"Spotlight on EPR" in eMagazine.com

An Interview With Bill Sheehan

March 1, 2011 | Jim Motavalli |

Bill Sheehan cofounded the Product Policy Institute (PPI) with Helen Spiegelman in 2003, and serves as its executive director. In his work at PPI, he tackles waste from every angle—from championing waste-reduction methods to promoting cleaner manufacturing processes and the use of less-toxic materials. Sheehan has been a major supporter of bringing extended producer responsibility (EPR) to the U.S., and his work has led to the formation of Product Stewardship Councils in California, New York, Texas, Vermont and other states. Here, he talks to E about the promise for widespread adoption of EPR in the U.S.

E Magazine: Is EPR reaching a tipping point in the U.S.?

Bill Sheehan: Yes. EPR is in a high legislative phase. The question now is what kind of EPR recycling we will have. The danger is that powerful corporations—in concert with the garbage industry and public sector waste departments—will water down EPR so that it does little to move the needle towards sustainability. If all EPR does is throw industry funding at programs that collect masses of mixed material that are sold on low-grade global commodities markets, we won’t get meaningful change.

E: What kinds of EPR schemes are being advocated for packaging?

B.S.: Two camps are squaring off. One approach is the mixed-basket-of-goods approach proposed by the beverage industry in Vermont as an alternative to beverage container deposits. This employs industry financing for a “comprehensive” material-based program for all packaging and printed paper. In practice, it relies on industry financing of government-delivered curbside programs. In Canada, this approach has been implemented in Ontario and Manitoba and has delivered poor results.
The second approach, pioneered in western Canada, is phased and targeted EPR. Government targets specific product categories—such as soft drinks, fast food, detergents and cleaners, and lets producers engage with consumers to innovate new programs. That’s how it has worked with the successful EPR programs for household hazardous products that are underway.

E: Should local and state governments pay part of the cost of EPR programs, or should corporations bear the burden alone?

B.S.: The central principle of EPR is that those who design, market and use products and packaging—producers and consumers—should pay for all of the environmental management costs. Experience shows that good EPR programs do not require any further subsidies from state or local governments. In fact, they work better when government sets the bar and then lets industry design and operate the most effective programs. One of the opportunities in EPR is that it offers brand owners an opportunity to build a relationship of trust with the consumer.

E: How do you view the beverage industry’s proposal for EPR for packaging in the Vermont legislation?

B.S.: Coca-Cola and Nestlé have made a fundamental concession: They admit that they have a moral responsibility to provide stewardship of their empty containers. But repealing effective, industry-managed container deposit programs makes no sense from a sustainability perspective.
Deposits get more than double the recovery rates of mixed curbside collection, they yield clean material that is used to make new products, they work for beverages consumed away from home and they engage consumers rather than taxpayers or garbage ratepayers. Industry-managed bottle deposits are the grandmother of North American EPR programs—they should be improved and expanded, not abandoned.

E: Is the Maine law a model for the rest of the U.S.?

B.S.: Maine’s first-in-the-nation framework law establishes the principles of EPR in policy, and also a process for identifying priority products in the waste stream for new product stewardship programs. Maine has more EPR laws than any other state, a strong state environmental agency and, not insignificantly, a campaign finance reform law.
Maine also has a collegial culture that allowed the bill’s author to get support from the business community through the Maine State Chamber of Commerce. States with less experience and capacity than Maine may need to first pass several product-specific EPR bills. Those can ultimately be rolled into a framework regulation as British Columbia did in 2004.

E: Why is Congress so unfriendly toward EPR?

B.S.: I think it’s more a matter of neglect. Recycling has never been a major focus of our federal government. In Europe and Canada, they’ve moved beyond debating whether EPR is the right policy and are asking how to make it work. Ultimately, harmonized federal or national EPR policies make sense. But brand owners are more powerful in Congress than in the state legislatures.

E: How does the Product Policy Institute see its role?

B.S.: PPI was the first environmental organization in the U.S. to raise the fundamental question of whether local communities should be bearing the burden of cleaning up after the throwaway economy. We told the story of the history of waste: how the provision of convenient municipal garbage collection, at no cost to those who design and market consumer goods, encouraged the proliferation of toxic and throw-away products and packaging.
We challenged—and still challenge—end-of-pipe services by local governments and waste haulers that don’t solve the waste problem, but perpetuate it. We think it’s time for the public to demand “cradle-to-cradle” product stewardship from the companies they do business with, so that consumers can return products and packaging rather than resorting to garbage trucks, landfills and incinerators.


http://www.emagazine.com/magazine/spotlight-on-epr

Product Policy Institute founder attends the Post Carbon Institute Fellows Retreat

Product Policy Institute founder, Bill Sheehan will be participating in a retreat for fellows of the Post Carbon Institute this weekend (Jan 22-24).

Post Carbon Institute fellows are 28 of the world's leading minds in the areas of economic, social, and environmental sustainability. While their areas of expertise range far and wide, one shared question binds them:

How do we manage the transition to a more resilient,
equitable, and sustainable world?
Bill Sheehan co-founded the Product Policy Institute with Helen Spiegelman in 2003 and serves as its Executive Director. Bill advocates for public policy that protects public health and safety and slows climate change by encouraging waste prevention, clean production and reduced use of toxics in products. He developed, with Spiegelman, a historical analysis that showed how municipal recycling and waste management services enable product manufacturers to design and sell goods without considering disposal costs and impacts.

Product Policy Institute Featured in Miller-McCune Article

Executive Director of PPI, Bill Sheehan was quoted in an article about the growing resistance of US cities and states to pay for waste disposal.

From the article: Because of industry opposition in California, it's fallen to Maine, the most sparsely populated state east of the Mississippi, to take the legislative lead. Maine faces a $400 million budget shortfall, and the bill, "An Act to Provide Leadership Regarding the Responsible Recycling of Consumer Products" stands a good chance, said Rep. Melissa Innes (http://www.maine.gov/legis/housedems/minnes/), D-Yarmouth, the author. A joint state House and Senate committee hearing on the legislation is set for Jan. 22. Democrats have a majority in both houses... Maine may be ahead, but California is giving it a push, said Bill Sheehan, executive director of the Product Policy Institute, an Athens, Ga.-based nonprofit group that advocates for a "zero-waste" society. "Maine is clearly a leader in being first and most prolific," Sheehan said. "They 'got it' early on. But a lot of the energy for extended producer responsibility is coming from local governments, and that movement is sweeping down the West Coast."...

Read the full article

Leading Organizations Applaud First-in-Nation Local Pharmaceutical Take Back Ordinance

Oakland, CA (July 24, 2012)  Today, three leading U.S. organizations in the product stewardship field applauded the historic 5-0 vote by the Alameda County, California, Board of Supervisors to require pharmaceutical companies whose products are sold in the County to pay for collection programs for unwanted medicines. 

The Product Stewardship Institute, Product Policy Institute, and California Product Stewardship Council are leaders of the national movement to shift responsibility for spent products from taxpayers to the producers who design, make, and sell them.  The problem with unwanted pharmaceuticals is that, without a safe and convenient collection program, there are significant risks of prescription drug abuse, accidental poisonings, aquatic impacts, and pollution of our nation’s waterways.

“Today, Alameda County took a stand and said if the federal government and state legislators fail to act to protect public health and the environment, and the product manufacturers refuse to share in the responsibility for their products which they profited from, local governments will take action because the public is demanding it”, said Heidi Sanborn, Executive Director of the California Product Stewardship Council.

The movement to have manufacturers pay for the end-of-life costs of their products is growing both among leading corporations and state and local governments in the United States. In Canada and other countries, an increasing number of companies already take responsibility for providing convenient collection of numerous unwanted products, including leftover medications.

The issue of “who pays” for collection programs is bigger than just pharmaceuticals.  “Dozens of new industry programs and state laws to reduce the lifecycle impacts of products in the U.S. have been initiated or adopted in the last decade” said Scott Cassel, Chief Executive Officer of the Product Stewardship Institute. There are now producer responsibility laws in 32 states for products including paint, mercury-containing fluorescent lamps, and electronics.

But asking corporations to share in the responsibility should not be such a fight.  Bill Sheehan, Executive Director of the Product Policy Institute said, “There are national discussions on packaging initiated by Nestle Waters and voluntary take-back programs funded by rechargeable battery producers.  But not one pharmaceutical company has offered any help to safely collect unwanted medications, like they do in other countries.  The industry failed to act.  They forced government to mandate what’s fair: that they share in the responsibility.”

CONTACTS

Product Policy Institute
Bill Sheehan, 706-247-2500    bill@productpolicy.org
www.productpolicy.org

Product Stewardship Institute
Scott Cassel, 617-236-4822    scott@productstewardship.us
www.productstewardship.us

California Product Stewardship Council
Heidi Sanborn, 916 706-3420    Heidi@CalPSC.org
www.calpsc.org

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Carbon Omissions: Stop Hiding Behind Recycling

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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WASTE: Climate Change, Peak Oil, and the End of Waste!

Bill Sheehan, Executive Director
Product Policy Institute

I'm happy to announce Product Policy Institute's inclusion in the forthcoming book, The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century's Sustainability Crises.  Our chapter, "Climate Change, Peak Oil & the End of Waste" examines the intersection of waste policy, consumption and climate change, and describes a materials management approach that can contribute to building sustainable, resilient communities.

As a preview of the book, a PDF of our contribution is available here: http://www.postcarbon.org/report/

Along with PPI's chapter, The Post Carbon Reader explores key drivers shaping the 21st century, from renewable energy and urban agriculture to social justice and systems resilience.  The book features a number of important thinkers and activists, most of whom are my peers at the Post Carbon Institute: Bill McKibben, Wes Jackson, Sandra Postel, Richard Heinberg, David Orr, Stephanie Mills, Michael Shuman, Erika Allen and Richard Douthwaite, among others.

We're excited about the Reader as it showcases many aspects and challenges of the work we do, tying it to the knowledge and efforts of our colleagues at Post Carbon Institute, an international think tank dedicated to the transition to a more resilient, equitable and sustainable world.

The Post Carbon Reader will be available on October 10, 2010 from Watershed Media.

I hope you enjoy what we've written and find it engaging enough to share with your friends and colleagues.

Vermonters can have their bottle bill and EPR for packaging too

By Bill Sheehan and Matt Prindiville, Product Policy Institute

A controversial EPR-related bill in Vermont has died and hearings took place on a new bill.

Vermont bill H.218 died, according to Resource Recycling.  It was introduced in 2010, reportedly the brainchild of Coca-Cola and artfully framed as an “EPR Framework” bill.  It would have implemented producer financing for collection of packaging and printed paper while repealing the state’s bottle bill - which is the state’s most successful recycling initiative, collecting over 80% of beverage containers sold into Vermont.

Hearings were held on a new bill, H.485, in mid-January.  The new bill is mostly a traditional solid waste management plan based on government responsibility for recycling and waste management.  However, the bill mentions extended producer responsibility, in the form of possible agency recommendations in future reports.  Surprisingly, that was enough to draw opposition testimony from the Toy Industry Association and the anti-EPR Product Management Alliance.

The bill allows the Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation to recommend options for legislative consideration, including:  (A) product and packaging bans, (B) tax incentives; and (C) deposit and return legislation or extended producer responsibility legislation for certain products.

While attempting to brand EPR for packaging and printed paper as being superior to bottle bills, Coca Cola and advocates for this approach missed the mark.  PPI has always advocated that industry-run bottle bills are not only EPR, but are model examples for successful EPR programs and ones to build on. 

Opponents have argued that bottle deposits are overly prescriptive, and don’t allow manufacturers the flexibility to create their own systems.  We would argue that container-deposits are a policy tool to achieve robust performance, and that industry-run bottle bill initiatives meet the definition of EPR because manufacturers are “physically and financially” responsible for their products.

Besides, we want to allow government to be prescriptive when results aren’t being achieved.  For another example beyond deposits, in 2006, Maine passed legislation to incorporate a $5 financial bounty in their underperforming EPR law for mercury thermostats, paid to anyone with an old thermostat.  Once the bounty was in place, returns to Maine’s thermostat EPR program went through the roof and is now the highest-performing program in the nation, with collection wildly exceeding that of any other state.

We hope Vermont will continue to lead on producer responsibility legislation, and that Vermonters will realize they can have their bottle bill and EPR for packaging and printed paper, too.  We’ll have to wait and see whether the beverage industry will support this concept.  For now, they’re busy promoting EPR in non-bottle bill states. 

For many of us who live in states with mature, successful bottle bill initiatives, we want to have EPR for packaging and printed paper too, but we’re not going to sacrifice the most successful recycling (and EPR) programs that we already have for the sake of winning industry support.  Several provinces in Canada and many EU countries have already figured this out: Bottle bills and EPR for packaging can go hand in hand.

Producer Responsibility for Disposable Batteries

 

By Bill Sheehan, Executive Director

It has become increasingly clear that the life cycle impacts of the 10 billion disposable batteries produced and discarded around the world each year are significant and problematic.  The battery manufacturers euphemistically refer to these quickly disposable products  as "primary" batteries, which are mostly of the alkaline variety.  They represent 80% of the market for batteries in the United States. 

While alkaline batteries do not contain highly toxic metals like many rechargeable batteries, they do contain dangerous acids, and the metals used also have substantial environmental impacts when considered in aggregate. The European Union has banned the disposal of alkaline batteries and all batteries are to be collected through their producer responsibility electronics directive (WEEE).  Three Canadian provinces have also mandated EPR programs for disposable batteries.  In response, the disposable battery industry is forming a voluntary nationwide stewardship organization to manage alkaline batteries and their kin in the US.

Some history is relevant here.  After bottle deposit laws were passed in the 1970s and 1980s, the next target for producer responsibility legislation in the 1990s was rechargeable batteries – known as "secondary" batteries in industry jargon.  These laws were adopted mostly in states with a lot of trash incineration, like Minnesota, New Jersey and Florida.  In response, the rechargeable battery industry launched a voluntary stewardship organization called the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation.  RBRC gets points for visibility but not for transparency or for accountability for attaining the kind of outcomes established in the legislation that RBRC preempted.  For example, some laws required that 70% of the batteries put on the market must be collected for recycling - RBRC only reports pounds collected, but when regulators looked closely the actual recovery rates, they were in the range of 10 to 20% – and probably still are.

In Canada, new producer responsibility laws that regulate disposable battery collection and recycling have been in place in British Columbia and Ontario since 2010 and in Manitoba since 2011. Quebec’s program will commence this summer.  A new report by CM Consulting, Managing Canada’s Waste Batteries 2012, describes the performance of the programs to date. 

In the United States, the Corporation for Battery Recycling, comprised of the major battery manufacturers in North America -- Duracell, Energizer, Kodak, Panasonic, and Rayovac - are soliciting proposals from organizations to act as the stewardship organization that manages a national program for collecting and recycling disposable household batteries.  The request for proposals will be released in late June 2012.  The national disposable battery recycling program is expected to start in April 2013.

One aspect of the Canadian report mentioned above is especially worth noting in this context.  The report’s author, Clarissa Morawski, is careful to distinguish between different metrics that are often confused: collection, diversion, recovery, recycling, and recycling efficiency (see page 13 of her report). When we talk about the outcomes we hope to achieve with EPR policies, it is important to be clear that we're measuring what matters and that were doing it in a consistent and transparent manner.  Ms. Morawski lays out definitions and methodology that could be applied to a wide range of products and packaging. 

Given the history of the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation, legislators, regulators and other stakeholders should pay close attention to these metrics in assessing the new stewardship organization for disposable batteries.  Proper assessment will determine whether this proposal actually achieves results, or whether further legislation is needed to ensure that it does.

British Columbia's New EPR Handbook for Consumers

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):

AlarmRecycle | BC Used Oil Management Association | Brewers Association of Canada | Call 2 Recycle |Canadian Brandowners Residual Stewardship Corporation | Electrical Equipment Manufacturers Association | Electronic Products Recycling Association | ElectroRecycle Small Appliance Recycling Program | Encorp Pacific (Canada) | Light Recycle | Post-Consumer Pharmaceutical Stewardship Association | Outdoor Power Equipment Institute of Canada | Product Care | Recycle My Cell | Switch the 'Stat | The TELUS Return and Recycle Program |  Tire Stewardship BC | 

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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Recycling Reconsidered

Here’s  an important new book just published by MIT Press. It builds a compelling case that “Recycling as we know it today generates the illusion of progress while allowing industry to maintain the status quo and place responsibility on consumers and local government.”  PPI will review in more detail in future blogs; in the meantime, below are the publisher’s blurb and several endorsements  (disclosure: I reviewed the book for MIT Press).

-- Bill Sheehan

Recycling Reconsidered:  The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in the United States.  By Samantha MacBride.  © 2012, MIT Press. 

Recycling  is widely celebrated as an environmental success story. The accomplishments of the recycling movement can be seen in municipal practice, a thriving private recycling industry, and widespread public support and participation. In the United States, more people recycle than vote. But, as Samantha MacBride points out in this book, the goals of recycling--saving the earth (and trees), conserving resources, and greening the economy--are still far from being realized. The vast majority of solid wastes are still burned or buried.

MacBride  argues that, since the emergence of the recycling movement in 1970, manufacturers of products that end up in waste have successfully prevented the implementation of more onerous, yet far more effective, forms of sustainable waste policy. Recycling as we know it today generates the illusion of progress while allowing industry to maintain the status quo and place responsibility on consumers and local government. Most disturbingly, it does so with the strong support of environmental social movements that defend recycling even as they grapple with its shortcomings.

MacBride  offers a series of case studies in recycling that pose provocative questions about whether the current ways we deal with waste are really the best ways to bring about real sustainability and environmental justice. MacBride does not aim to debunk or discourage recycling but to help us think beyond recycling as it is today. In the name of ecological citizenship, she challenges us to consider larger problems of solid waste, the global range of environmental threats, and policy alternatives that go beyond curbside collection of cans, bottles, and paper.

MIT Press  $27.00  (CLOTH)  312 pp.  ISBN-10:  0-262-01600-1   ISBN-13:  978-0-262-01600-1

About the Author

Samantha MacBride teaches at Columbia University’s School of Public and International Affairs and is a professional in local waste governance.

Endorsements

“With  a thoughtful and critical eye, this study deconstructs municipal recycling, sorting the valuable aspects from those that just ‘feel good’ and reveals the strategic tensions that arise when a social movement, the ‘zero waste’ recycling movement, aligns with a business sector, the recycling industry. With a comfortable mix of technical description, financial analysis and good story telling the book challenges the simple notions of glass and plastic recycling and ‘shared product responsibility.’ Recognizing the important role that private enterprise can play in reuse, recycling and composting, this book concludes that good government policy remains a critical force in driving a sustainable materials economy.”

Ken Geiser, Professor of Work Environment, Director, Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, University of Massachusetts, Lowell

 “Samantha  MacBride has produced an outstanding study that asks profound sociological questions about the way our recycling systems are organized. Her concept of ‘busy-ness’ is right on target: consumers, environmentalists, and governments are busy recycling and feeling good while the waste industry pursues profits, and the ultimate goals of sustainability and equity get lost in the shuffle. She demonstrates that the recycling movement itself is a big part of the problem, having never made it a priority to regulate, monitor, and focus on manufacturers’ waste, and blindly embracing the consumer as the center of a “can-do” ideology, to the neglect of troubling ecological and market realities. Drawing on her years of experience as a recycling professional, MacBride outlines bold and sensible policy recommendations for a just and sustainable recycling system and the broader materials economy. This book is a must-read for scholars, activists, and policy makers.

David Naguib Pellow, Don Martindale Professor of Sociology, University of Minnesota and author of Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago

 “As  the title implies, Samantha MacBride’s Recycling Reconsidered takes a serious, timely, and unvarnished look at recycling in the United States. Her agenda is clearly utilitarian—not to convince us of the environmental virtues of recycling or to offer a cynical appraisal of why it doesn’t work but to ask thoughtful questions and make reasonable suggestions well beyond the often trite assessments that regularly appear in print. You can argue with her conclusions, but you cannot dismiss her data, her careful analysis, and her no-nonsense approach.”

Martin V. Melosi, author of The Sanitary City

Photo credit: MIT Press 

Putting boundaries on selling Stuff

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.

British Columbia Trip Report: A Window into EPR in Canada

By Bill Sheehan, Executive Director, Product Policy Institute

I spent week of March 6-12, 2011, in British Columbia -- in Vancouver, the largest city, and Victoria, the provincial capital.  My mission was to see first-hand how the BC approach to Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is working.  PPI has been promoting the BC approach since our founding in 2003 and I think it is accurate to say that we had an influence in getting California to adopt the essence of the BC results-based approach to EPR, and through California, helped set the terms of debate for the rest of the US.  Although we have been promoting the BC approach, I had only caught glimpses of the programs on the ground over the years.

I came away energized.  The core of the BC results-based approach to EPR is the idea that environmental product stewardship should be based on producer and user responsibility (those who design and benefit from products), and it is governments role to regulate and industry’s role to do.  Although it is still a work in progress, what I saw evolving is a rich, market-based system in which the key word is diversity -- diversity of product categories separately and carefully regulated, diversity of stewardship organizations, and diversity of consumer-tailored options for collecting products and packaging.  It may be PPI's important role to research and communicate the BC approach to EPR, with all its warts, and translate it to an American audience.  Ontario and Manitoba are getting most of the attention as examples of Canadian EPR programs for packaging and hazardous products.  I think BC has invented something unique that is working better than the Canadian and Manitoba programs and that improves on even European programs.

During the week I had meetings with: two of the provincial regulators who originated the approach in the mid 1990s; the current BC Environment Ministry EPR team including two department heads; key contacts at two industry stewardship organizations and a consultant to one of them; a retired plastics industry executive; members of local government; the head of a depot association; several NGOs and citizen activists; and an academic (the originator of the ecological footprint concept).  I stayed at Helen and George Spiegelman’s house and Helen accompanied me on some of the outings.

My most interesting meeting was with Dennis Kinsey.  He developed a model for taking back beverage containers and other packaging at one of the big supermarket chains.  Mr. Kinsey’s work has been carried forward since he left several years ago. What he saw was an opportunity for the retail industry to get customers to return packaging to their stores. He created clean, well-lit, in-store return centers called Changes.  They service a certain demographic of customer: those who shop weekly and like to return 10 or 20 containers at a time to a clean place. The customers are incentivized by refunds on deposit containers and by receiving “points” that can be redeemed in the store for specific other packaging that is returned (based on agreements with participating brand-owners).  The owner of the chain was able to see this opportunity to build relationships with his customers.

The interesting part of the story is the fact that Changes is just one of a rich diversity of return options available in many BC localities, options that are customer-specific and that have evolved organically. The major stewardship organization for non-milk beverage containers, Encorp Pacific, contracts with Return It depots that people generally drive to and deliver large quantities of containers.  The one Return It depot we visited was rather grubby compared to the Changes center we visited, and I was struck by the inefficiency of not crushing the thousands of soft drink containers full of air, which are then trucked to their next stop.  Beer containers returned to the depot under a separate contract with the beer industry, by comparison, are crushed before shipping (800 to 1,000 aluminum beer cans into a brick the size of a shoe box). 
 
Here’s a description by Mr. Kinsey of the diversified system of take-back opportunities for containers that has evolved in his suburban community of Maple Ridge.  He concludes: Maple Ridge is serviced by a combination of Return to Retail, Municipal Blue Box, Centralized Depot and Encorp large volume Return It Centres, each catering to a specific consumer demographic in the area.

I am a resident of Maple Ridge BC and also sit on the board of the Ridge Meadows Recycling Society http://www.rmrecycling.org/, so I have a very good knowledge of the area. Currently there are several systems for Residents of Maple Ridge to choose when recycling both their deposit containers and recyclables. I will offer a brief description of the options and what they provide:
Two (2) Changes Recycling Centres - these centres are part of the Overwaitea Food Group Save On Foods stores http://www.owfg.com/. These centres pay full deposit for all non alcohol beverage containers and offer incentives for non deposit packaging from participating brand owners.   The centres cater to medium to small volume consumer returns.

Two (2) Encorp Return It Centres  www.encorp.ca  - These centres offer full deposit paid on all beverage containers both alcoholic and non alcoholic. These centres tend to cater to consumers with larger volume returns. They also cater to commercial accounts such as bars and restaurants. They also accept electronics.

One Safeway retail store - which accepts limited returns on non alcoholic containers.

One Coopers Foods store - part of the Overwaitea Food Group, does not have a Changes Centre attached but accepts limited returns.

One government liquor store which accepts alcoholic beverage containers ( wine and spirits and beer.

Six private liquor stores - which accept limited returns on alcoholic containers.

A blue box curbside program, operated by the municipality in conjunction with the Ridge Meadows Recycling Society, which services approx 80% of Maple Ridge Residents and accepts all types of recyclable materials.

One centralized Drop Off Depot, again operated by the Ridge Meadows Recycling Society - open seven days a week and services Maple Ridge residents which don't have access to blue box. It also services residents with large volumes of recycling and provides a commercial service as well.
 
Another striking thing about BC is how rapidly new product categories and new stewardship organizations are coming on-line.  The excellent BC Recycling Handbook (aimed at consumers) is barely a year old and is already out of date, as there are four new industry stewardship organizations (12 total) that have been created since it was produced.  Encorp’s Neil Hastie says the Handbook will be updated this summer.  On March 16^th the 12 BC stewards released a 14-minute video explaining the BC approach: see http://www.encorp.ca/bcstewardship/

PPI plans to organize a workshop in British Columbia for key American contacts working on EPR.  In addition to hearing directly from some of the people I met with, we’ll take them to a community like Maple Ridge, and we’ll go through a department store and point out what products are currently under EPR stewardship programs, what products will be coming online in the next two years, in four years, etc. 

But there are warts in the BC system.  A big one is governance of stewardship programs, where the neighboring province of Alberta may have some instructive experience  It will be useful to tell these stories also.


Below is info from the BC Environment Ministry’s website indicating the breadth of EPR programs -- http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/epd/recycling/ipsp.htm


Stay tuned to this blog and our Facebook page, PPI plans to continue to keep EPR advocates updated on the happenings in British Columbia, and across Canada.


 

Environmental Paper Network Interview with PPI

September's Featured Member: Product Policy Institute

By: Suzanna Baum

Added: Sep 20, 2012

Hello again! It’s time for another interview with one of our amazing members.  Every month I pick an organization to feature so that our network can get a more intricate feel for each other’s work.  This month I got to know Bill Sheehan, Executive Director at the Product Policy Institute.  PPI focuses on North American policies that extend manufacturers' responsibility for their products and packaging to the post-consumer stage, with the aim of driving green design.

SB:  What was the inspiration for you personally in launching the Product Policy Institute?

BS:   Before launching Product Policy Institute I co-founded and ran for eight years the Grassroots Recycling Network.  There we promoted the goal of “zero waste.”  I came to realize that the real problem with waste is at the design stage. Commodity chains are increasingly global and increasingly dependent on a big box retail model that emphasizes low profit margins based on high throughput.  (This is especially true for forest products.)  The result is that most manufactured products and packaging are designed to be thrown away.

So in 2003 I started the Product Policy Institute.  We’re a North American NGO working on policy solutions for unsustainable product and packaging waste. I started PPI because I came to realize that achieving zero waste is going to take more than individual actions of “green” consumers or governments building more infrastructure to manage whatever companies choose to put on the market. Sustainability is going to take collective actions by citizens, a new role for government, and policies that hold corporations responsible for the impacts of their products throughout the products’ life-cycles, including when consumers are done with them.  If you have to plan for how you’re going to get your product back before you can put it on the market, then you’re going to think twice about the cost of producing toxic, disposable products.

SB: What is Extended Producer Responsibility and what advantages does it offer over traditional systems of waste management?

BS:   Producer responsibility means whoever designs, produces, sells, or uses a product takes responsibility for minimizing the product's environmental impact throughout all stages of the products' life cycle.  And the party having the greatest ability to minimize impacts, the producer, has the most responsibility. 

EPR is a mandatory type of product stewardship that includes, at a minimum, the requirement that the producer’s responsibility for their product extends to post-consumer management of that product and its packaging. There are two related features of EPR policy: (1) shifting financial and management responsibility, with government oversight, upstream to the producer and away from the public sector; and (2) providing incentives to producers to incorporate environmental considerations into the design of their products and packaging.

One of the oldest examples of producer responsibility take-back systems was the nickel that soda companies used to pay to get their glass bottles back.

What is “traditional” waste management?  Before the last century, waste was a lot simpler and was generally provided by private sector entrepreneurs like rag-and-bone collectors.  Due to a public health crisis local governments got involved at the turn of the 19th Century. The nature of waste morphed over the course of the 20th Century into products and packaging increasingly designed for the dump.  Many local governments took on responsibility for collecting manufactured discards for recycling only about three decades ago – at the same time, interestingly, that Europe was turning to EPR for packaging and other products. 

The core problem with extended government responsibility (EGR) for manufactured discards is that local government programs do not relay market signals back to the brands that design and market products and packaging.  Not only does the current EGR system enable, or even encourage, the production of throwaway and toxic products, it is pretty inefficient.  Despite some outstanding community programs, thousands of community programs all collecting a different mix of materials in different ways, and accountable to local politicians with little understanding of global commodity markets, has resulted in stagnant national recycling rates and two-thirds of our discards being landfilled or incinerated.  What’s more, local governments are broke.

SB: Over the past decade, has Extended Producer Responsibility gained more support and momentum as a policy solution to managing materials and reducing waste?  What progress has been made?

BS:   Over the past decade EPR has blossomed as a policy solution for managing waste in the US.  Most of the action is at the state level.  More than 50 EPR laws have been passed in 32 states covering nine product categories, plus a “framework EPR” law in Maine.  Most EPR laws to date have addressed hazardous products such as paint, batteries, mercury containing products like lamps and thermostats, and above all electronic products. There are now 24 states with producer responsibility “e-waste” laws.

But in the last couple of years EPR has turned increasingly to bulky products, like mattresses and carpet, and to packaging and printed paper – which intersects with EPN members’ interests. 

Canada, by the way, has adopted a road map in which producer responsibility is to be applied to virtually all products and packaging in all provinces by 2018 – even to construction materials.  British Columbia is currently the first jurisdiction in North America implementing full producer responsibility for packaging and printed paper, with programs scheduled to be operational in 2014.

SB: What’s the goal of your new initiative, the CRADLE2 Coalition and who is a part of it?

BS:   The CRADLE² Coalition includes more than 40 public interest organizations from around the country concerned about the squandering of natural resources, the impacts on climate change, and the loss of jobs from wasting valuable, recyclable materials in landfills and incinerators. 

The goal of the Coalition is to build support for producer responsibility initiatives across the United States that result in source reduction and reuse and recycling what’s left.  Our long term vision is to build the political power to have states adopt EPR policies for virtually all products and packaging in the waste stream.

The Coalition is coordinated by Product Policy Institute.  The steering committee is composed of PPI and nine state-based advocacy organizations with track records of getting state producer responsibility legislation adopted: Sierra Club California, Natural Resources Council of Maine, the New York and Vermont Public Interest Groups, Texas Campaign for the Environment, Zero Waste Washington, Clean Water Funds of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and Minnesota-based Eureka Recycling.

SB: Paper has a relatively high recovery rate compared to other products, but still a massive amount of volume entering landfills instead of being recovered.  Could EPR potentially help increase the quality and volume of paper that is recovered?

BS:   Paper constitutes almost two-thirds of post-consumer “Packaging and Printed Paper,” a basket of goods that is currently the focus of legislative activity in the U.S. and Canada.  Without cardboard, the recovery rate for paper-based packaging is only 25%, according to U.S. EPA.  The recovery rate for printed paper is only 53%. A total of 27 million tons of paper – 173 pounds per person -- winds up in landfills and incinerators every year.  This represents a staggering waste of materials, and leads to greater stress on our planetary ecosystems from manufacturers relying on virgin natural resources rather than recycled materials. 

We believe that producer responsibility policies for packaging and printed paper (which could include minimum recycled content standards) are the single most effective means of increasing the supply and utilization of recycled paper, as evidenced by mature producer responsibility systems in Europe.  Whether EPR increases the qualityof recovered paper depends on public interest organizations ensuring that legislation includes high and continually increasing utilization rates along with accountability mechanisms.

SB: Why is Product Policy Institute engaged with EPN as a member organization?

BS:   Years ago Jake Kreilik came up with the phrase, “stumps to dumps.”  That captures for me the link between forest/paper activists and zero waste/recycling advocates.  Forest products are such a huge part of our economy that we cannot address sustainable production and consumption without addressing paper and wood products.  We believe that grassroots engagement and public interest organizations are critical to steering positive change, and EPN member organizations are the leaders in this area.

Thanks for getting to know PPI.  Please keep an eye out in October for our next featured member!