Extended Producer Responsibility Passes in Colorado

The first Extended Producer Responsibility, including provisions covering composting and compostable materials, passed the Colorado legislature yesterday and is awaiting Gov. Jared Polis’s signature.

The bill calls for a study period in which the state will conduct waste-stream studies and work with selecting a non-profit Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO) to manage executive of the program, which includes enrollment and collection of fees from packaging producers whose material is used and sold in Colorado; procedures and rules for the program, and implementation. The legislation calls for the program to begin July 1, 2025.

The US Composting Council supported Colorado HB 22-1533, introduced by Rep. Lisa Cutter, after working with Rep. Cutter and her team on provisions to include:

• A compost facility representative on the Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO) advisory group, which will advise the non-profit PRO on the way the program is designed.
• One of the things studied will be the “capacity, costs and gaps for compost facilities to process and recover compostable materials.
• Eco-modulation is included; this is a technique in which those who comply by designing their packaging materials easier to recycle, compost, reuse or reduce receive lower assessments on their materials.
• A way to address contamination by “requiring each compost facility participating in the program to report annually to the PRO on contamination levels at each facility and providing funding ... to compost facilities to reduce the costs of managing or increase the effectiveness of efforts to manage contamination and to process and to recover compostable packaging materials.”
• For purposes of the law, compost facilities are defined as those who are accepting certified compostable packaging.

The passage of the bill with composting considerations has been a goal for the past year of the USCC Board, Legislative and Environmental Affairs Committee and its Extended Producer Responsibility subgroup, which has a combined membership of compost manufacturing representatives and compostable packaging representatives. The group has been working since Q3 of 2021 to meet with legislators introducing EPR legislation to have composting provisions added, so that more funds are available to address compost facility infrastructure and contamination costs, and so that compostable products are assessed fees for uses that benefit their industry.

USCC and BPI have jointly developed Guiding Principles for EPR that have been the primary “asks” of legislators introducing EPR legislation. So far, Colorado and Maryland (where the bill did not pass) have included composting in their bills.

“We credit Representative Cutter and her team for doing an early and thorough stakeholder input process for the success of this bill,” said Frank Franciosi, executive director of USCC. “Understanding and balancing the needs of the recycling, packaging and composting industry is a challenge but in the long run, this approach will benefit the US zero waste movement, municipalities and ultimately, the health of our soils.”

Find the final bill here.

Find the USCC/BPI Guiding Principles here.