Resource Recycling Magazine: Advocacy groups argue over packaging EPR

Advocacy groups argue over packaging EPR

By Jared Paben, Resource Recycling

August 18, 2015

Extended producer responsibility for toxic materials makes sense, participants in a recent webinar agreed. But whether – and how – to extend EPR to packaging in the U.S. was the subject of a fierce debate.

"We do not need EPR for packaging, materials we're already recycling," said Neil Seldman, co-founder of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR).

Matt Prindiville, executive director of EPR advocacy organization group Upstream, disagreed.

"It's purely a way to get producer funding into the recycling system," Prindiville said.

The ILSR-hosted webinar, which drew 69 people, included presentations from Seldman and Prindiville. It was moderated by Maurice Sampson II, president and CEO of Philadelphia-based Niche Recycling.

Prindiville presented on Upstream's model legislation, drafted this spring, establishing what he called a "shared responsibility approach." Packaging producers would provide money to a trust, which would aim for a 75 percent recycling rate by spending the money to improve recycling infrastructure, compensate local governments for collection costs and conduct outreach. The trust would be governed by a board with representation from packaging producers, solid waste agencies, collectors, manufacturers using recyclable materials and environmental groups.

"This is really about getting producer funding into the system and having those funds being administered by the type of folks on this call," Prindiville said.

Unlike a fully producer-controlled system for packaging, Upstream's approach avoids creating a producer-controlled organization or consortium that can upend existing business relationships between local governments and haulers or create turmoil in markets, he said.

"While it doesn't go far enough for some, it provides a politically viable path forward in the U.S.," Prindiville said.

Seldman saw the bill differently.

The effort to extend EPR to packaging interferes with a thriving "zero waste" movement, he said. EPR systems, according to Seldman, shut out citizen involvement, and he pointed to the Connecticut mattress recycling law as a case in point.

"The revolution in solid waste management in the U.S. took place because citizens changed the rules at the local level," Seldman said. "Their efforts ushered in resource recovery parks, bottle bills, minimum-recycled-content laws, bans on bags and expanded polystyrene products and disposal bans for yard debris."

"These are the types of things – these small but cumulative things – that corporate America does not want to see happen, and EPR is the way to do that," he said. "It's a way to corporate bureaucratic responsibility, instead of citizen and local government responsibility."

Dick Lilly, formerly of Seattle Public Utilities' Solid Waste Division, and Mary Lou Van Deventer and Dan Knapp, both of Berkeley, Calif.-based company Urban Ore, also provided additional commentary on EPR for packaging following the presentations.

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