EPA releases ‘National Strategy to Prevent Plastic Pollution’

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released its National Strategy to Prevent Plastic Pollution, which outlines opportunities to protect communities from the impacts of plastic production and waste and details how government agencies, businesses, nonprofits and communities can work to prevent plastic pollution.

The EPA says its strategy also aligns with the U.S.’ commitment to negotiating an ambitious international agreement with the aim of “protecting public health and the environment by reducing plastic pollution around the world.”

The strategy is the third pillar of the EPA’s Building a Circular Economy for All effort, following national strategies on recycling and reducing food loss and waste.

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“EPA’s new strategy to prevent plastic pollution will have a profound impact on public health and our environment, especially in overburdened communities hit hardest,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan says. “From reducing cancer-causing pollution from plastic manufacturing facilities, to increasing industry’s accountability to take back recycled plastic packaging, to capturing waste before it ends up in our bodies and the environment, this strategy lays out the path forward for EPA and our partners to tackle this persistent challenge.”

Example actions from the EPA strategy include reducing the production and consumption of single-use plastic products and increasing the U.S. capacity to reuse and refill products, including in the federal government; measuring the environmental and human health impacts throughout the life cycle of single-use products; and enhancing public policies and incentives to decrease plastic pollution, including working with others to create a national extended producer responsibility framework.

The strategy is organized into six objectives that include reducing pollution from plastic production; innovating material and product design; decreasing scrap generation; improving waste management; improving capture and removal of plastic pollution; and minimizing loadings and impacts to waterways and the ocean.

The EPA says these actions are in addition to steps that already are being taken to reduce plastic waste, including:

• The EPA’s Trash Free Waters Program, which it says will strengthen its emphasis on preventing trash from entering the environment, removing trash in and around waterways and disseminating research findings.
• Setting enforceable wastewater standards for industry and developing national water quality criteria recommendations for pollutants in surface waters. In 2024, the EPA finalized new requirements for facilities to develop and submit response plans for worst-case discharges of hazardous substances under the Clean Water Act, including many chemicals used in plastic manufacturing.
• Finalizing rules this year to reduce emissions of toxic air pollutants including ethylene oxide and chloroprene, which the EPA says will result in significant reductions in harmful air pollution in local communities near plastic production facilities, including communities with environmental justice concerns.
• The EPA’s Risk Management Program rule, which sets requirements to protect vulnerable communities from chemical accidents, especially those living near facilities in industry sectors with high accident rates, including certain plastic manufacturing facilities. In the spring, the EPA finalized the Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention rule.
• The EPA’s Environmental Justice Grants and Technical Assistance Program, which offers a variety of funding opportunities for projects focused on plastic pollution reduction.
• The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provided the EPA with funding to support implementing its strategy through the Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling and Recycling Education and Outreach grant programs. The EPA says this includes funding for improvements to reuse and recycling infrastructure, for education and outreach and for waste reduction plans.
• A new platform containing the initial actions the EPA is taking to implement its series of strategies on Building a Circular Economy for All.

“Plastics have many uses but also create a huge impact on our environment,” Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management Director Terry Gray says. “The National Strategy to Prevent Plastic Pollution presents an excellent roadmap to prevent these types of pollution by creating circular economies, returning these materials to supply chains for recycling and reuse. We recognize and appreciate the leadership by EPA in developing and finalizing this strategy, considering comments and feedback from thousands of stakeholders. It will have big benefits to our environment as we move forward to implementation.”

The EPA is issuing this national strategy as representatives from around the world are set to gather in Busan, South Korea, for the final scheduled meeting of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP’s) International Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution, or INC-5, to develop an international legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. The agency says its strategy will help inform the international community of the wide range of actions available and already taken in the U.S.

In the bipartisan Save Our Seas 2.0 Act of 2020, Congress tasked the EPA with developing a strategy to reduce plastic scrap and other postconsumer materials in waterways and oceans. The agency published the draft strategy in April 2023 and says it received 92,000 comments during the public comment period. The updated strategy incorporates that feedback, and the EPA says it affirms the agency’s commitment to eliminating the release of plastic scrap into the environment by 2040.

Opportunities for action in the strategy are designed to combat climate change through greenhouse gas emission reductions associated with the life cycle of plastic products and to reduce public health impacts to communities “overburdened” by pollution.

The EPA, with input from industry and trade organizations, national and community-based nonprofit organizations, government agencies, Tribes and private individuals identified objectives and actions to address environmental and human health concerns by eliminating the U.S. release of plastic into the environment and reducing exposure to plastic pollution.

The agency says the new national strategy follows the National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics, and builds on its National Recycling Strategy by identifying actions needed to reduce and recover plastic and other materials, as well as prevent plastic pollution from harming human health and the environment. The EPA says these actions support a circular economy approach to the management of plastic products—an approach that it says is regenerative by design, ensuring resources retain value for as long as possible, and aligns with the White House’s report, "Mobilizing Federal Action on Plastic Pollution: Progress, Principles and Priorities," released earlier this year.

Organizations voice optimism

In a statement, the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA), Silver Spring, Maryland, voiced its support for the EPA’s plan and says it will serve as a resource in its implementation.

“SWANA congratulates the EPA on this publication,” Executive Director and CEO Amy Lestition Burke says. “As a U.S. Plastics Pact Activator and an implementation partner of the Canada Plastics Pact, SWANA is committed to preventing plastic pollution and supports the intent of the strategy. SWANA members play key roles in many of the strategy’s objectives and goals.”

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SWANA states that its members enable the success of decreasing scrap generation, improving waste management and improving the capture and removal of plastic pollution. The organization adds that those managing recycling education, recycling collection and material recovery facilities (MRFs) are well positioned to improve public understanding, improve waste management and remove plastics from the environment.

“Ongoing grant opportunities and other financial mechanisms will be key to expanding reuse and recycling systems into the future by enabling communities to implement needed infrastructure and programs,” says Kristyn Oldendorf, senior director of public policy and communications at SWANA.

Alejandro Perez, senior vice president of policy and government affairs for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), says in a statement that it’s no secret that the plastic pollution crisis in the U.S. and around the world is growing.

“As world leaders meet next week to negotiate a global agreement to end plastic pollution, we welcome this new U.S. government strategy, which reflects increased ambition and action to address how plastic products are made, used and recycled in the U.S.,” Perez says. “A whole-of-government approach to stopping plastic pollution is what this moment requires to protect our communities and keep plastic out of nature.

“If implemented, the key elements of the strategy could improve environmental standards from production to end of life and lay the groundwork for the creation of a national extended producer responsibility framework, which five U.S. states have already enacted to hold producers of plastic financially responsible for recycling their products.”

Christy Leavitt, plastics campaign director for Oceana, says, “We don’t have time to waste when it comes to protecting our environment and our communities from the overwhelming flood of plastic that has been thrust onto us as a society,” adding that the EPA’s new strategy is a first step to addressing the plastics crisis.

“The strategy provides an initial roadmap of action, and we need federal, state and local policies to implement the strongest solutions. The U.S. government must reduce the production and use of single-use plastics and move to nontoxic reuse and refill systems. Addressing the plastics problem requires bold and urgent action, and the U.S. government must do more to combat plastic pollution at the source to protect our oceans, our climate and our communities now and for future generations.”

NWRA supports labeling clarity, reasonable EPR approach

In response to the EPA's announcement, the National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA), Arlington, Virginia, applauds the agency's efforts to bring a national focus to improving waste management programs through decreased waste generation, environmentally sound management of waste and recyclables and effective composting, and looks forward to continuing to work with the agency to support improved circularity of recoverable materials.

The NWRA notes that recycling needs both public education and end markets to be successful, and that public understanding of the recycling process needs to include an awareness of how improper disposal impacts global water quality.

In the NWRA's view, successful recycling requires strong end market demand. To create demand for recyclable materials, the organization says it strongly recommends the EPA pursue:

• Enhanced content commitments: The NWRA says the EPA should encourage the use of recycled content purchasing policies--not just within the EPA, but with private companies. The EPA also could develop a purchasing policy framework for private businesses and resources on how to source products.
• Contamination reductions: The organization says an EPA focus on reducing recycling contamination at the point of collection by working with the industry on labeling issues would be a step toward finding viable solutions.

The EPA could also bring its influence to bear on hard-to-recycle items such as batteries, tires, mattresses and paint, the NWRA says, adding that it supports EPR programs for hard-to-recycle items.

"NWRA supports battery EPR programs because there is a battery-related fire in the U.S. every day," says President and CEO Michael E. Hoffman. "More than 40,000 consumer products contain an embedded battery; thousands more draw from rechargeable batteries. Most households have more than 10 items in the home with a battery that becomes a fire hazard if not disposed of correctly at their end of life. A national EPR approach to eliminating the dangers imposed by improper storage, recovery and disposal of batteries should be an EPA priority."

The organization says it is actively engaged in EPR discussions nationwide on a state-by-state basis and supports the goals of increased circularity and improved recovery. However, the organization says it is aware of multiple case studies that show packaging EPR does not achieve improved recovery rates of recyclables in well-established recycling programs. The NWRA adds that it does dramatically raise the cost of recycling (two- to threefold increase in cost with no appreciable increase in materials recovered), and while it shifts the cost burden to consumer packaging companies, those companies will then pass on their added costs to consumers, keeping upward pressure on inflation for many consumer products, especially food.

The NWRA says it supports the objectives of the EPA's National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics and believes successful composting or certified compostable products require addressing labeling issues with products and public education to make certified compostable products accepted at more facilities, while also addressing contamination issues in organics composting.

In its statement, the NWRA says it will continue to proactively engage with the agency on waste and recycling issues as it works to find solutions to these important national issues. The organization previously has supported the EPA's efforts to ratify the Basel Convention and will continue to do so.

Industry support with a dose of caution

Ross Eisenberg, president of America’s Plastic Makers, a division of the Washington-based American Chemistry Council (ACC), says the organization and the EPA share the same goal of preventing plastic in the environment, noting the plastics industry’s commitment has been demonstrated by the billions of dollars invested by companies to scale up a circular economy where used plastics are remade into new products in an effort to reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing.

However, he urged some caution regarding the EPA’s implementation of its new strategy.

“We support many aspects of the EPA’s strategy, especially its alignment with key elements of our 5 Actions for Sustainable Change—such as modernizing and expanding our recycling capacity, enhancing public education and the need for a national extended producer responsibility framework,” Eisenberg says. “However, some components of the agency’s strategy could inadvertently lead to the outsourcing of U.S. manufacturing. A circular economy for plastics needs to keep America competitive and keep jobs here.”

He urged the Biden-Harris administration to carefully consider the potential “unintended consequences” of policies that prescribe alternatives to plastics, adding that the ACC appreciates the EPA’s call for more data to better understand trade-offs, and that plastics have a lower life cycle GHG footprint in many applications compared to materials such as paper and metal.

“America’s plastic makers look forward to collaborating with the EPA to prevent plastic in the environment, boost the reuse and recycling of plastics and ensure a sustainable future for our environment, economy and communities,” Eisenberg says. “Together, we can make meaningful progress toward a cleaner, more circular future.”