Sustainable Packaging
Industry Experts discuss all the new materials and ways that packaging can be more sustainable and how we can do our parts to help recycle and reuse. Sustainable Packaging is and will continue to affect us all in our daily lives. We have lots of fun and get down to the real data of what's working to help our planet!
Sustainable Packaging
How Did EPR start? CEO and Founder Scott Cassel (Product Stewardship Institute)
What is the origin of Extended Producer Responsibility?
How does the PSI help companies like yours?
What can you do to prepare for EPR?
https://productstewardship.us/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-cassel-663a673/
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Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is Scott Cassell, the CEO and founder of the Product Institute. How are you, Scott?
Scott Cassel:I'm doing great. Nice to be here.
Cory Connors:Thank you for making time. This is a topic that I'm very interested in. And I know a lot of our listeners are very interested in, but before we get to what you do and your company now, let's talk about your background. How did you get into this role today?
Scott Cassel:Wow. well, it was over 40 years ago. so basically I studied, geology and environmental science. and after I got my first job as a nonprofit environmental, statewide environmental group in Philadelphia, I was running webinars and there were government officials there. They were business people there. They were environmental people there. And they all made sense to me, around the issue. And I said, How can I bring these people together? How do you solve problems? Because they all seem to make sense. And so that's where I learned about consensus building or facilitation and mediation. And I heard about the first conference in the United States on environmental dispute resolution. And, got permission to go back in 1983, 84 ish, and I learned about, Professor Larry Susskind from MIT, and, he was one of the founders of the field of doing it in a different way, where governments, typically have their public hearings where people come, they Bye. Bye. Bye. They give their presentation or in the legislative arena, they give their testimony and then there's a response and then there's sometimes written responses. And this was wholly different bringing stakeholders together. And so I went to, to study, consensus building up at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. put that together with the science. And so our organization is designed to do research. We do pilot projects. we do a lot of the technical consulting, but we also bring the stakeholders together. And that's really our unique niche is to, understand that every stakeholder. Has a piece of the puzzle that no other stakeholder has and it really needs to be brought in and everyone then gets bought into the solution if they, if their interests and their ideas are melded with the solution. And I've seen that firsthand and felt it. And that's what really drives me to do what I do.
Cory Connors:And we were talking just before the podcast about, you were just on a webinar where you were talking to, companies that are potentially, involved with extended producer responsibility. so is that one of the main jobs that you do is you, kind of counsel people on how to handle EPR?
Scott Cassel:Some ways, yes, but what we've been doing over the past 23 years is like to say it's pioneering this concept of extended producer responsibility in the United States. It's not a concept that we came up with. Thomas Lindquist, a Swedish professor, came up with it in the, 1990s. and in Europe, a German, packaging, ordinance came out first in the early 90s, was the first of these laws. So, what it is where the producers are, required to take responsibility for their products or packaging throughout the life cycle, upstream and downstream. and so what our organization did, was basically bring this concept to the U. S., working with, thousands of people now, but it started as state and local government officials. they were the ones that said, financially and through management, we, managing these programs, having to deal with the waste and such shortage on funding, they were just strapped, in, how to handle it. and I, at the time, was the director of waste policy for Massachusetts, the liaison with the governor's office, the seven departments, in our different agencies, including the Department of Environmental Protection. And I. I felt that firsthand with my colleagues and in the environmental agency that we had a lot of money. and we did enforce and we did as much as we could. But at one point in the 90s, the recycling rate leveled off. And that's where, I was looking for another solution. I heard a British Columbia ministry official, Ron Dreger, speak about EPR at a conference, and that's where I heard the concept, and I came back and I said, hey, this is something that I'd like to bring to the United States. I'd like to do it, start here in Massachusetts. My boss at the time was Gina McCarthy, who went on to be the EPA administrator. She helped with, with others in our state to, give some seed money, University of Massachusetts gave us a place to be for four years, and and that's where we started it out, at that time, and we've been at it for 23 years now.
Cory Connors:That's incredible. Well done. Thank you for doing that. I think it's going to be, well, it is a successful program so far.
Scott Cassel:Yeah, so I can go back to, what you mentioned about Oregon, and today was a webinar series that the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality Has contracted us to do, we do some, consulting, like this for-profits, nonprofits, and government. And, DEQ has four webinars that they're doing. This one was on food service packaging and there's other types of, of packaging under their extended producer responsibility law that covers, the broad packaging paper, printed paper, and. and food service where, and, it goes through, they laid out what some of the requirements are. And then at the same time, we had someone speak from a circular action alliance, which is called the producer responsibility organization, which is the producers pay into this P. R. O. And. They're largely responsible for bringing these, these, companies, small, medium, large, to bring them into compliance, and with the state and working together. So this was a joint initiative with PSI, with, our organization, Product Stewardship Institute, DEQ from the state, and also Circular Action Alliance.
Cory Connors:That's great. Yes. I've seen the Circular Action Alliance at the Almost every event I've been to in the packaging space, recently, and, their booth is always very busy. I think people are very concerned or confused or both about, who's a producer and who's responsible. And, so how are they getting the word out? Is this webinar an example of the efforts being made?
Scott Cassel:Yeah, it is. there's a, an interest, excuse me, an interest that the state and the producer or CAA share, which is to get the producers registered, if they are indeed, captured under the law. So then they need to know, am I captured? It's the first question. Hey, if you're captured. Yeah. And many companies know that the large companies often have people internally medium companies and small less so so that they're, they need that technical support, we do that to an extent, and there's compliance consulting organizations that do this as well. But, the to have the, the state. Once these producers to be in compliance. They don't want to go after. these companies, they don't want to enforce, against them. This is not what governments really want to do. They'd much rather, give the education, help with the compliance. and have that attitude that, the vast majority of companies will comply if they need to comply. and of course the PRO, CAA, they do a stewardship plan, a program plan that they did already. once to the, the DEQ, they submit it. It's basically the architectural plan. It's like, how are they going to implement, this program? There's many details in it. They're in the process of getting that approved, from the state. And of course, they have interest, in getting all these producers. So, it's trying to get the word out with webinars like this, with going to conferences, the more people that know about it, The more people can point and say, Hey, go to CAA or, that's what they're there for. We do have, it's actually info at circularaction. org. So that's the, info at circularaction. org. And, they're not giving legal advice. they'll tell, the producers, Hey, go to your legal advisors. But, up until, that point, they're going to give good advice on whether or not a company is under this regulation.
Cory Connors:Yes. And can you give us some broad, Points about who should be concerned about this. I've heard there's a primer as far as, if you're not selling more than 2 million dollars of product. you're, it's not something you need to worry about yet. where, what are some general guidelines that you can share with the audience?
Scott Cassel:Yeah, there is, there are small producer exemptions. as you mentioned, it's either To under 2 million dollars, but that's worldwide revenue. so it's, not just packaging sold in Oregon, but it's your, your revenue from, from your sales from your business globally. it could also be somewhere up to 5 million, it's sometimes in tons sold, one, one, ton or, million, sorry, million tons or 2 million tons or something like that. So, there are some exemptions for small companies, and there are definitions for those and if it's not clear in the statute, then there's, the states do rulemaking or regulations, that's second. And, the third way that, the law is clarified is also in a stewardship plan that is submitted by the PRO to the state. And once the state approves it, then it also becomes law. So there's certain aspects that are in there. The stewardship plan, it gives the producers more flexibility and offering something based on, what they would like to see themselves be held to. And so each state is different. some states are more. have it more regulatory or do regulations. Some just want it all in the statute. So it's a little different per state, but, for the vast majority, here we have extended producer responsibility in the United States. There's 5 packaging laws, but it's not only on packaging. There's 139, EPR laws passed in the United States on 19 products, including packaging, in 33 states. So, while the attention now is on the five states that have EPR laws for packaging, there's another dozen states that are, that have packaging bills. you have Illinois and Maryland have passed pre EPR needs assessments. Needs assessment is like a gap analysis on a recycling system, like, hey, what is the state recycling system look like? where do the needs, where are the infrastructure shortcomings, how much funding is needed, in this area? How do we. have it more equitable system. How do we, have more convenience for consumers? How do we collect more materials? So, it's looking at it, making it more robust. It's the vision for the system, the cost of that. And each of the states, even the five, they'll, each of them are doing needs assessments as part of their law. Illinois and Maryland are doing it first, and then they'll still have to go back and pass a law. And then there's another dozen others that have, Bills that are we're active in 2023 and 2024. And, those are, and that's just packaging and then there's all the other products like electronics batteries is very hot because of the lithium ion issues, the fires deaths. just millions, hundreds of millions of dollars of damage. We have mattresses, we have carpet, pharmaceuticals, medical sharps. it's the entire waste stream on it. And, this has become a very familiar now in the United States. And when we started out in 2000, nobody knew what even product stewardship was. so, and it's not only me, it's not only PSI, but we, we were there. Working in the trenches, with others in the beginning, and it's really gratifying, to see that, like, the big problem that we're trying to address is finally being recognized. And that's good to see.
Cory Connors:well said. This is, it's become, critical that we take action here. And, do you feel like, This is going to have a huge positive impact. I know you're working really hard. Is, are you seeing changes being made that are positive?
Scott Cassel:Seeing huge changes being made. of course, this is a huge problem and it feeds into another huge problem of climate change. So, the EPA, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, came out with a study a number of years ago, 29 percent of greenhouse gases are attributed to the life cycle of consumer products from the manufacturing, the transportation, the disposal, whatever it is. So, it is a climate change strategy. I think if there's 1 thing that people don't know that everyone's a lot of states are focused on climate change. I'd like them to know that. Dealing with waste. is a major climate change strategy. if you recycle, if you reuse, if you source reduce, you don't need to make that product again. Or if it's recycled, you don't need to mine that material again. Now, not in every single case is it, the life cycle assessment is going to show that it has positive environmental benefits. advantages to it, but in the vast majority it will. And even the fact that I'm talking about these lifecycle assessments as one of the tools in our webinar today, Oregon is one of the states that has made that, to the forefront, and it's a consideration in the fees, how much money that the producers will have to pay for the packaging, and products that they put under the mar in the marketplace.
Cory Connors:It's nice to see these changes coming. Like you, I've been studying this for a long time, and I've been anticipating these exciting changes. But you've recently written a book. I'd love to talk about that. Can you tell us what that's about? What's it called? Where do we get it? All that stuff.
Scott Cassel:Yeah, so it's called Products, the Perspectives on Product Stewardship, Navigating an Extended Producer Responsibility Path to a Circular Economy. And it can be gotten on Amazon, and, it can be gotten from, by sending an email to me, I can send information, scott at productstewardship. us. our organization is, the product stewardship. us, is our, internet. So you can get our website linked that way. And so the book is, I wrote it over four years. and, I, in general, it's about the emergence of the EPR movement in the United States, also in Europe and Canada as well. And I have You know, great sources there actually friends and colleagues. That's the one thing I love about this business is that many people care about the environment and they care about people and you know we work together and it's been really enjoyable. So it's about the emergence and I also discuss, it's a it's partly of. My own story about, how I went across the country and, came to environment, very briefly, quickly how I, came to loving the environment, going to the Grand Canyon and say, how does a structure like this get built? So I went and studied geology. Then I learned about environmental stuff by going to California. And I think it's, I, it's my, my passion was developed. Everyone needs a passion and to follow that passion. And this is, this is mine, but I make this, a book about how EPR developed and give a lot of kudos to those who came before me, Alan Hershkowitz from the Natural Resources Defense Council working Thanks In the late 1990s on the first EPR bill, at least at the federal level, if not ever in the United States on packaging working so hard there. but like, I think about it as. It was a seed that just dropped on pavement because there wasn't the fertile fertilizer yet. And so that's what we did as an organization is to talk about what is product stewardship. What is EPR? Why is it important? but Alan. and many others, Thomas Lindquist, as I mentioned, he coined the term. Joachim Koden from, Europe, the Extended Producer Responsibility Alliance. I have Ron Dredger from the British Columbian Ministry, who is the person who I just spoke with him today, because he's going to be on our annual meeting, with Duncan Barry, another, those two from Canada were, they are seminal people building. The foundation so I couldn't have done or PSI could not have done what we did without all those that came before and even in the environmental movement. So it's a quick read. I think it's an easy read. It's not, it's got a lot of information. It goes through how we develop our. EPR laws, they're all based on 16 different elements, basic elements, like what's the definition of a producer, what are the covered materials that are there? Every single law, whether it's packaging or paint or pharmaceuticals has the same 16 elements. And I go through it. And has three case studies, packaging, paint, and batteries at the end, and goes through some of the techniques that we use, that I use on bringing the stakeholders together.
Cory Connors:Sounds like you're doing great work, and so is your team. In Oregon, where I live, Like you talked about, we've been recycling for a long time, the 1st to have a bottle bill. And it just, it makes sense that we're 1 of the 1st states to have an EPR law. or do you call it an EPR law? Or do you call it an EPR system? Or how does that, what do you refer to it as?
Scott Cassel:Yeah, it's an EPR law that puts in place a EPR program. So the program plan. So, when it turns into implementation, it's the program that's being implemented, but is law. And the reason that I think it's important, and I'm glad you brought it up. Is because I think of EPR as a network of accountability. it's so right, that it's not just the producer responsibility, even though we say extended producer responsibility, primarily producers. Yes, they put the packaging and products onto the marketplace. So they have a primary responsibility. But there are the manufacturers that would sell to the brand owner. There are the local governments where their collection points and they have a nexus directly with the consumers and the people who are living in the town, you have the state government that has oversight and enforcement capabilities. You have the retailers who sell these products. You have environmental groups that really look out for. the public interest here, and so forth. So you have all these different the collectors, the recyclers, the waste management industry, all of them, and they're all spelled out. And you need to have a law that brings them all together. And that needs to be negotiated. And this is a new type of law here. It's new, the old type of laws were commanded control laws from the, 1980s, where you have, the stack, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Superfund, cleaning up the sites.
Cory Connors:This
Scott Cassel:is a wholly different thing. It's a whole paradigm shift. And that's why we need to leave that old mindset, put it away. And we need to give more responsibility to the producers. And it's also, it has to build trust because this is so different. Like the local governments don't want to go. Oh here take this from us and god bless you and that's it No, yeah, good luck get the phone calls So there needs to be trust between all of those different players. That's why they need to talk together That's why i'm a proponent Psi is a proponent of getting them together before the legislature It's better to go to the legislator and say, you know a legislator sponsor this legislation You The, all these groups are on board, which is what we did with the paint industry. But right now it's much harder on the packaging because there's so many different representatives.
Cory Connors:And it's my understanding that the laws are different in every state so far. Is it possible that someday there will be a national law that will supersede all of those and make it pretty simple?
Scott Cassel:Oh, nothing simple. You know that. But It'll never
Cory Connors:be easy.
Scott Cassel:First, I have to say, I, I hear often the, the complaints from the industry side, like, Oh, all the states are doing it so differently. Well, I'll tell you that the reason I mentioned the pain industry is because they're a great example of an industry that came to the table to work with us when we asked them to, and 2000 and. Three, 2002, we did research and, we came with the problem. 10 percent of all paint purchase sun used, it's seven, it's 75 to 85 million gallons goes is leftover. It's like nearly, nearly a billion dollars to manage all of that. Properly. They came to the table and they worked with us on a solution. And there's a heart there harmonized laws in, 12 states and Washington, DC in packaging. Which admittedly is much more, it's more complicated, and more players, representing the different industry groups. but we were offered that the industry worked with us for 15 years, and it's only the past three, Maybe four years where industry came to the table, flexible packaging association first, and then some others we're still not there yet, but that's what it takes to get the harmonized laws is particularly for industry to work together among themselves and with governments. And that's one of the things that we try to do is be that nexus to develop that table, because again, their voices are really important, but, I do think. There's an opportunity right now, to work together to get greater consistency. I think the word harmonization people smile at because it means a cookie cutter. That's like, it's tough. but there's greater consistency. We can go through what the key elements are of those 16. where do we want to start with the current laws on the books? How do we bring them forward? Are there additional states? How can we get more of a model together? That is definitely possible if the producers and waste management industry come to the table with the governments. Governments are always interested in doing something like this, and I think it's possible. Federal legislation I think it's possible. It, there hasn't been an EPR law yet on the federal level. we did work on the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act, a number of years ago. it's still there. there was the pharmaceuticals and electronics federal initiatives that we participated in over the years. But, there has to be a willingness from the industry to cover the United States in one way or another. And, I that is a stretch. And that's why the states don't want to wait for the federal. They want to move forward. They want to protect their own. state, but as we know from climate change, we need a national solution, if not a global solution.
Cory Connors:Yes, I feel like that's possible someday. I'm certainly an optimist when it comes to that, but I think it's, there's a feasible outcome here where we all work together and have similar rules for our waste. I'd like to, I'd like to see that embraced at least. So this is very exciting stuff. I will certainly put a link to your book in the show notes and, and the other ways that you suggested, to contact you and your team. Anything else that you wanted to mention before we, reach the end here?
Scott Cassel:just, back to your question of like, what are we seeing? and I think it's important for people to maintain optimism. that we are moving forward. That we're not going to solve it in my lifetime or yours, here in the climate change. This is a long haul and that's why I love to see the, next generation step up. We need to mentor, we need to bring them in. To positions of knowledge and transfer. and, I see the changes that are there, more batteries collected more of these laws mean more products that are being collected and the materials are being reused or recycled, or at least disposed of properly if they need to be fewer toxics into these products. So there's a whole evolution. And I think we need to celebrate. Those wins. and these laws passing are big because it means a whole different way to do it. And I just say persevere, but maintain the optimism and, and don't despair, because it, I've had many people not like what we've done for many years and then turn around and be buddies with us, and that's what it should be. We, we should see this as different interests, the lighting. and we need to find a way for these interests, to manifest in, societal change for the better.
Cory Connors:Very well said, sir, and I think we're going to end on that because that was just articulated very well. So thank you again for your time and your wisdom and for the hard work that you and your team are doing to make this a more sustainable place.
Scott Cassel:Corey, thanks very much for having me.
