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The White House Has a Plan To Slash Plastic Use in the US (nytimes.com) 112

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Calling plastic pollution one of the world's most pressing environmental problems, the Biden administration on Friday said that the federal government, the biggest buyer of consumer goods in the world, would phase out purchases of single-use plastics. From a report: The administration also said it planned tougher regulations on plastic manufacturing, which releases planet-warming greenhouse gases and other dangerous pollutants. The efforts, which the White House called the first comprehensive strategy to tackle plastic use nationwide, aim to reduce demand for disposable plastic items while also helping to create a market for substitutes that are reusable, compostable or more easily recyclable.

Brenda Mallory, who heads the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a statement that the changes would "require unprecedented action at every stage of the plastic life cycle." Because of its purchasing power, the White House added, "the federal government has the potential to significantly impact the supply of these products." The emphasis on curbing plastic use mirrors a growing recognition that the world can't recycle or manage its way out of a deluge of plastic waste. Global plastic production rose nearly 230-fold between 1950 and 2019, to more than 400 million tons a year, and is expected to quadruple from current levels by 2050. An estimated 40 percent of that is single-use plastic, which makes up the bulk of the world's plastic waste.
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The White House Has a Plan To Slash Plastic Use in the US More

The White House Has a Plan To Slash Plastic Use in the US

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  • Finally (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jack9 ( 11421 ) on Friday July 19, 2024 @04:03PM (#64638889)

    The amount of plastic (packaging, et al) has gotten out of control. I'm sick of needing tools to get to things I purchase. If you visit Europe, you can see how it doesn't need to be this way.

    • We have no idea what the next White House will look like, but Nick the Greek's giving 20:1 on Blue, 1:5 on Red.

      (What, you were expecting a fair shake or something? This is US Politics, we don't do that sort of thing here!)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      There's so much excessive over-packaging with plastic in the US, it feels like a massive joke or insult.

      Like the most stupid overuse are plastic, single use cups at restaurants. Paper cups are fine when you need disposability. Nobody ever recycles the plastic cups, and far too much crap "plastic promotional cups" exist.

      But the over-packaging that is the worst is still the "tiny USB drive inside a 5" plastic clamshell that you have to take kitchen shears to open.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        There's so much excessive over-packaging with plastic in the US, it feels like a massive joke or insult.

        Like the most stupid overuse are plastic, single use cups at restaurants. Paper cups are fine when you need disposability. Nobody ever recycles the plastic cups, and far too much crap "plastic promotional cups" exist.

        But the over-packaging that is the worst is still the "tiny USB drive inside a 5" plastic clamshell that you have to take kitchen shears to open.

        It's far worse than just single use plastics.

        F

      • Everybody's focusing on civilian goods here. Splain to me how you make an MRE or HDR without single use plastic packaging? Natick spent decades optimizing the materials science involved here. There's no way they'll regress to C-rats in heavy, bulky metal cans. It'll take more decades to figure out how to make retort packaging that meets MRE requirements while being constructed of dolphin friendly bamboo or whatever. The military is one of the GAO's biggest customers, and they will ABSOLUTELY NOT accept a lo

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by will4 ( 7250692 )

          The only thing from the article worth mentioning the federal government, the biggest buyer of consumer goods in the world.

          Repeat it three times.

          They're the same ones telling us to reduce, reuse, recycle.

          The US government at all levels is likely near the top in
          1. Fossil fuel used
          2. Electricity used
          3. Rubber used
          4. Air miles traveled
          5. Paper products, cardboard used
          6. Water used
          7. Plastic used ...
          Factoids:
          25% of the entire US Federal budget is spent within 50 miles of Washington,

    • While I love pointing out how Europe is some wonderful utopia compared to the United 3rd world States of America, Europe has *plenty* of problems with plastic packaging.

      Some of the strictest rules have only recently been introduced and they still do not go nearly far enough. Sure we got rid of plastic straws, attached bottle caps to bottles, but there's still a hugely disappointing amount of pointless plastic packaging in the world.

      And yes our fucking scissors are still encased in that fucking plastic that

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Fly Swatter ( 30498 )
      Want to remove the plastic clamshell problem? Crack down hard on theft.

      Theft is why you need to buy another knife to open that shiny new knife.
      Theft is why everything you open takes 10 minutes and hurts your ears in the process.
      Theft is why everything has to be the size of a plastic football.
      Theft is why everything costs more.
      Theft is why modern home centers feel like a cage match.
      Theft is why swipe fees are so expensive.
      Seriously, stop tolerating theft. Your wallet will thank you. Damn sheep

      • Yeah. The Lowes in the next town over started locking up the Romex recently. Maybe they know something I don't.

      • Re:Finally (Score:4, Interesting)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Saturday July 20, 2024 @05:55AM (#64640144) Homepage Journal

        Except that the problem is often worse in low crime countries, e.g. Japan.

        Plastic packaging is cheap and keeps the product pristine. Consumers don't like tatty cardboard boxes that have been shipped around and kept on the shelf for a long time, with signs of other consumers having handled them. Sealed plastic also helps prevent the product from degrading due to contact with the air, humidity etc.

        And most of all, it's the cheapest option. In Japan you get some amazing origami cardboard packaging from some manufacturers, but it all costs money to develop and to assemble at the factory, so cheap stuff comes in heat sealed shells.

        We need to adjust consumer expectations a bit. It can be done, e.g. some UK supermarkets offer "imperfect" vegetables and fruits at a small discount.

    • Chances are, they will have carve outs for packaging and shipping materials, like they did for the ban on Formaldehyde in wood products.

    • The amount of plastic (packaging, et al) has gotten out of control. I'm sick of needing tools to get to things I purchase.

      I have to take medication. Each and every individual pill is encased in plastic. It is a serious pain in the ass to open.

      WHY THE FUCK IS EVERY FUCKING PILL ENCASED IN PLASTIC?!?!?!

      I mean why? What is purpose served by wrapping each and every pill in plastic? How does this benefit me? I don't want it, plastic is bad for the environment, and yet somehow or another, every fucking pill is wrapped in plastic. Please make it make sense.

      I gotta admit, I have heard cries about reducing plastic since almost the day

  • Glass is pretty environmentally inert, but people get cut. What's the trade-off? When I was a kid, I stepped on a broken bottleneck, which lodged. Weeks later, Mom performed impromptu surgery and removed it. Painful. Lots more of that, traded for diminished environmental impact? Do the benefits outweigh the costs?

    • When I think that micro plastics is in my sperm, yes, I would rather have a cut foot.

    • The beverage industry does not like glass anymore because its way heavier than plastic. This means it costs a lot more to make and transport. Hence they will continue to use plastic, while gaslighting the public about its recyclability or lack thereof.

      • valid point. Plastic is more convenient than glass. I have found that the taste of the beverage inside of a glass container is better than that of a plastic container. I would like to make Glass Great Again!

    • That's not a "glass" problem, that's a "littering" problem.

      Guess what - littering fuckheads throw plastic on the ground too, and while it may not cut your feet if you step on it barefoot (don't do that?) it instead finds it's ways into waterways and the environment where it leaches chemicals. Glass doesn't do that.

      • Bottles are reusable. You used to have to pay a deposit which would be reimbursed when the bottles were returned. Litter wasn't that much of a problem. Discarded bottles would be collected by kids and homeless people for the refund.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
          I'm in the UK. Litter was a scandal decades ago with annual campaigns. Litter included plenty of discarded bottles with deposits payable. There's less visible litter overall now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      Glass is a lot less environmentally friendly when you take into account the carbon required to produce, recycle (which requires extensive water use as well) and transport it. I think it's a factor of 200x.

      Plastic is relatively easy to recycle, if you recycle it into either other plastic or fuel, but many people are opposed to that as well, so they have strict government regulations that make it practically impossible to do. If you treat plastic like the oil it is (eg pyrolysis and then mix it with corn etha

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        Glass can be reused rather than recycled, though. That's where the win is. However, it's not trivial to achieve as few are going to put in the time and effort to reuse glass and there is such a huge variety of shapes and sizes. You'd have to mandate five sizes of bottle, plus wine bottles, and five sizes of jar, probably.

        people would be harvesting it from the oceans (easier than drilling) and solve a great deal of the pollution problem.

        Oil is localised and concentrated more than plastic waste floating in the ocean, even where it is concentrated, so that seems unlikely to be viable.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by guruevi ( 827432 )

          The media makes it sound like there is a massive plastic island floating around the size of Texas, so if the problem is so massive, it should be easy to solve if you can just use it as a fuel.

          Glass can be reused to an extent, it doesn’t solve the transportation problem (makes it worse) but also requires massive cleaning and liability issues. Any scratches on the inside or neck could harbor dangerous bacteria, so you need a good QC process. We have a local farm that does it for their milk bottles, the

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

            The media makes it sound like there is a massive plastic island floating around the size of Texas, so if the problem is so massive, it should be easy to solve if you can just use it as a fuel.

            The area is large, it's a problem due to micro plastics, but the volume is tiny compared to a typical oil field. Given the effort and energy required to collect it and process it for fuel, it's not worth collecting

            Glass can be reused to an extent, it doesn’t solve the transportation problem (makes it worse) but also requires massive cleaning and liability issues. Any scratches on the inside or neck could harbor dangerous bacteria, so you need a good QC process. We have a local farm that does it for their milk bottles, the milk is more than twice the cost of a premium milk brand in plastic containers

            In the UK, delivered milk Is about 25% more. The true cost of milk in plastic includes the externalised costs.

            they can only reuse the bottles up to 3 times before they HAVE to be recycled.

            https://blog.themodernmilkman.... [themodernmilkman.co.uk]. 25 to 30, not 3 in the UK.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by guruevi ( 827432 )

              How fast does your milk go off in those glass bottles? The difference in days in delivered glass in the UK vs weeks in the US is the measure of bacteria leftover after cleaning from the article you posted, yes, big problem from many Reddit posts I can find. We used to have the same (government sponsored) milk delivery in my country of origin, this would be wholly unacceptable to FDA standards.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
                I get it delivered then I use it. It doesn't have time to go off. And no issues with milk-derived illness that I've ever heard of. Deliveries in the UK are on a purely commercial basis, not government sponsored. I'm surprised it wouldn't pass FDA standards in the USA as rates of bacterial infection from food are much higher in the USA than the UK - the UK has stricter standards.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by drnb ( 2434720 )

      Glass is pretty environmentally inert, but people get cut.

      Having lived in that era, the concern of getting cut by a glass soda bottle was down there with a concern about a lightning strike. At least in the context of handing a kid a bottle of coca cola.

      What's the trade-off? When I was a kid, I stepped on a broken bottleneck, ...

      I was only cut, nothing lodged. :-) I expect your bottle, like mine, was a beer bottle. Which we still have today. So switching soda back to glass is likely a quite minimal glass hazard. Coca cola bottles just did not break as easily as some beer bottles.

  • Fallacy of composition, in reverse (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Friday July 19, 2024 @04:04PM (#64638901)

    The classic version is that if I'm in a crowd and stand up, I get a better view, but if everyone also stands up, no one will have a better view.

    Here, it's a little more subtle. If my municipality bans plastic bottles or bags or whatever, people will make do by purchasing these products at greater hassle or expense elsewhere. And in an emergency like a water outage or extended utility outage, the same government that banned plastic will happily distribute water in plastic bottles and food aid packages in plastic bags that are readily available because a few one-off bans don't affect the availability of these products in the wider market.

    But if *everyone* bans these products, then the industry sinks, and next time there's an emergency, everyone is SOL having to import it from China or India or anywhere else they don't give a fuck about green because they have bills to pay and no time for luxury belief radicalism.

    Then there are the second-order effects from taking away a revenue source for petrochemical feedstocks sold to make disfavored plastics that will have the effect of driving up the cost of manufacturing not-disfavored products made from those petrochemical feedstocks whose cost of extraction, refining, and transport is amortized over the "good" and "bad" stuff right now.

    Tldr version: government getting full of itself and thinking it can pick winners and losers without imposing costs elsewhere. Just like in the old country.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
      Yes, there is no perfect solution, so we shouldn't do anything at all.

      • How about a less childish reading: the world is complex so we must maintain humility about policies that can have unintended negative consequences, especially when we know what those might be.

        • The problem started when you assumed "progressives" had the mental capacity to consider second or third order effects. To them, "plastic bad, bans good." Same as "Rich folks bad, need redistribution". Same thing happened in the Holomodor, "Kulaks bad, steal everything from them until they die. Then steal more next year."
          • Better to have solutions (progressives), than to flat out lie all of the time (MAGAs).

            • If your "solutions" have the property that they impose costs and burdens, do little to address the stated problem, and exist mostly to "send a message" to the designated bad guys, the way a lot of these plastic bans do*, then I'll take benign lying over earnest troublemaking any day of the week and twice on whatever say of the week your religion deems holier than the others.

              *Like the checkout bag bans. Some only ban petroleum-derived plastics leaving the rest all legal; others require bags to be recyclable

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
                Not having a solution still has the cost, they are just externalised from the goods being purchased.

                others require bags to be recyclable meaning little thin checkout bags are replaced with big honkin ones that use more plastic, etc

                They can be reused. I'm in the UK and every time I go to the grocery store, I see people reusing bags. The ban in the UK has not been noticeably unpopular and the use of plastic material used in bags overall, which takes into account that reusable ones are thicker, has reduced. So what you are saying won't work has been tried and did work.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by penguinoid ( 724646 )

      And in an emergency like a water outage or extended utility outage, the same government that banned plastic will happily distribute water in plastic bottles and food aid packages in plastic bags that are readily available because a few one-off bans don't affect the availability of these products in the wider market.

      But if *everyone* bans these products, then the industry sinks, and next time there's an emergency, everyone is SOL having to import it

      You sure are a genius compared to that government you invented.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Samare ( 2779329 )

      The EU is banning more and more single use plastic things apart from bottles.
      Many countries have a container-deposit scheme for plastic bottles. If the plastic you throw in the nature is worth money, you tend to throw it less. And if you do, someone will be more likely to pick it up to claim that money. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]

    • So... what did people do in emergencies before plastic bottled water was a thing? That wasn't so long ago. They had disasters & extreme weather events back then too. Did everyone just die of thirst & waterborne diseases or did they have some other clever solution? I know but maybe you wanna find out before spouting nonsense economic theories on the interwebs pipes & embarrassing yourself in public.
      • Unless, of course, you're 'Murican. In which case, you have no shame & will probably continue to ignore sensible, rational thinking & go on spouting nonsense & doubling down on whacky economic theories.
        • The wacky economic theories that giving tax cuts to Billionaires, so they can build schools, power plants, and roads, is the path to prosperity in the USA?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )

      oh no! what ever will we do without the emergency plastic bag industry!

      • Yeah, whatever would we do if we unwittingly cripple the industrial base that supplies our emergency equipment by cutting off its revenue from other products that are made from the same raw materials and share supply chains, factory lines, etc. What *would* we do if we were so shortsighted and so blinded by our zeal to please $deity that we threw out that baby with our bathwater?

        That's a silly question isn't it? That's like asking, what would happen if we delayed elections, closed down libraries, businesses

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
          Well, the free market would suggest that if there is still a market for these other goods, then if they are being cross subsidised by plastic packaging then the cost of these other goods would increase slightly and still be produced. Or maybe the free market is only a thing when it supports your environmental views and vanishes at other times?

  • Blah Blah Blah (Score:3)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Friday July 19, 2024 @04:20PM (#64638941)

    Meanwhile the plastic company lobbyists are busy filling the coffers. Get to the root of the problem already.

  • but mah bagz i use them for other things around the house and i'm proud to be an american where at least i know i'm free and plus what have whales ever done for me
  • Before plastic all kinds of products were packaged in paper cartons (milk, juice, ice cream, etc). And before you say bbbut⦠muh trees! They grow back and do not leave synthetic byproducts that never biodegrade.
  • It does nothing for the biggest plastic polluter in the world, China. They throw out 61% more than the #2, the US. [worldpopul...review.com]

    So how's that gonna stop China, Joe?

    • Well damn, I guess if we can't solve every aspect of one of the biggest challenges facing our species all at once - and it had better cost nothing - we better just not even try.

      Yep, 100% or 0%. Those are your choices! Incremental progress is for WOKE SOCIALISTS, AMIRITE?

      Please stop this stupid line of thinking.

      • Hey, this garbage isn't going to go away as long as we keep ignoring the biggest polluter out of fear of their "mighty military". We need to be pressing them on this, but we aren't.

        Please stop this stupid line of thinking.

        You know, I wasn't calling names at other people here about this. Why do you feel like you have to get in the gutter about it?

        • I didn't call names either. I evaluated your logic as being stupid. Which it is.

          Just because another country is a polluted shithole, doesn't mean that EVERY COUNTRY must be a polluted shithole.

          Incremental progress is still progress. And leading by example is a thing, because it allows you to shame the countries that don't follow in the progress.

          Would you say the same thing about coal? Oh, well because China is still burning coal, that means we should continue burning all the coal we can too, right? Tha

  • Feeling Unconvinced (Score:3)

    by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Friday July 19, 2024 @05:52PM (#64639188) Homepage Journal

    High energy / low entropy hydrocarbons under the ground are probably best left where they are, but if you pull them from under the ground, the most stupid thing you can do with them is burn them.

    There are other uses - Oiling machines, making plastics, any other variant of organic chemistry in industry and medicine.

    If I have some plastic waste and put it in the ground, that's putting it back where it came from. I don't see the problem. If I burn it, that's turning it into atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is maybe not the best idea ever.

    Reducing waste is fine, but don't lose the utility of the thing while you are trying to eliminate the waste.

    • Hydrocarbons deep in the ground are generally not an issue. If you dig, pump them out, and burn them you get some relatively short-lived pollution... it's the quantity we burn that is at issue with fossil fuels - it's well out of proportion to the natural sequestration process.

      Plastic, though, that's worse. When you take oil out of the ground and convert it into plastics you're making extremely stable molecules that may 'break down' at a macroscopic level, but those chains aren't very likely to crack. An

  • It's an election year. Nothing promised will be followed through on even if he wins, and if he doesn't the next administration will promptly throw out the plan anyway.
  • Reduce plastic use by trashing the economy so badly that anything packaged in or made of plastic becomes unaffordable.
  • Look for lots more stupid policies to come in the next few months.

  • Next time you go to the hospital, make sure they use glass bottles of IV fluid, sterilized rubber surgical tubing, glass syringes, etc. Single-use plastics help ensure sterile equipment, healthy outcomes, and save money. Get rid of all single-use plastics and prepare for more disease, death, pandemics, and expenses. Single-use plastics have fantastic economic savings elsewhere, but buying scissors in a sealed clamshell package that take scissors to open...nope.

    BTW, by far the plastics pollution is not in

  • will throw out everything Biden did.

  • Just about all the recycling places take Polyethylene Terephthalate (with the "1" in the triangle) and High Density Polyethylene (with the "2" in the triangle). So, these plastics aren't single use. Manufacturers won't have to fall back to non-plastic packaging.

  • ... reduce demand for disposable plastic items ...

    Medical care and aged care requires a lot of single-use items: Obviously for disease control, but also food. Once something touches a plate, it (and the plate) become a single-use item. A number of jobs are more about look-what-I-did (a version of checking boxes), than resource-management: How much stuff is thrown-away, how much is never used, is irrelevant.

    The part-time nature of those industries also means there's no-one to track how old something is (a lot of food never gets "expiry" labels, see ne

  • These bans to "save the planet" designed by lobbyists and political staffers and pushed by moron politicians produce the same stupid results with the same unintended consequences over and over again.

    Remember the California plastic straws ban that replaced plastic straws wrapped in paper with paper straws wrapped in plastic?

    "Ban single use plastics!" is a cry that sounds great to morons, but when actually considered it means the following: Get rid of safety-sealed affordable packaging for food and medicine,

  • White House has a plan: we will do everything by executive fiat, because Trump would be a dictator.

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