We can rethink plastic waste solutions without draconian bans on effective cups, bags, and forks.
There is a better way.
T he world’s largest climate conference, COP30, began this week in Brazil — but without the United States in attendance. Some activists are relieved that President Trump sent no delegation this year, in no small part because the administration thwarted a United Nations “plastics treaty” back in August, which COP30 attendees can now relitigate in peace. But when these left-wing climate activists aren’t busy praising China — the world’s leading polluter — for its clean energy efforts, or bemoaning the loss of their ally against plastics, former President Joe Biden, they continue promoting a misguided global crackdown on single-use plastics. While COP30 is toothless on this issue, U.S. statehouses are not, and many are rushing to curtail businesses’ use of plastics that consumers prefer.
Illinois is currently considering a bill to ban foam takeout containers by 2030, and Connecticut is taking the climate activist agenda even further by weighing legislation that would also ban plastic utensils. Virginia recently implemented $50 per day fines for businesses not in compliance with their polystyrene foam ban, while Oregon, starting in 2027, will ban the distribution of all types of plastic bags at retail stores and force businesses to switch to recycled paper.
This campaign against plastic is wrongheaded for three reasons. The first is that these bans are not actually good for the environment, because the alternatives have been proven to cause more environmental damage than plastic.
Substitutes — namely, paper bags — are incredibly resource- and energy-intensive to produce, a fact that the same U.N. negotiators who pursued a global plastic production cap have refused to acknowledge. According to Denmark’s Ministry of Environment and Food, a paper bag would need to be reused 43 times to match the per-use environmental impact of a single-use plastic bag.
For most people, reusing a paper bag 43 times is virtually impossible. Even worse, when the alternative option is a cotton bag, the number of reuses required to match a plastic bag’s environmental impact skyrockets to 7,100. A consumer substituting a cotton bag for plastic would require 136 years of weekly grocery store trips to be as environmentally friendly as single-use plastic is.
I debated John Hocevar, Greenpeace’s oceans campaign director, on NPR about this fact — but his only response was that the Denmark finding was unintuitive, and therefore “suspect.” It’s true that paper bags could be made more sustainably with, say, nuclear energy — but Greenpeace opposes that too.
The second reason why plastic is not the enemy of mankind is that the alternatives are more expensive in every way. According to the Canadian government’s own assessment of the country’s plastic ban — a ban which later failed in court — paper bags are not only worse for the environment, but are 2.6 times more expensive than single-use plastic bags. Single-use wooden cutlery is 2.25 times more expensive than single-use plastic cutlery, while paper straw alternatives are three times more expensive.
Everyone — from the small business owner operating on thin margins to the beloved local coffee shop to the everyday consumer — bears these higher costs.
The third reason these bans fail is that virtually all plastic can now be recycled through an advanced recycling process known as chemical depolymerization. This is the process where plastic is broken down and repurposed into new products. Companies are harnessing these innovative recycling techniques to alter the chemical bonds of simple plastics and repurpose them into resin pellets, tiles for your home, and even asphalt. This technology is also becoming increasingly accessible to local governments and businesses that want to cut back on waste.
To be clear, acknowledging the usefulness of plastic does not mean that America or the U.N. must abandon noble efforts to reduce plastic waste — especially waste that would otherwise end up in landfills or the environment.
One important way to reduce plastic waste without banning plastics would be to overcome legislative hurdles preventing advanced recycling’s expansion. Advanced recycling should be classified as manufacturing, and advanced recycled plastics should be treated with the same designation as mechanically recycled plastics, which allows for these products to be referred to as “recycled content.” Doing these two things would be a tremendous boon for reducing plastic waste, and would come with significant economic benefits for consumers and businesses.
According to manufacturers, if 50 percent of the plastic currently in landfills was diverted for advanced recycling, 173,200 new American jobs would be created and $48.7 billion in additional economic output would result. With those undeniable benefits, President Trump could embrace advanced recycling capabilities and use this to fuel his goal of revitalizing American industry and manufacturing.
Greenies and industrialists can be brought together on the plastics issue if they are presented with a sound idea that meets the moment. Twenty-seven percent of U.S. manufacturing is reliant on plastics as a core input, and what better way to boost that manufacturing than to produce it domestically with the advanced recycling of plastic waste?
We’re a people on track to visit Mars, unlock commercial editing of the human genome, and introduce AI-powered robots to our homes. We can certainly rethink plastic waste solutions without draconian bans on effective cups, bags, and forks.