For the Plastics Industry, the Past May Be PrologueFor the Plastics Industry, the Past May Be Prologue

The failure of negotiators to reach agreement on a United Nations–led global plastics treaty by year’s end is perhaps a fitting metaphor as the plastics industry heads into 2025 — in a word, uncertainty.

Meanwhile, with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and extended producer responsibility (EPR) watchdogs driving more anti-plastics legislation and President-elect Trump talking new tariffs ahead of his second term — there’s plenty up in the air surrounding the plastics industry. 

Here are some highlights from the plastics hit list of 2024 — and a look at what to expect in 2025.

Bans, bills, and big lawsuits

From coast to coast, more states and cities targeted plastics for elimination.

California, perhaps the leader in the anti-plastics crusade, enacted a second bag ban in November to close a loophole in the state’s first such law in 2014. The earlier law made an exception for thicker high-density polyethylene bags that were considered reusable and met certain recyclability standards. The new law, which bans all plastic shopping bags at grocery stores, takes effect on Jan. 1, 2026. 

A coalition of three California-based recyclers and manufacturers, called the Responsible Recycling Alliance (RRA), had formed to combat the new law. The RRA had urged integrating those bags into the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Program and contends the law undercuts progress made in the state’s recycling infrastructure.

Other notable laws that took effect in 2024, according to Packaging Dive, include the following.

A slew of bills focused on EPR and further bans also emerged.

Meanwhile, ratcheting up the lawfare against plastics, Baltimore followed the example of New York state and sued PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Frito Lay, and plastic manufacturing companies for what it called “their significant roles in creating a plastic pollution crisis.”

Recycling’s reputation on the ropes

The chorus of skeptical voices who doubt the viability — even the veracity — of the plastic industry’s recycling methods and claims reached a fever pitch in 2024.

For instance, the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) in February issued a 68-page report provocatively titled "The Fraud of Plastic Recycling” that asserted many plastics are “impossible to recycle.” 

The report cited as an example that green PET bottles cannot be recycled with clear PET bottles. While true, as John Spevacek pointed out in a Feb. 20 article in PlasticsToday, the report failed to single out similar recycling challenges for glass — or include context for other assertions about plastics recycling as it set out to prove “how Big Oil and the plastics industry deceived the public for decades and caused the plastic waste crisis.”

Meanwhile, Los Angeles County on Oct. 30 sued PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, claiming that they have misrepresented the recyclability of their plastic bottles and failed to disclose the “significant environmental and health harms associated with the use of plastic beverage containers.”

ExxonMobil also faced a recycling-related lawsuit, filed in San Francisco County Superior Court by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who accused the oil giant of “engaging in a decades-long campaign of deception that caused and exacerbated the global plastics pollution crisis.” The suit further claimed that ExxonMobil misled consumers through public statements and marketing campaigns for decades by promising that “recycling would address the ever-increasing amount of plastic waste ExxonMobil produces.”

Bonta is also pursuing documents from the Plastics Industry Association in his scrutiny of what he calls misrepresentation about the viability of plastic recycling. A November ruling by US District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C., kept alive Bonta’s investigation, which began in 2022.

If you can’t say something nice . . . 

Not to be outdone by the CCI, the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) in March published a report accusing the US plastics industry of accepting billions of taxpayer dollars and government subsidies while exceeding air pollution limits that disproportionately threaten communities near plastics processing facilities.

Titled “Feeding the Plastics Industrial Complex,” the report examined 50 plants that were built or expanded in the United States since 2012, 32 of which received a total of almost $9 billion in state and local subsidies. The report also claimed that 84% of those facilities violated air pollution limits. 

While the report acknowledged that the subsidies typically require companies to create jobs, often at designated wage levels, “the promise of high-paying industrial jobs” often doesn’t pan out, the report claimed based on outside research.

“We don’t need taxpayer support for private companies that essentially manufacture pollution,” said Alexandra Shaykevich, EIP research manager and an author of the report. “The plastics industry deserves penalties and more oversight — not more government handouts — for the environmental harm it is causing.” 

. . . but it wasn’t all bad news

Striking a blow amid the torrent of anti-plastics sentiment, PepsiCo in November prevailed against New York Attorney General Letitia James, who sued claiming the beverage and snack-food company should be held liable for endangering Buffalo’s water supply because it generated 17% of plastic waste found in and near the Buffalo River. 

State Supreme Court Justice Emilio Colaiacovo dismissed the case and its “phantom assertions of liability that do nothing to solve the problem that exists. People, not the company, ignored laws prohibiting littering,” the judge asserted.

Trump, tariffs, and a treaty

With Trump preparing to occupy the Oval Office again, industry experts wouldn’t be wrong to expect him to reverse the previous administration’s sudden about-face on plastics production limits. As UN-led negotiations toward a global plastics treaty failed to produce a final document in South Korea earlier this month, an extension of the “final” negotiation session looms. With the key divide among member states remaining — whether or not to curb or ban production of certain “problematic” plastics and chemicals — Trump seems unlikely to embrace the idea of scaling back production of fossil-fuel-based products.

What Trump is likely to embrace is more tariffs on products. Facing that likelihood, exporters in China, Canada, and Mexico sought in December to accelerate shipments to the United States in anticipation of fresh tariffs — 10% on Chinese goods and 25% on all imports from Canada and Mexico. 

What’s ahead in 2025

Two pieces of legislation — one big, one small — provide a glimpse into the scope of plastics-related regulations.

In Illinois, SB2960, which bans hotels with 50 or more rooms from offering small single-use plastic personal care bottles, goes into effect on July 1, 2025. On Jan. 1, 2026, the law will apply to hotels with fewer than 50 rooms. The law is similar to laws going into effect in California, New York, and Washington on Jan. 1.

On the federal level, the bipartisan Accelerating a Circular Economy for Plastics and Recycling Innovation Act, introduced in September, seeks a minimum of 30% recycled content in plastic packaging by 2030. To that end, the EPA would drive new plastic recycling standards with the help of an advisory committee comprising members representing plastics manufacturers and packaging designers, consumer brands, recyclers, and solid waste businesses. The bill has the support of the American Chemistry Council, Berry, and LyondellBasell. 

Taken together, these two disparate actions clearly illustrate the broad spectrum of plastics regulations we can continue to expect. But as shown by the stalled UN plastics treaty negotations and widely varying progress toward 2025 corporate sustainability goals — see the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s 2024 global commitment report — a clear path toward a more circular plastics economy might not come into focus that quickly.

Whatever happens, you can count on reading about it in our dispatches from the war on plastics throughout the coming year.