Nature wraps bananas and oranges in peels. But in some modern supermarkets, they’re bagged or wrapped in plastic too. For Judith Enck, that’s the epitome of pointless plastic. The baby food aisle is similarly distressing for her, with its rows and rows of blended fruits, vegetables and meat in single-use pouches that have replaced glass jars ..read more

Environmentalists have been sounding the alarm about plastic pollution in the environment for years and in New York, they are pushing for legislation on the issue. Judith Enck, the former EPA regional administrator who currently serves as president of the group Beyond Plastics, joined Capital Tonight on Friday to push for a packaging reduction bill ..read more

Plastic has now been linked to increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and premature death in humans. At what point will policymakers realize this material — which lingers for centuries and is made with chemicals known to be toxic to humans — is as much a threat to human health as it is to the planet ..read more

Delegates from 191 countries meet once again this month for the UN plastics treaty talks in Ottawa, and they need to avoid falling into industry traps that will hinder real progress. Dow chair and CEO Jim Fitterling’s recent Commentary in Fortune is a perfect example of how to ensure failure in Ottawa. If delegates commit to the priorities he outlined, they will fail to implement real solutions to the growing problem caused by his company and companies like it ..read more

Pollution from the plastics industry is a major force behind the heating of the planet, according to a new report from the federal government. The industry releases about four times as many planet-warming chemicals as the airline industry, according to the paper from scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab ..read more

About 48 million tons of plastic waste is generated in the United States each year, but only 5 to 6 percent of it is actually recycled. A new report from the Center for Climate Integrity, "The Fraud of Plastic Recycling," accuses the plastics industry of a decades-long campaign to "mislead" the public about the viability of recycling. Correspondent Ben Tracy talks with the report's co-author, Davis Allen, and with Jan Dell, a former chemical engineer, about an inconvenient truth surrounding the lifecycle of plastic. Air Date: Apr 14, 2024 ..read more

Beyond Plastics and partner organizations are taking an eye-opening documentary, “Blue Vinyl,” across the country with over 35 film screenings in 21 states, with additional screenings on Zoom, in Mexico, and in Tanzania ..read more

To get there, these companies and others are promoting a new generation of recycling plants, called “advanced” or “chemical” recycling, that promise to recycle many more products than can be recycled today. So far, advanced recycling is struggling to deliver on its promise. Nevertheless, the new technology is being hailed by the plastics industry as a solution to an exploding global waste problem ..read more

Beyond Plastics President Judith Enck, who served as an EPA regional administrator during the Obama administration, says the problem is that unlike materials such as paper, glass and aluminum, plastics have never been recycled at a rate higher than 10 percent in the U.S. “They need to change their marketing to say that recycling is real except for plastics,” said Enck, whose organization wants to block new plastic manufacturing and plastic-burning facilities ..read more

Advocates and leading medical doctors held a virtual news conference to highlight new research in the New England Journal of Medicine, showing that microplastics are linked to increased heart attacks and strokes, in addition to the many previously known negative impacts of single-use plastics to everyday New Yorkers’ health. The group highlighted the out-of-control expansion of single-use plastic and called on Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act ..read more