Draft of US plastics strategy focuses on health impacts, microplastics, recycling

The Environmental Protection Agency released a draft national plastics strategy on April 21 that includes a focus on the health impacts of plastics production and microplastics and looks at ways to improve recycling and waste management.

The EPA report came as the White House announced a new interagency policy committee on plastics pollution and the circular economy, an indication of stepped-up interest in President Joe Biden's administration.

"Plastic pollution negatively impacts our environment and public health with underserved and overburdened communities hit hardest," EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement where the agency noted that both plastics production and plastics waste have more than doubled in the last 20 years.

EPA's news release announcing its strategy also said the new White House interagency plastics committee will look at health and environmental justice concerns around plastics.

"The IPC will coordinate federal efforts on plastic pollution, prioritizing public health, economic development, environmental justice and equity to ensure that the benefits of acting on plastic pollution — including jobs, minimized exposure to harmful chemicals and clean communities — are available to all," EPA said.

Industry groups gave a mixed reaction, saying they shared EPA's goal of preventing plastic pollution.

The American Chemistry Council's plastics division said the draft EPA plastics strategy, which is open for public comment for 45 days, aligns with some of ACC's policy agenda but also risks sending plastics production overseas and could hinder development of new recycling technologies.

"Some components of EPA's draft strategy align with the federal policy proposal from [ACC], detailed in our 5 Actions for Sustainable Change, such as expanding recycling capacity and public education on recycling," said Joshua Baca, ACC's vice president of plastics.

"However, other components of the strategy risk sending plastic manufacturing and jobs overseas where plastic is often made with less stringent environmental standards and more greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions," Baca said. "We caution the Administration that prescribing alternative materials, capping plastic production or limiting innovative recycling technologies could work against its climate objectives as plastic almost always has a lower life cycle GHG footprint compared to paper and metal."

Baca pointed to plastics benefits like food safety, making vehicles lighter and enabling medical products.

"The EPA and America's plastic makers share the same goal: preventing plastic pollution," Baca said. "These words are backed by the billions of dollars plastic makers have invested to scale up a circular economy to help keep plastics from entering the environment, conserve natural resources by recycling valuable plastic materials and shrink the environmental footprint of manufacturing."

Environmental groups see the EPA strategy as limiting chemical recycling.

"Importantly, the EPA also clarifies that plastics-to-fuel operations are not considered recycling and proposes testing requirements for pyrolysis," said John Hocevar, Greenpeace USA's oceans campaign director.

A top adviser to EPA chief Regan, in an interview at an April 21 Washington conference, said the Biden administration does not want to include "plastics-to-fuel" operations.

"It really starts with protecting overburdened communities," said Grant Cope, senior counselor to Regan. "It lays out the rationale for not including plastics-to-fuel as part of the strategy. When you do plastics-to-fuel, the process entails the creation of hazardous waste, additional greenhouse gas emission [and] additional air pollutants.

"The draft includes text that says that's not the direction we want to go in," Cope said in an interview at the reusable packaging event organized by the World Wildlife Fund and Upstream. "We want to go with something more circular."

ACC, other plastics groups and consumer products companies have been lobbying state governments for laws they see as more favorable to chemical recycling. In April, Kansas and Indiana became the 23rd and 24th states, respectively, to pass such legislation, ACC said.

The Biden administration also announced an executive order on environmental justice April 21 and, in a detailed fact sheet, noted both the EPA plastics strategy and the interagency policy committee on plastics were part of its efforts.

“The Biden-Harris Administration recognizes that the plastic pollution crisis is an environmental justice issue, with disadvantaged communities in the U.S. and globally bearing social, economic and public health burdens across the entire life cycle of plastics,” the fact sheet said.

At the same conference, the White House official leading the interagency plastics committee laid out several policy priorities for the council, including reducing pollution, having plastics and product makers "bear responsibility" for waste, reducing unneeded plastics and investing in infrastructure.

"Plastics emits pollution at every stage of its life cycle, from extraction of raw materials, to manufacturing of plastics, to pollution from post-consumer products," said Jonathan Black, senior director of chemical safety and plastic pollution in the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "We must address pollution from every stage."

"There are many types of plastics that are unnecessary, harmful or difficult to recycle," said Black, who helped write the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act in a previous job as an aide to former New Mexico Democratic Sen. Tom Udall. "The reduction of these should be prioritized through national action."

He said his job is a new one within CEQ, and he's been staffing a team. He started the position in late 2022.

"It's the first time in the White House that anyone has had plastics pollution in their title," he told the reusables conference. "It really demonstrates the priority that this is becoming for the administration."

Black said the Biden administration does not see recycling as the complete solution.

"Finally, we know recycling is an important part of the solution," Black said. "We acknowledge that we can't recycle our way out of the growing plastics waste crisis."

EPA said its strategy has several action points, including redesigning plastic products for more reuse and refill; increasing solid waste collection; making fewer single-use, unrecyclable products; reducing pollution from plastic plants; and boosting public awareness. It pointed to the doubling of plastic production and waste globally in the last two decades.

"As a result, communities face pollution not only from the manufacture and transportation of plastic and associated chemicals, but from the millions of tons of plastic products [that] end up in waste streams and 'leak' into parks, neighborhoods, waterways and oceans," EPA said. "Products that range from shopping bags and takeout food containers to beverage bottles, food wrappers, bottle caps and much more can be found in the environment."

An EPA official involved in writing the strategy said the message to the plastics industry is "we don't have a circular economy yet, and we need to get to circularity."

"We need to make recycling actually work, and I think the plastics industry will be really valuable in that conversation because we know that recycling is not working right now," said Carolyn Hoskinson, director of EPA's Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery.

In an interview at the reusables conference, she said EPA wants to create solutions to plastic pollution while recognizing the valuable uses of plastics.

"There are tons of valuable uses of plastics, and I am certainly not saying that plastic is bad," she said. "There are lot of things that plastics does very well.

"Working across all of these sectors … is so important to figure out the solutions because we don't want to create more problems because of what we think is a solution," Hoskinson said. "We don't want to increase food waste because other types of packaging don't keep that food fresh. But we want to figure out how can we reduce plastics pollution."

She also said the plastics strategy aligns with the goal of the plastics treaty negotiations, one supported by the Biden administration, to eliminate the discharge of plastics into the environment by 2040.

"That is an ambitious goal, but that is the goal the U.S. government has been getting behind," Hoskinson said.