Upstream’s roots
Today, Upstream is a leading nonprofit organization advocating, innovating and celebrating circular economy solutions in businesses, communities and policies. But we weren’t always recognized as such.
We’ve come a long way since our early beginnings, but they shaped who we are now and the impact we’ve made over the years. So, let’s unpack Upstream’s roots and the evolution of the reuse movement as we know it.
How the Zero Waste Movement Began
Thirty years ago, an ecologist named Bill Sheehan in Athens, Georgia, and an activist in British Columbia named Helen Spiegelman became friends. Right around then, the big question in state and provincial governments was “How much recycling should we have? Should it be 30%, 40%, 50%?”
Bill and Helen, who were part of a band of radicals, boldly said, “We should be striving for zero waste.” So they worked together to help found what we now call the Zero Waste Movement in the US and Canada.
Of course, back then, it seemed like a crazy idea. But today, the biggest cities in the world are striving to become zero-waste cities, and the biggest corporations in the world are striving to go zero waste. We even have #zerowaste influencers with millions of social media posts and followers.
The Founding of Upstream
After working together through the 90s, Bill and Helen felt the movement they helped create had become overly focused on the end of the pipe.
They realized that we were never going to be able to recycle or compost our way to a sustainable future. We have to work upstream to redesign the systems generating all the waste in the first place.
So, they founded Upstream in 2003 to begin catalyzing conversations with business, government and nonprofit leaders to do just that.
Advocating for Extended Producer Responsibility
The first big idea was to bring a cornerstone environmental policy – which was starting to flourish across the Atlantic – from Europe to the United States.
That policy idea was called extended producer responsibility (EPR), which would hold companies accountable for reducing the environmental impacts of their products by making them financially responsible for the product and its packaging when the consumer was done with it.
Through this policy, any costs for better environmental design and management of the product or package would be included in the price of the product – a process called cost-internalization.
Bill and Helen recognized that in order to start a movement, they needed a rationale for why government officials, NGOs and businesses would want to support EPR.
So, they rolled up their sleeves and dug into the research.
What they found was fascinating.
The History & Evolution of Solid Waste Management
In the early 1900s, there were no solid waste management systems. In many cities, there weren’t sewer systems either.
So how did people get rid of their solid waste? They literally threw their garbage and waste from their chamber pots into the streets.
Horses were also the main mode of transportation, and the streets were filled with horse poop. City streets became breeding grounds for all kinds of bacteria and vermin, and many people became sick from exposure.
It was a public health crisis.
In New York City, a group of wealthy women came together and persuaded the Mayor and City Council to create the first municipal sanitation department in the United States. In a few short years, the streets had been transformed by an army of sanitation officials who set up systems for garbage collection, street sweeping, and better organization of the informal recycling infrastructure.
New York became a model, and other cities rushed to duplicate their success.
Back then, most of the products and packaging were made from natural materials like wood, leather, paper, metals, and cloth, and the biggest contribution to the waste stream was coal ash.
Fifty to 60 years later, the post-World War II economy was booming, plastics started to emerge, and the amount of products and packaging in the waste stream exploded.
Unintended Consequences
Bill and Helen realized the municipal solid waste systems that had been set up to take care of a public health crisis had inadvertently become a form of welfare for corporations.
A company could design and package a product any way they wanted and then leave the responsibility for disposing of that product to local governments and taxpayers. Corporations were essentially being subsidized by not having to pay for the waste they generated. Bill and Helen published these findings in a groundbreaking paper called Unintended Consequences: Municipal Solid Waste Management and the Throwaway Society.
The solution was to pass extended producer responsibility policies that would make companies putting these products in the marketplace responsible for sustainable design and collection for reuse and recycling.
Bill became an environmental Johnny Appleseed, working to seed organizations of government officials across North America to advocate for EPR policies in city and state governments.
Passing EPR for Electronic Waste
During this time, Matt Prindiville (who’s now Upstream’s CEO) worked for the Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM). NRCM was working on an EPR bill to require TV and computer manufacturers to pay for the collection and recycling of their products.
Only a handful of experts on the continent knew anything about EPR at the time. So, Matt called Bill, and they worked together to successfully pass the nation’s first EPR bill for electronic waste in 2004.
Upstream would go on to build and support a movement that has now passed more than 100 EPR laws in nearly 40 states – making companies responsible for the collection and recycling of computers, television sets, cell phones, mercury-containing thermostats, light bulbs, batteries, paint, pesticides, carpet, mattresses, unused pharmaceuticals – and now, packaging.
Continuing the Legacy
This legacy created a platform for Upstream’s current focus – and success – on reducing single-use packaging and elevating the new reuse economy.
Bill, Helen and our founding board knew that policy was (and still is) key for growing a circular economy.
Today, policy is just one of the tools in our toolbox. Upstream also provides support to businesses looking to transition to reuse through our Business Innovation Project and creates awareness and interest in building a new reuse economy through online communications and social impact campaigns.
And this is just the beginning. Join us on our journey to an indisposable future.