By Joseph Barnes
Opportunities for Connecticut to modernize its waste system were lost this year because the 2020 legislative session was cut short due to COVID-19. Environmental policies were lifted to protect public health during the pandemic, like the 10-cent plastic bag tax and enforcement of the bottle bill, which allows stores to choose whether to keep bottle redemption centers open.
After Executive Order 7H, the “stay safe, stay home” order, residential waste increased from last year as residents used their time to clean and declutter. Executive Order No. 7BB, requiring everyone in Connecticut to wear a cloth face mask or higher protection in areas where social distancing of 6 feet is not possible, further strains Connecticut’s waste system as the use of one-time use plastic personal protective equipment grows.
Connecticut will need to fight harder than ever after the pandemic to reinstate environmental policies and appropriately handle increased waste through policies directed at plastic pollution. Ultimately, we will need to reshape our economy from the current take-make-waste ideology to a circular economy — one that abides by the 4R’s: refuse, reduce, reuse, and recycle — to protect public health and provide stable jobs in the recovery from COVID-19.
A circular economy can be enacted through legislation like the updated bottle bill introduced in the 2020 legislative session, which expanded the acceptable plastic bottles that can be deposited to redemption centers and increased the refund from five cents to 10 cents, or by expanding the plastic tariffs to nonessential items replaceable with reusable or biodegradable alternatives, such as sandwich bags, plastic utensils and straws.
Revenue from these products should be allocated to the recycling industry to increase capacity and update technology, for example by building planned anaerobic digesters, transitioning to multi-stream recycling and updating harmful trash-to-energy facilities.
Another option is subsidizing the privatization of compost and recycling centers, which would create a competitive recycling market in a circular economy. Some revenue could be used to protect the safety of employees by raising wages, granting paid sick leave or investing in technology to make sorting through trash safer and cleaner, thereby preventing the spread of diseases like COVID-19 that survive on surfaces for several hours or days.
Other policies to stimulate the circular economy include mandating that single-use plastic items be made with a percentage of recycled materials and increasing that percentage on a yearly or biyearly basis.
Policies should also inject money made from recycling efforts back into the system, instead of into Connecticut’s general fund, to keep costs to the consumer down and provide a safety net to the industry.
Still, plastic manufacturing and recycling carry a carbon footprint that contributes to climate change, which will inevitably force changes to the plastic waste market that Connecticut is uniquely suited to leverage. The 2011 Connecticut Climate Change Preparedness Plan states that higher temperatures and more frequent precipitation could provide a suitable environment for biofuel crops, like hemp and corn, to grow in the state.
Connecticut has an opportunity to revamp its antiquated waste system, a need demonstrated by increasing waste and suspended environmental regulations during this pandemic. While the state must focus on public health concerns during the pandemic, it must also focus on the long-term effects of waste that come from this crisis. Legislators should enact policies to enlarge the recycling industry and reduce emissions with a booming circular economy, facilitate a transition towards planting carbon-sequestering crops to make bioplastics and approve a source of revenue for the transition.
These benefits from a circular economy centered around the plastic waste stream will ensure cleaner air, access to sustainable products and secure jobs to mitigate health and societal impacts should another crisis like COVID-19 strike again.
Joseph Barnes works at a recirculating aquaculture facility in Waterbury and is the Secretary for the Interreligious Eco-Justice Network. He lives in Farmington, where he serves on the town’s Green Efforts Commission. He wrote this in collaboration with the National Science Policy Network.
