Future of Recycling · people. In 2006 U.S. scrap recyclers exported $15.7 billion worth of...

Future of RecyclingIs a zero-waste society achievable?

Three-quarters of all Americans recycle at home,

making recycling one of the nation’s most popular

environmental activities. Skeptics argue that recycling

does little to help the environment and often costs

more than burying waste in landfills, but rising energy prices and

concerns about climate change are strengthening the supporters’

case. Making new goods from scrap metal, glass or paper uses less

energy and generates fewer greenhouse gases than extracting

and processing virgin materials. Today the U.S. recycles more than

30 percent of its municipal solid waste, and advocates say that

figure could be much higher. Diverting more waste from landfills,

however, will involve finding ways to handle new materials such

as food scraps. Meanwhile, a growing stream of junked computers,

televisions and other electronic trash — much of it containing

toxic materials — is forcing manufacturers to take responsibility

for disposing of their products.

I

N

S

I

D

E

THE ISSUES ....................1035

BACKGROUND ................1044

CHRONOLOGY ................1045

CURRENT SITUATION ........1049

AT ISSUE ........................1051

OUTLOOK ......................1052

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................1056

THE NEXT STEP ..............1057

THISREPORT

Four million old cell phones are recycled yearly atReCellular, in Dexter, Mich. Used TVs, computers,

cell phones and other “e-waste” contain many toxicmaterials and are the fastest-growing segment

of the U.S. municipal solid-waste stream.

CQResearcherPublished by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.

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CQ Researcher • Dec. 14, 2007 • www.cqresearcher.comVolume 17, Number 44 • Pages 1033-1060

RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR

EXCELLENCE ◆ AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD

1034 CQ Researcher

THE ISSUES

1035 • Is there a waste-disposalcrisis in the United States?• Do product bans reducewaste?• Should producers be responsible for disposingof used products?

BACKGROUND

1044 ‘Throwaway Society’Increased consumptionhas created more trash.

1047 Confronting WasteGovernment involvementbegan in the 1960s.

1047 Domestic DebateCritics say recycling hasmore costs than benefits.

CURRENT SITUATION

1049 Federal Action?Advocates want more education programs andmarket involvement.

1050 Slimmer PackagesManufacturers are designinglighter and more eco-friendlypackaging.

OUTLOOK

1052 Zero-Waste VisionsMany U.S. and foreign citiesshare Wal-Mart’s goal.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

1036 One-Third of Solid WasteIs PaperAbout one-fourth is yardtrimmings and food scrapscombined.

1037 Recycled Content OftenSaves EnergyBut using virgin resources tomake newsprint and glassconsumes less energy.

1038 Almost All Car BatteriesAre RecycledPercentages are much lowerfor everyday householdproducts.

1039 Half of All Trash Is DiscardedOnly one-third is recycled.

1040 Nation Recycles 82 MillionTons AnnuallyOver a 15-fold increase since1960.

1042 San Francisco Pioneers inFood RecyclingCity to collect 75 percent of allwaste by 2010.

1045 ChronologyKey events since 1948.

1046 Recycling Focuses on Two Types of PlasticMarket for other types is lessdeveloped.

1047 Did You Know?Facts about recycling.

1051 At IssueIs generating energy from wastegood for the environment?

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

1055 For More InformationOrganizations to contact.

1056 BibliographySelected sources used.

1057 The Next StepAdditional articles.

1059 Citing CQ ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

FUTURE OF RECYCLING

Cover: Getty Images/Andrew Sacks

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Future of Recycling

THE ISSUESB ack in the early days

of recycling, criticsargued that recycling

not only cost more thandumping waste in a landfillbut also used more energythan it saved.

Tell that to the enterpris-ing thieves cruising the streetsof New York City nowadays.With scrap material pricesrising, New York has an un-usual recycling problem:Thieves are stealing metal,bundled paper and other re-cyclables from curbside binsand selling them on under-ground markets. The im-probable “green” crime waveprompted Mayor MichaelBloomberg to sign a bill inOctober raising the penaltyfor using a vehicle to stealcurbside materials from $100to $2,000. 1

Few New Yorkers wouldhave predicted that old glassand plastic could become sovaluable back in 2002, when the citystopped recycling them to save moneyduring a budget crisis. But as costsrose to send these items to landfills,and neighborhoods opposed buildingnew incinerators, the city made a newcommitment to recycling.

“With landfill and incineration dis-posal costs rising steeply and their cur-rent reliability in question, it is im-portant that [New York City] movebeyond its traditional reliance on dump-and-burn solutions,” ComptrollerWilliam Thompson, Jr. warned in anOctober 2004 report. 2

New York City’s waste problem isespecially challenging because the cityclosed its vast Fresh Kills landfill onStaten Island (the world’s largest) in2001 after local politicians sued to shut

it down, and trucking waste to out-of-state landfills is costly.

Americans have debated the bene-fits and costs of recycling for severaldecades. 3 Although U.S. recycling rateshave climbed steadily since the 1970s,advocates say that the nation can domore. At the same time, technologiesfor producing energy from trash offernew options for managing solid waste.

Americans generate about 250 mil-lion tons of municipal solid waste(MSW), or household trash, annually.This amount has nearly tripled since1960, but the rate of growth has slowedin recent years. In 1960 nearly allMSW was dumped into landfills, butin 2006 almost half was diverted toother uses. More than 32 percent wasrecovered for recycling or compost-

ing (breaking down organicmaterials such as food andpaper into a soil-like mixturethat can be used as fertiliz-er). Another 13 percent wasincinerated in waste-to-ener-gy (WTE) plants — facilitiesequipped with advanced pol-lution controls that burngarbage under controlledconditions to generate elec-tricity. 4 (See chart, p. 1040.)

State and local govern-ments, which are responsiblefor solid waste disposal, typ-ically support recycling as away to reduce littering anddisposal costs. Environmen-talists endorse recycling be-cause it conserves natural re-sou rce s and r educesenvironmental impacts fromlogging and mining. And be-cause manufacturing productsfrom scrap instead of virginmaterials often requires lessenergy, recycling saves fueland reduces greenhouse gas(GHG) emissions that con-tribute to global climatechange. 5 (See graph, p. 1037.)

Recycling also combats global climatechange directly by reducing genera-tion of methane, a powerful green-house gas produced when organicwaste decays in landfills.

“People understand recycling — it’sthe most widely practiced environmen-tal activity in the U.S.,” says Allen Her-shkowitz, a senior scientist with the Nat-ural Resources Defense Council(NRDC). “Recycling is ecologically su-perior to using virgin materials. Whenyou make aluminum from recycled cansinstead of bauxite ore, you save 95 per-cent of the energy.” Relying on virginresources also threatens biodiversity, Her-shkowitz contends. “Earth is losing anacre of tropical forest every second, andthe paper industry is the top worldcause of deforestation,” he says.

BY JENNIFER WEEKS

AP P

hoto

/Set

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enig

New York City sanitation workers collect paper forrecycling ahead of roving scrap scavengers. Almost halfof the 250 million tons of household trash generated byAmericans annually is diverted to other uses. About a

third is recovered for recycling or composting, and 13 percent is burned to generate electricity.

1036 CQ Researcher

Municipal recycling is part of a larg-er scrap-recycling industry that alsoprocesses materials from industrial andother sources, such as automobiles,appliances and construction and de-molition wastes. This sector generatesan estimated $65 billion in revenuesannually and employs some 50,000people. In 2006 U.S. scrap recyclersexported $15.7 billion worth of mate-rials to 143 countries. 6

“With the developing world takingoff economically, demand for resourcesis picking up, and this trend is notgoing to subside. There just aren’tenough raw materials out there at de-cent prices for manufacturers to getwhat they want,” says Jeffrey Morris,a principal with Sound Resource Man-agement Group, a consulting firm inWashington state. “Energy is scarce,

too, and it takes energy to processmaterials into products. Disposal isn’ta good use of these resources, whichis why China is buying them as fastas it can.”

Skeptics say that materials in mu-nicipal waste have low value and areexpensive to reuse or recycle. DanielK. Benjamin, an economics profes-sor at Clemson University in SouthCarolina, argues that mandatory re-cycling programs “force people tosquander valuable resources in aquixotic quest to save what theywould sensibly discard.” In Benjamin’sview, society is better off letting low-income scavengers cull valuable ma-terials from trash. “[R]ecycling house-hold discards is the business of thepoor, but only until they have im-proved their lot enough to pass it

on to those who would follow intheir footsteps,” he writes. 7

Nearly 60 percent of U.S. house-hold discards are organic materialsthat can be readily composted or re-cycled (food scraps, yard trimmings,paper and paperboard). Other prod-ucts pose harder challenges. Only twoof the six major types of commercialplastic resins have well-developed re-cycling markets. (See sidebar, p. 1046.)And unlike glass, plastic typically can-not be processed directly back into itsoriginal form, so recycling oftenmeans “downcycling” it into a lesser-quality product — for example, shred-ding plastic beverage bottles to makefiber for fleece garments.

Another concern is e-waste — usedelectronic goods like televisions, com-puters and cell phones, which containmany toxic materials. The United Na-tions Environment Programme esti-mates that 20-50 million metric tonsof e-waste are generated worldwideevery year. 8 E-waste currently accountsfor about 2 percent of U.S. municipalsolid waste, but it is the fastest-grow-ing segment of the municipal wastestream. According to the EnvironmentalProtection Agency (EPA), only 15 to20 percent of the roughly 2 milliontons of U.S. electronics discarded in2005 were recycled, with most of theremainder going to landfills. 9

The short life cycle of electronicproducts is contributing to the preva-lence of e-waste. “Invariably, after youbuy the newest electronic widget, youdump the old one,” observes Canadi-an writer Giles Slade. 10 Governmentstandards can also make products ob-solete. Notably, U.S. television broad-casters are scheduled to shift from ana-log to digital technology in early 2009,a step that could prompt consumers toscrap millions of older televisions. 11

Waste managers and environmen-talists worry that e-waste will be crushedin landfills and release contaminants,polluting ground water and threaten-ing human health. Cathode ray tubes

FUTURE OF RECYCLING

One-Third of Solid Waste Is Paper

Paper accounted for 34 percent of the 251 million tons of U.S. municipal solid waste in 2006. Yard trimmings and food scraps together were 25 percent of the total.

* Figures do not total 100 due to rounding.

Source: “Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2006,” Environmental Protection Agency

U.S. Municipal Solid Waste, by Material, 2006

Glass

Rubber, leather and textilesWood

Other

3.3% Paper

33.9%

Food scraps

12.4%

Yard trimmings

12.9%

5.5% 7.3%

Plastics

11.7%

Metals

7.6%

5.3%


in televisions and computer monitorscontain several pounds of lead, whichcan cause brain and nerve damage.Computers also contain heavy metalssuch as copper, zinc, cadmium, beryl-lium and arsenic that are hazardousin small quantities. Liquid-crystal dis-plays in laptops, flat-panel televisionsand other digital equipment containmercury, another strong neurotoxin. 12

Electronics recycling is a fast-growingindustry because the metallic compo-nents are valuable, but many opera-tions — especially in developing coun-tries — provide little or no protectionfor workers or the environment.

High fossil fuel prices in recentyears have raised interest in alterna-tive fuels, including energy generatedfrom waste. 13 WTE plants are oneway to turn garbage into power; inaddition, many large landfills capturetheir methane emissions, clean the gasto remove impurities and burn it togenerate electricity. As of 2006 the U.S.had 3,134 megawatts of generating ca-pacity from landfill gas and WTE plants,the equivalent of five or six medium-sized coal-fired power plants. 14

More landfill methane projects are onthe drawing boards, but no new WTEplants have been built in the UnitedStates for a decade, although severalplants are expanding. Today’s WTE plantshave advanced pollution controls andproduce much lower emissions thanolder waste incinerators. WTE advocatessay that electricity from waste combus-tion should receive the same legal ben-efits and subsidies as other renewablefuels, but many environmental advo-cates oppose classifying WTE as “green”power. (See “At Issue,” p. 1049.)

As regulators, businesses and advo-cacy groups look for ways to manageAmerica’s trash, here are some of theissues they are debating:

Is there a waste disposal crisisin the United States?

Since the first Earth Day celebra-tion in 1970, many recycling advo-

cates have warned that the nationfaces disaster if Americans keep recy-cling only a fraction of the solid wastesthey produce. In the past, some ob-servers worried the United Statescould run out of landfill space. Todaymost recycling supporters acknowl-edge it is possible to bury all of ourtrash, but they say landfills pose last-ing environmental risks and that somewastes are too toxic to bury or burn.And some regions lack disposal spaceor systems for managing trash.

In 2006 there were 1,754 municipallandfills operating in the United States.15 The number has declined sharplyin the past several decades, but theiraverage size has increased as site own-ers seek to achieve economies ofscale. According to recent industry es-timates, the United States has 20-50years of landfill disposal capacity, al-though some states have as little asfive years’ worth. 16 A 2004 survey by

BioCycle magazine identified 30 statesthat were adding landfill capacity. 17

Some observers argue that the worldhas plenty of room for its trash. Inhis 2001 bestseller The Skeptical En-vironmentalist, Danish political sci-entist Bjorn Lomborg projected thatall of the garbage generated in theUnited States in the 21st century wouldfit into a landfill measuring 18 mileson each side and 10 stories high.“Garbage is something we can dealwith. It is a management problem,”Lomborg asserted. 18

But many environmental and com-munity groups say that even state-of-the-art landfills are not an acceptableway to manage trash. As waste breaksdown in landfills it produces landfillgas, a mix of methane, carbon diox-ide and small amounts of other sub-stances that can cause odors or healthrisks. 19 Landfills also produce leachate,a liquid runoff that can be toxic, when

Recycled Content Often Saves Energy

Manufacturing products with recycled material requires far less energy than making the same products with virgin content. Aluminum cans, for example, require about 10 BTUs if they are made with recycled material vs. 225 BTUs with virgin materials. Some other products, however, such as newsprint and glass containers, use less energy when made from virgin resources.

Source: Sound Resource Management

Energy Usage of Products Made withVirgin vs. Recycled Content

(in millions of British thermal units per ton)

0 50 100 150 200 250

Glass containers

Tin cans

Cardboard boxes

Newsprint

HDPE bottles

PET bottles

Aluminum cans

Recycled content

Virgin content

1038 CQ Researcher

water leaks in and picks up contam-inants from garbage.

Current standards require landfilloperators to install liners to containleachate, and to capture and treat gasat large landfills. But neither systemis foolproof. “Most professionals ac-knowledge that no one knows howlong modern liners will actually func-tion,” says Sego Jackson, principalsolid waste management planner forSnohomish County in northwest Wash-ington state. EPA’s guidelines for es-timating landfill air emissions assumethat on average, collection systemswill capture about 75 percent of thelandfill gas. 20

“We still do have a solid-waste man-agement crisis. The issue isn’t landfillcapacity, it’s the long-term impact oflandfills on public health,” says BrendaPlatt, co-director of the Institute for LocalSelf-Reliance, a nonprofit communitydevelopment group in Washington, D.C.“We know all landfill liners will even-tually leak, so we’re just postponing theimpact of our consumption.”

Waste managers want to improvetechnologies for managing trash butsay that the system is working. “Solid

waste management is a local issue, soit’s hard to generalize that the U.S. isfacing a crisis,” says Brent Dieleman,manager of the technical division forthe Solid Waste Association of NorthAmerica (SWANA), which includes in-dustry and government agencies. “Thereare local crises because of landfill spaceshortages and high disposal prices. Butwhen people raise this issue, oftenthey’re really saying that we generatemore garbage than we did in the past,and that’s not true.”

In the 1970s and ’80s, U.S. MSWgeneration rates rose by 30 percentor more each decade. The rate lev-eled off considerably in the 1990s asthe concept of source reduction (pre-venting waste from ever entering thewaste stream) started to influencebusiness practices. For example, manymanufacturers found ways to use lessmaterial in packaging as a cost-cut-ting measure. Beverage companiesreduced the weight of two-liter plas-tic bottles by 25 percent between1977 and 2000, and made steel bev-erage cans 40 percent lighter be-tween 1970 and 2000. 21 And pro-ducers increased the lives of some

products, such as tires, so fewer werethrown away over time.

These trends gradually moderatedthe rate at which Americans producedtrash. Total municipal waste genera-tion increased by about 16 percentbetween 1990 and 2000, and from2000 through 2006 trash output in-creased by only 5.4 percent. The na-tional per-capita generation rate ac-tually fell slightly, from 4.64 poundsper day in 2000 to 4.60 pounds in2006 (total garbage quantities rose be-cause population increased). 22 “We’renot producing substantially more wastenow than we have in the past, so forthe most part we can handle it effec-tively,” says Dieleman.

But for public officials in areas withhigh waste disposal costs the issue isurgent. The nationwide average “tip-ping fee” for disposing of trash at alandfill rose from $8.20 per ton in 1985to $34.29 in 2004, and prices are muchhigher where space is scarce. North-east state tipping fees averaged $70.53per ton in 2004; in contrast, fees inSouthern and Western states wereroughly $25 per ton. 23

And siting new landfills can bechallenging. “We have room, but land-filling is not what citizens want to dowith open space. When you ask con-sumers about landfills, no one wantsto live near them or drive by them,”says Kate Krebs, executive director ofthe National Recycling Coalition.

In one recent instance, when pro-posals for six large landfills in easternNorth Carolina became public in 2006,the state legislature passed a one-yearmoratorium on new landfills by votesof 50-0 in the Senate and 99-11 in theHouse. Later, North Carolina placed asurcharge on all trash sent to landfillsand tightened environmental standardsfor new facilities. 24 States are forbid-den from discriminating against out-of-state waste shipments under a 1978U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which heldthat such policies violated the Consti-tution’s Commerce Clause, but some

FUTURE OF RECYCLING

Almost All Car Batteries Are Recycled

Virtually all of the nation’s old automotive batteries are recycled, as required by most state laws. Recycling rates for household products such as paper and aluminum cans are significantly lower.


Recycling Rates of Selected Items, 2006

0

20

40

60

80

100%

Glasscontainers

Plasticsoft-drink

bottles

PlasticHDPE milkand water

bottles

TiresAlum.beer and

soda cans

Paper andpaper-board

Yardtrimmings

Steelcans

Autobatteries

99.0%

62.9% 62.0%51.6%

45.1%34.9% 31.0% 30.9%

25.3%


have used strategies such as surchargesand special waste-management districtsto regulate imported waste. 25

Many areas with growing populationsare having trouble keeping up with ris-ing waste generation. California has anaggressive solid waste program that al-ready recycles, reuses and composts 54percent of household garbage, but thestate’s population is projected to risefrom 36 million today to 60 million by2050. “We’re looking at that and we’rethinking, ‘Wow, that’s going to be a lotof trash,’ ” acknowledged Jon Myers,public affairs director for the CaliforniaIntegrated Waste Management Board. 26

Growth and development in manyWestern states are worsening a long-standing problem: illegal waste dump-ing on public lands. The Interior De-partment’s Bureau of Land Managementreported more than 6,000 illegal dumpsites strewn with household waste, carparts, appliances and other trash be-tween 2000 and 2006. Cleaning upthose dumps could cost several thou-sand dollars apiece if they contain haz-ardous materials or require laboratorytesting. 27 Illegal dumping is especial-ly common in areas that do not haveenough trained personnel and facili-ties for managing solid waste.

Even everyday consumer items suchas automobile tires can create hazardsif they are not managed safely. Be-tween 1983 and 1985 two separatefires at a tire pile in Everett, Wash.,burned more than 1 million tires, leav-ing five acres of ash that containedcarcinogenic residues and required amulti-million-dollar cleanup. 28 “A lothas been done to address tire piles,but they still exist in Snohomish Coun-ty and around Washington today.They’re very expensive to clean up,and the public still doesn’t have manygood options for dealing with un-wanted tires,” says Jackson.

Do product bans reduce waste?Plastic bags, once a convenience that

shoppers took for granted, have be-

come a prime environmental target.About 100 billion bags are sold to re-tailers worldwide every year, and only1-3 percent are recycled. Plastic bagsand films make up about 4.5 percentof the waste in landfills, where theycan take centuries to break down. 29

They blow around easily outdoors,where they tangle in tree branches,block drains and choke animals andbirds that accidentally ingest them.Ubiquitous as litter, plastic bags areknown derisively as “the national flower”in South Africa, “white pollution” in Chinaand “witches’ knickers” in Ireland.

Plastic bags are made of severaltypes of polyethylene (#2 and #4 resins).Only about 1 percent of bags used in

the U.S. each year are recycled. Mostcurbside recycling programs do notcollect them because they clog sort-ing machinery. In response to grow-ing concerns about litter and envi-ronmental impacts, at least 18 countrieshave adopted or considered taxes,consumer-education campaigns, usage-reduction targets or outright bans onplastic bags in the past five years. 30

San Francisco banned plastic shop-ping bags at large grocery and drugstores in 2007, and other cities havedebated similar measures, includingAnnapolis, Boston and Austin. In No-vember 2007 a bill was introduced inNew Jersey to ban the bags at largeretail stores statewide. 31

Proponents argue that banning hard-to-recycle and environmentally harm-ful products will force users to findmore benign substitutes. “[M]erely em-phasizing greater recycling of plasticbags is an inadequate response; rather,we must fundamentally alter policy tosignificantly reduce our use and con-sumption of plastic bags,” argues RameyKo, a member of the Bag the BagsCoalition in Austin, Texas. As Ko ac-knowledges, even in environmentallyconscious Austin many people chooseplastic bags over alternatives such aspaper bags or reusable tote bags. 32

Bag manufacturers say the best wayto deal with plastic bag litter is toboost support for recycling. The in-dustry is working with grocery storesto increase at-store collection and trainemployees not to double-bag purchasesin plastic. Producers also note that tech-nology improvements have made bagsmuch lighter: grocery sacks were 2.3mils (thousandths of an inch thick) in1976, but are 0.7 mils thick today. Be-cause plastic bags are so light, theyrequire less fuel to transport thanpaper grocery bags. They also con-sume about four times less energy toproduce and require only about 10percent as much energy to recycle. 33

“From a litter standpoint, plastic bagsare very aggravating, so it’s under-

Most Trash Is Discarded

Fifty-five percent of all municipal solid waste was discarded in 2006. Only about one-third was recycled. One-eighth was combusted with energy recovery.


Management of Municipal Solid Waste, 2006

55%Discarded

32.5%Recycling

12.5%

Combustion with Energy Recovery

1040 CQ Researcher

standable that people are focusing onthem,” says the NRC’s Krebs. “Butthere’s very strong end-use demandfor them from companies that use themas feedstock for plastic decking, andthe industry is working hard to getusers to recycle them.”

Other plastic goods have attractedsimilar treatment. Roughly 100 cities,mostly in California, have bannedtakeout food containers made of poly-styrene foam (known as Styrofoam, atrademarked brand) over the past 20years, seeking to promote biode-gradeable alternatives such as papercups. 34 Polystyrene can be recycledbut has a low scrap value because itis lightweight and bulky, so collectingand transporting enough material forrecycling is expensive, and food con-tainers must be cleaned before pro-

cessing. Like other disposable plasticproducts, it is a major component oflitter and breaks down very slowly.

As with plastic bags, producers saythat polystyrene containers cause lessenvironmental harm than alternatives,such as plastic-coated paper cups.

Many food retailers also object tocontainer bans. “It places the burdenon restaurants when we should be fo-cusing attention on the people whoare throwing away the containers,” saidLara Diaz Dunbar of the CaliforniaRestaurant Association in March 2007,when legislation banning non-recyclablefood containers by 2012 was introducedin the state legislature. 35

Instead of banning hard-to-recycleproducts altogether, many states andcommunities forbid landfilling them. Nu-merous states bar wastes including yard

trimmings, tires, used motor oil, varioustypes of batteries, appliances and oil-based paint from landfills. 36 These rulesforce sources to recycle the materials orfind other uses for them and help toreduce waste generation over time. “Dis-posal bans that put responsibility for re-cycling on producers create a direct in-centive not to make that item,” saysSnohomish County’s Jackson.

For example, in 2006 Massachusettsbanned sending construction and demo-lition wastes such as asphalt, brick,wood and metal to landfills in orderto extend state landfill capacity. “Thestate targeted aggregates [crushed stone,sand and gravel], metal and wood be-cause recycling markets could acceptat least 75 percent of the calculatedwaste stream with no problem,” saysAmy Bauman, founder of greenGoat,a Boston consulting firm that workswith the building industry to reduceand recycle wastes. “Otherwise a banmight lead to illegal dumping, whichdoesn’t help anyone.”

In Bauman’s view, the ban hasbenefited Massachusetts builders bygiving them a new incentive to reducewaste and take advantage of marketsfor recyclables. “The industry was alreadyrecycling aggregates and metal, so woodwas the only controversial issue,” shesays. “The ban reinforces the growingpopularity of green building.”

Dieleman of SWANA emphasizesthat disposal bans only work as partof a broader waste reduction and re-cycling strategy. “Before you ban land-filling wastes, you need to establishalternative ways to regulate, collect andprocess them that will achieve the over-all goal,” he points out. “Otherwise,you’re imposing an unfunded man-date on waste managers.”

Some cities are working with pro-ducers instead. In July 2007 Los An-geles partnered with plastic bag man-ufacturer, grocers and environmentalgroups to launch a pilot plastic bag re-cycling program in the wake of a newstate law requiring grocery and retail

FUTURE OF RECYCLING

Nation Recycles 82 Million Tons Annually

The amount of solid waste in the United States has nearly tripled in the past half-century, to 251 million tons. During the same period, the amount of waste recycled — including composting — increased more than 15-fold, to 82 million tons.


Management of Municipal Solid Waste, 1960-2006

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

2006200019801960

(millions of tons)

88.1

151.6

238.3 251.3

Recovery for compostingRecovery for recycling

Combustion withenergy recovery

Discards to landfill,other disposals


stores to offer in-store bag collection.City agencies are publicizing the pro-gram in designated “high-trash areas”and offering collection bins, pickup ser-vices, promotional materials and mediasupport to stores that participate. 37

Taxes and fees can also promotesustainable choices. Ireland cut plasticshopping bag use by 90 percent afterit placed a 15 Euro-cent tax on thebags in 2002. In 2007 the tax wasraised to 22 cents per bag after its ini-tial impact began to erode. 38 And a“green bag” movement in which storesoffer inexpensive, reusable polypropy-lene tote bags as an alternative topaper or plastic, is spreading from Eu-rope and Australia to the United States.“Hardly anyone pays for a shoppingbag in those countries,” says Jackson.“They’ve all got their own.”

Should producers be responsiblefor disposing of used products?

Few Americans think of theirhomes as hazardous waste storage sites,but according to EPA the cans of oldhouse paint sitting in millions of base-ments nationwide are household haz-ardous waste. Modern paints may con-tain a variety of toxic solvents andpigments, and some older housepaints contain lead (added to makethe finish last longer) or mercury (usedto prevent mildew).

The EPA regulates hazardous wastedisposal under the Resource Conser-vation and Recovery Act (RCRA), buthouseholds and small businesses thatgenerate minimal quantities of wasteare essentially exempt from RCRA re-quirements. Instead, municipal wasteprograms are responsible for safe dis-posal of household hazardous wastes.Communities may collect paint andother hazardous materials year-round,accept them on special collection daysor refer residents to drop-off centerselsewhere. People who live far fromcollection centers have few options.Some agencies suggest mixing old paintwith kitty litter or sawdust to thicken

Remnants of a ‘Throwaway Society’

Pharmaceutical products await incineration at the Covanta EnergyCorp. in Indianapolis (top). Last year the facility burned some 6.5 millionpounds of pills from pharmacies and drug manufacturers around thecountry. Electronic equipment to be recycled is warehoused at TheComputer Service Center in Blaine, Minn. (bottom). A half-dozenstates, including Minnesota, ban computer monitors, televisions andother e-waste in landfills because of their toxic content.

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it, pouring half-inch layers of paintinto a cardboard box lined with plas-tic (letting each layer harden beforeadding more), and then throwingaway the box. 39

In contrast, residents of British Co-lumbia, Canada, can call a hotline fordirections to more than 100 depotsacross the province that accept left-over house paint. 40 The centers arerun by Product Care, an industry-funded nonprofit association that alsocollects flammable liquids, pesticidesand gasoline. 41 Under provincial reg-ulations, companies that make, selland distribute these products mustprovide environmentally safe ways forusers to dispose of leftovers — a phi-losophy known as extended produc-er responsibility.

Producer responsibility requirementsare common in Canada and the Eu-ropean Union, but the concept hasbeen applied less often in the UnitedStates. Examples include deposit/re-turn systems for beverage bottles andvoluntary producer initiatives to recy-cle items that are landfilled in largequantities, such as carpet, or that con-tain hazardous materials, such ashome thermostats equipped with mer-cury switches. Most states have lawsrequiring car-battery retailers to takeback used batteries for recycling. Manyservice stations and chains like JiffyLube and Auto Zone also take backand recycle used motor oil, antifreezeand tires.

Concerns about the growing volumeof electronic goods entering the munic-

ipal waste stream are spurring a grass-roots push for producer responsibilitylaws focused on e-waste. “We think cor-porations should be required to takeback their e-waste, and should be barredfrom exporting it,” says Silicon ValleyToxics Coalition campaign DirectorLauren Ornelas. “They also should haveto reduce and eventually eliminate thetoxic chemicals that they use now.”

Today most e-waste recyclingtakes place in developing countries,where labor costs are lower and en-vironmental standards are less strin-gent than those in the United States.Press reports indicate that a largeshare of global e-waste is exportedillegally in violation of the BaselConvention, a pact that bans inter-national shipment of hazardous

FUTURE OF RECYCLING

A bout 60 percent of U.S. municipal solid waste is foodscraps, soiled paper, yard trimmings and other com-postable materials. Homeowners and municipal land-

scapers typically bag yard waste separately from other garbage,so it is easy to collect. Some 62 percent of U.S. yard wastewas composted in 2006. But few jurisdictions collect food scraps,which are usually mixed into household garbage and requirespecial handling to manage odors and avoid attracting rats andother pests.

San Francisco is the first large U.S. city to collect and com-post food scraps as a waste-diversion strategy. Food and othercompostable materials like soiled paper and waxed cardboardmake up about 20 percent of San Francisco’s solid waste (thecity is highly urbanized and has few yards, so it produces littleyard waste). Sunset Scavenger and Golden Gate Disposal, thecity’s two waste-hauling companies, have collected food wastefrom restaurants and other commercial customers since 1996 andfrom residences since 2000. Thanks partly to this program SanFrancisco was diverting 63 percent of its waste by 2005 and isaiming for a 75 percent diversion rate by 2010. 1

Some 40 percent of San Francisco’s population does notspeak English, so the food-diversion process is designed to besimple and user-friendly. Curbside collection of household wasteuses a color-coded system called the “Fantastic Three”: organ-ic wastes go into green wheeled collection carts, other recy-clables like glass and plastic into blue carts and trash into black

carts. Businesses, which also use a color-coded collection sys-tem, receive a 25 percent discount on their trash pickup costsfor separating food waste. Hauling companies provide multi-lingual training and posters to help employees learn the sys-tem.

As of 2007, San Francisco haulers were collecting over 300tons of organic wastes every day from some 2,100 businessesand 75,000 homes. 2 Trucks take the materials from a down-town processing center to two composting facilities about anhour away. There the waste is ground, mixed and stored forseveral months until natural decomposition processes turn itinto compost. The resulting blends, including a mix called FourCourse Compost that is approved for use on organic soils, aresent to local vineyards, small farms and landscaping suppliers.San Francisco also holds a yearly free compost giveaway forresidents.

Rather than viewing the food collection program as a bur-den, restaurants praise it. “It’s increased the morale in thekitchens,” said Jonathan Cook, operations supervisor at the Me-treon, a San Francisco entertainment complex with eight restau-rants. “People feel they’re not throwing things out, they’re doingsomething good for the environment while they’re working.”Separating food scraps saves Metreon restaurants $1,600 permonth in waste hauling fees. 3

Growers also praise the end product, which costs no morethan traditional compost. Linda Hale, vineyard supervisor for

San Francisco Pioneers in Recycling Food ScrapsCity to collect 75 percent of all waste by 2010.


wastes without consent from re-ceiving states. 42 The convention hasbeen ratified by 170 countries, in-cluding most European nations, butnot the United States.

The Silicon Valley coalition and thenonprofit Basel Action Network esti-mated in 2002 that 50-80 percent ofthe roughly 13 million computers re-cycled in the United States that yearwere exported to Asia. 43 In 2005 sig-nificant amounts of e-waste were alsobeginning to flow to Africa, and a casestudy in Nigeria found that most sec-ondhand electronics were either refur-bished or thrown directly into unregu-lated dumps. 44

Many Asian e-waste processors dolittle more than smash up electronicsto recycle them and harvest valuable

materials. Environmental samples col-lected by Greenpeace in 2005 at e-waste recycling facilities in Guiyu,China, and New Delhi, India, containedhigh levels of toxic metals includinglead, cadmium, copper, antimony andmercury, as well as PCBs and PBDEs— persistent, toxic manmade chemi-cals that are widely used in plasticand electronic products as insulatorsand flame retardants. 45 Exposure toPCBs can damage victims’ skin andliver as well as their hormonal andimmune systems and increase cancerrisks. 46 PBDEs have caused harmfulthyroid and liver effects in animal stud-ies, and EPA has classified one typeas a possible human carcinogen. 47

A 2007 study by researchers fromHong Kong found elevated levels of

dioxins and furans (persistent toxicchemicals that are by-products ofmany industrial processes), in sur-face soils and waste combustionresidues in Guiyu. “[T]he crude pro-cessing of e-waste has become oneof the main contributors of [thesechemicals] to the global environment,”the authors concluded. 48

Since 2003 California, Connecticut,Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, North Car-olina, Oregon, Texas and Washingtonhave passed laws that require certainelectronic products to be recycled andset up systems to pay for it. Arkansas,Massachusetts, New Hampshire, andRhode Island have banned landfillingor incinerating e-waste. 49 Most staterecycling laws require manufacturers topay for collecting and recycling their

the Madrone Vineyard ManagementGroup in Sonoma County, calls FourCourse Compost “really rich, andjust fabulous stuff.” The diversity ofingredients collected from restaurantsgives the compost a rich nutrientcontent, says David Di Loreto,owner of Di Loreto Cellars in Cam-ron Park, Calif.: “They have devel-oped a consistent, high quality, well-composted product, which all of ourfield trials and use have shown verybeneficial and environmentally cleanand friendly.” 4

Other cities are starting to followSan Francisco’s lead. Seattle hasbanned paper and cardboard fromnon-recyclable garbage and allowsresidents to mix food scraps withyard waste, which is collected forcomposting. Starting in 2009 the citywill require food-scrap recycling. 5

Meanwhile, nearly 200 businesses in Portland, Ore., and another33 companies at Portland’s airport are participating in a city pro-gram that collects commercial food waste and soiled paper forcomposting. 6

“Food and green wastes are the newrecycling frontier,” says Kate Krebs, ex-ecutive director of the National Recy-cling Coalition. “The biggest opportu-nities we have within the municipalstream are all compostable materialslike food, yard trimmings, wood scraps,paper and cardboard. This trend is goingto spread east because it makes somuch sense to turn food waste intonutrients in a non-chemical way.”

1 Jeremy Bates, “City Surges Toward 75 PercentWaste Diversion,” San Francisco Observer Online,May 17, 2005.2 Norcal Waste Systems, “New Annex BecomesGreen Central in S.F.,” March 22, 2007.3 Elizabeth Davies, “Four-Course Compost Com-pletes the Food Chain,” Independent (London),Nov. 5, 2004.4 Tina Caputo, “Restaurant Scraps Find New Lifein Northern California Vineyards,” Wines & Vines,February 2004.5 J. Michael Kennedy, “Seattle’s Recycling Suc-cess Is Being Measured in Scraps,” The New York

Times, Oct. 10, 2007.6 Portland Composts!, www.portlandonline.com/osd.

Food scraps go into a compost containerat The Slanted Door restaurant in San

Francisco, which began collecting and composting residential andcommercial food wastes in 1996.

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products. California uses an alternatesystem under which retailers collect a$6-$10 advance recycling fee from buy-ers at the time of purchase. The feesgo into a fund to cover recycling costswithout involving producers.

Under pressure from advocacy groupsand consumers, some companies havestarted providing takeback services. DellComputer offers free recycling for itsown products at any time and for otherbrands when customers buy a Dell re-placement. Other companies, includingHewlett-Packard, Apple and Toshibawill take back certain products, oftenwith a service charge. Among televisionmanufacturers, only Sony will recycle itsproducts for free. 50

Some waste managers observe thatno toxic leaks from landfilled e-wastehave been documented and say thatrisks from e-waste have been exagger-ated. “Of course, we should eliminatethe use of toxic materials wheneverpossible, and we should also learn howto best collect and process electronicmaterials for recycling. However, weshould not ban e-waste disposal unlesswe have sound data that support sucha ban. Public-sector budgets can’t af-ford new recycling mandates,” arguesChaz Miller, state programs director forthe Environmental Industry Associations,a trade group for the solid waste man-agement industry. 51

Other experts point out that althoughproducer responsibility requirements inEurope have helped to reduce wasteand increase recycling, it is not clearthat they are the most effective way toachieve these goals, or that they arespurring manufacturers to make theirgoods more eco-friendly. 52 “The mainarguments for takeback in Europe wereto reduce costs for local governmentsand to encourage producers to redesignproducts,” says Margaret Walls, an econ-omist with the think tank Resources forthe Future. “But no programs actuallywork that way because they’re all col-lective — companies hire contractors tomanage takeback. No producer takes

back its own merchandise from con-sumers, so signals to redesign productsare very muted.”

Takeback programs also are ex-pensive and can be complicated toadminister, Walls notes. “Systems thatrequire consumers to pay a depositfee up front when they buy an itemand refund it to them when they’redone with it [often retaining part ofthe deposit to pay for recycling] aremore cost-effective, and the rebate of-fers an incentive to bring things back,”she says. Deposit-refund systems haveworked well for beverage containersin the United States: 65-95 percent ofthese items are recycled in the 11 “bot-tle bill” states, compared to 30 per-cent on average in other states. 53

Some states also use deposit-refundsystems to promote recycling of lead-acid car batteries.

BACKGROUND‘The Throwaway Society’

H umans have recycled since an-cient times, especially prior to

the Industrial Revolution, when laborwas cheaper than most finished goods.Through the late 19th century, manyAmerican families sewed quilts out ofworn clothing, fed table scraps to theiranimals and made soap from woodashes and animal fat.

As industry expanded during the1800s, factories needed increasing quan-tities of rags (used to make paper), ropes,rubber, scrap metal and other inputs.Scrap recycling expanded from an ac-tivity practiced mainly at home and insmall craft shops into a commercial in-dustry. By the 1890s large U.S. citiessuch as New York and Philadelphia hadhundreds of scrap and junk dealers,some of whom shipped goods through-out the United States and across the At-lantic to Europe. Thousands of immi-grants earned their first American wagescollecting, processing and peddling scrapmaterials. 54

At the same time, public health ex-perts recognized that garbage couldspread disease, and local governmentscame to see trash disposal as a civicresponsibility. New York City, with itsnotoriously crowded and dirty tene-ments, was the locus for many waste-management innovations. It built thefirst U.S. trash incinerator on Gover-nor’s Island in New York Harbor in1885, created the first public garbage-collection system in 1895 and set upthe first U.S. trash sorting plant for re-cycling in 1899. Other cities followedsuit: A survey conducted by MIT in1902 found that more than 120 Amer-ican cities provided regular residentialwaste collection. 55

FUTURE OF RECYCLING

Continued on p. 1046

The Top 10 Items to Recycle

These items make up significant shares of the municipal solid waste stream and are readily recyclable in most areas of the United States:

Source: National Recycling Coalition; for a map showing places to recycle, visit www.nrc-recycle.org/localresources.aspx

1. Aluminum

2. PET plastic bottles

3. Newspaper

4. Corrugated cardboard

5. Steel cans

6. HDPE plastic bottles

7. Glass containers

8. Magazines

9. Mixed paper

10. Computers


Chronology1945-1960Postwar boom makes disposableproducts more widely available,increasing waste generation.Marketing promotes culture ofmass consumption.

1948Fresh Kills landfill, which will be-come the world’s largest city dump,opens in Staten Island, N.Y.

1954Industrial designer Brooks Stevenscalls “planned obsolescence” thegoal of marketing.

1955Life magazine labels America a“throw-away society.”

•

1960s-1970sEmerging environmental move-ment warns about hazardouswastes and argues that Ameri-cans generate too much trash.

1960Americans recycle about 6 percentof the more than 82 million tons ofmunicipal solid waste they generate.

1965Solid Waste Disposal Act providesfunds for research, demonstrations.

1970The first Earth Day raises awarenessof the growing waste problem andrecycling. . . . Congress establishesEnvironmental Protection Agency. . . .Resource Recovery Act shifts focusof federal waste-management activitiesfrom disposal to recycling, resourcerecovery and converting waste toenergy. . . . College student GaryAnderson designs the “chasing ar-rows” recycling symbol.

1971Oregon enacts first U.S. “bottle bill”on beer and soft-drink containers.

1976Resource Conservation and RecoveryAct (RCRA) creates first federal permitprogram for hazardous-waste dispos-al and sets standards for “sanitarylandfills” and waste incinerators.

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1980s Perceived waste-disposal crisis spurs public andgovernment support for recycling.

1984Amended RCRA sets environmental-protection standards for landfills andrequires all facilities not meetingthese standards to close by 1993.

1987Mobro 4000 garbage barge receiveswidespread media coverage as itsails from Long Island to theCaribbean looking for a disposalsite, sparking public fears the U.S.is running out of landfill space.

1988Society of the Plastics Industry devel-ops coding system sorting plasticsinto six categories. . . . . Hypodermicneedles and medical waste wash upon East Coast beaches.

1990U.S. waste generation rises to 205million tons, of which 14 percentis recycled, 14 percent is burnedfor energy and 2 percent is com-posted. . . . Pressure from con-sumers and environmentalistsleads McDonald’s restaurants tostop selling food in Styrofoam“clamshell” packages. . . . Con-gress amends Clean Air Act totighten emission standards forsolid-waste incinerators.

1990s-2000sUps and downs in scrap marketstrigger debate over the economicvalue of recycling. Increasing en-ergy prices and concerns aboutclimate change prompt compa-nies to explore ways of turningwaste into energy.

1994EPA launches outreach program toreduce landfill methane emissions,promote landfill gas energy projects.

1996San Francisco launches pilot pro-gram to collect and compost foodwaste. . . . U.S. achieves 25 percentrecycling rate.

2002Mayor Michael Bloomberg, R-N.Y.,suspends glass and plastic recy-cling in response to major budgetdeficits.

2004Suspension of recycling fails togenerate major savings, and NewYork City resumes recycling, sets agoal of diverting 70 percent of mu-nicipal waste from landfills by 2015.

2005Nation produces 245 million tons ofmunicipal solid waste; 23 percent isrecycled, 8 percent is compostedand 13 percent is burned for energy.

2006Dell Computer institutes free recy-cling for all of its hardware withoutrequiring a replacement purchase.

2007San Francisco bans plastic shop-ping bags at large grocery anddrug stores. . . . Five states pass e-waste recycling laws. . . .Eighteen nations ban or regulateplastic bags.

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Through World War I, as immigra-tion swelled the U.S. population andincomes rose, Americans generatedgrowing quantities of trash. New YorkCity residents threw out four poundsper person per day between 1900 and1920, mostly ashes from coal and woodheating. 56 But consumers also werebuying more single-use disposableproducts such as razors, facial tissueand sanitary napkins, which produc-ers touted as more modern and hy-gienic than traditional homemade ver-sions. Using these items eroded thethrift ethic, making it more socially ac-ceptable to throw things away. 57

The Great Depression forced manyAmericans back into recycling householditems and composting food scraps outof economic necessity. When the Unit-ed States entered World War II, govern-ment officials touted recycling as a civicduty. Millions of families collected usedmetal, rags, paper, string and householdfats (a source of glycerin for explosives)for scrap drives to support war produc-tion. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ex-horted radio listeners in 1942 to join aused-rubber collection drive that broughtin 400 tons of material, including girdles,pet toys and rubber bands. 58

The pendulum swung back towardconsumption in the postwar boom yearsas consumers spent their rising wageson new homes, cars and appliances.To encourage repeat purchases, man-ufacturers updated products regularly.Some deliberately shortened the designlives of popular items like radios, apractice known as planned obsoles-cence or “death-dating.” 59 In 1955 Lifemagazine dubbed the United States “TheThrowaway Society.”

Although people were buying morepackaged goods, they also were usingless coal and wood for heating and burn-ing more oil, which did not leave ashesbehind. As a result Americans generatedonly 2.68 pounds of solid waste per per-son per day in 1960 — the same amountor less than in the 1930s and ’40s. 60

FUTURE OF RECYCLING

Continued from p. 1044

Recycling Focuses on Two Types of PlasticMarket for other types is less developed.

Plastics have become essential in packaging as well as products from clothing to furniture. In 1988 the Society of the Plastics Industry introduced seven codes identifying the basic types of plastic resin. These numbers, which were intended to make recycling easier, appear inside the small “chasing arrows” triangle imprinted on the bottoms of plastic jars and bottles.

But this imprint does not guarantee that plastic items will be recycled. Recyclers focus mainly on #1 and #2 narrow-neck containers, such as beverage bottles, because there are more commercialized applications for these resins. (Wide-mouth containers such as yogurt tubs and baby wipe boxes are often rejected, even if they are made from #2 plastic, because they have a different melting point from bottles, so the containers cannot be processed together.) Fewer jurisdictions collect plastics #3 through #7 because markets for these materials are less developed.

Source: American Chemistry Council, Plastics Division

Resin

#1 Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET/PETE)

#2 High Density Polyethylene (HDPE)

#3 Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)

#4 Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE)

#5 Polypropylene (PP)

#6 Polystyrene (PS)

#7 Other (resins other than #1-6 or a multi-layer combination of several of these resins)

Products made withvirgin material

Plastic beverage and grocery bottles; food jars; film wrap; microwaveable food trays; textiles; carpet

Milk, water, juice, shampoo, and detergent bottles; grocery bags; shipping containers; extruded pipe; plastic wood composites; wire covering

Many types of rigid and flexible packaging; shrink wrap; pipe; siding; window frames; fencing; medical tubing; carpet backing

Bags for dry cleaning, newspapers, produce, and household trash; shrink wrap; coatings for beverage containers; toys, squeezable bottles; moldings, adhesives, and sealants

Yogurt, margarine, and deli food tubs; medicine bottles; appliances, carpeting, and other durable consumer products

Takeout food containers and disposable utensils; Styrofoam “peanuts” and other types of foam packaging; building insulation; medical products; toys

Large reusable water bottles; packaging materialsbottles; plastic lumber

Products made withrecycled content

Fiber for carpet, clothing, and comforter fill; food and beverage containers; film; strapping

Bottles for non-food items such as shampoo and cleaning supplies; plastic lumber; pipe; floor tiles; buckets, crates, recycling bins, and other containers

Pipe; decking; fencing; paneling; gutters; flooring; garden hose; packaging

Floor tiles; paneling, furniture; compost bins and trash cans

Automobile parts; garden equipment

Thermal insulation; foam packaging; plastic moldings

Bottles; plastic lumber


Most of the refuse was dumped into “san-itary landfills” that compacted alternatinglayers of garbage and dirt in trenches, atechnique pioneered by the U.S. ArmyCorps of Engineers during World War IIand widely adopted by American cities.But as consumers scooped up televisions,hula hoops and other “must-have” items,the municipal waste stream expandedand junkyards — increasingly filled withmanufactured products and packaging —spread across the nation.

Confronting Waste

C onverging worries about municipaland hazardous wastes pushed the

federal government into the waste man-agement arena in the 1960s. In 1965 Con-gress passed the Highway BeautificationAct, championed by Lady Bird Johnson,which regulated junkyards and billboardsalong major highways. Congress alsoadopted the Solid Waste Disposal Act,which authorized federal research anddemonstration projects of waste-disposalpractices and provided aid to states tocreate waste management plans. Fiveyears later the Resource Recovery Actexpanded the focus to recovering ener-gy and materials from solid waste andrequired the newly formed EnvironmentalProtection Agency to report annually onways of promoting recycling and reducingsolid-waste generation.

States and towns also took up theissue. In 1971, over opposition fromthe beverage industry, Oregon passedthe nation’s first “bottle bill” requiringrefundable deposits on beer and soft-drink containers. Next-door-neighborWashington state quickly jumped onthe recycling bandwagon, opening thefirst U.S. buy-back center for newspa-pers, beer bottles and aluminum cansin 1972. By the mid-1970s several com-munities, including Madison, Wis., andUniversity City, Mo., had establishedcurbside recycling collection. 61

With the 1976 Resource Conservationand Recovery Act (RCRA), Congress cre-

ated a national waste management pol-icy framework. Many of the law’s pro-visions focused on hazardous wastes,but Subtitle D urged states to developcomprehensive programs for managingnon-hazardous wastes, including MSWand other materials such as batteries,construction debris and medical waste.The law established criteria for munici-pal landfills and incinerators and bannedopen dumping of solid waste.

Many states and communities em-braced recycling as a way to reduce lit-ter and disposal costs, particularly on theEast and West coasts where landfill tip-ping fees were relatively high. These ef-forts received a boost in 1987, when theMobro 4000 garbage barge sailed upand down the East Coast seeking a placeto dump a load of trash from Long Is-land. When operators in other states re-

jected the barge — which did not havea disposal permit — out of fear that itwas carrying hazardous waste, news sto-ries wrongly reported that the UnitedStates was running out of space for itstrash. After six months the barge ownerwas finally allowed to send the garbageto a Brooklyn incinerator.

By 1988 some 1,050 communitiesoffered curbside pickup for recycling,a figure that would double to 2,711in 1990 and double again to 5,404 in1992. 62 Nine states had followed Ore-gon’s lead and passed bottle bills. In1989 California adopted a goal of di-verting 50 percent of its solid wastefrom landfills and waste-to-energyplants by the year 2000. 63

Like other commodities, recycled ma-terials were subject to price swings in-fluenced by market conditions, govern-ment policies and investor actions. Rapidlyexpanding community recycling programsproduced a flood of materials in theearly 1990s, driving U.S. prices downfrom an average of $50-$60 per ton inthe late 1980s to around $33 per ton in1993. Then in 1994 and ’95, prices abrupt-ly spiked as high as $200 per ton be-fore falling back to around $50 by 1996.

These wild swings roiled the recy-cling industry: Many companies that hadinvested when prices were high quick-ly went bankrupt. Some critics blamedstate and federal mandates requiring useof recycled paper for the spike. How-ever, other assessments concluded theepisode was an unusual confluence ofevents in a developing industry and thatsuch dramatic swings were less likelyto recur as global recycling capacity ex-panded and producers signed more long-term contracts. 64

Domestic Debate

G yrating markets for recycled ma-terials prompted critics to argue

that environmentalists had oversold re-cycling and that it produced morecosts than benefits. A 1996 New York


Did You Know?• Recycling 82 million tons of

solid waste saved the energy equivalent of 10 billion gallons of gasoline in 2006.

• Recycling a ton of mixed paper saves the energy equivalent of 185 gallons of gasoline.

• Recycling a ton of aluminum cans saves the energy equivalent of 1,655 gallons of gasoline.

• Approximately 31.4 million tons of materials were combusted for energy recovery in 2006.

• There were 8,660 curbside recycling programs in U.S. communities in 2006.

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Times Magazine cover story pro-claimed, “Recycling is Garbage,” call-ing it a waste of time and resourcesthat disrupted markets. 65 Others sup-ported recycling to a point but dis-

agreed that the United States couldachieve a “zero-waste” society as someadvocates urged.

“We already recycle the items thatmake the most environmental and eco-

nomic sense,” argued former EPA As-sistant Administrator J. Winston Porter in1997. During his tenure at EPA a decadeearlier, the agency had established a na-tional goal of diverting 25 percent ofmunicipal waste for recycling. “As weforce ourselves to go after less valuablewastes in more difficult locations —say, hotdog wrappers at ballparks orleftover napkins at the airport — thecosts will skyrocket. Recovered itemswill be trucked greater distances, ormore resources will be used to cleanand process dirty recyclables.” 66

Recycling skeptics also pointed outthat new controls were reducing theenvironmental impacts of landfills andwaste-to-energy plants. Many small land-fills and dumps had closed since 1991,when EPA began requiring municipallandfills to install liners, leachate-col-lection systems and groundwater mon-itoring. Integrated waste-managementcompanies — a growing force in allfacets of the industry, from trash col-lection to recycling and disposal — hadopened new, larger landfills in theirplace. 67 In 1995 EPA required advancedpollution controls at municipal inciner-ators and waste-to-energy plants. 68 Ayear later the agency directed largelandfills to collect landfill gas emissionsand burn them, either directly at thesite or in engines or boilers to gener-ate energy. 69

Recycling supporters contended thatthe new requirements still producedserious air and water pollution andthat properly designed collection pro-grams were cost-competitive with in-cinerators and landfills. They alsocharged that critics understated ener-gy and environmental benefits fromrecycling. 70 By 2000 the United Stateswas diverting more than 29 percentof municipal solid waste for recyclingand composting, and rapid economicgrowth in Asia was creating new mar-kets for both new and used paper,plastics and metals. Thanks in largepart to rising Asian demand, averageprices for recycled materials rose

FUTURE OF RECYCLING

From Vineyards to Greenhouses

High-grade compost made from restaurant and household food scrapsis delivered to the Saintsbury winery in Napa, Calif. (top). Pipes collectmethane gas from a solid-waste landfill in Watervliet, Mich. (bottom).Some of the gas is burned in furnaces to heat neighboring greenhouses.Environmentalists say recycling combats global climate change directlyby reducing the generation of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas producedwhen organic waste decays in landfills.

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steadily from the late 1990s through2007. 71 In 2006 the United Statesshipped $6.7 billion worth of scrap ma-terials to China, some 42 percent of itstotal scrap exports worldwide. 72

Even with demand growing, diver-sion rates for various materials remaineduneven. By 2005 the United States wasrecovering 50 percent (by weight) ofpaper products in municipal solid wasteand 35-72 percent of major metals, butless than 6 percent of plastics. The situ-ation was similar for organic wastes, whichaccounted for one-fourth of waste gen-eration, about half from yard trimmings(of which almost 62 percent were com-posted) and half fromfood wastes (lessthan 3 percent com-posted). 73

Some areas withadvanced recyclingprograms began totackle new and ne-glected classes ofwaste. Starting in 1996San Francisco devel-oped a system for col-lecting and compost-ing residential andcommercial foodwastes. (See sidebar,p. 1042.) And as en-vironmentalists andregulators grew in-creasingly alarmed about electronic waste,states began to ban e-waste from land-fills and debate whether producers orconsumers should pay to recycle it.

CURRENTSITUATION

Federal Action?

G rowing concern about e-wastedisposal and climate change

may stimulate national action to boostrecycling rates. Although states andcommunities manage most recyclingprograms, advocates say the federalgovernment should do more to helpcreate markets and educate the pub-lic about recycling’s benefits.

Several studies by the GovernmentAccountability Office (GAO) have calledfor more federal support for recycling.In 2005 the agency recommended thatEPA should take the lead in develop-ing national legislation to encourageand finance e-waste recycling. ButEPA responded that the problem was“fundamentally a business and eco-

nomic issue, rather than an environ-mental issue,” and that it would beinappropriate for the agency to choosehow to fund e-waste recycling whenmanufacturers did not agree on thebest approach. 74

Another GAO study in 2006 point-ed out that EPA worked with busi-nesses and government agencies topromote recycling but did not havedata or performance measures. Nor,GAO reported, was the CommerceDepartment carrying out its responsi-bility under the Resource Conserva-tion and Recovery Act to help devel-op new markets for recycled materialsin the United States. Based on a sur-

vey of recycling program managersand other experts, the report identi-fied three major federal actions thatcould increase recycling rates:

• more public education;• passage of a national bottle bill;

and• support for producer takeback pro-

grams focusing on toxic or hard-to-recycle products. 75

Facing a patchwork of state e-waste laws, the Electronic IndustriesAssociation (EIA) called in 2007 forCongress to pass national legislationregulating computer and televisionrecycling. EIA’s proposal would set

up two systems: TV re-cycling would initiallybe paid for by fees as-sessed on buyers ofnew TVs, until a largenumber of “legacy” TVsets (televisions sold inthe past by companiesno longer in business)had been recovered,while computer mak-ers would collect andrecycle information-technology equipment atno cost to consumers. 76

“This is an issue cry-ing out for a national so-lution,” said EIA interimpresident and CEO Matt

Flanigan. “Congress can do right bythe environment, consumers and theelectronics industry by adopting a na-tional recycling plan.” 77 Several mem-bers of Congress have formed a work-ing group on e-waste, and Rep. MikeThompson, D-Calif., has introducedlegislation (H.R. 233) that would as-sess fees of up to $10 on computerpurchases to fund recycling grants.

Congress may also consider a bill(H.R. 4238) introduced by Rep. EdwardM. Markey, D-Mass., to place a five-cent national deposit on bottled water,iced tea, sport drink and carbonatedbeverage containers. Other legislatorshave advocated national bottle bills in

The Fresh Kills landfill — the world’s largest — on Staten Island, wasclosed in 2001 adding to New York City’s trash-disposal problems. While in operation, the 3,000-acre dump took in 14,000 tons of

trash and released 2,650 tons of methane gas per day.

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FUTURE OF RECYCLING

the past, but Markey, who chairs theHouse Select Committee on Energy In-dependence and Global Warming, de-scribed his bill as a way to save ener-gy and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG)emissions. “If all of the 58 billion alu-minum cans that are thrown awayevery year in the Unit-ed States were recy-cled, it would cut theemissions of heat-trap-ping carbon pollutionby nearly 6 million tons— the equivalent of thepollution from morethan 1 million cars,”Markey said.

Some bottle-bill states,including California,and Oregon, havebroadened their cover-age to include popularproducts like bottledwater. But it can behard to expand statelaws, according to Jef-frey Morris at the SoundResource ManagementGroup, because bever-age manufacturers andgrocers lobby hardagainst such measures.“National legislationwould make a big dif-ference, especially onplastic bottles and itemsthat people consumeaway from home, sothey don’t go into curb-side bins,” says Morris.Many retailers dislikehandling returned bot-tles because they takeup space, but the processcan be structured in otherways. For example, Cal-ifornia accepts bottlesand cans at more than2,100 state-certified bottle and can re-demption centers.

Beyond these waste categories,some advocates say U.S. energy and

climate-change policy should rewardrecycling for reducing overall energyuse. One option, says the NationalRecycling Coalition’s Krebs, would beawarding tradable credits to compa-nies and agencies for increasing thequantity of materials they collect and

recycle. “Recycling helps to sequestercarbon, and we hope that Congresswill include it in a multi-pronged as-sault on global warming,” says Krebs.

Slimmer Packages

U nder pressure to reduce their en-vironmental footprints, many con-

sumer product manufacturers are re-ducing waste by redesigning packages

to make them even lighterand use less material. Indoing so, they also are cut-ting production, shippingand disposal costs. Somecompanies are using recy-cled materials or designingreadily recycled packages.

As part of a broad pushto make its operationsgreener, mega-retailer Wal-Mart has set a long-termgoal of producing zerowaste from its stores by re-ducing waste generationand recycling more mate-rials. As a first step, thecompany is working to re-duce solid-waste genera-tion at its U.S. stores 25percent below 2005 levelsby October 2008.

Wal-Mart has sent score-cards to its network of morethan 60,000 suppliers to ratethe environmental sound-ness of their packagingmaterials and will start fac-toring the results into itspurchasing decisions in2008. “Our aim is to reacha day when there are nodumpsters behind ourstores and [Sam’s] Clubs,and no landfills containingWal-Mart throwaways,” thecompany said. 78

This strategy is good busi-ness, says NRDC senior sci-entist Hershkowitz. “Wal-Mart doesn’t want to incur

the ecological liabilities and costs ofdisposing of so much packaging, sothat’s why they’re saying that all the

Continued on p. 1052

Environmental activist Wen Bo, here at a recycling center inBeijing, heads up China operations for the U.S.-based group

Pacific Environment. China buys about 42 percent of all U.S.scrap, but environmentalists say many Asian recyclers use

unsafe practices. Environmental samples collected by Greenpeacein 2005 at e-waste recycling facilities in Guiyu, China,

contained high levels of toxic metals and chemicals.

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At Issue:Is generating energy from waste good for the environment?Yes

yesTED MICHAELSPRESIDENT, INTEGRATED WASTE SERVICESASSOCIATION (IWSA)

WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, DECEMBER 2007

how can communities best manage post-recyclablegarbage? How can a newly carbon-conscious Americareduce greenhouse gas emissions? Which homegrown

energy source can help promote energy independence and re-duce fossil fuel consumption? Waste-to-energy is the answer tothese questions, and many others just like them.

Americans generate more than 300 million tons of garbageeach year. About one-third of it gets recycled, about 8 percentgoes to waste-to-energy plants and more than 160 million tonsis landfilled. Modern waste-to-energy plants generate clean, re-newable energy through the combustion of household trashthat would otherwise be landfilled. All waste-to-energy facilitiescomply with extremely stringent federal and state require-ments. After a thorough examination of waste-to-energy facili-ties, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concluded thatwaste-to-energy facilities produce electricity “with less environ-mental impact than almost any other source of electricity.”

Use of waste-to-energy has been shown to be an importantcomponent of successful solid-waste management programs.IWSA and its members vigorously encourage and supportcommunity programs to reduce, reuse and recycle waste. TheEPA and many states, as well as the European Union, haveestablished a solid-waste management hierarchy, showing that,after the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) direct recovery of ener-gy from waste through waste-to-energy is preferable to landfilldisposal. Far from competing with recycling, waste-to-energy iscompatible with recycling. In fact, recycling rates of communi-ties that utilize waste-to-energy plants are nearly 20 percentgreater than the national average.

Not surprisingly, European nations that enjoy the highest re-cycling rates emphasize the use of waste-to-energy to processwhat cannot be recycled. For example, Germany and Den-mark, with recycling rates of more than 60 percent, employwaste-to-energy for the remainder of their combustible waste.

Waste-to-energy plants are also valuable contributors in thefight against global warming. EPA studies show that Americanwaste-to-energy plants prevent the release of nearly 30 milliontons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year. The U.S. Conferenceof Mayors and the Global Roundtable on Climate Change haveboth recognized waste-to-energy as a tool to fight global warming.

Increased use of waste-to-energy will promote energy inde-pendence and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through thegeneration of clean, renewable energy. It’s an important com-ponent of America’s energy and solid-waste policies.No

BRENDA PLATTCO-DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE

WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, DECEMBER 2007

the incinerator industry falsely promotes waste incinerationas safe and clean, and as a source of renewable energy.Yet, incineration is not “waste to energy,” it is a waste of en-

ergy. Here are four key reasons to say no to incineration and inits stead favor waste prevention, reuse, recycling and composting:

Incinerators Waste Energy and Resources — Recyclingsaves three to five times the amount of energy as burning thesame materials. For example, when a ton of office paper isburned for its heating value, it generates about 8,200 megajoules. But when this same ton is recycled, it saves about35,200 mega joules. For every ton of material burned, manymore tons of raw materials must be processed to make newproducts to take its place. More trees cut down to makepaper. More ore mined for metal production. More petroleumprocessed into plastics. Incineration encourages a one-way flowof materials on a finite planet. It makes the task of conservingresources and reducing waste more difficult, not easier.

Incinerators Pollute — All incinerators release pollutants,including acid gases, particulate matter, carbon monoxide,nitrogen oxides, metals, dioxins and furans and at least 190volatile organic compounds. Many are persistent, bioaccumu-lative and toxic. A U.N. report indicated that waste incinera-tors contribute 69 percent of the dioxin in the global envi-ronment. The better the air-pollution control, the more toxicthe ash. An alarming new trend is the increase in efforts touse and disperse incinerator ash in commercial products.Moreover, waste prevention and recycling can reduce green-house gases and pollution much more effectively than burn-ing trash to displace coal.

Incinerators Are Costly — Facilities cost hundreds ofmillions of dollars to build and operate — far higher thanrecycling and composting. (Recycling also sustains 10 timesmore jobs than incineration on a per-ton basis.) Indeed, manyexisting incinerators have become white elephants for theircommunities. Some jurisdictions have raised property taxes tosubsidize their incinerators. In New Jersey, counties that builtincinerators accumulated $1.35 billion in debt. Voters had toapprove a multimillion-dollar state bailout.

Burning Encourage Wasting and Limit Recycling —Incinerators rely on minimum guaranteed waste flows, oftencalled “put-or-pay” contracts. As a result, facility operators regu-larly burn readily recyclable materials rather than pay extra feesfor tonnage shortfalls. Incinerators perpetuate the throw-awaysociety and impede sustainable production and consumption.

1052 CQ Researcher

packages they sell have to be recy-clable or contain reduced amount ofwaste,” he says. Other companies arealso “greening” their packages by re-ducing material content or using morerecycled and recyclable inputs, includingProctor & Gamble (toothpaste pack-ages), Coca-Cola (Dasani water bot-tles), Estée Lauder (makeup tubes),Kraft (beverage bottles), and Johnson& Johnson (Aveeno moisturizer bottlesand tubes). 79

Technica l ad-vances are making itpossible to incorpo-rate more recycledmaterials in packag-ing. Seventh Gener-ation, a Vermont-based company thatmakes environmen-tally safe householdproducts, has devel-oped HDPE (#2 plas-tic) bottles with 50percent recycledcontent, rigid con-tainers that are 80-90 percent recycledand trash bags madefrom 65-100 percentrecycled content.

The economicsof recycling arechallenging, saysReed Doyle, Sev-enth Generation’sd i r ec to r o f ad -vanced innovation.“Recycling is ex-pensive in the U.S. because we havestringent environmental regulations,so the profit margins for recyclersare low,” says Doyle. “But sustain-able packaging is a huge movement.The whole consumer products in-dustry is doing this because it hasto do it to stay in business.”

Many recycling advocates agreethat China’s voracious demand for scrapmaterials is a mixed blessing for re-

cycling in the United States. “China’sgrowth has helped grow the paper-recycling infrastructure in the UnitedStates, Japan and the EuropeanUnion,” says Doyle. “The better andsmarter we get at collecting this stuff,the more of their supply we’ll be ableto produce.”

Better still, say some, would be toprocess scrap at home. “I doubt thatoverseas recyclers follow the sameenvironmental standards that we usehere, so I’m skeptical that there’s an

overall environmental benefit insending material abroad,” saysBoston consultant Bauman. “And ifwe had a manufacturing base bigenough to accept all of that post-con-sumer scrap, it would ultimately drivedown production costs and make thesemanufacturers healthier. But you can’tignore the reality of overseas oppor-tunities.”

OUTLOOKZero-Waste Visions

A lthough U.S. solid-waste genera-tion continues to inch upward,

some 30 U.S. cities and counties, plusdozens of others worldwide, share Wal-Mart’s long-range goal of achieving

zero waste. 80 Theyview waste as a re-source that can be usedin more productive waysthan landfilling or in-cinerating it.

“It’s a planning strat-egy, like a zero-defectpolicy for manufactur-ers,” says Platt at the In-stitute for Self Reliance.“The goal isn’t literallyto e l imina te everyshred of waste, but itdoes say that we won’tset an artificial cap onrecycling by saying thatour goal is 25 or 35percent and then stop-ping there. We want toget to an efficient soci-ety in which all materi-als, products and pack-aging can be recoveredand recycled at the endof their lives.”

Snohomish County’sJackson echoes this per-

spective. “Unless you look towardzero waste, you’re completely off thepath to true sustainability,” he says.“You may not get to zero, but youshould be able to get very close, andthe small residual should not containharmful elements.”

Architect William McDonough andchemist Michael Braungart sketched aparadigm for a zero-waste society intheir 2002 best-seller Cradle to Cradle,

FUTURE OF RECYCLING

Continued from p. 1050

Plastic bags — known as “the national flower” in South Africa and“white pollution” in China — are a global problem. About 100 billionbags are sold to retailers worldwide every year. Plastic bags and films

make up about 4.5 percent of the waste in landfills, where they can takecenturies to break down. At least 18 countries have adopted or

considered taxes, consumer-education campaigns, usage-reductiontargets or outright bans on plastic bags in the past five years.

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which called for shifting from “cradle-to-grave” industrial production — makesomething, use it, throw it away —to a waste-free society in which ob-jects are designed to be reused. “Prod-ucts can be composed either of ma-terials that biodegrade and becomefood for biological cycles, or of tech-nical materials that stay in closed-looptechnical cycles, in which they con-tinually circulate as valuable nutrientsfor industry,” the authors wrote. 81

Some waste professionals see thisvision as utopian. Dieleman of theSolid Waste Association of NorthAmerica says that managing 65 per-cent of America’s municipal wastethrough source reduction, recycling,composting and energy recovery pro-jects is an ambitious but realistic goal.“Zero-waste ambitions and aggressiverecycling targets aren’t bad, but at thispoint we can’t recycle 100% of ourwaste, and we aren’t likely to be ableto do that any time,” he says.

Zero-waste goals can make sensein certain settings, says the NationalRecycling Coalition’s Krebs. “We’reseeing the idea come up quite a bitin the private sector, and we applaudthat. It also makes sense in venueslike sporting arenas and national parks,where you can control who comesin, who leaves and how concession-aires run their businesses. In thosecontexts you can set up systems tocapture wastes and hit a high target,”Krebs says. “It’s trickier when you getout into communities with homes,schools, playgrounds and other ele-ments that aren’t as tightly controlled.”

Current debates about nuisance itemslike plastic shopping bags and dis-posable water bottles suggest that Amer-icans are becoming more concernedabout trash and waste. Another trendthat echoes the idea of using fewergoods is the growth of so-called prod-uct-service systems, in which customersbuy a product or service instead ofan object. For example, Zipcar is acar-sharing company whose members

pay for occasional use of cars from acompany fleet. 82 Interface, a Geor-gia-based carpet manufacturer, offersa carpet leasing program under whichit will supply, install, and replace floor-ing for a monthly fee (recycling usedcarpet). 83 Some products, such asphotocopying machines, are more com-monly leased than purchased.

According to theorists like Mc-Donough and Braungart, product-servicesystems combined with extended pro-ducer-responsibility requirements willcreate a system in which manufactur-ers want to design their goods foreventual disassembly and recycling.Under such a system consumerswould not have to feel guilty aboutupgrading to new models, becausethey would return durable goods tomanufacturers, who in turn would haveaccess to a constant stream of high-quality materials for new production.

“We’re moving forward now from avery primitive perspective on recyclingand materials management into a moremodern era,” says Jackson in SnohomishCounty. “It’s inevitable from a climatechange, resource and energy perspec-tive. The transition will be bumpy fora while, but it’s going to happen.”

Notes1 Thomas J. Lueck, “Hot Items On the Streets:Recyclables,” The New York Times, Oct. 15,2007, p. B1.2 “No Room To Move: New York City’s Im-pending Solid Waste Crisis,” Office of theComptroller, City of New York, October 2004.3 For background see Mary H. Cooper, “TheEconomics of Recycling,” CQ Researcher,March 27, 1998, pp. 265-288.4 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Mu-nicipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, andDisposal in the United States: Facts and Fig-ures for 2006,” November 2007, p. 2,www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/pubs/msw06.pdf.5 For background see Marcia Clemmitt, “ClimateChange,” CQ Researcher, Jan. 27, 2006, pp. 73-96; and Colin Woodard, “Curbing Climate

Change,” CQ Global Researcher, February2007, pp. 25-48.6 Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries,“Scrap Recycling Industry Facts,” www.isri.org.7 Daniel K. Benjamin, “Eight Great Myths ofRecycling,” PERC Policy Series No. PS-28,Property and Environment Research Center,September 2003, pp. 19-22, 25.8 United Nations Environment Programme,“E-waste, The Hidden Side of IT Equipment’sManufacturing and Use,” Environment AlertBulletin, January 2005, p. 1.9 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Man-agement of Electronic Waste in the United States,”April 2007, www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/re-cycle/ecycling/docs/fact4-30-07.pdf.10 Giles Slade, Made To Break: Technologyand Obsolescence in America (2006), p. 268.11 Analog televisions can be equipped withconverter boxes that will enable them to re-ceive digital signals, but many consumers maytake the occasion to upgrade to digital tele-visions. For information on the digital TV tran-sition, see www.dtv.gov/index.html.12 Elizabeth Grossman, High-Tech Trash: Digi-tal Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health(2006), pp. 17-20.13 For background see Jennifer Weeks, “Do-mestic Energy Development,” CQ Researcher,Sept. 30, 2005, pp. 809-832, and Mary H.Cooper, “Alternative Fuels,” CQ Researcher,Feb. 25, 2005, pp. 173-196.14 U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Re-newable Energy Consumption and Electricity:Preliminary 2006 Statistics,” August 2007, p. 14.15 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, op.cit., p. 8.16 National Solid Wastes Management Asso-ciation, “MSW (Subtitle D) Landfills,” Nov. 8,2006, http://wastec.isproductions.net/web-modules/webarticles/anmviewer.asp?a=1127;American Chemistry Council, Chlorine Chem-istry Division, “Landfilling FAQs,” www.amer-icanchemistry.com/s_plastics/sec_content.asp?CID=1182&DID=4393.17 Phil Simmons, et al., “The State of Garbagein America,” BioCycle, April 2006, p. 40.18 Bjorn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environ-mentalist: Measuring the Real State of theWorld (2002), pp. 206-209. Lomborg as-sumed that U.S. waste generation wouldcontinue to rise at the 1990-2000 rate andthat the nation’s population would morethan double by 2100.19 U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Dis-ease Registry, “Landfill Gas Primer” (Novem-ber 2001), chapter 2, p. 4, www.atsdr.cdc.gov/

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HAC/landfill/html/toc.html.20 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “AP42, Fifth Edition: Compilation of Air Pollu-tant Emission Factors,” vol. 1, November1998, pp. 2.4-6, www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/ap42/ch02/final/c02s04.pdf.21 Testimony of Katharine Hornbarger, Gro-cery Manufacturers Association, before theConnecticut Bottle Bill Task Force, Oct. 24,1970, www.gmabrands.com/news/docs/Testi-mony.cfm?DocID=649.22 EPA, November 2007, op. cit., p. 1.23 National Solid Wastes Management Asso-ciation, op. cit.24 “No Trash Can Range,” Winston-Salem Jour-nal, Aug. 7, 2007, p. A8.25 The case is City of Philadelphia v. NewJersey, 437 U.S. 617 (1978). For informationon state regulation of imported waste, seeInstitute for Local Self-Reliance, “TrashingTransport: Strategies To Ban ImportedGarbage,” Feb. 8, 1991, www.ilsr.org/recy-cling/FTAO_17-TrashingTransport.pdf, andMichael J. Podolsky and Menahem Spiegel,“When Does Interstate Transportation of Mu-nicipal Solid Waste Make Sense and Whendoes It Not?” Public Administration Review,vol. 59, no. 3, May-June 1999.26 David Lazarus, “Talking Trash Disposal,”SFGate.com, July 13, 2007.27 U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau ofLand Management, Colorado, “Help Stop Il-legal Dumping On Your Public Lands,” pressrelease, Aug. 15, 2006; Benjamin Spillman,“Illegal Dumps Alter Western Landscape,”USA Today, Oct. 9, 2006, p. 3A.28 Rachel Tuinstra, “Development EnvisionedAt Landfill As $15 Million Cleanup NearsEnd,” Seattle Times, March 5, 2003.29 Progressive Bag Alliance, “Plastic BagBackgrounder,” www.progressivebagal-liance.com/background.html.

30 For current reports, see http://reusablebags.type-pad.com/newsroom/reusablebagscom/index.html.31 Terrence Dopp, “NJ To Ban Plastic Shop-ping Bags?” Bloomberg News, Nov. 20, 2007.32 Ramey Ko, “Why a Ban?” www.bagthe-bags.com/ban.html.33 “Paper Bags Are Better Than Plastic, Right?”Reusablebags.com, www.reusablebags.com/facts.php?id=7.34 Jim Herron Zamora, “Styrofoam Food Pack-aging Banned in Oakland,” San FranciscoChronicle, June 28, 2006.35 “Restaurant Owners Fire Back At Anti-Sty-rofoam, Plastic Bill,” NBC11.com, March 1,2007.36 Phil Simmons, et al., “The State of Garbagein America,” BioCycle, April 2006, p. 36.37 City of Los Angeles plastic bag recyclingprogram, www.plastics.lacity.org.38 “Ireland To Raise ‘Green Tax’ On PlasticBags,” Reuters UK, Feb. 21, 2007.39 For example, see Ohio Environmental Pro-tection Agency, “Storage and Disposal ofPaint Facts,” www.epa.state.oh.us/pic/facts/hh-wpaint.html, and New York Department ofEnvironmental Conservation, “Paint Dispos-al,” www.dec.ny.gov/docs/materials_miner-als_pdf/paint.pdf.40 Recycling Council of British Columbia, “Fre-quently Asked Questions,” www.rcbc.bc.ca/re-sources/frequently_asked_questions.htm.41 Product Care, “Product Stewardship Solu-tions,” www.productcare.org.42 “China’s Massive High-Tech Waste Woes,”Business Week, Aug. 9, 2007; ChristopherBodeen, “China Not Fighting Off E-waste Night-mare,” The Miami Herald, Nov. 19, 2007, www.mi-amiherald.com. For information on the BaselConvention, see www.basel.int/index.html.43 Basel Action Network and Silicon ValleyToxics Coalition, “Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia,” Feb. 25, 2002.

44 Basel Action Network, “The Digital Dump:Exporting Re-use and Abuse to Africa,” Oct.24, 2005, pp. 10-25.45 Greenpeace International, “Recycling ofElectronic Wastes In China and India: Work-place and Environmental Contamination,”August 2005, pp. 3-6.46 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Pre-vention, “Spotlight On Dioxins, Furans, andDioxin-Like Polychlorinated Biphenyls,” July2005, www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/pdf/fact-sheet_dioxinsfurans.pdf; U.S. Food and DrugAdministration, “Questions and Answers AboutDioxins,” updated July 2006, www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/dioxinqa.html#g2.47 U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Dis-ease Registry, “ToxFAQs for PolybrominatedDiphenyl Ethers (PBDEs),” www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts68-pbde.html#bookmark05.48 Anna O. W. Leung, et al., “Spatial Distri-bution of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethersand Polychlorinated Dibenzo-p-dioxins andDibenzofurans in Soil and Combusted Residueat Guiyu, an Electronic Waste Recycling Sitein Southeast China,” Environmental Science& Technology, vol. 41, no. 8, April 15, 2007,pp. 2730-2737.49 Electronics Takeback Coalition, “State Leg-islation on E-Waste,” www.e-takeback.org/docs%20open/Toolkit_Legislators/state%20leg-islation/state_leg_main.htm.50 For updated information, see ElectronicsTakeback Coalition, “Corporate Responsibili-ty,” www.computertakeback.com/corpo-rate_accountability/company_takeback.cfm.51 Chaz Miller, “Toxic Trash,” Waste Age, Oct. 1,2005, www.wasteage.com.52 Carola Hanisch, “Is Extended Producer Re-sponsibility Effective?”, Environmental Science& Technology, vol. 34, no. 7, April 1, 2000,pp. 170-75; Noah Sachs, “Planning the Fu-neral at the Birth: Extended Producer Re-sponsibility in the European Union and theUnited States,” Harvard Environmental LawReview, vol. 30 (2006), pp. 51-98.53 Container Recycling Institute, The 10¢ In-centive To Recycle, July 2006, p. 1.54 Carl A. Zimring, Cash for Your Trash: ScrapRecycling in America (2005), pp. 14-34.55 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Mile-stones in Garbage: A Historical Timeline ofMunicipal Solid Waste Management,”www.epa.gov/msw/timeline_alt.htm#2.56 Helen Spiegelman and Bill Sheehan, “TheNext Frontier for MSW,” BioCycle, February2006, p. 30; Kirk Johnson, “Throwaway Soci-

About the AuthorJennifer Weeks is a CQ Researcher contributing writer inWatertown, Mass., who specializes in energy and environ-mental issues. She has written for The Washington Post,The Boston Globe Magazine and other publications, andhas 15 years’ experience as a public-policy analyst, lob-byist and congressional staffer. She has an A.B. degreefrom Williams College and master’s degrees from the Uni-versity of North Carolina and Harvard.


eties of Yesteryear,” The New York Times, Nov.22, 2002, p. B1.57 Slade, op. cit., pp. 13-24.58 Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time:Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The HomeFront in World War II (1994), pp. 357-58.59 Slade, op. cit., pp. 164-72.60 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Mu-nicipal Solid Waste in the United States: 2005Facts and Figures,” October 2006, p. 142.61 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Mile-stones in Garbage,” op. cit.; Greater MadisonConvention and Visitors Bureau, www.visit-madison.com/visitorinfo/index.php?category_id=94&subcategory_id=239&printable=1.62 California Integrated Waste ManagementBoard, “Curbside Recycling: The Next Gen-eration,” updated Oct. 26, 2007, Table 1,www.ciwmb.ca.gov/lglibrary/innovations/Curbside/Program.htm.63 California Integrated Waste ManagementBoard, “History of California Solid Waste Law,1985-1989,” www.ciwmb.ca.gov/Statutes/Leg-islation/CalHist/1985to1989.htm.64 Jeffrey Morris, “There Must Be 50 Ways toPick A Number,” Resource Recycling, May 1998;Frank Ackerman and Kevin Gallagher, “MixedSignals: Market Incentives, Recycling and thePrice Spike of 1995,” Global Development andEnvironment Institute, Tufts University, WorkingPaper 01-02 (January 2001), p. 16.65 John Tierney, “Recycling is Garbage,” TheNew York Times Magazine, June 30, 1996.66 J. Winston Porter, “Too Much RecyclingCan Be a Waste of Resources,” Atlanta Jour-nal-Constitution, March 9, 1997.67 Zimring, op. cit., pp. 155-56.68 U.S. Department of Energy, “Public Poli-cy Affecting the Waste to Energy Industry,”Renewable Energy Annual 1996, http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/renewable.energy.annual/chap08.html.69 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “FactSheet: Final Air Regulations for MunicipalSolid Waste Landfills,” March 1, 1996.70 Institute for Local Self-Reliance, “The FiveMost Dangerous Myths About Recycling,” Sep-tember 1996, www.ilsr.org/recycling/wrrs/five-myths.html; Allen Hershkowitz, Recycling: TooGood To Throw Away (Natural Resources De-fense Council, February 1997).71 Brian Taylor, “Pushing Demand,” RecyclingToday, July 2002; Dan Sandoval, “ThrowingIts Weight Around,” Recycling Today, October2003; Amy Bauman, “Finding the Afterlife,”GoStructural.com, June 1, 2005.

72 Daniel Gross, “The Tao of Junk,” Slate,Sept. 8, 2007.73 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Mu-nicipal Solid Waste in the United States: 2005Facts and Figures (October 2006), p. 7.74 U.S. Government Accountability Office,“Electronic Waste: Strengthening the Role ofthe Federal Government in Encouraging Re-cycling and Reuse,” November 2005 (EPA re-sponse on pp. 54-56).75 U.S. Government Accountability Office,“Recycling: Additional Efforts Could IncreaseMunicipal Recycling,” December 2006.76 Electronic Industries Association, “As E-cyclingLaws Proliferate, EIA Urges a Federal Approach,”www.eia.org/print/print.phtml?article=351.77 EIA, op. cit.

78 Wal-Mart, “Sustainaiblity Progress to Date2007-2008,” p. 45, http://walmartstores.com.79 Pan Demetrakakes, “How To Sustain ‘Green’Packaging,” Food & Drug Packaging, June2007; Claudia H. Deutsch, “Incredible Shrink-ing Packages,” The New York Times, May 12,2007, p. C1.80 Zero Waste International Alliance,www.nrc.gov/materials/sp-nucmaterials.html.81 William McDonough and Michael Braun-gart, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way WeMake Things (2002), p. 104.82 www.zipcar.com.83 www.interfaceeurope.com/internet/web.nsf/webpages/554_EN.html.

FOR MORE INFORMATIONAmerican Chemistry Council, Plastics Division, 1300 Wilson Blvd., Arlington,VA 22209; (703) 741-5000; www.americanchemistry.com/s_plastics/index.asp. Tradeorganization representing leading manufacturers of plastic resins and offering in-formation on plastic products and recycling.

Institute for Local Self-Reliance, 927 15th St., N.W., 4th floor, Washington, DC20005; (202) 898-1610; www.ilsr.org. Promotes strategies and policies that helpcreate ecologically and economically sound communities.

National Recycling Coalition, 805 15th St., N.W., Suite 435, Washington, DC20005; (202) 789-1430; www.nrc-recycle.org. Nonprofit advocacy group promotingwaste reduction and recycling.

Natural Resources Defense Council, 40 W. 20th St., New York, NY 10011;(212) 727-2700; www.nrdc.org. National environmental advocacy group supportingrecycling efforts to reduce waste and conserve energy and natural resources.

Product Stewardship Institute, 137 Newbury St., 7th floor, Boston, MA 02116;(617) 236-4855; www.productstewardship.us. Works to reduce the health andenvironmental impacts of consumer products by promoting partnerships betweengovernment agencies, manufacturers, retailers and environmental groups.

Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, 760 N. First St., San Jose, CA 95112; (408) 287-6707; http://svtc.etoxics.org. Strives to make computer and electronic equipmentmore eco-friendly.

Solid Waste Association of North America, 100 Wayne Ave., Suite 700, SilverSpring, MD 20910; (800) 467-9262; www.swana.org. Provides information on allaspects of waste management.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Solid Waste and EmergencyResponse, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20460; (202) 272-0167;www.epa.gov. Develops guidelines and provides technical support to state andlocal governments for managing solid and hazardous waste and undergroundstorage tanks.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

1056 CQ Researcher

Books

Recycle: The Essential Guide, Black Dog Publishing,2006.This comprehensive guide includes descriptions of how

glass, plastic, paper and other materials are processed andcase studies of successful recycling initiatives around theworld. Also includes contact information for government re-cycling organizations, non-governmental organizations activeon waste issues and retailers offering “green” goods.

McDonough, William, and Michael Braungart, Cradle toCradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, North PointPress, 2002.Architect McDonough and chemist Braungart envision an

“eco-effective” world where products are designed so thatwhen they reach the end of their useful lives, they serve asingredients for other high-quality products instead of beingthrown away. To illustrate its theme, the book is printed onsynthetic paper made of plastic resins and inorganic fillersthat can be infinitely recycled.

Royte, Elizabeth, Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail ofTrash, Little, Brown, 2005.Journalist Royte follows each element in her household

waste stream — from food scraps to sewage — to its ulti-mate recycling or disposal site and reveals how little mostAmericans know about what happens to their trash.

Strasser, Susan, Waste and Want: A Social History ofTrash, Henry Holt, 1999.A history professor at the University of Delaware recounts

how Americans have used and managed their trash sincethe early 19th century and traces the cultural shift from reuseto consumption and convenience.

Articles

“New Recycling Era for NYC,” BioCycle, October 2004.A report on New York City’s decision to resume recycling

glass and plastic after a two-year suspension is accompaniedby views from recycling and waste-management experts onlessons from New York’s experience.

Burger, Michael, and Christopher Stewart, “GarbageAfter Fresh Kills,” Gotham Gazette, Jan. 28, 2002,www.gothamgazette.com/iotw/garbage.The authors look at New York City’s waste management

dilemma after the closure of the Fresh Kills landfill.

Fishman, Charles, “Message in a Bottle,” Fast Company,July 2007.

The $15 billion U.S. bottled-water industry demonstratesthe power of marketing and how the energy and waste in-volved in bottling water affects America’s consumer culture.

Mariansky, Gal, “Plastics — Solution, Or Pollution,” Cal-ifornia Engineer, spring 2006.An overview of current techniques for recycling plastics in-

cludes options for making new types of resin that are moreeasily recyclable.

Nowak, Rachel, “ ‘Total Recycling’ Aims To Make LandfillHistory,” New Scientist, Oct. 20, 2007.Mechanical biological treatment plants, which decontaminate

and separate the wastes in household garbage and compost theorganic portion, could greatly reduce the amount of municipalgarbage sent to landfills.

Selin, Henrik, and Stacy D. VanDeveer, “Raising GlobalStandards: Hazardous Substances and E-waste Managementin the European Union,” Environment, December 2006.The article examines the impact — on EU members and

on manufacturers worldwide who want to sell into the EUmarket — of EU directives to restrict the use of hazardoussubstances in electronic equipment and increase recycling ofe-waste.

Swartz, Nikki, “The San Francisco Feat,” Waste Age, April2002.Swartz provides an overview of San Francisco’s ambitious

organic-waste composting program.

Reports and Studies

Benjamin, Daniel K., “Eight Great Myths About Recycling,Property and Environment Research Center,” PERC Poli-cy Series No. PS-28, September 2003.A professor of economics at Clemson University critiques

what he terms “errors and misinformation” in standard ar-guments advocating recycling.

Fishbein, Bette K., “Waste in the Wireless World: TheChallenge of Cell Phones,” INFORM, 2002.Fishbein examines the growing world cell phone market,

environmental impacts of cell phone components and op-tions to promote cell phone recycling.

U.S. Department of Commerce, “Technology Administration,Recycling Technology Products: An Overview of E-wastePolicy Issues,” July 2006.Comments at a government-sponsored roundtable provide

an overview of stakeholder positions and concerns aboutpossible national e-waste recycling legislation.

Selected Sources

Bibliography


China

“Chinese Computer Company Is Ranked Top for GreenPolicies,” Agence France-Presse, April 3, 2007.Lenovo, a Chinese computer manufacturer, is the world’s

best electronics maker for recycling waste and dealing withtoxic content, according to Greenpeace.

Casey, Michael, “Study Says China’s Paper RecyclingIndustry Is Helping to Save Forests Worldwide,” TheAssociated Press, July 13, 2007.China provides a strong market for wastepaper that mostly

comes from the United States and Europe, thereby savingforests in the process.

Fitzpatrick, Liam, “Awash in Trash,” Time International,Oct. 9, 2006, p. 42.As China gets richer and consumes more, it produces un-

precedented quantities of solid waste.

Gross, Daniel, “Putting Out the Trash,” Newsweek Inter-national, Sept. 17, 2007.As U.S. imports from China soar, American exports — in-

cluding recyclables — to China are quietly rising at a morerapid pace.

Johnson, Tim, “Scavengers of Old, Toxic Computers,”The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 8, 2006, p. D1.China is sprawling with computer “slaughterhouses” whose

runoff includes toxic acids and metals.

Kleba, Heather, “Building Bridges in China,” Governing,April 2006, p. 63.Rapid industrialization and decreasing raw materials have

made China the largest market for recyclables.

E-waste

“E-waste Recycling Polluting Overseas,” Chicago Tribune,Nov. 19, 2007, p. C5.Activists estimate that between 50 to 80 percent of electronics

collected for recycling in the United States ends up overseas.

“How Green Is Your Apple?” The Economist, Aug. 26,2006.There is a wide variation in how technology firms are helping

their consumers dispose of obsolete products, according toGreenpeace.

“Recycle Computers,” editorial, Charlotte Observer, June11, 2006, p. 22A.A Senate bill encouraging the recycling of electronic equip-

ment would reduce the need for costly landfills and createjobs to recover and recycle components.

Bosire, Bogonko, “ ‘E-waste’ from Western Hand-Me-Downs Threatens Poor Countries: UN,” Agence France-Presse, Nov. 27, 2006.The United Nations has called for the protection of poor

countries from potentially deadly used electronics comingfrom rich nations.

Cole, Wendy, “Talking E-trash,” Time, May 15, 2006, p.A14.The number of electronics-recycling firms has nearly doubled

to about 900 over the past three years.

Harrison, Crayton, “Old PCs Less of a Pain to Recycle,”Dallas Morning News, Oct. 8, 2006, p. 1D.Environmental groups have begun rating recycling con-

tractors based on their disposal practices, giving consumersmore information on where to send old electronics.

Kessler, Michelle, “Pricey Electronics Recycling MakesStrides, But Expense Holds it Back,” USA Today, April 21,2006, p. 4B.Many electronics manufacturers have resisted comprehen-

sive recycling programs because of their costs.

Moran, Susan, “Panning E-waste for Gold,” The NewYork Times, May 17, 2006, p. G8.Hewlett-Packard’s recycling centers have extracted precious

metals from e-waste, such as gold, silver and palladium.

Velasquez-Manoff, Moises, “How Do You Make ElectronicsEasier to Recycle?” The Christian Science Monitor,March 8, 2007, p. 13.Discarded electronics are one of the fastest-growing seg-

ments of municipal waste, piling up three times faster thanother types of garbage.

Zimmerman, Martin, “ ‘E-waste’ Recyclers at Your Dispos-al,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 11, 2007, p. C1.The e-waste recycling sector is experiencing growth thanks

to consumers’ penchant for replacing outdated electronics.

Food Composting

Bloom, Jonathan, “Colleges Should Recycle Food,” ThePhiladelphia Inquirer, March 16, 2007, p. B2.Pennsylvania universities, many of which are separating

food scraps from regular trash, provide hope for reducingthe state’s municipal solid waste.

Brubaker, Harold, “A Blooming Success Out of TableScraps,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 16, 2007, p.C1.A Pennsylvania business recycles the kitchen waste from

hotels into compost for farms and gardens.

The Next Step:Additional Articles from Current Periodicals

1058 CQ Researcher

Kennedy, J. Michael, “Seattle’s Recycling Success Is BeingMeasured in Scraps,” The New York Times, Oct. 10, 2007,p. A14.Recycling of food scraps will be mandatory in Seattle by

2009, but for now residents of single family homes are al-lowed to mix the scraps with yard waste, which is thencomposted.

Laws and Regulations

“Recycling Becomes Mandatory,” The Washington Post,July 12, 2007, p. VA3.Mixed paper and cardboard recycling is now mandatory in

Fairfax, Virginia, after a measure adopted by the county’sboard of supervisors.

Brown, Jennifer, “State Hopes Law Spurs Creativity inRecycling,” Denver Post, July 5, 2007, p. B1.Colorado lawmakers are hoping to inspire entrepreneurial re-

cycling ideas by raising fees on trash dumping and tire recycling.

Catsimatidis, John A., “Canning the Bottle Bill,” The NewYork Times, July 9, 2006, p. A11.A New York bill that would have increased the number of

bottles and cans that could be returned to grocery stores forredemption was rejected by the state Senate.

DeMillo, Andrew, “Ark. Lawmaker Hopes to EncourageRecycling of Plastic Foam,” The Associated Press, Dec. 4,2007.Democratic Arkansas state Rep. Kathy Webb unsuccessful-

ly pushed a bill that would have required landfills to offerpolystyrene recycling.

Ellement, Franci Richardson, “Recycling Up as TownsUse a Carrot and a Stick,” Boston Globe, Aug. 9, 2007,p. Reg1.Many towns in Massachusetts are threatening to fine resi-

dents if they fail to follow recycling guidelines — and it’sbeen working.

Hu, Winnie, “Newly Approved Trash Plan Puts Empha-sis on Recycling,” The New York Times, July 21, 2006,p. B3.New York residents will be expected to do more recycling

and composting under a newly approved trash plan initiallypresented by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Lee, Mike, “New Formula Stirs Trash Talk,” San DiegoUnion-Tribune, March 16, 2006, p. B1.San Diego business leaders say garbage officials should

drop plans for mandatory recycling programs that affect com-panies and construction sites.

Marshall, Matt, “Tossing E-waste Is Not So Easy,” SanJose Mercury News (California), May 8, 2006, p. 1.

Fragmented systems for collecting and recycling e-wasteare too confusing for consumers, according to several envi-ronmentalists.

Mulero, Eugene, “Arizona’s Recycling Efforts Fall Short,”The Arizona Republic, Sept. 7, 2006, p. 1.Recycling rates have leveled off across Arizona, putting the

state in danger of not meeting target goals set forth by theEnvironmental Protection Agency.

Sherman, Lola, “Waste Not: List of Untrashable Gadgetsto Recycle Grows,” San Diego Union-Tribune, Feb. 16,2006, p. B6.San Diego city officials and private waste companies are

informing residents that they can no longer throw away bat-teries, cell phones and many other things into the trash.

Plastics

Jewell, Mark, “Makers of Emerging Plant-Based PlasticsHope to Carve Larger Market Niche,” The Associated Press,Oct. 22, 2007.Plastics made from corn and other plants are being touted

as green alternatives to conventional petroleum-based plastics.

Oko, Dan, “The Doggie Bag Dilemma,” Mother Jones,November-December 2006, p. 84.The Green Restaurant Association is working with fast-food

restaurants to use eco-friendly plastics that can be moldedinto silverware and trays.

Pratt, Mark, “Massachusetts Museum Educates, Promotesthe Plastics Industry,” The Associated Press, May 11, 2006.The National Plastics Center and Museum in Leominster,

Mass. — once the center of the plastics industry — edu-cates visitors on the development of biodegradable plasticsand the recycling process.

Show, Christine, “Got Plastic to Get Rid Of?” OrlandoSentinel, July 15, 2007, p. J1.Volusia County in Florida is expanding the types of plas-

tics residents can recycle, including those used in ketchupbottles, CD cases and yogurt cups.

Watson, Tom, “Where Can We Put All Those Plastics?”Seattle Times, June 2, 2007, p. I11.All plastics are technically recyclable, but in reality plastics

recycling has many limitations.

Product Bans

Clanton, Brett, “Bag Makers Defend Plastic,” HoustonChronicle, Dec. 2, 2007, p. 1.The plastic bag industry is challenging proposals in several

cities that limit the use of plastic bags in supermarkets andother stores.

FUTURE OF RECYCLING


Clayton, Mark, “Bye-Bye, Incandescent Bulb?” The Chris-tian Science Monitor, Feb. 28, 2007, p. 1.A California legislator has proposed a ban on incandescent

bulbs amid concerns over global warming, but major man-ufacturers are promoting bulb-recycling programs and a re-duction in the bulbs’ mercury content.

Goodyear, Charlie, “S.F. First City to Ban Plastic ShoppingBags,” The San Francisco Chronicle, March 28, 2007, p. A1.San Francisco city officials have approved a ban on non-

biodegradable plastic bags at supermarkets and pharmacies,hoping retailers will eventually use plastic bags made fromstarches.

Lee, Mike, “Plastic Pileup,” San Diego Union-Tribune,May 3, 2006, p. A1.Even though they are recyclable, plastic bags are banned

from curbside collection in California for several reasons.

Rosenblatt, Susannah, “L.A. County Supervisors ConsiderBanning Polystyrene Food Containers,” Los AngelesTimes, May 23, 2007, p. B4.Los Angeles officials have agreed to consider banning plastic

foam food containers from restaurants and stores because theycontribution to pollution, but an industry representative says thereal problem is a lack of recycling programs.

Responsibilities of Producers

“Deleting Computer Waste,” editorial, The Christian ScienceMonitor, Aug. 21, 2006, p. 8.The European Union’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equip-

ment directive makes producers responsible for recyclingcustomers’ computers free of charge.

Chea, Terence, “The Big Reboot: What to Do With OldPCs?” Chicago Tribune, March 12, 2007, p. C5.Hewlett-Packard and Dell are earning praise from environ-

mentalists for using eco-friendly computers and recycling theirproducts after consumers discard them.

Slagle, Matt, “Coalition Urges TV Makers to Offer FreeRecycling Programs to Make Disposal Safer,” The Asso-ciated Press, Nov. 15, 2007.The Electronics TakeBack Coalition says television manu-

facturers need to make it easier for Americans to safely dis-pose of aging TV sets.

Zezima, Katie, “Makers Start Bearing the Cost of RecyclingTV’s in Maine,” The New York Times, Jan. 19, 2006, p. C20.Maine has become the first state requiring manufacturers

to pay the full cost of recycling computer monitors and oldtelevisions.

Waste Disposal

“Focus on Recycling, Not Private Landfills,” editorial, St.Petersburg Times, Jan. 24, 2007, p. 2.A Florida county is considering a private-sector solution to

address the growing trash pile, but opponents say officialsshould focus more on improving recycling programs.

“Taking Out the Trash,” editorial, The New York Times,Dec. 11, 2005, p. LI19.Long Island does not have enough landfills to accommo-

date all of its garbage.

Cauchon, Dennis, “Cities Trying to Rejuvenate RecyclingEfforts,” USA Today, Oct. 27, 2006, p. 4A.The economics of recycling — it costs less to dump in a

landfill than to recycle — has been a continuous threat torecycling programs.

Covarrubias, Amanda, “Californians Recycle Half TheirTrash,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 25, 2006, p. B1.State officials in California said the state has achieved its

goal of reducing landfill waste by 50 percent thanks to diligentrecycling programs over the past 16 years.

Rainey, Richard, “Renew, Rebuild . . . Recycle?” Times-Picayune (New Orleans), April 16, 2007, p. 1.Many city governments in the New Orleans area are finding

it too costly to bring back curbside recycling programs affectedby Hurricane Katrina.

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