President Donald Trump said Friday that he would stop a plan by the Biden administration to phase out plastic straws across the federal government, saying it’s “BACK TO PLASTIC.”
“I will be signing an Executive Order next week ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws, which don’t work,” Trump posted on his Truth Social site.
Last year, the Biden administration ordered a phaseout of single-use plastic from the federal government’s food service operations, events and packaging by 2027, and from all other federal operations by 2035.
It was not clear whether Trump planned to call off that wider effort or whether he was focused just on bringing back plastic straws. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.
The U.S. government is considered the world’s biggest buyer of consumer goods, and its planned shift away from plastic had been considered a significant milestone in a global effort to tackle a plastics pollution crisis.
The Biden administration had said that the plan, which it called the first comprehensive strategy to tackle plastic use nationwide, aimed to reduce demand for disposable plastic items while also helping to create a market for substitutes that are reusable, compostable or more easily recyclable.
Plastic consumption has quadrupled over the past 30 years to more than 400 million tons a year, according to estimates by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Around the world, the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic enters the ocean every minute, experts estimate. And recycling has struggled to keep up: Only an estimated 9% of plastic waste generated globally is recycled.
Concerns have also mounted over the health effects of microplastics in food, water and human bodies. Flame retardants, phthalates, bisphenols and other chemicals present in plastic can also be hazardous to human health and the environment.
Nations have been negotiating a global plastic-waste treaty, amid rising recognition that the world can’t recycle or manage its way out of a deluge of plastic waste. But those talks stalled in December after pushback from producers of oil and gas, which provide the building blocks of plastic.
The latest directive to turn the federal government back to plastics would help the fossil fuel industry by stoking demand for plastic. Oil and gas companies donated heavily to Trump’s campaign.
