Does anyone know what certifications Colorado is looking for here?
From what I understand there is no requirement to use or avoid using 3rd party verifiers for PCR content accounting, but that’s the lower risk approach to compliance. A producer should have a written methodology that specifies what chain of custody 3rd party standards or certification methods like RCS or GRS they chose and how they picked an accredited auditor like SCS or AM Testing to certify against that standard. The disconnect is that these state regulations are asking for your PCR weight on the aggregate across the reporting year and the RCS or GRS standards are geared towards certifying PCR content in a particular part or individual product. The producer needs to be able to produce records if the state regulators audit them, so maintaining current certifications from suppliers and rolling all that up into the calculation being reported is going to be a necessary new administrative burden. The risk is on the producer doing the reporting to be able to demonstrate the truth of what they report, and certifications shifts that liability onto suppliers and certifiers, lowering that risk. Self attestation or relying only on the word of suppliers via email communications is a high risk way to go about it.
Yes I agree. I think the safe bet is to report Zero, even if you do have recycled content (I am working with a producer with a packaging product that is “widely known” to be 100% recycled content. This claim is credible and does pass the straight face test, but the supplier has never verified it, so we are claiming zero).
The thing about EPR is the marketer or producer is taking on all the regulatory risk of their supply chain, and the penalties are eye-wateringly high if one is unlucky enough to get caught misstating something. So claiming zero and paying what might be a few thousands of dollars more in EPR fees is the safe bet versus taking the risk on something that can’t be supported with a paper trail. There’s always time to get that paper trail and report PCR next year and lower the fee. If it’s widely known to be recycled material then it should be easily verifiable by a 3rd party auditor.
I agree with this approach. Still a ton of work to do, including this, post filing.