Episode Details

Jules Bailey calls his career a "Benjamin Button" trajectory: he started in the Oregon legislature, went on to run the distributor-owned cooperative behind the nation's first bottle bill, and is now in the startup world. In this conversation with Garr Punnett and co-host Sabira Lakhani, Jules explains what happens when a well-meant recycling policy meets real operations. Expect volume nobody planned for, retailers demanding more than you can deliver, and a refillable beer bottle that took dozens of tries to fit existing filling lines. He also makes the case for setting incentives and then getting out of the way, and explains why that's exactly why no state can simply copy Oregon. With seven states running packaging EPR and Oregon's law freshly upheld in federal court, it's a timely look at how these systems actually scale.