Sustainability in Your Ear Transcript: David Lawes On Colorado’s Motor Oil EPR Program

Mitch Ratcliffe 0:00
Hello! Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear. This is the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society, and I'm your host, Mitch Ratcliffe. Thanks for joining the conversation.

Today we're going to be talking about EPR, extended producer responsibility laws. Americans generate approximately 1.3 billion gallons of used motor oil a year, and only about 800 million gallons gets recycled. However, most of that is burned as fuel rather than re-refined into new oil. The remaining 500 million gallons are disposed of improperly, often dumped down drains, left in garages, or poured on the ground and sent to landfills. When it comes to the plastic containers that motor oil comes in, the recycling rate is even worse. Most curbside programs won't accept them because residual oil contaminates other recyclables.

Today we're going to be discussing oil recycling in Colorado, where Earth911's recycling locator lists 824 locations that accept motor oil and oil containers. But collection alone doesn't solve the problem. Someone has to pay for that infrastructure, someone has to manage the logistics, and someone has to take responsibility when things go wrong. Until now, that's fallen mostly on municipalities and volunteer programs, but extended producer responsibility laws are changing that equation by shifting the financial burdens to companies that make and sell these products.

Our guest today is David Lawes. He's CEO of the Lubricants Packaging Management Association. It's managing what could become a test case for how that shift happens. In September 2024, five major oil companies, including BP Lubricants, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Valvoline, founded the LPMA as an independent producer responsibility organization, and a year later, Colorado approved their program plan, making LPMA the first industry-led PRO—that's the producer responsibility organization—to secure state approval under EPR legislation.

Colorado gave producers a choice: join the Circular Action Alliance, which manages all packaging and printed paper recycling in the state, or develop their own sector-specific program which must demonstrate better outcomes than the alternatives. LPMA chose to go it alone, arguing that petroleum packaging requires specialized handling that general-purpose programs can't provide efficiently.

Lawes brings deep EPR experience to his work. He spent a decade regulating EPR programs in Canada, and he argues that producer flexibility—that is, letting companies design their own compliance pathways—leads to better environmental results and lower costs than state-mandated single-PRO models. And as evidence, he points to Oregon, where a lawsuit is challenging the state's requirement that all producers join one organization, as evidence of what can happen when choice is restricted.

The question is whether that's good policy or good lobbying. Five of the largest oil companies in the world have built a compliance system that lets them manage their own waste on their own terms. They say it's more efficient. Critics might ask whether producers should be writing the rules they're supposed to follow, and that's a good question.

LPMA is already operating in California, Maine, Minnesota, Vermont, and Oregon, with Maryland and Washington likely next. If Colorado's model works, it could reshape EPR programs nationwide. If it doesn't, it could prove that some decisions are better left to regulators rather than industries being regulated.

We'll talk with David about how Colorado's approval process worked, why petroleum packaging can't be managed through curbside programs, and what the business case is for independent PROs, as well as how he plans to scale operations across states with different regulatory frameworks. You can learn more about the LPMA at interchange360.com. Interchange 360 is all one word, no space, no dash: interchange360.com.

So let's see whether producer choice delivers better results or just better deals for producers, right after this brief commercial break.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Welcome to the show, David. How you doing today?

David Lawes 4:32
Great, Mitch. Thanks so much for having me.

Mitch Ratcliffe 4:33
Well, thanks for joining me early in the morning in Victoria. It's—I see the sun is rising your place, just like it is in mine. You know, I wanted to start off with a kind of a practical question. Earth911's database lists 824 Colorado locations that accept motor oil and motor oil containers. So the question is, how does LPMA's EPR program change the end-of-use automotive oil and oil packaging recycling challenge for Coloradans? Is it going to be easier?

David Lawes 5:03
Yeah, it'll be much easier. You know, right now, before the program starts, if one of those chain stations is taking back motor oil, that'll continue into the current market-based program that they have. So whoever's doing that for those facilities now will continue to do that.

The big change is going to be now, when the container's decanted into the tank—right now, it goes into the garbage. And so the change when this program starts is that container is going to go to the recycling station. So now those facilities will have a recycling option where they didn't before.

Mitch Ratcliffe 5:34
Does that mean the containers will be rinsed and cleaned before they go into the process? Or does it all go in together, oil and container?

David Lawes 5:41
No, the oil typically gets decanted into a large tank and then pumped out by a truck.

Mitch Ratcliffe 5:46
And I understood that part. What I'm asking about is the dirty containers. Is there a way to wash the inside of those containers?

David Lawes 5:54
Yeah, I would say, just empty it as best you can. Don't wash it on site. We have facilities that do that. Put the cap on it, put it in—whether we have a tote or we have a bag, or we'll have something at your facility—you can put it in, and one of our contracted trucks will come pick it up. It might be the same truck that picks up your oil. They might also be picking up the containers. And then we'll deal with all that at one of our specialized facilities.

Mitch Ratcliffe 6:19
How many of those specialized facilities does Colorado require?

David Lawes 6:23
Yeah, it's interesting. It's pretty specialized. So we'll probably have regional facilities. And this is—Colorado's first in the country to get going here. There's other states that are close by, so we'll have regional facilities that will do some of the work, probably densify and, you know, prepare for transport to longer distances.

There will be some capacity that's needed in the U.S. to handle this, because the recycling rate for oil packaging is quite low. So we're starting from a real low baseline. There's a few companies that have provided some interest in providing the recycling, and so we'll work with those to make sure this happens.

Mitch Ratcliffe 7:00
So Colorado is the first state to approve an independent, industry-led PRO, and I'm wondering, what was the approval process and the negotiation like?

David Lawes 7:08
Yeah, it was quite extensive. So, you know, first thing we had to do is work with the state staff to understand the independent pathway and to make sure we could comply with it. We then went through a process with the Colorado advisory board, and they put us through the ringer—that they should—and, you know, really reviewed our plans and how we are going to collect and manage this material, because they're looking for transparency on our program for sure, to make sure that we're meeting the results that are put into the regulation, and that we're equal or better than the other programs as well.

So the common packaging program—we want to—this is not about skirting the law or finding an easier pathway through the law. It is about meeting the same results in an industry-friendly way.

Mitch Ratcliffe 7:55
You've described this as a milestone for EPR in the United States. Other than being first, how do you think this is an exemplar of what we need in extended producer responsibility?

David Lawes 8:06
Yeah, it is really a milestone. And you're right, it's more than just first. It's the right model. And I've been in EPR policy for 20-something years, and it's Colorado that's gotten it right.

What they've done—they've provided industry flexibility while maintaining strong oversight. So what that's done—industry has a separate pathway in Colorado, where they don't always have that in every state yet. There's still really strong oversight by the state and by the advisory board. So that's what they've gotten right.

And it's first in Colorado. It's the first plan approved in Colorado before the general packaging plan. It's up for approval right now, but it's also precedent-setting across the country for other states to look at and see the process, see how it works, and possibly offer up the same independent pathway.

Mitch Ratcliffe 8:53
Well, let's talk about those other states. Where are you operating? Or rather, I did explain where you were operating in the introduction, but what is the state of those operations at this point?

David Lawes 9:05
Yeah, Colorado's, you know, obviously we have an approval, and we're off and running in Colorado, and we'll be collecting containers early next year.

The other states that have passed packaging—you've outlined them. But, you know, one problematic state for us is Oregon. Oregon doesn't allow producer flexibility. They are forcing everybody into a single PRO. And we've talked to the state quite a bit about that and why it doesn't work.

Oil containers with residual fluid in them, they don't commingle well. They don't do well with food-grade packaging. The folks that run the food-grade packaging recycling program don't want these containers in the blue box because it devalues the market value of that material. This is always best—everywhere where there's a good packaging program, there's a separate program for oil containers.

Mitch Ratcliffe 9:49
Let's talk about contamination just a little bit. Yeah, this is a really interesting issue for me after having done this for 10 years, and we try to explain this all the time. But can you describe what happens when motor oil gets, for instance, mixed with corrugated cardboard?

David Lawes 10:03
Yeah, it, you know, essentially, it just makes that corrugated cardboard less easy to recycle. So it does cause an issue in the market value of that material. Recyclers hate it. They want pure corrugated cardboard as clean as you can possibly get it. That's their dream. They can turn that back into new cardboard products. If it's contaminated, it's less likely to come back as a new product and could wind up, you know, either in a landfill or incinerated.

Mitch Ratcliffe 10:28
Clean, clear separation of materials is really important to the economics of recycling. And a lot of times when we think about recycling, we think, "Oh, the city takes care of it." Can you kind of unpack for us the layers of public and private entities that are involved in the transmission of what we put in the bin to the recycler?

David Lawes 10:47
Yes, this is exactly why we need to have a separate, independent program for automotive packaging. It is not something that—whether it's a city-run program or an industry-run program—it doesn't commingle well.

But we do work with many cities. If they have a depot or a household hazardous waste depot, those are perfect locations for us to work with them. That's where the oil is going. So we tend to follow where the oil goes. You don't put oil in your curbside blue box program. You take it back somewhere else, and that's where the packaging is going to be generated.

And that's where we want to—we'll work with the general packaging program to have communication out to residents, to direct them to, you know, take back their oil and the container to the same facility and keep it out of the curbside program.

There's also a real problem with aerosol containers in the curbside programs. They don't do well in the curbside program as well. They tend to cause, you know, damage when you go through the processing facility. MRFs, you know, material recycling facilities, sometimes cause fires. So that's why the general packaging program wants these materials separate.

Mitch Ratcliffe 11:50
The cleanliness and the separation in the materials is key to the economic viability of the recycling system. How much did LPMA have to put to work to stand up those specialized facilities, and do you see an ROI in that? Or is this simply an expense related to compliance?

David Lawes 12:07
It's an expense related to compliance, but the more we can keep it separate, the less we provide incentives to those facilities. So, volume-based incentives—if you recycle a certain amount of pounds of oil containers, we're going to give you an incentive for that. But because it's separate, we're able to lower those costs.

Mitch Ratcliffe 12:24
Let's go back to Oregon for a second. You are working in the state, and I'm curious how that's going. What lessons are you learning from the first few months of being engaged with the state of Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality?

David Lawes 12:34
We are engaged with the state of Oregon. We do have an exemption program. We haven't started collecting containers yet. We aim to, but we haven't started collecting containers yet.

And so, you know, the state—I think at the staff level, I think they've realized that there needs to be a separate pathway for these containers. They can't—but the law is passed, and they feel they're bound by the law. They have that where they require a single PRO.

I think they understand that we can, if it's separated, we can hit really high recovery rates. For example, the program we run in British Columbia, we collect and recycle 96% of the oil containers put on the marketplace. That is an astounding number when you consider where the U.S. is currently at, where Oregon is currently at—probably zero.

And so it won't happen overnight to get to 96. It takes a little time and a lot of communication with residents. But at least we can show that if separated, we can get to these high recycling rates.

Mitch Ratcliffe 13:25
I know the National Retail Federation is one of the industry associations that is particularly concerned about Oregon. Who are some of the other entities that are participating in trying to make some changes in the policy? Here, by the way, folks, I do live in Oregon, and this is not meant as a defense of the state, but an honest question.

David Lawes 13:43
And good for Oregon for, you know, taking a leadership role in regulating this product and regulating EPR. They just need to tweak it, really.

And so there's many industries that are sort of, I would say, caught up in the single-PRO Oregon law that don't like it. I think the glass industry is one of them. They, you know, even that doesn't do so well on the blue box. It's heavy, and they would prefer an independent option if they can do it. I've seen glass collected independently and managed quite well. Glass is actually a really nice circular economy product. It can be cleaned up and reused again. It's a nice environmental product.

There's others too that are, I would say—eggs, pesticides, and paint. I mean, those are the types of industries that want choice. They don't necessarily want to be lumped into the common collection program at curbside.

Mitch Ratcliffe 14:28
You mentioned a moment ago your 10 years of experience in Canada. What lessons from Canada's experience, which is far more developed than ours, are you beginning to apply here as you bring LPMA to the forefront?

David Lawes 14:40
Yeah, we're certainly bringing our knowledge on sort of the collection framework and what it takes to collect that material. We're also able to, you know, provide examples—living examples—of what it looks like when it's built. And I think that's really powerful.

We recently toured a bunch of California legislators up in Victoria and showed them some of our facilities. And they got to see firsthand just how this, you know, how does the program work? How does an independent, separate program work? How does packaging work combined with oil and antifreeze? And I think they were quite surprised at how easy we made it look, and the recovery rate speaks for itself.

Mitch Ratcliffe 15:16
In addition to all those successes, what are some of the mistakes that were made in Canada that you're watching out for here?

David Lawes 15:22
Yeah, well, probably one mistake is, you know, we really developed it province by province, the program in Canada. We didn't go for a national, harmonized entity.

So we learned that lesson, and in the U.S., when LPMA was formed, it's a national EPR compliance agency. So we're able to sort of smooth out the bumps for the members and have consistent, harmonized reporting of material into LPMA, and then work with each state to try and harmonize as best possible.

Every state regulates just a little bit differently, but it's our job to kind of smooth those bumps out and still deliver the same results. So it almost—it won't matter for the producer members so much, the bumps—and so that's our role.

Mitch Ratcliffe 16:04
There are discussions about a national plastics law, for instance. Do you think we need a national recycling policy? EPA produced a recommendation that we develop one before the Trump administration came in. Should we be pursuing that or go our separate ways?

David Lawes 16:18
Well, I think the Constitution might get in the way of some of the going national there, because it is a state responsibility to manage waste.

But certainly, some national harmonization would certainly help, whether it's a national definition of recycling, whether it's some policy guidance from EPA. I think that would be helpful in terms of harmonizing, because it doesn't need to be this different across the country.

Many countries—unfortunately, Canada's done it the same way, we've regulated province by province. But every other country that tackles this—Spain, France, Italy—they do it at a national level, and they do it quite well.

Mitch Ratcliffe 16:52
That's typically based on a shared definition of what you're handling. And it sounds like what would be valuable would be a national standard for describing materials that can be recovered and reused.

David Lawes 17:04
Yeah, definitely a national product list, national harmonized producer definition, so producers are defined the same across the country, and probably a national definition of what is recycling. Because, you know, strangely enough, recycling has been around for so long, but it still seems to get reinvented every time a new law comes up.

Mitch Ratcliffe 17:24
It's interesting. I mean, we have been doing this for about 100 to 110 years now, but it feels to me, after 10 years of covering this industry, that we are still at the end of version 1.0. What do you think version 2.0—or maybe we need to think in terms of 3.0—looks like?

David Lawes 17:43
I can see, as EPR really takes hold in the U.S. and the innovation and ingenuity of industry is able to drive, you know, better outcomes for this packaging—if governments stick to target-setting and not operations, you let industry set the targets—for industry, let industry innovate and evolve and invest in the sector.

We'll see massive changes to what happens on the ground, to what happens in everyday life, in terms of the type of packaging residents are seeing and the recycling rate. And you'll really see it at landfills, because you'll see a massive change in what's diverted from landfills.

Mitch Ratcliffe 18:18
This is a great place to take a quick commercial break, folks. We're going to be right back to continue the conversation. Stay tuned.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. We're talking with David Lawes. He's the CEO of the Lubricant Packaging Management Association, or LPMA. It's the PRO for Colorado's petroleum and automotive packaging industries' extended producer responsibility program.

So David, how do you respond to critics who say, "Yeah, okay, choice is great. There are reasons for that choice, but that's a lot of complexity to manage." Is it necessary? When people ask, what do you say?

David Lawes 18:58
Yeah, we've done the business analysis around the choice and why, you know, this industry has decided to have a separate program, and it's a positive business case for it.

And so we're looking to provide compliance to everybody that's a participant in our program, meet the state targets—especially for recycling and recovery—and get the best deal for this industry. And that's why we're doing this in a separate way, keep the costs down as far as we can. We have an obligation to our producers to keep costs down.

Mitch Ratcliffe 19:26
You know, one of the things we do at Earth911 is answer a lot of questions from consumers—thousands and thousands of them over the past 10 years. And there's consistent skepticism that the effort that they make to put something into the right bin—whether that's the blue bin or taking it to a hazardous waste drop-off location in the case of oil—doesn't lead to any actual positive outcome for the environment or for the reuse of those materials. How do we change that narrative? And maybe we'll talk through a little bit more about that, but what are your thoughts?

David Lawes 19:58
Yeah, it's a great point, and I'm seeing some of the same sentiment. But one of the really strong, powerful tools of an EPR program is the strong oversight of the state.

So we will need to report annually exactly how we've handled and managed all the material we collect. And we'll also need to get our—I call it just a very little bit technical—but it's a non-financial, independent verification. So anything—if we say this material is going to recycling, we're going to have to prove that to an independent auditor, and that independent audit statement will be part of our annual report that we submit to the state.

So that should hopefully provide not just transparency through our report on where this material is going and what we're turning it into, but also have that independently verified, so the public, the state—everyone gets that assurance that the right thing is being done.

Mitch Ratcliffe 20:47
How do you tell that story in a way that doesn't simply address the regulator? And by way of background, I worked on introducing Samsung's first non-regulatory reporting on its sustainability, and we talked actually to consumers about what we were doing. Does the oil and gas industry need to take that step and ramp up your storytelling?

David Lawes 21:07
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we need to have consumer-facing collateral that talks about where does the material go in a consumer-friendly way. And we're doing some of that. And the program we run in Canada, we'll look to bring that expertise to Colorado first, and wherever we're providing services.

But it is storytelling. It is providing the public with the assurance that if they do all the work that we're asking them to do to recycle—it's not easy. Sometimes people are busy, and we try to make it as convenient and accessible as possible. That's how we get our high numbers.

But we also need to tell the story of what does this material become? What is it turned into? On the program we run for motor oil in British Columbia, for example, it's about three-quarters of that motor oil actually gets turned back into new motor oil. And so we do some—you know, our communications program has some really creative ways of telling that story. And, you know, short, fast clips, and we advertise those and provide all kinds of social media content for this story.

Mitch Ratcliffe 22:05
You're talking about reshaping the culture based on helping people understand that their actions matter. Yes. What do those short pieces consist of? I'm curious. I haven't seen them, so I need to ask.

David Lawes 22:17
Well, we have some real smart people in our communications department, and you really need to tell a story in 30 seconds many times, because that's the attention span. And that's, you know, that's my attention span for some of this stuff. And it needs to be sharp, it needs to be powerful, it needs to be impactful.

But so we need to jam, you know, my long, tactical story about how this material is collected, recycled, and turned back into new products—turn it into a 30-second clip, provide some evidence of that and some visuals. And our understanding is that's going to go a long ways in helping the public raise their assurance level that this program is transparent and accountable to the state and the residents.

Mitch Ratcliffe 22:57
One of the other questions we often get is, "What can I do in one place?" Have you thought about how your collection points could be co-located with other material collection points in order to make it more convenient for people to participate in recycling and going beyond the blue bin?

David Lawes 23:13
Yeah, absolutely. This is why I love the network of household hazardous waste depots in Colorado. I toured them last year, and they're absolutely a fantastic network. But that's the one-stop shop for residents to take back everything that's left over in your garage. They're taking back paint, aerosols—like, not things that are part of our program, but part of other programs, other EPR programs, or state-run HHW programs.

So it's a fantastic network, and that's going to be the first place we go when we look to take back oil packaging. So those one-stop shops are fantastic.

There's also community events that get put on, usually in cooperation with the local government, where they don't have a full-time facility. They like to run these roundup-type events, and we'll look to partner with them, because, you know, if we can do that, those multi-material events are gold.

Mitch Ratcliffe 24:01
How do we encourage collaboration across material streams to lower the overall cost of collection, sorting, and processing? Have you all been talking about that with CAA or other PROs?

David Lawes 24:12
Yeah, that's absolutely our job, and that's industry's job. It's part of keeping the costs as low as possible—make sure we're coordinating where it makes business sense to do so.

So we will talk to—we've been talking to CAA, for sure. Like I said, they don't want oil packaging in their blue box, but some of it's going to make it into their blue box. As much as we don't want their food-grade packaging in our program, but undoubtedly, some of it makes it into the wrong spot. We need to reconcile that at the end of the day, get things back into the right spot.

There's also consumer information, another area where we really want to work, you know, with Circular Action Alliance. We've started that discussion. Circular Action Alliance is producing resident information. The perfect answer is not to have too many X's. You know, "you can't recycle this, and you can't recycle this." What we want to have is a lot of green checks of what to put in your curbside program, and a lot of arrows of where to take this other material that needs to go back to a depot or other household hazardous waste.

Even so, our material would be, "Don't put it in the blue box, but put it somewhere else." So still a positive message.

Mitch Ratcliffe 25:14
Are there other materials, like other automotive fluids, that would be appropriate for you also to be co-collecting?

David Lawes 25:20
Yeah, I've talked a lot about—do you mean on the packaging side, or the fluids, the actual fluid?

Yeah, most states—seven states have regulated packaging EPR, and we're responding there for sure. One state, Vermont, has regulated household hazardous waste EPR, and included in that definition is oil and antifreeze and all the fluids we manage. So that's the first state in the U.S. where we'll be looking at the fluids.

The programs we run in Canada look at it all—the oil, antifreeze, packaging, and filters.

Mitch Ratcliffe 25:51
How do you imagine this industry evolving over the next 10 years? I mean, we talk a lot about our desire to be environmentally responsible. We know that there's a—let's just call it a massive debate about that right now. Yeah. Do we have the momentum in the United States? And I'm particularly curious, as your perspective comes from that of Canada, to make this real and tangible for American consumers by 2035.

David Lawes 26:19
I certainly do. I mean, you really see some of the states, especially the Democratic states, are doubling down on EPR, and the rate of EPR law passing—we expect it's going to continue to increase.

But on the industry side, how I see this evolving—and this is, you know, we have plans beyond just the one year, two year—we really want to have, the key reason to have, one of the key reasons to have separation of this material from the common collection stream is we'd like to have bottle-to-bottle or container-to-container recycling.

We know that as more packaging laws kick up across the country, there's going to be this glut of PCR content. You'll have to meet PCR content rules. So I know our industry wants to have control of its own material in terms of using that as feedstock when they're creating new bottles. And that is a key component.

So I see that as a big part of the evolution. Oil packaging in the future is likely to come from old oil packaging and recycled right back into the same material.

Mitch Ratcliffe 27:20
What's the timeframe for circular oil? Can you put a number to circular oil containers? Well, let's do both oil and oil. I mean, the numbers in BC, you said the oil recycling rate is incredible compared to here. How long is it going to take us even to catch up with BC?

David Lawes 27:37
Well, you know, many people don't know it, but the motor oil collected in the U.S. through the market-based program right now, a lot of that's going back into new motor oil. It's just not well publicized right now. So you are seeing—I don't know what the number is, because there's not EPR programs, so they don't have that data level—but there is a fair amount of motor oil that's being collected and turned back into motor oil through the refineries across the country right now.

Actually, I'm going to a conference this week. It's called the Infinite Conference, and it's where all the oil refinery companies go and collection companies, and they talk about moving the dial and increasing the volume of fluid through their program. So that's happening at a, I would say, a lower level than where there's an EPR program, because the state or the province would require us to have cross-the-state collection, whereas the other, the market-driven programs, usually, you know, there's a circumference around the re-refinery that drives its volume, that drives the business.

On the packaging side, we're really closer than many people think. We've seen this coming for a long time, this extended producer responsibility. We've got a working group together. We work with a group called the National Lubricant Container Recycling Coalition that is a complete supply chain of oil packaging. It's manufacturers, it's recyclers, it's collectors, it's everybody—it's brand owners—it's everybody involved in the supply chain for oil packaging.

And I did the circle for a reason, because that is their aim, is to have circular management of oil packaging. And EPR plays a key component in that, because it closes the—like, closes the loop—where before that material is going to the garbage, now we're going to be able to get it back to a recycler.

Mitch Ratcliffe 29:18
One of the things that we need to do in terms of the development of a circular economy is have a lot more endpoints that are local. Is this also an entrepreneurial opportunity for people who are thinking about how they might participate in both cleaning up their environment and potentially building new good jobs in cities and communities?

David Lawes 29:35
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's positive business. This is—EPR brings jobs and investment into a state. That's sometimes the mandate of the state when they pass the law—it's a jobs and investment type proposal.

But yeah, the studies are out there that extended producer responsibility produces more jobs than was produced in landfill. I've seen anywhere from six to 10 to one of a ratio. The same material managed through landfill produces one job; if you manage it through a recycling program, six to 10 jobs. You're getting much more, better value out of that same material. And it's not getting wasted; it's better use of the resource.

Mitch Ratcliffe 30:16
I'd like to go back to the beginning of the conversation. After hearing all this background you've shared, what does effective collaboration between industry and government look like, now that we've talked about all the details? Can you summarize it in a way that people can take away and think about and perhaps talk with their legislators?

David Lawes 30:31
Yeah, it really means industry working with government to set up the—I would say—foundational pillars of EPR, and that is: producers have flexibility to design a program that meets the outcomes of government.

When government gets too involved in the weeds and starts prescribing to industry how to do it, that's when things fall apart and start failing. But if government can maintain that role of strong oversight—regulate and strong oversight—but get out of the way of the rest of it, let industry ingenuity take it over.

Mitch Ratcliffe 31:03
So our listeners will want to know more about LPMA. How can they do that, and how can they track the work that you're doing as it continues to develop?

David Lawes 31:09
Yeah, I mean, we've got our website interchange360.com. You can absolutely go there. We're active on social media, and I think I've done about 30 interviews since our program got approved in Colorado, so hopefully you're going to catch us somewhere.

Mitch Ratcliffe 31:23
David, thanks a lot for the time today. It's been a really interesting conversation.

David Lawes 31:27
Excellent. Thanks a lot, Mitch.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Mitch Ratcliffe 31:33
Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You've been listening to my conversation with David Lawes. He's CEO of the Lubricant Packaging Management Association, or LPMA, which is the producer responsibility organization launching statewide collection and recycling capacity for motor oil and motor oil packaging in Colorado, with other states coming online soon. You can learn more about the organization and its work at interchange360.com. Interchange 360 is all one word, no space, no dash: interchange360.com.

There aren't a lot of people with more hands-on experience in extended producer responsibility than David—though some of them have been on the show—and his argument that recycling collection should be specialized deserves serious consideration.

In contrast to his position, many argue for a single-stream approach to collecting and processing materials, where everything goes in the blue bin or can be dropped in a single load at a transfer station. But the rise of Centers for Hard to Recycle Materials, or CHaRMs, which are common now in Georgia and Colorado, for instance, along with specialized recycling pickup services such as Seattle-based Ridwell or Recyclops, a Utah startup—both have spoken with me on the show—points to a more distributed approach to collection that can be more efficient and more profitable.

Consider Buckstop, the electronics recycler whose founder, Alexander Oleson, I spoke with just a few weeks ago, who told us that he sees a huge economic opportunity in capturing the 80% of electronics that currently go unrecycled globally. So when it's time to build a comprehensive recycling system, the number of niche collection opportunities becomes painfully—and potentially profitably—obvious. And as David said, specialized recycling streams can reduce cross-contamination of materials, improving their resale value.

After about 540 of these conversations, it strikes me that an all-in-one silver bullet solution, while many companies chase it and waste management companies argue they can provide simple, single-bin solutions, is simply an attractive nuisance. A truly circular economy will develop many complementary reverse materials flows, some of which will be consolidated into larger, comprehensive collection programs, but many existing within their own silo where a focus on the handling of a particular material will produce better economic results than trying to sort it from tons of garbage.

At least 10 billionaires have made their fortunes in waste hauling since 1960, so it's short-sighted to think that they've cornered the market in every materials category. Count me in the specialized recycling camp where there's money to be made.

You know, at one point, Earth911 researched the potential value of the circular economy—of the stuff coming back for reuse—and what it will add to the global GDP. We found that it will produce more than $2 trillion a year in new value. There are new jobs, new companies, new nonprofits, and new things that we cannot imagine coming because people have a remarkable habit of concocting wild-ass solutions that may seem crazy at first but turn out to be perfectly self-evident in retrospect.

We're at the very dawn of the circular economy. We're on page three or four of a long history that will be written by innovators. So stay tuned. We'll keep the innovator interviews coming, and I hope you'll also take a moment to help out our mission here at Sustainability In Your Ear.

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Thank you for your support. I'm Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Sustainability In Your Ear, and we will be back with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself, take care of one another, and let's all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day.

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I hiked upstream along Elk Creek on Thanksgiving morning, bushwhacking down to the water's edge where the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers built, then notched, a flood control dam. This stretch would have been under about 80 feet of water, if the dam was still in place.