Creating an Industrial Regulatory Framework to Reduce Plastics

Synthetic carbon-based polymers, commonly called “plastics,” are flexible, durable, and cheap to produce, making them a very popular material. They have become essential components of most automobiles, medical devices, and consumer products. Plastics are also used in common items of convenience, such as straws, cigarette filters, and product packaging, and in this form are meant to be discarded after a brief use. Such “single-use” plastics present a major environmental challenge. They take a long time to degrade and therefore languish in landfills or litter the landscape. Hazardous chemicals can leach out of plastics over time, and what does not end up in a landfill often blows into the ocean, harming marine life. Current methods of incinerating plastics create toxic smoke and greenhouse effects, and while recycling methods are available, they are costly and underutilized. This paper explores the risks of single-use plastics and how the United States specifically can address the problems through regulation. By examining current federal and state trends, we explore incentivizing a reduction in single-use plastics at the industrial level by encouraging or requiring the producers of single-use plastics to bear the costs of their disposal.