WasteExpo 2025: EPR implementation requires collaboration, harmonization

Collaboration among equipment suppliers, material recovery facility (MRF) operators, legislators and consumer brands and their producer responsibility organizations is essential in implementing effective extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs, according to panelists who spoke during the WasteExpo session Collaborative Solutions: How EPR Shapes MRF Design through Stakeholder Partnerships.

EPR program launches

EPR legislation has been passed in seven U.S. states and throughout Canada, and programs are in various stages of implementation.

While the EPR programs across Canada’s 10 provinces have structural similarities, the systems being implemented in the U.S. are more varied in terms of their approaches, according to Jake Westerhof, area recycling director at GFL Environmental Inc., headquartered in Vaughan, Ontario.

Neil Menezes, vice president of material service at the Circular Action Alliance (CAA), the Washington-based nonprofit organization that serves as the producer responsibility organization (PRO) for paper and packaging producers in California, Colorado, Oregon, Minnesota and Maryland, described Maine’s EPR program as a packaging tax.

“No one quite knows how that will work because the reporting requirements don't make sense. The producer definition doesn't make sense," he said.

Oregon’s EPR program will begin July 1, followed by Colorado, which is supposed to start Jan. 1, 2026. However, Menezes said he doubted that target date would be met.

Minnesota’s EPR program allows service providers and local governments to continue operating in their existing relationships, he said, with producers funding a portion of the program’s costs. “It makes that transition significantly easier," Menezes said.

He described Maine’s EPR program as “a packaging tax” rather than true EPR.

“No one quite knows how that will work because the reporting requirements don't make sense. The producer definition doesn't make sense," he said.

Collaborating for success

Westerhof spoke about the need for collaboration when launching EPR programs. GFL worked with Machinex Technologies, Plessisville, Quebec, to design the Montreal-Est MRF in Quebec in collaboration with Éco Entreprises Québec (ÉEQ), the designated management organization (DMO) under the province’s EPR framework, which seeks to raise performance and quality standards for recycling facilities.

The project was designed, manufactured, delivered and fully operational within 15 months thanks to effective communication and strong collaboration among the project stakeholders, he said.

The Montreal-Est MRF began operating at the start of this year and can process 52 tons of residential single-stream recyclables per hour. The MRF has an annual capacity of 200,000 tons and is operated by Matrec, a division of GFL.

Westerhof said GLF has not started analyzing data from the MRF yet “because we're busy trying to get our feet underneath us” owing to the complicated nature of the MRF, which features 17 Mach Hyspec optical sorters that leverage hyperspectral detection and Mach Vision artificial intelligence. That process normally took the company 100 days, but that has not been the case with Montreal-Est.

“There's too many things going on," he said. "So, it's probably more like 200 days, or even six months.

“Our partners understood that we were making a pretty significant move upward in terms of performance and what we needed to do. … We're all working together for the first six months to understand what it is that we are doing well, and, more importantly, what we are not doing as well. And it gives us a little bit of opportunity to be ready for the full requirements of the contract that will start midyear. And I think if we have a tweak or two to do beyond midyear, the relationship that we've built amongst the parties will allow us to get there.”

Session moderator David Marcouiller, executive vice president and sales engineer with Machinex, said EPR is bringing new challenges regarding the materials to be recovered at MRFs.

“Finding the right ways, finding the best practices to sort and be able to recover those commodities that are added to the objectives of those material recovery facilities is also part of that adventure," he said. "Getting the PROs to come on-site at existing sites and visit us, our equipment [and] our competitors’ equipment and also the operations to align their requirements when the bids come out to build a new facility … that's a very key, important part of the process.”

Menezes said his role is to get materials that are not widely accepted at MRFs to be accepted in the states that are enacting EPR.

“It means we work collaboratively with various trade organizations … and also with service providers," he continued. “As we work with producers who are paying these bills, the ones that are supplying the packaging, who will have a significant cost associated with this to make sure that they're getting the service in terms of getting the materials back into their supply chain. So it is a collaborative effort, working across multiple stakeholders in the space, looking at those materials that are collected and maybe have their own set of challenges, and then figure out how to overcome those challenges.”

Improving recovery & meeting performance targets

Scott DeFife, president of the Glass Packaging Institute, Arlington, Virginia, said glass is a minority material in the packaging stream, accounting for roughly 3 percent by volume and roughly 12 percent by weight, but its recyclability is well-known.

“There's not a lot of glass moving through the bulk of the MRF if you're taking it out early, and hopefully there’s an opportunity to clean up the small fraction material at the end. In a non-EPR system, there's not a lot of MRFs that do that cleanup at the end,” he said, noting that step usually occurs at secondary glass processing facilities.

“It becomes important for the PRO [and] for the producers who are paying for the movement of the material from place to place to minimize the amount of movement of material that doesn't need to be moved before it gets disposed. So, in Colorado, for instance, through the needs assessment process, one of the first things that was identified was the ability to help invest in the material recovery facilities in Colorado in some glass cleanup equipment that didn't exist in most of the facilities in Colorado. It helps the PRO. It helps clean up the stream, it makes the secondary processing facility that handles the glass and the other small material that comes with it more efficient.”

EPR legislation often has performance targets for MRF operators.

“Performance-based processing contracts are not new," Westerhof said. "We've had these style contracts for quite some time. So, in that respect, the shift to an EPR contract has not really been that dramatic for us. We've long had contracts where we need to meet certain requirements of material recovery and quality. But, you know, I would say this, that sort of a regulated backdrop within a recycling program brings a different sort of urgency to meeting targets that maybe didn't exist in a nonregulated one.”

He said that while GFL always designs its MRFs for flexibility and future proofing, it’s crucial in areas with EPR laws “because what we think EPR will do is change behaviors in terms of packaging formats.” He added that it puts a finer point on MRFs’ ability to future-proof, be flexible and pivot as recovery and material targets evolve.”

EPR programs also measure recovery differently. “We measure it based on available materials coming in the front door, and there’s a lot more vigor in terms of meeting those recovery targets," he said.

Responsible end markets

Ensuring recovered materials find responsible end markets is another priority of EPR legislation that has been passed in Oregon, California, Colorado and Minnesota.

“Oregon has very specific responsible end market requirements, and a lot of it kind of stems from what we saw in China's National Sword policy, where the quality of materials kept deteriorating," Menezes said, adding that when recyclables recovered in U.S. MRFs were no longer able to be shipped to China, “it really had a negative impact even on the domestic market.”

Responsible end market verification is an attempt to ensure recovered materials are being properly recycled by the consuming facilities that purchase them.

“What we've heard is there's two main criteria, two main concerns end markets have, one being yield calculations,” Menezes said. “And then the second one is customers. That's where someone has a local customer that they've identified … [and] the last thing they want to do is blast out the entire world, saying, ‘Hey, here's one of our customers that pays us double anywhere else,’ and, as you can imagine, everyone starts approaching that market.

"… We want to make sure it goes to a responsible place—it's not using child labor or burning materials off or having things leaching into the environment—but also trying to understand, trying to respect the concerns and commercial sensitivity that their markets have in terms of their process to manage these materials and then the customers that they're assigning materials to.”

Responsible end market verification doesn’t just apply to consumers of recyclables in the states that have enacted EPR laws with this requirement, it applies to all consumers purchasing recyclables that are recovered through these systems.

DeFife said this introduces another auditing layer and a legal layer for buyers of recyclables, with the various states defining responsible end markets differently.

“As Neil said, Oregon has taken a very aggressive approach,” he continued, which might leave consumers wondering whether they want to continue to receive that material or whether it’s too troublesome to do so.”

CAA is working to harmonize these requirements among the states that have them, Menezes said, and trying to determine what’s reasonable. “We're trying to work collaboratively,” he added, noting that CAA is seeking consensus from Oregon, which is probably the most aggressive of the states that are enacting EPR legislation in terms of reporting third-party certification.

WasteExpo was May 5-8 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.