‘BACK TO PLASTIC!': Trump says he'll reverse Biden initiative to phase out plastic straws
President Donald Trump said Friday he would sign an executive order next week to undo a Biden-era plan to phase out plastic straws by 2027.
'BACK TO PLASTIC!' Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social. Paper straws, he continued, 'don't work.'
Republicans and Democrats butted heads over straws last summer when the Biden administration announced the federal government, which was the world's largest buyer of consumer goods, would phase out single-use plastics across its buildings. Trump's social media post Friday didn't address other single-use plastic goods, but they could also potentially make a return to government buildings as well.
The 83-page report issued by the Biden administration also called for stronger regulations on plastics manufacturing.
The squabble over straws and other single-use plastics is a microcosm of a larger debate over whether the federal government should mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Over 90 percent of plastic is derived from fossil fuels that, when combusted, release large amounts of carbon dioxide and fuel climate change, according to the report.
The explosion of global plastic production in the past decades has heightened concerns among Democrats about the possible consequences of an untempered climate.
'Tackling plastic pollution and its associated impacts will require unprecedented action at every stage of the plastic lifecycle — from reining in the pollution from petrochemical production that is poisoning communities and driving climate change, to reorienting infrastructure to ensure dramatic increases in recycling and reuse, to investing in innovative materials to replace the pervasive use of plastics in our society,' wrote Brenda Mallory, the then-chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and Ali Zaidi, the then-White House national climate adviser, in the report.
The Biden-era announcement came on the heels of a cultural shift that prompted some in the hospitality industry to switch from plastic to paper straws to help consumers reduce their ecological footprint. Some blue states and jurisdictions also passed laws either outright banning or disincentivizing single-use plastics.
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