Industry Groups Collaborate to boost Beverage Container Recycling & Navigate EPR Landscape
Facing a fragmented recycling system and increasing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation, the American Beverage Association (ABA) and the Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI) are forging partnerships to improve both the supply and recovery of recyclable beverage containers. These efforts aim to address challenges on both the collection and processing sides of the recycling equation.
Megan Daum,ABA’s VP of Sustainability,highlighted the growing number of EPR laws as a positive step towards expanding recycling access and infrastructure. However, she stressed that legislation alone isn’t enough. “We need a lot more of this stuff coming through the system,” Daum stated, emphasizing the need for increased recycled feedstock to meet industry goals of incorporating more recycled content into new products.
A key bottleneck, Daum explained, lies in upgrading the existing recycling infrastructure, notably Materials Recovery Facilities (MRFs). “If you’re sending all lovely clean material to MRFs that don’t have robots, that don’t have AI, did you really do good and get the system to circularity? No,” she asserted.
This realization drove the creation of ABA’s $100 million “Every Bottle Back” initiative, launched in 2019. The program invests in both expanding recycling education and access, and in upgrading MRF capabilities to effectively capture and process those materials.
The CMI is taking a similarly targeted approach. Scott Breen,SVP of Sustainability at CMI,described investments in AI-powered sorting robots for “last-chance” lines within MRFs – areas where valuable aluminum cans are often lost to landfills.CMI has funded robot installations at facilities like Caglia Environmental in California and Lakeshore Recycling Systems (LRS) in the Chicagoland area. Under this model, CMI funds the robot and shares in the revenue generated from the recovered aluminum, reinvesting those funds back into the program.
Despite aluminum cans already boasting the highest recycling rate and value among beverage containers, Breen noted that over 40% still end up in landfills in many regions. He underscored the effectiveness of deposit return systems (DRS) in maximizing both recovery rates and material cleanliness. CMI actively advocates for the inclusion of aluminum beverage cans in state-level policy discussions and views EPR as a potential catalyst for making DRS systems more viable.
Industry stakeholders see these collaborations as a way to create beneficial feedback loops. JD Ambati, CEO of EverestLabs, a robotics company powering many of these recovery efforts, believes significant volumes of material remain recoverable through these partnerships.
Daum acknowledged the complexity of achieving national scale with over 9,000 different recycling programs across the U.S., but expressed optimism. “You have to start somewhere,” she said, “and passing seven EPR laws is a really good start.”
