The NLCRC’s Actions Towards Increasing Recycling in the U.S.

The National Lubricant Container Recycling Coalition (NLCRC) recognizes the barriers facing the petroleum packaging industry are more significant than any one company can solve. The NLCRC’s vision is to develop a collaborative, market-sustaining program to reduce landfill disposal of lubricant oil containers and associated petroleum packaging and develop solutions that ensure responsible recycling of these materials.

To achieve this vision, the NLCRC is focused on understanding and optimizing the logistics of petroleum packaging collection through processing in the Atlanta Lubricant Container Recycling Pilot. The NLCRC’s work involves addressing, assessing, and measuring the economic and market drivers for post-consumer recovery and recycling while gaining deeper insights into consumer waste disposal behaviors and defining parameters for model development and future scalability.

The end-of-life management of petroleum packaging is concerning due to the low degradation rate of plastics in landfills. In response to increasing consumer demands, packaging legislation directly impacts stakeholder companies across the value chain. Several states have passed laws requiring recycled content to be included in the packaging (e.g., Post-Consumer Recycled content - PCR); or fees assessed to producers (brand owners) for the amount of plastic packaging distributed in the state. These fees fund state recycling infrastructure (e.g., Extended Producer Responsibility - EPR).

In response to EPR packaging legislation, the NLCRC is working to accelerate and deepen the knowledge of the business risks and opportunities imposed with implementing EPR and developing models to comply for stakeholder companies. As the states with packaging EPR in place, such as Oregon, Maine, Colorado, and California, are going through a policymaking process, and, in most cases, an estimated timeline for program implementation has been developed. The NLCRC is analyzing future compliance budget implications for producers or brand owners. Fortunately, changing legislation can represent an opportunity for the petroleum packaging industry to collaborate and move forward under a unified approach for the recycling plastics such as lubricant containers.

The NLCRC’s actions are possible due to collaboration with industry members. This sets a closer step towards developing solutions that ensure responsible recycling of hard-to-degrade lubricant oil containers and associated petroleum packaging.

The National Lubricant Container Recycling Coalition or “NLCRC” is an industry-led technical coalition established by a committed group of industry leaders in lubricant and associated plastic packaging manufacturing, focused on establishing solutions for post-consumer recovery and recycling of plastic lubricant containers.

NLCRC members include Berry Global, Castrol, Chevron, CKS Packaging Inc., Graham Packaging, Nexus Circular, Pennzoil - Quaker State Company, Petroleum Packaging Council, Plastipak Packaging, Safety-Kleen, and Valvoline. 

Connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter. Reach out with questions or inquiries at hello@nationallcrc.com.