NERC in the News
NERC Updates Recycling and Reuse Industry Study
Economic Impact Of Recycling, Reuse Industry
 |
BioCycle, March 2009
Recycling and reuse fuel a $35 billion/year industry in Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania, according to a report released in February by the Northeast Recycling Council (NERC). The research, which updates NERC’s 2000 Recycling Economic Information Study, found that more than 11,000 recycling and reuse businesses employ over 100,000 individuals in the five states, and pay them wages that exceed $4.2 billion. There are three categories of establishments studied in the survey — recycling industry; relying on recycling; and reuse/remanufacturing. New York has the largest number of those establishments (3,948), followed by Pennsylvania (3,803). However, in terms of direct economic impact, Pennsylvania is more than double that of New York — $20.6 million versus $10.1 million. Pennsylvania employs over 52,000 in the three categories studied; New York employs over 32,000, followed by 14,000 in Massachusetts, 4,500 in Maine, and 1,900 in Delaware.
NERC also evaluated the environmental benefits related to recycling and reuse. Each year, recycling operations in the five states save the amount of energy needed to power close to two million households, and avoid almost 1.25 MTCE of greenhouse gas emissions — equivalent to taking 2.8 million cars off the road, according to an estimate by NERC based on the study’s findings. Research for the Recycling Economic Information Update included several significant changes to the methodology used in the 2000 study to examine the economic impacts of the industry, says Lynn Rubinstein, NERC’s Executive Director. “The changes were designed to more accurately estimate the economic contribution of the recycling industry in the five participant states for the year 2007. Those changes also make it difficult to compare the studies to one another.” The complete report is available on the NERC website, www.nerc.org.
