Is Your Recycling Label Still Legal? | Emily Williams

In this episode, Cory Connors reconnects with longtime industry friend Emily Williams to discuss her new role leading How2Recycle. Emily traces her path from chemical engineering through roles at Michelman and TC Transcontinental (now ProAmpac) into a career built around product sustainability, policy, and partnerships. The conversation dives into the chaos surrounding California's SB 343 truth-in-labeling law and the recent injunction affecting it, how How2Recycle is guiding members through the uncertainty, and what's ahead at the organization's September 30th event in San Diego. Along the way, Emily and Cory swap stories about being recognized in public, obsessively sorting recycling bins at airports, and the growing culture of pre-competitive collaboration across the packaging industry.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Emily's path from chemical engineering into packaging sustainability, and her new role at How2Recycle
• The evolution of sustainability from a niche "side room" topic to a central industry focus
• The SB 343 injunction: what it does and doesn't change, and How2Recycle's "hold the line" guidance for members
• California's 60/60 recyclability threshold and the confusion it creates for brands
• How companies are responding differently to SB 343, from full compliance to pausing label rollouts
• The label redesign process: consumer studies, working groups, and industry jargon that doesn't translate to shoppers
• Ongoing research into better consumer messaging around cleaning and emptying packaging
• Contamination in recycling streams, including a look at the "wall of shame" at recovery facilities
• The role of trust, transparency, and credibility in keeping recycling systems functional
• Nonprofit advocacy vs. lobbying: how How2Recycle can influence policy within legal limits
• A sneak peek at the September 30th How2Recycle event in San Diego, including a cross-association panel on changing laws like SB 343
• The rise of pre-competitive collaboration as an industry norm
• How2Recycle's expanded member engagement efforts, including booths at Advance and the Summit and high-attendance member town halls

Resources Mentioned:

• How2Recycle
• Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC) events: Advance and the Summit
• California SB 343 (Truth in Labeling law)
• Circular Action Alliance (Oregon)
• Ameripen and the PAC Act
• FPA's Fall Flex Forward meeting
• FPI's Spring meetingSCS Global

Contact:

Listeners interested in How2Recycle's labeling program, upcoming events, or member resources can connect with Emily Williams and the How2Recycle team at their September 30th event in San Diego, or at upcoming SPC events including Advance and the Summit this fall.

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This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.

Transcript

0:06

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors, presented by Atlantic Packaging. I'm your host, Cory Connors. In today's episode, I connected with the Executive Director of How to Recycle, Emily Williams. We talked about everything from lawsuits and policy changes that are affecting labels on packaging to what to expect at their upcoming event this September 30th in San Diego. I'd also like to thank 3M and SpecRight and Forest Packaging for being our sponsors. Welcome, Emily Williams. I'm so excited to have you on again, my friend. Uh congratulations on your new role at the how to recycle leadership. Uh can you tell us about uh your background a little bit? Because the last time we had you on, you're on a different, different role. Yeah, it's been a few years. I was with TC Transcontinental Packaging when we last spoke, and now they're a part of ProMPAC as those industries change. So lots of changes happened. Um, so how did I come to how to recycle? That's a good question. my background by education is I'm a chemical engineer. I've got a bachelor's and master's degree in chemical engineering. Started out in RD, moved into the packaging industry and I want to say 2015. So a little over a decade of packaging industry experience. Either on the product development engineer side of things or on like the global marketing strategy side of things, specifically for sustainability. I used to work for Michaelman, which is a coding supplier into the packaging space, was there for around six years. And then I went to TC Transcontinental, which was a converter for flexibles. And I was there for around five years. I was in a sustainability specific role in their RD team while I was there. Um, my background in the sustainability space is really, I feel like I've been with it. Since some of the early days of it, back when they they would take the sustainability weirdos and kind of stick us in a side room at an event. Like, we're gonna go let these people talk to each other for a few hours because they're really loud, but they're kind of weird and we don't we don't wanna make this a whole thing. And right. Yeah, well, you know, some of us are it's fine. It's there's there's there's truth in all of that. and now to see it evolve to the it's the whole event. Right. It's table stakes. It's all anybody talks about anymore. Events are entirely built around it. So it's been a wild evolution to be a part of and to feel like you were, you know, I was on the ground floor of it is pretty cool. Um and coming into how to recycle my my core competencies I've always described are product sustainability, policy, and partnerships. And those are the things that this group seems to need. So it's it's been a really good fit, kind of like a freakishly good fit. It almost feels like This is the job I was setting myself up for over the last decade in a way. Um, I'm really enjoying it. I really enjoy the team. I really enjoy the new way I get to talk to my industry peers in this role is so cool. Conversations that I would have sold a kidney to have back when I was in industry are now just like people I just get to go talk to. And it's just, it's super cool. And they're seeking you out because of your leadership role, which is it's a nice change, I bet. Well, so used to seeing you work the booth at the SPC events, and now it's gonna be great to see you on stage and taking a leadership role and and t um maybe leading uh all of the talks and everything. I I don't know how involved you'll be with that. Maybe that's you and Paul, maybe that's uh uh you and Olga. I d I don't know how that's gonna work, but I'm excited to see that in at the event coming up soon. So if you're listening, this is this event hasn't happened yet and you can you can make it. It's um it's when is it this um September? Yeah, the thirtieth of September it's the there's two days of an SPC event in San Diego and then your event is the how to recycle event on the thirtieth. So that's gonna be great. Yeah, you should I totally agree. You should go to the whole thing. A lot of people uh only do a day or two, and I think you you miss a lot if you don't experience the whole thing. So how how has that been um do you go now to events and you're like walking through and not working out at a booth thinking, this is really cool, I can kind of have more freedom. You know, yes and no. So it's interesting because you know, I used to having the booth was like here's your home base, right? And you you could work from there and people would come to you. And now I go to events when I'm attending other events that aren't ours, because we do still in often have a booth that I can be available to answer questions at at our own events. And we'll have that also at uh the advanced and the summit this fall. Um but now when I go to other events, the the tricky part now in being such an openly public facing role. and and being recognizable, the glasses and the headbands have done it to myself. Um, is that I c I can't move like five feet without somebody stopping me to talk. So like in on the one hand, I'm not trapped in a booth anymore, but in the other hand, people find me. yeah, you can't be uh incognito. Right. Yeah, yeah. be surprised by the number of bathroom conversations I have had. I would not be surprised because I have the same thing. Oh, are you the podcast guy? Yeah, I get that all the time. And I'm like. I actually I had the most incredible member experience. I have to tell you about this. I was on vacation over the Fourth of July weekend with my mom. We were in New York City. And so we went to the Met to go see some of the new exhibits there. And also because it was crazy hot outside. So we were trying to hide indoors. And we had just come out of the ticket line and this woman comes up to me and she was so excited to come up to me and she was like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But are you Emily Williams? I was like. Yes. She works for Sinoco. And she was like, I just recognized you from the town halls and you must be on vacation. I don't want to bother you, but it's so nice to meet you in person. It was so lovely. Um and just yeah, I mean, at the Met on vacation, a member found me. So right? It was super cool. I it almost felt like she was meeting a celebrity, which might just be meeting feeding my ego, but it was, yeah, it was a wonderful experience. You are a packaging superstar. I'm I'm proud of you and and what you've accomplished in your short career already and you've got a very long career in front of you, uh, with more greatness. So I I can't wait to see what you accomplish in the future. So yeah. When I heard about you being um selected, if you will, for this job, I thought perfect. They couldn't have found a more perfect person. This is awesome. So I was really excited for you. I mean, you and I have been friends for very long time and uh and it's it's it's fun to see your friends be successful and uh get get into lines career lines and career paths that really make sense for them. So good for you and congrats again. Well, thank you for that. That's very flattering. Yeah. So when you took over the role, you jumped right into a very tumultuous time in in in packaging. So you have been juggling since day one. Um recycling and recycling policy is changing very quickly. Uh what kinds of changes are you seeing that are bad news and what kind of changes are you seeing that are good good news? Well, for our audience, I feel like we have to specify that you and I are having this conversation the week after the SB three forty-three injunction happened. Um, so in terms of like, well, what's going on? What's new? It's like, nothing, nothing major, small stuff. so obviously we have to talk about that. Cause if we don't, it's kind of like there being an elephant in the corner with a sign saying, Address me on it, and we just choose to ignore it. So we have to We have to mention that. I mean, so it is a tumultuous time. There's a lot of activity happening. We've obviously got some very significant pieces of legislation that are in play and being litigated against. And that really adds confusion for our membership. we made the moves we needed to make over a year ago to redesign our labels to be compliant with California. Members have done an incredible job switching over to the new labels to be compliant on the timeline they need to be. And then the injunction happens. And it creates a lot of additional confusion. We put out a statement on the injunction. It's very simple. It's very clear. It's that we are obviously following it, reading the details, speaking to various industry peers and experts, some of whom are involved in the lawsuit, to get thoughts on things. And that the important things to know is it's still an act of law. Um, right? It's not like the law was struck down. We've heard confusion to that effect. Um, and the injunction to our knowledge doesn't apply to anyone except for those that are on the plaintiff's list. So it's not everyone in industry from what we know. So that puts us in a tricky place. You know, can we provide flexibility to those that it does apply to? Should we? Is the safest, lowest risk pathway. And often we tend to be conservative for good reason, um, risk protection reasons, right? For our membership, is the safest pathway to maintain. Follow through on compliance. We've seen articles to that effect put out by law firms. So, you know, every company has to decide how to manage the risk for themselves ultimately, especially if you're a plaintiff and the injunction applies to you. That's that those are choices that you have to make. But for us, currently we are not changing anything about the labels, anything about, you know, things that might have been changed due to SB 343 in terms of upgrades, downgrades, et cetera. Everything is kind of hold, hold the line. is what we're really doing right now. So yeah, that's that's been fun to follow in. I the absolute firestorm that that was for forty eight hours. Cause we got we got emails into the system from members within like two hours of the injunction news being public. I mean it was it was immediate. So Because it affects so many kinds of packaging. So to step back a little bit just for the audience, I should have prefaced the this question with that. Um the SB 343 is the California's truth in labeling uh law that they've got implemented. And this is a very basic version of that, but basically it says you can't use recycled logos on packaging um anymore uh if they're not curbside recyclable. by a certain percentage of California consumers. I believe that's sixty percent. Is that ac yep. have access and then 60% of things have to be sorted successfully. And it's it's the 60-60 is a big ask and it's hard. And it it, you know, are there's lots of questions about, well, if something is 55%, are we just not recycling it anymore? what does that mean? What does this mean as far as the California EPR law goes, where you have these rates and dates that you have to meet by certain time frames, but now I can't say that something's recyclable. to get it to those rates and dates. I mean it's it's a lot of industry confusion um and questions and concern has come out of it. So I think uh that's exactly right. I think most of the people listening to this podcast are in the industry, of course. possibly consumers, but well, we're all consumers, but they're they're mostly uh worried about how this will affect them as as a as a consumer brand, as a consumer facing brand. can you give your pro tips on what uh company ABC should be doing with their packaging? Labeling. Wow, that's that's a great question. It's kind of a loaded question because ultimately at the end of the day, right? Yeah, it's very loaded. You knew that going in. Um, at the end of the day, every organization has to manage their risk on their own. We have had every response you could possibly imagine to SB343 in our system. We have major CPGs and retailers who are full steam ahead. They're switching to the pro labels, they're labeling everything they possibly can. They're not. They're not backing off in any way. Um, and all the way down to we've had some organizations say, I'm just not gonna label anything until this gets sorted out, and then everything in the in-between. Um, so it really is an individual organization's choice. We obviously stand by the labels that we have. We design them to be compliant with the law. That's what we do as an organization. We comply with laws at how to recycle. Um, and right, yeah. So solid start, good plan. Yeah. So we design them to be compliant with the law. We believe that they are compliant with the law and we stand by them and we stand by with uh I mean it's our mission is to educate consumers on what to do with their materials. So, you know, it's core to who we are that we think labels should be on packaging. Yeah. Oh, exactly. And the consumer needs it to to know what to do. I mean, your your organization is literally called how to recycle. And I think that's a it's just so obvious. Like, well, this is how you do it. You scan the code or you you look at the very simple instructions on the appropriate tags. So I think the redesign your team did is incredible. And I think it was uh big piece of work that they did. It predates me, but it was a a massive undertaking. I know that there was, I believe, a working group on the SPC side. There was consumer studies that were done. I mean, we don't do any kind of changes without going through that full process where membership is involved, consumer studies are completed. It's not like we make those types of changes in a vacuum. Right. I th and I I think that's what was so impressive is you had so many people involved and and Brandy and her team, you know, designed it and uh just got the input of I think probably thousands of people really in the long in the whole scope of it. always include thousands. So Yeah. Yeah. Because that's important. I think they had a lot of feedback that surprised them. I spoke with Brandy and about it and she said, Well, yeah, we were kind of surprised by this part and but we we ran with it because this is what people want. They wanna they don't un they don't understand what this logo means or they don't like how this looks. Uh so but you adjusted it. Yeah, consumer studies are so interesting. We get as as industry people, we get really attached to like this is the industry speak we use to describe a thing package type format, whatever it is, to each other. And then you go and you put that on a label and the consumer's like, I have no idea what that is. What does this mean? Right. So and we so we run into that all the time. We're like, maybe, maybe that's not the word that we should be using. What word should we use? So and we have more consumer studies that were working on doing to that effect right now on the SPC side uh regarding food residue on packaging and how to communicate effectively to consumers that they need to clean it or empty it or something. What is the magic word that makes sense to them? Um because it's probably not necessarily what we've been using. So Yeah, and how many people are gonna s wash out MM's bag, you know, things like that. You just you think about it like that's probably not gonna happen. So let's uh you know, let's give them a goal they can attain. Yeah, like that. In everyday use of packaging. I I travel a lot like you do, and I every once in a while bef while I'm boarding, there's always garbage cans there, right? And I'm I'm just as a packaging nerd, I'm looking at them and I'm watching them I do the same thing. Yeah. We're so fun at parties. the people are yeah. The the people are are putting non-recyclables into the into the recycle bin or they're putting recyclables into the trash. It's I just wanna say, wait, stop. And I can't do that. Not not in public. in the airport who's taking like my iced coffee cup and I've drunk all the coffee and I take the lid off and I dump in the i in the trash and then I yeah, that so I'm people must watch me at the bins like, what is this crazy lady doing? Yeah. it. But that's what you know, it's the right thing to do. So we need I guess we can lead by example. So still my kids ask, Is this recyclable? What do I do with this, Dad? You know, which bet you know friends pretty schooled on that. I've been the fun person at parties who will like go through the two bins kind of thing and be like, you can't put this in the recycling bin and why is this in the trash? And then I'll yell at everyone at the party, which has in the long term resulted in friends just sending me text messages to ask, hey, is this thing recyclable? So progress. I'll take it. that's I'll take that too. And I I I love that. I love to be a part of the solution, I feel like, because the cleaner the waste streams are the the better value they'll have. Um, you know, I'm uh I've I've heard from Circular Action Alliance in Oregon that about twenty percent of what gets put into the blue bins in Oregon is actually trash and shouldn't be in there. I thought I thought that number was actually pretty low. I thought it would have been higher. is I thought you were going with a different direction with that, but no, that's yeah, twenty percent is okay. And if you ever get to tour like a recovery facility or a paper mill, some of them will have like a wall of shame of stuff that's come in in bales. It's crazy. Bowling balls, an engine block. Like how this end up in a paper bale. It's wild. Um, and I what I'm learning about and kind of the seedy side of things is sometimes that's intentional because they want it they want the they get p they get paid by the weight. So ugh but let's let's hope that stuff, you know, and I think if there's big fines if if that happens and they find out what who it was and, you know, how they did it. So I did see one of those little kid pools once, the big plastic ones in a bin, uh in a bale, I thought, hm. I don't know if that's recyclable, but maybe. Yeah. Tough. Tough for consumers and tough for people like us in the industry trying to figure it out on a macro level. So I I think it's important. Mm-hmm. see stuff like that, right? Like that's a big, big thing for the recycling system is credibility and trust and transparency. And we even have that with our own members of making sure that we're being transparent about a change we made and why we did it and what our sources of data are and answering questions and things. That it a lot of it comes down to the system works when there's credibility and there's trust and there's transparency. That's it. You have to show that it's worth the time spent or people will just stop doing it. And I think I think recycling has a a better public opinion than than a lot of people think. In my in my opinion. I think that I mean, we're we're an optimistic organization by nature, but we have a lot of hope and a lot of optimism for the future of recycling. I mean, you think about you go back to policy stuff and you think about EPR systems and having EPR laws come online and how those are supposed to work with taking the money the producers pay in to improve the actual infrastructure and and it takes a while to see the benefits from those. Like these things don't happen overnight. But the fact that they're happening at all is great. Um And it's the kind of stuff that we need to happen. So we have a lot of optimism and hope for the future of recycling in this country. Me too, my friend. That's why it's so exciting to go to your events and I can't wait to for your event September thirtieth in San Diego. Can you tell us a little bit of sneak peek? Maybe things that uh haven't been publicly noted yet, or is that uh too risque? sorts of good stuff coming up in that event. I'm really excited. Um, I've got I've I've got a little bit of a of a a personal passion for like logistics and planning. So I I love that part of of coming up with content and trying to think about what does the membership really want to hear. So there's a bunch of things I'm really excited about that range from panels to some short little TED talks that, you know, I've got a a team member working on something that membership has been directly asking for. with a a one-page substantiation document that helps members have a starting point for how do you substantiate, you know, the claim that the tile, the claim that you're using, how is that substantiated through our methodology? And she's gonna talk about that. Um, in some of the really nitty-gritty stuff related to what we've been talking about today, I've got a panel that I'm gonna moderate with three other leaders of other trade associations where we're gonna get really into the detail about, okay, you have a law, SB 343, And your organization is unhappy with it or whatever, and you want it to be changed, how do you go about doing that? we've gotten so many questions from membership on SB343. And it's interesting, one of the ones we get most often is how are you, like pointing directly at how to recycle or green blue, how are you gonna fix SB343? Exactly like that, which is a fascinating question for an organization like us to get because we're a nonprofit or 501c3, and there's strict rules around how much, it's really how little, a nonprofit can lobby. We can advocate, but we can't lobby. And those are two different activities, but there's other organizations that can lobby. And when something is a law, there's a few particular pathways that you can take to impart change on an existing law. And those other trade groups that can lobby have chosen one or multiple Of those pathways and are actively working down them to impart change or maybe try to get some some federal perspective with the PAC Act that Ameripen's working on, um, the lawsuit, uh, making sure that their own materials still meet the requirements of the law and the lobbying efforts and the work that that takes. And so we're gonna have this panel where we really get into that kind of detail of how that works and who does what. In how you can impart change. And it kind of feels like we're taking what's been like a hallway quiet conversation where people are kind of uncomfortable talking about that loudly and putting it on the main stage and saying, no, we're gonna address this straight up and talk about these are the pathways to change a law like this. And this is what these other trade associations are doing in spaces that how to recycle can't participate because we don't lobby. But there's um interaction points where we can help advocate and provide tools into that. So I'm really excited for that panel. I think it's a really important topic. I think our members really need to hear that so openly. Um, because it starts to uh help things be more transparent, goes back to transparency and clarity in how do these systems even work when something like this happens. That's exciting. Wow. This I can't I can't wait for this panel. Well done. Uh it and I think it's I think it's humble that you're you're willing to share the stage with the other groups and say, because we're all in this together and I think you know, you're not you're not looking for the spotlight. You're not looking for, hey, look at us, we're doing great. Um, but look look at us as a a full group in the industry and Look at how much we can accomplish together and and maybe here's here here's some struggles. Yeah. really important. I mean, it goes back to early conversations. We were joking about being the weirdos in a room on the side and now it's the whole event, right? And it's it's table stakes now. And one of the big things that I've watched shift over the last 10 plus years is that concept of pre-competitive collaboration, right? It used to be 10 plus years ago, if someone was going after a sustainability thing, it was a nice little marketing ploy. Maybe it could be a competitive advantage because your your competitors didn't have it. Um, and now it's it's a realization that we need whole systemic change and no one can do that in a silo. You're not going to be able to accomplish that as individual company A for competitive advantage. The only way we all get there is if we do it together as a group. And honestly, the work that our types of organizations do are the same. It's an ecosystem of organizations that work together and provide data and do studies and fill different needs and gaps in the systems um in order to get to the same angle. Yeah. That's it. The the first time I heard that phrase pre pre pre competition collaboration uh was at an S P C or a green blue event. And I I'll never forget it because I thought, Yes, that's the solution. We need to work together before it goes into the market and and scale up and and I think that's what makes it feasible. So that's exciting to see. Agreed. Well, last year uh was a was a big hit. I know a lot of positive feedback about uh the um how to recycle members being able to get time with you and your team kind of kind of independently. Are you gonna do that again this year? Yeah, so we're ramping up efforts on all fronts to give membership the opportunity to actually speak to a person and ask us questions directly. This includes in-person events. So if you go the whole week, which you should, to advance in the summit, we're gonna have booths in our little exhibit space for all of how to recycle. We're gonna have a booth with a couple of team members from our member services team. We're gonna have a booth with a couple of team members from our platform team. The platform team is the group that processes all the brand requests. And then we're gonna have a couple of us, myself and another um team member on the RD side to answer the more technical questions. So we'll have you covered from every basis. We will be at these booths all three days in all of the breaks. We'll be around at the events. Come find us. I'm assuming it says staff on our badge somewhere. I'm hard to miss. Um, assuming you can see me above the crowd, I am hard to miss. I'll just hide, I'll hide behind a tall person if I'm really desperate for a moment alone. But but yeah, we'll be there. And then we also have the town halls that we've started doing. We've done two, but the first one was my second day of employment. Um, and then the second one we did was actually the Tuesday, the week of July 4th. I have to tell you, Cory, the attendance was bananas for uh a town hall that's not recorded. So you have to be there because these are unrecorded conversations and they're they're half the time is dedicated to giving members the ability to ask questions in the chat that we address either verbally or in the chat. and then share some information and do polls and give them a flavor of what's coming up and what we're working on and what we're thinking about. you know, whenever you create a webinar and you have a bunch of people register and then some percentage of that shows up, we had a 74% attendance rate the week of July 4th in that town hall. That is for people who work in the space of doing that kind of thing, that is bananas. So yeah, so members clearly want this. They want this opportunity to connect with us. To hear from us to be able to ask questions, and we're gonna continue to try and find ways to give them that opportunity. I think it shows how valuable your your organization is and has become to our industry because it's just it's in integrated into the system now. People are say people are using it and they they want to use it. They need it. Um for so many reasons. Compliance and other uh, you know, rules and laws. But I think it's uh well, I'm a little biased and I know you are too, but we we really like it. So uh anyways. hope to see you all in San Diego, uh, September thirtieth uh this year, two thousand twenty six. Um anything else you'd like to say before we close the show here? We covered a lot of ground. So I think, yeah, I think we kind of went all over the place, didn't we? But in a good way. No, I'm excited to see people at Advance and the summit. And there's gonna be I'm gonna be at some other events um as well. I'll be at FPA's Fall Flex Forward meeting on a panel in there, so you can catch me there next spring. I've already committed to FPI's spring meeting um to to speak to them and to meet with their members. So and I'm sure there will be more to come. So there's there will be more places and opportunities to find me as well if you're if you for some terrible tragic reason cannot come to advance in the summit in the fall. you'll forgive them if they can't make it. Yeah. you're so you're so kind. Well thank you, Emily. I I appreciate your wisdom and your leadership in this industry. Thank you. It's always a pleasure.