Tell the Legislature: Keep Plastic Out of Our Soil!

Join the Protect Our Soils coalition, including VPIRG and Rural Vermont, in calling on the legislature to uphold the Universal Recycling Law and stop ANR from permitting any more "depackaging" facilities to handle food scraps without regulation. Sludge from depackaging facilities is contaminated with microplastics while also making the separated shredded plastic packaging unfit for recycling. Read the full petition and sign-on below:

We are deeply concerned about the Agency of Natural Resources’ (ANR) recent reinterpretation of sections of the Universal Recycling Law (“URL”) and call on the Legislature to protect food scraps and soils from contamination, and ensure recyclable packaging is recycled. 

We believe maintaining the purity of discarded food materials and protecting soil health are critical to supporting a resilient, local food system and ensuring its benefits are broadly distributed throughout Vermont. Despite the URL being the most ambitious resource management legislation in the U.S., ANR is not enforcing the separation of discarded food from packaging or sources of plastics in blended materials (like plastic lined juice containers).

The Agency has reinterpreted the law to enable mechanical separation of food from packaging, which results in the contamination of compostable materials with plastics and other pollutants, as well as the loss of recyclable packaging from the recycling stream to the landfill and incinerators. Knowingly allowing microplastics and other pollutants to be applied to our soils is not acceptable and may result in unresolvable soil contamination and public health concerns.

Legislation is critical and urgent given that ANR has reinterpreted the law in a manner that is inconsistent with the original intent of the law and shows no sign of reversing course. This reinterpretation is threatening soil health, local composters and farmers, and privileging companies using incinerators and the landfill to deal with packaging, instead of sorting it for recycling.

A successful implementation of the goals of the URL requires legislation to help protect our crop-producing soils from microplastics and ensure food scraps are free of plastics, and put guardrails on the use of industrialized technologies that may exacerbate the microplastic crisis.

We believe the shocking disparity between the Agency’s reinterpretation of the law and the actual content of the law deserve swift reaction from the Legislature. We call on the Legislature to protect and prioritize the separation of food scraps from packaging while preventing the incineration and landfilling of recyclable plastic packaging. This will create a stable market for operators, ensuring good resource stewardship and that these resources be used to build healthy soils and support local food systems.

Specifically, the Legislature should support measures to:

  • Ensure that organics recyclers and organics haulers are not knowingly accepting plastics and other contaminants that will end up in soil;

  • Apply the precautionary principle in considering and reviewing approaches to separating food from packaging, and ensure adequate study of the potential effects of microplastics pollution of soils before declaring innocence;

  • Call on ANR to develop a strategic plan to promote and incentivize source separation and the organics management hierarchy;

  • Ensure that unpackaged food materials are not commingled with food packaging, and ensure that recyclable food packaging is recycled. Regulate the technologies (depackaging) that violate the law such that they can only be used where source separation of packaging from food scraps is not feasible;

  • Adopt maximum standards of contaminants, like microplastics and PFAS, in materials that will be land-applied.

  • Ensure transparency for farmers, gardeners and other consumers utilizing compost, digestate or other end products that may contain pollutants.

Rural Vermont