Now compiling results of field tests conducted in Southeastern PA.
Different laws with different objectives that share a common denominator
Different laws with different objectives that share a common denominator
Each year, pharmaceutical manufacturers, in compliance with the U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), use open standards to convey serialized product information on more than 4 billion pharmaceutical sellable units, many of them HDPE bottles.
Industry invested billions of dollars to secure and track & trace these units through the supply chain to their ultimate destination, where they are dispensed to the patient.
Once empty of product, unit labels maybe defaced and discarded either to be recycled or landfilled.
Use of serialized product information is not typically utilized in the disposal process of these bottles.
This practice may change as states like Maine, Oregon and Colorado pass Extended Producer Responsibility laws that hold manufacturers accountable for recycling packaging they introduce to the state.
EPR programs were first formally introduced in Sweden byThomas Lindhqvist in a 1990 report to the Swedish Ministry of the Environment.
A key feature of EPR programs is fee modulation, which penalizes the use of materials that are less environmentally friendly and rewards the use of materials that are.
With climate issues top of mind and the cost of recycling increasing, Maine passed a law in 2021 becoming the first in the United States to do so, requiring producers — instead of taxpayers — to fund recycling of end-of-life plastic bottles into new bottles.
Maine was joined by Oregon and Colorado who passed their own version of Producer Responsibility (EPR) Programs in 2021 and 2022 respectively. California is the latest state to pass EPR law (S.B. 54) as of June 30, 2022.
14 other states are considering EPR programs as a policy tool for managing and reducing consumer waste.
Using machine readable identifiers already printed on pharmaceutical sellable units, DecomRx combines physical transformation and digital recordation in a batch-controlled process to create a decommissioning event record.
These event records empower value beyond compliance use cases and facilitate EPR compliance, while post-process waste materials - HDPE, paper and glass - are weighed, logged and recycled.
