10 Spray August 2016 Pressure Points Doug Fratz CSPA Aerosol Products Division Staff executive It is with great pleasure that I can, for the first time, report that 70% of U.S. consumers have access to programs to recycle their empty steel and aluminum aerosol containers. The data comes from a comprehensive new study of recycling programs sponsored by a broad industry coalition that included the Consumer Specialty Products Association (CSPA) and many other trade associations representing 40 different types of packaging. The preliminary results for aerosol containers were reported at the CSPA Mid-Year Meeting Aerosol Products Division Program in May. The final reports are still in review as we go to press, but have been available since July. The report, covering the state of recycling, is entitled Sustainable Packaging Coalition: 2015-2016 Centralized Study on Availability of Recycling and was conducted by Resource Recycling Systems (RRS) and Moore Recycling Associates. A future issue of SPRAY will include a more detailed article by the authors. In this column, I will touch on the results for steel and aluminum aerosol containers, due to be released in a separate report entitled 2015- 16 Centralized Study on Availability of Recycling for Aerosol Containers. I will also provide some background on the genesis of the study and its vital importance to the aerosol products industry. As I noted in the May Pressure Points column, CSPA has been working for decades to encourage recycling programs to include empty aerosol containers and to encourage consumers to use that access to recycle their aerosols. When we started, only a small percentage of U.S. Consumers had access to recycling programs. With this new study, we now know that more than 90% of Americans have recycling programs available. A major study such as this cannot be developed quickly or easily and it took years to design, fund and execute. The primary need for the study was created by the Federal Trade Commission Yes, Americans can recycle empty aerosols! (FTC) when it issued revised Green Guides in 2012, requiring that 60% of the population must have the ability to recycle a material before it can have an unqualified recycling claim such as “please recycle when empty.” The CSPA was planning a campaign to encourage all aerosol product marketers to include such label instructions, which had to be put on hold. Data from the Steel Recycling Institute (SRI) was available to show that steel aerosol containers met that standard—and we met with FTC officials in 2013 to assure that the data was on target—but we had no similar data for aluminum. We decided to move ahead with our Open Letter on Aerosol Recycling, asking that all aerosol products be labeled to encourage recycling, but we needed firm data on aluminum. We, therefore, readily accepted an invitation from GreenBlue’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC) to join a broad industry coalition to design and execute a comprehensive study on current U.S. population access to recycling. That coalition, organized by SPC and advised by representatives from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), various state recycling officials and many other recycling organizations, began meeting regularly in early 2014, with dozens of industry trade associations involved, including three others with interest in aerosol containers: SRI, the Aluminum Association and the Can Manufacturers Institute. GreenBlue also needed population availability data on aerosols and numerous other types of packaging to support its How2Recycle labeling program. Each trade association involved had its own specific need for data on the availability of recycling. Developing consensus on how to design and conduct the study took many meetings over the following 18 months, but a Request for Proposal was finally issued in mid-2015. An excellent proposal was submitted by Resource Recycling Systems (RRS) and Moore Recycling Associates, a funding scheme was developed and the study was initiated in late 2015. Availability of recycling is defined as having access to either a curbside pickup program serving a residence (automatic, opt-in or subscription), a drop-off program serving an area or both. The acceptance of aerosol containers was assessed by reviewing the information provided to consumers in each program. More than 2,000 communities were assessed, sampled to assure that all of the largest 1,600 communities and a random sample of 500 smaller communities represented more than 50% of the population for each state. The data was translated into population availability, by assessing the number of people served by each program and carefully assuring no double counting (since some of the population has multiple programs available). The data provide overwhelmingly positive evidence that aerosol recycling is now widely available. For steel aerosol containers, 51% of the population has curbside recycling and another 19% only has drop-off available. Overall, 69% of the population can recycle steel aerosols. This is even higher than the access determined by SRI back in 2013; however, the most pleasant surprise was that aluminum aerosol recycling availability is even higher. For aluminum aerosol containers, 52% of the population has curbside recycling and another 20% only has drop-off available. Overall, 72% of the population can recycle aluminum aerosols. (For those interested in error statistics, those numbers are ± 2%.) This availability clearly meets the FTC 60% criteria for unqualified claims to “please recycle when empty.” The data was also interesting in terms of the clarity of consumer education for aerosol containers. Programs representing only around 35% of the population clearly specified that aerosols were accepted. continued on p. 79
Spray August 2016
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