Recycling : US Plastic Industry proposes National Recycling Strategy
Multiple leading US companies are urging the US government to adopt a national recycling standard.
Under the banner of the American Chemistry Council (ACC), on July 13, said plastic manufacturers published five actions intended to help Congress develop a comprehensive national recycling strategy.
The ACC’s call for a universal federal policy is grounded in its vision for a circular economy, which would entail the development of a ‘means for valuable and highly efficient plastic material to be reused again and again rather than [be] treated as waste.’
The proposals set out are as following:
All plastic packaging needs to incorporate at least 30% of recycled plastic by 2030.
There needs to be a consistent regulatory plastic system that integrates national and international legislation into account so as to harmonize national recycling efforts.
Congress must give the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Energy (DOE) jurisdiction to develop universal national recycling standards in order to combat localized differences in recycling practice.
Public policy on materials use and climate change needs to be guided by the results of a study conducted by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).
A US-specific Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) system for consumer packaging needs to be developed.
The ACC’s first demand, a call for 30% recycled plastic within plastic packaging, requires further consideration as outlined in the report. Quoting an analysis conducted by the Independent Commodity Intelligence Service (ICIS), it states that an estimated 13 billion pounds of recycled plastic would have to be recovered annually in order to hit that 30% figure, a level of supply currently not available. To reach said advanced recycling capacity, the need for mechanical recycling is also mentioned as well as the optimization of the waste collection and sorting system.
Increasing the overall plastic recycling rate in this way would help companies dedicated to using more recycled plastic in packaging reach their sustainability goals. There are 400 such brands, according to the ACC.
Beyond chemical recycling, as mentioned previously, the need for advanced recycling technologies was also identified by the ACC. A consistent regulatory system that does not misidentify advanced recycling as ‘waste disposal’ whilst clarifying that manufacturing processes rendering plastic to fuel count as recovery could help drive investment.
The report which calls for a ‘science and not ideology based’ approach to developing a national recycling system also argues that an ‘American designed producer responsibility system’ needs to extend beyond the recycling of plastic to all materials used in conventional packaging such as glass, paper and metal.
The plastic industry’s recommendations, despite being criticised by environmental groups such as Greenpeace for propagating ‘endless plastic production’, align with consumer wishes as proven by an ACC study conducted in June 2021, which found 83% of Americans in support of the plastic industry taking bold steps to address the plastic crisis. The survey found widespread support across party, ideological and demographical lines.