Proving that the concept of business-driven extended producer responsibility (EPR) is gaining favor amongst environmentally conscious brands, Recycling Reinvented announced it has received a pledge of support from New Belgium Brewing Co., a Fort Collins, CO-based brewer of more than 25 varieties of craft beer.
Amongst the company's core values is "honoring nature at every turn of the business" through environmental stewardship.
"I believe that if the producers were held accountable for the end of life of their packages, more efficient and effective systems would be created to promote landfill diversion," says Jennifer Vervier, director of sustainability for New Belgium. "Recycling Reinvented's vision of a uniquely American style of EPR lays the groundwork for the development of those types of efficiencies."
Through EPR, brand owners and manufacturers will help communities to increase access to curbside recycling and recycling away from home- not just for bottles, but for all product packaging. The efficiencies created by EPR will improve recycling rates and increase the availability of recycled stock materials for remanufacturing.
"We are pleased that New Belgium has joined us in supporting the development of a uniquely
American, business-driven solution for diverting valuable materials from our waste stream and landfills," says Paul Gardner, executive director of Recycling Reinvented. "We commend New Belgium for its long-standing commitment to environmentally safe business practices and we look forward to working together in the development of EPR."
About Recycling Reinvented
Recycling Reinvented promotes increasing recycling rates of waste packaging and printed material in the United States through an extended producer responsibility (EPR) model. With a diverse group of board members from the nonprofit and private sector, Recycling Reinvented builds a coalition of supporters from the public, private and nonprofit sectors in order to make EPR for packaging and printed materials a preferred method of managing valuable waste. Recycling-Reinvented.org hopes to be a place where industry, government, and nonprofit organizations can come to find out how EPR works, how it can increase recycling rates, and what will be required to make it work.
