Pellets and Politics

The website PolitiFact is weighing in on claims in the plastics-climate change debate, declaring public statements from the plastics industry "half true."

United Nation talks kick off April 29 to update the Basel Convention focusing on global trade in hazardous waste, and plastics scrap has a prominent place on the agenda.

A Sierra Club campaign is bringing to light a split between the plastics industry and consumer products maker SC Johnson && Son Inc. over bans on single-use plastics and -- maybe more importantly -- raising questions about whether other big consumer goods companies will follow.

If we want to achieve the kind of environmental gains major brands have been talking about for plastic bottles -- like Coca-Cola's plans for 50 percent recycled content in its plastic containers by 2030 -- the United States will need a herculean effort to more than double its recycling rate for PET bottles.

The Davos gathering of the world's 1 percenters took up the topic of plastic waste, with leaders expressing hope and giving a warning to companies.

Beyond an understandable public focus on Asia, the industry's new Alliance to End Plastic Waste can also hopefully unlock some innovation to make plastics more circular and sustainable in the U.S.

There are two very different views of how manufacturing is doing in the United States lurking under the increasingly heated trade debate. There's the view of the Trump administration, that unfair trade, particularly with China, is responsible for millions of lost factory jobs and has decimated domestic manufacturing. But the opposite view, from reports like "Myth Busting Manufacturing" from the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation, is that U.S. factories are actually doing pretty well.

I wanted to write this column on the growing calls for bans of plastic straws — the topic du jour in plastic litter — from a more personal perspective.

There's a growing consensus around reducing plastics pollution and ocean litter, and in favor of more sustainable use of plastics, including among industry. Having the U.S. sit outside the agreement is short-sighted.