Chemical recycling a flash point in New Jersey EPR plan
How to handle chemical recycling is emerging as a key sticking point in packaging recycling legislation in New Jersey, with industry groups pushing for the technology to be part of any law.
Legislators in Trenton, however, appear inclined to put some limits around it, arguing that plastics made from chemical recycling should not count toward measuring recycled content in packaging.
That position is backed by environmental groups, one of whom said at a Jan. 13 legislative hearing that New Jersey's plan "has the potential to be the best in the country."
The debate is playing out as lawmakers in the capitol of Trenton are considering extended producer responsibility legislation for packaging.
It was apparent at the hearing that the EPR legislation faces other hurdles, including differences over a 50 percent source reduction targets for single-use plastic packaging and measures to limit potentially toxic chemicals in packaging.
But the chemical recycling provisions attracted some of the most attention from industry groups.
The Chemistry Council of New Jersey and the EPR Leadership Forum, a group of mostly consumer brands, both told legislators that advanced recycling, as they call chemical recycling, is vital to meeting recycled content targets for packaging that the state has set out in other laws.
"We believe that advanced recycling is going to be what helps us to get to those goals, especially the recycled content goals that you have passed in the past," said Ed Waters, senior director of the Chemistry Council of New Jersey. "We'd like to make sure that … those products or that material should be counted as recycled material."
Similarly, a lobbyist for the EPR Leadership Forum said chemical recycling — a term to describe processes to recycle plastic rather than traditional mechanical technologies — would let New Jersey increase its recycling rates.
"In order to be able to continue to achieve the recycling rates that are needed and demanded by the needs assessment, the ability to utilize advanced recycling would be certainly helpful in that goal," said Sal Anderton, a third-party lobbyist representing the leadership forum, a group of consumer brands including Coca-Cola Co., S.C. Johnson and other packaged goods makers advocating for what they call "optimal" EPR legislation.
In 2022, New Jersey passed a law requiring recycled content in plastic bottles and bags sold in the state.
Environmental groups, on the other hand, listed the limits on chemical recycling as some of the draft legislation's strong points.
"There's a lot in this bill which is exceptional: the 50 percent reduction requirement, not allowing chemical recycling to count as real recycling, the toxics provision, [and] the implementation of eco-modulated fees so local governments get money to deal with their costs," said Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics. "There's an urgent need to get the details of this bill right."
As well, a witness from the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance told lawmakers that the 11 chemical recycling facilities built in the United States are not operating at full capacity and could only handle about 1.3 percent of all U.S. plastic waste, if they were at full capacity.
Brooke Helmick, the alliance's policy director, said chemical recycling pollutes communities around those facilities.
Industry-friendly provisions
The legislation's sponsor, state Sen. Bob Smith, D-Piscataway, said the latest draft includes provisions to address industry concerns. That includes amendments requested by the packaging group Ameripen to support refillable packaging by giving it the lowest EPR fees, as well as wording to create waivers for companies if they cannot eliminate toxic substances.
Smith, who chairs the Senate's Environment and Energy Committee, said the legislation also creates a credit for source reduction of packaging, if companies can document they have done that over the last 10 years.
Details would be developed by an industry-led Producer Responsibility Organization that would implement the bill.
"An amendment to acknowledge companies' efforts to source reduce prior to the effect of the date of the bill has been highly, intensely requested across the industry stakeholders," Smith said.
A 10-year source reduction credit aims to address industry concerns while supporting the bill's overall goal of source reduction of single-use plastic packaging by 50 percent, Smith said.
The bill's 50 percent source reduction target over 10 years for single-use plastic packaging remains controversial, however.
Andrew Hackman, a lobbyist for Ameripen, suggested it's too ambitious, and pointed to a similar effort in the state of Washington, where government officials said they lacked enough data to develop a good source reduction formula.
"There are a number of benchmarks out there that are pointing to 50 percent being too high and infeasible in the time frame," Hackman said.
Waters said the chemistry council is concerned it could be difficult to develop alternative products to meet all the source reduction targets, pointing to what he said were challenges in finding alternatives to polystyrene in some applications.
"We get concerned about putting these deadlines on products when we don't have a crystal ball we don't know when that alternative is going to be available," Waters said. "We have concerns about the 50 percent as being a very lofty goal for reduction of plastic."
Environmental groups, however, took issue with exemptions in the bill that they said are too broadly worded and could let companies evade the legislation's requirements.
They questioned, for example, who would assess a company's claim that it lacked resources to comply with the law and should get a waiver.
Enck said each product should have to meet that 50 percent reduction.
As well, she suggested the latest draft could unintentionally lead to more plastic being used because it measures source reduction by weight, instead of weight and volume.
Marta Young, the zero waste organizer with the group Clean Water Action, said the legislation should include all packaging materials.
"The bill should apply to all packaging, not just plastic," she said. "There are loopholes in the word plastic, with bioplastics and eco-friendly products sometimes containing as much toxics as other materials and can be full of micro and nano particles. Paper and cardboard should also be included."
Toxic provisions
Young also said her group was concerned with exemption language in the bill's toxic chemicals provisions, a point that Enck echoed, calling the bill's standards for granting exemptions "pretty subjective" in some cases.
"When would we want things like PFAS chemicals and vinyl chloride and mercury and lead, in a lot of the packaging touching our food and beverages directly," Enck said.
Industry groups also expressed concerns over the toxics provisions.
Waters, for the chemistry council, said the bill lacks clear definitions of some chemicals, pointing to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
The toxics provisions should be removed from the EPR bill and dealt with in separate legislation, he said.
Smith, however, asked Waters if the chemical industry would be OK if PFAS was removed from the EPR bill but other chemicals were left in.
Waters said the industry would still have concerns, noting PVC being in the toxic chemicals provision. He said PVC is widely used in medical devices.
But Smith said he was concerned about chemicals being in packaging that most people are exposed to.
"We're talking about all 330 million people in this country who are getting packages that are loaded with these toxic chemicals, and they ultimately go into the landfill, where they ultimately go into local streams or water," the lawmaker said. "We're exposing people to it."
Waters said chemical recycling would help address that.
"That's why we need advanced recycling," Waters said. "We can collect all that back up, and we can recycle those plastics that are getting into landfills and waterways."
Smith appeared skeptical of that argument, telling Waters he was "not selling."