“A flawed bill”: Environmentalists criticize Connecticut’s waste reduction plan

27 Jan 2023 --- Yesterday, Connecticut governor Ned Lamont announced new efforts to address Connecticut’s (US) waste crisis. While Just Zero, Bring Your Own Connecticut and Sierra Club Connecticut applaud the governor’s focus on waste, they are concerned whether the methods will be productive in properly eliminating plastic waste. 

The legislation is said to overhaul the state’s entire waste management system. Lamont’s proposals would tackle 40% of Connecticut’s waste shipped to other states including food waste and recycling. The plan is a part of a larger legislation package to come in February this year. 

The programs will be funded by increasing waste collection fees, with additional costs for waste being sent to landfills or out-of-state. The state has plans to give back some of the money to municipalities to fund other environmentally sustainable waste collection programs.

However, environmentalist groups are concerned that governor Lamont’s proposal will include a flawed extended producer responsibility (EPR) for packaging program that would increase Connecticut’s packaging waste.

“States across the country need to start passing bold producer responsibility for packaging laws that require significant packaging reductions, mandate a transition to reusable packaging, do not empower the industry that caused the packaging waste problem in the first place and don’t include loopholes for toxic, climate-damaging plastic disposal technologies,” Kevin Budris, advocacy director at Just Zero tells PackagingInsights. 

Connecticut plans to cut 40% of its outsourced waste to other states. Proposal problems 
The proposal will place more of the responsibility for wasteful packaging on manufacturers by shifting incentives and penalties onto businesses instead of consumers. Connecticut estimates that US$50 million in revenue from this part of the plan and the waste reduction would offset any cost to the taxpayer in the long run.

Budris compares the proposal and the bill Connecticut passed last year to reduce its packaging waste. “Last year’s bill also would have put the packaging industry and consumer brands in charge of the producer responsibility program without imposing mandatory, enforceable packaging reduction targets or adequate oversight,” he says.

Last year’s producer responsibility for packaging bill included loopholes that would have advanced recycling or chemical recycling to count as recycling.

“We are concerned that governor Lamont’s EPR for the packaging program is built on a flawed bill that did not pass last year in Connecticut. Connecticut needs to reduce its packaging waste through solutions that reduce and eliminate the production of single-use packaging in the first place,” Budris continues.

The Just Zero advocacy director recommends Connecticut take inspiration from bills introduced in Rhode Island, US and Massachusetts, US, in recent weeks. 

“A strong producer responsibility for packaging program can be one of those solutions, but only if it: doesn’t include petrochemical industry-friendly loopholes and sets mandatory packaging reduction targets that require packaging manufacturers and consumer brands to significantly reduce the amount of single-use packaging they create.” 

Differing plans on plastic waste 
Just Zero worries about petrochemical loopholes from Connecticut’s new waste reduction plan. The conference occurred in Hartford outside the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority trash incineration plant that shut down last year after discovering that sending trash to other states was more cost-effective.

“In their day, they served their purpose, but this is no longer their day. It’s our job to figure out, in a responsible way, what comes next. We’re thinking right now about what the next 40, 50 years is going to be like,” says Lamont about the incinerators.

The governor’s proposal aims to create a “self-sufficient” system for dealing with the waste within Connecticut’s borders by the decade’s end.

“Connecticut’s waste crisis shows that an emphasis on industry-friendly proposals to manage waste, rather than reduce it in the first place, will never address the root of the problem. Packaging waste is causing a crisis. We can only address that crisis by reducing the production of single-use packaging, especially plastic packaging,” concludes Budris.

By Sabine Waldeck