December, 11 2012, 01:34pm EDT

Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Nominated for Superfund Cleanup
Plastic pollution killing thousands of marine mammals, birds and fish
SAN FRANCISCO
The Center for Biological Diversity today petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to designate the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands -- including the portion of the enormous Pacific Garbage Patch within United States waters -- as the nation's newest Superfund site. Plastic debris kills or injures thousands of seabirds, marine mammals and turtles every year while contaminating the environment with toxic chemicals.
The EPA's Superfund program is designed to identify and clean up the country's most polluted areas. Today's petition, which targets one of the world's largest marine conservation areas, is the first time that plastic-infested waters of the United States have been nominated for a Superfund designation.
"The waters of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands contain thousands of pounds of plastic bags, bottles and other toxic litter that's deadly to seals, birds and other marine wildlife," said Emily Jeffers, a Center attorney. "Something this big and disgusting needs the kind of attention that only a Superfund designation can provide."
The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, whose reefs and shores are deluged by plastic debris, have long been a haven for marine wildlife. Designated a national marine monument in 2006, this 1,200-mile chain of scattered islands and atolls is home to more than 7,000 marine species, one quarter of which are found nowhere else on Earth. The Pacific Garbage Patch is a swirling mass of litter in the Pacific Ocean larger than the state of Texas.
As garbage is tossed into the Pacific Ocean, currents pull the debris into a vast, undulating mass of "plastic soup." Countless sea turtles, Hawaiian monk seals and other animals are hurt and killed. Some wildlife are entangled and drowned; others are strangled or suffer from lacerations and infection. Still others starve after consuming plastic because it creates false feelings of satiation. Nearly all Laysan albatross chicks in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, for instance -- 97.5 percent -- have plastic in their stomachs, fed to them by their parents who believe the plastics are food.
Plastic is also a source of toxic chemicals that, after being consumed by fish and birds, move up the food chain to bigger fish and marine mammals. These toxins can then be passed to humans who eat fish like swordfish and tuna.
"These deadly garbage patches have been ignored for decades and only gotten bigger," Jeffers said. "If we're serious about stopping plastic pollution from killing wildlife, we need to start the cleanup now."
The EPA's Superfund program, officially called the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, was passed in 1970 to protect human health and the environment from hazardous substances; it empowers the EPA to clean up areas that pose a threat to a healthy environment. Before a site becomes eligible for cleanup and remediation, it must be evaluated by the EPA to determine the extent and nature of the contamination. Today's petition calls on the agency to gather data and assess the nature and extent of plastic pollution in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and surrounding areas.
Photos are available for media use.
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
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Calls Mount for US to Provide Free School Meals to All Children
"Hiving off a tiny part of the public school bundle and charging a means-tested fee for it is extremely stupid," argues Matt Bruenig.
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Minnesota last week became just the fourth U.S. state to guarantee universal free school meals, triggering a fresh wave of demands and arguments for a similar federal policy to feed kids.
"Universal school meals is now law in Minnesota!" Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who represents the state, tweeted Monday. "Now, we need to pass our Universal School Meals Program Act to guarantee free school meals to every child across the country."
Omar's proposal, spearheaded in the upper chamber by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), "would permanently provide free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack to all school children regardless of income, eliminate school meal debt, and strengthen local economies by incentivizing local food procurement," the lawmakers' offices explained in 2021.
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"The school bus service doesn't charge fares. Neither should the school lunch service."
Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, highlighted Monday that while children who attend public schools generally have not only free education but also free access to bathrooms, textbooks, computer equipment, playgrounds, gyms, and sports gear, "around the middle of each school day, the free schooling service is briefly suspended for lunch."
"How much each kid is charged is based on their family income except that, if a kid lives in a school or school district where 40% or more of the kids are eligible for free lunch, then they are also eligible for free lunch even if their family income would otherwise be too high," he detailed. "Before Covid, in 2019, 68.1% of the kids were charged $0, 5.8% were charged $0.40, and 26.1% were charged the full $4.33... The total cost of the 4.9 billion meals is around $21 billion per year. In 2019, user fees covered $5.6 billion of this cost."
Bruenig—whose own child has access to free school meals because of the community eligibility program—continued:
The approximately $5.6 billion of school lunch fees collected in 2019 were equal to 0.7% of the total cost of K-12 schooling. In order to collect these fees, each school district has to set up a school lunch payments system, often by contracting with third-party providers like Global Payments. They also have to set up a system for dealing with kids who are not enrolled in the free lunch program but who show up to school with no money in their school lunch account or in their pockets. In this scenario, schools will either have to make the kid go without lunch, give them a free lunch for the day (but not too many times), or give them a lunch while assigning their lunch account a debt.
Eligibility for the $0 and $0.40 lunches is based on income, but this does not mean that everyone with an eligible income successfully signs up for the program. As with all means-tested programs, the application of the means test not only excludes people with ineligible incomes, but also people with eligible incomes who fail to successfully navigate the red tape of the welfare bureaucracy.
The think tank leader tore into arguments against universal free meals for kids, declaring that "hiving off a tiny part of the public school bundle and charging a means-tested fee for it is extremely stupid."
Bruenig pointed out that socializing the cost of child benefits like school meals helps "equalize the conditions of similarly-situated families with different numbers of children" and "smooths incomes across the lifecycle by ensuring that, when people have kids, their household financial situation remains mostly the same."
"Indeed, this is actually the case for the welfare state as whole, not just child benefits," the expert emphasized, explaining that like older adults and those with disabilities, children cannot and should not work, which "makes it impossible to receive personal labor income, meaning that some other non-labor income system is required."
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Pushing back against the first claim, Bruenig stressed that right-wingers don't apply it to other aspects of free schooling such as bus services. He also wrote that the means-testing claim "is both untrue and at odds with their general attitudes on, not just redistribution, but on how child benefit programs specifically should be structured."
A tax for everyone with a certain income intended to make up the $5.6 billion in school meal fees, he argued, "would have a larger base and thus represent a smaller share of the income of each person taxed and such a tax would smooth incomes over time," while also eliminating means-testing—which would allow schools to feed all kids and ditch costly payment systems.
As Nora De La Cour reported Sunday for Jacobin: "The fight for school meals traces its roots all the way back to maternalist Progressive Era efforts to shield children and workers from the ravages of unregulated capitalism. In her bookThe Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools, Jennifer Gaddis describes how early school lunch crusaders envisioned meal programs that would be integral to schools' educational missions, immersing students in hands-on learning about nutrition, gardening, food preparation, and home economics. Staffed by duly compensated professionals, these programs would collectivize and elevate care work, making it possible for mothers of all economic classes to efficiently nourish their young."
Now, families who experienced the positive impact of the pandemic-era program want more from the federal government.
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