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beyond plastics
Beyond Plastics Offers Next President Agenda to Protect Public Health and Environment
"When the new president takes office in January, we urge them to transition America from a leader in creating plastic pollution to a leader in combating it," said the head of the anti-plastic pollution group.
Aug 28, 2024
The group Beyond Plastics on Wednesday expressed hope that the next U.S. president "is up for the challenge" of reversing course on the annual plastic pollution that is currently projected to nearly double by 2040, and released a 27-point agenda to guide the winner of the November election.
"The next president of the United States should use a combination of approaches to significantly reduce the production, use, transport, and disposal of plastics for the sake of public health and the environment," reads the list of proposed priorities. "These include directives issued to federal agencies and efforts to work with Congress to introduce and pass relevant federal legislation."
The group released the agenda as countries including the U.S. prepare to participate in talks in November to finalize a global plastics treaty, aiming to cut down on the 15 million metric tons of plastic that end up in oceans each year and reduce human exposure to thousands of hazardous chemicals used to manufacture plastic.
The next U.S. president, said Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, "has an opportunity—and a responsibility—to prioritize people and the planet over industry profits, and finally require companies to kick their toxic plastic habit."
The priorities listed by Beyond Plastics include steps that federal agencies should take to reduce plastic pollution in the U.S. and abroad, and legislation that either Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris or Republican nominee Donald Trump should push Congress to pass.
Executive actions proposed by Beyond Plastics include:
- A moratorium on new permits or renewing permits for petroleum refining, petrochemical plants, and other facilities that produce plastics and their precursors;
- A national moratorium on the construction of chemical recycling facilities, which generate hazardous wastes, toxic air pollutants, and greenhouse gases, and are primarily sited in environmental justice communities;
- A ban on the shipping of plastic waste to other countries, following the shipment of 900 million pounds of plastic abroad in 2023;
- An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ban on vinyl chloride, the carcinogenic chemical that created a public health hazard in East Palestine, Ohio in 2023 after a Norfolk Southern train derailed;
- Department of Justice investigations into the plastic industry's health impacts on communities near processing and manufacturing plants, its role in pollution on public lands, its "false and misleading claims about recyclability and recycled content of plastics," and plastic pollution in waterways and oceans; and
- Leadership from the Department of Labor to achieve a "just transition" for workers in the plastics industry, with employees provided with job training and placement.
The group also called on the next administration to push for the passage of "a strong national packaging reduction bill" that would require a 50% reduction in plastic packaging over 10 years; the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act; the Farewell to Foam Act, which would phase out plastic foam food containers, disposable foam picnic coolers, and packing "peanuts"; and laws enabling local governments, states, and businesses to apply for federal funding to develop waste reduction, reuse, and refill programs.
"The next president of the United States should use a combination of approaches to significantly reduce the production, use, transport, and disposal of plastics for the sake of public health and the environment."
With the average American creating 200 pounds of plastic waste per year, said Enck, the U.S. now "generates more plastic waste than any other country and is doing little to change that."
Revolving Door Project researcher Hannah Story Brown noted after Beyond Plastics published its priorities list that as the California attorney general, Harris "brought a first-of-its-kind greenwashing lawsuit against plastic bottle companies for making biodegradability claims back in 2011."
"A Harris Justice Department could and should go further in combating this toxic industry's misleading marketing," said Brown.
In contrast, U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), a co-sponsor of the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act and part of the U.S. delegation taking part in global plastics treaty talks, toldPolitico earlier this year that "in the unthinkable scenario of a second Trump presidency, we're going to get nowhere on plastics."
Mario Loyola, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an associate director of regulatory reform under Trump during his presidential term, told the outlet that the Republican nominee would likely be "skeptical" that the treaty to reduce plastic pollution "was the best agreement that could have been reached."
Enck said that "when the new president takes office in January, we urge them to transition America from a leader in creating plastic pollution to a leader in combating it."
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'Welcome News': EPA Starts Process of Vinyl Chloride Risk Assessment
"This is one of the most important chemical review processes ever undertaken by the EPA," said one of the agency's former regional administrators.
Dec 14, 2023
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that it had begun the process of prioritizing vinyl chloride for evaluation under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Vinyl chloride, which is primarily used to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic, was one of five chemicals the agency earmarked for a risk assessment. The move comes eight months after a disastrous train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which included five cars carrying 115,000 gallons of the dangerous chemical.
"We have seen firsthand what vinyl chloride can do to a community," Hilary Flint, vice president of Unity Council for the East Palestine Train Derailment and director of communications and community engagement for Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community, said in a statement.
"This is a step in the right direction, and we will continue to fight for a total vinyl chloride ban," Flint continued. "We want to make sure what happened after the East Palestine train derailment is the last vinyl chloride disaster in the United States."
Vinyl chloride is a known carcinogen that has been linked to liver, brain, lung, and blood cancers. It can also harm the neurological system and suppress immunity. Despite this, it is one of the most produced chemicals by volume in both the U.S. and internationally. In 2019, billions of pounds were manufactured in the U.S. alone.
"Most vinyl chloride is used to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic, which poses significant health and environmental problems that have been known for over 50 years," Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and former EPA regional administrator, said in the EPA announcement. "This is one of the most important chemical review processes ever undertaken by the EPA."
"The examination of all routes of exposure prescribed by the law will lead EPA to the conclusion that vinyl chloride is far too dangerous to make or use, and should be banned."
A TSCA review will require the EPA to assess all the ways people can be exposed to vinyl chloride, both in terms of what it can pollute and how the exposure can take place. That means looking at how it contaminates soil, air, and water and how it impacts workers, frontline communities, and communities exposed during disasters like the East Palestine derailment. A full 27% of the people who live within three miles of a facility where vinyl chloride is used or made are children, and the evaluation will require the EPA to consider how the chemical impacts young people specifically.
Liz Hitchcock, director of Toxic Free Future's Safer Chemicals Healthy Families federal policy program, said the EPA's decision was "welcome news."
"The examination of all routes of exposure prescribed by the law will lead EPA to the conclusion that vinyl chloride is far too dangerous to make or use, and should be banned," Hitchcock said.
The other chemicals that the EPA will assess are acetaldehyde, acrylonitrile, benzenamine, and 4,4'-Methylene bis(2-chloroaniline) (MBOCA). Four out of the five chemicals are used in plastic production and all of them are used to make petrochemicals.
The EPA now has 12 months to determine whether or not the five chemicals are "High Priority Substances," after which it will begin the risk evaluation. The public will be able to comment on all of the chemicals.
"We applaud EPA for echoing states' concerns about the threat of vinyl chloride and PVC to communities. This action, along with action by states to restrict the use of PVC in packaging and building materials in favor of safer materials, will help communities thrive," Sarah Doll, national director of Safer States, said in a statement. "The urgency of vinyl chloride's threat means we need action from all levels of government."
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Cleanup of Oceans 'Futile' If Plastic Production Continues at Current Rate: Scientist
A new study stresses urgent action is required to tackle a "growing plastic smog" of over 170 trillion particles in the world's oceans.
Mar 09, 2023
On the heels of a historic agreement to protect the biodiversity of the high seas, researchers from around the world published a study this week underscoring the need for rapid, sweeping action to address "unprecedented" plastic pollution of oceans and sharply reduce global production.
"We've found an alarming trend of exponential growth of microplastics in the global ocean since the millennium, reaching over 170 trillion plastic particles,"
said lead author Marcus Eriksen, co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute in California. "This is a stark warning that we must act now at a global scale."
For the peer-reviewed study, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers based in the United States, Sweden, Chile, and Australia examined previously published and new data on floating plastic pollution between 1979-2019 from 11,777 stations across the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, Indian, and Mediterranean regions.
"Without substantial widespread policy changes, the rate at which plastics enter aquatic environments will increase approximately 2.6-fold from 2016 to 2040."
"The situation is much worse than expected,"
explained co-author Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Center in Sweden. "In 2014, it was estimated that there were 5 trillion plastic particles in the ocean. Now, less than 10 years later, we're up at 170 trillion."
Specifically, they estimate the world's oceans contain a "growing plastic smog" of approximately 82-358 trillion particles, or an average of 171 trillion particles that are primarily microplastics. As
The Washington Postnoted, that "is more than 21,000 pieces of plastic for each of the Earth's 8 billion residents."
The study states that "we observed no clear detectable trend until 1990, a fluctuating but stagnant trend from then until 2005, and a rapid increase until the present. This observed acceleration of plastic densities in the world's oceans, also reported for beaches around the globe, demands urgent international policy interventions."
"Without substantial widespread policy changes," the study warns, "the rate at which plastics enter aquatic environments will increase approximately 2.6-fold from 2016 to 2040."
Eriksen argued that given the current conditions, humanity must "stop focusing on cleanup and recycling, and usher in an age of corporate responsibility for the entire life of the things they make."
"Cleanup is futile if we continue to produce plastic at the current rate, and we have heard about recycling for too long while the plastic industry simultaneously rejects any commitments to buy recycled material or design for recyclability," the scientist said.
The research comes amid efforts to create a United Nations treaty on plastic pollution by next year. After 175 nations agreed to craft such a pact during a March 2022 meeting in Kenya, Uruguay hosted the first round of negotiations late last year. A second session of talks in France is scheduled for May.
According to Eriksen, "We need a strong, legally binding U.N. global treaty on plastic pollution that stops the problem at the source."
In comments to The Guardian, study co-author Edward J. Carpenter, of the Estuary & Ocean Science Center at San Francisco State University, also called for governments across the globe to ambitiously tackle the crisis.
"We know the ocean is a vital ecosystem and we have solutions to prevent plastic pollution. But plastic pollution continues to grow and has a toxic effect on marine life," he said. "There must be legislation to limit the production and sale of single-use plastics or marine life will be further degraded. Humans need healthy oceans for a livable planet."
Judith Enck, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator who is now president of the organzation Beyond Plastics, echoed the study authors' demand for dramatically cutting down on production.
"The plastics and petrochemical industries are making it impossible to curb the amount of plastic contaminating our oceans," she said in an email to CNN. "New research is always helpful, but we don't need to wait for new research to take action—the problem is already painfully clear, in the plastic accumulating in our oceans, air, soil, food, and bodies."
As Richard Thompson, a professor at the U.K.'s Plymouth University who was not involved in the study, told BBC News: "We are all agreed there is too much plastic in the ocean. We urgently need to move to solutions-focused research."
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