Colorado EPR: A Look at Legislative and Industry Perspectives

In June 2022, the Colorado House of Representatives passed House Bill 22-1355, the Producer Responsibility Program for Recycling, creating an extended producer responsibility (EPR) program focused on packaging and paper products. The legislation is part of a growing national effort to shift the cost of recycling from taxpayers and local governments to the companies that create the waste. Under the law, packaging producers must either join a designated producer responsibility organization (PRO), in the case of Colorado this is the Circular Action Alliance (CAA), or create an individual plan that complies with the state’s recycling and sustainability requirements.

The goal of the Colorado legislation is to make recycling more efficient and accessible to all Coloradans, regardless of where they live in the state, something the state has been struggling with.

“Our recycling rates in Colorado are hideous. I was born and raised here, and I couldn’t even believe it, because we think of ourselves as such a green, beautiful state and recycling did not bear that out. [Our recycling rate] is 15.5% … well below the national average,” State Senator Lisa Cutter, one of the bill’s original sponsors, told 3E in an interview.

Cutter, who began working on zero waste legislation as a newly elected state representative in 2019, said the bill faced many changes and setbacks on the way to its final passage. After an early attempt at zero-waste legislation failed, Cutter successfully pushed for a special interim committee focused on waste reduction. The bipartisan, bicameral committee worked with industry experts to better understand the issue and lay the groundwork for an EPR program that matched Colorado’s specific needs.

“Recycling is a complicated thing, [in] the way systems are set up. It was very patchwork. If a city has a really great system that they’re already running, instead of trying to create uniformity, we just said, ‘You can keep up with what you’re doing and we’ll reimburse you,’” Cutter explained.