In COVID-era trash surge, waste management ingenuity, circularity, and investments are key
Today's guest blog is courtesy of the World Bank. The original post can be read here.
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and with little warning, municipalities suddenly faced unique waste management challenges: massive upticks in daily waste volumes combined with curtailed garbage collection and cutbacks in recycling. While workplace waste production fell at the pandemic’s height, household waste rose to a degree that offset the decrease in commercial waste. With the exponential increase in the number of ill patients needing treatment, medical waste volumes surged as well.
Regions with poor waste management infrastructure were least able to handle the rapid influx of additional waste, which in many cases overwhelmed existing dump sites or landfills, amplifying negative environmental and social impacts.
Against this backdrop, the waste management industry is responding with ingenuity, creativity, and resilience. Consider…
How Much Can We Recycle?
A friend of mine likes to say the only thing wrong with recycling rates is the numerator and the denominator. I was reminded of this when I read about a study suggesting the 91.4 percent recycling rate for cardboard boxes, also known as old corrugated containers (OCC), is too high.
Why I support regulating my industry
Packaging EPR laws represent a critical lever to improving the packaging supply chain.
APR: The Demand for Recycled Material Has Never Been Stronger
Anyone with the least interest in recycling has heard the drumbeat of bad news. Recyclables diverted to landfills. Plastics recovery via recycling at a moribund less than ten percent. Regarding the percentage of plastics being recycled, Steve Alexander of the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) wrote in a recent NERC blog, “The authors [of a report on plastics recycling rates] intentionally failed to acknowledge that the low numbers they cite include ALL plastic items, including durable plastic items not collected through community recycling programs.
“The fact is that 21 percent of PET, polypropylene and high density polyethylene rigid plastic packaging — the kind of plastic that makes up the majority of consumer packaging and what consumers put in their blue bins — is recycled,” Alexander reported.
Kara Pochiro, APR’s Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs,
The Truth on Recycling
Today's guest blog is authored by Keefe Harrison of The Recycling Partnership. The original post can be read here.
Frustrated that recycling isn’t fixing the world’s waste problem? Here’s the truth: as it’s built now, it never will. If we think we can just keep making and buying whatever we want without any planning for what happens when we’re done with that thing, recycling will never keep pace and we’ll always be let down.
However, if we stop, and take on the hard but impactful work of planning and building a better system, one that involves reducing what we make in the first place, reusing more, and recycling all that we can, now that’s a different matter. I believe that if you don’t like something, you should work to change it. That’s what The Recycling Partnership is all about – hands on, hard work to overturn the status quo – driving for a better recycling…
Right to Repair Revisited
Today's guest blog is authored by Suz Okie of GreenBiz.
Just about a year ago, I queried if Read more | Comments (0) | Sep 6, 2022
Recycling Markets Stumbling in Our Shapeshifting Economy
Today's guest blog is authored by NERC Board Member Chaz Miller. The original post can be read here.
No one should be surprised at the up and down prices for our recyclables. After all, they are commodities subject to the economy’s ups and downs. Unlike recycling markets, the current economy is doing both at the same time. The Washington Post recently described it as “shape-shifting” because economic data is so contradictory. In August, eight days after we learned we had two consecutive quarters of declining economic growth (which is the definition of a recession), employment data showed tremendous job growth. We were back to pre-COVID levels. Housing starts are down, construction jobs are up and inflation is an inescapable reality. What is going on?
Recycling markets began reacting to economic news in mid-May…
New Circular Packaging Spotlight for a Few Familiar Formats
Today's guest blog is courtesy of NERC Advisory Member The Recycling Partnership. The original post can be read here.
Solutions for recyclable packaging are not one-size-fits-all. From aluminum beverage cans to glass bottles, each specific packaging material and format has its own unique recycling benefits and challenges, like design features or sorting technology. But addressing complex problems in siloes won’t further progress. We need all stakeholders across the value chain, for all materials, to engage in achieving a fully functioning U.S. residential recycling system and circular economy. The Recycling Partnership is furthering these efforts through the new Circular Packaging Spotlight and forthcoming Circular Packaging Assessment tool to further assist companies and communities with system complexities and individualized integrated solutions.
It’s Time to Come to our System Senses
Today's guest blog is authored by Keefe Harrison, CEO of NERC Advisory Member The Recycling Partnership. The original post can be read here.
I just hopped off the stage at Circularity ’22 and a few things stand out to me about this national drive to improve recycling and launch a circular economy. Clearly people are frustrated that recycling hasn’t fixed the waste problem yet. But before we jump to recycling’s failings, let’s be sure we haven’t failed recycling. From my perspective, we’ve been taking steps, when it’s going to take a system.
The reason it isn’t working at full scale is because we haven’t built it that way…yet. We don’t have a recycling system – we have a cobbled together network. That is the honest truth. As the CEO of an organization that works hard to fix recycling let me be clear: it is 2022 and 40 million American families still lack access to recycling!…
The Benefits of Recycled Glass
Today's blog is authored by NERC summer intern Joseph Dolan.
For the first time in my life, I am attending summer courses. I am going to complete a Master's degree in public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst this year, with one of my personal interests being environmental policy. Since I was required to get a summer internship for my academic program, I approached the Northeast Recycling Council in Brattleboro, Vermont for an internship position. I am pleased to work for such an organization since I believe in noble causes, which considering my interest in environmental policy overlaps quite well with their focus on recycling.
After the process of setting up the internship was taken care of, I was asked to help out with blogs. Originally, I was asked to find potential blogs, though I also offered to write one for them during my summer internship. After my offer was accepted, I contemplated what to write about for my first blog ever. I reflected on my reason for taking this internship, beyond the academic requirements. I considered my interest…