Published: Tuesday, February 2, 2021
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). Photo credit: Francis Chung/E&E News
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) during a press conference last year on recycling and plastic waste legislation. Francis Chung/E&E News
Industry and environmentalists are hoping to revive recycling legislation buried by the coronavirus pandemic, with some lawmakers already on board.
Bills aimed at addressing everything from recycling infrastructure and education to a crackdown on plastics are set to make a return in the 117th Congress, indicating last year s surge of interest in the sector has staying potential.
While industry leaders and environmental advocates said they anticipate competing priorities may hinder chances of passage, they also voiced hope around long-term odds of success.
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After a year of dialogue about what an extended producer responsibility (EPR) bill around plastic packaging and paper might include, nonprofit Product Stewardship Institute (PSI) and industry organization Flexible Packaging Association (FPA) have reached an agreement. They have finetuned an existing PSI document with elements that would be most important to FPA.
“Packaging has a target on its back because there are limited opportunities for getting it recycled, and we thought it was important to have a voice at the table in drafting legislation that would enable a stewardship program to protect the market … and to ensure a program would fund infrastructure to ensure all packaging, including flexible packaging, could get recycled and collected,” says Alison Keane, president and CEO, Flexible Packaging Association.
“Producer Responsibility is a business, and the brand owners will be a key stakeholder in that,” says AMERIPEN executive director Dan Felton in this 30-minute podcast about packaging policy predictions for 2021.
Felton has identified two policies he feels are most likely in the coming year:
1. Industry financing proposals, including Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) at a state level;
2. Recycled content mandates.
• Who is likely to pay?
• How will the funds be used and to what benefit?
• With so many brands advancing sustainable packaging voluntarily, why is producer responsibility legislation even needed?
• How can brands selling nationally and globally manage possible mandates at the state level?
Who Pays the Bill for Plastic Waste?
China’s 2018 National Sword Policy ended the country’s role as the recycling bin for the world’s post-consumer plastic scrap and threw global recycling markets into disarray. Reeling on the other side of the globe, American cities were forced to store, incinerate, or throw collected recyclables into landfills. Faced with a rapidly diminishing landfill capacity, China is consolidating and formalizing its domestic recycling industry, an expensive and daunting task.
Cities around the world are struggling with the costs and logistics of collecting and sorting their plastic waste. Less than 15 percent of plastic produced worldwide is actually recycled, due in part to low oil prices that make virgin plastic much cheaper than recycled pellets. The Pew Charitable TrustsBreaking the Plastic Wave report estimates that without decreases in plastic production and increases in recycling, by 2040 plastic pollution entering the ocean will triple from 11