The waste-processing side of the MIRA trash-to-energy plant in Hartford’s South Meadows. The closure of the plant last year has led to roughly 40 percent of the state's trash being shipped out of state, an issue that Gov. Ned Lamont is hoping to address through a bill that would enact one of the nation's most ambitious recycling programs.
Cloe PoissonA proposal to install one of the most ambitious recycling programs in the country in Connecticut has become a major sticking point in Gov. Ned Lamont’s plan to solve the state’s mounting trash woes, with the state’s trash haulers lining up in opposition to the bill.
The contentious plan would require the manufacturers of paper and packaging products — everything from Amazon boxes, food wrappers, and those toilsome plastic clamshells — to pitch in to cover the costs of recycling their products in Connecticut through new stewardship programs, also known as extended producer responsibility.
The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection estimates that such a program will divert as much as 190,000 tons of recyclables from the landfills and incinerators each year, while saving cities and towns up to $50 million.
The potential for those results has made the idea of targeting packaging through extended producer responsibility a key component of Gov. Lamont’s broader plan to address the impact of the closing of Hartford’s Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority, which has resulted in the state shipping roughly 40 percent of its waste out of state.
Yet while manufacturers would be required to foot the bill for the stewardship programs, and critics argue those costs would be passed along to consumers, the main opposition to the provision has come not from the packaging industry but from trash haulers and recyclers that are currently tasked with disposing of those company’s products.
In testimony submitted to lawmakers, hauling companies and recycling facilities have complained that new programs have the potential to usurp smaller, regional recycling programs, cutting off their business and creating less incentive to expand existing facilities.
Leading the push for the governor’s sprawling waste management bill — including the product stewardship components — has been Lamont’s DEEP commissioner, Katie Dykes, who has said that much of the opposition has been fed by misinformation or confusion over the creation of a new funding mechanism to handle the vast majority of Connecticut’s recyclables.
In an interview with CT Insider this week, Dykes said she was open to working with the hauling and recycling industry to add language that would clarify when stewardship organizations would have to operate using existing infrastructure and recycling systems within the state, hopefully easing those businesses concerns.
Dykes also added, however, that with the state currently shipping roughly 860,000 tons of garbage each year to landfills as far away as Ohio and Pennsylvania — and with investments already being made in trucks and railcars to take it there — some of the bill's opponents might not have an incentive to reach a compromise.
“Is the opposition to packaging EPR about a disagreement about the structure of this program or a disagreement about whether this is the best way to get more of the recyclables out of the waste stream?” Dykes said. “Or is this really about, you know, wanting to keep the status quo of shipping out of state?”
In an attempt to smooth over their disagreements, industry representatives met with Dykes and lawmakers Wednesday at the insistence of state Sen. Rick Lopes, D-New Britain, who co-chairs the committee that has oversight of the waste management bill.
While the meeting produced consensus over some issues, such as raising minimum standards for recycled content in new products and increased diversion of food scraps, Lewis Dubuque, vice president of Chapter Management at the National Waste and Recycling Association, said in a statement Wednesday that there remain "areas where we believe consensus will be difficult."
Dubuque did not mention the bill's provisions dealing with product stewardship directly, and a spokesman declined to clarify what "areas" he was referring to.
“Studies have shown that Connecticut is a national leader when it comes to waste and recycling and can more than handle all of the state’s recycling needs,” Dubuque said. “Drastic steps and mandates as proposed in legislation may cause more harm than good by erasing twenty years of progress and investment in our waste reduction efforts and should be approached with great caution.”
Industry officials and lawmakers have also raised concerns that Connecticut — with a population of just over 3.6 million — would be at the forefront of a seismic shift in recycling policy, with potential ramifications within and outside the state.
In response, Dykes and other supporters have pointed out that California, Colorado, Oregon and Maine have all recently approved similar programs, in addition to well-established examples in Europe and Canada. None of the stewardship programs adopted by other states, however, are expected to get off the ground until 2025 at the earliest. Lamont's bill would phase in the launch through 2026.
“Once New York and California do things, it changes the economics anyways,” said House Speaker Matt Ritter, D- Hartford, who hosted a forum last month on the issue. “Even if you support it, it’s hard for Connecticut to do it on its own.”
Officials anticipate that stewardship organizations would operate similarly to existing programs Connecticut has to manage hard-to-recycle items like mattresses and paints. In some towns, those items can be picked up by haulers or dropped off at the transfer station, where they are collected and shipped to specialty recycling plants with the costs reimbursed by the manufacturers or through fees attached to the sale of those products, said James Albis, the director of DEEP's office of policy and planning.
“The customer experience would not change. You'd still have a blue bin that you'd put out to your curb. You'd still bring your recyclables to the transfer station for drop off,” Albis said. “The only difference would be that for municipalities that are opting in, the stewardship organization would be paying for that collection, either directly reimbursing the municipality or contracting directly with the hauler.”
The difference between other stewardship programs and one for packaging, however, would be in the sheer scale of the project, covering nearly everything that residents can toss in the recycling bin.
To develop a workable program, Albis said DEEP has already engaged with industry groups such as American Institute for Packaging and the Environment, which represents brands like McDonald’s and General Mills. In testimony submitted to lawmakers, AMERIPEN said it supported the concept of stewardship programs for packaging generally, though it urged some revisions to the governor’s bill.
“I think the advantage is that we're going to have a lot of these large multinational companies at the table of participating in the stewardship organization,” Albis said. “They'll be able to help identify additional responsible parties that might not be picking up the slack. They don't want to see any freeriders.”
A similar bill to implement stewardship programs for consumer packaging was put forward by lawmakers on the Environment Committee last year, but died before ever receiving a vote.
As part of a broader effort to address Connecticut’s trash woes this year, Dykes and Gov. Lamont resurrected the idea along with a proposal to increase the fees the state charges to dispose of trash, with the hopes that the savings from the product stewardship programs would be more than enough to offset the cost of the higher fees. Scrapping one controversial section of the 44-page bill, Dykes said, could therefore endanger support for other sections.
Lawmakers have until the end of March to get a draft of a bill dealing with the solid waste issue out of the Environment Committee, though committee leaders said this week that significant revisions would likely continue well into the spring as the bill is debated on the floor of the House and Senate.
Lopes, the co-chair of the committee who brokered the meeting between Dykes and industry representatives, said he was encouraged by the meeting, though he said that product stewardship remained “one of the tricky subjects.”
“I honestly think there’s enough trash in this state to make everyone whole,” Lopes said. "Even if we don't get everything we want, we're going to get something done this year."
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the fact the stewardship programs for mattresses are funded through a statutory fee placed on mattress sales.