Extended producer responsibility for packaging laws are reshaping recycling markets across the country. Ongoing work to define and implement "responsible end market" requirements in certain regulations will need to balance accountability with the realities of doing business in recycling markets, said speakers during the recent Plastics Recycling Conference in San Diego.
The concept of a responsible end market, or REM, is to ensure materials are recycled in a way that minimizes environmental and public health risks. In the seven states that have passed an EPR for packaging law, all but Maine’s program include REM provisions.
The specifics will vary from state to state, but most players in the recycling value chain — starting at MRFs and including brokers, processors and others — will need to comply with new rules that show that recycled materials are going to these REMs.
The process and mechanisms for verifying end markets and ensuring they’re meeting REM standards is still being built, including definitions and related certifications.
“We've got our work cut out for us,” said Shane Buckingham, chief of staff for the Circular Action Alliance, the country’s main packaging producer responsibility organization. CAA is currently working on REM requirements in states including Oregon, California and Colorado.
Here are some REM takeaways from state regulators, local government officials and recyclers throughout the conference.
REMs aim to drive transparency
REMs are central to EPR because they’re a direct way to make recycling systems more transparent, trackable and hopefully more profitable, speakers said.
“We didn't always know exactly what was happening with the material that we sent to market — both certainly abroad, but also within the domestic marketplace,” said Dan Leif, director of policy implementation at The Recycling Partnership.
The concept was born in part from the fallout of China’s 2017 National Sword policy, which raised questions about environmental processes in certain markets and led to import bans for certain recyclable materials in an effort to curb dumping.
“These [dumped] materials were coming from commingled recycling programs such as Oregon's, and they stem in part from our collective failure as a country to hold processor facilities to high standards, including standards for responsible disposition,” said David Allaway, senior policy analyst at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.
Oregon recyclers were hit hard by National Sword because they relied heavily on China as an export market. This led DEQ to convene a steering committee to study policy options for recycling, which helped form the basis for the state’s EPR for packaging law.
REMs can help rebuild trust in the recycling system through a transparency and verification framework, Allaway said. “If you don't have responsible end markets, don't bother to collect the stuff in the first place.”
Defining and implementing REM standards is tricky
Deciding what a responsible end market actually is, and then proving that players in the value chain are indeed sending their materials there is at the heart of what makes REM provisions so complicated — in part because it’s never been done before in the U.S., said Leif.
Oregon was the first state to implement its EPR for packaging law, but the state delayed enforcing its REM requirement due to ongoing questions about how to develop the right compliance standards.
At its heart, Oregon’s program defines REMs as those that receive recyclables and turn them into feedstock for new products. REMs are meant to be “transparent, compliant, environmentally sound and achieve good yield,” Allaway said. Oregon considers “good yield” to be at least 60% of the material inbound to an REM.
Oregon’s REM process applies to “all parties downstream of the MRF,” down to the final end market. This is different for each material but in the case of plastics encompasses the producer of pellet or flake, Allaway said. Brokers, converters and processors are also encompassed in this REM system, he said.
For now, any entities that receive processed recycled material from an Oregon MRF or collection program must be screened as ‘responsible’ prior to receiving recycled material. That’s done through a self-attestation form that entities must submit to confirm their responsible status for an array of materials.
By June 2027, DEQ will require that a “qualified, independent, third-party auditor” contracted with CAA verifies all end markets and other downstream facilities receiving recyclables from Oregon meet the responsible end market standard, according to DEQ.
Meanwhile, CAA’s EPR program plan includes a REM verification standard that features certain performance indicators and procedures to carry out when recyclers and other entities are not able to comply.
CAA has also been coordinating REM provisions in California, where the state is still working to approve broader regulations for SB 54 that have been delayed. Meanwhile, Colorado’s program is launching later this summer, and CAA is rolling out a “self-attestation” process that relevant parties will follow, Buckingham said.
Streamlining requirements could reduce recyclers’ burden
As CAA and other entities work out the kinks in the REM process, they must also contend with concerns that complying with REM requires a burdensome amount of paperwork and data that companies aren’t used to collecting or sharing with anyone outside their business.
Ajit Perera is vice president of postconsumer operations at Talco Plastics, a California company that makes HDPE and PE pellet and flake. His company is gearing up to take on the additional regulatory and paperwork requirements necessary to follow REM rules. SB 54’s regulations aren’t set yet, “and the system is in transition right now ... but regulatory uncertainty isn’t forever,” he said.
As more states pass EPR laws that will likely include REM requirements, Perera called for processes that streamline a business’ REM requirements. One idea is to have CAA and other PROs integrate existing certification systems into their REM model. An example is the Association of Plastic Recyclers’ PCR certification, a tool he says could help document chain of custody for the products Talco makes. Using existing tools would also help alleviate some concerns over data privacy, he said.
The REM process may also require building new tools, Allaway said. For example, “Oregon's law allows certain commingled processing facilities to bypass the standard REM verification if their end markets are independently certified. At present, there is no approved certification system” for this independent verification, he said.
CAA is working with both Oregon DEQ and APR, along with consultant SCS Global Services, to help develop a new national REM verification standard that could help streamline requirements across the states, Buckingham said. That would include a public input process and a pilot audit. He said having a third-party audit system may also help alleviate concerns about giving up proprietary data as part of the process.
CAA aims to have the draft ready for public comment sometime in May, with the pilot audit process rolling out sometime later in the year.
If successful, end markets would be able to undergo “just one audit by a single organization that can evaluate for all EPR states, so that it's not that burdensome to the sector to ensure that they're meeting this very important requirement to deliver the materials to responsible end markets,” Buckingham said.
