Proactive Approach Needed to Address Plastic Pollution

As debates around plastic pollution continue to grow, Plastics News points out that an underlying question for 2020 will be how to pay for the recycling infrastructure that industry, environmental groups and governments all say is needed.

The op-ed points out that right now, the plastics industry's answer in Washington is the RECOVER Act, which would allocate $500 million in matching federal grants to states and municipalities to invest in improving their recycling programs and infrastructure, including upgrading plants that receive and process recyclables and enhance the recovery and collection of materials. The measure also aims to establish a recycling infrastructure program within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, put federal funding toward building new recycling technology and programs to help increase collection rates, improve the sortation and separation of materials, enhance the performance of curbside collection and more.

“But with estimates of the real need in the billions of dollars, that doesn't look like enough,” according to Plastics News.

Plastics News has more details:

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.

Read the full article here.