NERC Blog

Implementing the Food Recovery Hierarchy presents an opportunity to decrease solid waste generation, mitigate environmental impacts and resource use, improve food security in our communities, create jobs, conserve water, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution.

As a materials manager, it’s of course important to me that I plan for how to handle the remaining holiday food bounty in order to not let it go to waste. In this vein, I offer the following tips for leftover storage and cooking.

It’s the holiday season. Along with the hustle, bustle, and cheer comes trash. Trash, of course, increases dramatically this time of year (about 25%), as does recycling (also around 25%). These stats make it even more important that each of us in the field do our part to promote the “3R’s+” and “recycle right” this time of year.

For the pivotal importance of today for our country, the world, and the environment, I offer the following thoughts. – Athena Lee Bradley

Many professional events are promoting opportunities to recognize “young professionals” and/or bring “experienced professionals” together with the “young professionals”. NERC’s fall conference this year strives to do just that, with sessions devoted to two fairly recent developments in the recycling industry—reuse and organics—in which many young entrepreneurs have found success.

Today’s Guest Blog is by Billy Ernest, an ECOAmeriCorps Member serving the Windham Solid Waste Management District, Bennington County Solid Waste Alliance, and the Londonderry Group in southern Vermont.

It is simple reuse via redistribution. Yet in a short article publicizing the initiative, the environmentally-savvy Good Magazine called this “recycling.” It’s a common and seemingly simple mistake, and is just one of a myriad of daily examples where reuse is called recycling. Yet it is extremely important to differentiate between the two for political and environmental reasons.

There are many examples of success, as arenas and sports facilities around the world have developed highly effective waste diversion programs, many of which result in cost efficiencies.

NERC’s new Reuse Explorations Guide: Innovative Programs & Strategies is now available for free download. The Guide is a result of our two-year USDA funded Reuse Project. To help promote the Guide, here’s Part 2 of the excerpt on the sharing economy.

Today’s guest blog article is by Susan Bush, a Senior Consultant with RSE-USA.