EPA Releases National Strategy to Prevent Plastic Pollution
The EPA has released the National Strategy to Prevent Plastic Pollution, a six-part strategy to eliminate the release of plastic waste by 2040.
In November 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") released its National Strategy to Prevent Plastic Pollution, a comprehensive plan with the goal of eliminating the release of plastic waste into the environment by 2040. The strategy is the third pillar of the EPA's "Building a Circular Economy for All" initiative and follows national strategies on recycling and reducing food loss and waste.
The strategy targets the entire plastics lifecycle and encourages innovators to create systems for a circular economy where materials are returned to supply chains for recycling and reuse. A draft of this strategy was published in April 2023 and received nearly 92,000 comments.
Six Key Objectives
The EPA identified six key objectives and particular actions that businesses, industry, nonprofits, and government can take. The objectives are: (1) reduce pollution from plastic production; (2) innovate materials and product design; (3) decrease waste generation; (4) improve waste management; (5) improve capture and removal of plastic pollution; and (6) minimize plastic pollution in waterways and the ocean.
For each objective, the EPA identified actions that governments, businesses, industry, academia, and nonprofits can take. Actions include:
- Reducing the production and consumption of single-use plastic products and expanding capacity for reuse and refill products.
- Enhancing the market for sustainability by certifying and recognizing plastic products that meet stricter environmental standards.
- Developing a national challenge program or Genius Prize to encourage inventors to design materials, products, and systems for a circular economy.
- Developing and updating sustainability standards, ecolabels, and design guidelines to increase circularity of materials.
- Enhancing water management systems to capture and remove plastics from stormwater and wastewater.
EPA anticipates implementation of the strategy to be an iterative process requiring collaboration across academia, industry, nonprofit organizations, and government. The EPA is already implementing actions from the strategy including:
- Allocating $160 million through the Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling grant program to support solid waste infrastructure.
- Developing and finalizing reports on plastic pollution as directed by the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act.
- Creating the Trash Free Waters Program to prevent trash from entering the environment, remove trash from waterways, and disseminate research findings.
- Finalizing rules in 2024 to reduce emissions of toxic air pollutants including ethylene oxide and chloroprene, which will reduce harmful air pollution in communities near plastic production facilities.
The EPA intends to pursue regulatory action when needed as well as engage with various stakeholders to implement the strategy. It also plans to address additional issues, including textiles, in its "Building a Circular Economy for All" initiative. Consistent with the strategy, some proposed grants pursuant to the Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act seek to increase plastics recycling capabilities. It remains to be seen how those grants specifically, and the plastics strategy more generally, will be impacted by the incoming administration.
