NERC Blog

By Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe

It was a snowy day in Akwesasne during the MSW Blue Bag service run. The garbage truck driver picked up the blue trash bags while the Recycling Coordinator handed out the Composting Food Survey to each household that is subscribed to the MSW Blue Bag Service. The results will help us determine outreach and assistance. It will also help to plan and construct a small-scale composting pilot program that produces rich soil material.

We got the survey results after consulting the local people who are an essential part of the community. Before a decision is made we consult the public. The survey results indicate that most would like to have a composting collection service in Akwesasne. Most participants produce less than 5 gallons of organic waste. About half compost at home and the others do not. They correctly selected the images that indicated what was compostable. Having a compost drop-off service at the Transfer Station seems to not be popular. There was a positive response to…

Today's guest blog is authored by Jon Smieja of GreenBiz Group. The original post can be read here.

I’m quick to admit when I fall short of my circular economy aspirations in my personal life. Take the number of outdated and unused electronics lying around my house. The current inventory includes multiple old tablets, two laptop computers and a handful of old cell phones. I even have a third generation iPod Nano laying around somewhere. My point is many of us have closets and junk drawers full of this stuff, and it represents a huge missed opportunity for the circular economy. 

To get a better understanding of the size of that opportunity, I visited an electronics collection facility near my home in Minnesota. Repowered, based in Saint Paul, has processed over 40 million pounds of electronics since it opened its doors in 2011. At about 3 million pounds processed…

You cannot read the news without hearing a story about a lithium-ion battery fire incident that occurred in a high-rise building, electronic vehicle (EV), laptop on an airplane, vape in someone's pocket, a fulfillment warehouse and, of course, in a waste and recycling facility.

Today's guest blog is authored by Olga Kachook, director of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC) at GreenBlue. The original post can be read here.

If you follow reuse news, you may have noticed reusable packaging started 2023 with some impressive legislative tailwinds in Europe. France recently banned fast-food restaurants from serving disposable plates, cups and tableware to anyone eating or drinking on site, and in Germany, every business offering food or drinks to go must provide reusable containers. 

Like twisty cobblestone streets and month-long vacations, it’s tempting to file these policies under "Europeans being European." This kind of mandated reuse would never work in…

Guest blog author Kristen Rinehart is the vice president and general manager of recycling for NERC Advisory Member Advanced Drainage Systems (ADS), a Hilliard OH-based stormwater management company and the largest plastic recycler in North America.

Here’s a harsh reality: Americans are really good at generating plastic waste and really bad at recycling it. According to the World Economic Forum, the U.S. recycling rate for the 40 million tons of plastic waste generated annually is only about 5%. In October, Greenpeace USA released a report that claims plastic recycling is a failure, declaring, "The data is clear: Practically speaking, most plastic is just not recyclable.”

Recycling plastic certainly isn’t easy. Plastic bags and Styrofoam are notably difficult to recycle. But to give up on plastic recycling altogether would be a tragic mistake –– not just for the environment, but for the economy. But first, as Greenpeace suggests, let’s look at the data. While it is certainly true that we don’t recycle enough plastic, it isn’t because plastic cannot be recycled. Recycling businesses are actually…

PaintCare February Email Bulletin

PaintCare operates eleven paint recycling programs across the country, providing a network of more than 657 convenient drop-off sites in the northeast alone. Households and businesses are encouraged to recycle products such as paint, stain, and varnish at these drop-off locations. Thank you for your help in recycling over 6.5 million gallons of paint across our five northeast programs in Connecticut, Maine, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont!

Connecticut

Since the Connecticut PaintCare program launched in July 2013, Connecticut has established 157 year-round drop-off sites and collected 3.4 million gallons of paint. For inquiries, please visit the CT state page and contact Laura Honis.

Maine

Since October 2015, the Maine PaintCare program has established 128 year-round drop-off sites and collected 947,000 gallons of paint. For inquiries, please visit the ME state page and contact John Hurd.

New York…

Today's guest blog is courtesy of NERC Advisory Member The Recycling Partnership. The original post can be read here.

Why Landfills Are Not the Answer 

Here’s why we can’t just landfill our way out of the vast consumption and disposal of materials.    

• As climate change increases, landfills continue to be the third largest human-made source of methane emissions, spewing the equivalent of more than 20 million cars of CO2 emissions per year in to U.S. skies.   

For a circular future to become a reality, companies must redesign products and embrace new customer relationships with customers. That’s particularly true in apparel and electronics.

Today's guest blog is authored by Jon Smieja of the GreenBiz Group. The original post can be read here.

Have you been to a materials recovery facility (MRF)? I’ve had the pleasure of touring a couple, and the thing that sticks out about my experiences thus far is not the high-tech sorting machinery.

In fact, because I haven’t spent enough time in a MRF to fully comprehend all the material movements, I would best describe it as something akin to a Rube Goldberg machine. Materials seem to be moving in every direction, crisscrossing, dropping off cliffs and moving up belts. When you break it all down, I know that it is nothing like a Rube Goldberg machine, but that’s the first thought that still comes to mind for me.

Because of the massive amount of material that flows through the average MRF and the very real implications of missing valuable materials in the sorting process, a whole industry of innovators has popped up over the last decade…

2022 was an odd year for recycling. Legislators were aggressive, but markets were cold. In spite of a surge of new laws, the very idea of recycling continued to be undermined by anti-plastics polemicists.  Chaz Miller | Jan 13, 2023