Packaging ‘durability, not disposability' focus of Senate hearing

Washington — Federal policy is needed to help build the infrastructure to scale up reusable packaging, including as a part of a national bottle bill, witnesses told a Senate environment subcommittee hearing on July 27.

The hearing, the third in a series on plastics pollution led by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., looked at whether reusable packaging could reduce waste from single-use products.

Some witnesses said reusable packaging can have a lower environmental footprint than single-use materials, and government policy like extended producer responsibility programs or bottle bills can help reusable systems scale up.

"It is best if these policies are packaged together at the federal level and are consistent with action underway at the global level," said Dacie Meng, senior manager for policy and institutions at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. "While local and small-scale solutions have demonstrated the opportunity and will continue to play a key role in the implementation of reuse systems, we need cohesive federal action to accelerate progress."

Clemence Schmid, general manager of reuse platform Loop Global, told the hearing that government funding could help build infrastructure for collecting and operating reuse systems.

She urged Merkley to include reuse in a national bottle bill that he plans to introduce.

"We are very supportive of reuse being part of Sen. Merkley's national bottle bill, and we recommend not to limit it to bottles only," Schmid said.

Similarly, the head of a trade association for the reusable transport packaging industry said federal action would help and argued that reusable packaging policy should be material neutral.

"Reusable packaging is material neutral, typically made from plastics, wood, aluminum or glass," said Tim Debus, president and CEO of the Reusable Packaging Association. "The key is product design for durability, not disposability, using safe and recyclable materials, and having the system in place to ensure repeated use and end-of-life recycling.

"Plastics-based reusable packaging can be very effective in a managed system, where product utility is extended and plastic material is valued," he said.

In his written testimony, Debus pointed to several RPA member companies that supply reusable plastic packaging and recycle it at end of life, including Orbis Corp., Rehrig Pacific, Monoflo, Cabka and Schaefer Plastics.

During hearing testimony, he urged Congress to get more involved in reusables policy, in the same way he said the 2021 infrastructure spending law invested in municipal solid waste management.

"Congress has the opportunity to prioritize game-changing investments in reuse systems," he said.

The ranking Republican on the subcommittee, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., said reusable packaging is a "great concept," but he also questioned witnesses about labor costs in reuse systems and expressed skepticism about government mandates.

"Every time you touch a product, there's labor costs, and cost is associated with anything that we do," he said.

Schmid replied that single-use packaging also has labor costs, and she said a well-run reusables system can be cost-effective, in part because companies can find cost savings reusing assets.

In his opening statement, Mullin said he wanted market-based solutions.

"As I said in our first subcommittee hearing, I believe free market innovation is the best way to promote sustainability in all forms of waste management, whether it is in reusable packaging or recycling," Mullin said. "Businesses should not be forced to spend time and capital on unnecessary and erroneous regulations that do not serve their customers or their business model."

But later in the hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., offered a different take, arguing that the cost of pollution was borne by governments and the public and that companies had to take more responsibility.

"I think a lot of American corporations have developed a partial market economy business model — free market when it comes to the pricing and selling their products but passing on to the public, socializing, the externalities they may cause," Whitehouse said.

"A selective use of market theory has caused a lot of harm, whether it's in carbon emissions or plastic waste or across the board," he said.

Whitehouse said he was continuing to work on reintroducing legislation that would put a fee on virgin resin sold into single-use plastics, to shore up weak recycling markets and improve single-digit percentage rates of plastic recycling and recycled content.

"It's very hard to convince economically motivated corporations to do things that are against their economic interests," Whitehouse said. "It's a policy choice we have to make to put recycled plastic and new manufactured plastic onto the same footing."

He also said he and Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, continued to work on the third iteration of their bipartisan Save Our Seas legislation, with a focus on recycling and recycled content.

"One of the areas which I think we will likely focus is the area of recycling and how spectacularly unsuccessful ordinary recycling presently is," Whitehouse said.

Neither he nor Merkley offered many details on potential legislation around reusables, although Merkley discussed the bottle bill in his home state of Oregon and asked about putting deposits on reusable containers.

He noted studies that said switching 10 percent of single-use plastics to reusables could cut annual ocean plastic pollution by 50 percent and that switching 20 percent would be a $10 billion economic opportunity.

Merkley also quizzed witnesses on hurdles to advancing reusable packaging systems.

"I will say there is only one challenge; the challenge is scale," Schmid said. "We talked about it previously, in talking about labor costs. Costs will be viable once there are sufficient units to flow through the system."