To Reduce Plastic Waste, Make Producers Responsible for It (Guest Opinion by Judith Enck)
Judith Enck | September 1, 2022 | The Post-Standard
Judith Enck is a former EPA regional administrator, the president of Beyond Plastics, and a visiting faculty member at Bennington College, in Vermont.
Seen any plastic waste littering your favorite lakeshore, park or neighborhood lately? You’re not alone — largely because less than 6% of the plastic we produce is actually recycled.
Unlike metal, glass, paper and cardboard, plastics — which are made from a byproduct of hydrofracked gas plus a variety of toxic chemical and colorants — are neither feasible nor economical to recycle.
The plastics industry has known this for decades, but spent millions on advertising trying to convince us otherwise. Finally acknowledging that plastics recycling has been a dismal failure, they are now promoting technologies they misleadingly call “chemical” or “advanced recycling.” Other terms include “gasification,” “pyrolysis” and “chemical conversion.”
Make no mistake, these are not recycling. All refer to burning plastic waste to create fuel, or using toxic solvents to break down plastic waste. These processes emit pollutants and generate large quantities of hazardous waste, putting neighboring communities — which are disproportionately low income or people of color, or both — at risk.
But a far better solution is at hand. A bright idea with a boring name, Extended Producer Responsibility shifts the onus of managing waste from taxpayers to those who make the products. State Sen. Rachel May (D-Syracuse) and Assemblymember Steve Englebright (D-Suffolk County) have introduced a pair of bills in Albany to do exactly that.
Their Extended Producer Responsibility Act would create a program that substantially reduces packaging, especially plastic packaging, and sets mandatory standards for waste reduction and recycling. Together with new legislation to expand and update the state’s Bottle Bill, this initiative would shrink the financial burden of recycling programs on municipalities, decrease solid waste generation, and extend the life of landfills.
New York’s highly successful bottle bill was adopted in 1982. Now it’s time to modernize the law by 1. increasing the refundable deposit, and 2. expanding it so it covers all beverage containers, including those for non-carbonated drinks, like iced tea, sports drinks, wine and liquor.
More and more, policymakers are recognizing that effective EPR is essential to addressing recycling challenges and single-use packaging pollution. Indeed, four states have adopted new Extended Producer Responsibility laws for packaging, and another 16 have introduced such legislation this year. However, many of these bills are being pushed by the plastics industry and are flawed.
So what does effective EPR look like? May and Englebright’s proposal provides a robust model other states would do well to emulate. Firmly rooted in waste reduction, their legislation includes a requirement that packaging be reduced by 50 percent over 10 years, either by eliminating it altogether or switching to a reuse-and-refill system. The remaining packaging must be recyclable or made from recycled content.
