The pending packaging fee to fund expansion of recycling efforts across Colorado could more than double statewide diversions from landfills for just fractions of a penny per consumer item, according to recycling advocates reviewing a key baseline study for the law.
But then again, those fractions add up in a state with nearly 6 million residents consuming retail goods every day. The study, meant to set out options for how to run a new “producers responsibility fee” to promote more recycling, shows that the highest-cost scenario would need to raise $290 million a year by 2035.
Still, recycling advocates were excited by the potential they say the report shows for improving Colorado’s dismal landfill-diversion rates. The new study is part of the process set up by the legislature when it authorized a producer-guided recycling fee on consumer packaging. The study estimates the current diversion rates at 22% to 28% of Colorado’s covered packaging waste.
(Consumer advocates like CoPIRG, which include a wider variety of waste to calculate their ratios, say Colorado is only diverting about 16% of its waste.)
Using the packaging fees to introduce curbside recycling in Colorado communities that do not offer it would boost diversion to 47% to 54% of the waste stream covered by the rules under the low-case scenario, and to 54% to 60% diversion if the Cadillac version of the three scenarios moves forward.
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Some people had anticipated an effective recycling program might need $1 billion in fees to run properly, said CoPIRG’s Danny Katz. “And here we’re coming in at the $100 to $250 million range. Ultimately, all three scenarios will at least double our recycling rates.”
The state health department is taking public comments on the draft assessment here. Once state officials approve the study, the governing board for the packaging producers will spend the next year creating a detailed plan for the fees they must pay and how an enhanced statewide recycling program will work.
“This needs assessment lays out the pathway to get recycling services to all Coloradans across the entire state at no additional cost to them,” said Suzanne Jones, executive director of the nonprofit recycling services provider Eco-Cycle. “The plan will bring recycling services to 700,000 Colorado households who are currently being left behind. It will also incentivize a reduction of unnecessary packaging and the use of less toxic and more recyclable materials.”
Eco-Cycle will support the middle-range scenario outlined in the assessment as “as a reasonable but ambitious cost-effective choice to propel Colorado forward as a sustainability leader,” Jones said.
Recycling targets will be set by the producer group
Once the producer responsibility governing group settles on what level of statewide recycling is the most realistic target, they will then set per-package fees on themselves to fund it. In addition to diverting packaging from landfills, advocates hope the system will create an entrepreneurial business culture in recyclable materials that will take waste packaging and remake it into new, relatively cheap packaging. Colorado currently has a glass recycling and manufacturing system, but lacks industrial capacity to process other packaging materials that can be recycled and manufactured anew in the state.
CoPIRG wants state leaders to choose “at least” the middle scenario, Katz said, because it will fund glass collection in many more communities than currently allow it.
“That’s really important because it’s such a valuable material in Colorado. We are uniquely positioned to be able to recycle glass, because we already have some really good facilities for that. So we want to make sure that glass is included,” he said.
A fee on producers is not at all the same as a tax on consumers, Katz added, because the per-container fee will be so tiny that it will be absorbed by other new efficiencies for manufacturers, including access to a healthier market for recycled packaging materials. Some of the high-volume packaging producers expected to be part of the fee program include Molson Coors, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, other beverage makers and consumables manufacturers ranging from toothpaste to cereals.
“If you divide $250 million by the tens of millions, hundreds of millions of packages and boxes and bags and bottles and shrink wrap, things that package our products … this is not something that consumers will see,” Katz said.
The lowest-cost scenario in the baseline study would raise $250 million by 2035, to spend about $110 per Colorado household. The medium case raises $260 million, at about $120 per home, and the most robust recycling effort would raise $290 million or $130 per home.
To illustrate the current gap between Colorado communities, the study notes that while 96% of state residents have access to curbside trash pickup, only 68% of single-family homes have curbside recycling. The number is even lower, 60%, for those living in multi-family units.
As examples of what the scenarios would pay for, the study mentions that the lowest-cost program would provide recycling every two weeks in communities that don’t currently have it. The higher cost scenarios would provide weekly recycling pickup, expanded collection of glass, and funding for improved technology in materials recovery centers to sort and prepare goods.
A state health department spokesperson said Thursday the department will review the assessment and recommend one of the scenarios to the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee. If the JBC agrees, it would direct the producer board to set fees needed to raise money for the agreed-upon plan, and write out details of how money gets into the communities to improve recycling rates.