Packaging EPR won’t fix recycling—it will make it worse

The future of recycling in the United States is at a crossroads. While some policymakers and environmental groups are rallying behind extended producer responsibility (EPR) as the solution to managing our waste, the numbers tell a different story. Packaging EPR is an expensive, bureaucratic approach that, where implemented, has failed to deliver meaningful improvements. Instead of doubling down on a flawed system, we need smarter, targeted solutions that address the real obstacles to recycling success—a sustainable, economically sound and circular economy.

Right now, the U.S. generates nearly 330 million tons of municipal solid waste annually—roughly 1 ton per person. Our national recycling rate (excluding composting) remains in the mid-to-high 20 percent range, not for a lack of effort but mostly because the recoverable materials are falling outside of curbside waste and recycling collection infrastructure.

State-by-state recycling rates vary from the midteens to nearly 30 percent, correlating closely with access to curbside collection. Where curbside programs exist, access ranges from 50 percent to 98 percent, but actual participation lags by up to 6 percent owing to a mix of forgetfulness, travel or simply waiting for a full bin. In states with lower rates, geographic challenges—rural and semi-rural populations—further hinder participation.

The private sector’s multibillion-dollar commitment to modernizing our recycling infrastructure has yielded some improvements. The U.S. currently operates nearly 500 material recovery facilities (MRFs), with most using advanced single-stream processing that incorporates optical sensors and robotics. These modern MRFs process up to more than 100 tons per hour—double the capacity of older facilities—and can cut residual waste by up to 50 percent. Yet contamination remains a major issue, with at least 20 percent of the material in recycling bins being nonrecyclable.

Enter EPR, which its proponents claim will revolutionize recycling recovery rates. However, data from Europe and Canada—where EPR systems have been in place for years—prove otherwise. In Western Europe overall, packaging EPR has only pushed recycling rates to about 40 percent, despite per-person waste generation rates half that of North America. In Canada, British Columbia and Ontario have seen a mere 10 percent improvement.

Meanwhile, EPR dramatically increases costs, often doubling or tripling expenses for consumer product companies while delivering negligible gains in recovery rates.

The real issue isn’t a lack of producer responsibility—it’s leakage. Across the U.S. and Canada, recovery rates for plastic bottles and metal cans have been stagnant at 30 percent to 40 percent for decades. Why? Because these materials aren’t making it into the curbside system. Think about where people discard their drink containers: airports, gas stations, street-side bins, amusement parks and concerts. These out-of-home settings are recycling dead zones, and many of these items still end up as litter.

If consumer product companies truly want to move the needle on recycling, they should focus on solving this away-from-home problem. Expanding public-space recycling infrastructure, improving collection at high-traffic areas and investing in consumer education to reduce curbside contamination would yield far greater results than an EPR tax.

In public spaces, if we separate the waste into wet and dry, modern recycling operations could handle the dry volume and capture recoverable materials. Instead, many of these public settings have confusing signage. As a result, if two bins are present, both are contaminated with trash, which cannot be processed to capture the recoverable materials.

That’s not to say fee-based recovery programs don’t have a place. They have proven effective for specific hard-to-handle materials like tires, mattresses and lead-acid car batteries, and similar programs are showing promise for items such as rechargable batteries. However, trying to apply the same model to packaging is a costly mistake that won’t address the real problems at hand.

Battery recovery programs supported by a producer fee with the certainty of end-of-life disposal are worthy of legislation. A thermal event occurs nearly every day in our collection, processing and disposal infrastructure because of batteries. Lithium-ion battery fires are extremely difficult to contain and can’t be put out with water. Lithium-ion battery fires have to be smothered, and not all fire departments are trained or equipped to tackle them.

Recycling needs innovation, not more bureaucracy. Packaging EPR is a costly distraction from real solutions. If we want to make a meaningful impact, we must focus on reducing leakage, modernizing infrastructure and educating consumers—not burdening businesses with an expensive system that fails to deliver.