Corporate pressure preventing US plastic bans
US states and cities are prohibiting bans on single-use, disposable plastics due to pressure from the plastics industry. Whilst areas such as Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and California and Hawaii have introduced outright bans or imposed charges, Michigan last year introduced a bill outlawing such measures. Pennsylvania is now facing similar legislation. The corporate pressure can partly be attributed to the fact that companies including Dow, Exxon Mobil and Shell are constructing new factories designed to produce plastic from cheap by-products of shale drilling. At present, $185bn of new US petrochemical products are being planned or constructed.

Local governments are being seduced by a petrochemical industry that's more lucrative than ever.

The plastic bag wars are getting fierce. As people become more aware of the extent to which single-use plastics are polluting the world’s oceans and hurting wildlife, there is increasing pressure on municipal governments either to ban outright or impose a small fee on items such as plastic bags, foam takeout containers, disposable water bottles, and straws.

These excellent progressive steps have been taken by cities such as San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., as well as the states of California and Hawaii, among others. But there’s a less-impressive flipside to these bans, which are states and cities banning bans on single-use, disposable plastics.

The plastics industry is not happy about the growing environmental pressure and is pushing to prevent all bans and fees. It happened in Michigan last year, where a bill now “preempts local ordinances regulating the use, disposition, or sale of, prohibiting or restricting, or imposing any fee, charge, or tax on certain containers.” The governor of Minnesota did the same in May, killing a plastic bag ban that passed in Minneapolis the year before. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports, Pennsylvania is facing a similar corporate-backed ban on bans: