Dear Andy,
Garbage cans overflowing with recyclables are usually a sure sign we're not in Boulder County anymore. (That, and the lack of yoga mats on the grocery store shelves.) How many of us have been in a non-recycling town and ended up schlepping recyclables home since we couldn't reprogram ourselves to toss them? (Oh come on, I know I'm not the only one.)
It's true that as a nation we're not the greatest recyclers, and unfortunately studies show our wasting habits are getting worse, not better. According to a joint study by Biocycle Magazine and the Earth Engineering Center of Columbia University, Americans trashed over 73% of their waste in 2003, up from 68.5% in 1998. As wasting rises, so does the cost to tax payers who are left footing the bill for costly cleanup from landfills that leak deadly toxins into groundwater or incinerators that pollute the air.
There is an exciting new movement afoot to increase national recycling rates, though, and the good news is it's not all on consumers like us to do it. It's a key element of the "Zero Waste" movement, and it's called "Extended Producer Responsibility" or EPR. EPR shifts the costs of waste from taxpayers to brand owners and producers, requiring them to take responsibility for the life cycle impacts of their products, including developing a mechanism for recycling them. This shift of responsibility creates a powerful economic incentive for manufacturers to design waste out of the system. EPR has been a major movement since the early 1990s in other countries. Twenty-eight nations already have some form of producer responsibility laws.
In the EU, legislation requires electronic product manufacturers to pay for recycling their waste, and encourages them to design their products using fewer toxins. Ontario has a plan to require packaged goods makers to pay half the local government bill for curbside recycling by spring of this year. South Africa proposed a deposit system on cans, plastic bags, glass bottles, tires and consumer goods. South Korea initiated an EPR System last year that obligates manufacturers of everything from beverage containers and fluorescent lamps to packaging material and electronics to recycle their products.
Clearly EPR works as a motivator. In response to impending EPR legislation in the EU, Daimler Chrysler redesigned their cars using only three types of clearly labeled plastics so their cars can be taken back and easily disassembled in three hours to be recycled back into new products.
EPR is finally making its way to the US . After some consumer pressure, electronic manufacturers like Dell and Hewlett Packard who have to comply with EPR regulations in the EU are implementing programs to take back their computers for recycling in the US . To help recover the estimated 114 billion aluminum, plastic and glass beverage containers that are wasted in the United States every year, US Senator Jim Jeffords (I-VT) introduced the National Beverage Producer Responsibility Act of 2003 that requires industry to recover and recycle 80% of all beverage containers while allowing them the freedom to design the most efficient deposit-return program to reach the standard. To learn more about this legislation or to sign on in support, visit the Grassroots Recycling Network's website at www.grrn.org.
Back home in Recycleville , USA , we're beginning to implement a little EPR of our own. The Daily Camera helps support the Eco-Cycle/City of Boulder Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials (CHaRM) to recycle the plastic newspaper sleeves they generate. We'd like to see electronic manufacturers do the same.
EPR is a significant move forward and the hope is that before long we'll create a recycling standard that goes far beyond the confines of this little eco-bubble we call home.
