forbes… A month or so ago, this column ran a pieceintroducing the concept of extended producer responsibility (EPR), a recycling system wherein companies are responsible for collecting and recycling the packaging they create. The idea has the backing of big beverage industry players, including Nestle Waters North America and Coca-Cola, but the idea is that it would include all packaging, not just beverage containers, and so far other grocery manufacturers–those that make and sell cereal, canned foods, and so forth–are not on board. While the beverage industry has been taken to task time and again for its bottles and cans, other grocery manufacturers have so far avoided any sort of scrutiny around packaging. And while the beverage companies want more of their containers back so they can use them to make new containers with the high recycled content they’ve been promising in press releases for years, the grocery guys are under no such pressure.
Enter the NGOs. Today the As You Sow foundation, which uses shareholder advocacy to push corporations to prioritize sustainability and public health, released a comprehensive report on EPR, outlining the various reasons the system makes sense for the U.S. market. As You Sow senior director Conrad Mackerron makes several salient points in the report, which pulls together much of the research that has been done on EPR over the years, but the most compelling by far from a business perspective is the fact that the value of discarded packaging in the United States in 2010 was $11.4 billion. “We’re talking about valuable stuff like aluminum–Alcoa can’t get enough aluminum back–and PET plastic, which not only the beverage companies here want, but also the textile and automotive industries, both here and in China,” Mackerron said.
The EPA maintains State Resource Locators and contact information for several topics: Air Quality – Ambient
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