A group of prominent conservation organizations plans a campaign to urge President-elect Joe Biden to use executive orders to target plastics environmental concerns, saying they see significant room for tougher use of existing laws.
The coalition, which includes the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, Surfrider Foundation and 16 other founding partners, plans to issue what its calling a “presidential plastic action plan” Dec. 8 detailing steps the incoming Biden administration could take on its own, without Congress.
The group is not revealing specifics until the announcement, but its members have in recent years petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency for things like tougher rules around air and water emissions for plastics factories and have been part of lawsuits challenging the industry over pellet pollution from factories and Formosa’s plans to build a massive plastics complex in Louisiana.
A statement from the group said members will to urge Biden to stop new plastic projects.
One of the authors of the plan, CBD Senior Attorney Julie Teel Simmonds, said they’re hopeful a Biden administration will take a different approach to industry regulation.
“Executive action definitely can make a significant dent in the plastics pollution crisis,” she said. “The key point is our existing laws can be much, much better harnessed.”
CBD and other groups last year filed two petitions with EPA asking for tougher Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act enforcement around plastics facilities, asking for zero emissions of plastic pellets into waterways from resin plants, no detectable emissions of benzene and dioxin and stricter rules on a host of other chemicals.
The coalition said its plan will have eight points. Different groups within the coalition have been involved with a lawsuit that prompted the Trump administration to withdraw its approval for part of the state of Hawaii’s Clean Water Act plans and ask the state to take a deeper look at plastic pollution.
The regulatory push could include efforts around recycling as well. The EPA has a regulatory proceeding ongoing to write the first U.S. national recycling strategy, and some waste and recycling organizations have petitioned EPA to endorse standards on recycled content for plastic products.
Coalition members have argued in the past that the economic expansion of the plastics industry in recent years, fueled by low-cost shale gas feedstocks, calls for updating regulations governing plastics.
“The plan responds to the plastic industry’s aggressive expansion using the country’s oversupply of fracked gas to make throwaway plastic that fills our oceans, landfills and landscapes,” the group said in a statement. “Petrochemical-plastic projects harm front-line communities with toxic air and water pollution and worsen the climate crisis.”
While Biden did not talk much about plastics specifically during the campaign, apart from a few comments at a town hall supporting plastic bag bans, Teel Simmonds said the coalition notes that the president-elect is prioritizing climate change and environmental justice.
She said the coalition sees the climate crisis as “inextricably linked” to the buildout of plastic resin facilities in the United States and noted Biden’s naming of former Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., to a new position as climate czar as a positive.
As well, Teel Simmonds said Biden has specifically mentioned St. James Parish in Louisiana, where CBD is fighting an expanded Formosa presence in court, as an environmental justice concern.
“He’s signaled a willingness and intent in addressing some of the key problems,” she said. “The president has wide authority. We have a strong suite of existing laws that can be applied more forcefully.”
Apart from Kerry, Biden has not yet named his environmental team, including who he intends to nominate to head EPA.
Retiring Senator Tom Udall, D-N.M., a co-author of the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act, has been mentioned in press reports as a possible Interior Secretary nominee. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was a cosponsor of the Udall plastics legislation.
The coalition said its plan has more than 500 signatories and 19 founding members, including Break Free From Plastic and Beyond Plastics, which was founded by a former EPA regional administrator.
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