Third-year University of Houston Law Center student Rachael Beavers Horne
Chantal Carriere ‘19
Sept. 25, 2019 - An article by a University of Houston Law Center 3L student and a recent graduate has been accepted for publication in the Environmental Law Institute's Environmental Law News and Reporter.
The article, "All this talk, but plastics keep piling up," by 3L student Rachael Beavers Horne and 2019 graduate Chantal Carriere proposes a legislative mandate for recycled plastic content implemented by market mechanisms. The inspiration from the article came from Professor Victor Flatt’s Environmental Markets course during the Spring 2019 semester.
“Their proposal is brilliant and addresses many of the problems about incenting more recycled plastics in the United States,” Flatt said. “The Environmental Law News and Reporter is the most read and cited environmental law publication in the practicing bar, and this brings their proposal that much closer to reality.”
Environmental Markets is a skills class that examines how markets and law can be used to solve environmental problems. The students’ project examined the current plastics crisis in the U.S. and proposed a law mandating a minimum amount of recycled plastic content for plastics packaging, which would be expressed as a commodified credit that could be traded among entities in the plastics packaging industry to meet the proposed compliance obligation.
Beavers Horne currently serves as Senior Notes & Comments Editor for the Houston Law Review. She is also the president of the Environment and Energy Law Society at University of Houston.
Carriere, a 2019 summa cum laude graduate, worked on numerous environmental and energy projects during her law school tenure. She was a member of the International Energy Lawyers Program, a joint initiative between the University of Calgary Faculty of Law and the Law Center. The program allows students to complete an American and Canadian law degree in four years, and will enable them to apply for admission to bars in both countries.
