The upcoming presidential election might have important implications for the waste and recycling sector.
Whereas the Biden-Harris administration’s infrastructure and local weather funding insurance policies have been a boon to components of the business, a few of its laws have additionally prompted pushback. The trendy U.S. waste business was largely constructed on laws, and main corporations typically say they’ll do properly in such an atmosphere as a result of it creates new enterprise alternatives. Nevertheless, some operators really feel particular necessities — equivalent to new PFAS or fleet laws — are too burdensome.
The business additionally fared properly through the Trump administration, particularly as a consequence of its company tax cuts, till the pandemic affected the economic system and drove up inflation. Points equivalent to recycling markets and meals waste obtained consideration from the U.S. EPA beneath Trump, and that spotlight might proceed in some type if he takes workplace once more.
Whoever is working the following administration will face questions on how you can deal with supplies administration methods within the U.S. and overseas, in addition to emissions insurance policies and funding priorities. Such insurance policies can even rely partly on the outcomes of Senate and Home elections.
What different subjects are necessary for the following presidential administration to prioritize? Tell us at waste.dive.editors@industrydive.com.
Labor
Whereas the Teamsters declined to endorse both candidate, different notable unions within the business equivalent to AFSCME and LiUNA went for Harris. Harris has additionally expressed help for the PRO Act, which might develop sure collective bargaining rights.
Immigration is one other key matter within the race with implications for an business that has lengthy mentioned the necessity to recruit and retain extra frontline staff. Along with differing views on how you can enact broader immigration reforms, which has been mentioned by business executives earlier than as a precedence, the 2 candidates even have completely different stances on the Non permanent Protected Standing program. Through the Trump administration, when components of the TPS program had been beneath menace, a number of corporations spoke about how this might have an effect on their workforce.
The election end result might additionally have an effect on a variety of different pending labor points on the federal degree. Examples embrace the joint employer standing debate (which has its roots in a waste business case and= gone forwards and backwards in numerous administrations), OSHA’s proposed warmth normal and extra.
Federal grants
The Biden administration has made getting federal funds out the door to environmental tasks a precedence over the previous few years. A lot of these funds had been allotted beneath the Infrastructure Funding & Jobs Act of 2021 and the Inflation Discount Act of 2023. Harris was supportive of each legal guidelines and he or she forged the tie-breaking vote in favor of the latter.
The administration is within the means of awarding funds from the Local weather Air pollution Discount Grants program, a multibillion-dollar funding alternative for states and native jurisdictions. A number of jurisdictions plan to develop waste and recycling-related tasks as a part of that funding alternative.
Throughout the infrastructure regulation, the Stable Waste Infrastructure for Recycling and Recycling Training and Outreach grant are two of essentially the most impactful packages particularly funding waste and recycling tasks. Initiatives funded by these packages to date have encompassed quite a lot of applied sciences and amenities, together with a solar-powered composting facility, a MRF, a switch station and quite a few organics and recycling assortment program enhancements.
Trump has blasted President Joe Biden’s spending on these points, and officers from his first administration have argued he might have the ability to unilaterally withhold funds. Analyses from regulation agency Holland & Knight and Columbia College’s Sabin Heart for Local weather Change Regulation concluded that Trump might take one in every of a number of paths to delaying, pausing or rescinding funding. Challenge 2025, an initiative printed by conservative suppose tank The Heritage Basis, has additionally made defunding the EPA an goal of a second Trump administration. That doc shouldn’t be immediately tied to Trump’s marketing campaign, however a number of former Trump officers helped write it.
Harris, in the meantime, has stated she is going to construct on the work the present administration has already executed, together with the tasks financed by the IRA.
Emissions
The Trump administration delayed implementing landfill emissions laws, tangling an Obama-era replace up in court docket for years. The Biden administration finally put the up to date Clear Air Act laws into impact in 2021.
The EPA is legally required to replace these laws each eight years, so the Biden administration ought to have promulgated a brand new normal this yr. The company stated it deliberate to launch a brand new normal in 2025. That course of may very well be altered by a future Trump-controlled EPA.
Echoing a transfer he made in 2019, Trump has additionally vowed to dam California’s potential to implement its plan to transition heavy-duty autos — together with assortment vehicles — to zero emissions by 2045.
Biden’s administration has enacted a collection of guidelines designed to hasten the transition of industrial quality fleets towards zero-emission autos. The U.S. EPA’s Part 3 rule for medium- and heavy-duty automobile emissions requirements, finalized in March, requires refuse haulers to decrease their fleets’ carbon depth by 30% greater than earlier regulation by 2032.
One other regulation with doubtlessly far-reaching affect, California’s Superior Clear Fleets rule, is presently awaiting a waiver from the U.S. EPA to enter impact. Advocates for the rule, which units a extra stringent transition timeline than the federal clear vehicles rule, have publicly anxious Trump might roll again or deny a waiver for this system. Republican state attorneys common have urged the EPA to disclaim a waiver. The Biden administration has not stated when it plans to problem a call on the waiver.
PFAS
Underneath the Biden administration, the U.S. EPA has made a number of notable strikes to extra strictly regulate sure per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. That features setting consuming water requirements and designating PFOS and PFOA as hazardous substances beneath CERCLA. It additionally up to date its steering on how you can destroy or eliminate PFAS-containing gadgets.
A Harris administration might proceed the work the EPA is already doing on PFAS, equivalent to advancing suggestions specified by the company’s PFAS Strategic Roadmap. The company says additional analysis and reporting is critical to study extra concerning the chemical substances and their properties, in addition to applied sciences that would destroy them.
Harris has indirectly talked about waste administration facets of PFAS in her platform, although she has endorsed a invoice to assist veterans with well being points associated to presumed PFAS publicity.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ working mate, in 2023 signed into regulation a important PFAS ban that covers quite a few client merchandise. Safer States, a coalition of environmental and well being teams that advocate for PFAS regulatory insurance policies, known as it one of many “strongest bans on the planet.”
A brand new Trump administration may change the federal authorities’s strategy to those chemical substances. The EPA beneath his administration in 2019 did problem a PFAS motion plan, and former Administrator Andrew Wheeler stated in a latest interview that his administration was instrumental in “transferring ahead” with a number of PFAS-related regulatory steps.
Michael E. Hoffman, CEO of the Nationwide Waste & Recycling Affiliation, speculated in a latest interview {that a} “pink” administration could also be extra open to revising the EPA’s latest PFAS hazardous substance designation than a Democratic administration.
NWRA, together with the Recycled Supplies Affiliation, has requested a federal court docket to evaluation the rule, saying it could negatively have an effect on waste and recycling operators who’re “passive receivers” of PFAS-containing gadgets that enter their amenities.
Challenge 2025 has additionally known as for the following administration to “revisit” the designation of PFAS as hazardous substances beneath CERCLA.
Recycling and plastics
Each Trump and Biden’s administrations have a observe document of signing payments with important recycling affect. Trump signed Save Our Seas 2.0 in 2020, which supplied thousands and thousands in annual funding by 2025 for plastic recycling investments and cleanup initiatives.
The Biden administration’s Infrastructure Funding and Jobs Act and the Inflation Discount Act got here with thousands and thousands of {dollars} in funding for the EPA and different companies to make use of for recycling infrastructure, grant packages and environmental justice initiatives.
Different federal recycling payments are nonetheless in play, specifically a pair of bipartisan payments meant to enhance U.S. recycling infrastructure in underserved areas and bolster recycling-related knowledge assortment. These payments haven’t moved ahead regardless of broad recycling business help.
Underneath the earlier Trump administration, the EPA set a aim to succeed in a 50% nationwide recycling fee by 2030. Although Trump has not spoken immediately about recycling on the marketing campaign path, he stated in August that he would reverse quite a few Biden-era local weather and vitality initiatives, which some environmental teams say might have implications for recycling efforts.
If elected, Harris is basically anticipated to mirror the Biden administration’s recycling-related insurance policies. The Biden administration introduced in July an in depth plastic air pollution discount plan it says is the primary time the federal authorities has “formally acknowledg[ed] the severity of the plastic air pollution disaster.” It additionally known as for phasing out single-use plastics from federal operations by 2035.
The Biden administration has additionally spoken in favor of the plastics discount measures listed within the proposed worldwide plastics treaty, which some Republican lawmakers oppose.
Environmental justice
The Biden administration has made environmental justice a serious a part of its platform by quite a few new initiatives.
It created the Workplace of Environmental Justice and Exterior Civil Rights to make environmental justice a everlasting side of the EPA’s work. It additionally established the Justice40 initiative and EJ Motion Plan, and devoted funding particularly for environmental justice grants from the infrastructure regulation.
A Harris administration is predicted to proceed such efforts. Harris has mentioned environmental justice points throughout marketing campaign stops and all through her time as vp. She beforehand supported environmental justice efforts as California’s legal professional common and as a senator. Throughout her presidential marketing campaign, she has obtained endorsements from notable teams such because the Southern Poverty Regulation Heart.
As president, Trump shouldn’t be anticipated to make the problem a precedence. Throughout his earlier time period, he supported insurance policies that some teams say have harmed environmental justice communities, equivalent to reversing laws and deprioritizing or criticizing local weather change initiatives. Challenge 2025 particularly calls to “get rid of” the Workplace of Environmental Justice and Exterior Civil Rights.