Taxpayers deserve recycling policies that are efficient, affordable, and free from unnecessary government overreach. But, whenever governments create a maze of conflicting regulations, it ultimately impacts business operations and leads to consumers paying higher costs.
As it stands, the United States has a confusing patchwork of different state and local laws dealing with recycling. More than 10,000 municipalities operate recycling programs, often with different rules, standards, and capabilities. While, in general, federal intervention should be minimized, consumer products are packaged and distributed nationally—not state by state—leaving companies facing the costly and logistically complex task of redesigning, auditing, and printing state-specific labels to comply with conflicting definitions of terms such as “recyclable” and “recycled content.”
Take a look at some of the different rules businesses have to follow. California requires a handful of consumer products to have 50% recycled content while Washington State has a similar framework that touches on even more products. Many other states have some level of recycled content mandates and many have no such requirement at all. Without a consistent federal baseline, manufacturers and brand owners face the prospect of navigating different rulebooks governing what they can say about recycled content on their packaging.
The consequences of this broken system can be serious. They can discourage private sector investment, increase compliance costs, and raise consumer prices. As one industry stakeholder noted in Committee testimony about California’s aggressive recycled contents law, “high quality recycled plastic is in short supply and we cannot meet the demand,” and it creates “costly operation challenges for manufacturers.”
That’s because rules and regulations act as a compliance tax on products sold across state lines—a hidden cost that ultimately lands on consumers at the checkout counter. It also creates an uneven playing field. Large corporations can afford teams of lawyers and compliance professionals to navigate a maze of state regulations; small and midsize manufacturers often cannot. That is not a market outcome. It is a regulatory outcome—and it is precisely the kind of quiet cost increase that should concern anyone who takes fiscal responsibility seriously.
To help this growth continue in a light touch, free market manner, Congress should pass the bipartisan Recycled Materials Attribution Act (RMAA). This bill, championed by Congressman Nick Langworthy of New York, along with a handful of cosponsors, would establish clearer federal standards for recycled-content claims, prohibit misleading claims, and recognize modern accounting methods for accurately communicating the recycled content of products. The bill has already cleared one legislative hurdle and could soon be up for consideration in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The RMAA is exactly the kind of federal action that limited-government advocates welcome because it replaces regulatory ambiguity with clear rules of the road. National Taxpayers Union was proud to join a coalition of free-market and taxpayer advocacy organizations earlier this year in urging Congress to swiftly consider the legislation. As we wrote in our coalition letter, American consumers want clarity about what recycling claims mean on their packaging, while companies want “a single, straightforward framework” that allows them to comply with the law and develop innovative technologies. The RMAA provides relief for both groups.
The RMAA would give businesses one consistent set of rules while allowing truthful recycled-content claims backed by third-party certification, reducing unnecessary compliance costs and encouraging investment in recycling technologies.
The RMAA would also recognize newer and innovative advanced recycling technologies as part of the recycling landscape. Unlike traditional mechanical recycling, which generally involves sorting, cleaning, shredding, and remelting plastic, advanced recycling can use chemical or thermal processes to break difficult-to-recycle plastics down into their basic components for use in new products.
NTU also strongly supports other legislation that would reclassify some plastics manufacturing as “advanced manufacturing” rather than “waste incineration.” Doing so would expedite the ability for the private sector to build more of these facilities here in America, thereby expanding the types and amount of plastic that can be recycled, giving manufacturers another tool to reduce waste without requiring taxpayers to subsidize the effort.
Passing the RMAA is the kind of pro-taxpayer reform that should reach the president’s desk in strong bipartisan fashion. It removes unnecessary regulatory barriers, establishes clear rules, and lets American businesses bring the most high quality products to consumers at an affordable price. Praise is due to Congressman Langworthy for leading a commonsense, pro-taxpayer proposal.