Skip to main content
Sister Publication Links
  • Sustainable Plastics
  • Rubber News
Subscribe
  • Sign Up Free
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • News
    • Processor News
    • Suppliers
    • More News
    • Digital Edition
    • End Markets
    • Special Reports
    • Newsletters
    • Videos
    • Podcasts
    • Injection Molding
    • Blow Molding
    • Film & Sheet
    • Pipe/Profile/Tubing
    • Rotomolding
    • Thermoforming
    • Recycling
    • Machinery
    • Materials
    • Molds/Tooling
    • Product news
    • Design
    • K Show
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Sustainability
    • Public Policy
    • Material Insights Videos
    • Numbers that Matter
    • Automotive
    • Packaging
    • Medical
    • Consumer Products
    • Construction
    • Notable Leaders in Sustainability
    • Processor of the Year
    • Best Places to Work
    • Women Breaking the Mold
    • Rising Stars
    • Diversity
    • Most Interesting Social Media Accounts in Plastics
  • Opinion
    • The Plastics Blog
    • Kickstart
    • One Good Resin
    • Pellets and Politics
    • All Things Data
    • Viewpoint
    • From Pillar to Post
    • Perspective
    • Mailbag
    • Fake Plastic Trees
  • Shop Floor
    • Blending
    • Compounding
    • Drying
    • Injection Molding
    • Purging
    • Robotics
    • Size Reduction
    • Structural Foam
    • Tooling
    • Training
  • Events
    • Plastics News Events
    • Industry Events
    • Injection Molding & Design Expo
    • Livestreams/Webinars
    • Editorial Livestreams
    • Ask the Expert
    • Plastics News Events Library
    • Plastics News Executive Forum
    • Injection Molding & Design Expo
    • Plastics Caps + Closures: A Global Online Event
    • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum
    • Bioplastics Live
    • Numbers that Matter Live
    • PFAS Live
    • Plastics in Politics Live
    • PN Live: Mergers and Acquisitions
    • Polymer Points Live
    • Sustainable Plastics Live
    • Plastics Caps & Closures Library
    • Plastics in Healthcare Library
    • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum Library
  • Rankings & Data
    • Injection Molders
    • Blow Molders
    • Film Sheet
    • Thermoformers
    • Pipe Profile Tubing
    • Rotomolders
    • Mold/Toolmakers
    • LSR Processors
    • Recyclers
    • Compounders - List
    • Association - List
    • Plastic Lumber - List
    • All
  • Directory
  • Resin Prices
    • Resin Prices Overview
    • Commodity Thermoplastics
    • High Temperature Thermoplastics
    • Engineering Thermoplastics
    • Recycled Plastics
    • Thermosets
    • Europe - Virgin
    • Europe - Recycled
    • Europe - Feedstock
  • Custom
    • Sponsored Content
    • LS Mtron Sponsored Content
    • Conair Sponsored Content
    • KraussMaffei Sponsored Content
    • ENGEL Sponsored Content
    • White Papers
    • Classifieds
    • Place an Ad
    • Sign up for Early Classified
MENU
Breadcrumb
  1. Home
  2. News
May 22, 2020 11:59 AM

Consumer goods makers propose virgin resin fee to boost recycling

Steve Toloken
Assistant Managing Editor
Plastics News Staff
  • Tweet
  • Share
  • Share
  • Email
  • More
    Reprints 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.

    Washington — A trade association made up of major consumer brands including Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Clorox Co. is proposing a fee on virgin resin in the U.S. to level the playing field for recycled plastic and pay for improvements in the country's recycling system.

    The proposal from the Consumer Brands Association is part of a broader recycling policy platform it put out recently that included five other funding options, such as higher landfill charges, and does not get into details on resin fees.

    But having some of the world's biggest corporate buyers of plastics endorsing a virgin resin fee is a major shift and could move an idea previously limited to environmental groups and academics to the front of the debate around how — and who — pays for better recycling systems.

    CBA argues a virgin plastics fee would make it more economical to use recycled content, and it comes as many of its member companies in the consumer goods industries have made commitments to use more recycled plastic in the U.S. but say they'll struggle to find enough material because of low recycling rates.

    "Virgin resin, which is used to make plastic, is currently less expensive than recycled resin," CBA said in its mid-April document, Achieving America's Recycling Future. "A fee for virgin resin would put it on price parity with recycled resin, making it more cost-effective for use in packaging."

    CBA, which changed its name from the Grocery Manufacturers Association in January, included the virgin plastics fee as one of six funding mechanisms, along with packaging fees, waste generator fees, landfill tipping charges, per-bag fees for residential trash and voluntary industry fees to support education.

    Meghan Stasz, vice president of packaging and sustainability for the Arlington, Va.-based group, said a resin fee "could be a good tool" to address the price disparity between virgin and recycled resins.

    "This is one of the newest ideas in the financing conversation, so we don't admittedly have all of the details hammered out," she said. "But what we wanted to do was get that concept out … so that we can have exactly those kinds of conversations with stakeholders. It's a concept that we have talked about as an industry."

    ACC surprised

    The American Chemistry Council said the announcement was unexpected and believes a better approach would be to use chemical recycling technologies under development by virgin materials makers and others.

    "It was surprising," said Keith Christman, managing director of plastic markets at ACC. "We don't think it's the right approach, and it definitely would have been nice to talk about it beforehand.

    "We don't think it's the right approach to make recycled resin more competitive by artificially increasing the cost of virgin plastic," he said. "Instead, we're focused on scaling up advanced recycling that will make recycled resins meet both the brand quality needs for packaging as well as be more cost-effective by bringing the scale of large plastic resin producers to recycled materials."

    He said investments totaling $4.6 billion have been announced for both mechanical and chemical recycling in the United States in the last three years, since China's National Sword program essentially ended exports of lower-value plastic scrap and upended recycling markets.

    "These kinds of programs using advanced recycling are going to give us the scale we need to be cost-effective in the future," he said.

    The CBA plan does include chemical recycling, and Stasz said there is a "real opportunity" for it.

    Nationalize policy

    It's hard to predict if CBA's proposal would become part of any legislation.

    But consumer product companies have been making a stronger push in Washington to urge the federal government to take a larger role around recycling policy, and they're getting some high-profile audiences in the capital.

    In announcing its new platform, CBA said its members support "a national solution to fix the country's broken recycling system" with three goals: harmonizing the more than 10,000 local recycling programs in the U.S., a long-term financing plan and strong end markets to meet demand.

    "I think one of the major goals or points of our policy platform is that we want to elevate this conversation to a national one," Stasz said.

    Consumer product companies have been feeling more political pressure in state legislatures. California, in particular, almost passed legislation last year that would have required specific packaging types to achieve a 75 percent recycling rate by 2030 to be sold in the state.

    CBA organized a new group, the Recycling Leadership Council, along with more than a dozen other business associations and environmental groups, earlier this year.

    In January, the RLC had a kickoff meeting in Washington and, according to a CBA statement on its website, had a bipartisan group of members of Congress at the meeting to hear from CBA, the council members and each other on recycling policy.

    They included the Republican and Democratic heads of the Senate Recycling Caucus; the bipartisan sponsors of the plastics industry supported Save Our Seas legislation; Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., an author of the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, which is strongly opposed by industry; and Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., an organizer of the Congressional Plastics Solutions Task Force.

    RLC plans to put out a position paper in the fall, Stasz said. The CBA's policy platform with the virgin resin fee is not endorsed by the RLC.

    Christman said that while ACC is not a member of the RLC, he attended the January meeting with lawmakers.

    "I attended that meeting that they had on Capitol Hill," he said. "There was no hint of a proposal of a resin fee at that meeting and no discussion since."

    Christman pointed to his testimony at an early March hearing in Congress as examples of efforts the ACC supports, including the Save Our Seas Act; the Recover Act, which calls for at least $500 million in federal money to support local recycling; and the Recycle Act, which would boost recycling education spending.

    "There's a lot we're doing around recycling and improving recycling in the U.S.," he said.

    The Plastics Industry Association, for its part, said it looked forward to working with the new CBA council and also supported the Recover and Recycle Acts.

    Business pressures

    There are strong business pressures on the consumer product companies in CBA to boost recycling, particularly around plastics.

    Major consumer product companies have made sizable public commitments to increase recycled plastic in packaging, but there's not nearly enough available to meet that demand, said Allison Shapiro, executive director of the recycling investment fund Closed Loop Partners, in a May 19 webinar for the conference Circularity 20 Digital.

    She noted estimates from the New Plastics Economy project that the post-consumer recycled resin content of packaging was 4 percent in 2018 but would have to rise to 22 percent by 2025 to meet those goals, for 400 companies and retailers in that program.

    "That's a tremendously ambitious goal in seven years," Shapiro said.

    While Shapiro said that some are nervous that major companies will back away from those commitments as a response to the coronavirus pandemic, she also noted public statements from major companies that they will keep them.

    Stasz also said she believed the consumer goods industry will keep those commitments. The pandemic has reinforced the value of packaging for food safety and for protecting products, but it has also shown that better recycling systems — and funding to support it — are needed, she said.

    "COVID has certainly not changed the consumer packaged goods industries' commitment to sustainability, its commitment to improving packaging," she said. "Packaging has a really critical job to play. And we need recycling systems that can handle that packaging."

    The CBA proposal is not the first to suggest new approaches for funding. ACC last year endorsed a fee on single-use disposable foodservice packaging in California and also proposed it in New York and other places.

    As well, the Recycling Partnership, an industry-funded group, also said earlier this year it was getting ready to release a funding proposal and suggested it could include fees on packaging to close what they estimate is a gap of at least $9 billion to improve recycling systems in the United States.

    Dylan de Thomas, vice president of industry collaboration for the Recycling Partnership, said debates around financing recycling are moving into much greater detail, both in the public and private sectors.

    "A lot of the conversations like [these]… would be unthinkable three years ago," he said. "The industry at large and all the various stakeholders recognize that they need to play a greater role. … It's going to take a lot of effort, ingenuity and cash."

    RECOMMENDED FOR YOU
    Numbers That Matter Live - October 2023
    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]

    Most Popular
    1
    An 8,000-ton dream for Milacron, 20/20 Custom Molded Plastics
    2
    US Merchants opens curtain on growing injection molding operations
    3
    Report: Tekni-Plex may be for sale
    4
    Plastics processors face automation needs, sustainability demands
    5
    Rising costs prompt delay in Corpus Christi PET plant construction
    SIGN UP FOR OUR FREE NEWSLETTERS
    EMAIL ADDRESS

    Please enter a valid email address.

    Please enter your email address.

    Please verify captcha.

    Please select at least one newsletter to subscribe.

    Find more newsletters at plasticsnews.com/newsletters.

    You can unsubscribe at any time through links in these emails. For more information, see our Privacy Policy.

    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.

    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 News
    • Tire Business
    • Urethanes Technology
    Legal
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Privacy Request
    Copyright © 1996-2023. 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
        • K Show
        • Mergers & Acquisitions
        • Sustainability
        • Public Policy
        • Material Insights Videos
        • Numbers that Matter
      • Digital Edition
      • End Markets
        • Automotive
        • Packaging
        • Medical
        • Consumer Products
        • Construction
      • Special Reports
        • Notable Leaders in Sustainability
        • Processor of the Year
        • Best Places to Work
        • Women Breaking the Mold
        • Rising Stars
        • Diversity
        • Most Interesting Social Media Accounts in Plastics
      • Newsletters
      • Videos
      • Podcasts
    • Opinion
      • The Plastics Blog
      • Kickstart
      • One Good Resin
      • Pellets and Politics
      • All Things Data
      • Viewpoint
      • From Pillar to Post
      • Perspective
      • Mailbag
      • Fake Plastic Trees
    • Shop Floor
      • Blending
      • Compounding
      • Drying
      • Injection Molding
      • Purging
      • Robotics
      • Size Reduction
      • Structural Foam
      • Tooling
      • Training
    • Events
      • Plastics News Events
        • Plastics News Executive Forum
        • Injection Molding & Design Expo
        • Plastics Caps + Closures: A Global Online Event
        • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum
      • Industry Events
      • Injection Molding & Design Expo
      • Livestreams/Webinars
      • Editorial Livestreams
        • Bioplastics Live
        • Numbers that Matter Live
        • PFAS Live
        • Plastics in Politics Live
        • PN Live: Mergers and Acquisitions
        • Polymer Points Live
        • Sustainable Plastics Live
      • Ask the Expert
      • Plastics News Events Library
        • Plastics Caps & Closures Library
        • Plastics in Healthcare Library
        • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum Library
    • Rankings & Data
      • Injection Molders
      • Blow Molders
      • Film Sheet
      • Thermoformers
      • Pipe Profile Tubing
      • Rotomolders
      • Mold/Toolmakers
      • LSR Processors
      • Recyclers
      • Compounders - List
      • Association - List
      • Plastic Lumber - List
      • All
    • Directory
    • Resin Prices
      • Resin Prices Overview
      • Commodity Thermoplastics
      • High Temperature Thermoplastics
      • Engineering Thermoplastics
      • Recycled Plastics
      • Thermosets
      • Europe - Virgin
      • Europe - Recycled
      • Europe - Feedstock
    • Custom
      • Sponsored Content
      • LS Mtron Sponsored Content
      • Conair Sponsored Content
      • KraussMaffei Sponsored Content
      • ENGEL Sponsored Content
      • White Papers
      • Classifieds
        • Place an Ad
        • Sign up for Early Classified