Green Groups Call on Biden to Address Plastic Pollution Crisis
By Romero Holloway
A consortium of environmental and community organizations is poised to release a plan intended to urge President-elect Joe Biden to craft a series of executive orders aimed at curtailing the plastic pollution crisis around the world.
More than 550 groups including Greenpeace, the Earth Island Institute, Surfrider Foundation, and Save Our Shores have signed onto a Presidential Plastic Action Plan to be revealed during a virtual press conference on December 8.
During the event, speakers are slated to reveal their collective plan to have Biden address the plastic pollution crisis through a series of executive orders.
Environmental justice experts will join speakers from the spheres of politics, law, science, academia, and social justice.
One such speaker is Diane Wilson, a retired shrimper from Texas, who successfully took Formosa Plastics to court and won the largest settlement in history ($50 million) involving a private citizen taking on an industrial polluter.
Wilson sued Formosa for illegally allowing thousands of tiny plastic particles to infiltrate Lavaca Bay from its Point Comfort Plant. The federal judge in the case acknowledged the company was a serial offender and cemented Wilson’s status as one of the scrappiest individual environmental advocates in modern United States history.
Jeff Merkley, a Democratic Senator from Oregon, will also speak. Merkley is one of the most effective advocates for addressing plastic pollution on Capitol Hill, having sponsored the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act of 2020.
“Nobody wants their children ingesting dangerous chemicals and microscopic plastics,” said Merkley when he announced the bill in February. “Nobody wants to go to the beach and see mountains of single-use plastic waste. And plastic production is a major driver of pollution accelerating the climate crisis.”
The groups say the event is necessary particularly given the plastics industry’s plans to increase plastic production in the next decade by as much as 40%. Considering sharp declines in oil and gas usage due to the coronavirus pandemic, the oil and gas industry has turned its attention to alternative revenue streams.
The rise of electric vehicles, which further reduces oil and gas demand over a longer time span, makes such a move necessary for oil and gas companies to survive. Thus, they have focused on increasing plastic production, to the detriment of beaches, the oceans, and the climate.
We here at VITRI unequivocally support the goals of the plastic action plan.
We believe that the most effective way to reduce plastic waste in the environment is to significantly reduce the amount of plastic that consumers use daily. The only way to do this effectively is to produce a viable alternative.
We have taken the following quote by Senator Merkley as an exordium:
“An America with the creativity to invent a million uses for plastic has the creativity to design better alternatives.”
We have that creativity, and we are eager to use it to solve this intractable problem.
Our team is committed to making durable and sophisticated products that rival the convenience of plastics without the environmental burden. We believe technology and design innovations can revolutionize how Americans and the world consume products in concert with the health of the environment. Please stay tuned to our website, blog, and upcoming Kickstarter page as we unveil a product fully capable of providing the convenience and sustainability that will consign the concept of disposable plastics to the garbage heap of history.
Editor's Note: This post has been updated to reflect our rebranding to VITRI.