PRESS INQUIRIES
If you are a reporter looking to speak with Judith Enck or another member of the Beyond Plastics team, please click here to contact us. We’ll get back to you quickly.
SPEAKING REQUESTS
Looking for a keynote speaker, webinar panelist, educational lecture, or something else? Please click to share the details of your request with us.
Beyond Plastics and partner organizations are taking an eye-opening documentary, “Blue Vinyl,” across the country with over 35 film screenings in 21 states, with additional screenings on Zoom, in Mexico, and in Tanzania.
A new report released by Beyond Plastics and Earthjustice details the significant extent to which people are exposed to vinyl chloride, a known human carcinogen. Incidents in which vinyl chloride was illegally released into the environment or a workplace, often exposing people to this dangerous toxin, have occurred every five days since 2010, highlighting the harm companies pose to people and the environment due to lack of oversight.
Advocates and leading medical doctors held a virtual news conference to highlight new research in the New England Journal of Medicine, showing that microplastics are linked to increased heart attacks and strokes, in addition to the many previously known negative impacts of single-use plastics to everyday New Yorkers’ health. The group highlighted the out-of-control expansion of single-use plastic and called on Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act
Oregon Regenyx Facility Closes, Further Exposing Industry’s Deceptive Claim That Chemical Recycling Is a Solution to Plastic Pollution
Senate Environmental Chair Pete Harckham, Assemblymember Harvey Epstein, and more rally for Bigger Better Bottle Bill and Packaging Reduction and Recycling Act
IN THE NEWS
Plastic has now been linked to increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and premature death in humans. At what point will policymakers realize this material — which lingers for centuries and is made with chemicals known to be toxic to humans — is as much a threat to human health as it is to the planet?
Delegates from 191 countries meet once again this month for the UN plastics treaty talks in Ottawa, and they need to avoid falling into industry traps that will hinder real progress. Dow chair and CEO Jim Fitterling’s recent Commentary in Fortune is a perfect example of how to ensure failure in Ottawa. If delegates commit to the priorities he outlined, they will fail to implement real solutions to the growing problem caused by his company and companies like it.
Nature wraps bananas and oranges in peels. But in some modern supermarkets, they’re bagged or wrapped in plastic too. For Judith Enck, that’s the epitome of pointless plastic. The baby food aisle is similarly distressing for her, with its rows and rows of blended fruits, vegetables and meat in single-use pouches that have replaced glass jars.
Environmentalists have been sounding the alarm about plastic pollution in the environment for years and in New York, they are pushing for legislation on the issue. Judith Enck, the former EPA regional administrator who currently serves as president of the group Beyond Plastics, joined Capital Tonight on Friday to push for a packaging reduction bill.
Pollution from the plastics industry is a major force behind the heating of the planet, according to a new report from the federal government. The industry releases about four times as many planet-warming chemicals as the airline industry, according to the paper from scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
About 48 million tons of plastic waste is generated in the United States each year, but only 5 to 6 percent of it is actually recycled. A new report from the Center for Climate Integrity, "The Fraud of Plastic Recycling," accuses the plastics industry of a decades-long campaign to "mislead" the public about the viability of recycling. Correspondent Ben Tracy talks with the report's co-author, Davis Allen, and with Jan Dell, a former chemical engineer, about an inconvenient truth surrounding the lifecycle of plastic. Air Date: Apr 14, 2024
To get there, these companies and others are promoting a new generation of recycling plants, called “advanced” or “chemical” recycling, that promise to recycle many more products than can be recycled today. So far, advanced recycling is struggling to deliver on its promise. Nevertheless, the new technology is being hailed by the plastics industry as a solution to an exploding global waste problem.
Beyond Plastics President Judith Enck, who served as an EPA regional administrator during the Obama administration, says the problem is that unlike materials such as paper, glass and aluminum, plastics have never been recycled at a rate higher than 10 percent in the U.S. “They need to change their marketing to say that recycling is real except for plastics,” said Enck, whose organization wants to block new plastic manufacturing and plastic-burning facilities.
BEYOND PLASTICS PUBLICATIONS
GET THE LATEST ON SOCIAL MEDIA
-
RT @emdashsanders: NEW: Big Oil is trying to rebrand their expanding petrochemical & plastics operations as climate solutions. I too… https://t.co/I4gA0F702K
-
.@VIDailyNews profiled our newest Beyond Plastics team member: senior advisor Dawn Henry, former commissioner of th… https://t.co/fy2KlXM3zh
-
.@VIDailyNews profiled our newest Beyond Plastics member: senior advisor Dawn Henry, former commissioner of the U.S… https://t.co/2r6KcijFod
-
"Many other incidents don’t make national news: The U.S. has averaged a chemical accident every two days so far in… https://t.co/raVJzx0bq0