The U.S. government spends about $650 billion each year on products and services that it gets through procurement processes. That huge spending amount, unfortunately, involves huge volumes of plastic waste.
After considerable pressure from environmental groups, the White House is now proposing changes to procurement requirements that force a limit on single-use plastic materials. Reuters had some more information about the background to this drastic change.
“The effort comes five months after 180 conservation and community groups filed a petition calling on the GSA to ban federal agencies from buying single-use plastics. They argue that plastics, which are produced with fossil fuels, are contributing to climate change, harming public health and clogging the environment.”
This comes after earlier announcements that single-use plastic will be banned from all public lands, including national parks.
With millions of tons of plastic waste littering the environment, this is a huge step in the right direction to make sure that more plastic resources enter the cycle economy.
What will be interesting to see, though, is if such laws and regulations will expand to the rest of the economy and if private companies will voluntarily take the same steps.
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