The carpet industry's invisible hand

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Jun 07, 2022 View in browser   By Debra Kahn Presented by THE BIG IDEA About 5 billion pounds of carpet are sent to landfills annually. | Edwin Remsberg/Getty Images CARPETBAGGERS' REVENGE — It's hard to get manufacturers to look after their own products to ensure they don't worsen the world's pollution problem once consumers are done with them. And even when they've agreed to do it, they sometimes try to avoid doing more. Take the carpet industry, which is fighting bills to tax its products and use the proceeds to fund recycling. The industry's own recycling nonprofit ousted two of its board members in April because they were advocating for recycling bills in New York and Illinois, as our former colleague Catherine Boudreau reports in her final story for POLITICO. Carpet America Recovery Effort even runs a mandatory recycling program in California, where consumers pay fees on new carpet and the industry uses the money to pay for recycling. But it prefers "market-based" programs, arguing that the fees make carpet less competitive with other types of flooring. "CARE can't come to terms with its own contradictions," said Franco Rossi, president of Aquafil USA Inc., which recovers nylon from old carpets. Rossi was booted from CARE's board in late April, along with the president of another recycling company. "The carpet industry runs the stewardship program in California because they have to, but they don't want it anywhere else because they think it will hurt carpet sales." The group has gone to some lengths to suppress support for recycling mandates. When it was giving out funding to carpet recyclers, CARE required them to refrain from supporting legislation that would require manufacturers to manage products' lifecycles. The carpet industry is also actively lobbying against the bills. The Carpet and Rug Institute, which has an overlapping membership with CARE, urged Illinois lawmakers to oppose the recycling proposal, arguing that it was "modeled on a problematic California program" and would create "an entirely new state bureaucracy." The episode illustrates the tensions that emerge when an industry group regulates itself. How large a role industry should play relative to regulators has been a sticking point as states try to enact EPR laws for carpets, packaging and other products across the country. Read more from Catherine and me here.   A message from Bank of America: Make everything recyclable: TerraCycle has recycled more than 7.7 billion items since its founding in 2001. Its philosophy? "Everything can be recycled in the end." This Bank of America partner is working to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.   YOU TELL US Welcome to the Long Game, your source for news on how companies and governments are shaping our future. Team Sustainability is editor Greg Mott, deputy editor Debra Kahn and reporters Lorraine Woellert and Jordan Wolman. Reach us all at gmott@politico.com, dkahn@politico.com, lwoellert@politico.com and jwolman@politico.com. Want more? Don't we all. Sign up for the Long Game. Four days a week and still free! BUILDING BLOCKS The Biden administration threw the solar industry a lifeline. | Mary Altaffer/AP Photo SOLAR REPRIEVE — The Biden administration has figured out how to resolve at least one conflict between its clean energy and domestic manufacturing goals, POLITICO's Kelsey Tamborrino reports. Biden threw the solar industry a lifeline Monday by waiving tariffs for two years related to the Commerce Department's probe of whether solar panel manufacturers in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are circumventing tariffs on Chinese shipments of solar equipment to the U.S. The investigation has chilled the solar industry and even delayed the retirement of at least one coal-fired power plant as manufacturers express worry that they could eventually have to pay tariffs on the source of about 80 percent of U.S. panel imports. "There's a big takeaway here in that when there are conflicting policy priorities, the Biden administration has shown that rapid decarbonization will not be thrown under the bus," said Christian Roselund, a senior policy analyst at Clean Energy Associates, an industry advisory firm. More from Kelsey here.   A message from Bank of America:   Also reading: Biden also invoked the Defense Production Act to promote domestic solar-panel manufacturing and other clean-energy technologies like heat pumps and hydrogen electrolyzers. As David Iaconangelo reports for POLITICO's E&E News, clean energy advocates have been pushing for that for months, ever since Russia invaded Ukraine. "This single measure obviously doesn't solve our problems, in Russia or in the atmosphere. But it's a hopeful sign that we can still get something done," wrote Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, who was one of the earliest DPA-for-heat-pumps boosters.   DON'T MISS THE 2022 GREAT LAKES ECONOMIC FORUM:  POLITICO is excited to be the exclusive media partner again at the Council of the Great Lakes Region's bi-national Great Lakes Economic Forum with co-hosts Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot. This premier, intimate networking event, taking place June 26-28 in Chicago, brings together international, national and regional leaders from business, government, academia and the nonprofit sector each year. "Powering Forward" is this year's theme, setting the stage to connect key decision-makers with thought leaders and agents of change to identify and advance solutions that will strengthen the region's competitiveness and sustainability in today's competitive climate of trade, innovation, investment, labor mobility and environmental performance. Register today.     WEIRD SCIENCE SPOOKY PAC — Crypto is getting into the lobbying game in increasingly inscrutable ways, our colleague Ben Schreckinger writes for Digital Future Daily. A new political action committee that launched Monday is possibly the first to be associated with a decentralized autonomous organization, a new kind of web-based entity that can be governed with blockchain tokens. That means a pot of political money will now be controlled by whoever purchases digital tokens from a decentralized online group. 3OH DAO (pronounced Three-Oh-Dow) is advocating for normal financial stuff — a light regulatory touch and rules favorable to decentralized finance activity. Scratch the surface, though, and you find one of the investors is CultDAO, which has a creepy website and pitches itself as a cult around "investing in the revolution." Read more from Ben.   A message from Bank of America: TerraCycle has recycled more than 7.7 billion items since its founding in 2001. Its philosophy? "Everything can be recycled in the end." This Bank of America partner is working to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns, in line with UN Sustainable Development Goal 12. This goal is grounded in the recognition that creating more responsible consumption and production processes will be key to achieving a more sustainable global economy and healthier environment. "Our mission is not just to manage waste, but to eliminate the idea of waste." CEO of TerraCycle Tom Szaky explains how, with Bank of America's support, the company is reducing waste by making more kinds of products recyclable, and devising ways to integrate recycled materials into new products. Read more.   WHAT WE'RE CLICKING — The Treasury is calling for the World Bank — headed by a Trump appointee — to do more on climate, including avoiding financing fossil fuel projects, the Financial Times reports. — Critics worry a New York bill to disclose the fashion industry's carbon footprint will only lead to more greenwashing. The Intercept has a deep dive. — Wells Fargo is pausing its "diverse slate" interviewing policy after the New York Times reported some of the interviews were window-dressing. — Climate realism takes shape: The Climate Overshoot Commission has its first meeting Thursday, and the American Geophysical Union is working on an "ethics framework" for "climate intervention," the AP reports.   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.       Follow us on Twitter Debra Kahn @debra_kahn Greg Mott @gwmott Lorraine Woellert @Woellert Jordan Wolman @jordanwolman   Follow us

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