President Trump delights in alarming opponents and aiding friends in polluting industries
Opinion by Keith Schneider, Circle of Blue
In mid-December 2020, a month before he left office, President Donald Trump quietly signed the Save Our Seas Act to put the federal government’s shoulder to the work of developing alternatives to disposable plastic products, encouraging recycling, and limiting plastic debris in the world’s oceans.
It took years of civic activism about the harm plastic causes to human health and the marine environment to convince Trump to sign the law, which helped prompt leaders of 175 nations to begin negotiating a treaty two years later to prevent plastic pollution.
Two years after that, in the summer of 2024, President Joe Biden joined the campaign with a notable directive to federal agencies to replace plastic straws, cutlery, and packaging with those made from paper and other biodegradable materials. Biden’s order followed decisions by California to ban plastic straws, and Starbucks and Alaska Airlines to phase them out.
Early this month President Donald Trump blew up much of that exemplary government and corporate work with an executive order to halt purchases of paper straws by federal agencies, and develop a strategy by April to eliminate them nationwide.
