[Senate Hearing 116-255]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 116-255
RESPONDING TO THE CHALLENGES FACING RECYCLING IN THE UNITED STATES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
----------
JUNE 17, 2020
----------
Printed for the use of the Committee on Environment and Public Works
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
RESPONDING TO THE CHALLENGES FACING RECYCLING
IN THE UNITED STATES
S. Hrg. 116-255
RESPONDING TO THE CHALLENGES FACING RECYCLING IN THE UNITED STATES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JUNE 17, 2020
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Environment and Public Works
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
41-242 PDF WASHINGTON : 2020
COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming, Chairman
JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware,
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia Ranking Member
KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland
MIKE BRAUN, Indiana BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, New York
ROGER WICKER, Mississippi CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
RICHARD SHELBY, Alabama EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
JONI ERNST, Iowa TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
Richard M. Russell, Majority Staff Director
Mary Frances Repko, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
JUNE 17, 2020
OPENING STATEMENTS
Barrasso, Hon. John, U.S. Senator from the State of Wyoming...... 2
Carper, Hon. Thomas R., U.S. Senator from the State of Delaware.. 4
WITNESSES
Udall, Hon. Tom, U.S. Senator from the State of New Mexico....... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 18
Croke, Bridget, Managing Director, Closed Loop Partners.......... 23
Prepared statement........................................... 26
Responses to additional questions from:
Senator Sullivan......................................... 173
Senator Carper........................................... 175
Senator Merkley.......................................... 178
Senator Markey........................................... 179
Stasz, Meghan, Vice President of Packaging and Sustainability,
Consumer Brands Association.................................... 181
Prepared statement........................................... 183
Responses to additional questions from:
Senator Sullivan......................................... 189
Senator Carper........................................... 192
Senator Merkley.......................................... 194
Senator Markey........................................... 195
Butler, Nina Bellucci, Chief Executive Officer, MORE Recycling... 197
Prepared statement........................................... 200
Responses to additional questions from:
Senator Sullivan......................................... 217
Senator Carper........................................... 224
Senator Sanders.......................................... 230
Senator Merkley.......................................... 233
Senator Markey........................................... 234
RESPONDING TO THE CHALLENGES FACING RECYCLING IN THE UNITED STATES
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17, 2020
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Environment and Public Works,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m. in
room 106, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. John Barrasso
(Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
Present: Senators Barrasso, Carper, Inhofe, Braun, Rounds,
Boozman, Ernst, Cardin, Whitehouse, Merkley, and Gillibrand.
Senator Barrasso. Before we start the hearing today, I
wanted to just say it is Beth Lange's last hearing.
She has been with the Committee since 2017. For the last 2
years, she made sure our hearings and our markups ran smoothly
and on time. We appreciate all the work for the Committee, and
we wish her very well in her new job with the Department of
Agriculture and their Legislative Affairs Team.
During that time, she was able to have a baby named Jack, a
lovely young lad. Some of us were hoping that it would be John
instead of Jack, but we understand.
Off to the Department of Agriculture with you.
[Laughter.]
Senator Barrasso. Anyway, Leah Schaefer is taking over and
will do a great job with Beth.
Thank you so much for your service to the Committee, and we
are going to miss you. Thank you.
Senator Carper. Could I just add our thanks and our
congratulations as well?
You have one child, just one child?
Ms. Lange. Just one.
Senator Carper. Have you had enough of Jack? Do you think
there might be another one somewhere down the road?
Senator Barrasso. A girl named Jill, maybe?
[Laughter.]
Senator Carper. That would be good.
USDA?
Ms. Lange. Yes.
Senator Carper. All right. In the Bible, Matthew 25, it
says, ``When I was hungry, did you feed me?'' and going to the
USDA, thank you for feeding us, and thank you for your great
work here. It has been a joy. Thank you.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BARRASSO,
U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF WYOMING
Senator Barrasso. With that, we call this hearing to order
today.
Today we are going to consider the recent challenges facing
recycling programs in the United States and the potential
solutions to these challenges.
I will tell you, in the big story today in the Casper
newspaper is, today--I see Senator Udall--today, we are opening
the recycling facilities that we have all around Casper that
have been closed as a result of the coronavirus crisis that is
affecting us that have been closed as a result for a number of
months. So, we are going to look specifically today at consumer
goods, including paper, plastics, metals, and glass.
I would point out, in reading this article today in the
Casper Star Tribune, they said that we are not able to, again,
recycle glass. We will be recycling paper, plastics, and
others, but not glass.
It is interesting as we deal with this topic of recycling
what you can and can't, including no longer can, and what we
should in the future. I believe we have a shared responsibility
to keep recyclable materials and other waste out of the
environment.
In the United States, State and local laws, not Federal
laws, govern recycling. That means that towns, cities, and
counties manage recycling programs. Local recycling programs
can consist of curbside recycling, which takes place alongside
weekly trash collections.
These programs can also include drop off recycling, which
is what we have in Casper, Wyoming, which involves Americans
taking their recyclable goods to one or more collection sites.
I will tell you, other members, that when I take them
there, and as my wife has me dutifully sectioning things out,
and we take the clear plastics and the plastics with color in
them, and then the magazines, and then the newspapers, and the
inserts and put them all in the different bins, that one day, I
was there, and what looked like a big trash truck pulled up and
lined up with each of the dumpsters, and dumped them all into
the same locations.
So I guess the only reason I am actually moving them is
because my wife says it is important that I do separate them
out before I take them, but that is the way we collect them but
then when they take them beyond.
There are lots of interesting points to be dealt with as we
learn more and more about how and what we can recycle.
Local governments typically fund recycling programs through
the sale of recyclable materials and user fees. While we are
opening our recycling centers again in Wyoming, what we know is
that it now has a cost to do it. It doesn't pay for itself,
especially with the distances that we are from other
communities.
For decades, communities in the United States sold much, if
not all of the recyclable materials for export to China.
Chinese manufacturers were hungry for raw materials. Large
cargo ships, which would otherwise return empty to China, often
made it less expensive to export recyclable materials than
transport the materials locally.
But in 2018, China all but ended imports of mixed paper and
mixed plastic. As a result, the value of the materials
collapsed. In response, local governments have had to decide
whether to raise users' fees or end, suspend, or scale back
their recycling programs.
And what we are seeing in Wyoming today is that, there had
been a debate at city council, should we end this program. It
is an important program. What other public services will not be
granted because of the money that is going to be used at the
cost to recycle, a program that used to pay for itself?
When local governments end or suspend recycling,
recyclables often end up in landfills, so this is something
that no one wants to see.
Another challenge facing recycling programs is the issue of
contamination. Contamination occurs when consumers mix
recyclable materials with material that can't be recycled, or
material that can't be recycled locally. Contamination lowers
the value of recyclable materials and can drain revenue from
local recycling programs.
When China imported much of our recyclable waste, we didn't
have to worry much about that in terms of the contamination.
China and other countries sorted our waste for us. Now that
these countries have imposed import restrictions, we have been
forced to confront contamination head on.
State and local governments believe that if they can reduce
contamination, they can find or develop new markets for their
recyclable materials. Local recycling programs are responding
in several ways. Some have launched campaigns to educate
consumers about what can and cannot be recycled. Others have
switched from single streams of recycling to dual or multiple
stream recycling. Others have invested in new technologies that
can sort materials with greater sophistication.
The private sector has also taken additional steps to boost
recycling capacity here in the United States. Consumer product
companies have pledged to use more recyclable materials in
their products and in their packaging.
Companies are making investments in what is known as
advanced recycling. Advanced recycling is a group of
technologies that use heat or chemicals to break down certain
plastics and other materials.
With traditional or mechanical recycling, plastics can only
be recycled a few times and generally for lower quality goods.
Advanced recycling allows plastics to be reused indefinitely.
They also allow plastics to be used for other high quality
products. Advanced recycling won't replace traditional or
mechanical recycling, but it can reduce the need to produce new
materials.
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a new set of
challenges. It has disrupted curbside recycling in many
communities. Nine out of 10 States that have bottle and can
redemption programs, have, to this point, suspended these
programs because of the pandemic.
It has also contributed to the collapse in crude oil
prices, which reduces the value of many of the recyclable
materials.
Finally, COVID-19 has called into question taxes and bans
on single use plastics. In its reopening guidelines, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has encouraged
restaurants to use disposable food service items, such as
utensils and dishes. We are talking about plastic spoons,
plastic forks, plastic knives, plastic plates, as
recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
California, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York,
and Oregon, as well as a number of municipalities have delayed
or suspended their bans and taxes on single use plastic
shopping bags. Some State and city governments, along with
nationwide retail chains, have now even prohibited reusable
bags. The pandemic has reminded us that the critical role that
single use plastics do play in protecting public health.
To help us navigate these challenges, we have a panel of
three experts who will help identify potential solutions for
communities and companies alike.
Senator Udall is also here, and he cares deeply about
recycling, and is here to share his thoughts with the
Committee.
Before turning to Senator Udall, however, let me now turn
to Ranking Member Carper for his opening statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS R. CARPER,
U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF DELAWARE
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Thank you so much for
scheduling this hearing.
This is a hearing that Senator Udall, Sheldon and I, and
others have sought for some time, and I am just delighted we
could be here and warmly welcome our friend Tom Udall.
I would like to also welcome Bridget Croke, and I would
like to welcome Meghan and Nina. I think Meghan and Nina are
here, but are just going to be joining us from afar, but we are
delighted that you are going to be part of this presentation
today.
As some of my colleagues know, recycling has been a
lifelong passion of mine. When I was 22, I was a young naval
flight officer flying out of the naval air station in Moffett
Field in California, lived in Palo Alto when we were not
overseas, and I wanted to recycle.
I found a place where you could actually take stuff in my
Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, and go recycle. I would go there about
every month, and I have never stopped.
In the last year or two alone, I have recycled a Ford
Exploder, I called it an exploder, a Ford Explorer; I have
recycled paint thinners, electronics, televisions, a bundle of
outdoor tree lights, a dehumidifier, and a whole lot more.
My wife thinks I am crazy, but I am a big recycler.
Today is her birthday, and I don't have any intention to
ever recycle my wife. I will hold on to her as long as I have
held onto my 2001 Chrysler Town and Country Minivan, and then a
little bit longer, if she will put up with me.
But anyway, recycling is a win-win-win solution. It saves
our environment, grows our economy, creates jobs, as the
Chairman has said.
For a small State like Delaware, recycling is particularly
important because, to be honest with you, we just don't have a
lot of room for landfills. We are about 50 miles wide, about
100 miles north to south. So we just don't have the extra room
to store garbage and trash.
As co-chairs of the Senate Recycling Caucus, Senator John
Boozman, who is sitting right here with us, he and I have
collaborated, as he knows, on a number of efforts this
Congress, with the help of our staffs. We are grateful for
that, and we have held stakeholder briefings, passed a
resolution to recognize America Recycles Day, and asked Senate
leadership to consider the recycling industry in future COVID-
19 legislation.
We are also working on legislation that would gather much
needed data about our recycling system and explore the
opportunity for the U.S. to implement a national composting
strategy.
While I am proud of the work that Senator Boozman and I
have done in recent years with the help of our staffs, I also
know that we have more work to do, a lot more work to do. With
a national recycling rate of just 35 percent, recycling is not
a silver bullet solution to our waste management problems. We
must also incorporate solutions that address reducing and
reusing materials.
That is why our friend and colleague Tom Udall is here with
us today, to highlight both the challenges that single use
plastics present to our society, and potential solutions to
those challenges.
As we discuss recycling challenges facing the U.S., and the
Chairman has already mentioned a couple of them, we also need
to focus on the challenges that plastics present to our
recycling system, namely single use plastics.
Since the mass production of plastics began in the 1950s,
we have produced more than 8 million metric tons of plastics,
half of which have been produced over the last 13 years alone.
Of all the plastics ever produced, only 9 percent--only 9
percent--have ever been recycled.
If we continue down this path, the World Economic Forum
predicts that we are on track to have plastic pollution
outweigh fish in our world's oceans by 2050. Let me say that
again, the World Economic Forum predicts that we are on track
to have plastic pollutions outweigh fish in our world's oceans
by 2050.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a harbinger of this
crisis. That mass of marine debris floating in our oceans is
more than 300 times the size of my State.
But we don't have to voyage to the South Pacific to witness
the world's recycling crisis. That crisis is burgeoning right
here in the U.S., oftentimes in our own backyards.
My wife and I live in Wilmington, Delaware. It is located
not far from the I-95 corridor. When I head for DC on sessions
days, if I am not on the train, I oftentimes take an on ramp
near our home onto I-95 South, then head for our Nation's
Capital on 95.
Usually, a crew from DelDOT picks up litter along that on
ramp that I traveled on this morning, as well as along other on
ramps onto I-95.
People throw their trash out of their vehicles when they
get on the on ramps of I-95. They just say, well, this is my
last chance, I am going to get rid of this, and that is what
they do.
Usually, there is a crew from DelDOT that picks up litter
along the on ramps as well as other on ramps onto 95. During
the pandemic, however, those pickups have occurred less and
less frequently, leaving an unsightly mess that is, in a word,
infuriating.
The past month, the mowing crews have stopped showing up,
too, until the grass grew to a height of 1 foot. My wife would
drive by there and look at it and just become furious, until
last week, that is. When the mowing crew showed up last week,
they not only cut the grass, they shredded aluminum cans, they
shredded plastic bottles, Styrofoam, trash bags, diapers, and
more. As if it didn't look bad enough before, you can imagine
what it looked like after that.
I decided to do something about it, and thinking about my
wife's birthday, this is what I did. This past weekend, I found
an old DelDOT Adopt-a-Highway yellow fluorescent vest in our
garage. I put it on.
I grabbed a couple of large 45 gallon trash bags, climbed
into my like new 2001 Chrysler Town and Country minivan, headed
for a place to park not far from that on ramp, and went to
work. Two hours later, the right hand side of the on ramp had
been cleaned up. I loaded the bulging bags onto the back of my
minivan and vowed to return the next weekend to finish the job.
I tell you that story for this reason: As I drove home, I
couldn't help but think about how concerned many of us in our
neighborhood and in our State and around our country, how
concerned we are about a great garbage patch in the sea on the
other side of the world, even though we have a sea of garbage
just a mile or so from, in this case, our own backyards.
I couldn't help but think about how recycling just one of
those Coors aluminum cans I picked up would have yielded enough
energy to run a TV for 3 hours. Let me just say, if you are
wondering what people who threw out trash are drinking, they
are drinking Coors beer. I picked up I can't tell you how many
other aluminum cans.
Litter like that I have just described is not just an
eyesore; it is wasteful. It is harmful to our environment. By
not recycling properly, we miss an opportunity to do something
good for our planet and its inhabitants.
The amount of waste winding up on the side of the roads in
our States and other States is, sadly, not unique to Delaware.
In a lot of places in America, it is about to get worse.
Prior to 2018, as the Chairman has said, the U.S. shipped
enormous quantities of scrap recyclable materials to China.
That came to a halt when China imposed new restrictions on
certain imported materials coming in from other countries,
including the U.S.
As we grapple with the fallout of China's policies and the
impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, the price consumers will
have to pay for curbside recycling service is likely to rise,
not fall. That means many consumers will be forced to make a
choice, a Hobson's choice, either pay for recycling services,
or put their money toward other basic needs.
No American should have to debate whether they can afford
to recycle, especially amid a pandemic that has caused great
economic hardship, and whose effects are exacerbated by air
pollution.
When municipalities are no longer able to afford recycling,
the Chairman has referred to this, the collected recyclables
are oftentimes incinerated or pile dup in landfills, leaking
air toxins into the air we breathe. Burning plastic or allowing
plastic to melt in landfills not only contributes to climate
change, but also pollutes the air we breathe.
We can't afford to breathe toxic air even in the best of
times, and we sure can't afford to breathe it during a
respiratory pandemic.
If you happen to be African American, the news is even
worse. Black Americans are three times as likely to die of
asthma related illnesses and are dying from coronavirus at
three times the rate of white Americans, three times. None of
us who profess to believe in the Golden Rule, and I think we
all do, should turn a blind eye to a public health disparity of
this magnitude.
In closing, neither can we afford to turn a blind eye to
those that will be most affected by the global uptick in virgin
plastic production and our country's lack of recycling
collection: Low income communities, indigenous communities, and
communities of color that cannot afford to handle more waste,
our waste.
As we examine the challenges facing America's recycling
efforts today, I hope we will begin a new discussion, a robust
discussion, not just focusing on those challenges, but on the
opportunities they bring with them to make Planet Earth a
better home for all of us, and for God's creation, all of us
who occupy it together.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you very much, Senator Carper.
Before we turn to our three witnesses, we would like to
hear from Senator Udall. Senator Udall has a significant
interest in recycling, and has helped the Senate advance the
Save Our Seas 2.0 Bill earlier this year.
Welcome back to the Committee, Senator Udall. For many
years you were a long and productive member of this Committee,
and we look forward to hearing from you now.
STATEMENT OF HON. TOM UDALL,
U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO
Senator Udall. Thank you so much, Chairman Barrasso and
Ranking Member Carper, and members of the Committee.
It was a real pleasure working with Senator Whitehouse on
that Save Our Seas Bill, and thank you for inviting me today.
In recent years, Americans across our country have woken up
to the fact that we have a plastic pollution crisis. A study
released last week found that the equivalent of millions of
plastic bottles rain down or are swept onto our western
national parks each year in the form of tiny plastic particles.
We know plastic doesn't go away, so when it breaks down, we
find it 2 miles above sea level in the Rocky Mountains in the
form of rain. Seven miles below sea level in the Mariana
Trench, the deepest place in the ocean, there are plastic
wrappers.
It is in our own bodies. Research shows we swallow a credit
card's worth of plastic every week through our air, water, and
food.
For too long, we have placed the burden on millions of
consumers and taxpayers through curbside recycling and the hope
that, if we dutifully sort our plastic into blue bins, we will
reduce pollution. It is clear that this approach has failed.
We cannot expect consumers to clean up all this plastic
waste. We have lost sight of the foundation of our
environmental laws and the teachings of Economics 101: The
polluter, not the consumer or the taxpayer, should pay to clean
up the waste.
The place to focus is where plastic is created, at the
front end of production, where millions of tons are created.
But companies have no responsibility once they sell their
product. More and more cheap, new plastic items are being
produced that will never get recycled or reused.
The burden falls back on our municipalities to manage a
suffocating amount of plastic waste, costing local taxpayers
billions of dollars a year across the country.
Worse yet, most of that plastic recycling is a lie. It is
actually landfilled, incinerated, and shipped overseas to
developing countries.
Is there any question why our local governments are
shutting down recycling programs? Why do we force taxpayers to
sort, clean, and transport plastic pollution at their own cost,
after companies have profited from them?
Take a look at this chart, and I hope there is a smaller
copy up there with you, from 2017. Americans generated 35
million tons of plastic waste.
Only 8 percent of that waste was sorted for recycling. The
vast majority was sent directly to landfills and incineration,
and that 8 percent was mostly shipped overseas to developing
countries. Only a tiny fraction was recycled domestically.
We can't just place the blame on other countries for
polluting the oceans. If we can't recycle or manage our own
plastic waste here in America, how can we expect a developing
country to do so?
Here is the root of the problem: This is plastic that is
not manufactured for recycling or reuse. This is plastic that
manufacturers have designed for a one time use. It is the
opposite of sustainable.
Companies churn out new products, I want to show these
around, companies churn out new products and outsource the
cleanup of their waste to taxpayers, beach and highway
cleanups, and good Samaritans, none of whom can keep up with
the avalanche of waste.
We need to return to the polluter pays principle and
recognize who the true polluters are. My bill, the Break Free
from Plastic Pollution Act, does just that. We start by
dramatically reducing the manufacture of those items that
pollute the most and can't be recycled.
Plastic bags top the list, causing tremendous environmental
harm. For other products and packaging, we reform how these
items are handled after consumer use. Producers need to take
responsibility for the collection, recycling, and disposal of
the products they create. This will create powerful incentives
to design products that are more sustainable and easier to
recycle.
This is a tried and true market proven concept. We already
do this for batteries, paint, and other items that are
dangerous if disposed improperly.
Look closely at the soda bottle. Many U.S. States have had
bottle deposits for decades. Using deposits on beverage
containers greatly increases the return of those products for
recycling and keeps them out of the environment.
My bill also stops sending plastic waste overseas to
developing countries and requires that new products be made
from recycled plastic here in America. We need economies of
scale to bring down the cost of recycled plastic compared to
cheap new plastic. Many companies set recycled content goals,
but are unable or unwilling to do so given the limited supply
and high cost.
Finally, my bill presses pause on expanding more plastic
producing plants. These new, planned facilities are greenhouse
gas super-polluters, and they are an environmental hazard to
communities around them. If built, they are guaranteed to pump
billions more tons of plastic waste into the environment.
The lack of regulation on these facilities is shocking.
Many Americans simply would not believe it. It is a scandal.
This jar contains plastic pellets scooped from the
riverbanks of Cox Creek, Texas, where Formosa Plastic is
estimated to be discharging between 500 million and 5 billion
plastic pellets each year. Around the globe, these plastic
pellets are dumped, spilled, and lost to the environment at a
rate of 250 thousand tons per year.
It is shocking that there is no Federal ban on dumping
plastic pellets in waterways. My bill would fix that.
Colleagues, I was not the first person to become concerned
with plastic pollution. There is a mass movement of people
across our country who are fighting this awful situation. When
people realize that the blue recycling bin is largely a lie,
they are angry. They want answers.
It is a shame that we are trashing our planet, but it is
not the consumer's fault. This is not the fault of a few
litterbugs. It is past time for Congress and the industry to
step up on solutions to this problem.
My legislation does just that.
I would like to submit a letter for the record from 470
organizations that support my bill, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Barrasso. Without objection.
[The referenced information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Udall. I thank you for your time, and I am deeply
grateful for this Committee's attention and involvement.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Senator Udall follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Barrasso. Thank you so much, Senator Udall. It is
always good to have you back at this Committee on which you
served so ably for so many years.
But even after you left the Committee, you played a
critical role in our agenda. In the 114th Congress, you
successfully spearheaded efforts to reform our Nation's
chemical law, the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Like your father, you have been a tireless champion for the
environment. Your father Stewart Udall, you know him, maybe
some others don't, your father, Stewart Udall, served as
Secretary of the Interior to both Presidents Kennedy and
President Johnson.
As you know, I think I got for you a photo of your father
with Senator Kennedy in Laramie, Wyoming, at the University of
Wyoming in 1963.
So we welcomed both of them to Wyoming, and I have a
picture hanging on my wall of then-President Kennedy addressing
the group at the University of Wyoming in 1963.
Of course, for people who aren't familiar with this, you
may be watching from home, the Department of Interior's
headquarters bears your father's name.
This Committee thanks you for your service to our country.
Thank you for being with us today, Senator Udall.
Senator Udall. Chairman Barrasso, thank you for those
generous words. You failed to note, though, I come every summer
to Wyoming to the Wind River Mountains to backpack and hike and
climb mountains, which is one of my favorite places in the
world.
Senator Barrasso. We look forward to having you back again
this year.
Thank you, Senator Udall.
Senator Udall. Thank you.
Senator Barrasso. With that, we are going to hear from our
three witnesses today. We are joined by Bridget Croke, who is
the Managing Director at Closed Loop Partners, and she is
joining us remotely.
We also have Ms. Meghan Stasz, who is the Vice President of
Packaging and Sustainability at the Consumer Brands
Association, and Ms. Nina Bellucci Butler, who is the Chief
Executive Officer of MORE Recycling.
I want to remind the witnesses that your full written
statements and testimony will be made part of our official
hearing record today, so we ask that you please try to keep
your statements to 5 minutes so that we may have time for
questions.
We look forward to hearing the testimony, and with that,
let me start with Ms. Croke.
STATEMENT OF BRIDGET CROKE,
MANAGING DIRECTOR, CLOSED LOOP PARTNERS
Ms. Croke. Thank you, Chairman Barrasso, Ranking Member
Carper, and Committee members.
I will also mention that I also really love the Wind River
Range.
I am thrilled to have the opportunity to share my and my
company's perspective with you, albeit remotely, and to see
this topic discussed by national leaders.
Senator Barrasso. Can you tell us where you are? I think
you are in Vermont today, is that correct?
Ms. Croke. I am in Vermont. We are headquartered in New
York, but right now, we are all remote, and are not traveling,
so apologies for not being there in person, but thrilled to be
a part of this.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
Ms. Croke. As I mentioned, my name is Bridget Croke, and I
am a Managing Director at Closed Loop Partners. We are an
investment and innovation firm that has brought together
private industry like Walmart, Procter & Gamble, Unilever,
Nestle, and others, industry groups like the American Beverage
Association, and investors including major banks, pension
funds, family offices, along with environmental foundations to
invest in the infrastructure and innovative solutions needed to
minimize waste and ensure recycled materials become the
manufacturing feedstock for future products and packaging,
while hopefully creating good jobs and minimizing taxpayer
dollars spent to manage waste.
Over the last 5 years, Closed Loop Partners has deployed
nearly $70 million in investment capital in over 50 communities
and businesses across the United States, from Arizona, to Iowa,
to Tennessee, and we have leveraged an additional $270 million
in co-investment funds from public and private sources.
I tell you this to make the point that we are on the ground
turning our current take, make, waste economy into what we call
a more circular economy, whereby we minimize the need to
extract raw materials because we extend the use of those
materials and remanufacture them back into new products and
packaging.
We know with the right systems in place, there are
opportunities to turn waste into value. In our current system,
nearly $10 million of commodity value are lost to disposal each
year in the United States. Small and large communities are
spending billions of dollars on disposal as others have
mentioned, so we are literally throwing money in the trash.
Unfortunately, the recycling industry has suffered from
outdated infrastructure, especially small to medium sized
communities. Over the last 30 years or so all across the
country, there has been a significant lack of innovation in our
supply chains.
But that is starting to change, and good policy that
incentivizes growth of this vital industry will bring more
investment both to reduce waste and develop thriving
communities.
As mentioned also, the recycling markets have suffered from
the closure of one of the biggest unused markets: China. That
said, we and many others see this as an actual opportunity to
accelerate domestic recycling and manufacturing infrastructure,
which will help keep our dollars local.
Given the attention on waste and marine debris and the
growing demand for major consumer brands and retailers for
circular packaging and recovery system solutions, we are
beginning to see tremendous innovation that can rapidly advance
solutions.
I will give just a few examples. First is the introduction
of robotics and artificial intelligence into the recycling
industry. Companies like AMP Robotics have introduced robots
with artificial intelligence systems that enable the sorting
and production of high quality commodity bales of paper and
plastics, while adding safeguards against contamination.
The second is packaging innovation. We are seeing the
emergence and growth of smart, refillable packaging systems
like Algramo, that make it cheaper, safer, and more convenient
for consumers to use packaging more than one time. We are also
seeing significant growth in packaging that is designed to be
recycled for value.
Finally, we are seeing advanced plastics recycling
technologies, including purification technologies and chemical
recycling technologies mentioned earlier. I just want to frame
that as a whole category of technologies that remove impurities
from recycled plastics or take plastics back to their base
monomer, intermediary, or carbon state in order to
remanufacture them into a new plastic.
These technologies have the potential to create, in
success, infinite circular economy and value loops for
plastics.
These and other advancements are attracting significant
private capital from leading investors. Google and Sequoia have
invested in AMP Robotics in Colorado; Goldman Sachs is now the
largest shareholder in Lakeshore Recycling Systems, the largest
independent recycler in Illinois; and Citi is the largest
investor in rPlanet Earth, a bottle to bottle plastics
recycling facility in Southern California.
Leading municipalities, recyclers, manufacturers, and
consumer brands are starting to partner together to establish
and profit from a circular economy in the United States where
goods are continually manufactured using recycled material
collected from recycling programs in towns large and small.
This new partnership model is developing a circular economy
that we believe will result in one of the largest investment
opportunities in the United States over the next decade.
The additional economic impacts include major reduction in
waste disposal fees paid by municipalities, and will become a
significant driver of job creation in local economies.
We encourage you to develop policies that build incentives
and spur market demand for recycled content and packaging of
products, drive product and system innovation to eliminate
waste, and create good jobs that benefit both the economy and
the planet.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Croke follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Barrasso. Thank you so much for your testimony.
Please hang around. I know we are going to have a chance to ask
questions in a little bit.
We are going to hear from our other two witnesses first,
and next is Ms. Meghan Stasz, who is the Vice President of
Packaging and Sustainability at the Consumer Brands
Association.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
STATEMENT OF MEGHAN STASZ, VICE PRESIDENT OF PACKAGING AND
SUSTAINABILITY, CONSUMER BRANDS ASSOCIATION
Ms. Stasz. Thank you.
Good morning, and thank you Chairman Barrasso, Ranking
Member Carper, and members of the Committee for the opportunity
to speak to you today.
I would also like to thank Senators Sullivan and Whitehouse
for your bipartisan work on the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act, as well
as Ranking Member Carper and Senator Boozman for your
leadership as co-chairs of the Senate Recycling Caucus. We were
deeply honored and grateful for your participation at the
inaugural meeting in January of the Recycling Leadership
Council.
Chairman Barrasso, let me reiterate my appreciation for
calling this hearing, and for the invitation to testify. The
challenges that we face in resolving the barriers to a better
recycling system need thoughtful leadership, and we thank you
for this Committee's engagement.
As you said, I am Meghan Stasz, Vice President for
Packaging and Sustainability at the Consumer Brands
Association. We represent the consumer packaged goods, or CPG,
industry. We make household and personal care items and food
and beverage products, contributing $2 trillion to U.S. GDP and
supporting more than 20 million American jobs.
The products that we make are essential to every American
every day. The products that we make must also come in
packaging, packaging that protects safety and quality.
But packaging can be better, and that is something the
industry is actively working toward. We have made significant
commitments to improving the design of packaging: Less
material, fully recyclable or compostable, using more recycled
content. There is tremendous momentum and innovation.
All of this momentum and innovation relies on a functioning
recycling system, and today, that system is at a breaking
point. Recyclable packaging ends up where it shouldn't, in
landfills where it can't be reused, or even worse, as
pollution.
But we can't be daunted by the challenge of fixing our
broken recycling system. If anything, this is a tremendous
opportunity to create something new and lasting.
To achieve that goal, there are five challenges I would
like to call the Committee's attention to. The first is that
there is a market opportunity that is currently going unmet.
Many of the industry commitments I mentioned center on using
recycled content.
Unfortunately, at present, the domestic supply of recycled
plastics is only able to meet 6 percent of current demand. The
market clearly exists, and an important challenge to understand
is, why is recyclable material getting landfilled?
The second challenge is that our system is far too
fragmented and confusing. There are nearly 10,000 recycling
systems in America, each with their different rules. Consumer
Brands found that Americans think recycling is more confusing
than doing their taxes.
It is getting even more confusing. We are seeing fewer
materials accepted, or programs shutting down entirely because
recycling was upended when it lost China as the biggest buyer
of U.S. recyclables. Losing that customer exposed the need for
greater innovation and investment here in the U.S. to ensure
that recycling has a future.
The third challenge isn't a need for funding; it is a need
to figure out what to fund. There are many ways to pay for
changes.
We discussed six concepts in a policy platform that we
released in April, but we will land in the same place if we
don't advance smart, strategic changes to the underlying
recycling system. We should use financing to drive desired
behaviors, to solve specific problems, not simply to overlay
additional funds on a system that isn't working.
The fourth challenge is ensuring every stakeholder is in,
or recycling will be out. We believe no single industry can
solve the packaging and waste crisis alone.
This year, the Consumer Brands Association launched the
Recycling Leadership Council, which is a coalition of 21
stakeholders from consumer facing industries, the packaging
supply chain, and NGOs. Together, we are building a public
policy framework to fundamentally reimagine recycling in the
U.S.
The last challenge that I will mention is really the first
step we need to take. We don't have consistent, reliable
recycling data that is needed to make informed decisions. There
is no standardized or required reporting on recycling
nationwide. There isn't even a standardized definition of
recycling.
As the saying goes, you can't manage what you can't
measure. Without a clear picture of what is happening in States
and municipalities, we can't effectively target solutions. From
what little data we have, we know one thing is clear: Recycling
isn't working as it should.
We need the Federal Government's help, so two places I
would flag: Require better data, building on work that has
already been started by Senator Carper, and encourage recycling
infrastructure and end-market development.
We really applaud the clear commitment of Chairman Barrasso
and Ranking Member Carper in leading this Committee's focus on
recycling, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Stasz follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Barrasso. Thank you so much for your helpful
testimony.
We look forward to the questioning in just a few moments.
First, I would like to turn to Ms. Nina Bellucci Butler,
who is here, the Chief Executive Officer of MORE Recycling.
Thank you so very much for joining us today.
STATEMENT OF NINA BELLUCCI BUTLER,
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, MORE RECYCLING
Ms. Butler. Thank you, Chairman Barrasso, Ranking Member
Carper, and members of the Committee.
I am Nina Bellucci Butler, CEO of MORE Recycling, a
business of Sena.
We as a Nation are at a great inflection point, and you
have an opportunity to deploy meaningful and proven policy
solutions for communities across this great Nation struggling
on so many levels right now.
I am thinking about the rural communities in my birth State
of Kentucky to my previous home in San Francisco, California.
It is time to unlock economic drivers to manage resources
sustainably and circulate capital throughout America, not just
in the wealthy regions.
Until we establish policy that places the cost and benefit
of a healthy environment on the balance sheets of companies and
countries, we risk further erosion of the infrastructure and by
extension, the environment on which our children's lives
depend. I have two of them.
Recycling is not just about cutting down waste heading to
landfills that our children will need to endure; it is about
the dramatic energy savings we get out of recycling. Take
bottles, for example, such as detergent bottles. Using recycled
plastic cuts the amount of energy by almost 90 percent.
I got involved in plastics in the year 2000. I actually
felt destined to go to med school and had a desire to study the
threat of plastics on our health.
In 2003, I had the opportunity to travel down the amazing
Amazon River, and I remember looking out in Manaus and seeing
an entire layer of plastic film. The water level was low, and
it was like a geologic layer, this stratum of plastic.
I was lured then by the notion that if we just implemented
the best programs, we could solve the plastic waste problem. I
have had 20 years of working directly with the plastics
industry and the recycling industry. I have come to the very
firm conclusion that we need significant policy to right our
course for plastic waste, which is inextricably linked to
climate change.
While the economics are straightforward, the environmental
trade offs around plastics are extremely complex. Plastics are
a paradox. They benefit society on so many levels.
Think about what you are not willing to give up that is
plastic. Plastics have given us truly supernatural abilities,
from flying, diving deep in the ocean, clear eyesight, better
hearing, communicating with friends and family around the
world. They got me here from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in
less than a day. That is supernatural.
However, plastics present enormous environmental
challenges. Plastic scrap exists, as Senator Udall said,
everywhere from the Mariana Trench to the Great Pyrenees.
It is simply unethical to make something that nature cannot
absorb and not provide a system to manage it. It is imperative
that we look at the problem and unlock this plastic paradox
holistically. The gap between new plastic produced and plastic
recovered is widening, and the recycling rates are trending
downward from already a failing grade.
I have some charts. So, we can see here that we have been
increasing the amount of domestic recycling for many years, and
that was, in a sense, a comfort, and we were seeing a decline
in export, even before the national soared. But the reality is
we still are at absolute failing grades. In the last 2 years--
our company tracks this data--we have actually seen a decline.
This is the real reality of putting this notion together.
This is the recycling capacity in the United States right now
for a major category.
That is polyolefins, and this is the production capacity
for the top--just the top 10--virgin resin producers. We have 5
percent of this capacity. It is going to take a lot more than
forward thinking company investment or asking people to recycle
better. It costs more to recycle than to waste or use virgin
plastic.
Here is the current cost of a virgin material on the spot
market. Here is the cost of process to get to high quality
going back into food grade.
But it doesn't have to be this way if we put value on
energy savings. Just getting recycled content in trash bags,
which is very common in countries throughout Europe, could have
a dramatic impact. It would be more than the equivalent of 2
million tons of CO2 savings on something that is
already destined for landfills.
Instead of plastic recycling on a growth plan, we have a
trickle compared to a tsunami of new plastic production. We
learned from the University of Utah, as Senator Udall said, it
is raining plastic, and that is a problem worse than acid rain.
With today's lifestyle in which we can get what we want
when we want it from wherever, thanks largely to plastic, it is
clear we have the knowhow to produce and distribute products.
Therefore we surely have the skill sets to design elegant,
reverse logistics to recapture the product.
It is not a moon shot; it is an Earth shot. We just need
economic drivers in the right place. We need to put value on
carbon.
We need the leadership and cooperation to unleash human
ingenuity to design, implement, track, and optimize a
sustainable resource management plan, or a North Star. Because
what is equally as scary as plastic waste is the realization
that if we just omit certain plastics without changing our
consumption patterns and our economic model, we will quadruple
the greenhouse gas emissions on a regular basis.
Leaders, even in the petrochemical companies, see policy as
a means to create competitive advantage to those companies that
lean all the way into the circular economy.
It is an honor to appear before you today to share my
expertise on recycling and more efficient, mindful use of
resources.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Butler follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Barrasso. I appreciate your testimony, and
specifically the trip in 2003, the Amazon experience, which has
now brought you passion as well as expertise.
There is a marvelous book, Running the Amazon, which a
couple of my buddies from Wyoming have done, and this was back
in the 1980s. The experience that they had; it just must have
been amazing. So thank you so much for sharing with us today.
I would like to turn to Ms. Stasz. The COVID-19 pandemic
has reminded us of the value of single use plastics. Single use
plastics have been indispensable in protecting medical
professionals, first responders, others who are on the front
line caring for patients and fighting the virus.
Can you share with us some lessons about single use
plastics and what States and municipalities should do to cut
down on plastic pollution, and what we can learn from this
pandemic and the unique situation in which we find ourselves?
Ms. Stasz. Yes, thank you, Chairman. That is an excellent
question. I think the COVID pandemic has shown that there is a
real need for a range of packaging materials, that packaging
has this critical job to play, in particular, safety, quality,
protection of product.
What it is also showing is that we need a system that can
handle and process those materials. We need a 21st century
recycling system that can handle the packaging that is needed
today and that is in use today and the packaging that is being
developed for tomorrow.
Senator Barrasso. In 2017, China said they would restrict
most of the imports of mixed paper and mixed plastic,
continuing along the line of what you just talked about. So
since then, the private sector has taken steps to increase the
capacity to recycle these goods here at home.
What are the most noteworthy actions taken by the private
sector to date?
Ms. Stasz. China closing their doors to our recyclables
really exposed a shocking lack of infrastructure here,
domestically. Our industry has taken aggressive commitments to
improve our packaging, but we need that underlying recycling
system to work.
We are still in a supply and demand break. We are still in
a supply and demand challenge.
Our industry has certainly innovated, we have invested in
improvements, and I think we need all stakeholders at the table
to rebuild and reimagine that recycling infrastructure here
domestically, creating jobs, and filling that supply for the
demand that is out there.
Senator Barrasso. Ms. Croke, I don't want you to feel lost
up there in Vermont, I want you to feel engaged in all of this.
I have a couple questions for you.
First, in terms of the single use plastics that we have
heard are difficult to recycle, too often single use plastics
end up, as we hear, in rivers, oceans, where they threaten and
kill wildlife and present all sorts of problems.
What are the most promising advanced recycling technologies
when it comes to single use plastics?
Ms. Croke. Great question, and I might back up a little bit
and just note that we believe that there is no one solution,
there is no silver bullet. We are not going to solve this with
an individual innovation.
We need to look at reduction strategies, and we need to
look at ways to recover those materials at the end of life. So
we are both seeing on the reduction side, refill models that
make it easier and safer to use some plastic types more than
once.
Then we are also seeing new advanced recycling
technologies, both in terms of, as I mentioned, robotics and AI
and recycling facilities to sort those materials out. But the
ability to actually turn plastics into another plastic in a
high value way, again and again, through some of the chemical
technologies and purification technologies.
One example is a company called PureCycle, where if you
have, for example, a polypropylene yogurt container that you
recycle, there is very little market for that today. But if you
can turn that back into a clear pellet that doesn't have smell
or color in it, it can go into a new packaging just like a
virgin material. That is used through an enzymatic process.
There are a lot of different technologies out there. There
is no single technology within that category. As we see the
conversation grow and policy grow in this space, that is a
market demand driver that brings innovators to the table.
Senator Barrasso. So, still to you, Ms. Croke, the COVID-19
pandemic has contributed to a collapse in crude oil prices. We
have seen this worldwide. Lower crude oil prices make it
cheaper to produce virgin materials, especially plastics.
What are the practical impacts for local recycling programs
looking to sell their recyclable materials, companies looking
to increase the recycled content in their products, things
along those lines?
Ms. Croke. It is a question I can't say that we have a
final answer to. The markets are highly volatile right now, and
we don't know exactly where they are going to go. I wish we
did.
What I can say is that with COVID, we have seen that both
on the fiber and plastic side, that it is clear that we need
that material going into the manufacturing supply chain.
When we saw a lack of access to toilet paper and other
items that typically have high recycled content in them, it
showed us how critical that feedstock is, and the same thing
with packaging. We know companies that couldn't make enough
pumps for their cleaning products to get them out to customers,
because they couldn't get that material.
If we can build the supply chains around recycled content,
we know that material exists. So if we can get it collected and
get it back into those products, that will help manage the
supply chains.
On the plastics pricing issue and on the oil prices, it is
definitely a risk, and we need companies to be able to make
long term contracts, off ticket contracts, for those materials
to help even out the prices so that we can scale the system
where recycled content goes back into the manufacturing supply
chain, so it that can compete with the raw material supply
chain.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
Senator Carper.
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Again, our thanks very much to each of our witnesses for
joining us today, and it is great to be with our colleague, Tom
Udall, especially.
I really appreciate what you said about Tom's family,
especially his father. I know that they have a lot to be proud
of. And we are proud of him as well.
I am a glass half-full guy. My colleagues would tell you,
some of them say, one of them said the other day that I am the
most unrelentingly optimistic person they know.
Sitting here in this hearing today, I am not feeling
optimistic. I always look at problems, I think, Oh gosh, this
is, in adversity lies opportunity, that is Einstein's words,
and this is going to be fun. We will put together a team, and
we will figure out how to address this.
But this is a daunting challenge. This is a daunting
challenge. I am a big believer in not just focusing on symptoms
of problems. I told the story about taking my two 45 gallon
plastic bags, trash bags, and collecting litter on the on ramp
to I-95; that is addressing the symptoms of the problems.
I am a big believer in addressing root causes. I am also a
big believer that there is usually no silver bullet to solve
most of our problems. There are a lot of silver BBs. Some of
them are bigger than others, and you helped address and draw
our attention to some of those.
I always like to say, I felt this way when I was Governor
and wrestling with the problem in Delaware, I would always say
to my cabinet when we are trying to figure out what to do on a
particular issue, including recycling, and I would say, let's
look at other States. Let's find out what other Governors are
doing; let's find out how we can learn from them, and take
their ideas, and maybe rework them and use them in our State.
So I would like to find out what works and do more of that.
Right now, I would like to figure out what is our role, the
role of the Federal Government.
The EPA has made an effort to bring together recycling
industry stakeholders. I commend them for that. That includes
municipalities, businesses, non-profits, and others to discuss
how the U.S. can increase recycling rates across all 50 States.
There is a consensus that the Federal Government can play a
greater role in facilitating recycling, but the details of what
that role should be are subject, as you know, to debate.
A question for each of our witnesses: In your view, how can
Congress best build on EPA's and stakeholders' efforts, and
what should the Federal Government's role be in this challenge?
Let's just start with Senator Udall if we could, and then
we will go to Bridget, Meghan, and Nina.
Tom. Is he gone? All right.
OK, Tom, you can mail it in.
We will go to Bridget, to Meghan, and to Nina. I have heard
him address this enough times that I could probably do it for
him, but I won't.
Bridget, you go first, please.
It is a problem when you have hearing rooms this big. It is
like a football field in here.
Ms. Croke. Thank you for the question. I think a lot of the
proposals that are on the table have a lot of value in them, so
again, I don't have a [indiscernible] solution to this.
I would say that we have a massive industry of raw
materials, and building up a system that aggregates recycled
content material and helping it compete with the raw material
market requires the same incentives that the raw material
markets get. Tax incentives and other ways that you can
incentivize market demand for this material, so that companies
can turn their commitments into actions more easily, and kind
of make the economic case for that, and accelerate that.
We believe that at scale, a circular system can compete
economically with a linear system where you are extracting
materials, using it, and disposing of it. But we need to build
up that system. So the incentives to help build that system to
be on par with the raw material market would be incredible.
Senator Carper. Thank you, ma'am.
Meghan.
Ms. Stasz. Thank you, Senator Carper. I think there are a
couple of things that the Federal Government can do. I agree
with you that this is daunting, but this is also an
opportunity. We have an opportunity to rebuild a functioning,
effective, efficient recycling system here, domestically now. I
think hearings like this are such an incredible opportunity to
put those big ideas on the table.
The first thing that I think Government could do, which I
said in my testimony, is around standardization and data
collection. We want to raise recycling rates in the States, but
we don't know what the baseline is. We don't know what the
recycling is in most States. So how can we get that
standardized, harmonized data collection, so that we at least
know where our starting point is.
The second piece, and this is part of the three part
platform that Consumer Brands Association put out in April, we
think there is a terrific role for the Federal Government to
play in end market development. Creating this infrastructure
creates jobs.
North and South Carolina is a great example. There is $250
million invested in plastics recycling infrastructure in those
two States, but the State needs more supply. Those facilities
are running under capacity. So North and South Carolina have
launched a program called Your Bottles Mean Jobs, encouraging
households to recycle just two more bottles a week, which would
contribute $10 million in economic benefit and support 300
jobs.
There is opportunity here. There is a great role for the
Federal Government to play in terms of leadership for
incentivizing infrastructure development.
Senator Carper. Thank you.
Nina, same question.
Ms. Butler. Is this very specifically about what can be
done right now given current stakeholders and with the EPA, or
is it something longer term? I just want to clarify between
short versus long term.
Senator Carper. Longer term. The role of the Federal
Government, longer term, from this day forward.
Ms. Butler. Long term, I think we fundamentally have to
establish North Star policy that is grounded in valuing carbon,
that is a sustainable materials management plan that includes
extended producer responsibility, so that we can truly level
the playing field and set the right economic drivers in place.
Senator Carper. All right, thank you ma'am.
Thank you all.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Senator Carper.
Senator Inhofe.
Senator Inhofe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to ask
questions of two of the witnesses, and I will start with Ms.
Stasz. And then I have a second question for you if there is
time after I go to the second witness.
We are talking about, it has been introduced, a bill that
would put in place a ban of many single use plastics. I would
ask you, Ms. Stasz, what are some of the unintended economic or
environmental impacts of the alternatives? There are
alternatives that have been named, but I would like to know
some of the problems that may be there for those alternatives.
Ms. Stasz. Thank you for that question, Senator. As we
said, packaging has this really critical job to play. It
protects the safety, quality of products, and as we just
mentioned, the COVID pandemic laid bare the need for a range of
packaging, including single use plastic packaging.
What we need to make sure is that we have all options on
the table when it comes to packaging types, because there is a
range of consumers in terms of the packaging that they need for
their use. There is a range of products that need different
packaging.
We have entire teams of Ph.D. packaging engineers who are
spending their careers making sure that the packaging that is
used for a product is the best one possible to do its job, to
get the product to consumers safely and intact and with minimal
environmental footprint.
What we don't want to do is take arrows out of the quiver,
right? We want to make sure that we have all those options on
the table, but a system that can actually process them.
Because forcing switches in packaging material, if they
don't have a full life cycle analysis in mind, they can cause
those unintended consequences, potentially more greenhouse gas
emissions, or they might be fragile and break, and you will
lose the product, and you waste food, et cetera, when I think
about the role that packaging has to play.
I think we want to have a recycling system that will accept
and use and keep that packaging in play, keeping it out of
landfills, and absolutely keeping it out of the environment.
Senator Inhofe. That is good, I appreciate that.
Now, I wanted to ask a question of Ms. Croke, and it may
sound like it is a little stretch in this Committee, but I
think it is very important to me. I would like to have you
share your thoughts on probably one of the most discussed
recycling problems that is out there, and that is of electric
car batteries. Would you share with us your knowledge on this?
Ms. Croke. Sure. Look, I am not an expert in battery
recycling, but what I can tell you is that certainly, the fact
that this is an emerging growth industry, and that
[indiscernible] waste and battery waste and things adjacent to
that are still emerging, that it is in early days in terms of
solving some of these challenges.
So, as you can see, with the plastics issue, where there
has been significant attention drawn to it over the last couple
of years, when you put the microscope on something, that is
when stuff happens. That is when we can actually make change.
So in order to solve getting away from some of the raw
material inputs that go into that and being able to re-utilize
the high value material that is coming out of that, we need to
actually put attention into what the problem is and the
innovation that can come around that.
I might just add to Meghan's answer on the previous
question as well, it is also not binary in terms of what exists
today versus solving for packaging or processing. We have to
solve for both.
An example of that is we invested in a company called
Cambridge Props, which has a silk protein that goes over food
from meat to produce, et cetera, that helps extend the shelf
life, that removes the need for as much packaging around that.
At the same time, there is critical packaging that is
needed. So we need to drive innovation. We need to drive system
innovation and product innovation. That is true for plastics,
paper, and battery recycling.
Senator Inhofe. Let me get to the second part of the first
question. That would be, and this is for Ms. Stasz, would you
speak to the economic impact that a ban, such as the ban that
has been discussed, would have on the cost of living for middle
class Americans?
Ms. Stasz. Yes, I can, Senator, and thank you for that
question. We want to make sure that the products that U.S.
consumers use and rely on every single day are delivered
safely, intact, and affordably. Affordability is certainly part
of the decision around what is the best packaging for that
product.
So for banning certain materials, or taking those arrows
out of the quiver, we could, unintentionally, be driving up the
cost of getting product to consumers, or creating unintended
waste. That is certainly not an outcome that we want to see,
and again, I think we need that underlying system that can
handle the packaging that is the best for the product, the
packaging that is in use for today, and the packaging that is
in use for tomorrow, so that we don't see unintended
consequences like increased cost to consumers.
Senator Inhofe. Very good. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Senator Inhofe.
Senator Whitehouse.
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you both
for this hearing and for your support of our plastics efforts
over time.
I see that Senator Sullivan came in, and he has been a
wonderful companion working on this legislation.
It strikes me that when there is a whopping failure, and I
don't think there is any way to describe recycling as anything
other than a whopping failure when less that 10 percent of
recyclable product gets recycled, even when it is put in the
bin by a consumer, that the problem is usually one of
incentives.
It also strikes me that when the problem is one of
incentives, that usually means the problem is revenue. I think
the question for us here is, what is the revenue proposition
for an investor in better recycling?
I remember traveling with our friend John McCain to Mali
when there was extremist uprising, and we went to see the
troops who were deployed there. When I drove from the airport
into Bamako, I looked at the fields nearby, and I thought to
myself, how could there be so many ravens, or crows? What are
these fields that are just filled with black birds?
It turns out there weren't black birds at all. They were
black plastic trash bags that had hooked onto a piece of ground
and were flapping in the wind and looked, at first glance, like
a bird. It struck me that in a country as poor as Mali, if you
could just give people a penny for turning in one of those
plastic bags, they would be gone.
I note that Unilever, which is probably the most forward
looking company on this, has said that it is going to take a
pound of plastic out of the environment for every pound of
plastic it puts into the environment through its products. It
is going to be a lot harder for Unilever to find that pound of
plastic coming out than it is to put it in as packaging.
But when they do that work, they will end up having to pay
people to get the plastic out of the environment. That creates
a revenue proposition.
I am sorry that American companies aren't doing as well as
Unilever on that front, and I note with some sorrow that when
the American business community speaks for market solutions,
their interest in market solutions usually evaporates when it
comes to paying the cost of cleaning up their mess. Suddenly,
that is not such a great market solution.
Then they want partnerships and programs and reimagining
and public relations efforts, and anything but putting the
revenue out there to create the incentive to clean up their
mess.
That is the way economics is supposed to work. Senator
Udall described it as Economics 101. It is Economics 101 that
the cost of the mess of your products should be baked into your
product.
Tell me where you disagree with me in that analysis, and
tell me what you would support in terms of getting a revenue
proposition out there to create what we all need, which is, we
want to have 100 percent recycling. But until it pays somebody
to pick up the Coca-Cola bottle and put it in a bin, and until
it pays somebody to make sure that once it is in the bin, there
is better than a 1 in 10 shot that what is in the bin is
actually going to get recycled, this isn't going to work.
So let me start, if I may, with Ms. Stasz, because she has
big Rhode Island connections.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Stasz. I do. The best State.
Senator Whitehouse. The best State. Thank you.
Much better than Wyoming, all this big talk about Wind
River. We got Narragansett Bay, Mr. Chairman.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Stasz. You raise a really excellent point, Senator, and
I think especially around Economics 101 and what is the revenue
proposition here.
As I said in my testimony, certainly for recycled plastics,
the demand signal is there. It is strong. All of the 25 largest
CPG companies that have made big commitments to improving their
packaging somehow, largely by dramatic increases in recycled
content.
But as Nina pointed out, the supply isn't there. So what is
the break in the Econ 101 value proposition? I think that is a
really important question for all of us to consider.
When we think about financing these systems, how do we spur
investment or how do we finance recycling and improvements to
recycling?
There are a number of different ways to do that. We put out
six different funding concepts in the policy platform that
Consumer Brands released in April.
What we wanted to do was identify not just funding ideas,
but funding ideas that solve specific problems, that get to
underlying problems in the recycling system and use funding to
fix those problems to drive intended outcomes.
There is a range of ideas in there that get at those
targeted problems, one of which is a fee on packaging. We were
talking about other concepts like landfill tip fees. There is a
whole host of ideas out there that can be used in the right
circumstances. But any financing that goes to improve
infrastructure, it has got to solve specific problems in the
recycling supply chain.
Senator Whitehouse. Mr. Chairman, I am over my time, so if
I could invite the other two witnesses to respond to that
question as a question for the record, just provide a written
response per the Committee's rules, that will allow you to move
on to other Senators who are present.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Senator Whitehouse.
Senator Rounds.
Senator Rounds. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I recognize that
this discussion today is about recycling. But I am really
curious because in most cases, the reason for the recycling in
the first place is to try to get some of this product back out
of the environment in the first place, in particular, those
items that have a very long life.
In this particular case, we are talking primarily about
petrochemical based products. These petrochemical based
products, these polymers, have a very, very long if not
indefinite lifetime. Therefore they get into the environment,
and they don't leave. They just get smaller, more broken up,
but they still remain there.
I haven't heard one item of discussion today about the
alternative, which would be a biopolymer, rather than a
petropolymer, a biopolymer made out of soy based products and
so forth.
I would really like to know whether or not you see a future
for our biopolymer products that are produced right now; they
do not have an extended lifespan. Yet, with the research that
has been going on for 30-plus years, there appears to me to be
a very reasonable expectation that a biopolymer product
replacing a petropolymer product should seem at least part of
the discussion when we talk about trying to recycle.
I would just like, very quickly, just to kind of go down
the line, and get a thought, are we missing something by not
talking about the promotion of bio-based polymers in the
packaging and in the short lifespan needs of so much of what we
use plastics for that are petrol-based today?
Let's just start with Ms. Croke to begin with, and kind of
move our way down.
Ms. Croke. Great question. What I would like to do is just
break this into two pieces that sometimes get confused, not
that you are confusing this, but just in general for the
broader audience.
There is a difference between bio-based polymers that turn
into a polymer that acts and looks like any other polymer, and
at end of life, reacts like every other polymer and can be
recycled. Then there are compostable solutions that look and
act like plastic, but can actually break down, at least
theoretically, into a compostable solution.
So I break those into two items. I think they are both
viable and on the table, especially if you think about making
biopolymers that are still going to, at end of life, have to go
through the same processes as regular polymers, but you extract
less petrochemicals, and if you can identify sources of that
biomaterial that are going to be waste products, even better.
We have seen companies like Origin Materials that use waste
cellulosic material and turn that into a polymer. Super-cool,
great opportunity, lot of investment going into that.
The compostable plastics are also a potential opportunity,
especially for items that are unlikely to be recycled ever,
because they are food contaminated or they are very small and
can't go through a recycling system.
That said, if we are going down that path, we really need
to think about investment in our food waste, our composting,
and anaerobic digestion infrastructure, which we are investing
in through and across many of our funds.
I think there is significant opportunity there. But you
can't create products like that without thinking of the
infrastructure and making sure that material is actually bio-
available, so that when there is a product coming out of that
compost facility, it is high value and can be sold, just like a
recycled item.
Senator Rounds. Thank you.
Ms. Stasz.
Ms. Stasz. I will admit that I am not a chemist, so your
knowledge on biopolymers is likely more advanced than mine.
I think what I would say to that is that we need a range of
packaging materials. We need a whole suite of options in terms
of what is the best material. And there are so many new
materials, new innovation happening in the packaging space. And
to Bridget's point, we need a system that can process and
handle those.
I think another point here would be that whichever
materials we use and whichever system we use to handle,
process, recycle them, keep them out of landfill, as much as
possible, we should have clear, harmonized standards so that
consumers aren't confused about what to do with that particular
container, if it is a biopolymer or a more traditional plastic.
But 10,000 different recycling systems in the U.S., every
single one with their own set of rules, it is incredibly
confusing.
So, regardless of which kind of material we are using, I
think it is important that we have clear, consistent
guidelines, harmonization, so that we can reduce consumer
confusion and help consumers do the right thing with their
packaging when they are done with it.
Senator Rounds. Thank you.
Ms. Butler, would you like to respond?
Ms. Butler. Sure. Yes, this is actually what my master's
project was on at Duke University because I absolutely have
this allure of like, why can't we just make these materials out
of natural materials. This is a no brainer.
But this is the complexity of plastic. You can't have it
function exactly as you need it to in the most efficient way
and then poof, go away. That doesn't mean that there aren't
opportunities to displace a lot of applications.
When we look at the fact that more than half of what we
produce on an annual basis is not going into the packaging
stream, it is going into our clothing, and all kinds of other
applications, there are absolutely--but that is why I keep
going back to we need that North Star policy that is based on
how we value carbon. We have to align and manage all the trade
offs that go back to that one piece, because we will have a lot
of unintended consequences if we don't keep that clear North
Star in check.
Senator Rounds. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just think it is important that
as we talk about these polymers and the moving forward, that
the bio-based products not be forgotten. I think there are
years of research on it, and there are a number of ways in
which soy in particular, soybeans, have been used.
The biopolymers, we have had petrochemical engineers from
the different oil companies actually tell us that once you get
into that position, it is very difficult to tell them apart,
and a polymer engineer can use it whether it is bio-based or a
petrol-based. The difference is the lifespan, and I think that
is something that perhaps in the future we could explore.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Senator Rounds.
We do have a number of Senators who are joining us
remotely, as well as, I believe Senator Merkley, is next with
questions.
Senator Merkley.
Senator Merkley. Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I am pleased to be able to participate in this fashion.
I wanted to start out with having gone down and gotten some
breakfast this morning, and I will hold up, hopefully, you will
be able to see this, the lid, the plastic lid, which has no
triangle on it. Is there any way I can recycle this? If one of
you can just give me a quick answer.
Ms. Croke. I can answer that. We are actually working, it
is not super quick, but we are working with Starbucks and
McDonald's to find solutions with innovation and recovery
solutions on that. It is a 3 year project, so not today, but
give me like, a year and a half.
Senator Merkley. OK. Well, I also got a cup of yogurt and
was handed a spoon, and this has no triangle on it either. Is
this recyclable?
Ms. Butler. No.
Senator Merkley. And that spoon came in this bag, this
little plastic bag. It has no triangle. Can I do anything with
that?
Ms. Butler. Yes.
Senator Merkley. So. All of these are headed to the
landfill or incineration, which has its own pollution problems.
There's a term called wish-cycling, which is basically that we
think we have this big plastic bucket that I am here next to,
and I am throwing my plastic in there. I am looking for the
triangles.
But then I find out in preparation for our gathering today,
that right now, if it has a triangle and the number 3, 4, 5, 6,
or 7, basically there is no market. Basically only number 1 and
number 2 have a significant market. If I had a ton of it, a ton
of number 3, say, can I sell that anywhere in Oregon?
Ms. Croke. If you had a ton of number 5, you could, but 3,
not to my knowledge.
Senator Merkley. No go on number 3. How about number 4?
Ms. Butler. There is a market for number 4. What you said
is that it has to have enough volume, and it depends on where
you are. It is always very regional, and as Bridget said, there
is more demand for polypropylene for number 2, emerging for
number 1. There are differences between bottles versus trays.
And I want to point out that from the reclamation capacity
that was starting to move up and thrive, and there are
companies that despite so many challenges, have really
demonstrated American ingenuity. They were getting some resins
back up to almost virgin quality. This is all before the Shell
gas revolution when the price went down pretty dramatically,
starting in around 2014 and moving down.
So all of these questions are important. Anything can be
recycled if you have enough of it and there is value for it.
That is the problem. Both sides of the economic equation are
out of balance in terms of low disposal costs.
Senator Merkley. My home State, which is really all about
recycling, started the first bottle bill and the first effort
for massive beach cleanup, but the marketplace is not there.
There are other pieces of this puzzle that haven't been
talked about. One is that a lot of plastics are made from
natural gas. Natural gas is produced in a fashion that
contributes a lot to global warming, the burning of plastics
contributes to global warming, the leakage of methane out of
the natural gas pipe system contributes a lot to global
warming.
So why don't we just go with coated paper or other
strategies? My colleague mentioned biopolymers. You have
already responded to that, but there are a number of companies
that are working on coated papers as an alternative to these
uses.
Why not kind of get out of this cycle, nonrecyclable
plastic and burned plastic, rather than trying to double down
on a losing strategy?
I would just ask Ms. Butler, what are your thoughts on
that?
Ms. Butler. That is an excellent question, and this is why
it is so important that we keep getting back to using science
to really navigate the trade offs with that North Star in
place. It is such a knee jerk reaction to say, let's just use
paper. But the reality is, for that paper application to
function for the application we want, there are hosts of
chemicals that have to be used.
The PFAS issue is serious, and in terms of the sheer volume
of paper that is ending up in our landfills right now that are
off-gassing methane, it is something that is not, I think, on
the radar nearly enough. We are not managing and looking at all
the renegade gases coming off of landfills, which is why the
cost of disposal is so much lower than it should be.
I think that you can switch to paper, but we will have a
much more dramatic greenhouse gas increase if we don't change
consumption patterns. It is a feel good solution, but it
doesn't get us to the right overall objective, which is
reducing overall environmental impact.
Senator Merkley. Well, I do agree with that; that has to be
the goal.
I wanted to mention one other thing that hasn't been
raised, and that is plastic, as it deteriorates, produces
chemicals that are endocrine disruptors. Study after study
shows a significant impact on species, including human species
and human health.
I think that is an issue that needs to enter into this
discussion, that a future based on plastics is a future based
on endocrine disruptors that impact human health.
We are looking at a situation where even if you breathe the
air on a remote hike on a western land, we are now finding that
the dust is full of plastics. We are finding that the ocean is
going to have more plastic in it than fish by weight within a
couple decades.
It is everywhere, and it has profound impacts. I think we
have to look at every possible strategy using that science, as
you noted, to compare the impacts of different pieces,
different approaches. But I think we are entering deep into an
issue that is deeply problematic for the human race and
American health and environmental health.
I will just end it there. Thanks.
Ms. Butler. Thank you.
Senator Barrasso. Senator Cardin.
Senator Cardin. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, and let
me thank all the panelists on this hearing.
I am sorry I could not be here for the beginning part; we
had another committee hearing at that time, but I thank you
very much.
I am going to follow up on Senator Merkley's point in
regard to plastics, specifically dealing with microplastics
that end up in the Chesapeake Bay. We had a report done by the
Chesapeake Bay Program Scientific and Technical Advisory
Committee in 2019 that took samples and found that nine tidal
stations in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, every one they tested
had microplastics, which are extremely damaging to the
environmental future of the Chesapeake Bay.
We also found that wastewater treatment plants were not
designed to get microplastics out of the water system, so that
we also have a situation where we think we have treated
wastewater successfully, where we have not in regards to
microplastics.
I know we have been talking about this, but for those of us
who are committed to the Chesapeake Bay Program and committed
to doing everything we possibly can to preserve the Chesapeake
Bay for future generations, it is a national treasure declared
so by many Administrations, can you tell us how we can use the
tools available through the Chesapeake Bay Program and through
the efforts there and partnership effectively to deal with
microplastic issues in our waters?
Ms. Croke. I am happy to start, and I might let Nina talk a
little bit more about some of the science, but I will say that
if we are talking about microplastics, which you are correct,
is a huge issue, we need to take a much bigger lens on industry
at large. Because what we have identified is that a significant
part of those microplastics are coming from the textile
industry and fast fashion. The waste that is coming out of
there is a quiet issue that hasn't emerged as much as the
single use packaging plastics, but is polymer-based, and is
creating a lot of that risk, as well as tires on the road.
So I think taking a scientific approach to understanding
where microplastics are coming from, so that we can create
system solutions that solve for those issues around that
particular issue.
Nina, I am not sure if you have anything.
Ms. Butler. No, that was great, Bridget.
I am going to kind of sound like a bit of a broken record,
but again, it is until we put value on plastics, and we
navigate the trade offs, as Bridget said, we are going to
continue to be going in the wrong direction here.
So because there is so little value, and there are
immediate tools that you could look at in terms of bottle
bills, do you get materials collected. But to Bridget's point,
much of it is happening in applications that are not as
visible, and what we see is like, well, we should just
immediately eliminate or ban that.
It is fundamentally our responsibility to find a way to put
value on carbon, and therefore plastic, so that it is less and
less likely for someone to walk by and think it is OK to leave
something sitting there. Until we do that, we are going to have
more and more of both microplastic and just sheer volume
plastic waste.
Ms. Stasz. If I might add on to that, I think no one wants
to see pollution of any kind, which is why we are all here
today. We want to talk about how we can keep packaging not just
out of landfills, but out of rivers, out of lakes, out of
streams, out of the Chesapeake Bay.
I think to Senator Merkley's point, this consumer confusion
piece is really rampant, and that is because of these 10,000
different systems. What you do with the number 3, with the
chasing arrows in your town could be different from a single
family house to the apartment building next door to your office
building.
It is no wonder that as some of the research that we did,
we found that only 4 percent of Americans are not confused by
their recycling system. So they are either wish-cycling,
putting the wrongs things in the bin, hoping it gets recycled,
or they are not recycling altogether.
I think addressing this patchwork of systems, getting at
some more harmonized systems, helps us educate consumers
better, we get better quality product in the bin, but we also
get consumers to start participating in recycling, keeping
packaging out of landfill, keeping plastics in particular out
of landfill, or rivers, lakes, and oceans.
Senator Cardin. Let me just make a comment if I might. The
reason I asked the question, and I thank you all for your
answer, is that microplastics are not seen or not known in the
Chesapeake Bay. One of our great successes in cleaning up the
Bay has been education, public education. The people in the
watershed really want to do their share to preserve the Bay for
future generations.
We need to do a better job in regard to plastics. Yes, we
see the plastics in the ocean, and we see it in our waters, and
we are concerned about it, and we want to do things. But what
we don't see, sometimes, we don't deal with.
I thank you all for your answer. I agree we have to look at
the broader issues in regard to plastics. The Chesapeake Bay is
just one of the casualties from not having a policy that
reflects the true cost of plastic.
So I thank you all for your answer, and I think in regard
to the Chesapeake Bay Program, we have to redouble our public
education efforts so that the public understands that a lot of
the efforts that we are doing to clean up the Bay, we need to
put an effort in regards to the microplastics.
Thank you all very much for participating in the hearing.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Senator Cardin.
Senator Gillibrand.
Senator Gillibrand. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Butler, I really appreciate your testimony. We really
heard how plastic pollution in our environment, both in the
land and in the air and the water, is a growing problem across
the country.
I want to talk a little bit about some of the activities
that States like New York have engaged in. New York has enacted
policies designed to significantly reduce single use plastics
that are difficult to recycle, including plastic shopping bags,
straws, and Styrofoam containers.
How effective have local bans been on reducing the amount
of plastic consumed and discarded in communities with such
policies in place?
Ms. Butler. Thank you for the question. It is not as
straightforward as I would like to say.
Again, I keep going back to you have to navigate the trade
offs. Unfortunately, when we document how much availability of
recycling, when it comes to banning plastic bags, it has had a
dramatic decrease in the access that citizens can find to
recycle the things that are in their households that are far
beyond the plastic bag. That place to receive the material is
also what you can put your bathroom tissue wrap, your bread
bags, all kinds of things that really do carry products and
reduce food waste.
But the bigger issue looms that we don't have, the
companies that take that material and have evolved over decades
and really been the innovators, I think, in our economy, do not
have the demand.
While there are companies that want to buy recycled
content, the reality is purchasing recycled content right now
does cost a lot more than virgin. So there isn't true demand
that is creating value to get that material back.
So bans can lead to unintended consequences, and it really
depends on what application you are talking about, whether you
are talking about bags, or you are talking about straws, or you
are talking about polystyrene.
With the case with bags, it has had, in some ways, a
detrimental impact if it doesn't also reduce the use of paper
bags that have a very heavy carbon footprint.
Senator Gillibrand. You testified that there are virtually
no economic incentives for producers to use recycled plastic,
and that producing new plastic is comparatively inexpensive.
What financial incentives and/or penalties could help make it
more economically desirable to shift away from new plastic
production and use more recycled content and reusable products?
Ms. Butler. Requirements for recycled content could go a
very long way. Just take the trash bag example that I gave. We
don't have, to speak of, very much recycled content in an
application that is destined for landfills. It is very
commonplace in Europe, but we don't have it, because it's
simply less expensive.
So, as a publicly traded company, you are fiduciarily
irresponsible if you are taking a feedstock that is more
expensive than another feedstock, and you are increasing risk
because it may not be the exact same performance that you have
in highly engineered virgin resin. We have both got
artificially low cost on the one side of the economic equation,
which is the cost to dispose, it's less than half in the United
States than it is in say, Europe, and then on the other side of
the equation, it's incredibly inexpensive to source virgin
resin.
That really became the case, the tipping point was around
2014, 2015, where companies, for the most part, used recycled
content because it was a cheaper application. There were
policies such as the rigid plastic packaging law in California
that really stimulated a lot of investment in the reclamation
industry, getting significantly more recycled content.
But for the most part, once the price dropped below a
certain kind of specific sweet spot, it became incredibly
difficult for reclaimers, the recyclers, to compete with
virgin. It is only those pledges that go away when we have this
superstorm of low virgin prices, all of a sudden China stepping
away, and now COVID.
Senator Gillibrand. What role do you think industry should
play in bearing the cost of cleanup of plastic pollution in our
environment?
Ms. Butler. I think we need to use the economic drivers
with very well designed extended producer responsibility that
is anchored, fundamentally, in the value we place on carbon, so
that there would be fees that are what is called eco-
modulation. The fee adjusts based on the performance of that
product, and there is a feedback loop, so the better you
design, the lower your fee.
What I am hearing from brand companies and even
petrochemical companies as we have been working a lot more in
Europe this last year, is that they are actually asking for it.
There is not a North Star to be designed toward; there is a
lot of confusion in the marketplace based on what does the
consumer that may not know all the trade offs, but kind of the
consumer directions giving, versus what we could have through
smart policy that is really anchored in looking to reduce
overall environmental impact.
So I think EPR is key. I think other tools that fit well
within that, a bottle bill, recycle minimum, recycle content
legislation are also really important.
We can't keep our sights only set on the half-side of the
equation. It is also how inexpensive it is to landfill. When we
look at, if we broaden the true cost of landfilling, the price
would be much higher, and that is taxing the bads, not the
goods.
Senator Gillibrand. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
it.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Senator Gillibrand.
Senator Boozman.
Senator Boozman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you so
much, you and Senator Carper, for holding this hearing. It's a
real pleasure to work with Senator Carper on the Recycling
Caucus, but also all of us.
This is something, the nice thing about this, this is a
very bipartisan issue that just makes a lot of sense, and could
be low hanging fruit that we need to take advantage of. So we
do appreciate you guys so much for being here, and how you
represent common sense stewards of the environment.
Tell me, one of the things that we talk about is that, it
is great for the environment, we all agree with that, but tell
me also about the opportunity that it does in creating jobs. I
guess we could say that hundreds of thousands of good paying
jobs, this and that, talk a little bit about that. That is
something I think that we don't really talk enough about.
Ms. Stasz. Sure, absolutely, and thank you for the
question. I agree, this is a really critical bipartisan issue,
and I think that is so important to progress and to success of
initiatives that we would put forward.
When China closed its doors to U.S. recyclables, it did
expose or show this dramatic lack of domestic infrastructure
innovation, or in many cases, investment here. But again, that
provides this opportunity to rebuild that infrastructure, to
rebuild those jobs, to put more money into the economy in
different parts of the U.S. to be able to process recyclables
here, domestically.
I think North and South Carolina, with their Bottles Mean
Jobs program, is a really excellent example of that. I think
another key driver or layer around how we can incentivize
infrastructure or build out infrastructure in the right places,
is starting with some baseline data.
If we don't know where recycling rates are high or where
most of our infrastructure is, if we have the sort of black box
of data or lack of data right now, it is really hard to
understand where should we put our resources, right? Where
should we put our resources for the best return on our
investment to create those jobs?
But I think that there is real opportunity both in
standardized data collection and in building that domestic
infrastructure, so we can process our packaging here.
Senator Boozman. No, I agree totally. In fact, the next
thing I was going to bring up was the fact that with thousands
of systems nationwide that nobody knows what you are supposed
to do, and in fact, many of the people that are recycling don't
know what to do. It is a huge problem.
I guess the question is, what specifically, what can we do
as a Congress, either directly or indirectly, through
legislation or incentivizing people so that we can have some
sort of a better system to collect data, have a better system
to standardize? What are the keys to getting there? We talked
about this a lot, but how do you actually do that?
Ms. Stasz. I think standardized definitions is a really
good start. From EPA's work on their America Recycles effort
last year, the work of that group found that there are 18
different definitions of recycled or recyclable in the U.S.,
and that is just the definition of recyclable, never mind the
10,000 different systems we have to process and handle
recycling.
So some standardized definitions, I think, is a really good
way to start standardized data collection so that we can target
our investments in the right places.
Senator Boozman. You guys can jump in.
Ms. Butler. We have worked on this for many years, the
harmonization, because we track the amount of plastic that gets
recycled domestically or sold export. The ability to really
triangulate that data and look for double counting is based on
how companies report this data.
We have looked at harmonizing from a commodity perspective,
as well as harmonizing how we communicate to the general
public. We have worked with many organizations to come up with
this consistent way to do that. How we do audits, coming up
with consistent methodology through the Association of Plastic
Recyclers, and the American Chemistry Council, there has been a
tremendous amount of work on that.
Then specifically, as Meghan was saying, the question of
recyclability has been completely blown up. It used to be, you
had 60 percent access, and you put a recyclable on it, and we
are good. That was largely because we became very complacent in
sending material to China that was more difficult.
Now we are in a whole different ball game. We worked with,
there has been off and on about five different brand companies
that last 3 years that had a particular package that was
unknown as to whether or not it was deemed recyclable or not
based on the last availability of recycling study.
So we have developed this extensive decision tree to say
without a doubt, if a company is going to make a claim to
recyclability, you have to check all of these boxes, and it
says it flows through the system, is there market for it, is
there availability; it is a very complex thing.
But I almost think that this is a bit of a distraction if
we don't fundamentally have value on the material and there is
demand for it. What is drastically lacking, I think, from a
measurement perspective is verification.
When you make a claim of recycled content, that is what
creates real demand and gets it so that it is less likely to
become litter. Right now, because there is not enough clarity
on how to do that, the companies that are leading in that space
aren't realizing a true competitive advantage. It is a market
failure right now. From a Federal Government perspective, that
would be huge.
Senator Boozman. Thank you very much.
And again, thank you all and our participant by phone.
Thank you all so much for the great work you are doing.
Special thanks to Senator Carper and his work and his
staff, we know who does all the work with these things, I know
it is true in my case, but we do appreciate your efforts.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Senator Boozman.
Senator Carper.
Senator Carper. I just want to say to John Boozman, thank
you, it is an honor to be your wingman, and our staff and I, we
love working with your folks and the other members of this
Committee, and a lot of people that are not on this Committee,
or in the Congress.
I want to ask a question, if I could, of Bridget, please,
and that is the Closed Loop Partners mission, as I understand
it, is to build a circular economy that seeks to eliminate
waste and additional demand for new resources by reusing, by
recycling, and repurposing materials.
However, recycling varies, as we know, in each State; we
heard 10,000 different venues or sources, not sources, but
places. Recycling varies in each town, city, and county across
our Nation.
It varies in our own State. Products that are recycled in
one city may not be recycled in another. Many types of single
use plastics that are marketed or labeled as recyclable do not
have end markets, as we have heard again and again here today.
This means that many municipalities are not recycling these
plastics, and they are actually ending up, as we talked about,
in landfills or in incinerators. This is a tremendous
impediment to building a circular economy where our country can
use, can reuse materials efficiently.
Question: Knowing this challenge, how can industry and
government work together better, work together better, to build
that circular economy that works for both our economy and for
our environment, please?
Bridget.
Ms. Croke. Thank you for the question; thank you.
I just kind of keep going back to something that has come
up again and again. I would bring it back to what Nina said, in
that we really need to focus on building value, more end
markets. We believe, having talked to a lot of industry, big
consumer product companies, retailers, petrochemical companies,
who are also getting into the game, and big banks and
investors, if there is opportunity, they will invest.
We don't need government to take on the lion's share of the
investment in solving these issues. We need incentives to help
create and drive end markets, motivate companies to design for
recycling, and create an even playing field so that an investor
who is looking at investing either in a recycling facility, a
processing facility, or some innovation that is going to
advance recovery of materials or even new material science,
they are looking at this, and they are thinking, the commodity
markets are changing every year.
Right now, we see good markets, but last year, we saw bad
markets, and vice versa. If they don't see a 5 year horizon of
a company purchasing that output, their investment is at risk.
If we can help create an even playing field in terms of
incentivizing the use of recycled content for end markets for
big consumer product companies, investment will flow in the
private sector.
So anything that the Federal and regional governments can
do to help drive that incentive will drive capital in
significant levels into the space and build scale supply chains
that naturally compete with the raw material markets.
Senator Carper. Thank you.
Let me ask my last question maybe of Meghan and Nina. When
I was new in the Senate, I didn't know Ted Kennedy, and I asked
if I could maybe come by his office and have a cup of coffee
together. We actually had lunch together in his hideaway, which
was quite an experience, quite a hideaway. My hideaway is the
size of a broom closet; his was like a museum.
I said to him over lunch, I said, I have always wondered
why you, a very liberal Democrat, are like the favored dance
partner with a lot of Republicans when introducing legislation.
Looking for a Democrat, they ask you, Ted Kennedy, one of the
most liberal Democrats, to be their lead Democrat to make it a
bipartisan bill. I said, Why is that?
And he said to me, he said I am always willing to
compromise on policy, never willing to compromise on principle.
Think about that. Always willing to compromise on policy, never
willing to compromise on principles.
What are some principles that we should take to heart,
embrace, and maybe be reluctant to compromise on? Principles.
Not policy, but principles, please, each of you.
Nina, do you want to go first?
Ms. Butler. Yes. This is very near and dear to my heart,
and as I said, getting into the world of plastic, it was such
an unnatural step for me. But it is that basic principle that
we have to look at how we reduce the most overarching threat to
life on this planet, and that is climate change, and it is
toxins, but it's climate change.
Going back to the microplastic, what we can't see is really
dangerous, and the acidification of our oceans through
unbridled use of carbon and greenhouse gas emissions is our
biggest threat. We have to unlock this plastic paradox by
establishing the North Star policy so that we stay true to that
basic principle of protecting this planet.
Senator Carper. Thank you.
Meghan. And then I am done.
Ms. Stasz. I think it is an excellent question. I think a
foundational principle here is the need for shared
responsibility. No one actor, no one industry can solve this
problem alone.
We really need an environment in which all stakeholders are
at the table, and all stakeholders need to be at the table
bringing ideas about how to fix the piece of the recycling
supply chain that they control, that they have the most
influence over.
We have seen our industry, the consumer goods industry has
made major commitments to packaging improvements as the piece
of the recycling supply chain over which we have the most
control. We need all of the other stakeholders at the table as
well, bringing their ideas to the table on how to fix other
elements of the packaging supply chain.
Senator Carper. Mr. Chairman, I just note in closing, one
of the things that I think has been missing here is leadership.
I have found the most important ingredient to the success of
any endeavor is always leadership. This is an all hands on deck
moment, and the leadership has to come from a lot of sources:
Business, private sector, States, local governments, EPA, us,
and from the White House, from whoever is leading our country,
and for us to learn from other nations that are leading.
I am delighted that we are here. I think this has been a
great panel of witnesses, and we are grateful to each of them.
Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
I would ask unanimous consent, if I could, to submit for
the record a variety of materials that includes news articles,
fully recyclables, news articles, letters, statements from
stakeholders, and other materials relating to today's hearing
or on challenges facing recycling in the U.S.
I would ask unanimous consent for that, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Barrasso. Without objection.
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Senator Carper. And one more, if I could. I ask unanimous
consent to submit--is that the same thing? They are the same.
Two for the price of one. Thanks so much.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Senator Carper. We received a
number of letters and written testimony from cities and a
variety of organizations on the state of recycling in America,
and I am asking unanimous consent to enter all of this material
into the record, and without objection, that will be done.
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Senator Barrasso. I want to thank all the members of the
Senate who were here to participate in this.
I thank our witnesses, Ms. Croke, Ms. Stasz, and Ms. Butler
for all of your help. Very thoughtful, very productive time.
Some of the members who were not able to join us may want
to submit follow up questions for the record. I know Senator
Whitehouse had a question that he is going to ask several of
you to respond to as well. So the hearing record will be open
for 2 additional weeks.
I want to thank all of you for your time and your testimony
for being with us today.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:58 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]