were the first to initiate rescue operations on the ground. But it would soon become apparent that the unfolding natural disaster was more than what they could cope with, and that responses would have to be coordinated at a higher level in the emergency chain of command.

It was high time the crisis managers of the affected counties and municipalities took over, coordinating assignments of police, firefighters and paramedics to help save lives and provide assistance where needed.

Germany has a total of 294 counties and 107 self-governing municipalities, including major cities such as Potsdam, Cologne and Leipzig. In big emergencies, county governors can request assistance from other, less affected, regions to pool their crisis-fighting capabilities in task forces. Those are usually set up and run by a regional state government, of which there are 16 in Germany's federal state-based political system.

The Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance is Germany's highest authority in preventing and mitigating natural disasters


The role of the central government

It is only when crisis management at the federal state level fails that the central government in Berlin is allowed to step in with the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK). But for BBK to actively engage in a crisis, the respective community or municipality first needs to declare a state of emergency. And only then, Germany's armed forces can join rescue efforts, or Federal Police forces are allowed to maintain law and order.

Another organization frequently assigned to emergencies or natural disasters in Germany is the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW). THW crews boast special technical capabilities and expertise to provide effective assistance, notably in flood disasters and earthquakes. The agency's 80,000-strong membership is primarily made up of semi-professional volunteers, who are often also assigned to relief operations abroad, for example in bringing utilities like water and electricity back online.

During the ongoing flood crisis in Germany, THW's pumping crews successfully prevented several dams from bursting.


Thousands of Germans spend their free time on disaster relief drills

Germany's army of volunteer helpers

Volunteerism is also a prime hallmark of the work of millions of other rescuers and helpers organized in associations such as the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (ASB) — a charity and relief organization — the German Red Cross (DRK), the DLRG German Life Saving Association, and church-based humanitarian organizations such as the Johanniter Unfall Hilfe or the Malteser Hilfsdienst.

In Germany's most populous federal state, North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), almost 400 volunteer fire brigades are part of the state's fire protection structure and complement the about 30 fully professional fire brigades.

According to figures released by the national government, there are more than 1.7 million German volunteers involved in civil protection activities, meaning that they are not paid for their engagement.

Crisis communications

Monitoring water levels in German rivers and lakes is the task of flood control centers, which are also run by each of the 16 federal states. They are supposed to set off alarms in the event of likely flooding. Cross-border waterways, like the Rhine River, however, are overseen by international commissions.

The German Meteorological Service (DWD) is charged with weather forecasting and uses a three-tier warning system: Early Warning, Forecast/Premonition, and specific County Warnings.

Weather alarms are often spread among the general public via the NINA app developed by BBK. It informs users anywhere in Germany about the dangers in the vicinity of where they are. In the current catastrophe, though, it turned out that only a few Germans have NINA installed on their mobile phones.


The Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS) has developed the free-of-charge NINA app to inform people through their mobile phones

There's mounting criticism at the moment of how BBK handled public warnings during the floods. BBK chief Armin Schuster was blamed for informing populations in the affected regions too late. In an interview for public German radio, he rejected the criticism, saying BBK's alarm infrastructure worked completely well.

"Between Wednesday [July 7] and Saturday [July 10], we were sending out a total of 150 successive notifications," he said, adding that DWD's weather forecasts were also "to the point" in warning of heavy precipitation well in advance. "But you can never be so precise as to say exactly which location is hit with how much rainfall and for how long," he said.



A system in need of reforms


Communications among German rescue organizations work on channels that are different from push notifications on people's mobiles. A mobile digital network, established and maintained by the government, covers 99% of German territory, ensuring that communication can be maintained even when telecom infrastructure is severely impeded.

In addition, there are still old-fashioned air-raid sirens installed on public buildings in Germany, with most of them dating back to the Cold War era, or even further to World War II. Many of them have been removed in recent years to save maintenance costs. Now, there are calls, however, to bring those sirens back on again. Some experts say sirens make no sense because they would need electricity that's often not available in disaster scenarios.

BBK chief Armin Schuster has conceded that Germany's disaster protection system is in need of repair, and promised reforms after a national emergency warning day went miserably wrong in May 2020. A main plank in the reform is bringing back the good old sirens.

"Just three months into the reform, I'm positively surprised to see how committed the regional governments are in providing public funding for reinstalling sirens," Schuster said recently. Until the end of this year, he promised to come up with a catalog of German regions potentially at risk of disaster to determine "where, and how much will need to be invested." Part of the new early-warning system, he noted, will be air-raid sirens and smartphone apps.

This article has been adapted from the original German
How much COVID misinformation is on Facebook?

 Its execs don’t want to know

Data scientists proposed investigating the problem but were turned down.


TIM DE CHANT - 7/20/2021


For years, misinformation has flourished on Facebook. Falsehoods, misrepresentations, and outright lies posted on the site have shaped the discourse on everything from national politics to public health.

But despite their role in facilitating communications for billions of people, Facebook executives refused to commit resources to understand the extent to which COVID-19-related misinformation pervaded its platform, according to a report in The New York Times.

Early in the pandemic, a group of data scientists at Facebook met with executives to propose a project that would determine how many users saw misleading or false information about COVID. It wasn’t a small task—they estimated that the process could take up to a year or more to complete—but it would give the company a solid understanding of the extent to which misinformation spread on its platform.

The executives listened to the data scientists’ pitch and then reportedly ghosted them. The data team’s proposal wasn’t approved, and they were never given an explanation for why it was silently dropped.

FURTHER READINGBiden blasts social media after Facebook stonewalls admin over vaccine misinformationThe revelations come as Facebook has drawn fire from the White House for its role in the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccines that prevent it. “They’re killing people,” President Joe Biden said about the role of social networks in the spread of misinformation. “Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. They’re killing people.”

Biden later walked back his comments slightly, but they revealed the administration’s frustration with social media platforms—and with Facebook in particular—over their response to the pandemic. For weeks, the White House pressed Facebook for details on how the company is combating COVID vaccine misinformation. The social network offered some details but gave unsatisfying answers to other requests. 

It’s unclear why Facebook isn’t sharing information about its efforts to fight misinformation. The company has surveyed its users about vaccine acceptance—Facebook says 85 percent “have been or want to be vaccinated”—and it says it has taken down 18 million pieces of misinformation related to COVID-19 since the pandemic began. That’s about 40,000 pieces of content per day.

FURTHER READING Sweeping internal Facebook memo: “I have blood on my hands”

Perhaps Facebook hasn’t shared those details because it’s not confident in its own approach. Without a more comprehensive view of how misinformation spreads on Facebook, it’s probably extraordinarily difficult to devise an effective counteroffensive. Removing 18 million pieces of content isn’t nothing, but it’s likely an insignificant number given that back in 2012, when Facebook had less than half the users it has today, the company said it processed 2.5 billion pieces of content per day.

Facebook’s unwillingness or inability to understand the scope of COVID misinformation on its platform was apparent in comments it gave to The New York Times, in which it blamed its nescience on the lack of a “standard definition” for pandemic-related misinformation. “The suggestion we haven’t put resources toward combating COVID misinformation and supporting the vaccine rollout is just not supported by the facts,” said Dani Lever, a Facebook spokeswoman. “With no standard definition for vaccine misinformation, and with both false and even true content (often shared by mainstream media outlets) potentially discouraging vaccine acceptance, we focus on the outcomes—measuring whether people who use Facebook are accepting of COVID-19 vaccines.”

For researchers who study misinformation, that explanation isn’t sufficient. “They need to open up the black box that is their content ranking and content amplification architecture," Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told The New York Times. "Take that black box and open it up for audit by independent researchers and government. We don’t know how many Americans have been infected with misinformation.”