Plastics industry ‘not running away from its own problems,' ACC's Eisenberg says

Washington — Ross Eisenberg, the new head of the plastics division at the American Chemistry Council, sees navigating the challenges ahead for the industry as striking a balance between recognizing its problems and advocating for its strengths.

"This is an industry that is, quite frankly, vital to achieving not only our economic goals as a country but our environmental goals, including combating climate change," he said. "At the same time, it's not running away from its own problems. It's evolving. It's becoming more circular."

In a wide-ranging interview Sept. 18, his first day as ACC's vice president of plastics, Eisenberg outlined some of his thinking as he prepares to lead the lobbying efforts of one of the industry's two main trade associations in Washington.

He said the industry needs to focus on "not just saying no" in policy debates and figure out what it can support as it navigates government demands in states, in Washington and at global plastics treaty talks.

It also needs to remind lawmakers about the role of plastics in enabling technologies like making vehicles lighter or fighting climate change as it, conversely, takes a clear look at its environmental and waste challenges, he said.

One key task in Washington, he said, will be finding ways to build support among both Republicans and Democrats who can be skeptical — for different reasons — of ACC's legislative agenda.

He said ACC wants to build on the federal legislative framework it unveiled two years ago and sees the right policy as key to meeting the industry's recycling and sustainability goals.

"The bottom line is we want to make sure that we have the frameworks in place from a policy standpoint so that we can meet our goals for recyclability and recoverability," he said.

He takes over for Joshua Baca, who was abruptly dismissed from ACC in June after leading the plastics group since September 2020.

Eisenberg comes to the plastics division after having been ACC's top federal government lobbyist since early 2020, and before that, working on energy and environmental policy for the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

His two-decade career in Washington garnered him recognition this year, seeing him named to The Hill's annual list of top lobbyists and Washingtonian magazine's list of the 500 most influential people in D.C.

In Washington, Eisenberg suggested ACC needs to take both short- and long-term views on plastics.

In the short term, he said that means building support in Congress for a more industry favorable alternative to the largely Democratic supported Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act. ACC wants that alternative framework to be built on its five-point federal legislative plan unveiled in 2021.

And in the longer term, he said it means working to educate both Republicans and Democrats around the government policies that ACC wants, including federal mandates for 30 percent recycled plastic content, extended producer responsibility and regulations favorable to chemical recycling.

Republicans, he said, can be skeptical of the need for a much larger federal role in recycling and waste policy that will be important to ACC.

And for Democrats, he said, it means education around chemical recycling, the suite of technologies like pyrolysis that ACC said will be needed to meet plastics circularity goals but environmental groups and some lawmakers strongly oppose.

"There's definitely an education need on both the Republican and Democratic sides of the aisle," Eisenberg said. "It's education and not necessarily nullifying opposition. There's a big middle there. We just have to figure out a way to harness it."

In February, Eisenberg's boss, ACC CEO Chris Jahn, told reporters that a bipartisan ACC-supported alternative to Break Free would be introduced "relatively soon."

But that timeframe seems to have slipped, suggesting its complexity, with Eisenberg now saying a bill could be introduced "before the end of the year but certainly this Congress," which ends Jan. 3, 2025.

"Getting this bill right takes time," he said. "This is not intended to be a messaging bill. We put the five actions bill out there to drive a solution and a bipartisan one."

"We are definitely sensing, not necessarily resistance, but a need for education as to why there's a federal role around plastic and recycling," Eisenberg said. "We do believe there's a clear federal role to try to address these challenges."

Other lawmakers, he said, are skeptical about chemical recycling technologies, or advanced recycling as ACC calls it.

"Filling that education gap is our biggest challenge," Eisenberg said. "I don't want to pretend that there isn't a debate around advanced recycling. There is. We've seen it on the House side, we've seen it on the Senate side. We've seen it in states."

"Our hope is that the more data, the more evidence, the more we can put out there to answer some of these questions, the more comfortable lawmakers are going to get with it," he said.

"I can't tell you how many times I've talked with a staffer or lawmaker or executive branch official, and they'll say: 'Well, advanced recycling is unproven or advanced recycling is this,'" Eisenberg said. "And I'll say, 'Have you seen one? Can I take you to one?'"

He suggested efforts to build support for comprehensive federal plastics legislation could take years, comparing it to both climate legislation and the 2016 reforms of the Toxic Substances Control Act signed by President Barack Obama.

Building support for the 2016 TSCA overhaul of that original 1976 law took years of work, and plastics could be the same, Eisenberg said.

"In the late 2000s, the ACC put together a set of principles, reached across to the NGO community, found partners, came together on a plan and by 2015, 2016, they had actually gotten it signed," he said. "They built the big tent, they had made the hard decisions and got there. I see a similar path on plastics. One of the reasons I took this job was to try to forge that path."

Meanwhile, he said state legislation will continue to be active, with four states passing the first EPR laws for packaging since 2021, and others passing recycled content mandates and plastic packaging bans.

"We're expecting significant activity at the state level," he said. "Part of that is that the federal space moves at a pace that a lot of states aren't satisfied with."

And, he said, the group continues to engage with the global plastics treaty talks, where it wants a treaty that addresses plastics pollution without limiting plastics production.

It's sent negotiators to each of the first two formal sessions of the treaty and is sending delegates to the next session in Kenya in November, when countries will begin debating the first draft text language.

"We're cautiously optimistic here, we would very much like to see a treaty happen," Eisenberg said. "Our perspective is that it needs to be focused on ending plastic pollution and not plastic production."

He said ACC wants to play a constructive role in policy at all levels and find compromises it can support.

The industry "has demonstrated for a while that it was not just saying no to things, that it was constantly trying to find a way to yes," he said.

"We'll continue to try to engage intelligently," he said. "One thing that we typically do is if there's a policy on the table, we don't just typically swat it away. We come to the table with our own ideas."

Eisenberg's appointment has also seen him take on a new title not given to previous heads of the plastics division —president of America's Plastic Makers.

ACC's plastics division is a self-funded unit of ACC, financially support by 19 member companies.

It's used the term America's Plastic Makers on a website and other advertising and communications, and Eisenberg suggested the new title is aimed at representing the industry "as fully as we possibly can" around a plastics-themed brand.

"They brought me on to be an advocate for this industry, and part of doing that is being able to have a president, a lead advocate, for the brand," he said. "We saw an opportunity, particularly given the advertising we're doing in this space and otherwise, to have somebody out there being the face of the brand."