Judith Enck on the Plastic Crisis—and How to Reduce It at the Source

For decades, Americans have been told that plastic pollution is a problem of personal responsibility. If beaches are strewn with bottles and waterways clogged with packaging, the logic goes, it’s because people failed to recycle properly, forgot their reusable bags, or littered. (Remember the TV ad with the crying Native American by the side of the road?) In The Problem with Plastic: How We Can Save Ourselves and the Planet Before It’s Too Late, Judith Enck argues that this narrative is not only wrong—it has been deliberately cultivated to let the plastics industry off the hook. “None of us voted for more plastic,” Enck says. “And nothing tastes better in plastic.”

Enck, a former regional administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency and the founder of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics, has spent years studying how plastic became so ubiquitous—and why efforts to rein it in have largely failed. Her new book (with collaborator Adam Mahoney) lays out a comprehensive case that plastic pollution is not primarily a waste problem or a consumer problem, but a production problem rooted in the fossil fuel economy, regulatory failure, and environmental injustice.

The scope of the crisis is vast, but Enck insists it is also recent—and therefore solvable. Nearly half of all plastic ever produced has been made since 2007, a statistic that surprises many readers, including this one. “That tells me this is a very recent problem,” she says. “This is not something that goes back centuries. This is a relatively new problem created by the fossil fuel and chemical industry—and that means we have a fighting chance of solving it.”

By the Numbers: The Problem with Plastic

• Nearly 50% of all plastic ever produced has been made since 2007, underscoring how recent—and rapidly accelerating—the plastic crisis is.
• The average American uses almost 500 pounds of plastic per year, much of it invisible in packaging, textiles, and household goods.
• Less than 6% of plastic waste in the US is recycled, despite decades of public messaging suggesting otherwise.
• Plastics contain thousands of chemical additives, many of them toxic and largely unregulated.
• Microplastics have been found in human blood, breast milk, placentas, lungs, and feces, raising urgent questions about long-term health impacts.
• Plastic production is responsible for roughly one-sixth of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions, tying plastic directly to climate change.
• US plastic production emissions are on track to exceed those from coal-fired power plants, even as coal declines.
• Trillions of pieces of plastic pollute the world’s oceans, most of them microplastics that cannot be recovered.
• Plastic does not biodegrade—it breaks into smaller fragments, continuing to pollute ecosystems and release greenhouse gases.
• Landfills, incinerators, and petrochemical facilities are disproportionately located in low-income communities and communities of color, making plastic pollution an environmental justice issue.

From Fossil Fuels to Plastic Pellets

The book traces plastic’s rise alongside the expansion of the fossil fuel industry, particularly the boom in hydraulic fracturing over the past two decades. Historically, plastics were made primarily from oil. Today, Enck explains, they are increasingly made from ethane, a byproduct of fracked gas. “There’s a glut of fracked gas on the market,” Enck says. “What’s happened is that companies are capturing ethane—which used to be flared into the atmosphere—and sending it to ethane cracker facilities, where it’s heated at high temperatures and turned into little plastic pellets.”

Those pellets, known as pre-production plastics, are shipped by rail across the country to be molded into everything from packaging to consumer goods. The nearest ethane cracker to the Hudson Valley is in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, but the effects of this production model are national and global.

The economics are straightforward. Plastic is cheap to produce, especially when its true costs—pollution, health impacts, climate damage—are externalized. “Cheap for the companies,” Enck says. “Very expensive for our health and the environment.”

Recycling Was Never the Answer

One of the book’s central arguments is that plastic recycling has been oversold—intentionally. Despite decades of public messaging urging consumers to recycle, less than six percent of plastic waste in the United States is actually recycled.

The reason, Enck says, is structural. Unlike materials such as aluminum, glass, or paper, plastics are made from thousands of different chemical formulations. There are more than 16,000 chemicals used in plastic production, resulting in products that vary widely by polymer type, color, and additive content.

“If you have an aluminum can, you can recycle that aluminum can into a new aluminum can,” Enck says. “But plastics recycling fundamentally doesn’t work because there are too many different types of plastics, too many colors, and too many chemical combinations.”

In practice, only plastics labeled #1 and #2—such as soda bottles and milk jugs—are commonly recycled. Everything else is typically sorted out at material recovery facilities and sent to landfills or incinerators.

This reality, Enck argues, has been known to the plastics industry for decades. Yet companies continued to promote recycling as the solution, spending millions on advertising campaigns that reassured the public that plastic waste could simply be managed after the fact. In 2024, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued ExxonMobil, alleging that the company misled consumers about the recyclability of plastic.

“That deception has been very effective,” Enck says. “It’s kept the focus on individual behavior and away from the producers.”

Plastic, Health, and the Body

Beyond waste, The Problem with Plastic documents the growing body of scientific evidence linking plastics to human health risks. Microplastics—tiny fragments formed as plastic breaks down—have now been found in human blood, breast milk, placentas, lungs, and feces. Many plastics contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals linked to cancer, reproductive harm, and chronic disease.

“You read the latest scientific article about microplastics in our brains and our blood and our heart arteries,” Enck says, “and you get informed, and you get motivated.”

Yet regulation has lagged far behind the science. Many chemicals used in plastics remain unregulated, and disclosure requirements are weak. The result, Enck argues, is a public health experiment conducted without consent.

Environmental Justice at the Center

If the book has a moral core, it lies in its treatment of environmental justice. Plastic production, Enck shows, is heavily concentrated in low-income communities and communities of color—particularly along the Gulf Coast and in Appalachia.

“We dedicate the book to communities of color that bear the burden of plastics,” she says. “The most striking thing is that plastics are produced mostly in Louisiana, Texas, and Appalachia, and the production is causing enormous health and environmental damage.”

In Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” an 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, petrochemical facilities are densely packed near residential neighborhoods. A recent study found cancer rates there to be seven times higher than nearby regions.

“These are called ‘fenceline communities,’” Enck says. “Your backyard fence is literally next to a massive manufacturing facility. People’s health should not be dictated by their zip code.”

The inequities continue at the disposal stage. Because most plastics are not recycled, they end up in landfills and incinerators, which are also disproportionately sited in low-income communities and communities of color.

From Diagnosis to Policy

Rather than stopping at critique, Enck’s book devotes significant space to solutions—particularly policy interventions. At the center of her current work is New York State’s Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, which would require a 30-percent reduction in single-use packaging over 12 years and ban 17 toxic chemicals, including PFAS, from packaging sold in the state. “Anything sold in New York,” Enck says, “whether it’s Amazon, McDonald’s, or Kraft Foods, would have to meet new environmental standards.”

The bill has passed the State Senate twice but has yet to be brought to a vote in the Assembly. Industry opposition has been intense. Enck’s organization counted 106 lobbyists registered in opposition, compared with 24 in support. “We were outnumbered four to one,” she says. “Yet we came so close.”

Enck argues that New York, as a large market, could set standards that ripple nationally. “If companies meet that standard for New York,” she says, “they might as well meet it nationally.”

Other measures Enck supports include plastic bag bans, “Skip the Stuff” laws that require customers to request disposable utensils, and bans on practices like balloon releases. Each, she argues, demonstrates how policy—not voluntary action—drives meaningful change.

Balancing Urgency and Hope

The scale of the plastics crisis can feel overwhelming, a reality Enck does not deny. But she is wary of solutions that are symbolic rather than structural. “We don’t have time for weak bills and Band-Aids,” she says. “We need policies that are commensurate with the problem.”

At the same time, she emphasizes that change is incremental and requires persistence. “This is the long game,” Enck says. “You’re not going to fix this in a year or two. It’s going to take years, and you have to stick with it.”

That combination—clear-eyed urgency paired with disciplined hope—runs throughout The Problem with Plastic. The book’s argument is not that plastic can disappear overnight, but that production can be reduced, toxic chemicals eliminated, and systems redesigned to prioritize health and equity.

“This is not about personal purity,” Enck says. “It’s about pulling the political levers of government to protect people’s health.”

In that sense, the book is less a manifesto than a roadmap—one that insists plastic pollution is neither inevitable nor unsolvable, if society is willing to confront the systems that created it.

Judith Enck will be speaking at a number of upcoming events:

• On January 22 at 6pm, she’ll be at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck.
• On April 20 at 7:30pm, she’ll be at Page Hall on the University at Albany Downtown Campus in conversation with Susan Arbetter, a program of the New York State Writers Institute.
• On April 25 at 2pm, she’ll be speaking with Ulster County Executive Jen Metzger at the Orpheum Theater in Saugerties, a collaboration with Inquiring Minds Bookstore.