MONTPELIER – Trash – the stuff we all throw away – and the word “radical” aren’t usually linked in Vermonters’ minds.
But a radical change is exactly what a bill under consideration in the Vermont House is proposing for the way Vermonters deal with the waste of everyday living, from flyers and newspapers and catalogs to plastic packaging, cardboard cartons, water and juice bottles.
The bill is H.218, “An act relating to producer responsibility for solid waste,” a simple phrase whose words call for a complete rethinking and reorganization of everything we do with solid waste. Also known by the acronym EPR (extended producer responsibility), the bill got its first hearing before the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee in the Statehouse.
Here’s another thing you need to know about H.218: “This bill is going nowhere,” said the committee’s chairman, Rep. Tony Klein, as emphatically as he could after the hearing. He says there are so many unanswered questions and aspects to look at that the panel’s work is like an introductory 101 course on trash.
“There are no ulterior or underlying motives at all,” he declared to the 15 onlookers in the hearing as the panel settled in to begin going through the complex, 27-page bill with Mike O’Grady, of the Vermont Legislative Council. “This is an educational endeavor,” he said, a way to try and figure out what might work for the state.
It is also a daunting overhaul that seeks, for the first time, to deal with Vermont’s waste stream in a comprehensive way.
The bill, which is co-sponsored by two members of the committee, Rep. Sarah Edwards, P/D-Brattleboro and Rep. Margaret Cheney, D-Norwich, essentially would require all producers of waste to “finance and provide for the collection, transportation and recycling of all packaging and printed paper.” It’s anticipated much of this would occur through businesses and corporations that produce waste coming together to recycle their wastes. Smaller producers would not face that responsibility based on an exemption threshold, currently set at $750,000 worth of product.
Edwards said the basic idea is to develop a comprehensive, rather than the current piecemeal, approach to recycling waste. According to Edwards, European nations have already moved to comprehensive recycling and waste disposal, achieving 80 percent recycling rates. Vermont, as the bill, notes, has plateaued at around 32 percent.
Improving the state’s recycling fits with Vermonters’ land ethic and deals with the fact that the state only has two landfills and limited space for waste. Using an EPR system would also provide an incentive for producers, who would, under the bill, face the cost of dealing with their waste, to change, downsize or eliminate wasteful packaging or make it more recyclable.
Right now the state takes “discrete” slices of the waste stream and deals with them, O’Grady said. What H.218 seeks to achieve is “somewhat of a broader scheme,” said O’Grady as he walked the panel through the bill, raising red flags and potential issues.
These dealt with everything from jurisdictional issues to the costs to producers, staffing at the Agency of Natural Resources, which will oversee the bill, and even First Amendment issues that will likely arise with newspapers and flyers.
Klein raised a few issues of his own. When the bill refers to packaging, how small are the items it refers to? He also noted that it is unclear whether the bill incorporates Vermont’s successful bottle deposit bill.
Other issues flagged by O’Grady were whether all Vermont households would face a fee for the waste they produce; what organizations – such as the Legislature, for example – could be considered waste producers; and whether waste haulers needed to be registered under the proposal.
Klein said after the hearing that the bill has been a lightning rod for comment, especially because it appears to some people that the bill seems to undo Vermont’s bottle bill.
“This has already elicited intense emotion,” he said.
His advice: For everyone to tone down all the trash talking, as it were, and let the panel wade through the subject to see what, if anything, might work.
“Hopefully, we can find a path forward on what is best for the state of Vermont,” he said.
Correction: This story originally incorrectly stated that Vermont Public Interest Research Group supported this bill.
