California report sees 'crisis' in recycling, urges plastics changes

A commission appointed by California's legislature to look at recycling is making some potentially big recommendations around plastic packaging that it says are needed to help a system in "crisis."

The report from the Statewide Commission on Recycling Markets and Curbside Recycling, released in late December, makes five policy proposals around plastics, including creating an official statewide list of what is recyclable. For plastics that list would only allow PET and high density polyethylene bottles in curbside systems.

The detailed report, which covers much more than plastic, is expected by observers to be a guide for legislation. If parts of it become law, it would represent a more muscular and prescriptive approach from the state capital in Sacramento.

The policy recommendations include prohibiting plastic bags and film from carrying recyclability messaging, banning colored PET bottles because they lower the value of recyclables for cities and enacting tougher restrictions around labels and shrink sleeves on plastic bottles.

As well, it says California should urge Washington to formally join the Basel Convention, which enacted new rules Jan. 1 limiting global exports of waste plastics.

The five recommendations got a mixed response from plastics industry groups and companies, which argued that while some proposals could clean up contamination, they said limiting what's in curbside could hurt an industry effort launched last year to increase recycling of polypropylene packaging.

The commission, however, says its proposals are needed to make California's recycling programs less of a financial burden on local governments by reducing contamination from low-value or hard-to-recycle packaging materials. It said China's 2018 ban on recyclable scrap imports has made the situation worse.

"The state is facing a recycling crisis, with high rates of contamination of collected recycled materials," the commission said in a report delivered to state legislators Dec. 21. "Recycling operations are struggling to remain viable and more material is being landfilled instead of recycled. This is directly related to the closure of nearly 1,000 recycling centers in California since 2013."

Perhaps most prominently, the commission recommended that California create a statewide list of what should be recyclable in local programs.

For plastics, it preliminarily recommends only allowing PET and HDPE bottles on the curbside list and thus able to be marketed as recyclable or carry the "chasing arrows" or other symbols.

Other commonly used plastics in packaging — like polypropylene bottles and rigid containers, as well as thermoformed PET packaging or jars — would be excluded.

The commission said those materials could be added by local programs and it left open the door to including PP and nonbottle PET materials on the list in its final report, expected in mid-2021.

But keeping PP off the list of recyclables is a concern for some in the plastics industry.

Steve Alexander, president and CEO of the Association of Plastic Recyclers, said it could hurt a new, industry-funded effort, the Polypropylene Recycling Coalition. The coalition launched in 2020 with $35 million from plastics and consumer product companies.

Alexander, who said APR agrees with many commission recommendations, said keeping PP off the state's recyclables list sends a mixed message.

"This market needs signals and by potentially limiting the supply of the certain material that you're focused on, you're giving the market mixed signals," he said. "Polypropylene certainly has a great demand for those materials and we're trying to build up the infrastructure to collect more broadly."

The report said it based its recommendations in part on a survey of 76 materials recovery facilities in the state and what materials they can find markets for. Some paper and metal products were also left off the preliminary statewide list.

The recyclability of PP packaging is being hotly debated. It was downgraded last year in a widely used recyclability assessment from the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, and some PP coalition members have said its acceptance in recycling programs was at risk.

PP packaging recycling rates remain in the single digits, well below the 30 percent rate generally seen as viable.

Still, one recycling company that's investing $80 million in a joint venture facility in California to process PP and other low-value plastics echoed the APR point and urged the state to include PP.

Los Angeles-based PreZero US Inc., part of German grocery store giant Schwarz Group, said in a statement it is investing in its new Riverside, Calif., plant because it wanted to focus on a state with "progressive recycling legislation."

"Polypropylene … is a highly recyclable polyolefin that we will sell to molders here in California to close the loop in a circular economy," said Hendrik Dullinger, vice president of business development. "In the absence of PP getting recycled and being sorted through [materials recovery facilities], the growing demand will quickly outpace supply.

"For that reason, we strongly oppose the proposed elimination of PP from its 'recyclable' classification," he said.

The commission also wants the state to toughen rules around what kinds of shrink sleeves and labels can be used with plastic bottles and packaging.

The commission says that PET and HDPE bottles have high potential for recycling, but companies too often add labels that hurt recyclability and contaminate the bales that cities sell. It wants the state to incorporate APR guidelines as a baseline for determining what sleeves can be used.

"Many product companies are increasingly using full-body shrink sleeves and labels that are inconsistent with California's recycling and processing infrastructure," the report said. "APR and other recycling organizations have clearly communicated to product designers that certain types of full-body shrink sleeves should not be employed on products, yet many companies ignore the guidance and put the burden on consumers to remove the shrink sleeve."

The commission also wants to allow the CalRecycle agency to expand APR's list of banned labels, arguing, for example, that if a washable ink requires "excessive fresh water" to be cleaned it should not be allowed.

The report pointed to other industry groups, including the Recycling Partnership and the National Association for PET Container Resources, that identified labels as major contaminants in the plastic bottle recycling stream.

Alexander said plastic recycling companies also want to address contamination and have concerns about labels and shrink sleeves, although he said recycling companies also have equipment that can handle some of them.

He said recycling companies share frustrations with lack of consistency in what local recycling programs will take and, like the commission, do not want metals used with PET bottles.

"Consistency in labeling is critical as is truth in labeling," he said. "As recyclers, we're frustrated that we can't get more materials to recycle and supply the marketplace. We're frustrated by contamination that continues to come into our stream. A lot of this stuff we agree on."

But he also expressed concern about different states have separate labeling systems, if California's report signals a move toward that.

"We're not saying that labeling systems don't need to be changed and updated to eliminate a lot of the confusion," Alexander said. "Just having separate state labeling requirements, we think only adds to that confusion."

The report also said that colored or tinted PET bottles hurt the overall "strong potential" for bottle recycling, and it recommended that state regulators only allow clear PET bottles to be sold in the state.

It noted that South Korea has banned colored PET bottles as part to cut its plastic waste in half and double its recycling rate to 70 percent. And it noted a similar drive in Japan prompted beverage makers there to voluntarily stop using colored PET in 2001.

The commission also argued that industry reports from the Recycling Partnership and other groups that support its point that colored PET bottles are bad for recycling.

"Implementation of the policy would quickly increase beverage bottle recycling and reduce waste," the commission said.

Alexander said APR is also concerned about colored PET bottles. There is some movement in the U.S. toward getting rid of tinted PET.

Coca-Cola Co., for example, announced Feb. 9 that all bottles in its Sprite brand will move to clear packaging by the end of 2022 "to optimize the packaging for recycling."

The commission also urged the state to limit recyclability messages around plastic bags and film packaging.

It said bags and films should not be labeled as recyclable, either with language or symbols like a chasing arrow, because in practical terms they cannot be recycled in California's curbside programs.

The commission pointed to a 2018 study by the CalRecycle state agency that found that plastic bags, films and wraps were "the largest type of contamination in curbside recycling bins" at 12 percent, by weight.

It argued that flexible plastic materials have limited market value, gum up machinery in recycling facilities and lower the value of paper or cardboard bales cities want to sell, the report said.

And it pointed to comments from the Recycling Partnership that found significant consumer confusion around recyclability messages on plastic films, leading people to mistakenly put it in curbside bins.

"According to the Recycling Partnership, more than half of Californians think plastic bags are accepted in their curbside recycling program, regardless of whether plastic bags are actually accepted by their program," the report said. "TRP found that this behavior is driven by the misunderstanding that the chasing arrows recycle symbol means the item is recyclable curbside and the recycling system will fix mistakes that the residents make."

"Since consumers equate the 'recycle' word and symbol with what is accepted in curbside recycling bins, the 'recycle' word and symbol must be reserved for materials which are accepted in curbside bins and do not cause contamination," the commission said.

Trade association American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance, argued that the state government should not remove the word "recyclable" from bags.

It pointed to other laws in California mandating recycled content and language directing consumers to recycle bags and film at store takeback programs.

"Removing the word 'recyclable' from these bags makes little sense," said ARPBA Director Zachary Taylor. "Ironically, California law mandates reusable plastic film bags must be recyclable, contain 40 percent [post-consumer resin] and have language instructing consumers to recycle them through store takeback programs."

Taylor said the state should put more emphasis on education.

"A better approach to improve recycling efficiency is to focus on education programs that reinforce the appropriate place for various materials, not policy changes that will only divert more recyclable materials into the waste stream," he said.

But an executive with California-based flexible packaging and plastic film maker Emerald Packaging Inc. said the commission had a point.

"Perhaps this will cause the flexible packaging industry to support policies that would actually recycle plastics," said Emerald CEO Kevin Kelly. "The state is correct. Using a recycle symbol — like 4 — is misleading when the material isn't currently recycled except at store drop-off, which obviously doesn't happen much."

The commission is continuing its work and aims to give lawmakers an updated report in the summer. It suggested other topics could be in the final report.

It said it received several suggestions to weigh in on chemical recycling technologies and said it would review them under a three-part test to determine if they should be considered recycling facilities.

As well, it said it would look at how the state's container deposit payment system should handle PET thermoformed packaging, as well as prioritizing refillable containers in the bottle bill system.

The commission, which consisted of 17 members drawn from government, industry and nongovernmental organizations, said it had in some ways been asked to do a "nearly impossible" task in six months to raise California's current 37 percent recycling rate.

In particular it noted challenges around deciding what is recyclable and compostable, identifying strategies to meet California's "ambitious" recycling rate target of 75 percent and coming up with recommendations to help "build in-state recycling and composting capacity at a pace that is incompatible with the practical realities of permitting processes in California."