As You Sow presses consumer packaged goods and grocery companies to take responsibility for post-consumer packaging waste, with the added goals of reducing packaging and eliminating ocean debris.

Americans generate more waste than any other country in the world but recycle far less than other developed counties like Denmark, Belgium, or Germany. Paper and paperboard products and packaging, which together form the largest category of municipal solid waste, merit priority attention in efforts to improve extremely poor recycling rates for many post-consumer materials.

Shifting financial responsibility for collecting and recycling used packaging in the U.S. from taxpayers to producers through a policy known as extended producer responsibility (EPR) will incentivize producers to reduce the amount of packaging they create, substantially increase recycling rates, provide much needed revenue to improve efficiency of recycling systems, reduce carbon footprint and energy use, and reclaim billions of dollars of embedded value now buried in landfills.

Post-consumer paper and paperboard and packaging consists of valuable commodities such as aluminum, glass, paper, plastic, and steel. As You Sow estimates that the market value of packaging materials not recycled in the U.S. was $11.4 billion in 2010. It is not good business practice to throw away valuable resources. Businesses that do not develop sustainable sourcing of products through resource-efficient circular, or closed loop, systems in the near term will not be able to compete to serve a world population estimated at nine billion by 2050.

For more information, see our recent report making the case for EPR, or our more succinct issue brief.

In 2013, we filed shareholder proposals with the following companies:

EPR would require companies to internalize packaging recycling costs unfairly borne for decades by taxpayers. It has been successfully adopted in Canada and Europe, diverting large amounts of plastic, glass, metal, and paper away from landfills into recycling streams that conserve resources.

In addition to filing proposals, we are engaged in shareholder dialogue with these leading food retailers:

>>Recent media clippings for the Consumer Packaging initiative