Sponsors (62)
The bill reduces plastic pellet pollution and improves water quality and environmental justice for communities, but imposes compliance and enforcement costs and creates administrative and legal risks for businesses, governments, and taxpayers.
Residents of urban and rural communities (including people who fish or recreate in local waters) will experience cleaner waterways and reduced plastic pellet pollution, lowering exposure to microplastic debris and improving aquatic ecosystem health.
State and local permitting authorities receive clearer regulatory standards to include in NPDES permits, simplifying enforcement expectations for facilities that handle pre‑production plastics.
Disadvantaged and frontline communities will face reduced environmental burdens because the bill limits a source of microplastic pollution that disproportionately affects them.
Facilities that manufacture, use, package, or transport pre‑production plastics (including small businesses) and taxpayers may face higher costs for compliance, remediation, and expanded enforcement/monitoring.
State permitting programs and EPA will face added administrative burden and potential backlogs from revising numerous NPDES permits and promulgating rules within short timelines.
Rapid rulemaking deadlines (e.g., a 60‑day requirement) could create implementation challenges and legal vulnerability if agencies cannot complete required analyses, increasing the risk of litigation or delayed/invalidated rules.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires EPA to ban discharges of plastic pellets and pre-production plastic materials into waters and to add that ban to NPDES permits and performance standards.
Official title: To require the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to promulgate certain limitations with respect to pre-production plastic pellet pollution, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 12, 2026 by Mike Levin · Last progress February 12, 2026
Prohibits discharges of plastic pellets and other pre-production plastic materials from specified industrial point sources and requires the EPA to issue a final rule within 60 days of enactment. The rule must ban such discharges from facilities covered by two listed regulatory categories and from any point source that makes, uses, packages, or transports pre-production plastics, and the prohibitions must be added to all relevant NPDES permits, state-delegated permit programs, and performance standards for affected point sources.