With landfills filling up, Tennessee legislature once again looks at recycling bills

As Tennessee landfills near capacity, legislators look at ways to create greater recycling capacity.(Photo: John Partipilo)

Tennessee’s slow uptake of recycling is costing the state — in economic opportunity and dwindling landfill space — according to multiple presentations to the state’s newly formed Solid Waste Task Force.

With the bill filing deadline for the 2026 legislative session looming at the end of the month, the task force plans to draft a bill creating a waste diversion council that would assist Tennessee counties with finding ways to keep recyclable waste out of the state’s quickly-filling landfills and educate consumers about what they can recycle and where.

Tennessee businesses have told lawmakers in previous meetings that they are willing to purchase more recycled aluminum and glass if Tennessee can collect, process and produce sufficient quantities of recycled material to make it worthwhile. Right now, the state’s recycling rate is too low.

This comes as the Tennessee Waste to Jobs Act returns to the legislature for consideration. The act — introduced in 2025 by Sen. Heidi Campbell and Rep. Bob Freeman, both Nashville Democrats — would establish an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) model for packaging in Tennessee.

In EPR models, which have been in use internationally for years, companies that produce packaging products pay fees into a producer responsibility organization that uses those funds to improve recycling infrastructure and education. Tennessee’s bill would exempt small businesses that make less than $10 million in annual revenue, meaning that fees would be paid mostly by larger, national or multinational companies.

Campbell said the bill has built momentum since its introduction last year. The bill’s proponents have collected letters of support from several industry operators and a collection of Tennessee mayors from major cities and some rural communities, most recently including a letter from Dyer County Mayor David Quick.

But skepticism remains. A handful of states that have adopted EPR for packaging (many have EPR laws for specific products like batteries, paint and mattresses) are early in their implementation. 

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO of the National Waste and Recycling Association, countered that EPR does not improve recycling recovery rates or secondary markets. Hoffman told lawmakers that content commitments from producers — steady streams of recyclable materials — would stabilize secondary markets and encourage private capital investments in recycling infrastructure.

The state of trash

Regional landfill capacity and remaining life are on the decline in Tennessee, said Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation Bureau of Environment Advisor Jeremy Hooper. Attempts to create new landfills or expand existing landfills are also seeing more pushback on the local level. 

“There’s less and less space over time, as population expands, for landfills,” Hooper told lawmakers during a January Senate Energy, Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee meeting. “Those that are permitted are larger and more regional in nature, and there’s increasing demand on those, especially as landfills are denied expansions.”

Class I landfills, which accept the bulk of solid waste, currently have an estimated 10-plus years of life remaining in West and East Tennessee, Hooper said. But Middle Tennessee landfills are quickly approaching their limits. 

Middle Point Landfill — Middle Tennessee’s largest — has been a source of contention for years, with Murfreesboro leaders and residents opposing expansion plans and raising environmental concerns.

While the issue is regional now, that won’t always be the case, Hooper said.

“If a landfill closes down in Middle Tennessee, that has to go somewhere … waste going there right now could end up into the eastern or western grand divisions,” he said.

Landfills are expensive to run and time-consuming to permit, Hooper added, and as more landfills reach maximum capacity, waste will have to be transported elsewhere, adding to disposal costs.

Meanwhile, recycling markets and infrastructure are limited in Tennessee, making recycling more expensive as goods must be transported elsewhere for processing and reuse.  

“The take-home message for recycling is it has and continues to play a role in Tennessee, but the economics of recycling continue to make landfilling a cheaper disposal in many cases,” Hooper said.

During a task force meeting on Jan. 22, Rep. Chris Todd, a Jackson Republican, asked if the value of recycled material to end users is high enough to support the cost of recycling on its own.

Memphis Solid Waste Director Philip Davis told the task force that right now, it’s not, but the dynamics are complex and depend on the volume of recycled material and transportation costs. If Tennessee had more local processors, for example, the value of the recycled material changes.

“The resource that I believe we’re conserving is the landfill airspace,” Davis said. “We’re trying to conserve that for industry,” instead of filling it up with materials that should be composted or diverted.

While Todd said it’s a “no brainer” that compostable materials should not go to landfills, he said he can’t see his constituents being willing to pay more to recycle items like cans and bottles if it’s cheaper to put them in a landfill.

Steering recycling away from landfills

The task force, created in 2025 by the legislature to plot a strategy for Tennessee waste through 2050, has heard hours of statements from waste industry professionals, county and state waste officials, think tanks, recycling advocates and more over the last several months.

“We’ve heard it time and time again with every presentation … we need consistency, we need some standardization,” committee member Donna Barrett said.

She will work with Todd and Sen. Shane Reeves to draft a bill to create the diversion council.

Barrett, whose record of service in Tennessee includes stints as a state representative and election commissioner, said the diversion council could be structured similar to the Tennessee Election Commission.

“We do not tell counties which election equipment to use, we tell them which ones are certified,” Barrett said, using the election commission as an example.

Training and education would be the same from county to county, but individual counties could use the diversion council as a “clearing house” or information repository to determine which options best fit them, she said. 

“I may have a county that is so small that the mayor is the solid waste director … they don’t have time to interview a waste to energy (company) — a glass pickup company. They just don’t … have the bandwidth for that.”

The council could be tasked with speaking with solid waste directors across the state, identifying needs and solutions, vetting vendors, setting vendor standards, providing standardized recycling layouts and signage for recycling and convenience centers, and standardizing education and awareness programs, Barrett suggested.

There are many details to work out, including the council’s size, membership, and funding. 

“I think we have an opportunity legislatively, and it’s got to happen fairly quickly,” Todd said, noting that new revenue will be tough to find this year, and looking to reassign existing money to fund a council might be more realistic.