We need to have a dedicated, consistent educational process
for recycling in our country. And it shouldn't be just state
to say it should be. I think federally, but also
state to state. I was just in Paris a couple
weeks ago and I'm in the subway and there's these huge recycling
pictures on the subway walls. And it's like, it was a can and
it had wings on the can. It says, hey, this can doesn't
get recycled by itself, basically saying it takes, you
have to actually put it in the trash can.
And it talks about it's the, it's the we're trying to
accomplish improving sustainability and recycling and
things like that. Welcome to the Environmental
Transformation Podcast, where we bring you interviews with
industry leaders, climate champions, sustainability
practitioners, EHS and hazmat professionals making an impact
in their businesses today. Each leader solving complex
challenges and delivering solutions within their areas of
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thanks for joining us today. Before we jump in, make sure to
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announcements. Now let's get started.
Welcome to the. Environmental Transformation
Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Grady, and
today's guest is Megan Colligan Hembree.
And she is a member, or actually she's a partner of Holland
Knight in Washington, DC, where she counsels Fortune 500
companies and global brands on chemical risk, environmental
compliance and high stakes disputes and transactions.
Her focus is strategic, helping clients manage complex liability
across the life cycle of chemicals from product
development and disposal and turn regulatory complexity into
competitive advantage. Megan, welcome to the show.
I've watched you on some of your posts on LinkedIn and it piqued
my interest 'cause you were speaking on EPR a couple times
and I thought, you know what, let's bring the expert in
illegal expert get her perspective on this.
So welcome to the show. Sean, it's great to be here with
you today. Yeah, thanks.
Talk a little bit about let's give a definition for some of
the listeners who may not be that familiar with EPR.
Maybe you can just kind of give a high level summary of what is
it and how does it affect, how does it affect the industry and
maybe people personally. I think that's a great place to
start because it doesn't exactly provide a clear vision of what
it's intending in its name. But if you look at the basic
words, the first one is extended.
So they're in essence laws that are designed to extend
responsibility related to the end of life management for
product disposal and recycling to the parties that are
producing the plastic as a component of their product and
therefore their, you know, their method of transferring their
product to customers. So historically, it's very
important to start here. Waste is managed at the local
level generally, so every municipality has a different way
of doing things. There are general obligations
under federal law for how landfills are managed and
permitted and how recycling infrastructure generally exists,
and all of that implementation occurs at the state and local
level. And in 2018, China stopped
accepting waste from other countries.
At that moment in time, we saw from a policy perspective a
significant moment, a window of opportunity for issues related
to the plastics and waste streams in America to take full
center screen. And right around that time
period, U.S. policy makers and states started asking themselves
what are we going to do? How are we going to handle this?
At the same time, in Europe, at almost the exact moment in time,
we had the EU, for example, developing their first set of
plastic bands for single use products.
This is all around the same time where they started shifting
plastic straws to paper straws in the United States in multiple
jurisdictions, as well as shifting plastic bag
requirements and adding plastic bag fees.
And so this 2018 time period was really important for shaping the
way the next seven years have gone with plastics and the focus
of plastics and everyone trying to figure out what to do.
Yeah, it has been a an evolution, so to speak, of
watching the industry figure out how to handle this.
You mentioned the the China sword type act where they were
not accepting any plastic from anywhere, any country they
really put a bond on. A lot of companies are in the
countries in general. There was a period of time where
you could recycle plastic and you were getting some money for
it. And then all of a sudden, nobody
could recycle any plastic because no one was buying it.
And that was a big, a big change in the industry, as I recall.
Yeah. So now, extended producer
responsibility. It's really not a new thing,
though, is it? When you link, look back and I
can remember way back when I was a young child, you want to go
buy Coke bottles of Coke or Pepsi or whatever, and you put
down a deposit for some of those bottles so you could get that
back 'cause they wanted those bottles to recycle and reuse.
And it's the same type of concept here to the extent to
where consumers are going to pay a little extra because there's
going to be this extended responsibility of the
manufacturer to take back those products and do something with
it. Maybe you can.
Let's talk a little bit about how are companies preparing to
comply with EPR regulations across different regions in the
industry. We just talked about a few, but
plastics might be one that we might be more familiar with.
And how is that looking and shaping up right now for us as
consumers? Let's just say we started our
conversation before we were recording about using the word
adventure. IA lot of companies are are
sitting down and trying to strategize what they're going to
do. This overlaps across multiple
avenues within a company's operations.
We've been assisting smaller companies as well as some of the
largest brands in the world with this.
And every single company has a different set of resources and a
different set of structures with a company that really guide the
way they're able to focus and pay attention to this.
But almost in every instance we're talking to the individual
that's managing, I'll say operations and or
sustainability. Sometimes those are two distinct
people, COO and sometimes they're the chief sustainability
officer. We're generally also meeting
with the legal department and frequently we're interacting
with folks within the ESG setting at the same time and
packaging engineers. We're also speaking with people
within the revenue divisions of companies.
So sometimes the CFO, sometimes it's their sales department, but
every single one of those individuals or roles becomes a
critical player and figuring out how is a company going to assess
their packaging use for reporting obligations that
happen to be distinct in the several states in which these
laws have been enacted. As well as you mentioned, this
has been happening in other places.
So there are global EPR requirements in Canada, for
example, is we're working with a lot of companies that are
selling their products into Canada and have obligations
there across the globe. Yeah, that's going to be a
pretty complex situation for a global company that has products
that go everywhere. And at this day and age, any
company could technically be global if they got a product
that they can sell and ship. It sounds like this is going to
be a consideration for a lot of firms to to evaluate when
they're making decisions on packaging their products, how
they create I guess the return loop so to speak of that
product. And maybe you can talk about
what that looks like for some of the discussions you've been
having with companies. What has been the biggest
challenge in from an operational perspective and maybe a
financial perspective of where companies implementing EPR
programs? I'll start with the supply chain
again. Every company is a different
size and a different scale and different scope, but we're
always coming back to where is this packaging material being
manufactured? Is it in the US?
Is it abroad? Is there a contract with the
manufacturer in which the brand remains responsible for the
packaging liability? Does the manufacturer take on
any of that liability once? Is it imported?
Who is the importer of record? Who's the distributor of record?
And all of those questions matter.
Is anyone licensing the brand? In some instances it's possible
that the licensee could be the company required to report.
A lot of the brands that we are working with are taking this
very seriously, understanding that this generally falls on
their lap to understand or distributors whether online
retail or in person retail distribution.
Those companies are assisting by providing the data that they
have. But a lot of it is really trying
to understand exactly where all the packaging is going, which
states is it even going into and how do we make sure that the
party that has the responsibility under the
specific state law is indeed registering for these programs
and reporting under these programs.
The complexities continue on, but I would say that's one of
the very first. Questions.
Yeah, great. Thinking about it from a
strategic perspective, you mentioned a few scenarios there,
but I'd imagine if you're a manufacturer, if you could write
into your contracts for some of these packaging companies that
they're that you're buying the material from that they're going
to be responsible. That's probably one way to kind
of offset or get around some of this type of responsibility.
Is that correct? So that's a really great point
and why I was saying that's just the beginning, right, Because
then OK, so what's next now we're looking at the contracts
now we're looking at the licensing agreements now.
And so it just continues in that you are chasing your supply
chain to understand it while also shirring up for future
years and future contracts. A lot of the agreements in the
packaging world are annual and for also then thinking about
strategic messaging for partners within your supply chain and
all. And these companies, many of
their these relationships are critical.
It's not in anyone's interest for these conversations to be
adverse. So we're also seeing business
wide decisions and business wide conversations where companies
are sitting down and at the table together to determine how
do we best do this as partners? Why do we do this as partners?
Because people don't like to talk to me that frequently.
Oh, I don't know. Why not?
Come on. Hey, so you're in the weeds, so
to speak with a lot of companies now trying to navigate these
requirements and and advising them, which is great.
But how is EPR influencing product and the package design
decisions within the industry, within the electronics, consumer
goods, automotive and there's a lot there in this area and comes
to mind is like how can companies be more thoughtful
about creating more of a circular economy related product
that you know is going to be used for packaging that's easily
recycled? It's not complicated, simple.
What are you seeing in that space where companies are really
investing in a little more thought in that?
Before these EPR laws started taking US operations by storm,
we saw so many companies being caught leaders around how they
could impact sustainability generally.
I want to preface with EPR being a, let's say, a tool in the
toolbox of moving towards the circular economy.
But there are so many other areas of law regulation and also
just consumer management and consumer relationship and trust
and reputation building that are critical right now.
There's also greenwashing risks in terms of like how we're how
companies are communicating what they're doing to their their
customers. So again, I start there because
EPR is just a piece of the puzzle and brands are many
brands are stepping into leadership roles right now and
evaluating that exact question. Some of them are designing new
packaging for their products and you can see what when you're out
of the store. There's some, I recently saw a
very well known brand that indicated on their bottle that
they had reduced the amount of packaging from the last bottle
that you had seen them using by a certain percentage.
And companies are proud of this. They're proud of the way they're
changing their materials management.
They're, they're looking at their climate reporting
requirements and saying, OK, in addition to reducing the amount
of materials we're using for this packaging, can we transport
it in a different way? There's studies out there that
show or that if you reduce the weight of packaging, it reduces
the amount of GSG emissions. So all of these things are
interconnected and companies are building out sustainability
committees that are thinking really critically about all of
these moving pieces. Then there's, of course, the,
like you'd mentioned, the milk bottles, Coke bottles.
We're also seeing the resurgence of bottle bills.
And in some states, if a company is participating in a bottle
bill, then they're exempt from EPR because why would you have
to pay into something if those bottles are being returned?
And actually the California EPR law related to textiles that'll
be coming into effect, I think it's in 2026, actually
contemplates full circular economy such that our clothes
are going back, they're going back into the system, nothing
goes into landfill. Yeah.
When I think about EPR, the challenge that it seems to be
most companies would struggle with is how do you validate that
you're actually getting a significant percentage of EPR
return, you know, taking place, Especially if you say you get a
lot of small products, a lot of small packages.
In my mind, I go it's ATV or it's a washer and dryer.
You're going to be able to track that one a little easier I would
imagine, 'cause they're big products, but little things.
How is the data collection side of this for reporting actually
going to get done in a way that companies could actually with a
straight face say we did 60% EPR return on our products this
year? Like how does that even happen?
I'll tell you this, I'm working with some pretty brilliant
people that have complex calculations and they're
weighing their materials and they're tracking it line by
line. And once there is data, it can
be analyzed. I'll say that.
But if the product doesn't come back to their own say facility,
we talk about say this whole, you've got individual EPR
company, company where they would set up the whole return
cycle process. And then you got this collective
type approach too, right, where couple companies bind together
and they create this type of return process.
Have you started to work with companies that are looking into
that direction and doing a more of a partnership or they're
creating a group or a team effort here to create a return
process so that the data can be tracked, they can validate what
happens? I'm just curious because I think
this is the one of the biggest obstacles, the struggle for
companies with this. There are multiple different EPR
regimes and the packaging regime does not currently focus on this
return process. OK.
The packaging side is really focused on these one time
materials are adding a protective layer to a box that
was a plastic film that gets thrown out.
Or I'm sure you buy something for a friend and they open the
box and there's some sort of cream in there and then there's
some little pretty paper and it's really pretty and you're
like, oh, and you take out the little papers, but there's
nothing really you can do with that paper again.
So a lot of these packaging related APR laws are designed to
assess how our recycling infrastructure and landfill
infrastructure is designed and to be able to figure out ways to
recycle or manage those materials better, noting that
they're one time likely or building up recycling
infrastructure. So back to the core of why these
laws are here, at least the packaging related ones.
We could talk about other CPR concepts because this goes ways
bigger than that into creating the circular economy you're
talking about with respect to packaging behind all state laws.
If you get to the core of them, they're trying to assess what
are the needs for our infrastructure to improve, to be
able to recycle and to keep things going back in into the
system. And so these fees that are
getting assessed are basically designed to, I should say, they
are supposed to be signed to understand what a specific state
needs to address that particular material.
And at its core, if we think about it in really simple terms,
you know it, I'm just using a random material.
If it's determined that 80% of the state's recycling facilities
can't handle this particular type of material, then the goal
would be that these fees are designed to collect more money
for those types of materials. So then that money can then go
into the state and into the local municipalities to build
their capacity to handle it. And that's really where these
fees are designed to go. There's a lot of there's a lot
of questions about what will happen once the skis are
collected and if it'll really work, but that's at the floor of
the packaging related APR. And that that kind of makes
sense because to to kind of really manage the whole life
cycle of a small package that would be just too onerous.
I could imagine. I like the concept of creating
the packaging to be more sustainably I guess more
recyclable essentially and less make it strip the thing down to
its bare bones. So it's simple, it's easy.
It's it's going to have AI. Guess it's the best way to
recycle the product when when it does get recycled, help
companies get there because yeah, we don't need a lot of
single use plastics floating around just because you keep
adding more wrappers or extra material to a product.
It's a significant challenge for companies because they'll create
products and they'll create packaging that is technically
recyclable. But then if the state doesn't
have the appropriate infrastructure, there have been
lawsuits where if somebody says my material is recyclable, but
then it's a link, there's a state that actually can't
recycle it. Then they should get an
exemption. Instead, they're getting sued
for making the claim that their material is recyclable.
It can't actually be recycled. So there's a there's a lot of
moving pieces and why that's why it also really matters for
companies. Even though it can be
frustrating upfront, I think to have these new fees, I think the
vision is ultimately that it creates a system that will be
that will minimize those greenwashing risks, will
increase the recyclability. But we've got a gap to fill, and
states are using EPR as one of their tools to try to close that
gap. There's a lot of questions about
whether or not it's the right solution.
Yeah, I think some of the easier ones you could think of for EPR
would be like say tires, you buy tires, you go get a new tire and
that tire goes to back to the manufacturer's system.
That'd be a pretty, I think it's simpler, more an easier way to
to have a closed loop type EPR. But I'm sure there's other
products but. Hello ET Nation, I want to thank
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schedule a demo today. I like the packaging scenario.
I'm sure there's some challenges there.
And I could imagine for the company who makes a product and
it's recyclable in say New York. And then over there in New
Jersey, it's not because they don't have the infrastructure
over there, but that's pretty close.
They could ship it to New York pretty close.
But anyways, if they make the one package and then it's
doesn't meet every state's requirements.
So that that does sound like a pretty challenging prospect.
And I, I love that we're talking about more than packaging
because there have been higher EPR laws, OK?
Connecticut passed one in 2023. Yeah.
New York State introduced a bill mandating tire collection.
And so there's beyond packaging many other industries, there's
long standing battery EPR. Oh yeah.
It's out there. There's a lot going on in the
space. What's your thoughts here?
How might EPR regulations for innovation and material science,
recycling technologies and sustainable product development?
And it seems to me this whole EPR initiative really going to
initiate the advancement of all these new circular economy
technologies and things. I would think it just.
Oh, and absolutely, it's already happening.
There's like in tandem of the with these laws are multiple
packaging engineers and scientists that are working
their tail off to figure out how they can make internal changes
outside of the law to make their products have less of an impact
on the environment. So really, I think consumers
have shown companies that this is a priority to them and
companies respond to laws, but they really do respond to their
consumers. All right.
So there's amazing steps being taken.
I also think for the companies that don't have the
infrastructure, like the larger sustainability teams, the
packaging engineers, they're, I believe, more likely to be
financially impacted by this because they're just smaller in
general. And this is a whole new
compliance requirements on them that they likely didn't plan
for, which I think could trigger them to say, all right, rather
than deal with this, let's just change our packaging that we
have. We don't have the overhead to
even make a room for the annual fees for.
We've got to figure this out. I So, yeah, there are some
exemptions for certain businesses, but in some
instances you're like, OK, does that what happens if all 50
states have one of these laws and this is how much money
they're charging? But we haven't seen that just
yet. But it's there's a lot of talk
about whether this is one of those moments where a federal
solution is the right approach. Yeah, I was just going to go
there. I was like, OK, do we have
federal DPR laws across all 50 states that have to be adhered
to or is it really a state by state approach right now?
And man, that's a whole interesting prospect in the
census, all the environmental regulations that we're already
dealing with that you've got federal and then you got to
understand the nuances of the state laws associated with the
federal. And that's fine, I guess for the
most part. But is that is it mostly being
led by state at this point? Yeah, absolutely.
Although there's been a lot of legislative activity related to
this, related to packaging, related to recycling, relating
to plastic pollution. At one point in time, I had a
list of every single legislative activity that's gone forward in
the last eight years or so. But yeah, I think there there's
a law called the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act that I
believe has an EPR concept related to beverage containers
and some plastic products. We've in the last
administration, there was a letter that went out to, I
believe it was to most agencies. But in essence the core of
letter was basically, hey, when there's federal procurement
involved, we don't want to use single use plastics.
There was there were some Senate hearings last March.
The FTC has been evaluating the Green Guides for multiple years.
So I think and there have been multiple recycling
infrastructure bills, the issue and what makes this a very
interesting place to work as an attorney as there's so many
cross jurisdictional issues between funking between
implementation of the actual infrastructure, between
enforcement. So what's the right way to do
this? I think we can step back at this
moment in time already with lessons learned from the roll
out of Oregon's, Colorado's registration and reporting
requirements with California's and Minnesota's next in line to
see what would the benefits be if there was something at a
federal level. Some of the benefits to having
this at the state level is it's forcing the process or whenever
you have a federal law like this, it would take immense
studies, data collection, and to get it right to really create
something that was equitable and effective.
So I do think that at some point in time we'll hit a tipping
point within the number of states that have enacted EPR
laws where they'll be more and more pressure at the federal
level for some sort of synthesizing to occur.
Will it get into the nitty gritty of the day-to-day?
I don't know. Will it create some minimum
recycling standards? I worked on some legislation
that proposed that that was issued last fall, that some
recycling standards would be very helpful to create, let's
call like the foundational web that then all other waste
management and recycling issues could be managed through.
So I don't know, We'll see if there's a laughing downhill.
I when I think about a nationwide approach to some of
this, it seems that there is probably some low hanging fruit
type products that are no brainers.
That would be like, yeah, and we just mentioned tires.
Everybody has that problem in every single state.
Why wouldn't that be an easy one to say?
You know what, there's one. How about white goods?
Every refrigerator, washer and dryer, anything like like that.
All some like also electronics. Those would be, to my mind, the
easiest ones to do a nationwide EPR where companies have to put
together some more sophisticated infrastructure.
Not that it's not already there because there's a lot going on
in the space, but there needs to be more, right?
It'd be it'd be more collection systems and locations, but to me
that would be easy from a nationwide perspective.
The rest of the packaging I think would be a little more
probably state by state, but those would be a big ones.
I don't know how many states already have tire EPR laws have
come ahead, but I'm pretty sure that there are already OK.
If I were to pick up material to start with, it would be
electronics because I'm aware of at least 25 states that have
electronic, you know, CPR related laws.
So there's already infrastructure companies are
already supposed to be doing this.
So why not turn create something that again creates the minimum
standards. And that's one of the
interesting things about RECRA, the Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act, which is real. Our current cradle to grave law
in 1976 states are still generally taking over a majority
of the implementation of Rick Rickrit has been amended, I
think it four times. 1986, you got a few?
Yeah, there's a few there. Have been more regulation, more
revisions to the regulations, but.
I think hasn't changed that dramatically from its initial
implementation, so. One of my thoughts here is let's
go a little bit bigger than EPR Ricro, in my opinion, needs to
be amended, needs to be rehauled because again, if we want to
create a system that is circular in the United States, when our
waste system, our waste lot, and I don't know, in the preamble it
says of I'm actually going to say what the preamble says.
What I will say is that in every Ricker law class, I can say for
sure because I would, I got to take my Ricker class with
Jeffrey Miller who helped write the law at Peace Law school.
The first thing anyone learns about Ricker is that it's
cradle, the grief it's getting to end, it's completion
generation through disposal. So if we don't want that
disposal piece to be the main construct in the way we think
about it. Amend that component of the
record. I mean everything else is
regulatory compliance with hazardous waste characteristic
compliance of the reporting, but make more of the emphasis on the
the recycling infrastructure closed loop type scenarios.
That's good. There's extensive recycling
related exemptions I think are just the start.
Universal waste is great. You've got the whole, you've got
everything and just not everything, but you have a lot
in the universal waste rules that are everyday common main
products that we all use, electronics, batteries, all
kinds of paints, sometimes in certain states.
There's those all kinds of aspects of universal waste and
there is infrastructure being built and there are major
companies doing it. Like I, I'm a very familiar with
several lamp recycling, the electronic recycling, obviously
solvent recycling. There's a lot of their plastic
there's, it's all there cardboard, there's, it's, it's
there. Maybe there's got to be a better
way of tracking how those manufacturers are, how much
they're producing and then somehow figuring out how much is
going to get returned. I think there is that that once
it leaves the play their manufacturing site, how do they
track the recyclability of that product at some point I.
I think well coming back to one of the first things that we were
talking about which is like the supply chain from the.
So what has made a Recra an effective system for a long time
is that it in required has required tracking is created a
process that then can be implemented.
A lot of what we do is it in the hazardous waste industry and
that's really one of my main focus areas is we're tracking
how it moves through trucking, We're tracking where it was
made, what facility and. When it was generated, how long
it's been on site? And then our circle lawsuits
related to landfilling end up looking at those hazardous waste
manifests. OK, this is, these are the
parties that are responsible because they drop it off here,
they moved it here. The whole system is built for
the way we managed materials, but we haven't paused to create
that type of more systematic recycling infrastructure and
tracking process. There's again extensive
exemptions, but they're complicated.
We've got certain materials that are exempt from the definition
of solid waste altogether. Then we have other materials
that are exempt from the definition of hazardous waste if
they're managed a certain way. And anyway, so I think there
could be a simplification of that whole.
It'll be 1 area of the federal regulations that could help
reduce or improve the an EPR type circular economy component
for sure. I still feel like we're missing
the products that are manufactured, that are shipped
out to consumers that they won't ever be able to manage
themselves, the company themselves technically again,
they're just going to hope for the best that society recycles
the products better, more effectively.
And I think that's, I think there's the big disconnect or at
least the challenge for EPR in a lot of areas.
Plus we come up with some amazing technology that can sort
materials that are going into all of these facilities that can
better weigh and manage all of the materials.
I I think they're. You're spot on.
And there are new technologies coming online.
There are with AI and visual recognition and processing and
there is some huge improvements that are being made in that
area. They are costly to get them
implemented at a lot of these locations.
So it's going to take time, I think before a lot of these
companies are really in a position to where I guess the
technology and the equipment becomes very affordable and
standardized. But it's going to be a, it's
going to take some time. But I think that there's good
signs that's already really available now, but not at the
scale that needs to be. Agree, And the other component
besides. OK, obviously.
Can someone let me rewrite Ricker one day?
I'd love to work on it. Yeah, cut to my Bork dream.
I'll be honest with you, but OK. It does need to know it needs an
overhaul. I'm with you.
It's, it's a challenge. There's some of the regulation
or the requirements, just you scratch your head and so come
on, really. But they were written this in
76. That's a different world.
And this was their first attempt at a major regulation that was
They were tired of seeing companies just dump their stuff
in the back 40 like they did a Love canal.
That's why. I think it's an amazing law,
I'll say that. I also think critical to this
discussion is the creation of markets.
Yeah. How do we bring all of this
online? Again, EPR is a tool.
It creates a fee structure that'll put more money into the
state's hands to work on and perhaps buy some of that
infrastructure and some of that technology.
You're talking about a dream world.
Now, once that clean material is created, what And what once we
actually create it and we keep it out of landfills, what
happens next? Who's going to take that
material? Who's going to clean it?
Who's going to process it? And then there's many disputes
about what's the proper way of handling and processing
recyclable material to have a minimal environmental impact.
So. I think that's another critical
component of the discussion is and it's another think about
America as a free market society.
If we create a market for it, it's very for the waste to be
handled. Like, for example, China was a
market, they made money. Yeah, totally.
They totally made money on it and they were just getting
inundated by the world basically because they were just kept
sending stuff to them. The.
Biggest issue in I would say, OK, I keep saying the biggest
issue, one of the biggest issues of in of all of this is also the
contamination of materials. The the complexity of handling
material waste streams even at your home, right?
Some foods I'm thinking peanut butter, right?
Like how hard is it to get your peanut butter consumer gleaning
WAP that you could actually be recyclable?
Yeah, there's that. And you're right.
Now I'm aware of a few firms, Republics one, they just opened
up a blue polymer, couple blue polymer facilities, one in
Indianapolis where I reside, and they've got one in Phoenix and I
think they just opened a new one.
I'm not sure where, but they heard that they've come up with
a way to actually clean and process some of the plastic that
is dirty that's so that they can effectively clean it, process
it, and then make it a product for resale in the market.
And that's great. So strides are being made in
certain areas of the business under that and I think that's
real important. I've got a big panel discussion
coming up in a couple weeks in Louisville at the EHS Hazmat
Summit, where I'm leading a circular economy conversation
with leaders from Republic, leaders from ERI, which is
Electronic Recycling International, and also with a
company called Pre Tread. And Pre Tread is a company that
recycles tires and makes Rd. barriers out of it.
The big concrete ones, you see, instead of using that, they're
making them out of recycled tires.
And it's a great product because the durability of them, the
longevity of them and it's a reused product and out to go on
or dig up the earth. They can just they've already
done it. So it's more sustainable.
And we're talking about that. The whole circular economy,
infrastructure being built and growing it and dealing with
these challenges of that a lot of companies are facing either
with EPR or just because the companies want to deal with it
because it's the right thing to do from a sustainability
perspective. Reducing carbon footprint could
all that good stuff, right. So that's a lot of it.
When you when do you anticipate APR compliance will increase
prices on consumers and how can companies manage then offset
this impact? Money is going to have to come
somewhere from somewhere, right? So are they going to?
That's a business decision. I don't know if companies will
put that on their consumers or take the hit, but you know, most
companies are generally. Passing down the cost.
Yeah, I'm seeking to increase revenue.
But the other thing is the way I like to think about it is this
is where consumers and companies can show leadership in general.
It helps if it's not coming through this EPR fee that's
assigned to we're going to be assigned based on the weight of
packaging used by producers. It would have to come through
taxes anyway if we were to work through and enhance and increase
the infrastructure. So I don't see a world where we
all don't have to invest in infrastructure, all of us.
Yeah, yeah. Everybody's going to have to
contribute to the process to make this work.
I think the intent of the law was for producers to hold that
back more. But in essence, by doing that,
it does then say to conforms, you know what, I'm going to
choose the companies that are producing as little with
packaging material as possible. Value purchasing is what I call
that. And so then it does also
potentially shift consumer decisions, which ships market
decisions, which ships fees and in all of it.
So is that a better approach than taxes and having everyone
pay into the states? I don't know.
I think it should be a consumer based approach in my opinion.
If you want to buy the products and that you're willing to pay
for it, then great. But if you don't buy those
products then you probably wouldn't be fair.
You get to pay into it if you're not buying that product.
So seems like it'd be best if it's based on the actual
products you're buying because then it's directly related to
the process and the consumer product instead of just a flat
fee that everyone has to pay. I don't know like at least
that's my thoughts. I.
Think about it with a slightly different product base and
chemical issue, but really similar and connected to my
larger practice on just product stewardship and chemical
management. Excuse me?
When we look at the history and the way PFOS bands have rolled
out, just for a second, we're not going to go there.
I know it's not the purpose of the conversation thing.
Wait, go for it, go for it because unfortunately, consumers
are having to take the brunt of it.
In many ways, it's also how consumers are saying are
realizing and starting to actually think about what
they're consuming, right? They're like, Oh my goodness, I
didn't even think that this was something that I should be
paying attention to. And so their consumers, even
before the bans began, started saying, OK, we're not going to
buy those non stick pans anymore.
Get rid of your non stick pans, everybody.
And so then what happened? A whole and a whole new industry
became to be we've got a whole new cookware industry overnight
of companies that are competing to produce the best nonstick pan
that. That's an pee Foss pan.
And that's a whole another question of which pee Foss
compounds, but we'll just say how do we create a nonstick
material that has the lowest risk chemical exposure?
Sure, absolutely. And that makes sense.
I think from that part or that perspective, the consumer, I
think the biggest challenge though right now is all the
damage that's already been done by P5 for consumers having to
pay that. They're like, we didn't even
deal with that stuff and they're being exposed and have to pay
for water treatment that they didn't agree to.
So yeah, that's the biggest challenge I see with a lot of
unfairness in the process right now, and there's that.
If we get back to EPR though, I think that there's a lot that
can be done and I think there is a lot of onus on individuals
just to be better recyclers individually.
Everyone just does it a little bit and takes the initiative to
recycle more and reduce their water consumption and turn those
lights off and things like that. Collectively, it'll be a big
impact. And so I think that's a big
thing. But how might EPR improve the
quality and convenience of recycling and waste collection
systems for everyday consumers? What?
How do you see this really making it easier for them?
I'll just say to be determined on that one, but that's another
component of what these, the fees that are being collected
are intended to support. Coming off of Epas.
It was either 20, sometime between 2018 and 2020, EPA put
out a report or it outlined the critical issues for recycling in
the United States and what was blocking us from getting to a
recycling rate of 50%. And the number one issue in
essence was besides the fact that every state law and
municipal jurisdiction just does it differently and handles it
differently, was that it's tough for consumers to actually know
what's right. I've spoken to many people who
are like, I just moved to a new location and and I used to be
able to recycle glass, but now I can't recycle glass.
I can recycle glass, but not from my actual home.
I have to stop 10 miles away process into my life to do that.
And I want to do that, but when am I going to do that?
And I know I'll get to it eventually.
And all of a sudden six months pass and you're finally like
settled enough into your new location to think about your
refuse. So I think, I think that there's
more to to be, I'll just say more to be determined here, more
to be built out. But the goal is we move in that
direction. What we can say is there's a ton
of data out there about recycling in general, which
gives us the ability to say where are the areas in the
country where the least recycling is occurring.
And my perspective if I was in charge would be to start there.
If we can build capacity in the places where we have a recycling
rate below even 20%, education, better infrastructure for pick
up and drop off which would require more jobs, that would be
a great place to start. Yeah, I think the biggest
opportunity is the education side of the House.
It's educating constantly at a very young age.
School, kindergarten, even at kindergarten started there.
There should be back in the day. And we grew up as kids, at least
when I grew up as kids, we had cartoons that talked about the
bill and how that how bills are created in Congress.
And they always had a constant education process going where
you were learning about government and you were learning
about how to spell and read and write and all this and stuff.
We need to have a dedicated, consistent educational process
for recycling in our country. And it shouldn't be just state
to state. It should be, I think federally,
but also state to state. I was just in Paris a couple
weeks ago and I'm in the subway and there's these huge recycling
pictures on the subway walls and it's like, it was a can and it
had wings on the can. It says, hey, this can doesn't
get recycled by itself. Basically saying it takes, you
have to actually put it in the trash can.
And it talks about it's the, it's the we're trying to
accomplish improving sustainability and recycling and
things like that. Or in another ad was, hey, let's
reuse these products. Let's fix them up, rehab them
and reuse them. And so there's all these like
little new, I guess advertising and it's subliminal because
after a while you don't even recognize it, but it's sitting
there and if you just look up, you see it's there.
And it seems like an educational process for EPR systems,
recycling process. That's what we need to do, those
schemes and everything. I don't see us doing enough of
that. And, and in that federal law, I
mentioned to you that was one of the critical components of the
recycling standards, a study process that was built in at the
federal level of what can we do to best educate and close these
gaps. And that will take some time to
build out anything that becomes systematic.
But I agree with you that more education is better, but really
also comes down to general culture.
Some of these laws, I think, I don't know if they'll shift
culture immediately, but the more that circular options are
available at the market level that I think the more we'll see
cultural shifts. So that to me comes back to what
are the barriers to making recycling a profitable exercise?
And that's where I want to focus personally, because that I
believe can influence cultures in the most organic way aligned
with how our culture already works.
We like a we really do Americans, right?
If we how can we make trendy? Yeah, make it trendy.
Make it. Easy.
Just make it easy. A lot of cities they don't have
curbside recycling, They just have normal trash pickup, Make
it, make, add those things, add those stream pickups.
So that way people are more incentivized to do that.
It may take a couple dollars off their their trash bill if
they're recycling more, something you come up with,
something that just helps them be more incentivized.
I'm even having this idea right now, which would be our top
stars and our rock stars and our movie stars are very persuasive.
So if any of you are listening. Come on, help us out.
Help us out. Promote these recycling efforts,
do some documentaries and stuff like that.
Help us figure out ways to make this more effective.
When Beyoncé recycles, it's amazing, right?
We just, whatever. Let's just have we want to see
Beyoncé recycling. There you go, Beyoncé can
recycle, get all the big stars recycling.
There are a lot of really great stories to be told though.
A lot of big events are really focused on recycling at the at
their facilities, so they can basically have a better positive
impact. I was just at a live golf outing
recently and the recycling and trash receptacles are right
there next to each other and it's clearly marked.
Everybody is dropping their bottles and cans in the right
recycling section. They're putting their trash
waste in the trash. And then for of course, we've
got the guys pulling around and picking up the full bags and
replenishing the. It was really good to see how
effective that some of these big events are being managed from a
sustainability perspective on the waste management.
It's great. And I think those stories don't
get told enough, like they don't get shared with everyday people.
Here's the impact that you spectators had at this event,
right? You contributed to recycling
this much. That's those are the stories I
think that are not getting told. And you can you could go to the
NFL and be go down the line all these I think big leagues and
stuff like that are doing these type of things, but we're not
talking about it enough. We need to, yeah.
Even if there was like a or it's half time and right before the
end of the game. Hey, on your way out.
Don't forget to drop off your empty container here I mean.
I just have every event had a like resource manager, usher who
was like designed to pump you up or something.
Yeah, right. This way to the most exciting,
you know, place at the stadium. Yeah, the recycling center.
Exactly. No, that's great.
I love our conversation, Megan. This has been exciting,
educational for the listeners as well.
I really appreciate you coming on the show.
I know we could spend probably another 30 minutes easily
talking about EPR concepts and some challenges, but I think
we've covered the topic pretty well as far as some of the
issues that are out there. There's more to be dived into,
I'm sure, and explored. I really appreciate all the work
you're doing there at your firm, just to keep up the good work at
Holland Knight. Really appreciate that and thank
you for coming on the show. Thanks so much for having me, it
was a pleasure. Thanks for listening and
watching the show. If you enjoyed the show then
please share it with your friends and Co workers on social
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Thanks for being with us, ET Nation.