PROGRESS SLOW — 2023 was supposed to be a huge year for recycling in the U.S. (We reported as much.) But nearly a dozen state-level bills to fund increased recycling have gone nowhere in legislative sessions or been watered down to shadows of their former selves, Jordan reports. A string of setbacks in Hawaii, Washington, Connecticut, Maryland, Illinois and other blue states was capped last week in New York, where Democrats failed — for the third time in as many years — to pass a producer-responsibility program despite environmental groups finally reaching consensus around a proposal to shift the costs to those producing the waste, instead of local governments and residents. “It definitely has not been the year we expected,” said Dan Felton, executive director of the American Institute for Packaging and the Environment, which represents companies throughout the packaging supply chain, from consumer brands like McDonald's and Kellogg’s to manufacturers like 3M and ExxonMobil. Advocates were pushing one type of recycling bill in particular: Extended-producer responsibility programs, or requirements for producers (of packaging, bottles, what have you) to fund collection and recycling of their products themselves. The idea is that if they have to pay for it, they'll be likelier to formulate their products to be more easily recycled, reducing landfill waste and plastic that isn't economic to recycle. Environmentalists had reason to think this year would be big: They were building on momentum from California, Colorado, Oregon and Maine, which all saw EPR laws enacted the past two years. The bills proposed this year failed for a variety of reasons. Washington's collapsed under the weight of too many provisions, while competing measures of differing ambitions split lawmakers in New York and Hawaii. Recycling advocates are debating how best to proceed next year. Industry groups, meanwhile, see an opportunity to take a larger role. "Some want it to be absolutely everything all at once, and Democrats are getting pulled in different directions," Felton said. "Maybe there’s an opportunity here for industry to coalesce a little bit more so that we can be more productive in offering solutions as the states are considering this.”
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