Breaking Down Big Plastic: By exposing Big Plastics playbook, CLF is pushing to change its polluting ways.

• Author: Synoracki, Olivia
• Position: CHANGE LEADERSHIP

WHEN SUSAN EASTWOOD FIRST STARTED TO SPEAK OUT AGAINST POLLUTION IN HER COMMUNITY, HER BATTLE WAS PERSONAL. Her daughter suffers from severe asthma a condition made worse by the diesel-fueled bus she rode to school every day. To protect her daughter's health, Eastwood banded together with Clean Water Action on a campaign to keep her daughter and other kids safe from toxic bus emissions.

Today, as Chapter Chair of Sierra Club Connecticut and co-leader of the Connecticut Zero Waste Coalition, Eastwood's battles are bigger, and the goal posts are a bit farther away. But she is as determined as ever to protect public health and the environment from toxic pollution. She and her fellow volunteers have the plastic and waste industries clearly in their sights.

Blocking change, however, are large oil, chemical, and beverage companies who spend big to undermine any legislative proposal aiming to shake up the plastic industry.

"There's just so much money spent [by these industries]," she says, adding that "they play dirty, like with the Bottle Bill."

For decades, industry giants worked to undermine Connecticut's existing Bottle Bill, which was first enacted in 1978. But in last year's legislative session, after realizing that a law to modernize the Bottle Bill would pass despite their efforts, industry leaders suddenly came out in support of it. That "support" was contingent on one stipulation, however: that control of the state's bottle return program be handed over to them, the very polluters who spent years trying to destroy it. And they succeeded.

This last-minute move came as no surprise to CLF's legal advocates, says Staci Rubin, vice president for environmental justice. With public concern over plastic pollution at an all-time high, "we're seeing increasingly strong support for legislation aimed at addressing the plastic crisis."

But the corporate polluter playbook is standing in our way.

That "playbook" is a set of tactics that Big Plastic and its lobbyists have honed for decades. They have deployed it again and again to distract us from the reality of the plastic crisis. All so they can double down on plastic production.

But, as big oil, chemical, and beverage companies worsen the world's plastic crisis for their own benefit, they put the health of people and our climate on the line. CLF and our allies are not willing to let them risk our future without a fight. That's why we set out to expose their playbook in a new report late last year...