From EPR to 'picking on plastics,' groups see continued strong focus

Like plastics industry lobbyists, environmental groups and government officials expect a lot more legislation and activity this year around plastics, waste and environmental issues.

That's been the clear trend line. In 2021, for example, Maine and Oregon passed the country's first extended producer responsibility laws for packaging, opening the door to regulations that companies pay much more of the cost to recycle.

As well, governments in California, Washington state and New Jersey have all passed tough new mandates on recycled content in plastic packaging.

At a recent online conference, "Shifting Tides: Trends in Beverage Container Deposit and Packaging Legislation," environmentalists and state officials said they expect more of the same in 2022, including work with bottle bills.

"There was a breakthrough that happened with recycling legislation for packaging in 2021," said Susan Collins, president of the Container Recycling Institute, which organized the Jan. 10 event. "It's been a year like none other in the 12 years that I've been in this job."

Plastics industry lobbyists have noted similar trends in their own looks ahead to 2022 in state and federal policy.

For their part, Collins and others at CRI's event said they see more legislators linking worries about climate change with poor recycling and lack of circularity in materials use.

As well, they said public concerns are driven by cities facing higher costs for recycling in the wake of China's 2018 National Sword ban on imports of scrap materials.

One state official sees skepticism among state legislators over industry failures to meet past commitments.

"The one thing I noticed, having been around the block for a couple of decades, is … a whole new level of skepticism towards industry, and in particular the plastics industry, which is really founded I believe on decades of broken promises and failed commitments," said David Allaway, a senior policy analyst in the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

A policy aide to Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif., a key author of the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, said there's more bipartisan interest in recycling policy, partly because of the higher costs local governments faced after China's National Sword ban.

"We're just starting to see the dominoes fall in kind of an existential way," said Shane Trimmer, legislative director to Lowenthal. "Now the taxpayers are seeing it and they're letting policymakers know it. In a more bipartisan way, they're saying there's an issue on the ground."

Heidi Sanborn, the head of the California Statewide Commission on Recycling Markets and Curbside Recycling, said policymakers are increasingly linking climate with waste, recycling and resource extraction.

"We've got China Sword, all this pressure on sustainability, climate, the fires, tornadoes and hurricanes — everybody's seeing it," she said. "It's put a ton of pressure on everybody getting it together and really starting to close the loop. They can finally connect waste management in a circular economy with climate."

Oregon's Allaway said the debate should look at reducing overall consumption, rather than focusing on trying to recycle everything, and cautioned against "picking on plastics."

"There's been a lot of picking on plastics in the last 45 minutes; it's a really easy target," he said. "There's the potential for some really regrettable substitutes. I think we need to figure out how to live with plastics.

"The reality is that the quantity of materials is just too large," Allaway said. "We have to reduce our material use and we have to get much smarter about reducing the impacts of certain materials and eliminating others from the economy altogether."

While parts of the conference focused on nitty-gritty details of legislation, like the chances of passing updated container deposit laws in Connecticut and Vermont, the event also took a broad brush look at how views on recycling are changing.

Panelists said they see more questions from the public and lawmakers over how recycling works in practice, such as the health and environmental problems that come from exporting scrap materials to low-income countries that lack good waste management systems.

"It was huge in California this year, with exporting to countries that can't handle it," said Sanborn, who is also executive director of the National Stewardship Action Council.

She also pointed to concerns about where new plastics factories are located and opposition to a proposed Formosa Group LA LLC plant in Louisiana: "Why is another facility going into a low-income neighborhood?"

Several panelists said they see emerging concerns around additives in packaging materials, including plastics, and how those additives can then show up in recycled materials.

"I think that more of these issues are hitting home in a way that they haven't before, and a lot of it is because of the greater focus on justice and equity issues," said Paul Burns, executive director at the Vermont Public Interest Research Group.

In general, panelists said they see much more interest from lawmakers around waste and environmental issues, including more focus on extended producer responsibility systems that require companies to pay more to support recycling systems.

For example, the new governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, in her State of the State report in early January endorsed EPR for packaging, calling it a "fundamental shift … that requires producers, not taxpayers, to cover the cost of recycling."

"There's absolutely been a shift," said Lou Rosado Burch, Connecticut program director for Citizens for a Clean Environment. "We've been advocating for one form of EPR strategy or another for many years now, and it seems to me that over the last two years, you're starting to get a response. Legislators seem to know what you're talking about.

"Policymakers at the state and local level are starting to understand we have a problem now, perhaps because the cost of recycling solid waste has gone up so dramatically, whether it's because of the China green sword or other market factors," he said.

In Oregon, Allaway said the new EPR law "changes the dynamic" for how government officials look at what should and should not be recycled. He said a state commission will start to make recommendations this year.

"We're going to be looking at some materials that some in industry would like us to collect for recycling [but] that we might not agree makes sense to recycle," Allaway said. "It's a very different dynamic."

He said officials will look at economic and environmental impacts of materials, including using life cycle analysis and studying the impacts on greenhouse gas emissions, energy use and toxicity. He called it a change in thinking.

"Recycling is not this folksy grassroots thing that can rely on volunteers," Allaway said. "This is a real business that is faced with very, very challenging economic conditions. If we want a functioning recycling system, we need to invest in it like other utilities."

While the panelists in general expect a lot more government attention to waste and recycling challenges, speakers at one point turned the discussion to broader national debates over elections and the impact that could have on the waste legislation they favor.

"This industry is doing better now than we have in a long time, but our democracy is under attack, and it is going to slow things down," said Sanborn. "My worry for our industry, even though we're right on the cusp of some really big stuff, I'm afraid there are other things nationally that are going to take precedence and probably should. But let's do the best we can and make sure we're working not just in our industry but on making sure we have good representative democratic government."