Across the country, companies are bringing production closer to home to strengthen supply chains, reduce dependency on imports and create jobs.

Notably, this process – known as “reshoring” or “nearshoring” – only succeeds when manufacturers have access to reliable, high-quality materials. That’s where Arkansas is leading the way, transforming recycled inputs into steel, plastics and paper products that power modern manufacturing in addition to helping build a circular economy that keeps critical resources at home and North American supply chains strong.

Circularity ensures yesterday’s waste is reintegrated while reducing dependence on mined ore or new, unused plastics shipped across oceans.

Added benefits include shortened supply lines, slashed transportation costs as well as emissions, and diminished exposure to global market shocks.

It’s also a workforce success story: sustaining thousands of high-wage jobs while ensuring the materials needed for cars, bridges, appliances and packaging remain readily available.

Recycling is not just good environmental policy –– it’s supply chain resiliency in action.

As old buildings and bridges are torn down to make way for new construction, and automobiles and washing machines reach their end of life, Arkansas recyclers accumulate and process them to recover high-quality ferrous metals. The result is a product that meets the same stringent performance standards as brand new steel made from mined ore.

Today, more than 70 percent of the steel forged in the U.S. is manufactured with recycled materials, and Arkansas is at the center of this story. Nucor’s mills in Mississippi County, one of the leading steel-producing counties in the nation, transform recycled materials into the steel that builds our cars and bridges.

The Natural State is also home to national leaders in plastics recycling.

Revolution, one of the largest recyclers and manufacturers of agricultural plastics in North America, has a recycling hub in Stuttgart and manufacturing operations in Little Rock that have helped reutilize over 1 billion pounds of plastics. In Arkansas, it converts used farm plastics into new products like polytube and trashcan liners made with the highest certified post-consumer resin in the industry. Revolution’s success demonstrates how circularity drives economic growth.

That same story holds true for the simple cardboard box, one of the most widely recycled materials in America. A fixture of our modern economy, almost every product sold domestically is at some point contained in cardboard.

Corrugated cardboard is one of the most recyclable materials in use today. With six sustainable packaging facilities in Arkansas, International Paper plays a pivotal role in creating new corrugated packaging by reusing more than 5 million tons of recycled fiber annually to turn yesterday’s boxes, newspapers and office paper into sustainable packaging.

Since 2013, International Paper has increased its recovery rate of corrugated packaging by 93 percent and its overall recovery rate by 40 percent, removing unwanted waste, extending the lifespan of our fiber and timber resources, and creating well-paying jobs for Arkansans.

Seeing the success of the recycled materials industry in The Natural State has directly informed my policy priorities in the U.S. Senate.

Whether passing pro-growth and investment policies like tax reform or leading the Senate Recycling Caucus to promote awareness around this evolving sector, I am proud to work in bipartisan fashion and advance commonsense ideas. This year, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously advanced my legislation, the Strategies to Eliminate Waste and Accelerate Recycling Development (STEWARD) Act, to strengthen voluntary standardized data collection efforts that help Arkansas manufacturers make informed business decisions while discerning industry trends.

The circular economy plays a small role in each of our lives. From the bridges we drive across to the appliances we replace and cardboard boxes we break down, what is recycled today becomes the durable materials we rely on tomorrow. I would encourage other states to follow Arkansas’s lead because it is clearly a winning play for our economy and the environment.

Click here to read the op-ed on The Hill's website.