NERC in the News
New Study of Pennsylvania’s Recycling Law, Decades After Its Adoption, Sees Need for New Approaches
Associated Press, April 16, 2011
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HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania's recycling law has diverted a mountain of trash from landfills since it was adopted more than two decades ago, but a detailed new study makes the case that it ought to be revisited.
A 45-page report issued last week by a Widener University School of Law professor and several of his students proposes wholesale changes to what was once the nation's largest mandatory recycling program.
They said it has become "rudderless and drifting," with considerable unused capacity in the recycling infrastructure that was built — at great expense — as a result of the 1988 law.
Among the recommendations: force more municipalities to set up programs, expand the sorts of items that must be recycled and be more aggressive about public education.
"This statute, probably more than any other statute in the state's history, affects human environmental behavior," said the professor, John Dernbach.
He said the public is already on board, particularly the younger generation that grew up with recycling as a part of their lives.
"There's an expectation that the program is going to continue, because people have come to believe recycling is a good thing, for a variety of reasons," he said.
Dernbach, who helped draft the law while working for what was then called the Department of Environmental Resources, wrote the report with students in a seminar on climate change.
The researchers said recycling targets outlined in the law have either been met or are being ignored, so they believe policymakers need to establish new goals and develop more accurate measurements of progress.
The '88 law reached its initial target, a recycling rate of 25 percent, by 1996, and then passed a new goal, 35 percent, in 2001.
But the Widener study questioned the reliability of state measurements of recycling compliance, suggesting that the Department of Environmental Protection needs to publish "easily understood and readily available" information about how much the average person recycles and whether those numbers are getting better or worse. Department spokesman John Repetz did not respond to questions about the report.
Doug Hill, executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, acknowledged that today's recycling figures are not precise, but he said that is because there is no compelling reason to generate more accurate figures.
"But in orders of magnitude, we're still correct," Hill said.
The report also said one in five Pennsylvanians lack curbside pickup and about 600 of the state's 2,566 municipalities do not currently coordinate recycling, not even operating a collection center.
"I don't think curbside is going to work in really rural areas, but you can have better drop-off centers, you can figure out where in the boonies the big sources of waste are, including the commercial and industrial sources, and focus on them," Dernbach said.
The report faulted the Department of General Services for not fully meeting its responsibilities under the law to coordinate recycling within state government. Department spokesman Troy Thompson said the agency was studying the report.
Jeff Schmidt, director of the state's Sierra Club chapter, said he thinks Pennsylvania's waste reduction efforts have been a failure, partly because of raids on a fund earmarked to expand recycling.
"We've hit a plateau, if you will, but there's an awful lot of potential out there," Schmidt said. "The public is interested in doing this, but they need better education and they need more access to recycling."
Hill said recycling of special items like hazardous materials and computers has been increasing. In addition, he said, a bill has been introduced that would give counties a new funding stream to expand overall recycling, and efforts are under way to address business, commercial and industrial recycling.
"(That's) where we're getting the best results and the best numbers, and probably have the best opportunity to do more," he said.
Recyling has become big business in Pennsylvania and now employs more than 52,000 people at 3,200 establishments, according to a 2009 study by the Northeast Recycling Council. For all they do to reduce the waste stream, more is being generated all the time.
"Whether it floats up on beaches or seeps out of landfills," Gov. Robert P. Casey said when he signed the bill, "we can see that our garbage does not disappear."
