Product Policy Institute Blog

America Recycles, Why Not Rayovac?

2013-11-15T14:19:00.000-08:00

By Andrew Dobbs, Texas

Campaign for the Environment

Today, November 15, is America Recycles Day. While most of us have access to good curbside or drop off recycling, and many states now require computer and TV makers to take back and recycle used electronics, inside much of our e-waste are single-use batteries–and unfortunately, there is still no take-back program for those batteries.

One company is the main obstacle to moving forward on battery recycling – Rayovac. That’s why recycling advocates across the country are using this America Recycles Day to tell Rayovac that it’s time to Take ‘Em Back!

Rayovac actually has the audacity to tell US consumers to throw batteries in the trash while telling European customers that this is harmful to the environment. The four major battery makers were all set to begin a national recycling program for single-use batteries two years ago until Rayovac backed out. Energizer, Duracell and Panasonic are all on board. So it’s up to all of us to tell Rayovac: America Recycles, Why Not Rayovac?

Take time this week of America Recycles Day to send messages to Rayovac and let them know it’s time to change.

1. Tweet at @Rayovac that you want recycling here in the US just like they get in Europe and elsewhere. Use the hashtags #AmericaReyclesDay and #takeitbackrayovac, and retweet our messages on this topic.

2. Go “Like” Rayovac on Facebook and post a message or a comment on their page telling them that they need to stop lagging on recycling. They are erasing consumer messages critical of the company, so make sure you also post to your own timeline, highlighting @Rayovac so that they’ll know that the public is hearing all about their failures to lead.

Here are some ideas of what to tell them:

· America Recycles, Why Not Rayovac?

· We won’t accept your double standards. It’s time to provide Americans with battery recycling like in Canada and Europe.

· Energizer, Duracell and Panasonic all support battery recycling. Why not Rayovac?

· Why do you offer battery recycling in other countries, but not in the U.S.?

· Why do you tell your customers in Europe that throwing away batteries can harm the environment, but tell Americans that it’s safe to throw them away?

· Thousands of consumers have asked you to step up and offer real recycling for your products: when will you act?

· As the holiday buying season approaches, I will be taking Rayovac’s record on recycling into consideration when choosing which batteries to buy for my family.

Ten years ago computer and TV makers were dead set against providing real recycling to their consumers. Now, a decade later these companies provide this service and are committed to recycling. With your help we hope to turn Rayovac in the same direction so that all of us might have convenient access to recycling for all of our products. Thanks, and Happy America Recycles Day!

Putting boundaries on selling Stuff

2013-09-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

By Bill Sheehan, Executive Director

I was asked recently about my “theory of change” in the light of ever-increasing power of corporations that put profits ahead of sustainability of people and the planet. I agree that concentration of corporate power, combined with weakening civic power, is part of what's driving unsustainable production and consumption. My theory of change is that governments are essential to controlling corporate power and that government is strengthened by civic rather than consumer action. That’s one reason why Product Policy Institute focuses on policy solutions.

What excites me about the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy approach is that it is a way to get governments doing what they do best – regulating and playing referee – and corporations doing what they do best – innovating solutions to problems. I think local governments got off track by getting in the business of picking up after wasteful corporations. That was fine a century ago when there was a local public health hazard, but now the health hazard is more of a global threat from the scale of throughput of energy and materials. It's hard to be an effective regulator when you're also a service provider. And it's doubly problematic when you are short-circuiting feedback to the parties making disposable and toxic products.

I see EPR as high leverage because it puts boundaries on the essential thing that most industries exist to do, , directly and indirectly: sell more Stuff. ("Indirectly" includes, for example, corporations strip-mining for metals that are made into products that are transported to stores and ultimately bought by consumers.) And when you look at all the energy embodied in Stuff (44% of global US greenhouse gas emissions impacts), getting a handle on the flow of goods and materials gets at the heart of some pretty big problems.

EPR policies put conditions at the highest leverage point in the production-consumption system: the point of sale. It puts conditions on the parties that design Stuff: If you want to sell your goods in this jurisdiction they must meet performance standards in the public interest. Government may determine it is in the public interest that products are designed for source reduction, reuse and recycling; that products don't become waste when consumers are done with them; that they don't do irreparable harm to the planet. Companies then innovate and compete to meet the standards. Corporate accountability framed this way passes the in-law test: it's reasonable and fair.

I understand that establishing corporate accountability for the impacts of manufactured Stuff is just one piece of a big puzzle. But it is an underappreciated strategy that has potential for transformative change far beyond recycling.

It's Time to Give Principled-EPR for Packaging A Chance in Ontario

2013-09-18T09:36:00.000-07:00

We’ve been posting a lot on Ontario lately because some bold changes are being proposed to the EPR system. Usman Valiante has just written a compelling critique. It’s on the long side but well worth the read. Despite the title of his article, if the Ontario legislation is changed per his suggestions, the Province of Ontario will become North America's leading jurisdiction for EPR and waste reduction and diversion. (One quibble: Usman recites the history of how municipalities got snookered into providing curbside recycling by the beverage industry and expedient politicians, how the original and current waste acts thwarted true producer responsibility, and then defends the municipal role as a success to build on.) Reprinted with permission.

-- Bill Sheehan

Usman Valiante is Senior Policy Analyst with Corporate Policy Group LLP. He has 20 years experience in the management of commercial and public policy issues involving a complex mix of economics, environmental science, law, public policy, business strategy and politics.

By Usman Valiante

Solid Waste & Recycling magazine in Canada

Sept 15, 2013

The effect of the people’s agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go; with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all.

-- Frederich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944)

Ontario municipalities are rightly frustrated with sharing responsibility for the collection and recycling of printed-paper and packaging (PPP) – what Ontarians call “Blue Box” materials – with producers.

As the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) states in its submission regarding Bill 91 Waste Reduction Act, “ It is quite challenging and frustrating under the current Waste Diversion Act that, although municipalities are legally responsible for more than 50% of the net costs of the Blue Box program and all the infrastructure investments we have made, we have no official voice in the actual design or implementation of the Blue Box Program Plan nor do we have any influence over producers’ packaging decisions.”

A legitimate gripe, no ifs, ands or buts.

As we sympathize with the plight of Ontario municipalities we should remember that “shared responsibility” didn’t happened by accident but was created by design.

As per Hayek’s allegory, in establishing a centrally planned “shared responsibility” paradigm for recycling we have gone on a journey without a clear destination and have ended up in a place where no one wants to be.

As drafted, the Waste Reduction Act (WRA) not only builds on, but also amplifies the faulty design of the Waste Diversion Act 2002 (WDA). The WDA itself is the product of a long history of decisions based on short-term political expedients.

I remember the common refrains during the debates over Bill 90 Waste Diversion Act over 11 years ago, “It isn’t perfect, but let’s get it done and we’ll fix it later” and “If we don’t take this deal we might not get another one”.

Well, now is later and we aren’t talking about fixing anything but taking another big step down the existing track that will make things much worse. Once again, the biggest losers will be Ontario municipalities and Ontario consumers.

How so? Well, let’s start at the beginning.

To understand the fundamental problem with the design of the Blue Box funding model (which is really the guts of the Blue Box Program Plan operated by Stewardship Ontario) one must revisit its history.

How did the idea of producer “funding” of the Blue Box under the moribund concept of “shared responsibility” or “product stewardship” come to be?

It all started way back in the late 1970s with the first great churn in the primordial soup of packaging politics brought on by the members of the Ontario Soft-Drink Association as they sought to escape refillable bottles (or more accurately their network of franchise bottlers) and provide consumers with what they termed “packaging freedom”.

The story as it unfolded in Ontario is a fascinating one and its abridgement below does it no justice whatsoever.

In a nutshell, in 1987 the Ontario Government (of which the Honourable Jim Bradley was Environment Minister) reached an agreement with the soft-drink industry by which it would reduce provincial quotas for the sale of refillable soft-drink containers (the quotas themselves set under the previous Progressive Conservative government of Premier William G. Davis) in exchange for the soft drink industry and its packaging suppliers facilitating the establishment of a provincial Blue Box system.

The deal effectively allowed soft-drink producers to finish dismantling a 100% producer responsibility program of deposit-refund and refilling in exchange for the promise of broader municipal-based, curbside, multi-material recycling – a system that would ostensibly help alleviate the province’s “landfill crisis”.

The Blue Box program was sold on the idea that producers would provide seed capital funding to start up the Blue Box and in the longer-term “valuable recyclable materials” would sustain it by generating municipal revenues in excess of collection and recycling costs. Most notably, aluminum soft-drink cans were to become the “gold” in the Blue Box.

When Ontario municipalities came to understand the reality of the economics of secondary material markets they realized that the Blue Box wasn’t a moneymaker but a costly and risky venture. Some threatened to abandon curbside recycling altogether if producer funding was not forthcoming.

With Ontario’s New Democrats now in power and recognizing growing municipal angst, with calls for the introduction of a province-wide deposit-refund system and regulated use of refillable containers, key industry players coalesced to form the Canadian Industry Packaging Stewardship Initiative (CIPSI) in 1992.

CIPSI proposed to initially fund municipalities to the tune of $65/tonne of Blue Box material recycled with 2/3 of “efficient” net municipal recycling costs borne by industry once efficiency metrics had been established. The amount of municipal funding offered by CIPSI was reduced in later proposals predicated on the then rising tide of secondary material prices.

The Provincial Government took the CIPSI proposal to consultation in early 1994 as a proposed regulatory measure. At the same time it regulated Ontario municipalities into delivering Blue Box programs through Ontario Regulation 101/94 under the Environmental Protection Act.

In November 1994, AMO and key Ontario environmental groups, including the Recycling Council of Ontario, deemed the CIPSI proposal insufficient.

With the 1995 election of the Progressive Conservatives the CIPSI proposal was turfed as a new tax. Shortly thereafter the Ontario Government ended provincial subsidies to municipalities for operation of the Blue Box.

Municipalities, now regulated into delivering the Blue Box, were saddled with all of its cost.

The Ontario Government’s soft political underbelly was its own liquor agency the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) – the single largest source of packaging by weight in the Blue Box.

Municipalities clamored for a LCBO deposit-refund system to alleviate the cost of recycling LCBO packaging and more strategically as way to push the concept of “producer responsibility” back onto the provincial agenda.

In August 1998 the City of Toronto introduced a concept of a City by-law mandating an LCBO deposit-refund system in order to pressure Minister of Environment to implement a deposit return program for LCBO containers.

In October 1998, Minister Norm Sterling introduced a plan to fund the Blue Box through a “Waste Diversion Organization” with the LCBO contributing $4 million to Ontario municipalities to help offset their costs of recycling LCBO containers through the Blue Box.

Behind the scenes, Corporations Supporting Recycling (CSR) – the latest transmogrification of CIPSI – worked with the MOE to develop a regulatory package to address the political crisis (CSR later became the backbone of the nascent Stewardship Ontario under the Waste Diversion Act).

It was in this political climate that CIPSI was resurrected, repackaged and rebranded as a 50-50 industry-municipal “cost-sharing” model to be incorporated into a new law – Bill 90, Waste Diversion Act.

As of 2002 the 50-50 split is law.

Today, as AMO writes, “materials that end up in municipal recovery systems are becoming very difficult to manage. As stewards introduce new, lightweight and difficult materials into the system, they should ultimately be responsible and accountable for the end of life costs of managing these materials”, producers gripe about municipal PPP collection and processing costs that have escalated from $250/tonne in 2007 to well over $320/tonne today.

The squabbling over costs and control is incessant.

The legacy of the WDA is frustration and discord – between producers and municipalities, between producers and the resource recovery sector and between the Province of Ontario and producers.

This frustration arises because none of these parties is self-determinant in fulfilling its respective role. Meanwhile, the province is locked into a system that is characterized by stagnant PPP recycling rates and escalating costs.

So how to fix this mess?

The great economist Ronald Coase, who passed away this past Labour Day, wrote in his seminal paper The Problem of Social Cost that before implementing a policy undertake an, “…analysis with a situation approximating that which actually exists, to examine the effects of a proposed policy change, and to attempt to decide whether the new situation would be, in total, better or worse than the original one.”

Following Coase’s public policy advice, let’s look at what the Ontario Government is proposing for municipalities under the Producers’ Responsibilities to Municipalities provisions of Bill 91 WRA:

The right to register with the Waste Reduction Authority (the Authority) whereby producers are then obligated to compensate municipalities for collection and recycling of all designated materials (PPP, tires, batteries, paint, you name it);

Financial compensation for recycling activities through either ‘voluntary’ agreements with producers or compensation payments determined either by the Authority or through regulation; and

The authority to design, deliver and control collection and processing of designated wastes for which they have taken responsibility.

Under this approach municipalities’ ability to negotiate voluntary agreements with producers is backstopped by the ability to invoke the Authority to intervene and set the rate of producer compensation to municipalities.

What Bill 91 is proposing to do is fully institutionalize the oversight, mediation and arbitration of Blue Box fees payable by producers within its own regulation making powers and the powers afforded to the Authority under law. The resulting utility prices set by the Authority will essentially be – and I use the common law definition here, not the political one – taxes.

Producers will make offers to municipalities and when they are rejected, the Authority will step in whereby producers will mobilize a platoon of technical consultants, lawyers and lobbyists to “work the program”. With gross Blue Box costs heading toward $200 million a year, spending $2 million in high priced help offers a good return on investment if it will save $10 million a year in Blue Box taxation.

For its part, the municipal financial fate will rest with an Authority that is supposed to be overseeing environmental compliance but will be spending all of its time and bloated resources refereeing producer-municipal disputes.

In the longer run the utility scheme will only be sustained as long as the coercive force of the province is committed to it. A change in political winds and municipalities will be back to square one.

In a nutshell, what Bill 91 WRA is offering in terms of the roles of the Authority, municipalities and producers is lousy institutional design – more fighting, more discord, more paralysis, a war of attrition with no more waste reduction.

The WRA municipal provisions are a bad deal for Ontario municipalities, for producers and for consumers who will end up paying for the whole enchilada.

So then, what’s the solution?

Principled, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).

Principled EPR means is holding producers fully responsible and accountable for managing their wastes. Specifically:

Producer collection and recycling targets whereby producers must meet regulated waste service standards (i.e. collection service) and waste diversionstandards (i.e. collection targets and recycling standards) for designated materials;

Shifting of regulatory requirements to collect and process designated materials from municipalities to producers with the ability for producers to negotiate with municipalities for the collection and processing of designated materials and for municipalities to negotiate to their advantage or to option out entirely leaving producers to establish their own systems to discharge their regulatory obligations; and

Penalties that producers must face for failing to achieve waste diversion standards, with penalties set in proportion to the portion of the waste service standard they failed to achieve. These penalties would be payable to municipalities in recognition of the fact that the uncollected portion of designated materials remain in the municipal waste stream. As AMO states, “To mitigate the potential risk of IPR diversion programs performing poorly, appropriate failsafe compensation schemes for municipalities are required”.

To be successful in meeting regulated waste service and diversion standards, producers will need to negotiate access to the designated wastes collected in existing systems (largely municipal) or build entirely new collection systems themselves.

For printed-paper and packaging collected at the curb, producers need municipalities to help them discharge their obligations. Given the historical municipal role in delivering curbside collection systems and the bond municipalities have built with residents they are in the best position to work with producers that need access to these materials.

As such, municipalities are afforded bargaining power that they do not currently have under the shared responsibility system set out in the WDA – the materials they collect will have value to producers that must meet environmental performance targets.

Under EPR the risk of processing and marketing collected materials should be completely borne by producers not municipalities. However, with that assumption of responsibility and associated risk comes the reasonable expectation of control and self-determinacy.

Repealing Ontario Regulation 101/94 which requires municipalities to provide Blue Box services strengthens, not weakens, the municipal negotiating position – either producers negotiate reasonably and cooperate and collaborate with municipalities or they face having to deliver Blue Box collection and engage residents themselves.

For materials better collected in systems other than curbside and MHSW depots (i.e. private depot, return-to-retail, return-to-charities, special collection events etc.), producers facing penalties have a strong incentive to collect designated materials in new and innovative ways in order to keep those materials out of the municipal waste stream – mobile phone producers don’t want municipalities collecting mobile phones and municipalities would be happy if none appeared in their waste stream.

Bill 91 WRA should be amended to eliminate the provisions related to Producers’ Responsibilities to Municipalities and the Authority should not be provided with the jurisdiction to, “…establish a compensation formula for every designated waste”.

The role of the province should be to set regulated waste service and diversion standards and the role of the Authority should be to ensure those outcomes are met.

By holding producers responsible and accountable for waste diversion outcomes the necessary arrangements, collaborations and innovations necessary to achieve those outcomes will happen of their own accord.

We’ve talked about producer responsibility for a long time in Ontario. Maybe it’s time to actually give it a chance.

###

http://blog.solidwastemag.com/why-ontarios-bill-91-waste-reduction-act-is-a-bad-deal-for-ontario-municipalities/

Growing Business with EPR in Maine

2013-09-06T12:40:00.000-07:00

By Martin Grohman and Clayton Kyle

Martin Grohman

Clayton Kyle

Marty and Clayton are board members of Product Policy Institute. They are both Maine business entrepreneurs working in spaces created or helped by extended producer responsibility policies. Clayton created an innovative and successful business recovering beverage containers, capitalizing on the opportunity created by the Maine bottle bill – the grandmother of EPR laws in the US. Marty co-founded a composite decking manufacturing company before becoming Director of Sustainability for GAF, North America’s largest roofing manufacture. In that role he promotes shingle recycling, as well as internal efforts promoting sustainability. Recently, Marty began hosting a podcast show called The Grow Maine Show in which Marty interviews Maine entrepreneurs. Episode #4 is an interview with fellow PPI board member Clayton Kyle. Listen here to learn about how many minutes to cook lobsters, what instruments they play, and how the bottle bill created a great business opportunity.

MARTY'S INTRO:
The remarkable thing about Clayton Kyle: he has developed large-scale, successful businesses in two completely unrelated fields: commercial roofing insulation and beverage container recycling. In between, he started a venture fund, and is skilled at recognizing opportunities. When an insulation manufacturer consolidated, with no one left to serve the market, he put together a team and pursued the opportunity, developing a national business that still operates today. When container recycling was frustrating (ever try “reverse vending”? – if so, you’re probably still in line), he licensed the technology to build Clynk, now processing more than 80 million containers a month. These startups were not based on specific technical knowledge, but rather upon Clayton’s ability to recognize an opportunity, and expertise in the business of growing businesses.

Clynk takes the frustrating out of recycling. If you’ve seen Clynk’s branding, you know what I mean. It’s eye-catching, and it conveys a key message: “We recycling easy and fun.” It even makes you feel a little virtuous (Clayton and I are both board members of The Product Policy Institute, which helps promote recycling legislation). But the thing that surprised everybody (although it seems obvious now) is that a shopper is more likely to shop at a store that offers Clynk.

Plus, you’ll learn things you didn’t know about deposit bottles; what to expect if your son builds a motorized bike; and the right kind of container to buy your beer in!

Listen here.

E-waste: California's government-managed program ranks 7th in per capita collection

2013-08-30T13:17:00.000-07:00

By Bill Sheehan, Executive Director

A new fact sheet by Barbara Kyle of the Electronics Take-Back Coalition asks the question: How does the California e-waste program compare to other states?

California, the first state to pass an e-waste recycling law, established a consumer fee model. Consumers pay a fee at purchase on covered products

(video displays and portable DVD players) which go into a recycling fund administered by the State, reimbursing recyclers and collectors.

Twenty three other states have adopted the “extended producer responsibility” model known as EPR. These require the manufacturers to take financial responsibility for collecting and recycling used electronics.

The fact sheet looks only at collection rates. The bottom line: California ranks 7^th in terms of pounds collected per capita, despite its being in operation the longest and including e-waste from business which most other states don’t include.

New AMERIPEN Report Passes the Buck on Sustainable Financing for Recycling

2013-08-26T16:22:00.000-07:00

By Matt Prindiville, Associate Director

Last week, I heard from a colleague that AMERIPEN (the American Institute for Packaging and the Environment) was releasing a new report analyzing strategies to increase the recovery of post-consumer packaging in the United States. AMERIPEN is a trade association, representing approximately 30 companies, most of which are large, international consumer-packaged goods corporations like Proctor & Gamble, General Mills, Kraft and Pepsico. This morning, AMERIPEN released their report “Analysis of Strategies and Financial Platforms to Increase the Recovery of Used Packaging.”

The central goals of the paper are “to identify strategies and financing mechanisms used across the globe that are the most effective and efficient in recovering packaging waste and addressing financing challenges of collection, sorting, and transportation.” The report walks through an analysis of a series of seven strategies to increase recovery of packaging. In most cases, the analysis is good, highlighting the strengths and challenges of each approach. In some cases as in the example of landfill surcharges, the report also provides commentary on the political feasibility of a given strategy. In others, the analysis falls short, such as the section parroting flawed beverage-industry talking points against container deposits.

Five of the strategies are generally delivered or mandated by government, usually local government: Disposal Bans, Mandatory Recycling, Pay As You Throw (unit-based pricing), Advance Recycling/Disposal Fees, and Landfill Surcharges. The other two strategies require industry to play a leading role: Extended Producer Responsibility and Container Deposits (a form of EPR if industry manages the program).

Not surprisingly, in the conclusion on pages 33-34, the report recommends that policy makers pursue policies implemented by local government at taxpayer expense: Pay-As-You-Throw, mandatory recycling requirements and disposal bans on recyclable packaging. These policies require no investment by any of AMERIPEN’s member companies. Regardless of efficacy, they summarily reject policies like extended producer responsibility (including container deposits), which require financial and/or management commitments from the companies that make up AMERIPEN’s board.

This is not to say that PAYT, recycling requirements and disposal bans aren’t good policy. These are mostly proven strategies among a suite of necessary and useful policies to increase recycling; and they deserve support. But without industry-financing, the costs for improving packaging recycling falls squarely on taxpayers, ratepayers and local governments, which in today’s climate means these ideas are unlikely to be pursued at a scale necessary to address the problem of widespread packaging waste.

Unfortunately, the AMERIPEN report ultimately falls short on its promise of addressing the challenge of “balancing the need for sustainable funding of packaging waste recovery with the need to improve the efficiency of the system in order to increase material recovery.” It completely passes the buck on industry responsibility for any financing or administration of recycling programs to meet the two challenges of sustainable financing and greater system efficiency, both of which are solved by extended producer responsibility.

The irony is that nearly all of the AMERIPEN companies already participate in EPR-packaging systems throughout Europe, and will soon do the same for every province in Canada. The European EPR programs are even praised by the same type of trade association representing the same companies in the EU.

Our advice to AMERIPEN is the same that we gave to the Grocery Manufacturers Association after they released their anti-EPR report last year. Rather than fighting what its members already do in 47 other countries, AMERIPEN companies could work to create superior producer-led EPR systems in the U.S., develop predictable supplies of raw materials, and earn positive public recognition from assuming this level of corporate social responsibility.

That wouldn’t be passing the buck. It would be rising to the challenge.

Does it matter how we pay for recycling?

2013-08-21T08:58:00.001-07:00

By David Stitzhal

David is a founding board member of Product Policy Institute and President of Full Circle Environmental, Inc.

Does it matter whether we pay for recycling through rates and taxes versus paying as part of the cost of the product?

As a society we define which goods and services we pay for through taxes, utility rates and service fees, and which we pay for through private transactions. These allocation decisions have been made over time, and are not necessarily revisited often.

Taxes are often used to pay for so-called common benefits. We pay, for example, for pothole repair through taxes, rather than as individuals each time we come to a hole in the road. Thus a broad public benefit is paid for through a broad financing mechanism.

Conversely, we purchase food at stores using our personal earnings, rather than standing in line for allotments of bread and sugar issued by a central government. The quantity of food we want, as well as the level of quality, must be paid for by individuals as they are able.

We are accustomed to paying for garbage and recycling services broadly -- through government-mediated taxes, rates and fees (remitted to local government or private vendors). This wasn’t always the case. Government first got involved in sanitation a century ago to protect public health. At that time the waste stream was much simpler and could be largely composted or repurposed. But as the waste stream has grown in complexity, toxicity and non-recyclability – attributes that are predominantly under the control of product designers and manufacturers – local government still finds itself responsible for financing disposal and recycling efforts.

The current system locks in an inherent inequity in which people who buy selectively and therefore dispose of fewer and less toxic products still must pay into a system that inexorably subsidizes those individuals who purchase and dispose of comparatively more, and more toxic, products.

A greater inequity however lies in the fact that because downstream disposal costs are paid for by different parties than the upstream producers who design, market and profit from the product, the producers therefore have no bottom-line, market-driven, cost-of-business incentive to take into account the disposal and toxicity impacts of their product and packaging -- much less a financial incentive to address these impacts through product re-design.

In other words, disposal costs and toxicity impacts of any given product are paid for outside the producer-consumer relationship; they are paid for broadly by ratepayers and taxpayers. Thus Manufacturer A can over-package a toxic widget, and Manufacturer B can minimally package a less toxic, recyclable version of the same widget, yet neither one has to factor in the multiple costs of disposal, recycling or impacts from toxicity. This free ride to the dump – free for producers, not society -- inherently subsidizes inefficiency in products and their packaging, and allows blindness to toxicity. From a market perspective, this approach provides little incentive for producers to consider the end-of-life costs of their products and packaging.

When we determine who should pay for something, we must ask, To whom does the good accrue? Taxes work well when we have a broad public good, with undifferentiated benefits. (We all benefit from a tax-funded fire department, even if our own house doesn’t ever catch fire.) However, those narrow costs which are simply part of creating a product for sale – buying raw materials, hiring employees, running equipment, and arranging for a product’s end-of-life-management – should travel with the product. We should not isolate one cost of doing business – in this case a product’s disposal impacts – and cover those costs through the blunt instrument of public taxation and rate setting.

David Stitzhal can be emailed at stitzhal at fullcircleenvironmental.com

Photo from California Department of Transportation

EPR for Packaging in Rural British Columbia – A Lesson for the U.S.

2013-08-07T11:01:00.000-07:00

By Raymond Gaudart

As British Columbia moves forward in implementing the first 100% producer-funded and managed collection and recovery program in North America for packaging and printed paper, issues are being raised that can serve as alerts for parties working on EPR for packaging in the United States. A specific issue is that of service levels for rural communities. Raymond Guadart describes why the Board Chair of the Regional District of Central Kootenay (RDCK) recently wrote the Environment Minister a letter over concerns that the Steward’s plan to require that all drop-off sites be manned would close the vast majority of such sites. It is worth noting that RDCK supports EPR for packaging. This episode illustrates the kind of issues that public-interest advocates in the US need to ensure is dealt with in legislation.

/Bill S.

As Multi Material British Columbia (MMBC) moves forward in the implementation of its approved Stewardship Plan for Printed Paper and Packaging (PPP) some flaws in the process have become very evident. Most notably for rural and small communities in BC is the lack of a requirement for the steward to ensure adequate access to collection facilities for all residents of the province.

This requirement is one of the fundamental principles of a stewardship program as defined in the government’s Industry Product Stewardship Business Plan. It is also a matter of public record that MMBC assured local governments during public consultations leading up to the plan approval that there would be no change in service levels.

Now local governments and non-profit societies, who provide recycling services in the majority of the province’s extensive rural areas, find themselves faced with the onerous requirement to staff and fence all recycling depots in order to qualify as a collector and receive the unilaterally imposed financial incentives offered by MMBC to continue to deliver recycling services. The cost of meeting MMBC’s depot criteria will effectively eliminate access to recycling in large parts of rural BC. Not even large waste management companies are likely to be able to afford to meet the criteria and remain cost effective.

There is also no provision in the approved plan to require different financial incentives dependant on distance from processing facilities or an adjustment for increased costs over the duration of a five year contract (the likely length of an agreement with MMBC).

Perhaps it is time for the Province of British Columbia to recognize that its non-prescriptive approach to EPR doesn’t work in this instance. There need to be some criteria included in an approved stewardship plan for PPP that include guarantees of adequate access for all residents. Likewise, there needs to be recognition that the cost of delivering services will vary from metropolitan centres to rural areas, and that costs do not remain constant over the course of a five year period.

There is an excellent opportunity in this process for British Columbia to refine its approach to EPR to ensure the potential it offers for both eliminating taxpayer subsidies for the production of waste and encouraging industry to minimize its production of waste through Design for Environment.

Environmental Groups Target Battery Maker Rayovac for Bad Record on Recycling

2013-08-02T11:15:00.000-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 2, 2013

Contact: Andrew Dobbs, Texas Campaign for the Environment (512) 326-5655, dobbs@texasenvironment.org

Matt Prindiville, Product Policy Institute, (207) 902-0054, matt@productpolicy.org

Environmental Groups Target Battery Maker Rayovac for Bad Record on Recycling

Texas group leads the effort to press number 3 battery maker to catch up to competitors

A coalition of environmental groups have announced a campaign to press Rayovac, a major battery manufacturer, to step up their efforts on recycling and waste reduction. Texas Campaign for the Environment—TCE, a nonprofit, grassroots group known for its work on electronic waste recycling—asked Rayovac in May to begin taking back their batteries for recycling. Now TCE has been joined by 26 other organizations from across the country calling on Rayovac , to provide recycling for their batteries in the U.S., as they do in Europe.

“Rayovac is falling behind their competitors when it comes to battery recycling, and it’s past time for them to join these efforts toward sustainability,” Robin Schneider, Executive Director of Texas Campaign for the Environment said. “We want them to take back their batteries for recycling, to set meaningful goals for these collections and to support legislation which would create a level playing field for battery recycling. These solutions have worked for electronics and a variety of other products nationwide, and now we want Rayovac to help make it a reality for batteries.”

Rayovac is one of the four largest manufacturers of single-use batteries. Duracell, Energizer and Panasonic have all taken steps towards establishing battery takeback recycling for consumers. These companies have formed the Corporation for Battery Recycling, but Rayovac pulled out of the group and instead instructs its customers to dispose of their batteries in the household trash. Single-use batteries are banned from disposal in California and Europe, and are considered “universal waste” by the EPA—a category of widely produced, potentially hazardous products which should be kept out of normal disposal streams whenever possible. Rayovac also produces rechargeable batteries which are toxic and even more widely banned from disposal.

“People ask me all the time about what they should do with their spent batteries, and unfortunately in most places we don’t have good options” said Matt Prindiville, Associate Director for the Product Policy Institute, a national environmental advocacy organization working to make products and packaging more sustainable. “Now, a group of battery manufacturers has come forward to set up recycling programs, but Rayovac, one of the largest manufacturers, has pulled out. Apparently, they’re comfortable with letting other people clean up their mess. This is unacceptable.”

Texas Campaign for the Environment privately called upon Rayovac, as well as lighting manufacturers Philips, GE and Sylvania to take their products back for recycling in May, and Rayovac, Philips and Sylvania responded with a refusal in June. Most modern lighting is also toxic, and major manufacturers have declined to offer their consumers responsible solutions for disposal or recycling. TCE was joined in their public response by organizations from 11 states, including:

· Recycle Worlds Consulting, based in Madison, Wisconsin

· Clean Water Action Council of Northeast Wisconsin

· Northeast Wisconsin Zero Waste Coalition

· ReThink Wisconsin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison student group

· Nothing Left to Waste, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota

· Eureka Recycling, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota

· Michigan Clean Water Action

· the New Jersey Environmental Federation

· Rhode Island Clean Water Action

· Massachusetts Clean Water Action

· California Clean Water Action

· The Product Policy Institute, a national organization headquartered in Rockland, Maine

· Safe Minds, a national organization headquartered in Huntington Beach, California

· Citizens’ Campaign for the Environment, based in Farmingdale, New York and Hamden, Connecticut

· Clean and Healthy New York, based in Albandy, New York

· Vermont Public Interest Research Group, based in Montpelier, Vermont

· Zero Waste Detroit

· CRADLE2, based in Augusta, Maine

· Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition, based in Austin, Texas

· Basel Action Network, an international organization based in Seattle, Washington

· Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), an international organization based in Berkeley, California

· Electronics Takeback Coalition, based in San Francisco, California

· International Campaign for Responsible Technology, based in San Jose, California

· Eco-Cycle, based in Boulder, Colorado

TCE hopes to bring groups from around the country together in a widespread, creative campaign to change the companies’ policies. The group was especially encouraged by the support found in Wisconsin, home to Rayovac’s parent company, Spectrum Brands.

“We are not afraid to take on big companies that are doing too little for the planet,” Schneider said. “We are also excited when we get to move from opposition to cooperation, and we expect that Rayovac and the lighting companies will make changes sooner rather than later. Until then, we intend to organize support to hold these irresponsible companies accountable.”

Towards a progressive vision of Zero Waste

2013-08-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

By Helen Spiegelman and George Spiegelman

Helen is co-founder and past President of Product Policy Institute. Her husband George recently retired as professor from the University of British Columbia.

Two reports appeared this year that focus on “green job” opportunities fromnew approaches to waste management and prevention.

Closing the Loop: Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Creating Green Jobs through Zero Waste in British Columbia is part of the Climate Justice Project, a 5-year research project led by the Canadian Council for Policy Alternatives BC Chapter and the University of British Columbia looking at the social and economic impacts of climate change and developing “innovative green policy solutions that are both effective and equitable.”

Transforming Trash in Urban America was produced by Partnership for Working Families, a national network of organizations that work for solutions to the nation’s economic and environmental problems.

The two reports are quite different in tone and perspective, but they both arise from a shared premise that social justice must be a key focus of environmental and economic policies, including waste management.

Key differences

Transforming Trash proposes solutions framed around so-called “Sustainable Recycling.” This encompasses “robust recycling programs” along with “high-road job quality” and economic development policies. The core issue for many of the groups that comprise Partnership for Working Families is the deindustrialization of America, the flight of jobs overseas, the shrinking middle class, and the marginalization of vulnerable groups. The paper suggests that a shift from the traditional burn-and-bury approach to waste management and adoption of the Sustainable Recycling approach would create new green job opportunities, especially for marginalized workers.

Closing the Loop proposes solutions to waste management that are aimed at addressing a broader economic, social and environmental problem: the high material and energy throughput of the global economy, which is causing a range of impacts including, notably, climate change. The Zero Waste approach proposed by Closing the Loop starts upstream of the waste management system, aiming to reduce the volume of materials that flow through the economy, hence reducing emissions, while maintaining a high quality of life. Since the shift would reduce environmental impacts, the jobs generated by the policies would be "green jobs".

Transforming Trash surveys 37 major American cities and identifies cities that the authors conclude have achieved “complete, intermediate and early-stages of progress.” They also describe policies and practices they have been adopted. These include municipal interventions in the waste industry through specific language in contracts with waste management companies and through regulations.

While Transforming Trash has a significant focus on raising the job quality within the collection and processing of municipal waste sector, there is less consideration of job opportunities in activities that would reduce material that is currently trashed, by reducing the amount of material that enters the waste management system. Nor does Transforming Trash relate how the new green jobs it proposes mesh, or don't mesh, with the broader economy.

Closing the Loop looks specifically at British Columbia. The focus is not just municipal and provincial waste management programs but at the economy as whole. The analysis includes material flows, GHG emissions, and the potential for reduction in emissions through different strategies. The report includes a section on developing an agenda for green jobs drawing on statistics from other countries.

Closing the Loop acknowledges that British Columbia is currently largely a resource extraction/export economy and raises the possibility that resource recovery could become a new source of materials, with the possibility of establishing domestic manufacturing jobs related to materials recovery (in addition to jobs in reuse and repair).

Analysis

In actuality, Transforming Trash has little to do with "transforming trash." It's primarily about transforming the working and social conditions of people already working within the traditional trash sector. ”Sustainable Recycling” would expand current activities in collection and processing of specific materials (those deemed “recyclable”) but, because the focus is entirely internal to the existing waste management process, there is nothing to drive a reduction in waste. In fact, entrenchment of green jobs in the current waste management system creates a dependency on the continued production of high quantities of energy-intensive materials needing to be managed. Such a narrowly defined Green Jobs agenda falls short of addressing the larger problem of the “deindustrialization” of America since it only considers jobs downstream of production.

Closing the Loop attempts to find policies not only to reduce the quantity of material used and discarded in the industrial system, but also to introduce new job opportunities in areas outside of traditional waste management. The report recommends exploring public policies that would diversify local economies and would include product maintenance, repair, and reuse of products and materials as well as locally based manufacturing to create markets for recovered materials.

Are the reports contradictory? No. Both reports emphasize the need to ensure good working conditions. But while Transforming Trash`s scope is limited to jobs within the traditional waste management sector, Closing the Loop argues the need to change the industrial system that produces so much waste in order to create new opportunities for working people in our local communities.

In the section on Green Jobs, Closing the Loop doesn`t go as far as Transforming Trash in providing specific examples and mechanisms that municipal policy can provide to ensure equitable pay and job safety for workers in the waste management sector (for instance, the city of Seattle’s contracting system requires wage minimums and collective bargaining agreements for collection workers). Closing the Loop is more explicit about establishing links between material recovery and local manufacturing than is Transforming Trash. In particular, Closing the Loop provides a potential agenda for waste prevention policies such as EPR requirements, mandatory warranties on products, cooperative purchasing – all aimed at moving the focus up the Pollution Prevention Hierarchy.

Sustainable reindustrialization

The Transforming Trash report calls for reforms in the handling of post-consumer materials, insisting they be recycled instead of trashed. This approach will reduce some environmental impacts (land and water contamination from disposal facilities). However, treating waste as a “resource” creates a market for waste and expands a sector of the workforce that is economically dependent on waste.

The Closing the Loop report calls for broader reforms to the industrial system: insisting on reductions in the flow of materials and energy. This approach entails wide-ranging reforms: imposing responsibilities on corporate entities, forcing them to warranty their products for longer periods, banning certain products outright, or requiring producers to ensure take-back services are available when a product is no longer serviceable.

There is little debate around the core issues underlying these two positions. There is general agreement that the global industrial system is excluding too many people from participation with disastrous social impacts to communities. There is also general agreement that the global industrial system is using too much “stuff” and that this is causing not only environmental impacts but social impacts.

It is worth asking if it is reasonable to expect a sustainable “reindustrialization” of America through jobs that depend on excessive material and energy flows. Further, is it reasonable to expect that a new economy can be built from the end of a pipe that carries products and packaging not designed to be recovered, or reused?

The alternative presented by Closing the Loop is based on a reform of the industrial system to make it more conserving of materials and energy and more locally diversified, providing a range of good family-supporting jobs in every community. This alternative is challenging. It means reclaiming public control of a much broader range of economic activity than governments have at the current time. It means dispelling the neo-conservative economic myth of infinite resources that got us into trouble in the first place.

Upcycling the Upcycle: Thoughts on the new book by McDonough & Braungart

2013-07-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

By Matt Prindiville, Associate Director

“The goal of the upcycle is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world with clean air, water, soil, and power – economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed.” - excerpt from the Upcycle by Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart

I recently read Bill McDonough's and Michael Braungart’s new book, the Upcycle. As someone who was profoundly affected by their first book, Cradle-to-Cradle, I looked forward to my long cross-country plane ride home where I eagerly devoured the book. From the first pages, I was struck by what these two do best: inspire us to believe that environmental problems can be solved by new ways of thinking and doing.

Abundance versus Scarcity

The central message of the Upcycle is that our natural world is a thriving place full of abundance, and that we can design production and consumption systems that support nature’s tendency toward abundance rather than diminish it. For folks familiar with the conventional definition of “upcycle,” which means converting waste materials into new materials or products of better quality or better environmental value, this is an expansion of that idea. McDonough and Braungart’s focus is on green design as the core strategy to achieve this goal, and they cite numerous real-world and theoretical examples to confirm this position.

Where many environmental “solutions” are based on the premise of using less resources by becoming more “eco-efficient,” they argue that this focus is often misguided. From their perspective, what is most important is becoming “eco-effective,” which I paraphrase to mean: getting what we want through either no negative impact or beneficial support to the natural world. They use the example of people enjoying long, hot showers. The conventional green wisdom is that long, hot showers are bad for the environment. If you care, you should purchase a low-flow showerhead, set the temperature as cold as you can stand it, and get out as soon as possible. They argue that if you have a closed-loop water circulation system that is heated by passive-solar technology, you can take a hot shower as long as you want with virtually no impact on the planet. That’s an eco-effective solution.

“Less Bad is No Good”

This is my new favorite slogan. Many of our environmentally regulations are focused on making things “less bad.” For example, we set limits on the amount of harmful emissions that a power plant or industrial facility can pollute. While these laws are important, McDonough and Braungart write that we should put greater focus on developing incentives for the creation and deployment of new technologies that can deliver the same goods and services without pollution or ecological harm. “Not bad” is good for everyone.

A “Regulation” Means “Here is Something to Be Redesigned”

McDonough and Braungart use several examples to show where regulations are “alerts to design failures.” We need laws protecting our air, water and land because of poor design around production and consumption and the subsequent waste and pollution created. These regulations can be made moot through the widespread deployment of technologies and practices that deliver the same goods without pollution or waste. While some would deride this as naïve or “happytalk,” it is a powerful reminder of what we can achieve with sufficient motivation and the right drivers in place.

Speaking of the Right Drivers…

If I have one criticism of the Upcyle, it’s that McDonough and Braungart are overly focused on green design and not enough on public policy change. I understand that they are respectively, an architect and a chemist, and they have made significant global contributions through developing green design solutions for large companies. Their Cradle-to-Cradle Certification process for product design is creating a new de-facto industry standard for safe and sustainable products. Talking about design is where they are most comfortable.

But green design without an appropriate legal framework often doesn’t effectively reward environmental leaders and can let the laggards off the hook. Often, if one company wants to do the right thing, they are put at a competitive disadvantage. And some green innovations, like designing safer chemicals for use in electronics, will not be widely deployed without legislation. This is especially true for systems innovations, like extended producer responsibility. One company may want its product or packaging reused or recycled at the end of its useful life, but they cannot change or improve our existing recycling systems in and of themselves.

Most big environmental problems cannot be solved by one company working alone on voluntary measures, or even loosely allied through trade associations. Really big problems call for a shift in the way we do things for everyone involved, and it’s often these types of problems that require legislation to hold businesses and individuals to the same higher standards.

Upcycling the Upcycle

The marriage of green design and effective public policy will be the key to upcycling the Upcycle. We need to create the legal frameworks that empower and reward individuals and companies for developing goods and services in ways that protect and even nourish the planet. These frameworks must also set standards to pull the laggards up to join the environmental leaders. Extended producer responsibility, safer chemicals policy, a price on carbon are all examples of the policies needed to achieve this vision.

If we are successful in passing the right policy drivers, then we will be able to widely encourage and deploy the design solutions that McDonough, Braungart and many others are working to create for our most pressing environmental problems. We will also have gone a long way toward creating the “delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world with clean air, water, soil, and power – economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed.”

CATO UNBOUND: An Alternative to Municipal Recycling

2013-06-28T07:48:00.000-07:00

By Bill Sheehan, Ph.D., Executive Director

A remarkable conversation is happening at the libertarian think tank CATO Institute. The topic of June’s Cato Unbound is The Political Economy of Recycling. Predictably, the lead article by libertarian economist Michael Munger from Duke University is full of bold arguments about the failure of municipal recycling. There's plenty of red meat for three responders: Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Edward Humes (author of Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash); former state legislator and deputy director at Recycling Reinvented Melissa Walsh Innes; and fellow libertarian economist, Steven Landsburg. The bait is taken and there is plenty of disagreement along well worn lines about the value of recycling, commodities and landfills.

What struck me was that after all the ostensible disagreement, three of the four authors were in agreement that the solution to the shortcomings of municipal collection systems (aka “recycling”) lies upstream, with the producers that design and make products and packaging.

Munger starts his essay with the statement, “Almost everything that's said about recycling is wrong.” For starters: the notion that everything that can be recycled should be recycled, or that zero waste should be the goal. He argues, “we recycle far too much of the waste stream, because we use moral imperatives rather than economic logic.” He advocates eliminating all mandatory municipal “recycling” programs nationwide (the bulk of Munger’s comments are directed at collection and sorting programs operated or overseen by local governments).

But after 4,500 words explaining the economic and moral absurdities of municipal recycling, Munger concludes:

“Ultimately, the solution is to refocus on market incentives rather than moral imperatives. The organizations with the cheapest means of enacting change, and who have the last best chance to reconsider packaging of all kinds, whether it’s liquid, food products, or microwaves, are the manufacturers and retail distributors of the products we buy. At present, no one is responsible for disposing of packaging, and so the state does its fumbling best to try to solve the problem. The solution is to reconsider responsibility for disposal, at the level of initial production. A property rights system that assigns disposal responsibility, and ultimately liability, to the manufacturer would encourage the use of effective market incentives to reconceive the very nature of waste itself. And that might be less wasteful than recycling old ideas that threaten to bury us under a mountain of garbage.” (Bold added)

Munger elaborates in a commentary: “[I]f we start asking the right question – not how to recycle garbage, but how to prevent garbage's existence – we might make progress.” For example, the amount of plastic in bottles and aluminum and cans has been reduced by more than half in the last decade, he claims, but the answer may be to increase the sturdiness of containers so that they can be reused. Fair point.

Humes takes issue with the “same old trash talk that’s been used against recycling for decades: that it’s too costly, or that it can cause as much environmental harm as landfilling, or that it has become some sort of unreasoned article of green faith rather than grounded in hard science.” But he then agrees with Munger about the “real barrier” to recycling success:

“For it to succeed, recycling must be re-positioned as America’s last line of defense against waste, not the leading one. There are far more efficient, profitable, and environmentally beneficial strategies, among them: packaging reduction, life-cycle engineering, and replacement of incentives for wastefulness with ones that hold manufacturers responsible for the waste stream their products create.”

Walsh Innes takes issue with a couple of Munger’s points but spends most of her response describing a policy approach that delivers Mungers "ultimate solution" of “assigning disposal responsibility, and ultimately liability, to manufacturers” -- using “effective market incentives to reconceive the very nature of waste itself.” As Innes states, "Whether he knows it or not, Munger is advocating for extended producer responsibility (EPR), a legislated form of product stewardship in which the producers of a product finance and manage the recycling of the product at end of life.”

I expected the two libertarian economists to be pro-business and advocate for unfettered voluntary market competition as the solution to all problems. Indeed, both Munger and Landsburg display the economist’s faith of letting price signals rather than morality drive decisions about what should be collected for recycling. Munger, however, makes some interesting observations in a supplementary response commentary, Bootleggers, Baptists, and Recyclers.

It turns out that Munger used to be a regulator at the Federal Trade Commission. He quotes a former co-worker who described the unholy alliance between capitalist bootleggers and moralist Baptists that got prohibition passed in the US in the 1920s. Munger sees a parallel in the municipal recycling field. He sees a de facto coalition of fervent activists and “the enormous corporations that make up the recycling-industrial complex.” The latter may not break the law, but they are happy to lobby for changes in the law that improve their profits and corporate bottom line. For example, Munger notes, “the alternative to curbside recycling is bottle deposits and other kinds of packaging restrictions. Why do we recycle, rather than use these other policies? A pretty good academic case can be made that the answer is “Because the beverage companies prefer recycling, because then they don’t have to pay the costs of [managing waste] packaging!”

Munger is not sanguine about reforming the municipal recycling system. If you explain the economic inefficiencies, he says, the moral wing of the coalition will smite you: “Don’t you care about the environment?” And if you raise examples where post-consumer recycling may actually be bad for the environment, such as collecting colored glass in places without markets, “the smooth corporate lobbyists of the economic wing will cite figures that show that recycling creates jobs and employs people in local communities.”

The CATO Unbound series on recycling is more than a rehash of the same arguments about municipal recycling that have raged for decades. It’s interesting that most of the essays agreed that municipal recycling has not and cannot deliver all that is expected of it, and most converged on the solution of producer responsibility for waste to address the problem at the source.

Annual EPA Municipal Solid Waste report published

2013-06-21T12:29:00.000-07:00

Below is the official statement on the release of EPA's annual Municipal Solid Waste in the United States report dated May 2013. It presents data for 2011.

The data are not perfect and do not measure what goes in any given landfill or incinerator. What makes these data valuable for policy development is the distinction between manufactured (product) and non-product (organic and inorganic) wastes. This is possible with the materials flow method used by EPA, but not with BioCycle’s mostly self-reported tonnage data on what actually goes in landfills (which includes a larger universe of materials that varies state to state).

Two bottom lines of the new EPA report: Solid waste generation was flat in 2011; and the composting rate dropped.

/Bill Sheehan

EPA has released the 2011 Municipal Characterization Report, which provides data on annual US waste generation, recycling, and disposal. In 2011, Americans generated about 250 million tons of trash and recycled and composted almost 87 million tons of this material. Our national recycling rate is 34.7 percent. On average, Americans generated 4.40 pounds of trash per person per day, and recycled and composted 1.53 pounds of it. For more information on the generation, recycling, and disposal of various types of materials, please see the full report: http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/municipal/msw99.htm

What I learned at the sustainable consumption conference

2013-06-19T07:08:00.000-07:00

By Bill Sheehan, Executive Director

Courtesy of Patagonia

Last week I attended an academic conference on sustainable consumption at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

I have spent the last 10 years working upstream, in the field of sustainable production, studying and pushing for producer-focused policies such as extended producer responsibility.

To be honest, I have tended to view "sustainable consumption," with its emphasis on voluntary, individual behavioral change, as too soft a path to have a meaningful impact on the destructive forces that threaten us. I went to the conference to get out of my comfort zone and to learn what is happening in a related field.

What I heard at the conference were many ideas about source reduction, which is a major challenge for those of us working to incent and restrain corporations to be more sustainable. I felt encouraged to be among creative and smart people grappling with this issue.

My take-away from the conference is that Product Policy Institute's (PPI) original three-part mission of sustainable production and consumption and good governance is the correct frame for addressing the myriad interconnected problems facing us. It's a three legged stool.

Sustainable production – We view a root cause of our throwaway society as the production system based on high throughput of globally sourced cheap products, and the disconnect between those who design and market goods and those who clean up after them. PPI has focused on implementing policies that make producers legally responsible for the life-cycle impacts of their products. The theory is to harness the power of the markets, within legally mandated boundaries, to drive the production of more durable and less toxic products. It’s an important piece, but not the whole story.

Sustainable consumption – The sustainable consumption frame opens the door to thinking about growth assumptions underlying the business models of powerful global manufacturers and retailers producing and selling ever increasing quantities of cheap globally-sourced, low-margin goods. The book Eco-Business by Peter Dauvergne and Jane Lister makes the case that the core corporate interest is growth. Corporate environmental and social strategies have been increasingly used as business strategies to protect raw material supplies and gain advantage over competitors, all for the purpose of selling more stuff. The sustainable consumption frame asks questions about unlimited growth. If an absolute decrease in material and energy throughput is necessary to restore ecological health and stability as well as human happiness, then we need to address unlimited growth. Reduction and reuse are radical agendas; helping producers make and sell more efficient products may be worthwhile but it is unlikely to lead to transformative outcomes.

Good governance -- The third leg of the stool is the hard one. But it's crucial for addressing both unsustainable production and consumption. Governments and NGOs have so little power relative to multi-national business giants that we resign ourselves to working with corporations on incremental gains in a world desperate for deep transformational change. Unlimited corporate growth based on high throughput of globally sourced cheap products is not in the public’s or the planet’s interest. Intervention by government and civil society is needed to achieve outcomes in the public interest.

Ontario Proposes Individual Producer Responsibility and Cost-internalization

2013-06-06T23:16:00.000-07:00

Ontario has finally blown up the dysfunctional and hated Waste Diversion Act and is proposing replacing it with legislation which will enshrine Individual Producer Responsibility and cost-internalization among other things. The legislation is posted for public comment on the environmental registry for 90 days and then goes back to the legislature for a vote -- likely in October.

As a brief synopsis, the proposed legislation and strategy consists of the following changes:

Individual Producer Responsibility - A move to making individual producers legally responsible for meeting outcomes set by the government, which would include waste diversion targets, standards, service standards, promotion and education requirements and administrative penalties. This will eliminate the IFO's as we know them under the WDA.

Strengthened Enforcement & Oversight - Proposes a transition of Waste Diversion Ontario into a new body that will have a broader set of powers and responsibilities to oversee the Act. This new Authority will have compliance tools and clarity in its role and responsibility to properly oversee and enforce.

Visible Fees - Proposed legislation would require all-in pricing (no eco-fees at point of sale).

Municipal Role - Mechanisms are included to ensure reasonable costs are reimbursed to municipalities. The new Authority has new powers to manage dispute resolution.

Increased Waste Diversion - New material designations are identified, including IC&I paper and packaging, carpet, bulky items, additional WEEE, non-food organics; a new standard for end-of-life vehicles; development of a strategy for organics; and a mechanism for disposal bans.

Waste Hierarchy - Appears to be better acknowledgement of waste hierarchy but recovery is still not considered as diversion.

Transition - Existing stewardship programs will be transitioned into the new IPR framework over a proposed four year phasing period starting with e-waste. Blue Box will be transitioned over a longer period but the 50% producer funding will be increased at an earlier stage.

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Organic, vegan Raspberries -- "monstrous" plastic pouch hypocricy

2013-06-05T07:01:00.001-07:00

Great video clip from recent talk by Bill McDonough demonstrates one way to make the multi-layer plastic laminate pouches symbols of bad design and wasteful packaging.

In just over a minute he demonstrates the hypocrisy of selling healthy food in unhealthy packaging, using the example of organic raspberries in a pouch that can't be recycled, but can only go to an incinerator or landfill, and notes that burning it will not be healthy for humans. He calls it a "monstrous hybrid."

Public or Private? Who Should be Responsible for Our Unwanted Stuff?

2013-05-21T10:35:00.000-07:00

By Bill Sheehan, Matt Prindiville and Helen Spiegelman

There is a difference in opinion among Zero Waste advocates about who should “own” manufactured products and packaging when consumers are done with them.

One view is that these discards should be considered public goods, owned by the community and subject to recycling programs that are delivered by or on behalf of the community, typically by or on behalf of local governments.

The other view, which is Product Policy Institute’s view, is that private manufactured goods should continue as private goods when consumers are done with them and be subject to commercial arrangements between producers, consumers and intermediaries who provide collection, repair/reuse, and recycling services.

PPI’s view is that public ownership of discards short-circuits critical market feedback to producers who design and market products. It continues to enable proliferation of toxic and disposable products, and amounts to welfare for waste.

Generally speaking, discarded products and packaging are not public assets but public liabilities. With the exception of a handful of products and materials (like aluminum), recycling is a losing financial proposition for local governments. For nearly every category of product discards, it costs more to collect the materials than you can get from selling the scrap. Some would argue that it costs less than landfilling or incinerating these materials to make a case that recycling pays for itself. We would argue that when the full responsibility and costs are transferred to the producers, then there are no costs for local government and the former argument is rendered moot.

The power of EPR to bring about waste reduction and better product design is in shifting the liability back onto the producers who created the problem.

All this is not to say that local governments should have no role in how discards are managed in their communities. In addition to regulatory roles (setting performance outcomes in the public interest and ensuring transparency and accountability) local governments have critical roles to play in making change happen and ensuring that the change enhances opportunities in the community rather than diminishing them. Local governments can do this through public education. They can do it through public purchasing policies. They can exercise their considerable zoning and business licensing powers to support the development of diversified local collection and processing capacity that will be needed to manage discards under EPR regulations.

Aside from this, there is much public benefit to come from robust local government involvement in the management of source-separated organic discards.

There may well be specific discard streams (such as household paper for instance) in which it may make sense for local governments to stay in the collection and/or sorting business in an EPR world, protected by commercial agreements that protect local governments and taxpayers from financial risk.

A fruitful discussion would consider how local governments can manage the orderly transition from public ownership that currently imposes costs on society to an EPR system that creates local economic development opportunities instead.

Shaw Industries supports law for non-recyclable carpet

2013-05-07T20:16:00.000-07:00

By Bill Sheehan, Executive Director

I spent a year during 2011-2012 as an NGO representative in the carpet industry dialogue on increasing carpet recycling. The dialogue broke down because the industry wanted governments to agree to voluntary recycling goals (which had failed before) but they refused to offer any financing mechanism to build the needed recycling infrastructure. The industry strenuously opposed EPR for carpet which provides such financing in California, which has the nation's only carpet EPR law.

This year Shaw Industries, the largest carpet manufacturer in the world, came out in support of a container deposit bill in Maryland (HB 1085, which subsequently died).

Interesting. It turns out that carpet made from PET plastic is the fastest-growing segment of the carpet industry. They get PET plastic from soda and water bottles collected in states with bottle bills, which provide clean material.

The problem is that carpet made from PET plastic is generally non-recyclable (there are a few small volume applications). And the increasing trend towards PET carpet threatens to undermine the existing carpet recycling infrastructure in the US, which is based on recyclable nylon carpet.

It is evident that a major reason the carpet industry opposes EPR measures for their products is that they are more interested in using cheaper, non-recyclable PET feedstock than in recycling their carpet. So Shaw Industries supports government intervention to ensure a supply of non-recyclable feedstock, while opposing EPR laws to finance carpet recycling.

It looks like the only thing that will change this dynamic is more state laws like California's. For a model bill, see this link.

PHOTO: rentitgreen.blogspot.com

Carbon Omissions: Stop Hiding Behind Recycling

2013-04-17T11:47:00.003-07:00

By Bill Sheehan, Executive Director

An interesting article from UK has been circulating on several listservs connecting carbon accounting, consumption and recycling. I am reposting it here with a few comments to put it in context.

The article, which was published in both the Guardian UK and The Ecologist, challenged a government claim “that this country cut greenhouse gas emissions by 19% between 1990 and 2008…. When the impact of the goods we buy from other nations is counted, our total greenhouse gases did not fall by 19% between 1990 and 2008. They rose by 20%.” There has in fact been a drum beat of articles shining light on this topic for several years.

Flow of emissions among major exporting and importing countries (in megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent). From Nature, 09 March 2010.

The phenomenon is called outsourced emissions, or, more bluntly, carbon omissions. It refers to the fact that wealthy countries like the US and UK consume a great deal of products manufactured in poorer countries, often using dirtier technologies. Traditional greenhouse gas accounting misses this phenomenon for two reasons: they focus on production rather than consumption; and they only look at emissions in a limited geographical or territorial area (for example, emissions produced in the US).

In 2009 Product Policy Institute published an early report on this phenomenon, Products, Packaging and US Greenhouse Gas Emissions. We engaged the technical expert who did the systems-based accounting for EPA (Joshuah Stolaroff) and got him to extend the analysis globally. The result was that accounting for global emissions increased the US greenhouse gas impacts of making, transporting and using goods and materials -- which we labeled products and packaging – from 37% to 44% of all US emissions. (For an update see 2011 presentations to ICLEI, Consumption-based GHG Accounting: An Introduction.)

UK is actually more dependent on outsourced emissions than the US. In a Nature review of an important study done at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in Stanford, California, the author noted: " In some wealthy countries, including Britain and France, more than 30% of consumption-based emissions are imported; in the United States, the figure is 11%.”

Here's the article:

Let's Stop Hiding Behind Recycling and Be Honest About Consumption

By George Monbiot

Guardian UK, 14 April 2013

We have offshored the problem of escalating consumption, and our perceptions of it, by considering only territorial emissions, says George Monbiot.

Every society has topics it does not discuss. These are the issues which challenge its comfortable assumptions. They are the ones that remind us of mortality, which threaten the continuity we anticipate, which expose our various beliefs as irreconcilable.

Among them are the facts which sink the cosy assertion, that (in David Cameron's words) "there need not be a tension between green and growth".

At a reception in London recently I met an extremely rich woman, who lives, as most people with similar levels of wealth do, in an almost comically unsustainable fashion: jetting between various homes and resorts in one long turbo-charged holiday. When I told her what I did, she responded: "Oh I agree, the environment is so important. I'm crazy about recycling." But the real problem, she explained, was "people breeding too much".

I agreed that population is an element of the problem, but argued that consumption is rising much faster and - unlike the growth in the number of people - is showing no signs of levelling off. She found this notion deeply offensive: I mean the notion that human population growth is slowing. When I told her that birth rates are dropping almost everywhere, and that the world is undergoing a slow demographic transition, she disagreed violently: she has seen, on her endless travels, how many children "all those people have".

As so many in her position do, she was using population as a means of disavowing her own impacts. The issue allowed her to transfer responsibility to others: people at the opposite end of the economic spectrum. It allowed her to pretend that her shopping and flying and endless refurbishments of multiple homes are not a problem. Recycling and population: these are the amulets people clasp in order not to see the clash between protecting the environment and rising consumption.

In a similar way, we have managed, with the help of a misleading global accounting system, to overlook one of the gravest impacts of our consumption. This too has allowed us to blame foreigners - particularly poorer foreigners - for the problem.

When nations negotiate global cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, they are held responsible only for the gases produced within their own borders. Partly as a result of this convention, these tend to be the only ones that countries count. When these "territorial emissions" fall, they congratulate themselves on reducing their carbon footprints. But as markets of all kinds have been globalised, and as manufacturing migrates from rich nations to poorer ones, territorial accounting bears ever less relationship to our real impacts.

While this is an issue which affects all post-industrial countries, it is especially pertinent in the United Kingdom, where the difference between our domestic and international impacts is greater than that of any other major emitter. The last government boasted that this country cut greenhouse gas emissions by 19% between 1990 and 2008. It positioned itself (as the current government does) as a global leader, on course to meet its own targets, and as an example for other nations to follow.

But the cut the UK has celebrated is an artefact of accountancy. When the impact of the goods we buy from other nations is counted, our total greenhouse gases did not fall by 19% between 1990 and 2008. They rose by 20%. This is despite the replacement during that period of many of our coal-fired power stations with natural gas, which produces roughly half as much carbon dioxide for every unit of electricity. When our "consumption emissions", rather than territorial emissions, are taken into account, our proud record turns into a story of dismal failure.

There are two further impacts of this false accounting. The first is that because many of the goods whose manufacture we commission are now produced in other countries, those places take the blame for our rising consumption. We use China just as we use the population issue: as a means of deflecting responsibility. What's the point of cutting our own consumption, a thousand voices ask, when China is building a new power station every 10 seconds (or whatever the current rate happens to be)?

But, just as our position is flattered by the way greenhouse gases are counted, China's is unfairly maligned. A graph published by the House of Commons energy and climate change committee shows that consumption accounting would reduce China's emissions by roughly 45%. Many of those power stations and polluting factories have been built to supply our markets, feeding an apparently insatiable demand in the UK, the US and other rich nations for escalating quantities of stuff.

The second thing the accounting convention has hidden from us is consumerism's contribution to global warming. Because we consider only our territorial emissions, we tend to emphasise the impact of services - heating, lighting and transport for example - while overlooking the impact of goods. Look at the whole picture, however, and you discover (using the Guardian's carbon calculator) that manufacturing and consumption is responsible for a remarkable 57% of the greenhouse gas production caused by the UK.

Unsurprisingly, hardly anyone wants to talk about this, as the only meaningful response is a reduction in the volume of stuff we consume. And this is where even the most progressive governments' climate policies collide with everything else they represent. As Mustapha Mond points out in Brave New World, "industrial civilisation is only possible when there's no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning".

The wheels of the current economic system - which depends on perpetual growth for its survival - certainly. The impossibility of sustaining this system of endless, pointless consumption without the continued erosion of the living planet and the future prospects of humankind, is the conversation we will not have.

By considering only our territorial emissions, we make the impacts of our escalating consumption disappear in a puff of black smoke: we have offshored the problem, and our perceptions of it.

But at least in a couple of places the conjuring trick is beginning to attract some attention.

On 16 April, the Carbon Omissions site will launch a brilliant animation by Leo Murray, neatly sketching out the problem*. The hope is that by explaining the issue simply and engagingly, his animation will reach a much bigger audience than articles like the one you are reading can achieve. (*Declaration of interest [unpaid]: I did the voiceover).

On 24 April, the Committee on Climate Change (a body that advises the UK government) will publish a report on how consumption emissions are likely to rise, and how government policy should respond to the issue.

I hope this is the beginning of a conversation we have been avoiding for much too long. How many of us are prepared fully to consider the implications?

www.monbiot.com

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Opposition No-Show at RI Hearing on Packaging-EPR

2013-04-12T09:59:00.003-07:00

By Matt Prindiville, Associate Director

On Thursday, April 4^th, the Rhode Island House Committee on Environment and Natural Resources held a hearing on H5264, “An Act to Reduce Marine Debris and Conserve Landfill Space while Increasing the Recycling of Post-Consumer Packaging," sponsored by Representative Donna Walsh (D-Charlestown). The bill would put the responsibility for collecting and recycling packaging and printed paper (PPP) onto the companies that sell products into the marketplace. It would cover all packaging and paper generated from households initially, and would then direct producers to finance collection and recycling for all generators in the state except for industrial and large commercial.

The bill holds producers to achieve a 75% recycling rate for all PPP generated by 2019. It also creates a process to create recycling targets for each different commodity type – aluminum, PET, HDPE, etc – to drive continuous performance and prevent higher-value, easily-recyclable materials like paper and aluminum from subsidizing lower value materials such as many of the plastics with little or no recycling markets. Finally, it directs producers to work with organizations working on marine debris to directly address the problem materials found in coastal cleanups.

Supporters showed up in force and strong testimony was delivered by local and national environmental advocates and businesses. Jamie Rhodes from Clean Water Action, and the lead advocate working on EPR in Rhode Island, walked the Committee through each provision step by step. Allen Hershkowitz from the Natural Resources Defense Council delivered passionate and eloquent testimony, citing the many financial and environmental benefits to the state from passing the bill. Mr. Hershkowitz also stressed the national profile of the bill, reminding the Committee that, “This is one of the most important bills you will work on,” and “All eyes are on Rhode Island.” Other supportive testimony was given from many local organizations, including local chapters from Surfrider, the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society.

Business supporters ranged from Nestle Waters North America to Environmental Packaging International (EPI), a Rhode Island business providing regulatory compliance services to companies around the world operating under EPR and other product stewardship initiatives. Victor Bell from EPI reminded the Committee that Rhode Island was one of the first and only states to pass an EPR-type initiative, which put a tax on all packaging to pay for litter prevention and cleanup.

I came in prepared to square off with opponents of the legislation, primarily big trade associations like the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the American Forest and Paper Association, the Toy Industry Association, the American Institute for Packaging and the Environment and others.

But with the exception of the paper industry, none of the other big opponents showed up to testify. There were only three or four opponents in total, and several of them were from niche industries looking to exempt their products (this always happens in bill hearings). I was flabbergasted. In over a decade of working on environmental policy, I have never seen a hearing on a controversial bill where the primary trade associations involved didn’t show up.

However, they all knew about the hearing because they submitted written testimony. They also showed up in force to deliver testimony in opposition to EPR before the Rhode Island Senate Packaging Commission. In my mind, this means their primary strategy is to work behind the scenes to try and kill the bill with legislative leadership. An issue of such magnitude and public importance should be debated in public. Private lobbying and donations to political leaders undermines democracy and keeps the public in the dark about the dirtier side of our consumer society.

In the end, I think these powerful actors are in for a rude awakening. EPR for packaging has legs. There is a growing constituency of support across environmental and industry sectors and a growing understanding that we need new policies to address the widespread wasting of resources – natural, financial and human – from the unsustainable design and use of packaging.

It’s only a matter of time before producers become responsible for packaging waste in the United States.

How Curbside Collection Came to Be

2013-04-04T12:26:00.001-07:00

By Bill Sheehan, Executive Director

Many recycling practitioners in the United States seem unaware of how the hallmark of municipal

recycling programs – curbside collection – came to be. Some seem to think that municipal curbside collection programs arose sometime during the 1980s in response to a civic movement, like the civic movement that successfully opposed new incinerators in the 1970s and 80s. But that's not how it happened.

A new study published last fall in the Harvard Business History Review details how American beverage companies enrolled governments to set up, and taxpayers to fund, curbside recycling systems as they transitioned from refillable to one-way, disposable packaging. Elements of this story have been documented before.

For example, Samantha McBride in Recycling Reconsidered (chapter 2) tells the story of how New York City, in the 1970s, was led away from adopting beverage container deposits by the beverage industry. “The industry's strategy was to recruit compliant [environmental] organizations and support their campaigns to push for changes in municipal waste policy (curbside recycling) instead of changes in corporate practices.” MacBride tells the story in the context of a broader analysis of corporate co-optation of the environmental movement.

In Ontario in the early 1980s, the beverage industry provided seed funding for municipal curbside programs to thwart not only deposits, but also quotas for refillable containers. As Guy Crittenden observed in The Blue Box Conspiracy (1997), “The blue box on your front porch wasn't dreamed up by government officials. Or inspired by grassroots environmentalists. The soft drink industry and its packaging suppliers brought in the Blue Box to serve a common corporate agenda — thwarting government legislation that would have foiled their plans to bury the refillable bottle in the junk heap of history...” And: “By salting the low-value materials that we now find in our Blue Boxes with pricey aluminum, recycling the box's entire contents would become thinkable.” More detail is provided in Waste Blues, a 1997 article published in The Financial Post Magazine.

The new study in the Harvard Business History Review is by Bart Elmore, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. I quote extensively from his paper here, but encourage the reader to download and review the full paper at the link below, provided with the author's permission.

The author’s purpose is “understanding the elements of the American political economy that nurtured big business growth in the twentieth century.” For environmentalists, the story provides a cautionary tale of how vigilance is needed to ensure that new proposals for EPR for packaging deliver results in the public interest.

EXCERPTS from: The American Beverage Industry and the Development of Curbside Recycling Programs, 1950–2000. By Bartow J. Elmore, Harvard Business History Review 86 (Autumn 2012): 477–501.

ABSTRACT

Many people today consider curbside recycling the quintessential model of eco-stewardship, yet this waste-management system in the United States was in many ways a polluter sponsored initiative that allowed corporations to expand their productive capacity without fixing fundamental flows in their packaging technology. For the soft-drink, brewing and canning industries, the promise of recycling became a powerful weapon for combating mandatory deposit bills and other source-reduction measures in the 1970s and 1980s. …

WHY BEVERAGE GIANTS SWITCHED TO ONE-WAY CONTAINERS

By the turn of the twentieth century, soft-drink companies and major brewing giants shipped thousands of returnable bottles all across the United States. Most companies relied on a network of small bottlers to distribute their products to consumer outlets throughout America. ...

The shift to one-way container distribution began in the brewing business, not the soft-drink industry, in large part because the major brewing giants desired a cost-efficient way to break into the new markets made available by the collapse of small breweries in the wake of Prohibition. ...

Profits that once had gone into the pockets of local bottlers could now be channeled into corporate coffers if the company could take over bottling operations. … Smaller bottlers who depended on a returnable system to turn a profit lambasted the government for allowing soft-drink giants to pass off the costs of container collection and disposal on the government. ...

The one-way container allowed beverage giants like Coke to achieve record profits by shifting key costs of distribution onto municipalities. Coke’s success assured the consolidation of the soft-drink industry, as corporate rivals followed the number-one brand’s lead. The era of one-way metal soft-drink containers had arrived by the mid-1960s, and though the beverage companies would look to develop new packaging designs in the years ahead—Coke making a major shift toward plastics in 1978—the most dramatic conversion had already taken place by 1960. The beverage industry was primed for a new era of growth in the age of convenience packaging. The only question was, Would the consumer remain committed to this new distribution system?

CONSUMER BACKLASH: THE EXCESSES OF INDUSTRY BECOME VISIBLE

The soft-drink giants’ switch to one-way containers in the 1960s generated prodigious amounts of waste that alerted consumers to the environmental costs associated with corporate growth. Thousands of throwaway cans and bottles lay strewn across the American landscape by the 1960s, and many Americans began to call on the brewing, soft drink, and packaging industries to clean up the mess. ...

In the mid-1950s, the American canning, brewing, and beverage industries responded to consumer concern about one-way container waste by creating the first national antilitter organization, Keep America Beautiful. … KAB’s central objective was to deflect accusations that producers were to blame for the country’s growing litter problem. ...

Coca-Cola developed independent programs to fight the backlash against one-way container technology. Coke’s vigorous pursuit of these campaigns was in large part a response to the growing strength of an environmental movement that increasingly took aggressive actions toward visible corporate polluters. ...

Coke, NSDA, and KAB public ad campaigns in the 1960s and early 1970s certainly helped draw the public’s attention away from the fact that American companies were producing prodigious amounts of packaging waste, but corporate polluters knew that litter bags would not, in the long run, solve their problem of exposure. In the Pacific Northwest and New England in particular, legislators were frustrated that little was being done to combat the nation’s growing litter problem, and they pushed for mandatory deposit legislation in the late 1960s. The beverage industry had to respond with a more aggressive campaign directed to American lawmakers if it hoped to avoid costly pollution taxes. ...

RECYCLING BECOMES THE SOLUTION

By the end of the 1970s and into the 1980s, the increased visibility of the country’s landfill problems intensified concerns about throwaway containers. ...

Publicly funded curbside recycling programs, or rather the promise of such programs, became the U.S. industry’s primary mechanism for combating legislation that would demand extended producer responsibility for packaging waste in the 1980s. ...

The soft-drink, packaging, and brewing industries held out recycling as the panacea that would solve the nation’s litter problems. Companies in these industries knew that they had to take preemptive steps to combat growing consumer concerns, and they believed recycling could be touted as an effective industry alternative to mandatory deposit schemes. ...

Unable on their own to clean up the mess they helped create, the nation’s big beverage companies turned to federal and local government agencies in the 1970s and 1980s to help develop solid-waste management programs that would keep corporate waste out of sight. Opposing initiatives requiring producers to pay for industry pollution, beverage companies lobbied for “comprehensive” recycling programs to solve the problem. Recycling became a corporate weapon in a fierce battle to undermine mandatory deposit legislation and bans on nonreturnable packaging, point-source pollution reduction programs popular among environmentalists in the “Age of Ecology.” …

In the end, industry lobbyists were victorious, pushing through legislation at the federal, state, and municipal levels that established recycling programs as the cure-all for the nation’s solid-waste problems. Recycling became the exclusive solution rather than the complement to mandatory source-reduction programs. While Coke and its corporate partners continued to produce billions of one-way containers, municipalities took on new debts in order to deal with the mounting piles of trash. ...

This highly visible corporate greening campaign, however, represented the veneer of a much larger system that had to be built from the ground up, largely by city governments and largely with taxpayer dollars. … Because the costs of cleaning up the mess were distributed, in other words, few citizens recognized the huge capital outlays that were being made by the public on behalf of private industry. Beverage and packaging companies had found a way to enroll local governments in a nationwide corporate cleanup and had done so without drawing the ire of an American citizenry typically averse to government bailouts of private industry. They succeeded because the support they received was largely invisible to the public. ...

The beverage industry positioned itself as the keystone of the recycling system. Through the end of the 1980s, soft-drink, brewing, and beverage-packaging companies sought to convince citizens and lawmakers alike that container waste was the essential fuel driving nascent [curbside] recycling programs. … Coke and its industry allies argued that the diversion of aluminum cans from the waste reclamation stream via deposit laws would eliminate the majority of the revenue generated from sales of recyclables. ...

The soft drink industry’s appeal proved effective. After 1986, only one other state (Hawaii) passed a mandatory deposit law. Most municipalities committed substantial resources and political support to the development of what the industry called “comprehensive” recycling programs. In 1986, only Rhode Island had a mandatory statewide recycling law on the books, but, just three years later, twenty-six states had passed laws requiring recycling as a component of solid-waste reduction, and seven states mandated the creation of statewide curbside programs. The number of curbside programs in the United States increased from just six hundred in 1989 to over four thousand in 1992. With the rise of curbside recycling, industries abandoned many of their own buyback programs and began to rely largely on municipal services that required them to pay no extra fees. ...

By the end of the 1990s, publicly funded recycling programs had become accepted as the method for cleaning up industry container waste.

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http://www.productpolicy.org/ppi/attachments/Elmore-Curbside%20Recycling.pdf

Agricultural Product Stewardship & EPR in Canada

2013-01-29T15:57:00.001-08:00

By Barry Friesen, P. Eng, General Manager, CleanFARMS

Packaging and product waste in Canada is almost equal in volume between commercial and residential sources. To date, regulated extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs have targeted mainly household and general consumer products. The crop protection industry, on the commercial side however, has been delivering product stewardship programs to farmers on a voluntary basis for 24 years. Since 1989, the crop protection industry has been operating what is now a Canada-wide collection program for commercial pesticide and fertilizer containers and obsolete commercial pesticide products.

Farmer Guide - CleanFARMS, established in 2010, took over the pesticide container program and has now expanded it to include liquid fertilizers. It is now extending its reach to establish permanent programs for a variety of products such as grain storage bags, bale/silage wrap, twine and netting. To assist farmers in Ontario, CleanFARMS, with funding from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, produced a ‘GUIDE TO RECYCLING NON-NUTRIENT AGRICULTURAL WASTE IN ONTARIO’. This guide offers a one-stop reference to permanent programs available to Ontario farmers.

http://www.cleanfarms.ca/documents/studies/OntarioFarmerRecycHB_FINAL_20120614.pdf

Studies - CleanFARMS has also been working with all provinces to establish permanent programs for the collection and recycling of all non-nutrient agricultural wastes. CleanFARMS’ approach has been to conduct waste characterization studies, farmer attitude and behavior surveys, collection and processing option evaluations and pilot programming. The end result of this work is to lead the way to establishing permanent programs.

It should be noted that not every program needs to be regulated. The pesticide container program, which recently expanded to include liquid fertilizer containers, is voluntary in most provinces and has a 66% recovery of all commercial containers. The studies will include determining if backdrop regulation is necessary or if a voluntary (the preferred) approach can suffice for other products. Results of the studies can be found on CleanFARMS’ website under its ‘Resources’ tab at www.cleanfarms.ca .

Governance of Producer Responsibility Organizations

2013-01-24T09:13:00.000-08:00

By Christina Seidel, Executive Director, Recycling Council of Alberta

Extended producer responsibility mandates are often carried out by collective non-profit Producer Responsibility Organizations (PROs) that discharge individual brand owner responsibilities. The makeup of the PRO governing board can determine the extent to which an EPR program serves broader commercial interests and achieves outcomes in the public interest.

PRO governing boards should include multi-stakeholder representation. This provides for more robust discussion around the board table, which is where the real decisions are made. It broadens the discussion to include important issues like the environment, in which producers have little expertise or often even interest. Purely producer PROs tend to focus on compliance and economic efficiency unless there is a broader conscience on the board. This conscience can be provided by other stakeholders.

At the same time, the list of stakeholders is likely best to not include those directly benefitting financially from the legislation, such as the recyclers/ haulers who are directly paid by the organization. This is just good board governance not to have these stakeholders at the table. However, their input is still desirable, so this is where an advisory group can come in. That way their input is still incorporated but not in a potentially conflicted way.

However, advisory groups can end up being a token gesture if there are no stakeholders on the governing board other than producers. There is no mechanism that requires the governing board to take the advisory board’s input into consideration.

Producers can be threatened by the notion of other stakeholders on their board. But, there are examples of multi-stakeholder boards that operate effectively. I think the best model is one where no single group has a majority vote, requiring more consensus building around the table. However, it may be necessary to compromise by giving producers a majority vote. This may provide them with the feeling of control they want, while still bringing broader opinions and expertise to the table.

An example of a multi-stakeholder stewardship board with broad representation is the Alberta Recycling Management Authority. This board manages the tire, electronics and paint stewardship programs in Alberta. Board representation includes one member from each of the tire, electronics and paint industries, as well as urban and rural municipalities, professional engineers association, environmental services association, Recycling Council of Alberta, Alberta Environmental Network, and public at large. In addition, there are three industry councils to address issues specific to tires, electronics or paint, and present recommendations to the Board.

An example of an industry-oriented board that incorporates some external stakeholder representation is the BC Used Oil Management Association. Its board is comprised of seven industry members from manufacturers, brand owners and retailers, as well as one municipal member and one from the public-at-large. The other used oil management boards across the country have similar board make-up.

It is somewhat intuitive that broader stakeholder representation will raise a wider range of issues at the board table, as well as bring an increased range of skills and expertise to the decision-making process. Getting the right mix on the governing board is an important consideration in enabling legislation or regulations.

British Columbia's New EPR Handbook for Consumers

2012-12-26T07:06:00.000-08:00

By Bill Sheehan, Executive Director

I just received the new updated British Columbia’s Recycling Handbook. It provides a fascinating glimpse, for Americans, of how discarded products will be managed when those who design, market and use products and associated packaging – producers and consumers – are responsible for managing them at end of life. It's called extended producer responsibility, or EPR for short.

The booklet is for consumers. As the subtitle states, this is A Simple Guide to What Can Be Recycled Under BC's Stewardship Programs. Industry stewardship agencies, also known as producer responsibility organizations (PROs), are organizations established by manufacturers, distributers or brand owners to discharge their responsibility for ensuring that their products are recycled when customers are done with them. In British Columbia, such programs are "100% industry funded," meaning that program costs are internalized in the price of the product, at no cost to taxpayers or local government.

British Columbia has more stewardship agencies covering more product categories than any other jurisdiction in North America.

The first edition of the Recycling Handbook, issued two years ago, was 20 pages and covered the 8 stewardship agencies operating at the time. The new edition is 28 pages and includes 17 stewardship agencies (see list at end).

Some of the new product categories that have been added since the last version of the Handbook include toys, small appliances and power tools, a vast array of electronics, outdoor power equipment, lighting products, and alkaline batteries. (A stewardship program for residential packaging and printed paper is under development.)

One thing that is striking about the Handbook is the diversity of return channels available for different products. A chart lists, for each product type, whether it can be taken to depots, retailers, collection events, regional drop-off sites or put in curbside bins. Each of these return avenues creates opportunities for entrepreneurs and jobs, since stewards pay to have their products collected and sorted.

A nice touch for a consumer guide is a graphic showing what kinds of new things each of 15 product categories are made into.

The Handbook is published by the Stewardship Agencies of British Columbia. You can find it, and an informative video, Evolution of Industry led Product Stewardship Model in British Columbia, on their website at http://www.bcstewards.com/

Here’s a list of industry stewardship agencies operating in B.C., from the Recycling Council of British Columbia website (see also this summary table of programs):

The Handbook portrays a commonsense world in which the costs of managing products at end of life are included in product prices and not off-loaded onto government, taxpayers or general garbage ratepayers. While EPR programs in British Columbia have their warts, they give those of us in other jurisdictions a lot to learn from as we develop more rational materials management systems.

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PPI-PSI Response to the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA)

2012-12-13T16:50:00.001-08:00

Product Policy Institute (PPI) and Product Stewardship Institute (PSI) today released a white paper responding to a recent GMA report that concluded that Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) should not be applied to packaging, and that government, not themselves, should be responsible for their packaging when consumers are done with it.

The PPI-PSI white paper, Grocery Manufacturers Seek Government Aid to Recycle Their Packaging, identifies four areas in which the GMA report “gets it wrong:” (1) Limited data, poorly interpreted; (2) False conclusions about cost-effectiveness; (3) Misleading recycling rates; and (4) Premature conclusion on packaging design.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association is a trade association representing large consumer packaged goods brands, such as Procter and Gamble, General Mills, Kraft, and Pepsi. The conclusion of the GMA report is that the recycling collection system status quo, in which local governments and taxpayers pay to collect and sort packaging waste, is viable and only needs some tweaking. America is different, they argue, from the many countries in which EPR for packaging is established policy and has been delivering superior results. In essence, GMA proposes more government aid and higher taxes to deal with their packaging waste.

What’s wrong with this picture? The PPI-PSI white paper points out that local governments cannot afford to maintain or expand recycling infrastructure—or do so at the expense of vital services; local governments are not optimal participants in a global commodity supply system; and internalizing recycling costs in products and packaging is inherently fairer than taxpayer-funded recycling.

The PPI-PSI paper concludes:

“An underperforming recycling system is a long-term threat to U.S. consumer packaged goods companies. Many companies have made sustainability or sustainable packaging statements; however, what is often missing is the articulation of strategic or tactical plans to achieve the stated goals. Rather than fighting what its members already do in 47 other countries, companies could work to create superior producer-led EPR systems in the U.S., develop predictable supplies of raw materials, and earn positive public recognition from assuming this level of corporate social responsibility. Those companies within GMA that eventually come to the realization that EPR may deliver benefits toward their sustainability goals might start to question their trade organization’s opposition.”