Walking the sustainability walk: The case for EPR

A number of experiences over the last year have me thinking even more than normal about how businesses that produce goods need to be thinking about those goods’ next lives, a concept known as circularity. And I’m not the only one thinking about this. Last year, trade shows across the country included panels on recycling, sustainability and circularity — the idea that everything that gets created should have a second life, a third and so on. I was honored to serve on several of those, and I left inspired by the ideas my colleagues shared and the focus the industry is placing on circularity.

Our company, Advanced Drainage Systems (ADS), is a leading manufacturer of stormwater and onsite septic wastewater management products and solutions for commercial, residential, infrastructure and agricultural applications. At our core, though, we are in the water business: Our products protect and manage water, which we like to say is the world’s most precious resource. Protecting water also means thinking critically about how sustainability in manufacturing should influence our business practices.

Throughout the year, on panels and in internal discussions about creating more sustainable products, a few key points became apparent:

1. We need to increase access to and awareness of recycling. That includes educating consumers about what can and cannot be recycled and increasing the amount of ‘used’ material available to be recycled. The need is there; the system is not keeping up.

2. We need to recover more recyclable materials from the waste stream and ensure that material is as clean as possible and kept with like materials rather than mixed.

3. We all—producers who use virgin materials, companies who want more recycled materials, recycling companies, researchers, policymakers, etc.—need to work together to make recycling successful. There is no singular silver bullet.

It is no secret that I believe strongly that all business leaders need to do a better job of thinking about the second and third acts of their products and packaging, and it has been fascinating to be around sustainability experts recently.

One of the panels I served included a breakout session led by a team of a fiber recycler, an electronic waste (e-waste) recycler, a composter, and myself, a representative from the plastics recycling world. These are wildly different materials, recycled in various ways by various industries. And yet, I was amazed at the similarities between us.

"The more people who can access recycling programs worldwide, the better off our planet will be."

For each and every one of our businesses, the limited access our country offers to recycling programs creates significant supply issues. Not because people don’t want to recycle but because people either don't have easy access to recycling services in their communities or don't know where in their communities to go to recycle.

This is a problem of both access to recycling and education. I think there is a third piece, extended producer responsibility (EPR), which has been discussed extensively over the past year, and I would like to see more companies embrace it.

EPR is a tool that governments use to build the total cost of a product into its price. The idea is to create incentives for companies that make products out of virgin materials, like plastics, influencing how those products are initially designed and what happens to them at the end of their life. That means that manufacturers must proactively consider how their products can be reused or recycled after their first life and on to their second, third or fourth lives.

Full disclosure: Here at ADS, we are fans of sensible EPR. We think it can boost access to and education about recycling, which is a win for us. And of course, more recycled products are good for our business goals. We have set a target to recycle a billion pounds of plastic a year by 2032. Last year, we recycled more than 500 million pounds, but we could have recycled more had we been able to purchase more of the empty shampoo bottles, detergent jugs and other high-density polyurethane (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) cups, tubs and lids we needed from recycling centers around the U.S.

But more than our business objectives, there is a case to be made for internalizing costs that have, for too long, been borne externally by the environment and the consumer. EPR is one attempt to address that.

Four states—California, Colorado, Maine and Oregon—have enacted EPR policies around packaging, and while it is still too early to know how successful those policies have been in removing recyclables from the waste stream, early projections are promising.

One thing I know: The more people who can access recycling programs worldwide, the better off our planet will be. That is a win not just for sustainably-minded businesses but for everyone.