As Efforts on a Global Treaty Stall, Cities and States Are on the Front Lines of the Battle Over Plastic Pollution

Global plastics treaty talks have stalled. And voters last month elected a president and Congress hostile to environmental laws and regulations—and supportive of fossil fuels.

For the coming year at least, the robust political fight in the United States over what to do about plastic pollution will likely shift to states and cities, where it’s really been happening all along.

The odds of electing a Congress willing to pass comprehensive plastics legislation were always low, as was securing an enforceable global plastics treaty that a two-thirds vote of the U.S. Senate could ratify.

While the treaty fight will continue for at least one more negotiating session, the domestic front lines of the plastics battle will be in statehouses, city council chambers and courthouses—and most of all in communities that bear the brunt of pollution from plastic manufacturing.

“It would have been incredibly useful to have a binding international agreement,” said former environmental regulator Judith Enck, founder and president of Beyond Plastics, an environmental group. “But we still have to do something absent that, and state and local governments are where the action will be.”

To that end, Beyond Plastics is preparing to go on offense next year in support of strong state plastic packaging and recycling laws, like the one it supported last year and almost got passed in the New York State Legislature.

However, environmental and local advocates will also be playing defense in environmental justice communities if the second Trump administration follows through on campaign promises to renew the pro-fossil fuel and deregulatory agenda that marked Donald Trump’s first term. The federal government could seek to expand plastic production, boost so-called “chemical” recycling that oil and gas companies support and roll back hard-fought clean-air rules on petrochemical plants won during the Biden administration. 

That would mean more battles in environmental justice communities, particularly in plastic-manufacturing states like Texas and Louisiana.

“Are we prepared? Yes,” said Shiv Srivastava, policy director for Fenceline Watch, a Houston-based environmental justice organization. He doesn’t expect the Trump administration’s energy and petrochemical policies will be much different from those of Texas, the top crude oil- and natural gas-producing state in the nation, which Inside Climate News has found enables polluters through lax regulations.

“We are battle-tested,” Srivastava said. “It’s not going to be fun. It will be arduous. But we have no choice but to be prepared for it.”

Limiting Plastic Production Remains a Sticking Point

In a world choking on plastic waste, the United Nations Environmental Assembly in March 2022 set more than 175 nations on a path toward a binding agreement to curb that pollution, to be achieved by the end of this year. The resolution called for a “full lifecycle” approach, which generally means from production to design to disposal.

The U.N. timeline failed. Parties were unable to reach an agreement at their recent fifth and final scheduled gathering from Nov. 25 to Dec. 1 in South Korea. Delegates decided to hold one more meeting next year, without setting a date or place.

With global production and use of plastics set to reach 736 million metric tons by 2040, up 70 percent from 2020, as many as 100 countries have lent support for limits on how much plastic companies can produce. 

But some oil-producing countries have objected to production limits. So has the chemical industry, which has been pushing for a more limited agreement that focuses on better management of plastic waste rather than making less plastic.

“It is crucial that this treaty stays focused on addressing the primary cause of plastic pollution—mismanaged waste,” said Chris Jahn, council secretary of the International Council of Chemical Associations, in a written statement. “With 2.7 billion people globally lacking access to waste collection systems, solutions must prioritize addressing this gap, rather than imposing provisions that could lead to greater environmental or economic harm, such as supply restrictions or duplicative measures on chemicals in plastics.”

Delegates were still wrangling at the last session over how to finance any future treaty requirements and how to address concerns about the most toxic chemicals contained in plastic products.

U.N. officials have said plastics are part of a triple planetary threat of pollution, biodiversity loss and climate change. Plastics, nearly all of which are made by fossil fuels, are inexorably linked with climate change. Under a business-as-usual scenario, the plastics lifecycle could be responsible for as much as 19 percent of global greenhouse emissions by 2040, according to the U.N.

“We have tested the resilience of this planet to its limit,” said Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee Secretariat, the administrative body assisting with the talks, in written comments after the South Korea meeting concluded. “Now is the time for us to push our own limits and honour the trust placed in us. We have no choice but to succeed.”

Trump’s “America first” agenda, his support for the oil and gas industry that fuels plastic manufacturing and his disdain for the U.N. Paris climate agreement, give environmental advocates little hope that his administration will fight for a strong plastics treaty. 

Some environmental advocates have said that accepting a weak treaty could be worse than having no treaty at all and have pledged to continue pressing for a strong one that limits plastic production.

Even if the U.S. doesn’t become a party to such a treaty, it could benefit environmental justice communities here, Srivastava said.

Because the United States is a global leader in plastics production, any agreement to limit plastic production would likely affect U.S. plants.

“Our communities are forced to bear the brunt of production of these petrochemicals that go into products all over the world,” Srivastava said. “If there are tight regulations on what chemicals can be sold and the movement of those chemicals and the health impacts of those chemicals, then that will lift all boats,” he said.

Interest in “Extended Producer Responsibility” Grows

About 40 percent of plastic products are used once and tossed, such as bottles, cups, bags, cutlery, wrappers and other packaging. The United States is years behind Europe in passing what are called extended producer responsibility, or EPR, laws meant to better manage this kind of waste. 

Several states, including Maine and Minnesota, have done so. California passed the most ambitious one yet in 2022, though some environmentalists said it contained big loopholes.

As many as a dozen other states, including Maryland and Illinois, could be debating similar laws in 2025, said Scott Cassel, founder and executive director of the Product Stewardship Institute, which holds workshops to help bring divergent interests together around the management of consumer waste. Those two states have already passed “needs assessment” laws that can be a first step toward an EPR program.

New York lawmakers last year fell just short of passing a packaging reduction and recycling bill that was backed by Beyond Plastics and other environmental groups. Enck had seen it as a national model and said she expects that effort to resume in January when lawmakers gather again in Albany.

Several years in the making, the proposed Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act had followed a “polluter pays” philosophy, putting the financial burden for managing packaging waste on the companies that generate it, rather than taxpayers or government agencies. 

It would have reduced plastic packaging 30 percent over 12 years, banned some of the most toxic chemicals used in such packaging and prevented chemical recycling of plastic waste for at least three years. Environmentalists typically view chemical recycling as tantamount to incineration.

The bill passed the state Senate but fell short in the New York State Assembly after a flurry of claims from companies that it would effectively ban products like Cool Whip and individually wrapped cheese slices or everyday activities like backyard barbecues. 

“Every year a bill is not passed means hundreds of millions of dollars are not returned or reimbursed to municipalities.”

— Scott Cassel, Product Stewardship Institute

“We are redoubling our efforts in New York,” and will also push for a similar law in New Jersey and in other states, Enck said. “The plastics and consumer goods and chemical industries in many legislatures are promoting very weak packaging policies, and we have to counter that. The best way to counter that is with strong counter proposals.”

Business interests in New York have said they could agree to an EPR law but described the New York bill as too onerous.

“There are many different and strong interests [in New York] that need to be aligned in order for a bill to actually pass into law,” said Cassel.

He said he believes a bill that balances competing interests will have a better chance of passing. He’s optimistic such an agreement can be reached because the financial costs of managing packaging waste take an ongoing toll on local governments.

“Every year a bill is not passed means hundreds of millions of dollars are not returned or reimbursed to municipalities,” he said.

There could also be more action to curb plastic waste at the local level, such as the Skip the Stuff campaign in New Jersey led by Marta Young of Clean Water Action. She’s been working with cities on ordinances that prevent restaurants from automatically doling out plastic cutlery and plastic condiment packages. Ten such ordinances were passed last year, and a dozen more cities are considering doing the same, as is the state Legislature, Young said.

“Just because we can’t pass things at the global level or move forward for the next how many years at the federal level, I think there will be a lot of momentum at the state and local level to do great environmental policy work,” Young said.

Plastics Lawsuits Could Proliferate

Alleging decades of lies and mounting costs to manage plastic waste, California Attorney General Rob Bonta in September sued ExxonMobil, accusing the Texas-based oil and gas giant of knowingly contributing to “one of the most devastating global environmental crises of our time” while misleading the public about recycling as a solution. Exxon responded by blaming California for its recycling failures, but the financial stakes are high. The lawsuit seeks billions of dollars from Exxon to fund the abatement of a host of harms from plastic pollution in California.

Nationally, only about 6 percent of plastic gets recycled. With waste management and environmental costs mounting, legal experts expect to see more states and local jurisdictions follow California’s lead with their own plastics lawsuits.

That appears to already be happening in at least one surprising location that may indicate these kinds of lawsuits could have bipartisan appeal, said Chelsea Linsley, a staff attorney with the Center for Climate Integrity and coauthor of a report in February that concluded “petrochemical companies, independently and through industry trade associations and front groups, have deceived consumers, policymakers, and regulators into believing that they could address the plastic waste crisis through a series of false solutions,” such as recycling.

She pointed to a plastics lawsuit filed earlier this month by Ford County, Kansas, where Trump got more than twice as many votes as Vice President Kamala Harris. The lawsuit against several major plastic manufacturers claims deceptive advertising around recycling contributed to a “global waste crisis” that has imposed “significant costs on communities that are left to pay for the consequences.” It seeks class-action status and the “public abatement” and “cleanup of this public nuisance.”

Linsley said state or local governments in the coming year might also pursue cases that push back against chemical recycling, or take on environmental and health implications from an emerging body of troubling research into microplastics.

As plastic breaks up in the environment, it forms smaller and smaller particles. Inhaled or ingested, this plastic residue has been documented in the blood, feces, placental fluids and brains of humans—and, most recently, in dolphin’s breath.

“This has started to be a pretty big cause of concern,” Linsley said. 

Election Ramifications for Environmental Justice

A year ago, it looked like environmentalists might have beaten a proposal for a new plastics plant planned for Louisiana’s St. James Parish in that state’s chemical corridor. A state court had tossed aside the project’s state air permits, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Biden administration had earlier reversed a key wetlands permit and required a new environmental impact study.

Those were serious blows, but earlier this year, a state appeals court overturned the lower court’s air permit ruling. Now, some advocates are wondering whether the Trump administration might take steps to help greenlight the project. The company has said it’s in for the long haul.

“We do not intend to give up the fight for this important economic development project that will benefit the people of St. James Parish and Louisiana,” said Janile Parks, a spokeswoman for FG LA LLC, a subsidiary of the Formosa Plastics Group, in a written statement.

“From the beginning, I thought they were trying to wait out Biden,” said Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, part of a coalition of environmental groups working to defeat the massive, $9.4 billion project on 2,400 acres in a predominantly Black portion of St. James Parish. 

The plant would emit 800 tons per year of toxic pollution and 13 million tons per year of greenhouse gases, roughly equivalent to the emissions of 3.5 coal-fired power plants.

There is also now clear documentation that the project would “destroy the burial site of enslaved people,” Rolfes said. Local zoning that allows for the plant has also been challenged by environmental justice advocates, with their case heard in September by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

A potential repeal by the Trump administration of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s tougher regulations to reduce harmful, toxic emissions from chemical and plastics plants across the country could trigger battles in environmental communities and in Washington, D.C.

Those rules, put in place earlier this year, seek to reduce cancer-causing and other health-harming emissions from chemical, plastics and resin plants. They often emit chemical byproducts linked to cancer and other health risks, and they disproportionately impact communities of color and low-income white neighborhoods. 

“I think it is going to be really bad at the federal level, even worse than anyone is expecting now,” said Enck, who was a regional EPA administrator for eight years during the Obama administration.