Policies already in place to address plastic pollution

National Recycling Strategy: EPA published the  November 2021 and reaffirmed the goal to increase the U.S. recycling rate to 50 percent by 2030.  The Strategy identifies strategic objectives and actions needed to create a stronger, more resilient, and cost-effective U.S. municipal solid waste recycling system.  Recycling has been an important component of the EPA’s decades-long efforts to implement the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and more recent efforts to pursue a Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) approach, which aims to reduce the environmental impacts of materials across their lifecycle.

Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) program: EPA releases an annual report, Advancing Sustainable Materials Management:  Facts and Figures, to provide information on Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) generation, recycling, composting, combustion with energy recovery and landfilling.  The report analyzes MSW trends in generation and management, materials and products, and economic indicators affecting MSW.

WasteWise Program: EPA works with businesses, governments, and nonprofit organizations  more productively over their entire life cycles. Partners demonstrate how they reduce waste, practice environmental stewardship and incorporate sustainable materials management into their business model, including their waste-handling processes.

Trash Free Waters is  that emphasizes stakeholder engagement to assist U.S. and international communities with addressing primarily land-based sources of marine litter. Within the United States, there have been more than 200 place-based projects that have been or are being implemented.

 – a tool that provides step-by-step guidance for including all stakeholders, either at the national, state, or community level in decision-making to address land-based sources of marine litter.

 – The Guide covers a diverse set of important topics for city-level decision-makers around the world, including stakeholder engagement, waste management planning and economics, waste collection and transportation, prevention, minimization, and recycling, landfill design and operation, and energy recovery.

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)

DOE launched the Plastics Innovation Challenge in 2018 to coordinate the many initiatives across the department on plastic recycling, degradation, upcycling, and design for circularity. The goals of this program are to develop solutions that deliver greater than 50 percent energy savings, address greater than 90 percent of plastics, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than50 percent, and achieve at least 75 percent carbon utilization.  The work includes solving fundamental science challenges through research projects and Energy Frontier Research Centers, forging public-private partnerships such as the BOTTLE Consortia () and the REMADE Institute, and working with industry partners to reduce plastic waste through the Better Plants Program.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)

USDA offers support and programs to increase the research, development and buyer/consumer awareness of bioplastics. Agricultural Research Service scientists developed a way for crop residues from cornstalks, straw, and sugarcane bagasse, combined with sustainable enzymes, to convert crop-derived sugars into compounds used in the sustainable manufacture of nylon plastics.  USDA’s BioPreferred Program works to increase the purchase and use of biobased products through federal procurement and a certification and labeling initiative.  The program’s USDA Certified Biobased Product label is a market development initiative to increase consumer and buyer recognition, and the purchase of bioproducts.

U.S. Department of Interior (DOI)

Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE): The BSEE Marine Trash and Debris Prevention standards require offshore energy companies to conduct annual training for all Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) employees and to adopt best practices to reduce marine debris.

National Park Service (NPS): NPS cooperates with partners to extend the benefits of natural and cultural resource conservation and outdoor recreation throughout this country and the world.  The NPS actively works with local, state, and other federal partners on beach clean-ups and educational products and programs to help make visitors aware of environmental impacts of plastics pollution and marine debris, and how individual choices and actions can make a difference.  

S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS): USFWS manages more than 180 coastal national wildlife refuges and five marine national monuments across the United States.  USFWS, partners, and numerous volunteers, work to perform cleanups of plastic pollution on the reefs and beaches.  The USFWS also collaborates with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and others to remove fishing nets and plastic debris (more than 950 metric tons, since 1996) from the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Recycled Plastics for Food Packaging: FDA assists manufacturers in safely using recycled plastics for food contact articles.  The program helps divert plastic food contact articles from ending up in landfills or polluting the marine environment, while ensuring that the high-quality plastics previously used for food contact articles are safely used to produce new food contact articles.

National Aeronautical and Space Agency (NASA)

NASA funded a project to investigate the capability of using satellite remote sensing to detect microplastics in our oceans using hyperspectral remote sensing, an important capability of NASA’s upcoming PACE mission. Microplastics form when plastic trash in the ocean breaks down from the sun’s rays and the motion of ocean waves and can be carried hundreds or thousands of miles away from the source by ocean currents, making it difficult to track and remove them.  Researchers are also using current NASA satellite data to track the movement of microplastics in the ocean, using data from NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS).

National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST)

NIST supports U.S. work on documentary standards, reference materials, and reference data and serves as a diverse stakeholder-convenor on manufacturing and technology innovation needs in the U.S. economy and conducts work on the thermal and mechanical properties of polymers at different stages in the recycling process, including studying depolymerization and degradation of polymers in both manufacturing and natural environments.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) Marine Debris Program

The  was established in 2006 to address the adverse impacts of marine debris on the U.S. economy, the marine environment, and navigation safety. To prevent marine debris, the Program forms partnerships across the United States and internationally through outreach and education initiatives and supports locally driven, community-based .