SOS marine plastic bill moves on even as key critic calls it inadequate

Washington — The industry-backed plastic pollution bill Save Our Seas 2.0 is moving forward in Congress, but it also picked up opposition from a key lawmaker who said it won't do enough to help cities burdened with the costs of plastic waste.

The legislation was voted through the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on Nov. 13, but not before Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., said he opposed it because it lacked specific measures like container deposits and other ways to help reduce plastic waste in the U.S.

SOS 2.0 author Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, however, said he "strongly disagreed" with Udall's comments questioning SOS, adding his bill has strong support.

"We're looking to try to bring this to the floor quickly for Senate approval," Sullivan said. "It does take a comprehensive approach and I think the broad bipartisan support in the Senate is a testament to that."

But as comments from Udall and earlier statements from the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Tom Carper, indicate, this year's SOS bill has more opposition than the first Save Our Seas law, which passed last year.

In this year's bill, for example, a chemical recycling provision supported by the plastics industry was removed during a vote by another Senate committee in September.

Udall used the Senate committee meeting to say he agreed with critiques from environmentalists about SOS 2.0 and pushed Congress to debate a national bottle bill to raise plastics recycling rates.

Udall said the U.S. plastics bottle recycling rate is less than 30 percent but noted that states with container deposits like California, Oregon and New York regularly exceed 70 percent container recycling rates. He said 47 percent of the containers recycled in the U.S. come from 10 states with bottle deposits.

A bottle bill is "good economics and taxpayer-friendly," Udall said. "The companies that sell and profit from these beverage containers should help local governments cover the cost of collecting and recycling them."

"The cold hard fact is that recycling is not working effectively in the United States today," Udall said.

In some ways, the two sides are looking at the problem from opposite shores.

SOS 2.0 supporters point to studies showing that marine debris from rivers in Asia as contributing to most of the marine pollution in the ocean.

Sullivan said six countries and 10 rivers in Asia account for 70 percent of the world's plastic pollution, and he said the legislation is "an important step forward" in tackling what is a global problem.

SOS 2.0 would elevate plastic waste in U.S. trade policy and supports an international agreement on marine debris, as well as setting up a revolving loan fund for states to improve U.S. waste infrastructure.

Sullivan said SOS 2.0 "will do a lot, we believe, to address this ocean pollution, ocean plastics crisis that I think so many of us are concerned about."

But SOS 2.0 critics want the U.S. to do more domestically. Udall pointed to microplastic pollution in the U.S., including a study that showed people ingest a credit card size amount of microplastic each week.

"The plastics crisis goes far beyond our oceans," Udall said. "I agree with environmentalists who have written that Save Our Seas 2.0 does little to tackle this problem."

A statement from Sullivan's office said SOS 2.0 now moves to the full Senate, where the Commerce committee legislation will be joined with SOS 2.0 bills that passed the committees on environment and foreign relations. Two Democratic co-sponsors of SOS, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, also urged passage by the full Senate.

Udall said he still hoped to get other changes in the bill and in a statement suggested bans on some single-use plastic products and language that would limit converting waste plastic into chemicals, feedstocks, fuels and energy.

Udall is planning to introduce his own legislation that would include a national bottle bill, bans on some single-use plastic product starting in 2022, fees on nonreusable carryout bags, minimum recycled content requirements for containers, provisions that allow states to have more stringent requirements and a moratorium on constructing new plastic facilities.