While today recycling is paid by consumers and is facilitated by the local government, the reality

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The philosophy of recycling began circulating in the United States since 1970. It all started with an area fundamentalist of the environmental movement, today activists often you think such a theme now stale and boring. Surely there are more exciting and innovative solutions to today's problems but the problem remains of paramount importance .... Birth of the EPR
... It 's the kind of thinking that has made that recycling would remain trapped in a system of 1970 which is expensive and inefficient. The percentages of recycling have increased steadily over time, but not so fast as it increased the consumption, and so the percentage of recycling today even for the goods most suitable for this practice are well below 50%. This statistic comes from a report published by As You Sow Foundation, which is working with several companies, nonprofit organizations and legislators in order to push for the new law Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), a major upgrade to the current recycling system in the United States.
While today recycling is paid by consumers and is facilitated by the local government, the reality is that companies that create and use packaging should be required to collect and manage them. This type of system has had a widespread success in northern Europe. In the United ifah States, was initially proposed by beverage companies (in particular Nestlé Waters and, less publicly by Coca Cola), who wanted to see an increase in the recycling of PET plastic, without the passage of other laws on the containers that require companies to fund deposits of containers in some states. The plan has since broadened to include the food industry, ifah with the idea that more people are involved, the lower the cost for all, and the higher the recycling rates across the board.
While the beverage industry has been called for years for its cans and its bottles, food producers do not, and are therefore less likely to share the new EPR. The beverage companies, in addition to having to respond to critics, like the EPR because it gives them a lower cost using new recycled PET, allowing them to use more recycled content in bottles without increasing their costs. From EPR to PET: Opening New Markets
"We found that the packaging is the biggest part of our environmental footprint, so from a perspective of sustainability, we have an incentive to increase our use of rPET (recycled PET), but we can not because of the limited availability and high costs "says Michael Washburn, Nestlé Waters. For food producers there are fewer incentives and the EPR is seen as an additional and unnecessary expense. "Many large food companies are sitting with our arms folded, waiting to see if this will become a big enough problem with which they will have to do," says Conrad MacKerron of As You Sow Foundation. MacKerron was the author of the report ifah of the Foundation ifah and is conducting actions with companies such as Kraft and Procter & Gamble in support of the EPR. "Part of my job is to make sure that it becomes a business big enough," he said.
So far, As You Sow has obtained 25% of the shareholders of Kraft in support of the EPR and is planning a referendum on the issue with Procter & Gamble in October. Meanwhile, MacKerron, Washburn and many other supporters of EPR are conducting ongoing meetings with both the producers with food retailers, hoping to convince them of the benefits of EPR. "They need to bring in the project at least one manufacturer or retailer of groceries because the legislation can continue its course," said MacKerron.
The plan is to start with a system of EPR in a state that has a robust recycling system, to extend it to other states from there a short time and finally get a unified national EPR.
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