By Rachel Miller

Bridgton Recycling Committee Member

When the town of Bridgton voted down Pay Per Bag, many community members rejected the proposal out of concerns for the resulting costs to the individual and in reaction to the mandatory nature of the approach for individuals.

In the meantime, interestingly, the state of Maine has been working steadily towards a whole new model of addressing waste management at the level of the corporation. In fact, Maine was the very first state in the United States to embrace this new approach, called the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for Packaging Law. Since it was passed with bipartisan support in July 2021, four more states have followed suit, and there are over 10 more states that have introduced such a bill, gathering serious momentum throughout the United States. While implementation will still take a number of years to fully roll out, it promises to provide new solutions to the current local and global problem of our copious packaging waste.

Under Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation, manufacturers are held financially responsible for the waste they create and are required to support the collection, disposal, cleanup, and reuse of their products. Maine has eight other laws in place that are based in EPR-driven thinking (batteries, paint, medications, and e-waste, for example), but this latest packaging-specific EPR law will be transformative in a much larger sense, given that packaging is 28% of municipal solid waste in this country, according to the EPA, and given that in 2019 Maine municipalities were spending between?$16 to $17.5 million annually to manage packaging waste, according to Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection.

In the same summer that Maine’s bill was passed, a number of multinational corporations (including Walmart, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestle, Mars, Danone, and Unilever) signed a pledge in support of EPR for packaging: “To solve the packaging waste and pollution crisis a comprehensive circular economy approach is required. We must: eliminate the packaging we don’t need; innovate to ensure all the packaging we do need is reusable, recyclable, or compostable; and circulate all the packaging we use, keeping it in the economy and out of the environment.”

They also agreed that in order to achieve this, there must be mandatory programs “in which all industry players introducing packaging to the market provide funding dedicated to collecting and processing their packaging after its use.”

A number of Canadian provinces and European countries have in place EPR for packaging laws, and steadily bringing in the American market will ensure a full, steady stream of increasingly recyclable packaging materials for companies to reuse and rely on at much greater scale. When faced with real financial ramifications for producing unrecyclable materials, manufacturers will be incentivized to design packaging for maximum reusability and recyclability.

What Maine implements will help lay the groundwork for what other states end up rolling out with their EPR legislation. Maine will have companies (with exemptions for smaller businesses) pay into a fund based on the amount and the recyclability of packaging associated with their products. The fund will be managed by an independent stewardship organization, which will then reimburse municipalities for eligible recycling and waste management costs. Municipalities will receive payments based on the median per-ton cost of two types of packaging: material that is readily recyclable and material that is not readily recyclable. First reimbursements to municipalities are projected to start in 2027.

The funds will also allow for investments in better recycling infrastructure and will help Mainers better understand how to recycle. Citizen education and behavior shifts will have to be part of all this. With the vast resources of multinational corporations behind community education and outreach, hopefully recycling rates like Bridgton’s, at a paltry 20% for many years, will rocket upwards. Corporations helped turn us into a culture of disposability, and now they will be paying to move us out of that mindset.

What might this mean for us specifically? In 2022, the Bridgton transfer station costs for the year came to $638,519. In 2023, the projected annual budget for the Bridgton transfer station rose to a shocking total of $1,000,000 – or over $360,000 higher than last year. That exponential rise is supported by our taxes. If Maine’s formulas for reimbursement were to line up with the models in various Canadian provinces, we could potentially see reimbursement of 80% of the operational costs. Manitoba municipalities see 80% coverage, and Quebec municipalities are compensated between 80% to 100% of operational costs. Although participation will be voluntary for Maine municipalities, given the potential for 80% operations coverage, town participation would be in the interest of every Bridgton taxpayer.

We’ll have a few more years of taxpayers footing the bill for corporate packaging waste until there will be some relief. Corporations for too long have been pointing the finger at the individual and saying it’s solely our responsibility to recycle. Now Maine is pointing its finger at the corporation, and companies will soon have to Pay Per Bag themselves.