Recycling in the United States is failing. Only 50 percent of packaging is currently recycled. For plastics the rate is lower, only nine percent. The U.S. packaging recycling rate is far below many other countries and has been stagnant for over a decade because our waste management infrastructure is fragmented, inefficient, and underfunded. U.S. city and county governments spend millions of taxpayer dollars each year to manage an expanding and increasingly complex array of packaging waste they had no input in designing or creating. U.S. recyclers are struggling with poorly designed packaging that cannot be recycled and adds cost to the recycling system, and brand owners are unable to source the recycled content they need to honor their public sustainability commitments. Under the current system, consumer packaged goods companies have little incentive to change. 

Market shifts in the wake of China’s National Sword policy and other export restrictions on recyclables led many U.S. municipal recycling programs to stop accepting certain or all materials as they struggled with budget deficits. Taxpayers are shouldering the cost to collect and manage packaging waste created by corporations. Many communities also are bearing the brunt of the social and environmental impacts of the waste crisis as plastics refineries, packaging production facilities, incinerators, and landfills are sited overwhelmingly in low-income communities and communities of color. It is beyond time for a better system in which producers are required to take responsibility for their packaging to create a circular economy.

EPR: Centerpiece of the circular economy

Imagine this: On your next trip to the grocery store, you are able to fill up reusable containers with bulk goods like cereals and shampoo. Some items you still purchase in packaging are made from post-consumer recycled content. At home, when you’ve emptied the packaging, you recycle with confidence because your entire state has a standard list of recyclable items. You are no longer confused about what belongs in the recycling bin and what does not. When an online order arrives at your doorstep, it has no excess material – no gratuitous boxes inside of boxes, no inexplicable bubble wrap or plastic pillows. Over time, more and more of your household needs are available package-free or in reusable, or recyclable formats. What’s more, your friends who live in rural communities and in apartment buildings downtown now have recycling programs for the first time. Your town was able to start a curbside composting program this year, thanks to newly available funds that were previously spent on recycling. This is a packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) system. 

EPR for packaging will be a game changer for waste reduction and recycling in the United States. When designed well, an EPR program can optimize material collection, weather market challenges, and restore the public’s trust in recycling. EPR reduces the unreasonable demands placed on municipalities to manage and pay for recycling programs, leaving local governments with more funding to focus on priorities such as public health. 

Throughout Europe and Canada, where EPR has been established for decades, these programs have increased packaging recovery and recycling rates, reduced consumer confusion and material contamination, bolstered recycling infrastructure, and cultivated strong domestic markets for recycled materials. Some countries with packaging EPR systems, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, have achieved packaging recycling rates over 80 percent.

At a time when brands are facing mounting pressure from citizens who are fed up with ocean plastics and increasingly aware of the global injustices of impacts from waste disposal, EPR can incentivize and reward the reuse, recycling, and production of materials with lighter environmental footprints. Producer funding of EPR systems can support and expand collection and recycling infrastructure, catalyze new recycling technologies, and harmonize recycling systems across an entire state or nationwide. Importantly, EPR can also level the playing field for producers and brand owners by ensuring that all companies contribute to the transition to a circular economy.

Paving the way for complementary waste policies

Voluntary product stewardship efforts and consumer education campaigns have produced small but incremental improvements to the current recycling system. Industry has poured millions of dollars into advanced recycling technologies, recycling infrastructure grant programs, and other voluntary efforts to increase recycling. Nevertheless, local governments continue to struggle with recycling programs that simply cannot keep pace with the flood of plastic packaging. We need a systemic policy approach that creates a comprehensive system and holds all producers accountable. In short: We need EPR for packaging. 

Complementary policy tools such as bans on single-use items and container deposit systems are key, but without EPR these tools will not be enough to build a circular economy. Unless producers are held accountable for packaging waste, they will continue to have no real incentive to make meaningful change. 

Building momentum, driving change

The world’s largest packaging producers operate on a global scale. To drive meaningful change on plastic and packaging waste, economic accountability must be global in scale as well. If large economies such as the United States and China join the EU, Canada, India, and other global powerhouses to implement EPR for packaging, the market pressure on producers will be unavoidable. Our organization – the Product Stewardship Institute (PSI) – offers a model on how this can be done. We bring local and state governments, manufacturers and brands, waste collectors and recyclers, NGOs, and other stakeholders together to forge lasting agreements rooted in producer responsibility and sustainable materials management. 

In 2020, we at the Product Stewardship Institute facilitated a dialogue between state and local governments and members of the Flexible Packaging Association to reach a first-of-its-kind agreement on key elements of EPR for packaging in the United States. Leveraging the deep experience of our global partners, we provide ongoing educational resources to those seeking real policy change, including an extensive packaging EPR toolkit that highlights best practices and original research such as our in-depth report on EPR for Packaging and Paper Products. In the United States today, more than a dozen states are actively considering EPR for packaging and many have already introduced legislation using PSI’s model or are working directly with PSI in facilitated dialogues with key stakeholders. The federal Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, first introduced in early 2020 (reintroduced in 2021), was also informed by PSI’s policy model and featured packaging EPR as its centerpiece.

As we look ahead, PSI is hopeful that innovative EPR policies will provide avenues for reducing the production and consumption of single-use materials. We must drastically change the status quo. Now, it is the time to adopt EPR legislation for packaging and paper products in the United States to stabilize and improve our recycling programs and build resilience and flexibility for the material changes and market fluctuations that inevitably lie ahead.