The fight against plastic pollution just took an important step forward. We are thrilled to share the news that this week Maine became the first U.S. state to enact legislation forcing producers of packaging waste to pay for the collection and recycling of post-consumer packaging, a concept known as extended producer responsibility (EPR).

As You Sow’s Waste Program has been helping to lay the groundwork for enactment of EPR in the U.S. for a decade by educating companies through shareholder engagement and pressing them to endorse producer responsibility. EPR for packaging—common in European countries, Canada and elsewhere—is a crucial component of reducing the flow of plastic waste into the environment and dramatically increasing recycling of plastic as well as other valuable packaging materials, including aluminum, glass, and fiber.

Under the Maine program, the cost of collecting and recycling packaging will shift from taxpayers to companies who place packaging into commerce, providing tax relief for citizens and a source of stable, long-term funds to improve infrastructure and collection rates in communities that often struggled to provide quality services with public funds.

For many years, As You Sow was one of the few voices pressing companies to accept responsibility for their packaging through EPR in the U.S. as they already did in scores of other countries. In 2012, we laid out the case for EPR in Unfinished Business: The Case for Extended Producer Responsibility for Post-Consumer Packaging, the first report to disclose that $11 billion in recyclables were being landfilled  each year due to poor recycling programs. We filed shareholder proposals calling for adoption of EPR by consumer goods companies like Colgate-Palmolive, General Mills, Kroger, and Procter & Gamble. Companies told us we were often the first group to press them on taking financial responsibility for their packaging.

We participated in an unusual partnership with Nestle Waste North America, one of the few major companies to endorse EPR at that time, and visionary NGOs like Upstream, to press for state producer responsibility for packaging legislation. While we did not ultimately succeed in moving legislation in 2014, our dialogues with major brands led to incremental steps such as the first boardroom level discussions of EPR at companies and creation of the Closed Loop Fund, an initiative of 10 brands led by Walmart to raise $100 million for loans to cities and businesses to improve recycling infrastructure.  This demonstrated that companies were willing to accept an initial measure of responsibility for their packaging waste. As You Sow has continued to press companies to endorse EPR and kept it as a key grading criteria in our periodic Waste & Opportunity reports and rankings on packaging sustainability.

In the last four years, the notion of EPR for packaging as a tool for fighting plastic pollution gained momentum as the extent of global plastic pollution become front page news and exploded as a top tier environmental issue. Large plastic waste generators like Unilever and Nestle began to call for EPR for packaging in the U.S. In 2020, EPR was recognized at the federal level as part of the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act introduced by Sen. Tom Udall (NM) and Rep. Alan Lowenthal (CA). For a while, it looked like California would strike first with SB54 in 2019 and 2020, legislation that would have required EPR to achieve a goal of recycling 75% of single-use plastic packaging. However, corporate lobbyists were able to thwart it both years.

But happily, the momentum for workable solutions to reducing plastic waste is overriding plastic industry opposition. Congratulations to Maine lawmakers for their pioneering success in enacting the first of what we hope will be a long line of state EPR for packaging laws to curb plastic waste. It can’t happen too soon!