Inside Climate News reports:

Single-use plastic would be phased out of all U.S. government operations by 2035 under a new federal plastics pollution strategy unveiled Friday by President Joe Biden’s administration, which cited a “crisis” of littered oceans and poisoned air due to plastics.

“The Federal government is—for the first time—formally acknowledging the severity of the plastic pollution crisis and the scale of the response that will be required to effectively confront it,” said Brenda Mallory and Ali Zaidi, the top White House environmental and climate officials, in the joint letter that opens the 83-page document.

Noting that plastics production and waste have more than doubled in the past two decades, and are expected to increase four-fold by 2050, they said action is needed to address impacts throughout the plastic lifecycle, from production to end-of-life, with a coordinated response at all levels of government.

Plastic is “now found almost everywhere on our planet, from floating garbage patches in the Pacific Ocean to nearly every waterline, coastline, and shore line, including beaches and river banks,” the document said. It talked about local municipalities being burdened with the cost of plastics pollution, the risks to human health from microplastics and how production and transport of fossil fuel-derived plastics are contributing to greenhouse gas pollution and exacerbating climate change. [Continue reading…]