New: Stevens’ plastic waste act would ramp up recycling

A Michigan congresswoman wants to bolster recycling habits through a new act which, if passed, would establish a sweeping national program for reducing plastic waste.

U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Rochester Hills) on Tuesday introduced legislation that aims to give the federal government’s recycling research and development a glow-up. Her bill, dubbed the Plastic Waste Reduction and Recycling Act, directs federal agencies to develop ideas on how to drastically reduce plastic waste and put in place standards for regulating recycling technologies.

“We can no longer deny that we face a plastic waste crisis,” said Stevens, who chairs the U.S. House Science Subcommittee on Research and Technology. 

Congress found the global production of plastic increased from two million tons in 1950 to 400 million tons in 2020. Of 8.3 billion metric tons produced globally, 6.3 billion of those became waste, according to the language of the bill. 

The United States only recycles about 9% of its plastic waste, the bill points out. The nation previously marketed millions of metric tons of its leftover recyclable plastics to China. However, China’s 2018 ban on importing plastic waste from foreign countries brought that to an end.

Stevens’ bill, if passed, tells the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) — better known as the president’s advisory council on science and technology — to establish a plastic waste reduction and recycling program at the federal level. 

“Most notably, this legislation authorizes research and development across several agencies and a range of topics, including plastics that are recyclable by design, next generation recycling technologies, upcycling into high-value products, and environmental impacts of plastic waste,” said Stevens.