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.
