Beyond Integrity: How Biden's EPA got in Bed with Beyond Plastics
A Firebreak FOIA reveals a cozy relationship between EPA officials and the Beyond Plastics Founder, Judith Enck
This investigation, based on my FOIA request, shows how:
Beyond Plastics founder and president, Judith Enck, was leading a multi-NGO protest and press conference in front of the EPA’s Washington office while the federal agency’s directors were planning to have lunch and drinks with her.
After EPA officials exchanged emails with a reporter, the agency director shared those messages with Beyond Plastics to aid the group’s campaign against vinyl chloride.
A collection of small NGOs were invited to a closed meeting with EPA officials to discuss dioxin testing in the wake of the East Palestine train derailment.
The EPA communications and public affairs teams were coordinating press releases with Beyond Plastics on a major policy announcement, following up on media amplification and looking for next steps forward together.
All of this was happening while the EPA knew full well that Beyond Plastics was not a legitimate organization, did not have a 501(c)(3) status and did not file any financial disclosures. Enck’s “project” was managed passively by a fiscal sponsor, Bennington College, did not have an office and did not declare the number of foundations and interest groups financing her operations. See the Firebreak investigations on Bennington College and on Beyond Plastics’ non-transparency.
The introduction to this article showed how US EPA administrator, Michael Regan, set an open-door policy for the EPA to collude with any environmental NGO running a campaign. During the Biden administration, the environmental agency was more political than policy driven, with directors and staffers giving special support to friends and former colleagues in their networks.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials colluded with activist groups lobbying to ban vinyl chloride, a widely-used chemical. Led by Beyond Plastics president, Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator, this activist-regulator coalition coordinated a protest outside EPA headquarters and crafted an official press release announcing the agency’s plans to scrutinize vinyl chloride. The affair represents a serious ethical breach and raises questions about the EPA’s independence under the previous administration.
We’re Mad As Hell (…and Let’s Do Lunch)
The story starts with Judith Enck writing her former colleagues at the US EPA to inform them of the pending protest Beyond Plastics was organizing outside of their Washington offices. She sent them a copy of the “media advisory”.
Enck had already arranged a meeting with the EPA’s Chemical Safety Administrator, Michal Freedhoff, later in the day but wanted someone from the EPA to come outside for the cameras to receive her petition.
She announced that the “participating groups include: Beyond Plastics, River Valley Organizing from East Palestine, Hip Hop Caucus, Moms Clean Air Force, CBD, Plastic Free Future and others.” Interesting that she did not mention Greenpeace as one of the groups attending the protest (which Enck preferred to simply call a “news conference”).
The tone of the message below resembles how a superior dictates information to her staff.
The messages that followed from the EPA were quite complimentary. The EPA directors replied with warm praise and congratulations (and an invitation to lunch). EPA Public Affairs associate administrator, Nick Conger, states: “I appreciate all you’re doing.”
This is quite an astonishing message exchange. Essentially, Judith Enck is telling her former colleagues: “We are going to throw rocks at you from outside of your building for the gathered media – we have even recruited some thugs from Greenpeace (and then I’ll come in for a hug and some catch-up chitchat).”
The Senior Counsellor to the EPA Administrator, Grant Cope replied that we must do lunch, or maybe some drinks after work. It is safe to assume there were no hard feelings about Enck arranging protests against their agency.
Send me what you wrote to a journalist…
Enck continued to call the shots during the afternoon of the EPA protest and press event. The EPA Public Affairs Administrator, Nick Conger, issued a “We are very concerned!” statement to a journalist who attended the event. Judith Enck got wind of this (somehow) and had the audacity to demand that the EPA official send her a copy of the internal communication.
And of course … Mr Conger dutifully complied that same evening, sharing the email he had sent the journalist earlier that day to the NGO activist.
In this email to a journalist, Conger states they are considering, perhaps, including vinyl chloride in their periodic review of chemicals. Should the EPA have telegraphed to the media a possible chemical that might, or might not, come under its next review? And should the contents of that email correspondence have been then shared with Ms Enck?
This was not a commitment to do a review of vinyl chloride, something that had not been decided as of July, 2023, but rather an invitation to Enck and her band of activists to push harder.
See the rather amateur YouTube video of the July 27, 2023 protest rally in front of the EPA. With all of the millions Beyond Plastics is receiving in funding from foundations and other interest groups, one has to wonder, with their comical event management, what they are doing with all of their donations and contributions.
The EPA was working closely with activist groups
On another occasion, Judith Enck organized a meeting in April 2023 with high-level EPA officials and a group of NGOs to discuss dioxin testing and monitoring.
In the agenda to the closed meeting with at least seven activist NGOs, there are five speaking slots for members of the anti-plastics coalition (including Judith Enck).
If a group of industry lobbyists were to sit down with a large number of EPA officials to express their “concerns and recommendations”, the NGOs would be screaming about industry capture. But when activists do this, it is called “stakeholder engagement”.
It should be noted that Enck, in one of the countless press releases related to the protest gathering outside of the EPA on July 27, 2023, referred to dioxins as the “most toxic chemical known to science”. There was no citation, but the original full quote is that “dioxin is the most toxic chemical known to guinea pigs”. For some strange reason, it knocks them out at very low doses. The actual effects on humans are far less significant.
If Enck had been a scientist, she would have known that. But that didn’t stop her from leading a high-level meeting on dioxin testing.
Coordinating Press Releases
In December, 2023, when the EPA did, in actuality, decide to include vinyl chloride in their periodic substance review (promised to a journalist and Judith Enck back in July, 2023), the agency worked with Enck and Beyond Plastics to coordinate their communications on this “good news”. The email exchange below shows the planning on the timing: first the EPA will send out their press release and then, immediately after, Beyond Plastics will send their complementary press release to the media.
Enck is checking the timing and the coordination with all of the skills of a communications novice, first-time communicator: “I won’t break the embargo, but confirming it is still noon today? Please send me the final EPA news release when it is out. I can send you our statement after yours is out”.
The EPA chose to use Beyond Plastics’ president, Judith Enck for the main quote in an agency press release. This decision was made by Michal Freedhoff, the EPA administrator who had met with the activist protesters in front of the EPA on July 27, 2023.
Of course Enck offered to check the EPA press release and amend her quote if necessary. Imagine if a director from a chemical company had such audacity as this NGO activist campaigning to ban a major industrial and consumer product. There would be calls to shut the agency down.
There was no need to edit Enck’s quote in the press release (perhaps no one dared). Rather, the EPA decided to highlight Enck’s credentials in bold.
See the Beyond Plastics press release headline below that came out immediately after the EPA announcement. The timing is essential to include the NGO’s position in any media follow up. Beyond Plastics not only amplified the EPA decision to include vinyl chloride in its chemicals review, but attempted to claim ownership of the decision by advancing their expectation of the outcome of the review.
Reminder: Beyond Plastics does not exist as an organization, it refuses to disclose the interest groups funding its fiscal sponsor, and Judith Enck’s only legitimate professional title is as an adjunct at Bennington College in Vermont (2025 student body: 797). The EPA communications team needs to do some basic due diligence.
It would be safe to assume there was no coordination with communications teams from the plastics industry so they could also have a chance to get their message out to the media in a timely manner. Why is it not alarming that the media and the public were being duped by this tag-team coordination between a government agency and a non-transparent activist who seems to be running the show on US environmental regulatory policy?
Here is the email from Judith Enck to her EPA “colleagues” with the Beyond Plastics press release, sent immediately after the EPA press release.
After the two press releases were coordinated, Ms Enck got back to the EPA administrators to inform them of the Beyond Plastics social media amplification on the “news”.
A grateful EPA assistant administrator promised to “circle back to you soon on how best to follow up”.
What does this actually mean? When the Assistant Administrator in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention promises an activist from a non-transparent project trying to ban all plastics to “circle back soon on how to follow up”, does this imply collusion? Is Beyond Plastics now writing the EPA’s regulations or just their communications strategy?
Government agencies should not be coordinating with any stakeholders on how to follow up with them on the policy process. And if they did, these organizations would need to be legitimate, transparent and professional. It is widely known that Beyond Plastics is not.
If Judith Enck does not come clean (and clean up her act), then we should expect that government agencies mark anyone from Beyond Plastics, a non-transparent fiscal sponsor project, with the same red flag they would attribute to other illegitimate or unethical organizations.
Recommendations
Non-existent, non-transparent activist “projects” like Beyond Plastics, managed via third-party fiscal sponsors, should not be allowed to lobby Congress, agencies or the media. EPA officials should not have met a person claiming to represent a nonexistent NGO.
There needs to be an investigation into the interest groups working in the shadows to enable projects like Beyond Plastics. All donations and expenses for each campaign need to be published.
Proliferation of such non-transparent fiscal sponsor campaigns should be discouraged. At the very least, non-disclosed foundation funding (which often goes into the tens of millions of dollars) should not be tax deductible.
The EPA management that coordinated and supported Judith Enck’s inappropriate collusion should be fired.
An investigation should be conducted into the timing and the means to determine the list for the EPA’s periodic review of chemicals.
Standards and codes of conduct for all US government and agency staff as to appropriate stakeholder engagement protocols need to written, published and enforced.