As politicians parse plastics bans, it's time for industry to get proactive

2020 is shaping up to be an even more eventful year for debates around plastic waste and plastic pollution than 2019 was. And that's saying a lot, considering that 2019 opened with plastic bag bans in two states, California and Hawaii, but will close out with six more.

The pace of plastics packaging legislation continued, even as 2019 wound down. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, for example, proposed on Dec. 17 that his state add a polystyrene foam food packaging ban — New York already has a bag ban.

In January, California's legislature is expected to take up huge packaging bills that nearly passed last year, and other states will also keep debating plastics and packaging laws. More than 200 bills related to plastics pollution were introduced in 34 states in 2019, according to the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators.

On the federal level, Congress, with several legislative proposals of its own and the formation Dec. 10 of the Congressional Plastics Solutions Task Force, will keep elevating the issue.

Underlying all of it, I think, will be the question of how to pay for the recycling infrastructure that industry, environmental groups and governments all say is needed.

I can see 2020 putting the plastics industry under more pressure to agree to some viable, long-term revenue sources to fund infrastructure upgrades.

For example, a California plan floated by the American Chemistry Council's plastics division would raise $100 million from a three-tenths of a cent fee on takeout food packaging of all material types, not just plastic. ACC suggested it is open to that fee in other states and federally.

California voters may also decide on a plastics packaging referendum in November that would put a fee of up to a penny on plastic and some paper packaging, raising an estimated $1 billion a year.

Right now the plastics industry's answer in Washington is the RECOVER Act, a bill that would commit $500 million of federal tax money over five years to matching grants to help local governments and organizations build out recycling infrastructure.

But with estimates of the real need in the billions of dollars, that doesn't look like enough.

I think the industry as a whole, including other plastics trade groups, should consider getting behind national versions of what the ACC is proposing in California — a material-neutral plan that puts small fees on single-use packaging, possibly at the wholesale level, to provide a steady stream of money to support upgrades in waste collection and recycling.

In my neighborhood, I see the impacts of packaging pollution daily.

There's an urban stream, Four Mile Run, very near where I live outside Washington, D.C., and I see packaging waste of all types in that stream system every day.

A preliminary study of microplastics in Four Mile Run, done by a local conservation group, found levels much higher than in the Chesapeake Bay and comparable to urban streams in Los Angeles.

Getting behind fees and other material-neutral measures that have teeth, like container deposits, would result in less litter and waste and help clean up microplastics in urban waterways like Four Mile Run.

Putting a fee on single-use disposable packaging of all material types would be a financially sustainable step forward that the plastics industry should support.

EPA figures show that the recycling rate for plastic packaging and containers is 13 percent, well below the 50.1 percent average for all material types.

Container deposit legislation would do the same, providing a clear path to raise the U.S. PET bottle recycling rate from under 30 percent now to the European level of 60 percent.

At a time of rising federal budget deficits, and with state and local governments complaining that China's ban on scrap imports is making it harder for local recycling programs, efforts like those would result in real money being available to support recycling upgrades that everyone agrees are needed.