A policy advocacy group says it has a plan for extended producer responsibility in the U.S. that stakeholders here may actually be willing to get behind. Nonprofit organization UPSTREAM last week released model legislation aimed at state lawmakers looking to overhaul their recycling systems and mandate product and packaging companies to help foot the bill. Such models have been implemented for paper and packaging in Europe and parts of Canada but not in the U.S. UPSTREAM representatives say their model bill addresses some of the issues that have been raised by U.S. companies and municipalities by leveraging a "shared responsibility" approach. Whereas EPR systems in other countries have tended to shift all funding responsibilities and program logistics decisions to the corporations producing paper and packaging, the latest UPSTREAM model would spread management roles across a group of stakeholders, including packaging makers, local governments, private haulers and end users of recycled material.
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