In most cases, both U.S. companies and government bodies have been reluctant to press for product stewardship or end-of-life producer responsibility laws. Whether this is a trend that should be reversed was the subject of a panel discussion at the National Recycling Coalition Annual Congress in Austin, Texas.
Several of the speakers favored taking a closer look at product stewardship initiatives, though most agreed that the business community should be allowed to find the best means of achieving any goals or mandates that are put into place.
According to Ted Smith of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, San Jose, Calif., some business leaders are seeing the value of government involvement in order to lift all companies into enacting sound environmental policies. “Sometimes it has to be done through the regulatory process, or else ‘free riders’ will ignore industry standards,” said Smith.
Smith said businesses would be more likely to accept “an established system of timetables and goals,” such as one with a minimum floor to meet safety and health standards, coupled with incentives to encourage maximum environmental responsibility.
Cat Wilt, who researches recycling policy at the University of Tennessee, helped carpet manufacturers set up a closed-loop, non-regulated initiative to capture 40 percent of the waste carpeting stream for recycling.
Nonetheless, she supports a “credible threat of legislation” to spur industry leaders into enacting programs. “I really believe product stewardship is the place we need to go to now,” said Wilt. The costs should be placed on both the producers and the consumers, she added.
Will Cote of International Paper Co.’s Environmental Business Services, Loveland, Ohio, said producer responsibility laws should be approached carefully, and held out the Green Dot packaging system in Germany as an ineffective way to impose a recycling solution.
“I think the marketplace is the most effective place for stakeholders to get together, legislation and regulation notwithstanding,” said Cote.
Bill Shireman of Global Futures, San Francisco, said feedback in the marketplace is an important first step to promoting product stewardship initiatives. “Let manufacturers know when you have an item that can’t be recycled. If [the lack of a recycling option] isn’t affecting them right now, it isn’t real,” Shireman said of corporate priorities.
Shireman outlined six methods of imposing environmentally sound policies onto corporations, including mandated take-back programs such as deposit-return laws; supply chain activism such as pressuring a retailer not to carry environmentally harmful products; and multi-stakeholder processes such as the NEPSI meetings taking place in the electronics recycling sector.