![]() Stevens highlighted her strategy of bringing diverse interests together to come up with potential improvements to the recycling system. Areas of agreement among all stakeholders ![]() recyclables, she said.īesides her national legislation, Stevens has taken steps to bolster the recycling system in Michigan, including just this week announcing more than $1.3 million in grants to recycling stakeholders in her region of the state. “I think a lot of people’s trust broke down” when China stopped accepting many U.S. ![]() Promoting domestic management of recovered plastic is a key component of inspiring consumer confidence in the recycling system, Stevens explained. “So our legislation is really utilizing and catalyzing our federal government to do just that.” We have nonprofits and for-profits and everyone wants to promote the circular economy,” Stevens said. “I’ve done a lot of great work with our stakeholder community. Stevens said this federal government role as a supportive actor is important because the desire to boost recycling is practically universal among stakeholders. EPA would be directed to “support research and other activities on innovative plastic waste management, and public health impacts of airborne and waterborne microplastics,” according to the bill summary. Various federal agencies would “set the table” for recycling progress by supporting research, developing standards and similar activities.įor example, the U.S. Stevens said the bill takes an “all-of-government approach” to examining and harnessing recycling technologies. Stevens said she plans to reintroduce the act again this year (last year, the bill garnered bipartisan support, but it did not move out of committee in the House). Then, in June 2020, Stevens introduced the Plastic Waste Reduction and Recycling Act, legislation that directs federal agencies and offices to take steps in support of plastics recycling. Later that year, she and three other lawmakers unveiled a workgroup focused on boosting plastics recycling through technology investments and more. In 2019, she convened a hearing to discuss various recycling technologies. Stevens began getting involved in plastics recycling at the legislative level. “I saw this as supply chain, I saw this as jobs and I saw this as lessening our dependence on foreign markets like China,” Stevens said. Stevens noted she’s not a chemist, but she is a manufacturing expert, and when she looked at the recycling system and the problems it faces, she saw potential benefits for the manufacturing sector as well as the environment. “At the time I didn’t realize how much we were shipping overseas to China for the purposes of recycling,” Stevens said. Her interest in the recycling system was further piqued by the global turmoil in recycling markets, caused by China’s decision to restrict imports of recyclables. “But what about the host of other chemical compounds that are in our plastics?” “We’ve heard about the BPA, and that became sort of a trend, ‘This bottle is BPA-free,'” Stevens said. Stevens was interested in the chemical makeup of plastics and their environmental and health effects, whether they’re sitting in a landfill or entering the human body. She had read about microplastics, about plastic making its way into food, airways and even to the bottom of the ocean. Stevens had delved into learning about plastic even before she entered Congress in 2017. “What we’ve seen over the last 50 years, in particular, is that the sole onus of consumer responsibility, it’s never going to fully get us there,” Stevens said. She also stressed that everyone – not just the individual consumer – has a part to play in advancing recycling in the U.S.
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