Enterprise teams are asking the state to pause the regulatory course of the new recycling guidelines

Enterprise associations urged Gov. Janet Mills to pause motion on a brand new regulation designed to cut back packaging waste to deliver Maine’s proposed guidelines according to different states that have enacted related legal guidelines.

The regulation is designed to make companies cowl the price of disposing of hard-to-recyclable packaging by reimbursing municipalities for disposal prices and investing in recycling infrastructure nationwide.

Underneath the regulation, corporations that manufacture packaging supplies should pay right into a fund managed by a third-party stewardship group contracted by the Division of Environmental Safety. Prices might be primarily based on the kind of packaging and the burden of the packaging that corporations produce. Mills signed the regulation into law in 2021; however, the state Environmental Safety Board is presently figuring out the precise guidelines for its implementation.

Nevertheless, management at half a dozen teams, together with the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, mentioned the board’s newest set of proposed guidelines may create uncertainty and pointless hardship for companies in a letter dispatched to Mills’ workplace Monday.

“Whereas the said function of this regulation is a constructive one which all of us help, the implementation of this regulation seems to be extremely difficult and annoyed by vital points and flaws,” the teams mentioned within the letter.

The council will add its present proposed algorithm to its regular meeting Thursday. The assembly begins at 09:00, and members of the general public can comment on a particular person.

The proposed guidelines require that, within the case of readily recyclable materials, for every ton manufactured, producers should pay the common value for the “recycling, reuse, and composting” of the fabric sort in the course of the earlier year.

However, the charges are a lot steeper for supplies that aren’t readily recyclable: twice the common value per ton “of the most costly readily recyclable packaging materials sorted in the course of the earlier calendar year.” It turns into thrice the price between 2031 and 2040, 4 instances the price from 2041 to 2050, and 5 instances the price from 2051 onwards.

Producers will even be required to pay a price for merchandise that doesn’t comprise certain proportions of post-consumer recycled materials.

The associations argue that this creates a penalty construction that would shortly improve the price of doing enterprise in Maine.

“Nobody, together with the division and the regulation’s supporters, has any thought how much this program will value,” they mentioned within the letter.

Opponents argued for a long time that the regulation may stifle enterprise in Maine.

Patrick Woodcock, chief government of the Chamber of Commerce, mentioned the brand new guidelines created uncertainty for enterprise house owners planning their 2026 budgets.

“Maine ought to take into account alignment with different states that are implementing the expanded producer accountability applications with clear value controls and with further flexibility for producers while sustaining this system’s worthy requirement to cut back waste,” Woodcock mentioned in a press release.

They additionally say that Maine’s strategy seems to give attention to concentrating on your entire recycling system, reasonably than working extra carefully with packaging corporations to find out its funding mechanism and techniques, as 4 different states have finished.

“Maine’s regulation is totally out of step with the 4 different states that have handed EPR legal guidelines and can trigger this program to be extremely burdensome on corporations and municipalities making an attempt to implement its mandates,” they are saying within the letter.

Whereas Maine was the primary state to cross laws increasing producer accountability for packaging, Minnesota, Colorado, Oregon, and California have all since handed and carried out their very own legal guidelines.