ACC endorses packaging fees, EPR concepts to support recycling

UPDATED OCT. 2: The American Chemistry Council is coming out in support of fees on packaging and trash disposal to help pay for more recycling, and it is calling for industry financing to address harder-to-recycle plastic packaging formats like tubes and pouches.

The Washington-based trade association Oct. 1 released what it's calling a "Roadmap to Reuse" strategy that pushes a national recycling framework for standardizing programs in the United States and giving more support for recycled content.

A senior ACC official described the new policy as endorsing extended producer responsibility, which at its most basic level has industry pay fees to help to fund recycling programs, often through privately run third-party groups.

"That is essentially the bottom line when you boil it down, we're coming out in support of packaging fees, which are an EPR system," said Keith Christman, ACC's managing director of plastics markets. "This is us coming out and saying what we're for as far as policies."

The new policy framework does not include details on those fees, however. It's part of an initiative, "From Single-Use to Reuse," that ACC has unveiled to try to spell out how it will hit public targets it first set in 2018.

At that time, ACC set targets of having 100 percent of plastic packaging recyclable or recoverable in the U.S. by 2030, and then having all actually be reused, recycled or recovered by 2040.

Since those targets were announced in 2018, however, the political landscape around plastics recycling has changed dramatically.

Multiple bills have since been introduced in Congress, and lawmakers in Washington and in statehouses have increasingly been debating — and sometimes passing — plastic product bans, EPR and laws aimed at shoring up weak recycling systems.

Specifically, ACC's new plan endorses "multimaterial packaging fees" to support collection and sortation infrastructure and pay-as-you-throw fees on garbage disposal "to equalize the cost of recycling with that of disposal."

Other industry groups like the Consumer Brands Association and the Recycling Partnership, which ACC pointed to, have recently endorsed similar ideas.

The latter group released its own policy statement Sept. 29 that supported packaging fees, saying that governments in the U.S. currently spend $4 billion a year on recycling and that the system needs more resources.

Skeptics of recycling as a full solution point to EPA figures that show only 13 percent of plastic packaging and containers are currently recycled. But ACC and other industry groups say it's important to improve recycling infrastructure.

More specific to plastics, ACC says its policy framework also supports "develop[ing] plastics value chain financing for collecting and sorting flexibles, films, foams and plastics packaging formats such as tubes, lids, cups, pouches and small formats."

In an Oct. 1 interview, ACC officials said they expect these financing mechanisms and other recycling plans to increasingly be part of debates in Congress and statehouses.

"We view this as an opportunity to try to move some practical legislation [in Congress]," said Ross Eisenberg, vice president of federal affairs. "Very candidly, I think there's a window for action here. And that is what this is intended to put us in the middle of."

Christman said ACC is also calling for more support for legislation to mandate or incentivize recycled content, which he said is a change in policy for the business association, whose member companies are large manufacturers of virgin plastic.

Those firms, however, have been increasingly investing in recycling technologies, as public concern over plastic waste has grown.

"Recycled content is one of the things we're supporting here and that's a change," Christman said. "There have been challenges to using recycled content in food-grade packages in the past. But the pathway to get there is through the products of advanced recycling."

He said ACC wants to link support for recycled content legislation to regulatory support for those advanced recycling technologies.

"Those [recycled content laws] are things we can support, if they also have in them credit for advanced recycling and credit using mass balance to attribute that recycled content to various products," he said.

Also called chemical recycling, advanced recycling technologies break plastics down into their monomers to be recycled or made into things like chemicals and fuels, rather physically grinding and cleaning plastic as traditional mechanical recycling does.

ACC's platform said it wants to build on what it says is more than $5 billion in new investments in plastics recycling in the U.S. since 2017.

But environmental groups like Greenpeace have questioned the $5 billion figure and argue to lawmakers that factories that turn waste plastic into fuel should not be considered recycling because they do little to address climate change.

It seems likely to be a key flashpoint in the political debates. It certainly figures prominently in ACC's new framework.

ACC, for example, specifically urged governments to consider output from advanced recycling be included in definitions of recycled content.

It included additional language saying that mass balance measurements should be used for recycled content, which is similar to how renewable energy is tracked. And it called for a National Academy of Sciences life cycle assessment study of the new advanced, or chemical recycling, technologies.

Eisenberg believes there's an opportunity to pass recycling legislation like ACC envisions in the next session of Congress, starting in 2021. He said he sees opportunities to build coalitions.

He said there are no specific bills in Congress that put ACC's framework into legislative language.

The most prominent bill favored by environmental groups, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, does have extensive EPR language that applies to all packaging materials, not just plastic. But ACC opposes that bill.

Nonetheless, Eisenberg said he sees chances to pass significant legislation in the next Congress.

"At some point that window could close, I don't think this is going to be an indefinite opportunity, but there is an opportunity," he said. "Very candidly, I think we're in that window and we're taking it seriously."