Just a few months ago, the movement to ban single-use plastic seemed somewhat unstoppable. By the end of 2019, nine states—California, Hawaii, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Oregon, Vermont, and, most recently, Washington—had enacted statewide bans on single-use plastic bags. Several major cities including Seattle, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., had banned plastic straws. And statewide bans of other single-use plastics, such as plastic utensils, Styrofoam packaging,...

Three years ago, the UN declared plastic pollution a global crisis, more than three decades after the discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch--a collection of marine debris 2x the size of Texas. The Year 2020 was supposed to be a watershed moment for the plastic industry after dozens of state and local policymakers planned to make the ultimate shift away from...