Policy Positions
Making sustainable change requires making sustainable public policies.
Making Sustainable Change
To create a circular economy for plastics, policies that encourage today’s linear economy must be replaced with policies that promote circularity. We’re working with policy makers at the local, state, federal and international levels to help keep plastic in our economy and out of our environment.
America’s Plastic Makers predominately advocate for public policies that enhance sustainability. Below are some of the issues that we engage in and links to our policy positions.
Driving Automotive Circularity and Recycling
America’s Plastic Makers® support policies and investments that accelerate a more circular automotive supply chain, keeping valuable plastics and polymer composites in use and out of landfills.
Water and Sewer Infrastructure Improvements: Policy Principles for Cost Effective, Scalable Solutions
Replacing lead service lines is a critical public health priority. As states and utilities scale these efforts, policy decisions will shape how quickly and cost-effectively communities can remove lead pipe from drinking water systems.
Recycling Development Centers: A Practical Path to Improving Recycling Rates
Improving recycling rates in the United States requires data-driven decision making, expanded infrastructure, and end markets to ensure solutions work.
5 Actions for Sustainable Change: A Plan for Congress to Accelerate a Circular Economy for Plastic
New technologies are poised to modernize recycling infrastructure. AI-powered robotics, advanced sortation, and smart sensors are improving how plastics are identified, sorted and processed — helping sortation facilities recover more materials efficiently and cost-effectively.
Production Caps: Making a Tough Situation Worse
Imposing production caps to limit the supply of plastics would be a costly and ineffective response to plastic pollution that risks undermining sustainability progress, weakening U.S. manufacturing, and increasing costs of goods across the globe.
Global Agreement on Plastic Pollution: How Should It Work?
America’s Plastic Makers – and plastic makers globally – are championing development of a global agreement for a sustainable, circular economy for plastic. Here’s our vision and ambition.
Advanced Recycling: Strenghtening U.S. Recycling and Manufacturing
America’s Plastic Makers® support recognizing advanced recycling as a manufacturing process and as a source of recycled content that counts toward plastics recycling rates and recycled-content goals.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)
Implementing an extended producer responsibility (EPR) system in the U.S. can help significantly increase plastic recycling rates, keep valuable materials in circulation, and move the nation closer to a circular economy for all packaging. Good EPR policy can expand access to recycling, improve collection and sortation, and support a more modern and efficient recycling system.
Restrictions on Plastic Packaging and Products: A Step Backward
Decades of scientific studies show that plastic packaging and products typically use less material and create less waste and greenhouse gas emissions over their lifecycles than available alternatives. Replacing plastic packaging with heavier, higher-emission materials could move us backward environmentally, not forward.
Plastic Pellet Containment: Legislation Can Enhance Best Practices
Federal legislation and a global agreement on plastic can build on existing programs to help keep plastic pellets out of our environment.
Bio-based Plastic: Principles for Incorporation in Manufacturing
Bio-based plastics have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas impacts and displace fossil resources with renewable resources throughout the supply chain.
You can help build a circular supply chain for plastic, keeping more of these valuable materials in use and in critical products.
Resources
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR): Why Data and Transparency = Better Recycling Rates
Bio-based Plastic
Policy Vision, 5 Actions to Make Sustainable Change
As America’s Plastic Makers®, we’re embracing sustainable change and a new way to make plastic.
We’re investing billions of dollars to take advantage of emerging advanced recycling technologies that turn used plastic back into its raw materials to be remade. It’s a new way of recycling that allows us to remake plastic again and again, saving natural resources and keeping plastic out of our environment. Together, we can turn “single-use” into a relic of the past.