A look at Oregon’s new recycling program

Oregon recently launched a recycling program that aims to hold businesses accountable for the packaging waste they create. The Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act (RMA) charges producers of paper, packaging and food serviceware for the products they distribute in Oregon. The goal is to fund recycling services in small communities through the fees that businesses pay into the program.

The RMA was the first law of its kind to pass in 2021 and was followed by similar legislation in California, Colorado and a handful of other states. It’s currently facing a lawsuit from a trade group that claims the law is illegal and unfairly impacts its members.

Nicole Portley is a program plan lead for the RMA at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. She joins us with more details on how the new program is working.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Oregon recently launched a recycling program that aims to hold businesses accountable for the packaging waste they create. The Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act charges producers of paper packaging and food serviceware for the products they distribute in Oregon.

The goal is to fund recycling services in small communities through the fees that businesses pay into the program. Oregon was the first state in the country to pass a law like this – that was in 2021 – a handful of other states have since followed. Last week we talked about a lawsuit brought by the National Association of Wholesaler Distributors. Because that litigation is pending, the Department of Environmental Quality can’t talk about the details of the case, but it is able to talk about the broader framework and goals of this new system.

Nicole Portley is the program plan lead for the Recycling Modernization Act at Oregon DEQ and she joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.

Nicole Portley: Thank you, Dave. Good afternoon.

Miller: What is the big idea behind the Recycling Modernization Act?

Portley: [The] Recycling Modernization Act has its roots in the growing awareness of the problem of plastic pollution, as well as the waste trade scandals of the 2010s and the understanding that the trade of recyclables globally is a strong contributor to the problem of plastic pollution.

So, our recyclables going overseas and the target material gets recycled, but the contamination that comes along with it was ending up getting dumped – burned – in the ocean, in communities, etc. Growing awareness of those problems, as well as China, the then global leader in recycling of domestic waste banning in 2017 and 2018 the import of domestic recyclables from abroad, presented a unique opportunity to take stock of systemic problems with our recycling system and resolve those problems. This law brings producer funding to bear in achieving that system overhaul of the recycling system.

Miller: What are other examples of having producers be responsible, either in whole or in part, for the stuff that we buy from them when that stuff reaches the end of its life?

Portley: Yes, extended producer responsibility is not a new thing for Oregon. I believe we have six existing programs, our flagship program being the bottle bill. Consumers are the ones to pay that deposit, but producers are involved in the recycling of the product, the collection and the recycling of those bottles. There are also extended producer responsibility programs in place in Oregon for electronics, for paint, drugs, pharmaceuticals, as well as mattresses.

But extended producer responsibility for packaging has been held at bay in the United States. It’s existed in places like Europe dating to the 1990s and in Canada since the early 2000s. It does involve taking costs that heretofore have been borne by the public: by ratepayers when they pay for their waste and recycling. It’s taking some of those costs and it’s shifting it over to the producers.

That’s been held at bay in legislatures up until now this kind of… the scandal around waste trade and plastic pollution represented a unique opportunity to break through and institute this in policy. And so now Oregon was one of the first out of the gate, but now seven states have laws on the books implementing extended producer responsibility for packaging.

Miller: How much money are these producers expected to have to pay into Oregon’s system in the coming years? Money that can then go towards municipal recycling systems?

Portley: Actually as I was listening to your previous segment about Phil Knight’s Investment into OHSU, I was doing the math to see if the investment being made into our recycling system by producers is going to be comparable, and I would say it is probably going to come out as roughly comparable.

Miller: Two billion dollars in the coming years?

Portley: Something on the order of that. What we have at present is the producer’s budget for the next two and a half years, which is $732 million. That budget includes many infrastructure investments. So, trucks, bins, improvements to depot and reload facilities… The investment you need to collect materials from communities and then also investments in infrastructure at the processing facility so that the material can be effectively sorted.

We would expect less need for infrastructure investments going forward. So you’ll have more of a higher annual budget up front to cover those out of the gate in infrastructure costs and then more of a stable lower budget going forward. But I think if you do the math, we may come out to something on the order of two billion dollars for the first 10 years.

Miller: The way you’re describing it, it seems like a lot of the infrastructure for handling this waste and processing it… Will there also be changes that the general public will see? I mean, will collection services expand? Will what we can put in a recycling bin expand? Will it change for the public?

Portley: Yes, it will. Successful recycling involves collection, sorting, and market processing. There will be interventions on all of those fronts as a part of this law. What the public sees is collection. With respect to collection, local governments, cities and towns of over 4000 residents take on an obligation through this law to collect a new uniform statewide collection list of materials, and they will do so by obtaining the needed infrastructure through the producer funding.

Rural areas that have not had any curbside collection in the past will see a big change when that collection comes to their communities. Urban areas that already have curbside collection may not see initial big changes, but over time the program allows a pathway for the adding of materials to the statewide list if the necessary investments are made to resolve outstanding problems with those materials. We set a distinct bar for a material to be considered recyclable or not, and producers have a pathway to meet that bar.

Miller: Oregon’s program was mandated by lawmakers, it was created in rulemaking by your agency, but it’s being managed now by a third party, a corporate funded nonprofit. Why?

Portley: The way extended producer responsibility generally works [is] you’ll have what’s called a Producer Responsibility Organization that serves as an umbrella for the producers to fulfill their compliance organizations. So the producers themselves, the individual producers, have three simple obligations: they need to join the PRO, report their data on the products that they sold into the state, and pay fees. Then the PRO is an organization kind of specialized for taking those fees and channeling them towards the various system upgrades.

I would caution us against characterizing that the PRO has taken over implementation of the waste system, that is not the case. We have what’s referred to as a joint responsibility system rather than a sole responsibility system. It’s not like Oregon’s recycling system is just getting handed over wholesale to the PRO. Rather, local governments, the sorting facilities, and the PRO are all taking on obligations under our law.

Miller: How much will we know about where our paper and plastics are going after we put them into bins and how much say will the state have to make sure that they’re not being burned or dumped?

Portley: Yes, the law is very explicit about bringing a transparency tool to the issue of recyclables going to places where they are not handled responsibly and where environmental outcomes are actually disfavorable rather than favorable. The law is designed to bring to the public the assurance that when they put recyclables in their bin, they are actually being recycled with environmental benefit.

The policy within the act that addresses this is the Responsible and Market Policy. All of the downstream facilities that the PRO as well as the sorting facility send materials to; they all have to meet Oregon’s responsible standard. Detailed reporting on a quarterly basis as to where the materials are going will begin in December of this year. So we’ll start getting a very detailed picture of where the materials are going. As of now, all of the markets being used have to have self-attested that they are meeting the responsible standard, and that has given us already some initial vision of where the materials go.

It’s kind of creating a club of the downstream. These are factories like pulp mills and metal smelters, glass bottle manufacturers… The different facilities that take the recyclables and produce a new product that they are stepping out into the light and revealing themselves through this self attestation process.

Miller: Nicole Portley, thanks very much.

Portley: Thank you very much, Dave.

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