National Recycling Agenda: Follow the Money
posted by Patty Moore Wednesday, May 20, 2009 7:33pmI realize I am behind in the sequence, but I want to comment about a National Recycling Agenda.
A note first: Recycling is good but reducing what we produce and consume has a much greater impact on improving the environment. Reusing is better too. That said…
I believe the top priority for a National Recycling Agenda is to:
1. Implement a national funding mechanism for recycling infrastructure & operations
We are fortunate in this country that we have some great minds that understand how to maximize recycling. They know that you need multiple opportunities to recycle; that means a recycling bin and a compost bin next to EVERY trash bin. But communities cannot afford the bins.
Long-time recyclers understand that we need to invest in research and development of the infrastructure to reprocess materials back into new raw materials for industries’ use and to create jobs. But there is no available funding to make these investments.
Much of our recycled paper, plastic and metals are being exported to other countries (primarily China) to be used as lower cost feedstock in producing new products. China, and other countries, are actively investing in their recycling infrastructure, and the US is rapidly being left behind.
In short, the US recycling industry desperately needs a funding source to move it forward and keep it competitive with other nations.
I maintain that such a system must:
- Cover ALL material types and ALL products: fees should not be punitive
- Reward materials that have a high recycling rate, or those with significant recycled content, with lower fees
- Ensure that fees are exclusively used to enhance the recycling system: fees cannot revert to either government or any private company
- Set up industry-controlled governance (the fee payers) that is subject to specific management requirements and transparent to the public and government
- Provide incentives to industry to increase recycling rates and to use recycled materials
- Provide incentives to industry to use materials with the smallest “ecological footprint” (as defined using LCI standards)
- Include incentives and opportunities for consumers to recycle
- Work to harmonize (nationally) the materials collected for recycling to as many materials as possible
And since I was asked about the top three priorities, here are my second and third choices:
2. Expand collection opportunities beyond curbside: specifically retail oriented drop-off program
3. Ban compostable organic and recyclable materials from the landfill
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Patty wrote: “1. Implement a national funding mechanism for recycling infrastructure & operations.”
I agree but think we need to make sure America’s small business recyclers are included in these programs and not just the big regional and nationwide recyclers and waste handlers.
Patty continued, “2. Expand collection opportunities beyond curbside: specifically retail oriented drop-off program.”
Again, I agree but lets’s not forget how our cities have a long history of driving local recyclers to the outskirts of town– recyclers need to be allowed to do business where people live. Right now, in Nashville, TN., Dallas Tx and in many other cities across America politicians are working to drive privately owned recycling businesses from within their city limits. Even the business I help manage has faced that same threat even though our community is happy to do business with us.
Patty concludes, “3. Ban compostable organic and recyclable materials from the landfill.”
Let’s work to ban landfills altogether. After all, if recycling is taken seriously and recognized as a part of our infrastructure (which it is) then we should have no need for landfills.
A funding mechanism that builds infrastructure should be coupled to a long term industry commitment to extended producer responsibility. whether that means take back, reverse engineering, backing deposit laws, etc. The existing paradigm of ‘Let ‘us’ produce what we want/what the consumer ‘needs’ , (as long as it has no direct threat to public health) and the downstream must take care of itself’, is not going to serve us or our descendants very well at all. The more that the industry leads the change, the more likely it is to help create the kind of change that it can work with. This will not be easy or simple. It will be hard and complex. Only when the pain of not doing it excceds the risk/opreceived pain/cost of doing it will we take action. That time is not long in coming, no matter how much oil, natural gas and coal is left to be extracted and used.
This is quite honestly the first positive thing that has come from the industrial side of this conversation. Thank you.
We as a group must develop a system where waste is eliminated, or darn close to it. We cannot continue to bury or burn our resources. It doesn’t work for either the consumer or the manufacturer.
Please work to make your suggestions happen.
Thanks.