REUSE Act of 2025
Download PDFSponsored by
Sen. Merkley, Jeff [D-OR]
ID: M001176
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Bill Summary
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, courtesy of the 119th Congress. The REUSE Act of 2025: because what America really needs is another report on reuse and refill systems.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The bill's primary objective is to require the EPA Administrator to prepare a report on the feasibility of reuse and refill systems for various sectors, including food service, consumer products, and transportation. Because, clearly, the most pressing issue facing our nation is the lack of reports on reusable containers.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill defines "reuse and refill system" in excruciating detail, ensuring that everyone involved has a clear understanding of what they're supposed to be reporting on. It also establishes a timeline for the report's completion (2 years) and requires the Administrator to consult with relevant stakeholders.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects: businesses that deploy reuse and refill system technologies, parties responsible for waste collection and management, and the EPA itself. Oh, and let's not forget the "relevant reuse and refill system stakeholders" – a term that sounds suspiciously like a euphemism for "lobbyists with deep pockets."
**Potential Impact & Implications:** The report will likely be a 500-page doorstop filled with platitudes about sustainability and environmental responsibility. Meanwhile, the real impact will be felt by the companies that get to write off their lobbying expenses as "research" and the politicians who get to claim they're doing something about climate change.
Diagnosis: This bill is suffering from a bad case of "Report-itis" – a disease characterized by an excessive reliance on bureaucratic busywork rather than actual policy changes. The symptoms include vague objectives, unnecessary definitions, and a complete lack of teeth.
Treatment: A healthy dose of skepticism and a strong stomach for the inevitable greenwashing that will follow this report's publication. Don't worry; it won't actually change anything.
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Sen. Merkley, Jeff [D-OR]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 432 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Expand and fully stand up the Office of Mountains, Deserts and Plains to support innovative approaches to the cleaning up of abandoned mines. l Develop and execute a 10-year cleanup plan to address lead at all existing cleanup sites that includes benchmarks and milestones that allow for congressional and public oversight of the schedule. RCRA. To streamline waste management, the following changes are needed in the Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery (ORCR): l Create an RCRA post-closure care permit that is tailored only to post- closure obligations. l Modify regulations that impede resource efficiency, recycling, and reuse by providing clearly that these materials are not waste. This can be done by promulgating a rule that provides an alternative pathway to hazardous waste regulation to allow the transport of material to legitimate recyclers or back to manufacturers to support the recycling and reuse of material. l Change the electronic manifest (e-manifest) regulations to a 100 percent electronic system and eliminate all paper manifests and manual filing and data input. This system should operate from a range of common handheld devices and could be expanded to accommodate solid waste and materials for reuse and recycling. l Reassign regulation and enforcement of air emission standards under the authority of RCRA Section 300437 to OAR and revise and modernize the regulations to comport and integrate with CAA rules. Risk Management Program. If a new Risk Management Program (RMP) rule is finalized by the Biden Administration, it should be revised to reflect the amend- ments finalized in 2019 to protect sensitive information. Personnel The following organizational changes could create resource efficiencies to focus on the highest-value opportunities: l Eliminate or consolidate the regional laboratories and allow OLEM to use EPA, other government, or private labs based on expertise and cost. — 433 — Environmental Protection Agency l Consolidate non-core functions (communications, economists, congressional relations, etc.) into one OLEM suboffice to allow the subject- matter offices to focus on the execution of field work. l Eliminate the Office of Emergency Management and reassign its functions. 1. Move the emergency management function (currently OEM) into Homeland Security under the Administrator’s office. 2. Incorporate removal authority (currently OEM) into OSRTI. 3. Retain the oversight and enforcement of the RMP program within OLEM. 4. Drop “Emergency Management” from OLEM’s name. Budget While the overall goal is certainly to reduce government scope and spending, OLEM’s programs present the best opportunity to use taxpayer dollars to execute EPA’s core mission of cleaning up contamination. OFFICE OF CHEMICAL SAFETY AND POLLUTION PREVENTION (OCSPP) OCSPP primarily oversees the regulation of new and existing chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)38 and the regulation of pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)39 and Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA).40 These activities are managed in two separate offices within OCSPP: the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT, chemicals) and Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP, pesticides). OCSPP is constantly pressured to ban the use of certain chemicals, typically based on fear as a result of mischaracterized or incomplete science. Needed Reforms and New Policy in OPPT (Chemicals) l Ensure that decision-making is risk-based rather than defaulting to precautionary, hazard-based approaches like the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS). l Focus the scope of chemical evaluations on pathways of exposure that are not covered by other program offices and other environmental statutes, and eliminate scope creep to ensure that evaluations can be completed in a timely manner consistent with the statutory requirements.
Introduction
— 396 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Increase the use of commercial waste disposal. Using commercial disposal would reduce capital costs (~ $2 billion) for new disposal sites to accelerate cleanup and reduce local post-cleanup environmental liability at multiple sites. l Revisit the Hanford cleanup’s regulatory framework. Hanford poses significant political and legal challenges with the State of Washington, and DOE will have to work with Congress to make progress in accelerating cleanup at that site. DOE and EPA need to work more closely to coordinate their responses to claims made under the TPA and work more aggressively for changes, including congressional action if necessary, to achieve workable cleanup goals. l Establish more direct leadership and accountability to the Deputy Secretary consistent with Government Accountability Office recommendations.91 l Change Environmental Management’s culture to promote innovation and completion. Budget Environmental Management received slightly less than $7.6 billion in FY 2021, and its budget request for FY 2023 is approximately $8.06 billion.92 The additional funding necessary to accelerate closure of the program will need to be considered as part of a broader government-wide discussion about yearly appropriations. OFFICE OF CIVILIAN RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT (OCRWM) (CURRENTLY OFFICE OF SPENT FUEL AND WASTE DISPOSITION) Mission/Overview The Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) of 1982 conferred the responsibility for commercial nuclear waste disposal on the federal government,93 and in 2002, Congress designated a single repository located at Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the national repository site. The act also established the Office of Civilian Radio- active Waste Management (OCRWM).94 The Obama Administration shut down OCRWM in 2010. The Office of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition, which is headed by a non-confirmed Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office of Nuclear Energy, is currently responsible for the management of nuclear waste, and interim disposal is taking place on various sites. Providing a plan for the proper disposal of civilian nuclear waste is essential to the promotion of nuclear power in the United States. — 397 — Department of Energy and Related Commissions Needed Reforms l Work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as it reviews DOE’s permit application for Yucca Mountain. According to both the scientific community and global experience, deep geologic storage is critical to any plan for the proper disposal of more than 75 years of defense waste and 80,000 tons of commercial spent nuclear fuel.95 Yucca Mountain remains a viable option for waste management, and DOE should recommit to working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as it reviews DOE’s permit application for a repository. Finishing the review does not mean that Yucca Mountain will be completed and operational; it merely presents all the information for the State of Nevada, Congress, the nuclear industry, and the Administration to use as the basis for informed decisions. l Reform the licensing process. The reactor licensing process is inadequate. Fixing nuclear waste management will require wholesale reform that realigns responsibilities, resets incentives, and introduces market forces without creating chaos within the current nuclear industry that has been built around the current system. l Produce concrete outcomes from consent-based siting. Beginning in the Obama Administration and resurrected during the Biden Administration, consent-based siting for a civilian waste nuclear repository has been a way to delay any politically painful decisions about siting a permanent civilian nuclear waste facility. In 2022, DOE announced $16 million to support local communities in consent-based siting.96 The next Administration should use the consent-based-siting process to identify and build temporary or permanent sites for a civilian waste nuclear repository (or repositories). New Policies l Restart Yucca Mountain licensing. DOE should restart the Yucca Mountain licensing process. Any continuation of interim storage facilities should be made part of an integrated waste management system that includes geologic storage. Further, building on the consent-based siting process already underway, DOE should find a second repository site. l Fix the policy and cost drivers that are preventing nuclear storage. The federal government continues to hold $46 billion97 in the Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF),98 funded by utilities and their ratepayers for permanent disposal of nuclear waste. However, no such storage exists, and spent nuclear fuel remains on site at most nuclear plants. Meanwhile, Congress uses those funds to finance unrelated spending. Moreover, DOE’s
Introduction
— 431 — Environmental Protection Agency can result in more work on the ground in communities where Americans live and work. OLEM can accomplish this goal by determining the scope of work based on an actual reduction in exposure to chemicals as opposed to the elimination of the- oretical potential exposures. To manage cleanups more effectively, OLEM should: l Require training in project management for project managers (as opposed to all staff having a general science background). l Adopt EPA’s Lean Management System (ELMS) across all OLEM programs. l Delegate all CERCLA authority from the Administrator to the OLEM Assistant Administrator as opposed to a direct delegation to the Regional Administrators. l Find opportunities to transfer work and funding to states and tribes. New Policies Superfund. To execute more efficient and effective cleanups, the following changes are needed in the Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Inno- vation (OSRTI): l Revise the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan (NCP) to modernize and streamline the cleanup process using lessons learned from the execution of the NCP over the past 40-plus years. l Increase the use of CERCLA removal authority to execute short-term cleanups, which will provide clarity and finality for potentially responsible parties (PRPs) and return cleaned up land to communities more swiftly. l Streamline the process for determining Applicable or Relevant and Appropriate Requirements based on commonalities across sites as opposed to making such determinations on a site-by-site basis. l Revise groundwater cleanup regulations and policies to reflect the challenges of omnipresent contaminants like PFAS. l Revisit the designation of PFAS chemicals as “hazardous substances” under CERCLA. l Allow PRPs to perform the statutorily required five-year reviews of Superfund cleanups to free OLEM resources. — 432 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Expand and fully stand up the Office of Mountains, Deserts and Plains to support innovative approaches to the cleaning up of abandoned mines. l Develop and execute a 10-year cleanup plan to address lead at all existing cleanup sites that includes benchmarks and milestones that allow for congressional and public oversight of the schedule. RCRA. To streamline waste management, the following changes are needed in the Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery (ORCR): l Create an RCRA post-closure care permit that is tailored only to post- closure obligations. l Modify regulations that impede resource efficiency, recycling, and reuse by providing clearly that these materials are not waste. This can be done by promulgating a rule that provides an alternative pathway to hazardous waste regulation to allow the transport of material to legitimate recyclers or back to manufacturers to support the recycling and reuse of material. l Change the electronic manifest (e-manifest) regulations to a 100 percent electronic system and eliminate all paper manifests and manual filing and data input. This system should operate from a range of common handheld devices and could be expanded to accommodate solid waste and materials for reuse and recycling. l Reassign regulation and enforcement of air emission standards under the authority of RCRA Section 300437 to OAR and revise and modernize the regulations to comport and integrate with CAA rules. Risk Management Program. If a new Risk Management Program (RMP) rule is finalized by the Biden Administration, it should be revised to reflect the amend- ments finalized in 2019 to protect sensitive information. Personnel The following organizational changes could create resource efficiencies to focus on the highest-value opportunities: l Eliminate or consolidate the regional laboratories and allow OLEM to use EPA, other government, or private labs based on expertise and cost.
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.