CLOSED–LOOP INNOVATORS

Judith Enck

Championing Ecological Health and Environmental Justice in Plastic Action

Judith Enck discovered her interest in environmental activism when she interned in college for the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) and was asked to lobby for the Returnable Container Act (also known as the Bottle Bill), which had stalled for 10 years. The difficulty she faced in lobbying for this relatively simple bill motivated her to return for a second internship. After graduation, she abandoned plans for social work or law school to return to environmental advocacy, and quickly became the executive director of Environmental Advocates NY. The bill eventually became a New York State law in 1982 and has since prevented the unnecessary export or landfilling of billions of plastic bottles. Judith learned important lessons from that victory and has been making her mark on America’s waste policies ever since.

With whirlwind development in packaging technology over the last few decades, the world has come to expect the convenience and versatility that plastic can further bring. Yet, the production of plastic and its disposal are both contributing to health and environmental effects that disproportionately affect those least equipped to handle them. Judith was galvanized to work on these issues because she saw how the global community had turned a blind eye to the consequences of our reliance on plastic and how “polluted landfills and incinerators are almost always sited in low-income communities and communities of color.”

A self-described “solid waste gal,” Judith views waste issues from an equity perspective. From her first bottle bill and her campaign for banning medical waste incinerators, to her appointment as U.S. EPA Regional Administrator in the Obama Administration and Congressional testimony in support of the Break Free From Plastic Act of 2020, waste activism is the thread that runs through her career.

After her tenure with the Obama Administration ended in 2009, Judith decided to use her decades of public policy expertise to support grassroots advocacy and bring more people into the plastics movement. She is currently a professor at Bennington College in Vermont and founder and president of the organization, Beyond Plastics.

Beyond Plastics has been producing reports on the climate and plastic linkage and toolkits to help guide dry cleaners, restaurants and other industries onto a path to reduce plastic. Judith sees plastics as a systemsscale crisis that demands holistic solutions that connect the fields of climate change, public health, and environmental justice.

“I’m optimistic because there are some 450 local plastic waste laws in the books. But there are 12,000 U.S. local governments, so we still have a long, long way to go.”