One of the reasons Republicans think Vice President Kamala Harris is unfit for the nation’s highest office: She “want to get rid of plastic straws.”
That’s according to Jason Miller, a senior adviser to former President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. On the day President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid and endorsed Harris, Miller told NBC that Harris’ comments about plastic were part of the “radical record” she has built as a California prosecutor and attorney general. developed. Far-right Fox News commentator Sean Hannity Harris’ record weighed separately, tells viewers: “I love my plastic straw; I hate those paper straws.”
This is not surprising rhetoric, given the contemporary conservative movement’s tendency to conflate environmental pollution and personal freedom. But the plastic pollution crisis is no joke – every year, more than 460 million metric tons of plastic is produced worldwide, and approx 9 percent of that is recycled. The rest gobble up landfills, emit toxic chemicals into the air when burned, and suffocate aquatic life when they escape into the world’s rivers, lakes, and coastal waters.
Meanwhile, recent polls show that Americans overwhelmingly want government action to address the problem. According to s recent survey from the nonprofit Oceana, three-quarters of registered voters support national policies that reduce single-use plastics; other surveys show even stronger support for the overall reduction of plastic production.
So what would a Harris presidency mean for plastics?
Harris’ record on the subject is sparse, but experts say her background as California’s attorney general, combined with her record in the Senate and comments she has made as a 2020 presidential candidate, bode well. If nothing else, Harris could build on progress made under the Biden administration, such as a recently announced strategy to eliminate single-use plastics from federal operations.
“There aren’t a lot of data points,” said Sam Pearse, plastics campaign manager for The Story of Stuff Project, a nonprofit that advocates against plastic pollution. “But she has both the expertise and credentials to challenge plastic pollution as president and hold polluters to a higher standard.”
Here’s what we know about Harris’ views on plastic. She did say, in a 2019 interview with CNN, that the US should ban single-use plastic straws. (She joked about the need for “innovation” to make better alternatives to paper-based straws that tend to wilt when wet.) But it wasn’t exactly a groundbreaking policy position; in 2019, support for plastic straw bans functioned primarily as a culture wars flashpoint for presidential candidates. Plastic straws makeup only 0.25 percent of the estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic that end up in the world’s oceans each year.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
More significant was her co-sponsorship, along with four other Democratic senators, of the federal Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2020. This far-reaching Democratic bill would have phased out a slew of unnecessary single-use plastic products — yes, including straws — as well as created incentives for recycling beverage containers, held companies financially responsible for the plastic trash they generate, and a temporary break on new or expanded plastics manufacturing facilities pending a comprehensive environmental review. That bill, as well as subsequent versions introduced in 2021 and 2023never got a floor vote in the House or Senate, but environmental groups think it helped raise awareness among the public and lawmakers about the kind of systemic interventions needed to address the plastic pollution problem.
“Having her support as a sponsor is a big sign that she believes in addressing this problem from a life cycle perspective,” says Julie Teel Simmonds, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund. a group that advocates for political candidates. who will prioritize environmental issues. The term “life cycle” refers to all stages of plastic production, use and disposal, as opposed to a perspective favored by industry groups that focus primarily on reducing plastic litter.
Other environmental advocates said Harris’ record as California attorney general could indicate a willingness to take on major plastic polluters. In 2011, Harris sued water bottling companies for claiming that their plastic bottles are “100 percent compostable and recyclable.” She also sued BP, ConocoPhillips, and Phillips 66 – companies whose fossil fuels are used to make plastic – for environmental violations, and oversaw a investigation into Exxon Mobil’s alleged attempts to lie to the public about the risks it faced from climate change.
None of this means that plastics (and the petrochemicals used to make them) will be a top priority for a potential Harris administration. Historically, action against plastics has tended to fall low on the Democrats’ political agenda, even compared to other environmental problems. But the plastic pollution crisis has become much more visible in recent years, partly due to United Nations negotiations on a treaty to “end plastic pollution.” Those negotiations will be concluded by the end of the year, although further discussions about implementation may continue long after that.
The Biden-Harris administration has also stepped up US efforts to address the plastic pollution crisis, including most recently by announcing a target to phase out government procurement of single-use plastics from all federal operations by 2035. An interagency plastics policy committee set up by the Biden-Harris administration has also begun to recognize and address environmental justice issues caused by plastic production facilities, which tend to be located near poor communities of color. A former White House staffer told Grist that Harris’ office had expressed interest in continuing this work.
The same cannot be said for a second Trump administration, according to several experts Grist spoke with.
“The extent to which a Trump administration would be willing to acknowledge the scale and breadth of plastic and the effect that the oil and gas industry has on plastic is like zero to negative a million,” Rachel Karasik, ‘ a plastics research scientist, said. at the Norwegian Institute for Water Research, focusing on a range of water-related issues, including plastic pollution.
Back in 2019, in the wake of Harris’ 2019 straws comments, Trump’s then-campaign manager Brad Parscale quickly launched a line of 9-inch, Trump-branded plastic straws that nearly half a million dollars in just one week. Apparently they were so popular that the first group sold out within hours.
While the last Trump administration didn’t completely ignore plastic — it did release a interagency strategy to clean up “marine debris,” including plastic, in October 2020 — experts told Grist that a second run would likely see the reversal of Biden-Harris plastic policies and the loosening of environmental restrictions on production facilities. They also said Trump was likely to withdraw from negotiations on the UN plastics treaty, just as he withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement in 2020.
This is contrary to hopes that the Harris administration will join a “high-ambition coalition” from countries that strongly support an agreement, and effectively implement the treaty’s provisions domestically. “At least Harris is competent and a true public servant, and she believes in international diplomacy and tackling global problems,” Teel Simmonds said. “I can’t say the same for Trump.”
