US Infrastructure Law Includes Recycling Funds
The new law, for instance, includes the RECYCLE Act, which authorizes a new federal grant program through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to help educate consumers about their residential and community recycling programs. This act, which ISRI helped craft, aims to reduce contamination in the residential recycling stream and, in turn, increase the volume of higher-quality commodity-grade recyclables for processing into new products, ISRI says. The RECYCLE Act also will increase the purchasing of products with recycled content through a mandatory review of EPA's Comprehensive Procurement Guidelines. The bipartisan infrastructure package funds the RECYCLE Act at $15 million per year for five years, or a total of $75 million.
The new infrastructure law also allots $150 million for critical mineral and battery recycling, including a new Battery Material Processing Grant Program within U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which provides grants for battery recycling research, development, and demonstration, ISRI says.