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On behalf of Local weather Technology, a company in Minnesota working with highschool youth and educators, we’re expressing our disappointment in your lobbying efforts on the State Capitol to cease HF3577/SF3561 – the Packaging Waste and Discount Act. At Local weather Technology, the scholars of our Youth Environmental Activist (YEA!) highschool community have been advocating for sustainable options that not solely cut back waste, however cease feeding dangerous pollution, just like the HERC trash burner in North Minneapolis.
Basic Mills, Cargill, and 3M are all members of AMERIPEN, whose mission is to “Be the main voice for the packaging trade, utilizing science to encourage, create and advocate for sustainable options for the packaging worth chain.” One would hope that you simply keep true to this mission in Minnesota, a state wherein your firms name residence, and welcome laws that would scale back pointless packaging and the related prices of added packaging on our communities.
The efforts your lobbyists are placing in to cease HF3577/SF3561 inform neighborhood members that you simply don’t assist a invoice that:
Prioritizes Waste Discount: We can’t recycle and compost our approach out of this packaging disaster; we should prioritize discount. The invoice requires producers to fulfill targets for supply discount, reuse, recycling and composting, and post-consumer recycled content material. These targets are enforced by the Minnesota Air pollution Management Company (MPCA).
Drives Packaging Redesign: Packaging producers might be charged primarily based on the quantity and sort of packaging used. The much less packaging an organization makes use of, the much less they are going to pay. There are additionally monetary incentives for firms to cut back pointless packaging and use unhazardous, reusable, recyclable and compostable supplies.
Creates Equitable & Free Entry to Recycling: Recycling is a rising monetary burden for native governments and particular person households. This system will present free recycling for all Minnesotans, by requiring producers and profiters of packaging waste to reimburse native governments for the price of these packages, relatively than native taxpayers.
Helps High quality Jobs: This system ensures that precedence for service supplier contracts is given to Minnesota firms that present good jobs, sturdy security requirements, and high quality companies. Moreover, investments in reuse and recycling infrastructure will create new jobs throughout our state. The MPCA estimates that totally investing in recycling will lead to over 15,000 new jobs.
Strengthens Minnesota’s Financial system: Companies are struggling to supply the metallic, paper, plastic, and glass wanted to make new packaging and merchandise. In the meantime, annually Minnesota buries and burns over 1 million tons of recyclables value an estimated $143 million. By recycling extra, we will create a dependable home provide of recycled metallic, paper, plastic, and glass to make new merchandise. Moreover, the recycled content material necessities present stability to, historically unstable, commodity markets.
Analysis tells us that packaging waste and printed paper make up 40% of our waste stream in Minnesota, and world plastic manufacturing is predicted to double over the following 20 years.
Not solely are we asking that you simply assist the efforts of passing the Packaging Waste and Discount Act, however that you simply respect the science behind it. Your stance in opposition to this invoice to avoid wasting a number of {dollars} is spreading a dangerous message that we aren’t in a waste disaster, when the truth is we’re. This dangerous messaging is in alignment with the fossil gasoline trade and much like the kind of messaging unfold by ExxonMobil, who additionally tried minimizing the impacts of local weather change and the position they play in it. Furthermore, these coverage adjustments solely characterize single‒digit proportion improve to your firms in extra provide prices — a small worth to pay in assist of your shoppers’ and our planet’s well being contemplating every of your earnings have been within the billions in 2023.
Minnesota shouldn’t be the primary state to think about this laws. The truth is, a number of different states have already applied related insurance policies, as has the complete European Union. Your companies are already abiding by these guidelines elsewhere, so why are you preventing it right here, within the state wherein your workers and their households work and dwell? The insurance policies represented in these payments align with the sustainability priorities of every of your firms, and don’t require these adjustments to be applied till 2033. Within the case of Basic Mills, that is three years later than the corporate has already dedicated to publicly. The state’s laws additionally permits for a waiver ought to any firm present they won’t be able to supply the required supplies by way of world provide chains by the 2033 deadline.
As we proceed to deal with the local weather and waste disaster, collaboration turns into important to find efficient options. We hope you’ll be a part of us on this dialog and take the essential steps in the direction of bettering our state’s recycling, supporting native governments, and investing extra companies to our communities.
B. serves as Coverage Supervisor for Local weather Technology. They’re a Minneapolis Southsider and first era graduate of the College of Minnesota. B. has a number of years expertise in neighborhood organizing and coverage work and is worked up to carry their experiences in voting rights and housing advocacy to Local weather Technology’s local weather justice work. They imagine in investing in our younger leaders to construct a greater future and maintain motion work and have centered the voices of younger folks in earlier campaigns. B. is a participant within the Wilder Basis’s Group Fairness Program, a nine-month political management cohort-based studying journey for Black, Indigenous, and Folks of Coloration neighborhood leaders and alter makers.
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