Reward consumers to improve recycling

摘要

My stomping grounds of Miami-Dade County boasted a whole 1% recycling rate for PET in 2019. Saying that there is work to be done in the Sunshine State would be a gross underrepresentation of the scale of the problem and the solutions needed to solve it. The answer does not lie in one silver bullet or in pointing fingers at manufacturers when their bottles and cans wash up on our beaches. We are all in this together. While it may be evident that a lack of a strong secondary market in the past few years is the primary reason for such a low PET recycling rate, I would add that a key part of the issue lies in legislative mechanisms that allow this type of problem to exist. As with any industry, it is important to set the benchmark and to look where things have been done right. The most beautiful part of the United States of America is that each state in the union acts as its own sovereign policy experiment (under certain guidelines, of course). According to the 2021 report "50 States of Recycling," which was produced by consulting firm Eunomia on behalf of Ball Corporation, eight of the 10 states with the best recycling performance have deposit return systems (DRS) - also known as bottle bills - for beverage containers.