Justin Deffenbacher
Amidst the tangled mess of recycling scraps of newspaper are sti…
Just off a remote turnoff of Chicago’s Dan Ryan Expressway sits Illinois’ largest material recovery facility, affectionately known as “Murph” (MRF). Opened in the mid-1990s by Waste Management Inc. (WMI), the plant processes all recyclables for the City of Chicago and northwest Indiana.
Inside, an assembly line of machinery churns out half-ton bales of aluminum, cardboard, fiber, and plastics shipped domestically and internationally. Two days of processing produces an astonishing 1,200 tons of material, but that’s much less than a decade ago.
And, says Plant Manager Hector Fonseca, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Outdated objectives
Since the 1970s, when many municipal recycling programs began, weight has been the constant metric in determining success. Now, almost half a century later, these quantity-over-quality guidelines are leading to inefficient and often costly outcomes.
“When we first started these programs, all waste had been sent to the landfill where it was weighed,” says WMI Senior Public Affairs Director Susan Robinson. The Houston-based company is North America’s largest environmental solutions provider, serving 21 million municipal and commercial customers. “Naturally, the goal was all about limiting what goes across the scale, but today we’re looking at the bigger picture.”
That picture: sustainable materials management (SMM), an eight-year-old EPA-backed lifecycle-based philosophy that focuses on total environmental impact instead of how much ends up at the recycling plant. It’s a systemic approach to using and reusing resources that considers the greenhouse gasses generated by two processes:
· Mining raw material, shipping it to a factory where it’s turned into a product and packaged, shipping it to a store or home, protecting the product until the time the consumer uses it; and
· Producing, shipping, and disposing of the product’s package.
By this calculation, vacuum-packed coffee pouches are more environmentally beneficial than coffee cans because they’re lighter and require less material, enabling a single truck to deliver more product.
“One thing we haven’t done well is looked at production,” Robinson says. “It’s important that a package be protective as well as sustainable. If the product gets broken, you far outweigh any environmental benefit.”
Another problem with weight-based goals is that they encourage over-recycling, a phenomenon that’s just as harmful as not recycling at all. When they’re not sure what’s recyclable and what’s not, consumers usually toss it all in the recycling bin. As a result, contamination rates in some WMI plants have risen by as much as 50%.
“We’ve promoted this ‘recycle first’ mentality that’s confused people,” Robinson says. “Consumers err on the side of inclusion and weight-based metrics let it happen.”
Different goal = different message
Weight is also becoming less appropriate because of changes in products and packaging, both of which have become lighter.
In May 2017, Illinois passed a bill eliminating weight-based collection goals for e-waste, which is an extended producer responsibility (EPR) program. With flat-screen monitors and laptops replacing bulkier components, manufacturers were hitting statutorily imposed annual goals much sooner than expected. They’d stop funding collection and processing facilities, which in turn stopped accepting e-waste. If Gov. Bruce Rauner signs the bill into law, the solid waste industry will have its first system solely based on lifecycle analysis.
Waste stream composition also has undergone a profound change over the last decade. No longer dominated by newspaper and glass, new packaging materials have taken over.
“The online folks — Amazon, Blue Apron, etc. — have figured out what’s best to ship their products in,” says Robinson. “Retailers recognize the science in smaller, lighter packaging. This creates a system where we’re using fewer materials overall.”
The bottom line: Packaging is more efficient. In 1992, WMI reports, it took 65,000 plastic water bottles to produce a half-ton material block; today, it takes 90,000. Thus, the average municipal recycling operation must expend more resources to meet a weight-based goal – inefficient for both taxpayers and the local environment.
Online shopping is also affecting what’s recycled and by whom, which impacts municipal collection contracts and public outreach. WMI has seen a 30% increase in residential waste but total volume has remained constant. Individual consumers are more important to recycling program success but, given the rapid evolution in packaging materials, need help understanding their role in meeting local sustainability goals. Along with explaining sustainable materials management to a public already confused about such diverse waste as paint, batteries, cooking oil, computers, and mattresses, municipal solid waste agencies must change their basic message: recycle right, not recycle first.
“Just because something can be recycled in a commercial setting doesn’t mean it can in a residential one,” Robinson says. “Commercial plants have the systems in place to separate and recycle things not suited for residential-waste recyclers.”
Implementation immediate for SMM?
Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality is taking a sustainable materials management approach to food.
Waste Management, Alice Ashe
The rise of online retailers and the decline of big box stores has changed waste streams, and not necessarily for the better. Residents and business are doing the right thing by recycling old corrugated cardboard (OCC). However, from a sustainable materials management approach, a non-recyclable plastic pouch is more sustainable than the box because it allows more goods to be shipped at once.
Two percent of U.S. energy use goes toward growing, manufacturing, transporting, refrigerating, and cooking food that’s never eaten, enough to power 54 million homes for a year. One-quarter of the nation’s fresh water supply goes toward producing food that’s never eaten. Released in March 2017, Oregon DEQ Strategic Plan for Preventing the Wasting of Food reframes material such as uneaten restaurant and hospital cafeteria food as wasted nutrients rather than something to be diverted from landfills by calling it “wasted food” instead of “food waste.” The state will spend five years studying how to meeting its goal of reducing wasted food 40% by 2050 affects greenhouse gas emissions and water and energy use.
Illinois and Oregon are the only states implementing sustainable material management goals. However, California, New York, Vermont, and Washington State have considered adding the strategy alongside weight-based metrics, working with EPA auditors to determine feasibility.
“With ongoing education and data support, states and cities will move toward sustainability goals based on priorities other than weight, such as energy and emissions reduction and even social impacts,” Robinson says. “It’s early, but we’re seeing the discussion starting to take hold. It’s a bit of an ‘aha moment’ once folks learn about the environmental implications of sustainable materials management.”
“We want people asking the question: What are the best measurable and effective goals and outcomes that local, state, regional, and national officials should consider? Tailoring a waste reduction target to an organization’s goals and realistic limitations is important in reducing their environmental impact,” EPA Spokesperson Enesta Jones says.