The Disposability Industry: Waste and Responsibility in Circular Economy Policymaking in the United States

ABSTRACT

Increasing amounts of disposable packaging and products, which litter city streets and reveal the limits of landfilling, have prompted calls to hold corporations responsible for the waste they produce. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policies were initially designed to regulate industry in ways that would force them to package consumer products more sustainably. But in recent years corporations have positioned themselves as the authors of such policies and a new legal formation, the Producer Responsibility Organization, has emerged as a mechanism for managing EPR systems. This paper examines this shift in the United States through an analysis of public campaigns by corporate stakeholders to center their role in the regulation of their industries. This has been achieved in part by altering the meanings of “responsibility” in EPR. In so doing, EPR has emerged as a new form of enclosure and resource extraction (of recyclable waste), enabling endless growth in the manufacture of disposable goods and packaging. As the same time, examples from the United States and around the globe reveal multivalent understandings of responsibility that are vital to decentralized projects of circularity.