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Policies, Practices, and Performance Note on bottlenote \Full Responi Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging and Paper Products: Policies, Practices, and Performance February 20 , 2020 March 17, 2020 1 Beacon Street (617) 236-4855 Prepared by the Product Stewardship Institute, Inc. Boston, MA 02108 www.productstewardship.usi The Product Stewardship Institute The Product Stewardship Institute (PSI) is a national nonprofit working to reduce the health and environmental impacts of consumer products from design and production through end-of-life. PSI takes a unique approach to solving environmental problems by bringing key stakeholders together in well- designed dialogues to forge lasting agreements rooted in producer responsibility and sustainable materials management. The organization has built capacity for product stewardship in the U.S. for the past 20 years, conducting both voluntary and legislative product stewardship initiatives. PSI works closely with 47 state environmental agency members, hundreds of local government members, and over 120 partners from businesses, universities, organizations, and international governments. Acknowledgements PSI prepared this report for Metro regional government in Oregon. PSI would like to thank Metro’s Scott Klag for research direction and guidance. We also thank Catherine Abel, Bridget Anderson, Meegan Armstrong, Victor Bell, Elena Bertocci, Mary Cummins, Andrew Doi, Carmelo Freda, Normand Gadoury, Mathieu Guillemette, Garth Hickle, Sego Jackson, Kate Kitchener, Allen Langdon, Sophie Langlois-Blouin, Patrick Leavers, Dave Lefebvre, Tom Metzner, Tom Outerbridge, Dominique Potelle, Joachim Quoden, Geoff Rathbone, Lisa Sepanski, and the many staff members at Metro Oregon who provided comments, technical information, and insight. Project Contact For more information please contact Scott Cassel, PSI Chief Executive Officer and Founder, at [email protected] or (617) 236-4822. Authors of this Report This report was prepared by Scott Cassel, Sydney Harris, and Kristin Aldred Cheek of the Product Stewardship Institute. Product Stewardship Institute | March 17, 2020 ii EPR for PPP: Policies, Practices, and Performance Contents Executive Summary ...................................................................................................... v 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 The Problem: PPP Recycling in Crisis ..................................................................... 2 The Solution: Extended Producer Responsibility .................................................. 2 Aims of this Paper ................................................................................................... 3 2. EPR for PPP: Around the World ............................................................................... 4 Origin and Evolution of EPR for PPP in Europe ..................................................... 4 Adoption of EPR for PPP in Canada ..................................................................... 6 Spreading Worldwide ............................................................................................ 7 EPR in the U.S........................................................................................................... 7 3. EPR for PPP: The Fundamentals .............................................................................. 8 EPR for PPP: Basic Approaches ............................................................................. 9 Key Elements of EPR for PPP ................................................................................ 10 Producer Responsibility Organizations (PROs) ..........................................................10 Stewardship Plans........................................................................................................11 Covered Materials ......................................................................................................11 Internalized Costs ........................................................................................................12 Material Fees ...............................................................................................................13 Recycling Access ........................................................................................................14 Performance Standards .............................................................................................14 Education & Outreach ...............................................................................................15 EPR for PPP in Canada: A Review of Four Programs ......................................... 15 Ontario .........................................................................................................................16 Québec .......................................................................................................................19 Manitoba .....................................................................................................................20 British Columbia ...........................................................................................................22 4. British Columbia: A Case Study ........................................................................... 26 Governing Structure ............................................................................................. 26 Product Stewardship Institute | March 17, 2020 iii EPR for PPP: Policies, Practices, and Performance Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO) .............................................................26 Investments in Infrastructure .......................................................................................27 Stewardship Plan .........................................................................................................28 Collected Materials ....................................................................................................29 Internalized Costs ........................................................................................................31 Modulated Fees ..........................................................................................................32 Performance Standards .............................................................................................32 Recycling Access ........................................................................................................36 Education & Outreach ...............................................................................................36 Adoption & Adaptation ...................................................................................... 37 Locating and Developing Markets ............................................................................37 Program Results ...........................................................................................................38 Summary ............................................................................................................... 39 5. Conclusion and Recommendations ................................................................... 41 Appendix A: The PPP Recovery Rate in Each Canadian Province ........................ 43 Appendix B: Fee Schedules for Canadian EPR Programs ....................................... 46 Appendix C: Packaging and Paper Definitions in British Columbia ...................... 50 Appendix D: British Columbia’s Pollution Prevention Hierarchy ............................. 53 Product Stewardship Institute | March 17, 2020 iv EPR for PPP: Policies, Practices, and Performance Executive Summary Communities throughout the United States are facing an unprecedented challenge for managing packaging and paper products (PPP) in the municipal waste stream. Currently, around 50% of residential PPP is recycled in the U.S. – far less than in many other countries – and this rate has been stagnant for nearly two decades.1 What was already a strained, fragmented system has been further impeded over the last two years by extreme market disruptions brought on by restrictions in international export markets (starting with the “China Sword”). Widespread use of single-stream recycling, which increases contamination across collected materials, has exacerbated these issues. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which is common throughout much of the world, has gained increasing support in the U.S. over the past decade as a critical solution to PPP recycling challenges. EPR shifts the responsibility for end-of-life management of products and packaging upstream to producers – rather than the public sector – and creates incentives for producers to incorporate environmental considerations into the design of their products and packaging. Well-designed EPR systems increase recovery and recycling of PPP, reduce contamination, and develop markets for difficult-to-recycle materials. EPR not only provides sustainable financing for recycling by placing financial responsibility for the system on producers; it can also transition legal responsibility for recycling performance and the burden of day-to-day recycling management away from the public sector, allowing limited public resources to be directed toward other priorities. Many existing EPR for PPP programs are beginning to incorporate “eco-modulated fees” that incentivize producers to reduce the end-of-life impacts of their packaging by using more recyclable or reusable materials, and to consider other environmental factors
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