Audit, Compliance and Risk Blog | STP | Environment
On November 15, 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published its “2021 National Recycling Strategy,” which summarizes recent efforts to organize support for recycling of solid wastes – typically referred to in regulatory parlance as “municipal solid waste (MSW)” – and sets out near-term priorities for further progress to reach a national recycling rate of 50% by 2030. The Strategy notes that “The U.S. MSW recycling system currently faces a number of challenges, including confusion about what materials can be recycled, recycling infrastructure that has not kept pace with today’s diverse and changing waste stream, reduced markets for recycled materials, and varying methodologies to measure recycling system performance.” EPA characterizes this Strategy as “part one in a series of strategies to help us re-envision how we use materials more broadly.” As part of these broader considerations, the Strategy incorporates contemporary emphases on environmental justice and climate change. (I’ve recently written about state-level initiatives including “product stewardship” HERE and HERE). The remainder of this note summarizes this policy document.
Tags: EPA, Environment, Recycling
In recent years, governments around the world have extended solid waste management efforts to support—and in some cases require—recycling and resource recovery efforts to divert more solid wastes from landfills, and to substitute reused materials or raw materials. Increasingly, specialized stewardship programs target particular types of hazardous wastes – used oils, spent batteries, etc. – the national advocacy group Product Stewardship Institute identifies more than 120 such programs spread among 34 US states (I introduced these efforts HERE). Maine already has a number of these programs.
Tags: Environment, environmental law, Maine, Recyclable, Packaging
Within the US federal government, the Department of Justice (DOJ) enforces many civil and criminal laws directly, and also provides the attorneys who represent federal agencies in enforcement cases. For example, DOJ’s “US attorneys” represent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in cases under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, etc. In doing so, DOJ provides those attorneys with departmental policies to guide their activities – as a practical matter, DOJ policies supersede any conflicting client-agency policies. It’s therefore important, that since the Biden administration assumed office, Attorney General Garland and his deputies have moved aggressively to review and revise departmental policies inherited from the Trump administration. The remainder of this note discusses some of these changes.
Tags: EPA, DOJ, Environment, ENRD, Climate