News

Prof. Satyajit Bose of Columbia University, in a June 2022 policy brief with funding from The Recycling Partnership, examined the economic impacts of EPR on consumer prices.

Both states already have multiple producer responsibility programs for certain products, which offer convenient, safe, recycling or disposal:

In the upcoming 2022 Washington State legislative session, a bill to modernize residential recycling in Washington will be introduced, called the RENEW Act.

In a bill signing ceremony at the Seattle Aquarium on May 17, 2021, Governor Inslee signed into law SB 5022 to reduce plastic pollution and im

The long awaited statewide paint producer responsibility program operated by PaintCare, enacted in 2019, and overseen by the Dept. of Ecology, began April 1, 2021!

A new report to the U.S. Congress by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Nixing the Fix: An FTC Report to Congress on Repair Restrictions, is critical of manufacturers' justifications for repair restrictions.

Under rules proposed in October 2020, "Canada will ban six single-use plastic items, like straws and six-pack rings, create incentives for companies to use recycled plastic, and force plastic producers to pay for recycling." On May 12, 2021, the Canadian government added "plastic manufactured items to Schedule 1" of the environmental protection act, which will allow th

The stewardship organization representing carpet manufacturers - Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) - will pay the state of California by June 15, 2021, "$1,175,000 in penalties for its repeated failure from 2013 through 2016 to meet recycling and landfill diversion goals under California’s Carpet Product Stewardship Law," according to a March 30, 2021 CalRecycle news release.

In a March 2021 post, UPSTREAM reflects on recent ups and downs in extended producer responsibility legislation: "EPR for packaging is a foundational policy for a circular economy, and we need to get it firmly established in the United States. The US has been the holdover from the rest of the Global North and increasingly the Global South.