Extended Producer Responsibility. Part 1: Define the Problem / Benign Neglect?

2009 The Watchmen

Adrian Veidt:
It doesn't take a genius to see that the world has problems.
Edward Blake:
No, but it takes a room full of morons to think they're small enough for you to handle.

"It doesn't take a genius to see the world has problems."

"It takes a roomful of morons to think they're small enough for you to handle."

So let's discuss EPR, or "Extended Producer Responsibility".  It's the most talked about recycling topic, other than "Plastic", at almost every recycling conference.

This blog is deliberately agnostic about EPR. Here is my critique.

1. Define the problem to be solved. Then don't neglect it.

The first ever bottle bill, in Vermont in the late 1950s, was passed at a time when "disposable" beverages was new. Most soda and beer at the time was sold in refillable bottles. Vermonters collecting litter saw that the new one-use containers constituted most of the litter, and the problem was "non-deposit container litter".

In the 1980s, when bottle deposit laws were proposed in several other states (including Massachusetts, which my division administered at DEP), there was a huge shift to single-use containers, and both rewarding refillables and recycling single use were part of the plan. The advocates conceded on putting the deposit only on carbonated beverages because bottled water wasn't common and the Cranberry Juice lobby in Massachusetts argued that (highly sugared) fruit juice was healthy. 

Third Dimensional Silo Environmentalism

Plastic is the villain of the mainstream environmental coverage these days. 

To be sure, there are lots of undesirable and unsustainable things about plastic.  But I'm concerned that the attacks are coming out of environmental silos. In the same way I was labelled an "apologist" of used electronics purchases by emerging markets 15 years ago, I've been called an "iconoclast" for even questioning sanctions on plastic packaging, such as the Vermont ban on plastic straws and single use bags. 

Our seeding of the plastic litter offset in Cameroun should demonstrate we are serious about the threat of ocean plastic. But it also shows we are looking for ways to defend the packaging from unfair threats and scapegoatism, without sliding into denial.

https://www.oregon.gov/deq/FilterDocs/MaterialAttributes.pdf

If you never read another one of my blogs, read the Oregon Packaging Paper from 2018. Then visit US Geological Survey USGS.gov every time a recycling story hits the press.

Reporters like Adam Minter, Oliver Wallis-Franklin, and  Laura Sullivan, Emily Kwong, Rebecca Ramirez (of NPR "The Myth of Plastic Recycling") should start with the link above.  It's not all about recycling.

For decades I've described the perfect packaging from a waste silo perspective - organic, reusable, natural and compostable, native American / First Nation adapted... Baby seal pelt bags.

Life Cycle Analysis should keep score of the environmental harm implicated in microplastics, ocean litter, recyclability and recycled content. In all of these, plastic fares poorly. But the camera lenses always focus on the fingerprint, the downstream, the gotcha. It's called fetishism, and it is blind to the role of the total path of consumption.