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Packaging EPR: Idea Trending; Implementation Moot

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging is trending. But it’s unlikely to work in the U.S. marketplace as we know it. Here’s why.

Ben Miyares

The 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) gave states rather than the Federal government the right to manage their waste streams. Under RCRA the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deals with but does not regulate packaging waste. Consequently, there has been little federal policy covering packaging waste since RCRA was enacted. RCRA effectively dumped the regulation of packaging waste in the laps of the states.

And even though concern about packaging waste—particularly plastic packaging waste—appears to be growing, there is no consensus in the states favoring EPR and little agreement about who would be charged with what share of the responsibility for handling the waste. Also muddled is which materials and packaging formats would be targeted. Nor are there signs that the Feds are inclined to take action on their own or be goaded into regulatory activity by the U.S. Congress.

In the unlikely event there were to be national regulation of packaging waste in the next three to five years, it would come from the states, regions, and municipalities rather than be decreed by national fiat.

Even some of EPR’s champions concede that Extended Producer Responsibility policies by themselves won’t work. “While EPR is a necessary and vital part of the solution to packaging waste and pollution, it is by itself insufficient and needs to be complemented by a wider set of policies, and voluntary industry action and innovation towards a circular economy for packaging,” says The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, arguably the staunchest of EPR’s proponents.

Innovation is industry’s lifeblood. But there’s little business appetite for disruptive policies that insert government further into the works and create a rat’s nest of compliance red tape in the bargain.

“Plastics are inundating the Planet.” That’s the headline of a recent opinion column in The New York Times by the trio of Marty Mulvihill, co-founder of venture capital fund Safer Made; Gretta Goldenman, environmental consultant and board chair of the Green Science Policy Institute (GSPI); and Arlene Blum, Executive Director at GSPI.

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