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| | | | |  | | By Lorraine Woellert , Debra Kahn and Jordan Wolman | | | | | 
It's hard to get PFAS-free plastic products these days. | Mark Duncan/AP Photo | TURF WARS — PFAS is p-freaking everyone out. Companies are marketing their products as free of the compounds known as forever chemicals, some of which have been linked to cancer and other health problems. The city of Portsmouth, N.H., is facing an uproar after it agreed to pay $3.5 million for an artificial turf field that the manufacturer touted as free of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances. Subsequent testing by the city found 135 parts per trillion of PFOS (a type of PFAS). Residents want to sue the manufacturer, FieldTurf, and the city's contractor, which is arguing that the contract only specified that the chemicals be undetectable by a particular EPA-approved testing method. Towns and school districts around the country are weighing the costs and benefits of artificial turf. In Sharon, Mass., which voted to put a three-year moratorium on artificial turf, residents have been experimenting with increased maintenance of natural grass fields. “The idea is to demonstrate that natural grass can be serviceable,” said Paul Lauenstein, a local advocate who works on water issues. “We don’t have to buy a million-dollar field with 40 tons of plastic.” Read more from E.A. Crunden and Ariel Wittenberg of POLITICO's E&E News. ...And chaser: Researchers have found PFOA (another type of PFAS) in Antarctica and Tibet in higher concentrations than EPA's recommended drinking water limits. “Based on the latest US guidelines for PFOA in drinking water, rainwater everywhere would be judged unsafe to drink,” chemist Ian Cousins of Stockholm University, who led the study, told Chemical & Engineering News.
| | | SINEMA'S ON BOARD — Senate Democrats cleared a huge hurdle Thursday night by securing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's (D-Ariz.) approval of their signature climate, tax and health care proposal. Sinema wants a new 1 percent excise tax on stock buybacks that will bring in $73 billion. On the spending side, she's secured the continuation of a loophole for taxation of certain investment income, about $40 billion in corporate tax breaks, and roughly $5 billion for drought resiliency. All told, the agreement with Sinema is expected to increase the bill’s original $300 billion deficit reduction figure. They're set to move forward with it on Saturday. Read more from POLITICO's Burgess Everett and Marianne LeVine here . ‘EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM’ — Washington’s newest political mega-donor is a 30-year-old crypto king who drives a hybrid Toyota Corolla. And he’s deeply influenced by effective altruism, a philosophical and social movement that’s defined by maximizing good through a data-driven framework — an unusual lens for engaging with politics. Philanthropically, it means testing and measuring efforts through a cost-per-life-saved formula. For example, an experiment showed investing in treating children for intestinal worms did more to improve their educational outcomes than giving schools extra resources for textbooks. Elena Schneider interviews Sam Bankman-Fried .
| | | | INTRODUCING POWER SWITCH: The energy landscape is profoundly transforming. Power Switch is a daily newsletter that unlocks the most important stories driving the energy sector and the political forces shaping critical decisions about your energy future, from production to storage, distribution to consumption. Don’t miss out on Power Switch, your guide to the politics of energy transformation in America and around the world. SUBSCRIBE TODAY . | | | | | | | | WITHDRAWAL PAINS — California wants to quit fossil fuels, but faced with a fragile electrical grid and the prospect of summertime blackouts, the state has agreed to put aside hundreds of millions of dollars to buy power from fossil fuel plants that are scheduled to shut down as soon as next year. Naturally, there’s been a backlash. Lara Korte tells the story . AN ABBOTT WHISTLEBLOWER — A former supervisor at the Abbott Nutrition baby formula plant linked to infant deaths earlier this year has stepped forward to describe a facility with a leaking roof, lax food safety and recordkeeping, and a culture of fear, raising new questions about why such problems were allowed to continue and why the FDA didn’t discover them earlier. Helena Bottemiller Evich has more .
| | | THE FED’S GLOBAL REACH — The Federal Reserve’s efforts to fight inflation threaten to send the U.S. economy into a recession. They also could spark a series of economic crises in developing countries. As caretaker of the world’s reserve currency, the Fed has massive influence on global financial markets, which are growing more tightly integrated. As higher rates push up the value of the U.S. dollar, debt held in dollars anywhere in the world becomes more expensive to pay off. Fed rate hikes also can incentivize investors to pull money out of emerging markets to seek better returns in the U.S., with destabilizing effects. That’s what seems to be happening. Data released Wednesday showed that emerging markets suffered a record-breaking fifth consecutive month of investors pulling their money out. The numbers, compiled monthly by the Institute of International Finance, a trade group for the global financial services industry, show that the capital flight — totaling $39.3 billion since March — is reaching the level of the taper-tantrum crisis in 2013, when a Fed pull-back caused financial panic in some emerging markets. Check out the interesting read from Adam Behsudi .
| | | MURKY STANDARDS — The International Sustainability Standards Board, which is developing standards for delivering environmental, social and governance information to investors and the public, has published draft rules that call on companies to disclose their scope 3 emissions. As the ISSB aims to finalize its voluntary standards by the end of the year, companies, asset managers and others say they’re concerned with a lack of definitions, differences between industries, and a lack of clarity over carbon credits and other subjects. California Public Employees’ Retirement System writes that the climate disclosure rule is “silent on what happens when there is disagreement” between industry-based and cross-industry metrics, and the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development wants the rule to better define “significant” sustainability risks and opportunities. The Vanguard Group Inc. said the draft sustainability disclosure might place “an undue burden” on companies if they’re required to report all categories of scope 3.
| | | Madison West is now senior director of global corporate responsibility at Intel. She most recently was VP for ESG at government contractor Maximus. Steve Glickman is now the president of Aspiration Global, the international arm of Aspiration, a B-corporation that works with companies and governments to help them reduce their carbon footprints through reforestation programs. He co-founded the Economic Innovation Group and is an Obama White House and Commerce alum. — Daniel Lippman
| | | Happy Friday! Team Sustainability is editor Greg Mott , deputy editor Debra Kahn , and reporters Lorraine Woellert and Jordan Wolman . Reach us at gmott@politico.com , dkahn@politico.com , lwoellert@politico.com and jwolman@politico.com . Want more? You can have it. Sign up for the Long Game . Four days a week and still free. That’s sustainability!
| | | — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) trip to Taiwan has China saying it's pulling out of talks over defense policy coordination, military maritime safety, returning illegal immigrants, criminal matters, transnational crime, illegal drugs and climate change. — Despite the rise of the resale economy, there's still really no good way to dispose of old clothing, the Atlantic finds . — Same for the wine industry — attempts to create a circular economy for wine bottles are falling prey to logistical issues, the NYT's wine critic writes .
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