NERC Blog

Packaging EPR laws represent a critical lever to improving the packaging supply chain.

Anyone with the least interest in recycling has heard the drumbeat of bad news. Recyclables diverted to landfills. Plastics recovery via recycling at a moribund less than ten percent. Regarding the percentage of plastics being recycled, Steve Alexander of the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) wrote in a recent NERC blog, “The authors [of a report on plastics recycling rates] intentionally failed to acknowledge that the low numbers they cite include ALL plastic items, including durable plastic items not collected through community recycling programs.

“The fact is that 21 percent of PET, polypropylene and high density polyethylene rigid plastic packaging — the kind of plastic that makes up the majority of consumer packaging and what consumers put in their blue bins — is recycled,” Alexander reported.

Kara Pochiro, APR’s Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs,

Today's guest blog is authored by Keefe Harrison of The Recycling Partnership. The original post can be read here.

Frustrated that recycling isn’t fixing the world’s waste problem? Here’s the truth: as it’s built now, it never will.  If we think we can just keep making and buying whatever we want without any planning for what happens when we’re done with that thing, recycling will never keep pace and we’ll always be let down. 

However, if we stop, and take on the hard but impactful work of planning and building a better system, one that involves reducing what we make in the first place, reusing more, and recycling all that we can, now that’s a different matter. I believe that if you don’t like something, you should work to change it. That’s what The Recycling Partnership is all about – hands on, hard work to overturn the status quo – driving for a better recycling…

Today's guest blog is authored by Suz Okie of GreenBiz.

Just about a year ago, I queried if Read more | Comments (0) | Sep 6, 2022