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On March 25th, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Representative Alan Lowenthal (D-CA) reintroduced the 2021 Freedom from Plastic Pollution Act, which was introduced to Congress in history "The most comprehensive bill" to solve the plastic pollution crisis.
The Break Free From Plastic movement was launched in 2016 and claims to have the support of more than 11,000 organizations and individuals around the world, stating that the bill “expands and improves earlier versions, using proven solutions to protect affected communities and reform our Destroy the recycling system and transfer the financial burden of waste management from municipalities and taxpayers to where it belongs: producers of plastic waste."
The problem with this line of thinking is that resin producers do not produce plastic waste, and plastic processors do not produce plastic waste. They provide materials and manufacturing services to make the production of plastic products easier, cleaner, safer and more energy efficient. Unfortunately, consumers are the real producers of plastic waste — and all types of waste, including textiles, paper, aluminum, and glass — because many of them don’t seem to care about the environment.
The name of the organization — Get Rid of Plastics (BFFP) — tells us all we need to know about its goal: to eliminate all polymer materials from the earth's surface and return to the good old days of automobile steel manufacturing. BFFP obviously believes that we need to replace environmentally friendly polymer food containers with paper food containers made from trees. What happened to the people who once supported saving forests as carbon sinks, keeping the earth green and beautiful, embracing trees? Now they want to cut down the forest to make paper and produce wood pellets for energy, which releases more carbon dioxide than burning waste.
Senator Merkley commented that the three Rs-reduce, reuse and recycle-have become "three Bs-buried, burned or shipped out of the sea." He emphasized, "Now is the time for us to pass this legislation to control it."
Sharon Lavigne, the founder of RISE St. James, is a grassroots faith organization dedicated to removing “hazardous petrochemical products from the land”. She issued this unscientific statement: “Plastic in its life cycle Every step of the process will cause damage" and "The chemicals used to make these items are being discharged into the air, and we are breathing." Avigny supports the initiative to stop the Formosa Plastics factory in St. James, Los Angeles.
BFFP’s goals for this legislation include:
Congressman Lowenthal commented: "Our legislation applies one of the core principles of environmental law:'polluter pays'. Now is the time for billion-dollar companies to step up to bear the cost of cleaning up product waste. This legislation is A bold first step on the road to a lasting solution."
In response to the BFFP's proposed legislation, Joshua Baca, vice president of the Plastics Department of the American Chemistry Council, said: "Despite the requirements of the bill's supporters, the legislative intent is clear. This action will be "suspended." "The production of plastics has disrupted the supply chain, hindering the resilience of the U.S. manufacturing industry and our ability to recover after a crisis (such as the current pandemic); leading to a shortage of basic materials in the entire medical supply chain to fight the pandemic. Including masks, protective covers, medical gowns, syringes, and hygienic packaging; preventing advanced recycling technologies, which allow us to recycle more types and more plastics to make new products, and provide high-paying jobs; and limit the need to deal with climate change Products such as wind turbines, solar panels and electric cars, as well as lightweight plastics that make our cars and homes significantly more energy efficient, thereby significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions."
The Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS) also announced its strong opposition to the "Eliminate Plastic Pollution Act." Tony Radoszewski, President and CEO of PLASTICS, said: "Just as we started to rebound from the effects of COVID-19, this legislation is absolutely devastating to manufacturing employment and the overall U.S. economy." "This bill is right. It is a direct threat to nearly 1 million men and women working in the domestic plastics industry. In addition, this misleading legislation may lead to unintended consequences of increased greenhouse gas emissions."
Perc Pineda, Chief Economist of PLASTICS, commented: “This puts more than US$7 billion in capital expenditures on plastic materials and resin manufacturing at serious risk. Importantly, every US$1 spent on manufacturing adds to the economy. US$2.74."
PLASTICS added that the Break Free Act "targets the use of plastics in a variety of applications, which will stimulate the production of inefficient materials such as glass, tin, aluminum, and paper. Life cycle analysis shows that compared with these old materials, plastic’s greenhouse gas emissions Emissions are lower." The bill will also "destroy manufacturing jobs and throw the U.S. supply chain into chaos."
The association stated that PLASTICS will continue to support common-sense bipartisan legislation to encourage sustainability through recycling, and it has promoted measures such as the recycling bill to improve recycling infrastructure and the recycling bill reintroduced in Congress this week.
In my opinion, what we need to get rid of is dozens of anti-plastic activists who want to get rid of the plastic world and replace polymer materials with alternatives that have been proven to be less environmentally friendly through repeated studies, because they use more natural resources. -Energy, water and trees/plants-and lead to higher carbon dioxide emissions.
These anti-plastics militant groups continue to oppose every solution proposed by the industry, including alternatives to mechanical recycling, such as advanced or chemical recycling. The latter was rejected because it was not a bottle-to-bottle recycling, but a polymer of monomers, chemicals and fuels.
Activists absolutely refuse to turn garbage into energy, because it is a way to eliminate all kinds of difficult-to-recycle waste. In the Waste-to-Energy (WTE) 360 update in March 2019, the publication stated that WTE “is booming in Europe, but the concepts of burning waste and extracting energy to generate electricity have been difficult to sell in the United States.”
Despite the fact that we need alternative forms of energy and plastics. The BTU value of polymer-derived natural gas/oil environment is higher than that of coal. If people ignore the wood pellets that burn very low BTU values and consume forest resources that take decades to replenish, then waste plastics should certainly be favored by environmentalists.
Waste 360 states, “Today there are 75 waste incineration power plants in the United States, compared to 87 about 10 years ago.” In 2015, Palm Beach County, Florida began commercial operation of a new large-scale combustion facility costing US$672 million ——This is the first in the country in more than 15 years. It generates 96 megawatts of electricity, enough to power approximately 40,000 homes and businesses.
According to the 2019 Census Report, the average household income in Palm Beach County is $63,299, and the average individual income is $30,762. Demographic data shows that 19.8% of the residents of Palm Beach County are black, 23.4% are Hispanic/Latino, and 53.5% are white. This should quell some complaints from activists such as Sharon Lavigne and KT Andresky (organizers of the Detroit Breath Freedom Movement) who claim that waste incinerators are "disproportionately" built in "colored, low-income, and indigenous communities." Community. "
Converting waste into energy is a viable solution that has the potential to create powerful clean energy while helping to solve the challenge of plastic waste that is difficult to recycle plastic. At this point, can we afford to destroy the plastic industry that has proven so valuable to almost all social classes, from manufacturing and healthcare to the food and beverage industry, and the transportation sector over the past 100 years?
The only area where we have failed is to educate people to properly dispose of plastic, paper, textile, aluminum and glass waste and not to litter the environment.
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