Sydney Harris, Upstream’s interim Strategic Policy Advisor, walks us through the many reuse policy victories to celebrate from 2022.

Upstream CEO Matt Prindiville just returned from GreenBiz’s Circularity Conference. It was a sold-out 3 day affair with more than a thousand sustainability professionals from virtually every consumer brand, plus representatives from the rest of their value chain. Here are three valuable takeaways from the conference.

With big brands signaling support for extended producer responsibility (EPR), deposit-return systems (DRS), and – most recently – reuse/refill, opportunities have opened up to pass policies and build infrastructure to transform how we consume products. But with these commitments come competing ideas around vision, strategies and tactics – and about which policies should come first, and which should follow.