Nessel joins coalition calling for Biden admin. to do extra to fight plastic air pollution

4 months ago 3 min read

Michigan Lawyer Common Dana Nessel on Thursday introduced she was becoming a member of a coalition with 13 different attorneys common urging the Biden administration to bolster its technique to fight plastic air pollution.

Within the letter, Nessel and attorneys common from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Vermont known as on the U.S. Environmental Safety Company (EPA) to implement a broader and extra sturdy plan to enhance plastic waste administration, and to cut back the manufacturing of plastic supplies and reduce reliance on them.

Whereas the nation’s technique for dealing with plastic has targeted on recycling and cleansing up plastic air pollution, Nessel and the opposite attorneys common known as on the EPA to develop its method and to intervene at each stage of the life cycle of plastic waste. This contains implementing measures to cut back the manufacturing of latest plastic.

The letter advisable the EPA not classify processes exterior of mechanical recycling as recycling except the method meets rigorous requirements that shield environmental and human well being, and promote circularity, which suggests maintaining merchandise and supplies in circulation for so long as attainable.

The letter additionally supplied particular suggestions, together with:

Lowering plastic manufacturing as a part of international, U.S., and state greenhouse fuel emissions targets.
Defending communities from new petrochemical vegetation or increasing capability at current vegetation.
Prioritizing funding modern methods to cut back total plastic use and plastic packaging wants and promote the reuse of supplies.
Fight misleading environmental advertising and marketing, together with misleading use of the recycling image, by adopting and administering a nationwide plastics product labeling customary.
Broadening the scope of the plastic waste discount technique to incorporate assessments of the quick vogue trade, which produces and sells low-cost polyester clothes meant to be minimally worn and disposed of rapidly, leading to a large quantity of textiles ending up in landfills.

Of their letter, the attorneys common additionally warned in regards to the disproportionate results of plastic manufacturing on low-income communities of shade.

“We, the States, are deeply involved in regards to the harms suffered by our residents residing in communities close to plastic-making infrastructure together with fossil gas extraction websites, refineries, and plastic and chemical manufacturing vegetation. Such communities are sometimes impoverished communities of shade and disproportionately bear the brunt of the plastic air pollution disaster — respiration within the worst air, consuming the worst water, and tragically, creating most cancers at greater charges,” the letter reads.

Along with considerations of plastic waste and manufacturing, Nessel’s workplace warned towards microplastics, tiny items of degraded plastic which have been present in consuming water, meals, air, and even human blood and residing lung tissue that may have considerably dangerous environmental results and are seemingly dangerous to people.

“All Michigan communities should be secure from the dangerous results of plastics air pollution,” Nessel stated in an announcement. “Our protection of Michigan’s pure assets contains defending them from the chemical compounds produced by the manufacture and disposal of plastics. I stand firmly with my colleagues in asking the Biden administration for a strong plan that responds to the plastics air pollution disaster and reduces our nation’s international plastics footprint in significant methods.”