Advance Sustainability Goals with Recycled Materials

The RMS serves as a voluntary, market-based tool to address challenges that brands, their suppliers and the recycling industry face in trying to incorporate higher amounts of recycled content into packaging or finished products.

The variety and flexibility of the RMS is intended to provide continuity for consumers and brands while meeting the needs of the industry and enabling new mechanisms to encourage the use of recycled content.

Anticipating an increase in materials captured for recycling, the RMS has been developed to help advance the use of recycled materials. The RMS serves as a vehicle for brands to track, validate and communicate recycled material claims with a certified chain of custody. The ARC trading system – powered by the ARC Registry – also provides a means for brands to invest directly in expanding recycling capacity and capability.

The Recycled Material Standard is the core of the RMS Program. The standards have been developed through a multi-stakeholder consensus process led by GreenBlue, focusing on clear rules, definitions and guidelines to create an even playing field among competitors and a strong assurance mechanism for brands and consumers. Certified participants will play a key role in advancing the use of recycled materials.

The RMS program is based on a third-party certification system. GreenBlue developed and maintains the Recycled Material Standard (the rules for participation). A participant is a company within the supply chain that meets the requirements of the standard and gets certified. A certification body (CB) is an accredited third party that carries out the auditing functions required for certification. The “CBs” make sure participants are following the rules in order to maintain their certified status.

The chain of custody system specifies material management requirements along the full value chain in order to assure the accuracy and transparency of claims associated with recycled materials. In order to establish chain of custody, all participants from the point of reprocessing through manufacturing and labeling of a final product are required to be certified.

To achieve certification, participants are required to undergo an audit from an accredited certification body and demonstrate conformance with the standard.

The RMS has defined a new environmental commodity: the Attributes of Recycled Content (ARC) certificate. The ARC trading system – powered by the ARC Registry – has been modeled after other programs such as renewable energy certificates (RECs) and carbon credits.

An ARC is defined as a claim associated with one metric ton of output produced from recycled input materials. The ARC is generated at the processor level and each ARC is tracked through the ARC Registry to assure no double counting.

ARCs can be purchased by any entity in the value chain. Typically these are brands, universities or governments aiming to meet established commitments.

The ARC system provides a finance mechanism to advance technology investment in both mechanical and chemical recycling facilities. To move recycling beyond business as usual, the standard includes a robust set of criteria modeled after additionality tests established for carbon trading. Companies purchasing ARCs will be able to demonstrate their support for investments in recycling technology.