Biden-Harris Administration Releases New Strategy to Tackle Plastic Pollution, Takes Action to Reduce Single-Use Plastics in Federal Operations
July 19, 2024
Communities across the United States and around the world are facing a plastic pollution crisis. Plastic production and waste have doubled over the past two decades, littering our ocean, poisoning the air of communities near production facilities, and threatening public health. The Biden-Harris Administration recognizes that pollution can occur at every stage of the plastic lifecycle, disproportionately impacting communities with environmental justice concerns, contributing to loss of biodiversity, and exacerbating the impacts of climate change.
President Biden is committed to taking ambitious actions throughout the lifecycle of plastic to end plastic pollution and is working with the global community to do the same. Today the Biden-Harris Administration is releasing the first comprehensive, government-wide strategy to target plastic pollution at production, processing, use, and disposal. Mobilizing Federal Action on Plastic Pollution: Progress, Principles, and Priorities outlines existing and new federal actions to reduce the impact of plastic pollution throughout the plastic lifecycle and calls for sustained and coordinated work with state, local, Tribal, and Territorial governments, local communities, the private sector, and other stakeholders to address the scale and breadth of the plastic pollution challenge.
Additionally, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing a new goal to phase out federal procurement of single-use plastics from food service operations, events, and packaging by 2027, and from all federal operations by 2035. This commitment builds on President Biden’s Executive Order on Catalyzing Clean Energy Industries and Jobs through Federal Sustainability and the President’s Federal Sustainability Plan, which directs the federal government to achieve net-zero procurement by 2050, including by phasing out procurement of single-use plastic products. Meeting the new goal by selecting reusable, compostable, and highly recyclable products in lieu of single-use plastics in food service will further agencies’ obligations under the Executive Order.
Today’s actions further leverage the purchasing power of the federal government to reduce emissions, protect public health, and spur markets for new sustainable products. They also enhance domestic initiatives that reinforce United States leadership in ongoing international efforts to develop a strong agreement to tackle the plastic pollution crisis across the globe.
Mobilizing Federal Action on Plastic Pollution: Progress, Principles, and Priorities
In Mobilizing Federal Action on Plastic Pollution: Progress, Principles, and Priorities, the federal government is — for the first time — formally acknowledging the severity of the plastic pollution crisis and the scale of the response that will be required to effectively confront it. Developed by the Biden-Harris Administration’s Interagency Policy Committee on Plastic Pollution and a Circular Economy, the report outlines key principles for reducing plastic pollution, focus areas of federal agencies, and opportunities for further action:
Assessing and Reducing Pollution from Plastic Production: Over 90% of plastic is derived from fossil fuels.Under President Biden’s leadership, federal agencies are taking steps to reduce pollution from the extraction of fossil fuels and production of plastic. This includes chemicals of concern and a range of hazardous air pollutants and volatile organic compounds, some of which are known carcinogens. Pairing these measures with improved data collection is necessary to understand the full extent of the environmental and human health risks of plastic production. This work aligns with EPA’s ongoing efforts towards meeting the goals of the Biden Cancer Moonshot.
Innovating Materials and Product Design: Agencies are advancing work to explore alternative materials and processing methods.Innovation in materials and services can help ensure that products are compatible with waste management systems and have minimal impacts on human health and the environment. Actions include participating in the development of standards to promote recyclability and reuse, innovation in materials management, and additional research and development of materials that will create a more circular economy.
Decreasing Plastic Waste Generation: A key step to decreasing the quantity of plastic waste generated is limiting the initial use of materials that are unnecessary, difficult to manage, or likely to end up as pollution in the environment. Federal agencies are leading by example to reduce single-use plastic within their own operations by targeting specific items or pollution pathways, such as introducing more environmentally friendly systems like water refill stations as a substitute for single-use plastic bottles.
Improving Environmentally Sound Waste Management: President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is helping improve environmentally sound waste management, particularly in communities that are already overburdened by pollution. To ensure plastic waste is properly handled, additional actions are needed to improve environmentally-sound and worker-safe waste management practices and the associated infrastructure needs. These include efforts to optimize the collection of plastic, enhance plastic recycling, and other measures to prevent plastic waste from entering the environment.
Informing and Conducting Capture and Removal of Plastic Pollution: Several federal agencies are leading efforts to clean up existing plastic pollution and prevent additional plastic pollution from entering the environment, including the ocean.Additional action is needed to improve the capture of plastic, both before it enters the waste management system, and to address and prevent its escape during the waste management process.
Biden-Harris Administration Leadership to Tackle Plastic Pollution
Today’s announcements showcase efforts underway across the Biden-Harris Administration to address plastic pollution across its lifecycle. Examples of agency leadership include:
Addressing Pollution from Chemical Manufacturing for Plastic Production and Advancing Environmental Justice: Under President Biden’s leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is providing critical health protections to hundreds of thousands of people living near facilities that produce chemicals used in the manufacture of plastics and other products, including finalizing rules to reduce emissions of toxic air pollutants and harmful pollution that contributes to smog, expanding the Toxics Release Inventory Program to improve the public’s understanding of releases associated with plastics production, and starting the process of prioritizing five chemicals used in plastic production, including vinyl chloride, for risk evaluations under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). EPA is also currently evaluating several flame retardants and phthalate chemicals used in plastics under TSCA.
Reducing Single-Use Plastic on Public Lands and in Department of the Interior Facilities: Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland issued Secretary’s Order 3407 to reduce the procurement, sale, and distribution of single-use plastic products and packaging Department-wide, with a goal of phasing out single-use plastic products on Interior Department-managed lands by 2032. To support this effort, the Department is working to provide additional water bottle filling stations on public lands, working with concessionaires to reduce the sale of single-use plastics on Department-managed lands, and cleaning up plastic marine debris.
Investing in Infrastructure to Improve Reuse, Recycling and Composting: EPA is investing $275 million in Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling grants as part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. EPA made 140 grant selections for projects ranging from recycling, composting, and reuse infrastructure improvements to technical support for local waste management staff. This grant program marks the first time that funding of this scale has been available specifically for the purpose of improving solid waste infrastructure.
Cleaning Up Existing Plastic Pollution in the Environment: Under President Biden, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provided nearly $70 million in federal funding for transformational, multi-year projects removing large marine debris and using proven interception technologies to capture marine debris throughout the coastal United States, Great Lakes, territories, and Freely Associated States. NOAA also announced $27 million for its first 29 Sea Grant projects that support the creation of coalitions and innovative research that will address the prevention and removal of marine debris over time.