National Harbor, Md. — EPR — short for extended producer responsibility — has been a hot topic in the plastics industry for years now.
A total of five states already have EPR rules in place for packaging and even more are considering them this year.
"Everybody's jumped on the EPR bandwagon. It's the Holy Grail. We've got to get this right," said Steve Alexander, president of the Association of Plastic Recyclers at the Plastics Recycling Conference in National Harbor, Md., near Washington.
And as far as he is concerned, EPR has not quite gotten it just right just yet.
"The way I see EPR at this point, it's a collection mechanism," the APR trade group president said. "I'm not seeing a big demand component on that. So it might be great to collect a lot of material, but a big thing we're dealing with right now is who is identified as the responsible end market for the material. And not to get too technical, but right now in some instances, it's the recycler."
Alexander, during a March 24 session, told the conference crowd that he has concerns that recyclers could shoulder an unfair burden in the EPR process when they simply are part of the overall system to help mandated materials find a second life.
"We shouldn't be the end of market. We have to have to have contracts. We have to have people buy the material [from reprocessors] and use it. So that's a big concern I have with EPR," he said.
States including California, Oregon, Maine, Colorado and Minnesota all have created EPR regulations covering packaging. Another 10 are talking about similar action.
EPR, at its essence, is designed to push the end-of-life recycling costs back to producers.
There are a litany of EPR laws around the county in different states covering different items. Mercury-containing switches and thermostats and batteries were popular targets when EPR was first getting started 20 and 30 years ago. But the list — again with individual states enacting specific rules for specific products — has expanded over time to include items such as mattresses, gas cylinders, carpet and even junk mail, depending on where you live.
The debate on packaging, spurred on to some extent by littering and the proliferation of plastics in packaging, has been intensifying in statehouses in recent years.
But Alexander, whose trade group boasts it is the "Voice of Plastics Recycling" and even has trademarked that description, sees a disconnect with the way EPR is unfolding.
"In the legislative arena, they have ADD [attention deficit disorder]. If they want to solve something. You get their attention, they solve it. They move on. If it's not done correctly the first time, it's very difficult to go back," Alexander said.
"We have to ensure that that supply has a market. I'm not sure I've seen all that yet," Alexander said. "We've got to make sure that there's a demand component there as well."
Scott Saunders is general manager of KW Plastics, a major recycler of both high density polyethylene and polypropylene based in Troy, Ala. He shares Alexander's worry about the execution of EPR.
"The concerns that I have with the programs I'm familiar with is that they are burdening the recycler with so many reporting requirements, inspection requirements that our competitors on the virgin resin side don't have," he said.
"They also have a misguided idea that if it's collected in that state, they would like to see it processed in that state and returned in that state, which will add tremendous cost to the supply chain. I try to point out to the regulators and people we talk to, you don't produce virgin resin and consumer it in the same state. That's why it's so efficient," Saunders said.
"If you start having these little micro marketplaces, you are going to increase inefficiencies. You are going are going to increase costs. And you are going to end up having a material that's way too expensive rather than just providing it to the normal, healthy marketplace and let it find its home," he said.