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4 EPR takeaways from the Packaging Recycling Summit

Packaging minds from P&G, General Mills and Just Born Quality Confections, along with municipal waste leaders and other collaborators, discussed the latest compliance tensions and emerging solutions.

You’ve got questions. So does everyone else.

As EPR begins to take hold in U.S. states, questions abound across the value chain.

“We’re supposed to be talking about navigating EPR, and I’m not sure that I’m really any more familiar with where I should be going as a local government,” said Christina Seibert, executive director at the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County, Illinois. “I’ve got as many questions as I have answers.”

State disparities create tension

The differences among states’ packaging EPR laws is a major pain point for brands and packaging companies, speakers said.

“Where we create conflict in setting policy is creating conflict for the implementation and the logistics that it takes to make it effective,” Seibert said. “We know that brands are not designing packaging for a state, they’re designing it for a market. The market is national, and sometimes larger than national.” 

Peeping at data solutions

Concerns over disparate state programs also have come up at Just Born Quality Confections, the parent company of candy brands including Mike and Ike, Peeps and Hot Tamales.

“Every time I thought I had a good grasp, another state would change their goal posts,” said Charlotte Ashcraft, senior manager of packaging and graphics development, discussing her journey with learning about EPR. “Then something clicked for me. I realized I was trying to solve the wrong problem. I was treating EPR like a policy problem, and it’s not — at least not for us. EPR is really a packaging data problem.”

Where the fees flow

Various speakers touched on how collected EPR fees go toward adding or improving recycling infrastructure. Speakers at one session discussed an area they believe should be at the top of the funding list: flexible film recycling.

4 EPR takeaways from the Packaging Recycling Summit | Packaging Dive

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