The Universal Recycling Ordinance (URO) supports Austin’s Zero Waste goal. The ordinance requires i) commercial property owners to ensure that tenants and employees have access to recycling, and ii) food-permitted businesses to ensure that employees have convenient access to diversion methods that keep organic materials, like food scraps, out of landfills. Violations are a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by fines up to $2,000 per day, but feedback that we are hearing is that many restaurants don't take the regulations seriously and that enforcement is minimal for all but the largest businesses. More updates as we learn more. 

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) was directed by Senate Bill 649 to develop a plan to stimulate the use of recycled material feedstocks in processing and manufacturing. The report is a comprehensive look at end-to-end statewide issues in the recycling industry and makes recommendations based on the findings. The report is attached. The Executive Summary starts on page 5, and Recommendations start on page 81. Note that the report covers all materials, not just plastics.

Bag bans are illegal in Texas with the Texas Supreme Court ruling that they are specifically prevented by the Texas Constitution. According to the Texas Tribune, Judge Guzman urged the Legislature to take "direct ameliorative action" and change the laws to better address environmental concerns. But so far, to our knowledge, the Texas Legislature has failed to take up the issue. 

The "chasing arrows" recycling symbol is not always what the manufacturer would like you to think that it means. California passed a new law in October 2021 that will prevent the use of the symbol when the product or packaging is not genuinely recyclable. That would include not just being theoretically recyclable in a laboratory setting, but actually recyclable in practical terms in most California communities, including having the end-markets to absorb the recovered materials. Unfortunately, in Texas any product can display the symbols if the packager so chooses, even if it isn't genuinely recyclable. That leads to contamination entering the recycling stream and burdening materials recovery facilities (MRFs) with the need to pull the offending items from the stream and pay to landfill them. 

EPR legislation are laws that shift the cost and responsibility for recycling packaging from the consumer and from municipalities to the manufacturer of the product in question. Ten states have bottle bill laws as of December 2021, which have shown great success in boosting the recovery of beverage bottle material. Such laws also align interests by incentivizing recycling to be taken into account in the product's design. Some states such as Oregon, Maine, and California have gone further by incorporating truth-in-packaging language to provide penalties for displaying misleading claims as to the product's or packaging's recyclability. New York is looking to follow suit. California has gone the furthest by requiring certification that there is a viable end-market for the materials, i.e., that the recovered materials can actually be sold and reused in the real world. 

Texas has one Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) law, House Bill 2714, which went into effect in 2008. It requires computer manufacturers to take back equipment at no charge from consumers for recycling. So far, nothing has passed in Texas related to plastics. 

Would you believe that the makers of soap and body scrubs used to put tiny beads of plastic into their products, millions of which would simply wash down the drain and into streams and oceans? The Microbead-Free Waters Act was passed in the US in 2015, and only fully came into effect in 2019, to stop the practice — but it may well still be continuing in other jurisdictions. The plastic beads not caught in filters can be eaten by small fish, thereby entering the food chain. A similar problem exists with synthetic textiles, which are made from plastic — each load of laundry sends tiny fibers down the drain.

The bill is currently winding its way through Congress as of December 2021. Amongst other things, it would begin to phase out unnecessary products, increase/create industry accountability, pause construction on new plastics manufacturing plants, and create a new standard for labeling. Unfortunately, the bill would also freeze permitting of chemical recycling plants (also called advanced recycling plants), which can play a critical role in creating a circular economy.

We haven't come across legislation in this space yet, but it would certainly boost recycling efforts by simplifying the recycling process and making a larger portion of plastic packaging recyclable by incorporating recyclability at the design stage. Let us know if you have come across initiatives in this space.

A number of states have or are progressing legislation that would require minimum post-consumer recycled content requirements. One such law is California's Assembly Bill 478, which would require a minimum of 30% recycled content in thermoform plastics by 2030, joining requirements that are already in place for rigid plastics. Such laws help to close the supply and demand gap between the supply of recycled material (thanks to the efforts of good people like yourselves who are diligent about recycling) with the demand for recycled material. 

Bottle bills have been called rock stars amongst environmental legislation due to their track record of significantly boosting recycling. The 10 states in the US (some of which are pretty small states) that have bottle bills account for nearly half of all plastic bottle recycling in America. And according to Keep America Beautiful, the states without bottle bill laws have significantly higher rates of bottle litter than those that do have such programs. Typically, 5¢ or 10¢ is charged at the time of sale, which the consumer gets refunded when they deliver the materials to a collection center. The materials collected through such schemes tend to have a higher market value as they come in relatively pure as a result of not having to travel through mixed-material sorting mechanisms.  On the downside, such programs can compete with curbside recycling, reducing efficiency due to lower volumes and hurting profitability by changing materials recovery facilities' product mix — as volumes of one of their highest value materials (PET) is reduced, they can be left with a higher proportion of low (or negative) value materials like plastic #s 3-7.  Some states are considering raising the amount of the deposits in order to boost incentives and in order to keep up with inflation — in some cases, the the 5 or 10¢ figures haven't changed since the 1970s. 

This item is not legislation, but is a good policy for companies to adopt. If you know anyone who is a brand owner or anyone who works for one, the Association of Plastics Recyclers (APR) has an excellent design guide. They have step-by-step guidelines for a range of different materials and even offer tutorials and training to help brand owners make their products more sustainable. So much of what materials recovery facilities and recyclers struggle with simply comes down to poor product design, where product owners fail to take small steps that can greatly improve the in-practice recyclability of their product's packaging. 

Ever see those recycling instructions that have a lot more helpful content on them compared to the typical generic symbol and think, "How great is that, and why doesn't everyone use this?" Those instructions that are printed on e.g. a frozen food item that have separate frames for i) the tray, ii) the film covering the tray, and iii) the box that the meal came in are brought to you by the good folks at GreenBlue. It is indeed a smarter label system that generally provides a wealth more information and credibility than the sometimes vague or misleading (or absent) recycling symbols used by many consumer goods companies.  It's easy for companies to sign up and start doing better.