A bipartisan bill that aims to help rid the world’s oceans of plastic waste is making its way through Congress. The Save Our Seas 2.0 Act (SOS 2.0) builds on a 2018 law and outlines several steps to reduce marine debris currently floating in the ocean and prevent future waste from piling up.
A group of U.S. senators led by Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) introduced the bipartisan bill (S. 1982) in June 2019. It aims to improve the domestic response to current marine debris and prevent future buildup by improving U.S. infrastructure. The bill also suggests several steps to encourage greater international engagement to develop solutions.
The United Nations estimates that more than 8 million metric tons of plastic is dumped into the ocean every year — the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic being dumped into the ocean every minute. This type of marine debris can be harmful for both wildlife and humans, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Marine animals can get caught in plastic waste or ingest it, both of which can lead to injury, illness and death. For humans, marine debris can create boating hazards, and waste along shores can reduce tourism in coastal communities, which also must cover the cost of cleanup.
“The prevalence of marine debris in our oceans is a chronic issue, one that threatens not only fisheries in my state of Alaska, but the health of the oceans and communities across the country, and across the globe,” Sullivan said in a joint statement announcing the bill. “The good news is that this is one environmental issue that is solvable, actionable and measurable. SOS 2.0 will work to enhance our response here at home and across the globe. It will also work to prevent waste from getting into our oceans in the first place.”
Key components of SOS 2.0 include establishing a trust fund that would provide resources to respond to marine debris-related events, authorizing prize money for innovations that advance detection and cleanup efforts, providing grants to improve domestic water infrastructure, assessing barriers to recycling and repurposing plastic waste and conducting more research to better understand the plastic waste issue.
SOS 2.0 also includes several international solutions, including formalizing U.S. policy on international cooperation on marine waste. Under the bill, NOAA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would be tasked with increasing international outreach, and the executive branch would have to consider marine debris while negotiating international agreements.
The bill’s backers include nonprofit advocacy groups like the Ocean Conservancy, which voiced strong support of SOS 2.0 as an additional measure to the original Save Our Seas Act. The original bill reauthorized NOAA’s Marine Debris Program through 2022 and encouraged the administration to engage leaders of other countries to help address the issue.
“As the next step in our fight against plastic pollution in our oceans and waterways, SOS Act 2.0 appropriately and necessarily broadens the scope for action,” Ocean Conservancy CEO Janis Searles Jones wrote in a letter to Sullivan and Whitehouse. “We appreciate the legislation’s clear recognition that plastic pollution is a global problem, as it will take a combination of international cooperation and domestic leadership to tackle the issue.”
Some lawmakers and advocacy groups oppose the legislation, however. While SOS 2.0 was up for vote before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in November, Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) said the bill did not do enough to combat plastic pollution, stating that “the plastics crisis goes far beyond our oceans.”
Some conservation groups also oppose SOS 2.0 because they believe some provisions of the proposed bill could make plastic pollution worse by focusing on recycling as opposed to finding alternatives to plastic. “We need Congress to pass legislation that reduces the generation of plastic, particularly single-use plastic packaging,” the groups said in the letter. “This bill will do little to reduce the staggering amount of plastic polluting our streets, streams, shores and seas, as it does not curb upstream production or provide for a transition to reusable and refillable packaging.”
SOS 2.0 passed the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in November 2019. It may come up for a full Senate vote in 2020.
For background, see the September 2014 issue of Congressional Digest on “United States Ocean Policy.”
