The National Recycling Coalition (NRC) would like to applaud Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) for the following comments on the importance of recycling and the critical nature of maintaining a clean source of recoverable materials.
Senator Stabenow Oral Comments before the Finance Committee Extenders Markup
July 21, 2015
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I will be brief. In the interest of talking about jobs, there are over 30,000 jobs in the recycled paper manufacturing industry and I want to briefly speak about an amendment. I won’t ask for a vote, but Senators Isakson, Carper, Brown and I are offering an amendment to basically update current law, which was originally championed by myself and Senators Isakson, Boozman and Carper in Section 45 of the code which limits the tax credits for the burning of municipal solid waste to prevent Waste-to-Energy facilities from receiving the production tax credit (in fact this saves money) for burning commonly recyclable paper. We want people and businesses incentivized to recycle paper not burn recyclable paper. What we are finding now is that some municipal waste facilities are collecting it in one system and, basically, it gets ruined. The recyclable paper gets ruined. But there is some way they are still collecting this tax credit. So, this would actually save some money, if you are looking for some ‘pay fors’, Mr. Chairman. Our amendment would clarify that we do not want recycled paper burned and do not want to incentivize those in the municipal waste industry to do that. I hope we can work together, Mr. Chairman. This is something that really needs to get fixed and affects tens of thousands of jobs and more actually, on this committee. I hope we can work together to get this fixed and I ask the Chairman and Ranking Member for your support to do that.
Chairman Hatch and Senator Wyden agreed to work together to resolve issues.
The NRC appreciates the efforts of Senator Stabenow to help American recycling industries maintain the clean supply of the raw materials necessary to produce recycled content products.
