Ever wonder what people in the plastics industry say to each other about reform efforts aimed at banning phthalates and BPA? We caught a glimpse of that often private conversation this week in Plastics News, an industry publication that just cited "renewed attacks from activists" as the No. 2 issue that has faced the plastics industry over the past two decades. Interestingly, the News points out that attacks on the plastics industry are nothing new - they're just more effective now because they involve marketplace campaigns as well as legislative ones.

"[T]he reality is that attacks on plastics were just as persistent 20 years ago, with efforts then under way to ban chlorine, a ban in New York’s Suffolk County on PS and PVC takeout food containers, and the first concerted effort by environmentalists to ban plastic bags and PS takeout containers," the News writes. "What’s different is that yesterday’s visible rallies have taken a back seat to well-organized new media campaigns that are designed to create public pressure, not just on governments to take action, but on retailers to remove products from their stores - in other words, achieving the effect of a legislative ban without getting one enacted."

The article goes on to discuss the role of various industry groups, who we know primarily as the folks who set up industry-run websites that weigh in on public health debates with the chemical industry's perspective. As many web surfers digest information they find on websites fairly quickly, these sites' scientific and objective tone often give them an effectiveness beyond what one would typically grant a trade organization with a significant vested interest in the status quo. To their credit, most sites we've seen along these lines do provide clear, if subtle, marks indicating their parent organizations or backers.

Anti-reform plastics organizations Plastics News cited which work in the media include:

• The Progressive Bag Affiliates: "formed to meet the threats posed by proposed plastic bag bans or taxes." Organized by the American Chemistry Council.


• The Plastics Foodservice Packaging Group: Combats legislation banning polystyrene takeout packaging. Formerly called the Polystyrene Packaging Council, and organized by the ACC.


• The Phthalates Ester Panel: Responds to calls for bans and other criticisms of phthalate plasticizers. Backed by the Chemical Manufacturers Association.


• The Polycarbonate/BPA Global Group: Combats warnings and proposed bans on BPA. The organization behind Bisphenol-A.org and Facts on Plastic. Current spokesman, widely cited in the media, is Stephen G. Hentges.


• The Vinyl Institute: Promotes and defends vinyl (PVC) against critics.

But all is not lost, the News concludes. The industry has held its own in many of these battles to date, particularly in its anti-environmental efforts:

"To its credit, the plastics industry has successfully fended off many chemistry-specific bans, phthalates notwithstanding. What’s more, possibly because it has so often been under the gun, the industry has learned how to successfully ward off product bans, with the exception of numerous bans on PS take-out packaging in California. Only Westport, Conn., and three communities in California - San Francisco, Malibu and Fairfield - actually have enacted plastic bag bans. But the industry has been less successful in devising a successful strategy to combat what is likely to be the battleground of the 21st century - the new media campaigns that pressure retailers and large institutions, including health-care facilities and governments, to de-select products, so as to avoid any association with potential negativity.

At the moment (and this is our analysis here, not the publication's) no one in the industry seems to have a counter-strategy for this market-based activism, in part because there are ready substitutes for the chemicals and materials under fire, and new brands have emerged that place their chemical safety status front and center in their operations and marketing. This has meant that major retailers have faced competitive pressures within their industry to establish their own, more progressive chemical policies, and the manufacturers have no real choice but to follow suit.

The true irony is that many twentieth-century baby care empires were built by repetitively and creatively triggering and enhancing anxieties among parents in order to spur demand for new purchases. Now that parents' concern about potential risks to their children is demanding that companies respond to those concerns rather than creating the concern to help sell a product they've created, companies often seem downright perplexed by these impulses to err on the side of caution when it comes to childrearing issues.

You can read the full article, and comment on it, here, or find out what else made Plastics News' top twenty issues for the industry (for the "#1 issue," you'll have to wait until March 16).