Holyoke takes the lead in a campaign to reduce waste at the source--manufacturers.

Holyoke is the first community in Massachusetts to call for a statewide Extended Producer Responsibiliby, EPR, program. 

..."Once you make producers responsible for the cost of what happens to their products when they're discarded, that's going to influence how they design their product," [Lynn Pledger of Clean Water Action] said. "They're going to design it to make it easier to recycle. If it has a toxic component, for example, they're not going to want to pay to dispose of that toxic waste, so they're going to find a safer alternative."

The three Rs of environmentalism—reduce, reuse, recycle—represent a hierarchy, Pledger said, one in which the preferred option is to not create potential waste in the first place. Even products that can be recycled come with environmental costs, in their manufacture, in their packaging, in the recycling process.  EPR, she said, helps create "long product chains. & And along the way, you're focusing first on reusing things that don't have to be ground up and remanufactured."