Panel: State packaging EPR laws will push national conversation

A few states will take the major step this year of passing producer responsibility laws for packaging in the United States, potentially putting industry more on the hook for financing recycling systems.

At least that was the prediction from a panel of industry and government officials at a recent sustainable packaging conference.

"I predict in the next year we'll have two, maybe three states with producer responsibility laws on the books for packaging," said Dan Felton, executive director of Ameripen, a packaging trade association. "That in and of itself is going to be an interesting, good development, and with that, that's going to drive the conversation … to a more uniform national approach."

Alison Keane, the president and CEO of the Flexible Packaging Association, agreed that state action will push along a national conversation.

"The states will be able to move faster than the feds, maybe not in terms of infrastructure and financing, but in terms of actual EPR for packaging legislation," Keane said. "If you're not part of the conversation, get there and fast because whoever gets it first is going to start to be the model that we all work off of in order to try to get a harmonized approach."

Both spoke at a panel on recycling financing at SPC Impact, an online conference held April 20-21 by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, along with representatives from state and local government, business groups and the waste management industry.

State and local government representatives agreed with the push for EPR and pointed to problems in recycling plastics as one motivator for them.

An official with King County in Washington state, for example, said that China's 2018 National Sword ban took away most of the export markets the county relied on and shifted costs to taxpayers.

"What's happened in King County is that a lot of our programs and our cities are dropping materials because it's just too expensive, especially the plastics," said Lisa Sepanski, project manager with the solid waste division in the county of 2.2 million people, which includes the city of Seattle.

"We have relied over the years on export markets, especially for plastics and paper, to make the financing of recycling pencil out," Sepanski said. "We need additional funding, but we need to fund the system of the future, not the broken system of the past."

The panel didn't talk about specific financing plans and how that might impact different packaging materials. In general, EPR plans put fees on packaging or require industry financial support, and often have business groups helping to manage the system.

At the moment, Keane said, there are many potential approaches, with about 10 states looking at serious EPR legislation. She suggested it could take five years to "get down to a good model that we can all start to work off of across the states and the federal level."

Both she and Felton talked about a "shared responsibility" funding model, and Keane said the system needs to focus both on new packaging types and be designed in an effective way.

FPA in December unveiled broad principles of EPR it supported, including for flexible plastic and paper packaging.

"We are favorable toward producer financing for these types of systems," she said. "But it could be a ton of money … and you could spend XYZ more amount of money and not get more recycling done."

Felton said Ameripen sees EPR as a way to increase markets and recycling opportunities for packaging, including for hard-to-recycle materials, and that such a system can be an alternative to city or state governments banning products.

"At the end of the day, we would rather ensure that producer responsibility can help maintain and increase those markets … so that we're not looking at alternatives such as product bans," Felton said.

But a state government official from Massachusetts pushed back on Felton's ban comments, arguing that local governments ban products when they see no viable recycling alternatives.

"In Massachusetts, we don't have any statewide bans, but we have over 160 cities and towns that have implemented product bans," said Brooke Nash, branch chief of municipal solid waste reduction in the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. "It's a reflection of the frustration of not being able to find any way to recycle this material."

Felton also noted business drivers for improving recycling. He pointed to a study his group released in March that found "major disconnects" between the recycled plastic volumes needed by consumer product companies and the available supply.

He said better funded recycling systems could help companies meet recycled content plastic packaging goals.

Keane echoed Felton and said that FPA also sees EPR as a way to help improve recycling and avoid bans. She said new financing can help build a system that "creates an on-ramp to circularity for the films and flexibles that are not readily recyclable today."

"It's not all altruistic on the producers' part. … We can be honest with this audience," she said. "We don't want to see product deselection; we don't want to see bans. We want the right packaging on the product, and we want to support our brands."

There was general agreement on the panel that attitudes around managing waste have shifted toward producer responsibility systems.

An executive with the San Francisco-based waste management and recycling company Recology, for example, said the costs of improving waste management systems are currently being paid by taxpayers or ratepayers.

Eric Potashner, vice president and senior director of strategic affairs, said Recology, for example, has invested in its San Francisco materials recovery facility to produce bales that meet the strict export requirements of China's National Sword program.

"All of this so far has been funded 100 percent by either our ratepayers directly or through taxes when the municipalities that we serve such as Seattle collect taxes for those residential programs," he said. "What's refreshing about these conversations is it sounds like it's been recognized across the board, and where we don't have any disagreements is that the producers and the industry are ready and what sounds like willing to step up and help fund the process."

Recology has been active in California's plastics debate. The firm has helped fund a ballot initiative likely to go before the state's voters in 2022 that would put a 1-cent fee on plastic packaging and ban nonrecyclable expanded polystyrene containers.

Nash, from the Massachusetts agency, closed her comments on the panel by predicting the United States will "start talking about a national approach."

"Three years ago, nobody would have thought that we would be having as much agreement as we have between us," Nash said. "I feel like we are poised to move fast into a dialogue with all of us and that we're going to see real changes in the next few years."