WASHINGTON, DC – Chris Yang, president and CEO of the American Chemistry Council (ACC), explained how the group's more than 150 manufacturers are “helping create a cleaner future” without forcing the government to implement its own set of environmental and safety standards.
Monday morning political event entitled Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Lee ZeldinBreitbart News Washington bureau chief Matthew Boyle asked Yang about how the chemical industry operates in an “environmentally friendly manner.”
“Firstly, it is the products we make that will help create a cleaner future, but the way we make them also contributes to this,” said the industry leader.
There are more than 150 ACC members manufacturers as members producing a wide range of chemical products that Americans use in their daily lives, and Yang argues that “American success depends on American chemistry.”
Examples of member groups' environmentally conscious products include hydrogen and nuclear energy, he said.
“Believe it or not, [it] it requires chemistry. So the products that our members make enable all of these clean technologies. At the same time, the way we produce our members has also become better over time,” he continued.
Each ACC member must comply with the industry group's Responsible Care program, which requires “a third audit of our environmental and safety protocols,” Yang explained:
So we have a program we call Responsible Care. Our members are required to comply with this program and this is a third party audit of our environmental, safety and security protocols. And what we do is we collect their metrics on how they cope with these tasks. We aggregate this data and disclose it publicly—not because anyone in government forces us to do it, but because it is the right thing to do. And I can sit here and tell you that our industry is cleaner and safer than ever.
The ACC still operates within government regulations, with Yang saying the current EPA under the Trump administration is working faster than the Biden administration's EPA to approve chemicals that will safely benefit the public.
“This is not your grandfather's chemical industry, and we will continue to get better and better as we move forward,” Yang told the crowd gathered in Washington, D.C. “So how we do it is really important, and what we do is equally important.”
Olivia Rondeau is a political reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter And Instagram.
