Beyond the Blue Bin: Forging a Federal Landscape for Recycling Innovation and Economic Growth
2025-07-16
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Source: Congress.gov
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Good morning and welcome to today's Subcommittee hearing entitled Beyond the Blue Bin, Forging a Federal Landscape for Recycling Innovation and Economic Growth. Before I begin, I'd like to thank Chairman Guthrie for the opportunity to lead the Environment Subcommittee. I'd also like to thank Chairman Griffith for his excellent leadership of the Subcommittee and wish him the best as the new Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health. And to my friend and colleague, Ranking Member Mr. Tonko, I look forward to working with you.
As chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight Investigations, I focused on the importance of critical minerals to our national security and holding the Environmental Protection Agency accountable. I look forward to continuing that important work in this new role. Waste and recycling are generally considered to be regional issues regulated at the state and local level. However, we will hear testimony today about the national and economic security implications of recycling policy. In his first days in office, President Trump emphasized the need to secure our critical mineral and rare earth supply chains. We must use an all of the above approach when it comes to ensuring our ability to access these critical minerals and elements, which is why electronic waste, e-waste, is so important for our future. With the growth of data centers and the use of technology, e-waste is accumulating at higher rates every year with billions of dollars in losses as this technology reaches its end life. E-waste is a commodity that can be repurposed in our fight to not only be energy independent, but energy dominant. Let me be clear, we will not recycle our way out of these issues. However, as we look to build out our mining capacities, our processing and refining capacities, e-waste recycling innovation provides vital short and long-term support for our needs as a nation. The President also issued an executive order on the importance of putting America first in international environmental agreements. As part of the negotiations for the Global Plastics Treaty, the Biden-Harris administration announced support for bans on plastics and a cap on plastic production. That would not be in America's interest. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about the role that American businesses can play in innovating and developing technologies to take advantage of the opportunities in the recycling industry. The threat China poses to the United States and our allies cannot be overstated. We will hear from our witnesses today on how we can use recycling as a tool to compete with China and to protect our communities.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today. It is my understanding we have not had a hearing on this topic in some time, and I appreciate my colleagues engaging on this important issue. I look forward to our discussion and now recognize the ranking member of the subcommittee, the distinguished gentleman from New York, Mr. Tonko, for his opening statement.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. That sounds good. Let me start by congratulating you on taking over leadership of the subcommittee. I look forward to working together and striking progress. The United States leads the world in many things. Unfortunately, this includes the amount of waste we generate. And most of this waste ends up landfilled, incinerated, or littered. In recognition of this, we have spent more than 50 years promoting a waste management hierarchy. Every kid learns the three R's, reduce, reuse, and recycle. So while today's discussion will focus primarily on that third R, I would be remiss if I didn't remind everyone of the needs to similarly focus on reduction and reuse as critical components to our national waste strategy. Today's hearing will cover a wide range of the recycling challenges facing our country. each of which could be its own hearing. But across each of these challenges, I believe we will see a common thread. The status quo is untenable, often creating environmental issues while letting billions of dollars of valuable materials go unrecovered. I understand the desire to promote innovation to overcome these challenges. as suggested by the hearing's title. But in reality, our recycling system needs some very basic foundational improvements before we can even begin to suggest that new technologies will save us. More than one quarter of Americans do not have access to recycling. less than one half recycle at home there are glaring needs for better data accessibility labeling and education to enable people to feel confident that when they use the blue bin correctly their efforts will actually result in real recycling by which i mean products are ending up in a responsible end market and not being diverted to a landfill or downcycled in recent years congress has tried to address these basic needs of our recycling system The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act included significant funding for state, local, and tribal governments to implement EPA's national recycling strategy. Other bipartisan bills like the RIAA and RCAA seek to further support these recycling basics. These proposals will not single-handedly fix our system, but they do represent good first steps to improve data and promote accessibility.
I do hope that the coalition building and policy development that went into these bills will make it easier for us to work together toward bigger and more ambitious policies in the future. Because in the absence of Federal leadership, several states have already begun to create such policies.
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