Great Lakes group unveils action plan to reduce plastic waste

A cross-border U.S.-Canada business group has released a plan for reducing plastic packaging waste and litter in the Great Lakes region.

The plan includes establishing consistent container deposit programs and investing in technology to recycle flexible packaging, according to the Council of the Great Lakes Region, which has offices in Cleveland and Ottawa, Ontario.

CGLR's Circular Great Lakes initiative is aimed at creating a circular economy and achieving a cleaner Great Lakes region.

The group released a circular economy action plan for plastics on June 28. Plastics companies supporting the project include Dow Inc., Charter Next Generation Inc., Dart Container Corp. and Pregis LLC.

"Over the last couple of years through our work, and working alongside a number of different partners, we have clearly seen that plastic waste and plastic litter are of great concern to the binational Great Lakes region," CGLR CEO Mark Fisher said in an interview with Plastics News.

"Beach cleanups show that roughly 80 percent of the materials washing up on the shoreline is plastic. We find that even after decades of recycling, we're still seeing way too much valuable material that's used by consumers being sent by landfills."

CGLR's first priority is to make sure that every household in the region has access to a recycling program that would be able to recycle the different kinds of materials that consumers use. The goal, set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is to be able to achieve a 50 percent recycling rate.

CGLR is making it a key point to be able to have a working system and marketplace for the recycled material.

"A key priority for us is to make sure that we have that collection, processing and end market supply chain working in this region to support that," Fisher said.

The second priority is to work directly with policymakers to create more supportive policies for recovery and reuse. Also, creating policies that can help reduce the demand for some of the plastics materials being used in the region.

"Right now, we have policies that differ across the region, differ across levels of government, and unfortunately in many cases, those policies favor landfilling over recovery and reuse," Fisher said.

CGLR also wants to make sure consumers are engaged in their recycling programs. It wants to focus on educating people about what they are throwing out, where it is ending up and the impact that litter has on the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Circular Economy Institute wants to develop a curriculum and training for all businesses and policymakers to educate themselves further.

The third priority is to work with communities to clean up existing waste and plastic that is ending up in the environment. The group wants to make sure the existing pollution doesn't end up in the wildlife or into waterways.

"Forty million Americans and Canadians use the Great Lakes for drinking water," Fisher said. "So, making sure that the material that has found its way into the environment already is being captured and cleaned up as quickly as possible, and if the material ... is recyclable, getting it back into the right material management stream."

CGLR is looking at many different policies that are being used around the world and trying to implement that into policies in the Great Lakes region. One policy recommendation is a consistent container deposit policy and program, otherwise known as a bottle bill. This will provide a motivation for consumers of aluminum cans to recycle their cans and not to litter.

The group found that states with bottle bills have two to three times higher recycling rates than states that do not.

The group is also looking at moving toward extender producer responsibility, which would give material producers the responsibility to manage recycling systems.

"All of these policies have to be right size for each community, each state," Fisher said. "We are going to look at the region, look at each state, one by one, and see what makes sense for the broader Great Lakes region, but also for the individual states that make up this region."

CGLR is working with an organization called Pollution Probe, a Canada-based charity, to use innovative technologies. That includes using BeBots, a beach-cleaning robot, and developing optical sorting technology.

"This is a great program that allows us to use technology to help capture and clean up the problem," Fisher said. "But they also capture a lot of attention, so it's a great opportunity as well to educate passersby and beachgoers about the technology but also the litter problem that exists."

The use of technology will be helpful for collecting flexible packaging. CGLR wants to use technology to identify and sort plastic waste in order to recycle it better.

"We're losing way too much material to our environment through litter," Fisher said. "But more importantly, we're just not managing valuable materials properly within our cities and communities. We're sending way too much valuable material to our landfills and that material can be recovered and reused in the economy."

CGLR has said that it wants to encourage systemic changes and shifting away from a linear, take-make-dispose economy and materials management mindset.