Plastics association seeks 'fair' recycling funding plan

The Plastics Industry Association is developing a recycling infrastructure financing plan that could raise some of the billions of dollars needed to pay for it and as an alternative to legislation in California and elsewhere and to provide a "fair funding mechanism" for tackling waste challenges.

While it's far from clear what details would be in the association's proposal, CEO Tony Radoszewski said in a Sept. 24 interview that the board of the Washington-based group discussed it at a meeting the previous week and would like to release its plan in coming months.

He said pressure from governments is building.

"If we don't do it, it's going to be forced on us some way or another," Radoszewski said. "We've already seen that in legislation in California, in New Jersey, up in the Northeast. It just makes sense for us to lead."

He said it's too soon to discuss specific funding mechanisms but said the cost could run into the billions of dollars, and he noted a $9 billion cost estimate from The Recycling Partnership to upgrade infrastructure. That's significantly larger than the $500 million in federal tax dollars over five years contained in the Recover Act, legislation supported by the association.

He pointed to far-reaching plastics packaging legislation in California, Senate Bill 54, that narrowly failed in August. It would have required a 75 percent recycling or composting rate for single-use plastics and some foodservice items. Radoszewski said the association wants to present alternatives.

"I don't know if we could do this before the election or certainly before the end of the year, to have a proposal that we could bring to, whether it's California and SB-54, or just an overall process that might even be widely accepted at the federal level," he said.

"It would have a fair funding mechanism so that the infrastructure can be built, research can continue and technology is developed that will hopefully dramatically increase recycling rates of plastic and to find the materials that are best for secondary use," Radoszewski said.

The association's discussions come amid mounting interest in finding financing plans, including from key customer groups of the industry.

The Consumer Brands Association, which is made up of global companies like Coca-Cola Co. and Clorox that are huge buyers of plastic, released a recycling platform in April and said it wanted to find long-term financing plans for recycling.

The Arlington, Va.-based CBA raised the idea of per-unit fees on packaging and fees on virgin plastic resin, among other proposals it floated. It's also leading a coalition of other industry associations to elevate recycling issues in Washington.

California, as well, may ask voters in November 2022 to consider a ballot measure that would put a penny fee on single-use plastic packaging to fund recycling and cleanup. In 2016, voters in that state approved a statewide plastic bag ban.

Other states are also taking action. New Jersey's Legislature Sept. 24 passed a bill banning single-use plastic and paper bags and some expanded polystyrene packaging.

And two new plastics-related bills were introduced in Congress in the last week. Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, R-Ohio, introduced legislation Sept. 21 to boost plastics recycling research.

And Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., came out with a bill Sept. 24 directing the Environmental Protection Agency to crack down on plastic pellet leakage from factories.

Radoszewski's comments suggest the association is looking at details in its own financing plan.

He said, for example, that the proposal could include third-party organizations that control the money collected.

"I think this is an important part, who controls that money," he said. "We can envision a nonprofit third-party organization, when these monies are collected, whatever mechanism that is, that determines how that's used, rather than government entities taking it up."

He said the association wanted to push back against plastic bans and has concerns money collected from taxes or fees would go to general coffers of governments rather than targeted to funding recycling infrastructure.

He said that funding from the plastics industry could be "one major area" but added that "we're looking at every option that there is available to us."

When asked if the proposal could include some form of extended producer responsibility, he said that "I think you could say that would be a component that we would seriously have to look at."

Observers including the Boston-based Product Stewardship Institute say there's increased interest in EPR.

In a Sept. 8 blog, PSI said 10 states will be considering EPR legislation for plastics and packaging in 2021, and it noted that the main plastics legislation in Congress favored by environmental groups, Udall's Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, would set up a nationwide EPR system for packaging and paper products.

Radoszewski said the plastics association wants to work with other industry groups, including the plastics division of the American Chemistry Council.

The head of that ACC group tweeted Sept. 24 that they are working on updates to their 2030-40 sustainability goals for plastics and will be "sharing some developments in the next few weeks."

Last year, ACC floated putting a small per-unit fee on disposable foodservice products in California for all materials, not just plastics.

Radoszewski said the plastics association wants to talk.

"What we would like to do is to have the chance to sit down with other folks and look at ways that we can craft legislation that would support the sustainability issue and develop a funding scheme for it," he said. "Look, at the end of the day, it's not just about us, right. It's going to be for the good of society in terms of cleaning up the pollution that we have."