The recent U.S. Recycling Summit held in Anaheim, California, focused on certain aspects of extended producer responsibility, a practice that is becoming increasingly widespread, with manufacturers becoming more aware of it. In fact, five states are working on implementing legislation. Dan Felton, Ameripen’s executive director, called the rate of change “quite remarkable” and said attendees who were unfamiliar with the topic should get up to speed as soon as possible.
Brands now have to figure out how to accurately collect the data needed to inform the system and remain compliant. This becomes more complicated the more diversity within a single brand, as Neil Menezes, manager of packaging sustainability policy at General Mills and vice chairman of the board of the Circular Action Alliance, says.
Neiñ added that, “We don’t normally track packaging weight, we track pallets, cases, units,” he said. “Finding a way to convert that to a weight of different types of packaging is a complex exercise. We need, effectively, some kind of unit weight by component, and make sure we multiply that carefully to get the actual weights that we need to report to the jurisdiction.”
At the moment, in the U.S., there are still many gaps and unknowns to be resolved on the EPR issue and there is an urgent need to resolve them in order to implement this system. At this time there is still a lot of confusion about exactly what the future holds for brands, packaging suppliers and the possible changes that need to be made to operations and packaging. And the fact that each state is developing its own individual extended producer responsibility system, with no national system in sight, only adds to the general uncertainty.
The development of effective data collection systems and targets should be at the core of an extended producer responsibility system.
Achieving harmonization of the parties involved in all aspects of the EPR – and in each state implementing the EPR – is becoming a sticking point. There is a need, the producers conclude, to strike a balance between what the states and stakeholders demand.
U.S. Packaging Companies Closer to EPR Laws
Ameripen supports Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation.
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The impact of aluminum beverage can recycling on environmental sustainability: Perspective from the United Arab Emirates and Asia Pacific.
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