[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 185 (Tuesday, November 19, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S6663]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        OCEAN PLASTIC POLLUTION

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, the world's oceans serve as a crucial 
carbon sink, a home to hundreds of thousands of known and countless 
unknown species of marine life, an essential source of protein for 
billions of people, and a facilitator of billions of dollars in 
tourism, fishing, shipping, and other economic activity. Today, the 
oceans, on which life on Earth depends, are under serious threat.
  Threats from climate change, habitat destruction, illegal, 
unreported, and unregulated fishing, and pollution--plastic waste 
pollution in particular--are accelerating and causing potentially 
irreparable harm to this planet.
  I spoke recently on the significant health, environmental, and 
economic impacts of the more than 300 billion pounds of plastic waste 
circulating in the oceans, and on funding in the Senate version of the 
fiscal year 2020 Department of State and Foreign Operations 
appropriations bill to strengthen U.S. efforts to address this 
pollution.
  Today I will further discuss the scale of the problem and actions 
that governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), private 
companies, and other stakeholders can take to address this challenge.
  I want to share a few findings and recommendations from a report 
recently published by Ocean Conservancy and the Trash Free Seas 
Alliance, a global group of companies and NGOs seeking to reduce and 
reinvent products and services that contribute to ocean pollution.
  Absent collective action, the report depicts a bleak future--one 
involving more than 550 billion pounds of plastic waste in the oceans 
by 2025, clogging our rivers and waterways, threatening marine life and 
seabirds, endangering human health, contaminating the food supply, and 
triggering a significant decline in economic benefits.
  For perspective, the amount of plastic entering the oceans each year 
is equivalent to dumping a garbage truck full of plastic into the ocean 
every minute of every hour of every day. That is 1,440 truckloads of 
plastic per day, or more than half a million truckloads per year. And, 
of course, this does not include the immense amounts of chemical waste 
and other types of pollution that enter the oceans every day.
  As the report describes, rising ocean plastic pollution is a direct 
result of the increasing global production and use of plastic, which 
totals more than 750 billion pounds per year, an estimated 40 percent 
of which is single-use. Waste management systems, particularly in 
developing countries, are woefully incapable of managing the growing 
quantity of plastic waste.
  So the majority of plastic entering the oceans was never collected as 
part of a formal waste management system, and without increased 
resources for waste management programs and improvements to collection 
infrastructure, developing countries--and the oceans--will continue to 
be inundated with plastic waste.
  There is no single solution. Instead, the report outlines four 
priority areas on which to focus our collective efforts: financing the 
collection of plastic waste; reducing the production and use of single-
use plastics; improving design standards to address nonrecyclable or 
difficult to recycle plastics; and increasing the demand for post-
consumer plastics.
  One option for increasing resources to finance the collection of 
plastic waste is by charging fees to companies based on the amount of 
nonrecyclable materials used in their products. Such fees have the 
potential to generate up to 75 percent of the resources needed to 
support effective waste collection programs. And increasing the demand 
for recycled products--one of the other priority lines of effort--
reportedly has the potential to reduce the resources needed for such 
programs by more than 30 percent. Other options for tackling plastic 
pollution include a ban on microplastics, incentive programs for 
recycling, preferential procurement policies, and the use of refillable 
packaging.
  All of this is to say that steps can, and must, be urgently taken. 
While ocean plastic pollution may be a devastating and growing 
challenge, it is not an insurmountable one.
  And as I have said before, while the United States should 
significantly increase our engagement and leadership on this issue, we 
cannot solve this problem alone. There is no greater unifier than the 
oceans. Their protection should be of the utmost importance to 
governments, companies, and individuals on every continent and in every 
country.

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