We’re fired up and ready to go! The 2024 Rhode Island legislative session has started, and over the next 6 months, we’ll be pushing for legislation to fight plastic pollution and toxics. You can help - check out our 2024 preview, and take action to support our top priorities!
Fighting Plastic Waste with a Bottle Bill
Beverage bottles and cans litter our neighborhoods, clog storm drains, pollute our waterways with microplastics, and are too frequently trashed, not recycled. Last session, a dedicated core of organizers fought to pass a bottle bill in Rhode Island to fight litter and improve recycling. Volunteers collected tens of thousands of littered nips, residents sent letters and emails to their elected officials, and allied legislators joined in the call. As a result, the legislature ended the 2023 session by, for the first time, creating a joint study commission to examine solutions to beverage container pollution.
Clean Water Action has been at the hearings all fall, and this commission will continue its work through the winter. Our goal? A strong bottle bill passed by June. To do this, we’ll need our members to help us keep the pressure on! Contact your state legislators, and tell them you want to see the bottle bill pass this year! Thank you!
We will also be pushing for legislation requiring testing of water for microplastics, focusing on wastewater discharged from sewage treatment plants. Last summer, the University of Rhode Island released a study with the horrifying topline that the top two inches of sediment in Narragansett Bay is polluted with over 1,000 tons of microplastics. Gross. In order to solve this problem, we need more information about how microplastics get into the Bay. Requiring more testing for microplastics is step one.
Protecting Our State from Toxic PFAS
In 2024, Clean Water Action will continue fighting to protect our waterways, and our bodies, from toxic PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). PFAS are a class of human-made chemicals that are incredibly persistent in the environment and also highly toxic. They have been linked to cancers, birth defects, and other health problems. Thanks to the efforts of our members and allies, the Rhode Island General Assembly passed two bills to protect Rhode Islanders from PFAS in the 2022 session including a ban on the use of PFAS in food packaging.
Now, the next step is a comprehensive ban on toxic PFAS in 2024 that expands the list of products that must be free of intentionally-added PFAS. Consumers should be able to know that the products they bring into their homes are safe.
Standing Up for Environmental Justice
Due to decades of environmental racism, BIPOC neighborhoods, low-income communities, and language-isolated neighborhoods often have a higher concentration of polluting facilities than wealthier, whiter communities. The cumulative impact of all of those individual pollution sources can be devastating for residents’ health. Rhode Island needs an Environmental Justice Act that would give RI regulators the ability to take the cumulative impacts of polluting facilities into consideration when making permitting decisions in these overburdened communities and give the public more of a voice in what happens in their neighborhood.
Keeping the “Chemical Recycling” Scam Out of RI
The petrochemical industry continues to peddle the false solution of “chemical recycling” as the answer to plastic waste. It’s dirty. It’s expensive. And it isn’t “recycling.” Clean Water Action and our allies are fighting to proactively ban the process in our state by passing legislation in 2024!
You can help!
Democracy works best when we all participate! The Rhode Island General Assembly’s 2024 session begins on January 2nd, and the session usually concludes around the end of June. It’s a sprint to pass our priority bills, and we need your help!
TAKE ACTION: Sign a letter to your state legislators telling them you support Clean Water Action’s 2024 environmental priorities! Thanks for staying involved, and cheers to a happy, healthy, and productive New Year!
