Authority sets Interim 2020 Blue Box Steward Funding Obligation

May 1, 2020 Published on: May 1, 2020 Go back to the Latest News Archive

The Authority has set an interim 2020 Blue Box Steward Funding Obligation at $135.2 million. The steward funding obligation is the total amount that stewards must pay to municipalities for operating the Blue Box Program.

The 2020 Steward Funding Obligation has been set on an interim basis because the methodology to calculate the obligation is under review. The review was initiated due to anomalies generated by the methodology that are likely the result of significant market changes that occurred in 2018. The 2018 data forms the basis for the 2020 funding obligation.

Since the final steward obligation for 2020 will not be available by the first quarterly payment date in June, the interim obligation will inform the first payment. The final 2020 funding obligation will be determined by September 2020, and the amounts for the second, third and fourth quarterly payments will be adjusted to ensure that each Blue Box program receives their appropriate share of the final amount. The Authority will post the 2020 funding obligation to its website once finalized.

For the InKind Advertisting Program, an interim linage has been set to support program operations until the release of the final 2020 linage in September. This temporary linage has been set for each participating program at 50% of its 2019 linage. The total 2020 interim value of the Inkind Program is $4.86 million.

To determine the interim 2020 Steward Funding Obligation, the Authority used information obtained from its annual municipal Datacall, which surveys municipalities on costs and amount of materials collected through the Blue Box Program.