And What Is The United States Doing About Plastic Pollution?

Today is the second day of the International Summit on Plastic Pollution (https://liu.edu/plastic-pollution-summit).  Yesterday, I shared a bit about what conference participants are learning about how France is comprehensively attacking the scourge of plastic pollution by prohibiting many uses of plastics, among other things.  Today, a few words on what is, and is not, happening in the United States.

A handful of states and municipalities have taken a play out of the European playbook, banning certain uses of plastics. California was the first state to impose a statewide ban on single-use plastic bags at large retail stores and it has expanded that ban to restrict the commercial use of plastic utensils, straws, and stirrers.  New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Washington have followed suit with restrictions of their own.  Over two hundred municipalities have enacted similar restrictions.

Why such sweeping national regulations in France while in the United States the Federal Government remains mostly on the sidelines in the fight to reduce the amount of plastics in our oceans?

We, the French and American lawyers who studied the differences between the French and American responses to plastic pollution, concluded the reasons are both structural and ideological.

For example, the French Republic has always had a centralized government.  The creation of the European Union has only increased the breadth of legal requirements emanating from the central government.  I learned that the concept of state and municipal laws does not even exist in France.

On the other hand, in the United States, the Federal Government has more limited authority delegated to it in the United States Constitution.  All other authorities are reserved to the States.     

That does not mean that the United States Federal Government cannot do a lot more of what the French and several states and municipalities are doing.  However, it does mean it does not come as easily to our Federal Government, especially to those in Congress with a narrower vision of the role of that Government.

That means that in the United States continued education and mobilization, led by Non-Governmental Organizations, is going to be critical to getting from here to there in the battle against plastic pollution.

I hope that the recent United Nations commitment to act, and summits like the one this week, will help.  Our oceans are at their limits.