APR launches Demand Champs for governments

The Association of Plastic Recyclers is launching an effort to use the purchasing power of governments to buy more recycled plastic products and help shore up fragile plastic scrap markets.

APR is working with the Northeast Recycling Council to expand the voluntary Demand Champions program it started in 2017 for the private sector and broaden it to include state and local governments.

The idea is to get government agencies to sign voluntary pledges to increase their purchase of some targeted products using recycled content plastic.

But one of the organizers of the effort acknowledges likely challenges, both from the impact of the coronavirus and because many governments have not focused on recycled content purchasing.

"We need to get government active and they are not," said Lynn Rubinstein, executive director of the Brattleboro, Vt.-based NERC. "We've got to find a way to drive greater demand for those resins."

A few state governments, such as California, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Washington, have effective programs "but they are in such a minority it would stagger you," Rubinstein said in a May 27 webinar organized by APR. "We have to got to get government engaged."

Rubinstein said low plastic prices and the changes in global recycling markets, like China's National Sword import restrictions, are also big challenges.

They hurt the economics of city-run recycling programs, something that more recycled content buying could help mitigate, she said.

"There's a tremendous amount of pressure on residential recycling programs now," she said. "It started with China fence and we've seen more of it with COVID."

"We've seen a huge spike in the cost of communities to offer residential recycling, and at least a piece of that is because of the decline in value of the plastics being sold from those programs," Rubinstein said. "So everything we can do to drive up the value of those materials will have a positive impact."

One state legislative group monitoring plastics issues says recycled content is an emerging policy area for governments.

Jeff Mauk, executive director of the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators in Washington, said government procurement bills for recycled content have been introduced in Florida and Illinois.

As well, he said the federal Break Free From Plastic Pollution bill also includes minimum recycled content mandates for some plastic products.

Like Rubinstein, Mauk said lawmakers are interested in reducing the financial burdens on local recycling programs, although he said states are looking at mandates, not just voluntary programs.

"Mandating recycled content will create a market and incentives for recycling and will lift burdens off of municipalities and recycling businesses that are not able to sell recyclable waste when virgin material is less expensive," Mauk said.

Rubinstein said the coronavirus pandemic could also be a short-term handicap in getting state governments involved.

"We need the procurement community to get engaged in this, and they are entirely consumed with COVID right now," she said. "While I've had some conversations, nobody can turn adequate attention to this. I'm going to be a cup half-full and say by mid to late summer we'll have moved the needle a little bit and we'll have people begin to sign up."

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While it may be hard to predict how much of a boost in recycled content purchasing will come from state and local governments, the new APR effort builds on the work of the Demand Champions program for companies, which launched in 2017.

APR officials say interest from the private sector has grown, from 10 companies in 2018 to 40 this year.

The association said the program has resulted in rising volumes of post-consumer resins captured for recycling and growing openness among companies about using recycled content in their products.

Liz Bedard, rigids recycling program director for APR, said that in 2018 and 2019, respectively, the group documented 6.8 million pounds and 25.9 million pounds of new post-consumer resins used by the champion firms.

That diverted recycled plastic equal to municipal collection programs in cities the size of Cambridge, Mass., and Minneapolis in the first two years, APR said.

It's also enough recycling to create 500 jobs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of taking 8,000 cars off the roads, APR said.

She said efforts to increase recycled content are critical to reversing "fragile" markets for recycled plastic, mitigating the impact of historically low virgin resin prices and boosting domestic recycling markets.

"We need to think about creating domestic markets so that we don't see our plastics exported and perhaps become ocean plastic," Bedard said. "I think we've learned the hard way that we probably don't want to depend too much on export markets and we want to create domestic markets."

Still, though, the volumes of recycled resins reported thus far by the Demand Champions program is a relatively small amount compared to overall plastic recycling in the U.S.

A December 2019 report from APR and the American Chemistry Council said that for 2018, the U.S. recycled 2.85 billion pounds of plastic from post-consumer bottles, mostly PET and high density polyethylene resins.

That means the first year of the Demand Champions program, it generated an increase demand pull equal to about one-quarter of one percent of the plastic bottle recycling in the U.S. If you include in non-bottle plastic recycling, it would be a smaller percentage.

The green investment advisory group As You Sow, which has pressured companies around plastic waste and recycled plastics use, suggested the program should seek stronger commitments from participants.

Conrad MacKerron, As You Sow senior vice president, said big consumer brands that take part should be required to state publicly how much post-consumer resin they're going to purchase.

"Much more is expected from consumer brands," he said. "The program could be more impactful if it set more substantial purchasing targets for major producers and users, and more modest but still transparent goals for small businesses and governments with less buying power."

But Bedard points to strong growth in the voluntary program — with 40 companies participating this year compared to 10 in 2018 — and she said it's helping to change company mindsets around recycled plastic.

She pointed to one participating firm that looked at all of its purchasing decisions to see where it could use post-consumer plastics, after joining Demand Champions.

"It changed their attitude toward use of PCR [post-consumer resin]," she said. "They subsequently looked at all of their work in process purchases through the lens of PCR.

"They weren't just interested in, 'What can I do to meet this commitment, what's the low hanging fruit,'" Bedard said. "It was a brand-new mindset to them. They wanted to purchase as much as they could in PCR."

As well, Bedard said interest is growing beyond just the plastics-related firms that were the initial participants, pointing to lawn equipment firm Toro Co. and Chick-Fil-A joining recently.

APR does a lot of work behind the scenes with companies to help facilitate, Bedard said, pointing to Waste Management's announcement in February to join Demand Champions and commit to using 10 percent post-consumer recycled content in its curbside collection carts.

Bedard said Waste Management's action played a big role in shoring up the markets for recycling of bulky rigid plastic containers.

"It made the difference," she said. "It resulted in a resurgence in the domestic bulky rigid market in the United States."

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The joint APR-NERC program is open broadly to any state and local government, including agencies like schools, libraries, and public and private universities and colleges. It can also include single departments within larger agencies.

Like with the corporate program, it does not require governments to make specific volume commitments around recycled plastic purchases. Rather, it requires them to commit to increasing the amount of recycled plastic product purchases in a one-year period to get recognized as a Demand Champion.

The new effort also includes an "entry level" that governments can join if they can't make an immediate commitment but want to start examining products they could buy, Rubinstein said.

That level, called an advocate, is aimed at getting the agency to be ready to make a formal purchasing commitment within a year, she said. One state, New Hampshire, has signed up at the advocate level.

APR and NERC will provide free technical advice on purchasing and have identified seven target products based on markets that both use recycled resin and that government currently purchases, Rubinstein said.

They include infrastructure drainage pipes, trash bags, rollout carts for garbage and recycling collection, benches and outdoor furniture, plastic lumber and a catchall of other products containing recycled plastic, such as electronics.

The effort also includes a webpage describing the program and listing vendors selling qualified products, she said.

Rubinstein said that NERC has a background in working with government purchasing programs, operating environmentally preferable electronics purchasing programs with states for 12 years.

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