Cities push Congress to take bigger role on plastic waste

Washington — Operators of city recycling programs came to Capitol Hill March 4 to urge a much bigger federal role in tackling plastic waste and recycling problems, raising ideas like extended producer responsibility (EPR), fees on some packaging and laws requiring recycled content in things like PET bottles.

The push for stronger federal action garnered some support from Democrats at a congressional hearing, but also sizable pushback and skepticism from Republicans on the panel, one of whom declared himself "pro-plastic" and against restrictions on plastics manufacturing.

It was a wide-ranging hearing and at times seemed to lack a clear focus, but recycling officials from Los Angeles and other cities told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that China closing its markets to imports of plastic and paper recyclables in 2018 dealt a major blow to the economics of their programs.

Los Angeles previously turned a $4 million annual profit from its curbside recycling program, but China's restrictions help flip that to an $8 million loss last year and a projected $12 million loss this year, said Enrique Zaldivar, general manager of the Los Angeles Sanitation and Environment Bureau.

In both testimony and written comments, he urged Washington to take a stronger role than it historically has.

He endorsed EPR, fees, more attention on plastic waste and single-use products and steps to develop markets for recyclables, including developing more of a regional recycling economy with Mexico and Canada.

"The burden of paying for wastes without markets falls on municipalities," Zaldivar said. "Industry has long expected taxpayers or ratepayers to absorb the burden of throwaway items and to pay billions of dollars for a system that's being crushed under the weight of the problem.

"The systems are now failing everyone, including consumer brand owners and the plastics industry," he said. "It points to a crisis in recycling markets."

He endorsed legislation like the Recover Act, a $500 million recycling grant program supported by the plastics industry.

But he also praised new legislation that plastics makers have strongly opposed, from Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., and Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif., which would set up EPR programs, ban some single-use plastics and restrict expansion at certain plastics facilities. Zaldivar urged Congress to consider many approaches.

But several Republicans on the committee said they were concerned about unintended consequences from banning plastics and replacing them with materials they said may have a higher environmental footprint.

"I know some people think it would be easier to ban plastics, but I do not think it's a good policy to ban a material because you do not like it," said Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., a co-chair of the House Recycling Caucus.

"We should explore whether banning plastics would actually exacerbate the problem Congress thinks it is solving with a ban, as well as what other risk trade-offs occur," he said.

Both Shimkus and Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., the top Republican on the committee, said they did want the federal government expanding into setting waste policy for curbside and other recycling of nonhazardous waste, saying it should be left to states and local governments.

But Democrats were arguing for a bigger federal role, saying they saw plastics waste as contributing to environmental, health and climate problems.

"Plastic pollution is contaminating our air and our land and our water and is contributing to the climate crisis," said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and chair of the committee, and with Shimkus, the other co-chair of the House Recycling Caucus.

Shipping U.S. recyclables to China allowed the U.S. to avoid having to develop domestic solutions for its recycling problems, particularly because a significant amount of U.S. exports were contaminated and what the U.S. thought was being recycled was not, he said.

"This was profitable for American recyclers and hid any environmental costs from the American public, but the truth is that up to 30 percent of that material exported was contaminated, making it unrecyclable," Pallone said.

Pallone argued that too much plastic cannot be reused, telling the panel that plastics should shoot for a model similar to aluminum, which has developed manufacturing methods that for recycled material to be continuously reused.

"For certain materials, recycling systems are working relatively well," he said. "Of all the aluminum ever produced in North America, 75 percent remains in use today. But that's not the same for plastics."

He said over the last 60 years, about 75 percent of plastics manufactured have become waste: "It's often cheaper to make new plastics from fossil fuels."

The short hearing did not delve into how a diverse range of materials like plastics achieve that sort of circular performance, but it was clear that members of Congress saw the problem in different ways.

Pallone, for example, noted that he was concerned by estimates that plans for rapidly increasing plastics production over the next 30 years — quadrupling production by 2050 — will dramatically increase the environmental footprint of plastics.

A policy memo distributed by Pallone pointed to studies that plastics will grow to become 13 percent of the world's remaining carbon budget through 2050 and that the percent of the world's oil being used for petrochemicals will grow from 12 percent to 50 percent by 2050.

"Solving the climate crisis will require strong action to address emissions from production and disposal of plastics," Pallone said.

Others testifying before the panel, however, argued that plastics use can lower carbon footprint in products.

Keith Christman, managing director of plastics markets at the Washington-based American Chemistry Council, gave as an example lightweight, flexible plastic film for coffee packaging that has only 25 percent of the greenhouse gas impact as steel coffee can packaging, even with an 80 percent recycling rate for the steel can and no recycling for the plastics.

He noted that the industry is working on technologies like chemical recycling to more widely recycle challenging plastics and has set goals of having all plastics packaging reused, recycled or recovered by 2040, and he argued that product bans would exacerbate environmental impacts.

He said China's recyclables ban has helped spur an estimated $4.2 billion in investment in plastics recycling in the United States in the last 18 months.