P&G backs recycling fund as EPR pressure mounts

The Recycling Partnership has launched a Recycling Participation Fund in the US to encourage household recycling as pressure from Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws mounts. The fund is backed by personal care heavy hitter, Procter and Gamble (P&G).

Last month, new EPR laws were implemented across seven US states, heightening the urgency to meet recycling performance targets. The Recycling Partnership organization says these benchmarks cannot be achieved through infrastructure alone.

The US-based nonprofit emphasizes that even in areas with established recycling programs, over half of recyclable materials do not enter the recycling system. This gap in the recycling chain makes consumer participation a key and underutilized pillar of progress, according to the partnership. The fund aims to offer producers a way to embolden community-level factors required to improve recycling outcomes.

Data drives recycling

The Recycling Participation Fund uses over 10 years’ worth of information on resident insight, field data, and real-world testing to help make recycling more accessible and encourage confidence in local recycling programs.

“People want recycling to work, and they want to know their actions matter,” says Cody Marshall, chief recycling officer at The Recycling Partnership. “As the leading organization that has been on the ground gathering deep, scientific, system-level data on household recycling behavior, we are uniquely positioned to use this pivotal funding to accelerate the time it takes to achieve next-level recycling rates.”

In the personal care industry, the fund reflects a shift from packaging redesign alone to making post-consumer participation attainable. The added lever of optimized consumer recycling aids in embedding circular-economy principles, combining long-term packaging innovation and day-to-day recycling.

The Recycling Partnership boasts a portfolio of over 200 behavior-focused projects. One example is an investment of almost US$9 million in the state of Michigan in collaboration with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. The collaboration increased the state’s recycling rate from 14% to 25%, passing the US average.

The Recycling Partnership has comprised extensive data from these projects with support from the private sector across various industries. The fund will tap this research to inform underexplored solutions and test novel strategies to accelerate recycling participation in California, Texas, Arkansas, and other priority regions in the country. The fund also has 10 community deployments planned within the first year.

Beauty packaging perspectives

The fund reflects a shift from packaging redesign alone to making post-consumer participation attainable.

The personal care industry has been navigating sustainability requirements by tapping recyclable or circular materials such as monomaterials, post-consumer recycled content, and bio-based options.

Earlier this year, Personal Care Insights sat down with packaging players SP Group and Trivium to discuss what successfully future-proofing beauty packaging entails.

SP Group told us that sustainability in personal care packaging is no longer a vague ambition or marketing claim — it is defined by measurable progress, regulatory compliance, and the ability to scale in real-world systems.

Trivium Packaging divulged that true sustainability requires balancing environmental goals with essential product protection, especially for sensitive formulations, while addressing low adoption of refill and reuse systems due to consumer, retail, and infrastructure barriers. For Trivium, the most impactful material innovations are those that combine circularity, consumer adoption, and compatibility with existing infrastructure.

We also sat down with Lignopure and TNT Group about how they are contributing to a circular economy in the beauty sector for product ingredients and packaging.

Lignopure highlighted that technologies are allowing the development of byproducts and waste streams that increase the portfolio of upcycled cosmetic ingredients. “In the not-too-distant future, consumers will seek ‘% upcycled origin’ as they seek ‘vegan’ in cosmetic packaging,” said Gabriela Meza Armenta, head of sales and marketing at Lignopure.

TNT Group named quiet luxury a driving trend in beauty packaging, demanding monomaterial and simpler components. The packaging company said it was working to produce primary and secondary packaging from a single recyclable material and highlighted its use of metals such as aluminum and Zamak, an alloy with a base of zinc.

At the time of the interview, The Upcycled Beauty Company’s Zero Waste Beauty Report 2025 found that 14% of cosmetic packaging makes it to recycling plants, but only 9% is recycled. Companies are asking for improved government clarification and implementation to streamline and increase circularity in the beauty industry.

The report also highlighted that packaging accounts for 70% of the beauty industry’s waste, and 95% of cosmetic packaging is thrown away. This results in the destruction of US$4.8 billion worth of beauty products annually.