Skip to main content
Sister Publication Links
  • Sustainable Plastics
  • Plastics News China
  • Rubber & Plastics News
logo-pn-color
Subscribe
  • Login
  • Register
  • Subscribe
  • News
    • Processor News
    • Suppliers
    • More News
    • End Markets
    • FYI Charts
    • LSR World
    • Multimedia
    • NPE2021
    • K Show
    • Special Reports
    • Top materials of injection molders
      Recycled PET use by product category
      US PET, flexible packaging desintations
      Global fluropolymers additives market: CAGR
    • NPE exhibitors question handling of deposits for canceled trade show
      Exhibitors back NPE cancellation: ‘We couldn't take that risk'
      NPE2021 canceled as in-person event
      NPE reviews its options as pandemic prompts exhibitor to exit
    • Injection Molding
    • Blow Molding
    • Film & Sheet
    • Pipe/Profile/Tubing
    • Rotomolding
    • Thermoforming
    • Recycling
    • Machinery
    • Materials
    • Molds/Tooling
    • Product news
    • Design
    • What Keeps You Up At Night
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Sustainability
    • Public Policy
    • Material Insights Videos
    • Numbers that Matter
    • Polymer Points Live
    • Automotive
    • Packaging
    • Medical
    • Consumer Products
    • Construction
    • Videos
    • Galleries
    • Podcasts
    • CEO Issue
    • Best Places to Work
    • Processor of the Year
    • Rising Stars
    • Women Breaking the Mold
  • Opinion
    • The Plastics Blog
    • Kickstart
    • Heavy Metal
    • One Good Resin
    • BRICS and Plastics
    • All Things Data
    • Viewpoint
    • Perspective
    • Mailbag
    • Getting back on the road
      How long will it take for EVs to replace internal combustion engines?
      Watching, and hoping, for progress in 2021
      COVID-19 stories dominate 2020 headlines
    • Kickstart: Attention, Walmart molders
      Kickstart: No one said returning to school would be easy
      Kickstart: Best foot forward
      Kickstart: Heading back to the office ... sometime
    • Heavy Metal: Coronavirus edition, plus the work of working from home
      Don't put off succession planning
      What's a good gift for your cobot? Batteries?
      Here's some big ideas to mull over the holidays
    • Plaskolite wins 3M supplier award
      Green feet: Braskem partners with Dansko on bio-based clogs
      Curbell donates plastic sheet for prosthetics project in Ecuador
      Covestro volunteers build ramp for Ohio veteran
    • Climate debate in Washington increasingly includes plastic
      There was no choice but canceling NPE still a big deal
      The business case for producer responsibility
      Think divided government stalls plastics legislation? Think again
    • Thermoformers: Would you believe a 12 percent gain?
      Just how big is thermoforming in North America?
      Changing names for compounders embracing corporate branding
      Diversity the key to outperforming the market
    • Thermoformers: Would you believe a 12 percent gain?
      The benefits of getting social
      Rising Stars shine bright future on industry
      Getting back on the road
    • Perspective: Plastics manufacturers — a surprising contribution to sustainability
      Plastics industry business owners: Listen to your future workforce
      Perspective: ‘Fake news' of a different sort?
      Perspective: Making products in the USA is good for the planet
    • Mailbag: Additional fees for electric vehicles ‘unfortunate'
      Mailbag: Where's the plastics industry's response to critics?
      Mailbag: Manufacturers struggling to follow COVID-19 safety rules
      Modernizing recycling infrastructure will benefit businesses as well as the environment
  • Shop Floor
    • Blending
    • Compounding
    • Drying
    • Injection Molding
    • Purging
    • Robotics
    • Size Reduction
    • Structural Foam
    • Tooling
    • Training
    • Maintenance can ensure efficient blender operation
      Dosing: Perfect for adding color
      Blending vs dosing: What you need to know
      Going low or high: Comparing volume
    • Colors and custom compounds
      In the laboratory: Compounding solutions
      Recycling content: Resins going ‘green’
      Compounding: Glass and other fillers
    • Dryer maintenance: Don’t err with air
      Dryers: Options for a shop’s process
      Dryer installation: Going central?
      Resins: Hygroscopic or non-hygroscopic
    • Electric injection molding presses: Efficiency is key
      Hydraulic injection molding machines
      Proper maintenance can prevent downtime
      Hybrid injection molding machines
    • Purging Hot runners: Open or closed methods
      Purging extrusion machinery
      Purging extrusion blow molding machines
      Purging: Chemical, abrasive and non-abrasive
    • Controls, special applications boost production, profitability
      Robot maintenance key for smooth operation
      High-speed robots: A rapid way to increase efficiency
      Robots: Every shape and size
    • Maintenance: Key for efficiency
      Shredders: Plastic in pieces
      Safety first for size reduction
      Granulators: The right fit
    • Structural foam molding: Flexibility for processors
      Video: Structural foam molding
    • Mold inventory: How many molds does a shop have?
      Molds: Innovation
      Mold changeover: Saving time and money
      How molds work
    • Labor: Apprenticeships may provide answer
      College training, programs
      Internships: Solving the skills gap in-house
      Lean Six Sigma: Transforming business operation
  • Events
    • Plastics News Events
    • Industry Events
    • Livestreams/Webinars
    • Ask the Expert
    • Polymer Points Live
    • Reifenhäuser Technologies Livestreams
    • 2020 Caps & Closures Library
    • Plastics in Healthcare Library
    • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum Library
    • Polymer Points Live - February 2021
      Polymer Points Live - January 2021
      Polymer Points Live - December 2020
      Polymer Points Live - October 2020
    • Plastics in Healthcare 2020
    • Plastics News Executive Forum
    • Plastics in Automotive
    • Plastics News Caps & Closures
    • Plastics in Healthcare
    • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum
  • Resin Prices
    • All Resins
    • Commodity TPs
    • High Temp TPs
    • ETPs
    • Thermosets
    • Recycled Plastics
    • Historic Commodity Thermoplastics
    • Historic High Temp Thermoplastics
    • Historic Engineering Thermoplastics
    • Historic Thermosets
    • Historic Recycled Plastics
  • Rankings
    • Injection Molders
    • Blow Molders
    • Film Sheet
    • Thermoformers
    • Pipe Profile Tubing
    • Rotomolders
    • Mold/Toolmakers
    • LSR Processors
    • Recyclers
    • Compounders - List
    • Association - List
    • Plastic Lumber - List
    • All
  • Data Store
  • Directory
  • More+
    • Classifieds
    • Digital Edition
    • Newsletters
    • Sponsored Content
    • KraussMaffei Sponsored Content
    • ENGEL Sponsored Content
    • White Papers
    • Processor of the Year submissions
    • Sponsored By Ensign Equipment
      Filling Systems Customized for Any Process or Budget Need
      KraussMaffei
      Sponsored By KraussMaffei
      KraussMaffei Retools in US with investment from Parent Ownership
      Sponsored By Mitsubishi
      Innovative new technology from Mitsubishi Engineering-Plastics Corporation helps reduce emission footprints
      Canon Virginia, Inc.
      Sponsored Content By Canon Virginia, Inc.
      Canon Virginia Inc. brings collaboration to the table
    • KraussMaffei
      Sponsored By KraussMaffei
      KraussMaffei Retools in US with investment from Parent Ownership
    • Sponsored By ENGEL Machinery
      Tailored maintenance for injection molding machines and robots
      Sponsored By ENGEL Machinery
      Improve maintenance efficiency with e-connect.monitor
      Sponsored By ENGEL Machinery
      Maximum precision for lowest shot weights
      Sponsored By ENGEL Machinery
      Even more cost effectiveness for small precision parts
    • Shell
      Sponsored By Shell
      Food and Beverage Trends Impacting the Polymer Industry
      Sponsored By Conexiom
      Use Sales Order Automation to free up time for CSRs to focus on customers, not manual entry
    • Place an Ad
    • Sign up for Early Classified
MENU
Breadcrumb
  1. Home
  2. News
February 05, 2021 10:36 AM

Brand owners, NGOs call for Washington to step up on recycling

Steve Toloken
Plastics News Staff
  • Tweet
  • Share
  • Share
  • Email
  • More
    Print
    Photo by David Bohrer/Consumer Brands Association
    From left: Sens. Tom Carper, D-Del.; John Boozman, R-Ark.; Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.; and Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska., at a meeting of the Recycling Leadership Council in early 2020.

    Whatever happens around recycling and plastics policy in the United States, it's looking like Washington is going to play a much larger role in an area historically left to state and local governments.

    A broad coalition of consumer products companies, the Recycling Leadership Council, unveiled a policy plan Feb. 4 that wants the federal government to be much more involved in regulating and financing recycling.

    To buttress their point, the group's online unveiling included appearances by several U.S. senators and members of Congress.

    The lawmakers said there's bipartisan interest in Washington in doing more, even if they did not identify specific legislation on the scale of what the RLC report is urging.

    RLC, which is organized by the Consumer Brands Association, urged Washington help standardize U.S recycling, provide more funding for local systems and recyclers, and build better data collection.

    One RLC recommendation that Washington could do soon: Any new infrastructure legislation in Congress should include money to help struggling recycling programs.

    The report also made some plastics-specific points.

    It argued that low virgin resin prices cause major problems for making plastics recycling economically viable, although it didn't detail what to do about that.

    As well, it urged Washington to support development of advanced recycling technologies favored by the industry and study the "global impacts of U.S. plastic pollution," including whether U.S. plastic waste exports are actually properly recycled in other countries.

    But mostly the RLC, which includes some of the world's biggest corporate buyers of plastic resin, intended its report as a statement from consumer product companies and allied groups that they want Washington to step up.

    "Recycling in the United States is at a breaking point due to thousands of disparate systems, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the massive fractures in its foundation," said Geoff Freeman, CBA president and CEO. "The time is now to solve this crisis, and Americans overwhelmingly want federal leadership."

    Other coalition members include the American Beverage Association, the Flexible Packaging Association and glass and metal packaging groups.

    The report came on the same day that more than 250 environmental groups made their own pitch to President Joe Biden for $1.3 billion in new federal spending aimed at plastics pollution.

    Like RLC, they also suggested funds come from new federal infrastructure spending, and they added climate or stimulus legislation.

    The Break Free From Plastic coalition asked Biden for $75 million to better regulate and enforce environmental laws aimed at the plastics industry, as well as $150 million to investigate the health impacts of plastics and $500 million to support recycling of non-plastic materials.

    The RLC report came in for criticism from Greenpeace, which said government should try to reduce the use of throwaway packaging and abandon the idea that recycling paid for with tax dollars can solve the problem.

    "Real solutions start with an honest assessment of the problem, which goes well beyond waste and will require far more than recycling to solve," said John Hocevar, Greenpeace USA oceans campaign director. "It is time to abandon throwaway packaging, especially plastics, and incentivize systems of reuse. … Today's blueprint is just another 'call to action' from an industry front group that fails to acknowledge this fundamental reality."

    Consumer Brands Association
    Stasz
    ‘Critical' federal role

    RLC members, which includes the environmental group Ocean Conservancy as well as industry-funded organizations like The Recycling Partnership, see the report as an important step toward that goal.

    RLC made several broad policy proposals, including calling for national definitions of recycling and recyclability, federal block grants for local programs and tax incentives for recycling companies similar to those given to the renewable power industry. They also called for stronger Federal Trade Commission enforcement of marketing claims for recyclability.

    Meghan Stasz, vice president of packaging and sustainability at CBA, said RLC sees federal action as a "really critical piece."

    "We don't see this blueprint as a singular solution," she said. "Rather, we think that strong federal action and leadership can really help accelerate the solutions that states and industries are already working toward."

    Stasz and other RLC members said it will take a concerted effort in Washington.

    "I think the next step of direct engagement up on Capitol Hill will be vitally important to make this real," said Kate Krebs, director of industry affairs at Closed Loop Partners.

    RLC sees the report as building on a policy goal set by the Trump administration in its waning days, for a U.S. recycling rate of 50 percent by 2030.

    The report did not get into details on how to pay for the upgrades to the thousands of local government recycling programs across the country, nor did it present a detailed picture of what that might cost.

    But several of the coalition members noted at a news conference that their groups have gone further around funding and endorsed industry paying fees on packaging.

    The Recycling Partnership released a report in September calling for packaging fees and "shared producer responsibility," said Dylan de Thomas, vice president of external affairs for the group.

    "We are going to insist and assist that producers play that prominent role," he said. "Community recycling budgets have always been tight. But in this post-COVID and post China National Sword environment, we're going to see those governments squeezed even tighter to juggle to see how recycling fits into their offering of those critical public services."

    As well, the CBA in an April policy agenda floated putting fees on virgin plastic resin to fund recycling, although that CBA idea was not part of the RLC report.

    The RLC report noted research from Ocean Conservancy that said extended producer responsibility programs have "the most potential" to address the funding gap, followed by recycled content mandates. And it noted OC reports arguing that "bans on problematic plastic" can reduce contamination in curbside systems.

    Legislation in Washington has not advanced to the stage of talking financial details beyond the Democratic-sponsored Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, but members of Congress on the call said there's a lot of bipartisan interest in recycling.

    Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said both the Trump and Biden administrations have been interested, and he said he plans a third version of the Save Our Seas legislation, which passed with bipartisan support in its previous two versions.

    "This is literally one of those issues where everybody for the most part is pulling on the same oar and that's how you get things done in this town," Sullivan said.

    Some Democratic lawmakers singled out plastics in their comments.

    Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who is a co-author of the Save Our Seas laws with Sullivan, called for "particular attention to ocean plastics in this context. We have a real crisis emerging offshore."

    Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., the new chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, also highlighted plastics in a statement distributed by the RLC.

    "America's recycling system is not working, especially with respect to plastics," Carper said. "Recycling in our country is in dire need of new policies and solutions."

    The RLC report said the low price of virgin resin is an obstacle to having strong end markets for recycled plastic.

    "The primary obstacles to developing end markets are contamination of the recycling stream, low-value material, the low cost of virgin plastic and scalability," it said, noting it held several meetings with stakeholder groups.

    "In the interconnected recycling system, economics matter," it said. "As the experts in several stakeholder panels identified, including the retail and plastics sessions, the cost of virgin material is often much lower than recycled content."

    The report said that the rapid growth of plastic production, with an estimated 8.3 billion metric tons manufactured by 2017, is "outgrowing all other man-made materials other than steel and cement."

    It said that's projected to grow to 34 billion tonnes by 2050.

    As well, the report noted problems getting enough reclaimed plastics to meet market demands for recycled content.

    One plastics industry trade group welcomed the RLC report.

    Joshua Baca, head of the plastics division at the American Chemistry Council, pointed to ACC's plastics road map it released in October that called for industry financing like packaging fees as well as legislative support for recycled content.

    "We're dealing with an issue that requires a lot of stakeholders to be involved and we welcome additional ideas and solutions," Baca said.

    He said any effort should recognize the importance of technologies for chemical recycling, or advanced recycling as the industry calls them, to meet market demand for recycled content for plastics.

    "You can't solve the plastic waste problem without advanced recycling," Baca said. "Hard-to-recycle stuff cannot be done without advanced recycling and it's very complementary to mechanical recycling."

    Letter
    to the
    Editor

    Do you have an opinion about this story? Do you have some thoughts you'd like to share with our readers? Plastics News would love to hear from you. Email your letter to Editor at [email protected]

    Get our newsletters

    Staying current is easy with Plastics News delivered straight to your inbox, free of charge.

    Subscribe today

    Subscribe to Plastics News

    Subscribe now
    Connect with Us
    • LinkedIn
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram

    Plastics News covers the business of the global plastics industry. We report news, gather data and deliver timely information that provides our readers with a competitive advantage.

    logo-pn-color
    Contact Us

    1155 Gratiot Avenue
    Detroit MI 48207-2997

    Customer Service:
    877-320-1723

    Resources
    • About
    • Staff
    • Editorial Calendar
    • Media Kit
    • Data Store
    • Digital Edition
    • Custom Content
    • People
    • Contact
    • Careers
    • Sitemap
    Related Crain Publications
    • Sustainable Plastics
    • Rubber & Plastics News
    • Urethanes Technology
    • Plastics News China
    • European Rubber Journal
    • Tire Business
    Legal
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Privacy Request
    Copyright © 1996-2021. Crain Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
    • News
      • Processor News
        • Injection Molding
        • Blow Molding
        • Film & Sheet
        • Pipe/Profile/Tubing
        • Rotomolding
        • Thermoforming
        • Recycling
      • Suppliers
        • Machinery
        • Materials
        • Molds/Tooling
        • Product news
        • Design
      • More News
        • What Keeps You Up At Night
        • Mergers & Acquisitions
        • Sustainability
        • Public Policy
        • Material Insights Videos
        • Numbers that Matter
        • Polymer Points Live
      • End Markets
        • Automotive
        • Packaging
        • Medical
        • Consumer Products
        • Construction
      • FYI Charts
        • Current FYI
      • LSR World
      • Multimedia
        • Videos
        • Galleries
        • Podcasts
      • NPE2021
      • K Show
      • Special Reports
        • CEO Issue
        • Best Places to Work
        • Processor of the Year
        • Rising Stars
        • Women Breaking the Mold
    • Opinion
      • The Plastics Blog
      • Kickstart
      • Heavy Metal
      • One Good Resin
      • BRICS and Plastics
      • All Things Data
      • Viewpoint
      • Perspective
      • Mailbag
    • Shop Floor
      • Blending
      • Compounding
      • Drying
      • Injection Molding
      • Purging
      • Robotics
      • Size Reduction
      • Structural Foam
      • Tooling
      • Training
    • Events
      • Plastics News Events
        • Plastics News Executive Forum
        • Plastics in Automotive
        • Plastics News Caps & Closures
        • Plastics in Healthcare
        • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum
      • Industry Events
      • Livestreams/Webinars
      • Ask the Expert
      • Polymer Points Live
      • Reifenhäuser Technologies Livestreams
      • 2020 Caps & Closures Library
      • Plastics in Healthcare Library
      • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum Library
    • Resin Prices
      • All Resins
      • Commodity TPs
        • Historic Commodity Thermoplastics
      • High Temp TPs
        • Historic High Temp Thermoplastics
      • ETPs
        • Historic Engineering Thermoplastics
      • Thermosets
        • Historic Thermosets
      • Recycled Plastics
        • Historic Recycled Plastics
    • Rankings
      • Injection Molders
      • Blow Molders
      • Film Sheet
      • Thermoformers
      • Pipe Profile Tubing
      • Rotomolders
      • Mold/Toolmakers
      • LSR Processors
      • Recyclers
      • Compounders - List
      • Association - List
      • Plastic Lumber - List
      • All
    • Data Store
    • Directory
    • More+
      • Classifieds
        • Place an Ad
        • Sign up for Early Classified
      • Digital Edition
      • Newsletters
      • Sponsored Content
      • KraussMaffei Sponsored Content
      • ENGEL Sponsored Content
      • White Papers
      • Processor of the Year submissions