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Holding companies accountable for plastic recycling

Bundles of mixed plastic had to be dismantled and sorted by grade after China changed its purchasing policies.
Amanda Troxler
Bundles of mixed plastic had to be dismantled and sorted by grade after China changed its purchasing policies.

Oregon lawmakers passed a bill in 2021 to upgrade the state’s recycling system — and get manufacturers of packaged goods to pay for a lot of the improvements. Lawmakers in Washington recently tried to do something similar. Even though the proposal didn’t pass in the last legislative session, it built momentum for the concept of holding producers of plastic packaging responsible for recycling that material. Reporter Sam Wohlfeil recently dug into this topic for InvestigateWest and joins us to talk about it.

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Julie Sabatier